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Mexico City's Chinatown originated in the 1960s near Alameda Central, forming around Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, and Filipino immigrants who established an increasingly strong presence in the city. The ephemeral and vibrant nature of this enclave has led to various design interventions, including the most recent one inaugurated in early 2018 by the Public Space Authority (Autoridad del Espacio Público), featuring urban furniture designed by the Mexican firm Obiect.

Videos

As one of Modernism's key global legacies, how do the architecture and urban planning of Brasília shape the lives of those living in Brazil's capital? This is the subject of the documentary The Body and the Modernist City (O Corpo e a Cidade Modernista), which premieres with two screenings in Europe: on May 8 at the Copenhagen Architecture Festival (CAFx) in Denmark, and on June 10 at the Arquiteturas Film Festival in Portugal.

The results of the 24th competition organized by the Projetar.org portal have just been released. The challenge proposed to students was to design a portable individual shelter for unhoused individuals, receiving 142 proposals submitted by teams of students from various Brazilian states and other countries. Given the difficulty of addressing the housing deficit, the fact that the global population is projected to increase by 50% by 2050, and the severity of the situation faced by unhoused people, it is both necessary and urgent to consider emergency solutions that can at least alleviate suffering and improve their basic living conditions.

See the competition results below:

The social housing model currently seems like a utopia in Spain—ruled by developers and real estate firms, and mired in national policies that fail—and have always failed—to address the housing problem.

Over the years, the idea has been promoted that renting a home is almost a crime, throwing away money that could otherwise go toward purchasing property. Welcome to the wonderful world of real estate speculation. Driven by exorbitant rents set by real estate agencies or landlords with absolutely no state or provincial regulation to control them, the system itself pushes the population to take out mortgages and participate in private development. While over 50% of housing in Spain was rented back in the 1950s, those figures are a far cry from the progressive decline that brings us to the present day: nearly 80% of current housing is owner-occupied, while rentals have shrunk to just 20%.

The lives of 32 families took a turn —quite literally— when the homes they occupied in the 1980s became a designated tourist attraction in 2009. Some of the residents decided to capitalize on this by offering small tours of their homes. Yet, despite the crowds of tourists that have flocked here since, the community remains as tightly knit as the cubes themselves. 

In this project by El Equipo de Mazzanti, Independence Park (Bogotá) reclaims ground by expanding southward, covering a section of 26th Street in the Colombian capital.

Featuring an area of 7,257 square meters distributed across eight plazas, the site has become a key redevelopment space in the city center, where major thoroughfares converge. Nature, seating areas, architectural richness, and urban design transform a space conceived to "reconnect" the city, leveraging the site's native vegetation.

As the year comes to a close, we look back... what captivated us most? After presenting the best architecture of the year, we now focus on identifying representative projects. Among the wide range of Peruvian works published in 2018, those that had the greatest impact on our platform span various scales and typologies. Below, you will find everything from a private house to a public library, by both established and emerging architects—reflecting architecture for everyone.

May the work continue.

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We Are an Event is a fictional character born from the collaboration between Quentin Laurens-Berge and Lambert Moiroux, both French nationals. Created to address questions about the city in which they reside, this character acts as a sphere of exchange and a tool to establish distance from the work produced. As seen in their recent work, Quentin and Lambert belong to a generation of young architects questioning conventional modes of architectural production through an everyday perspective on aesthetics.

Dear architects, thank you for your dedication and hard work this year!

Thank you for your commitment to architecture: for considering human life from every angle to create better living environments; for integrating technology and innovative design to push our era to higher aesthetic heights; and for every effort, big and small, that helps write the epic history of Chinese architecture.

Based on website traffic data, here are the most popular projects in China in 2017 (ordered by publication date; click each link to view more details). In 2018, ArchDaily will continue to support and walk alongside architects every step of the way!

Placemaking is a dynamic concept that inspires people to collectively reinvent their public spaces, transforming them into destinations, gathering places, and social hubs. It serves as a practical tool to revitalize public life by focusing on key locations—a process of social empowerment that helps build local, everyday democracy from the ground up within the public realm. This paradigm encourages diverse stakeholders to assume shared responsibility in shaping and developing the city. As part of the Placemaking Latin America program, more than 40 activities are scheduled, including a first complete training course in Placemaking to be held in Mexico City, as well as a Participatory Urbanism Forum featuring panels, workshops, project pitches, and networking events.

Late last November, we published the winners of the second open call for graduation projects in Colombia, also known as theses, receiving 70 entries from 14 cities and 29 universities. Ultimately, nine projects passed the three stages of evaluation, standing out for addressing pressing systemic issues, developing deep research analyses, and posing both urban and rural challenges, just like in 2016.

In this feature, we take an in-depth look at "BHP: Bioclimatic Multi-Family Housing Prototype," developed by Natalia Carrero and Juan Celis (Universidad Santo Tomás, Bucaramanga campus) and selected for the 2017 edition of Archiprix International.

Eduardo Souto de Moura, the 2011 Pritzker Prize laureate, is perhaps, alongside Álvaro Siza, the most influential Portuguese architect today, with a consistent body of work marked by projects that demonstrate an impressive attention to local specificity.

The mismanagement of water in a city built on a former lakebed—as is the case with Mexico City—has become a daily and cyclical struggle over the years. Consequently, various authors have studied different ways to address the cataclysmic impact of denying a site's geographical history. However, Mexico City's water crisis is not limited to constant flooding; it also involves a drinking water supply that is often insufficient and unequally distributed across different areas. This is due to an inefficient underground distribution system, adding further complexity to an issue that remains a constant challenge in urban planning and infrastructure.

This article was originally published as 'Solving Mexico City's cataclysmic cycle of drowning, drying, and sinking' in Quartz.

Nodes or gathering zones are the key points in urban dynamics, as they facilitate interaction between citizens and the architectural object. Many buildings seek to capitalize on the opportunities provided by their context to connect the architectural design with the landscape, thereby strengthening and introducing new approaches to understanding and viewing urban relationships and architecture from a different perspective.

As an axis connected to the city, a building must understand the relationship between architecture and the urban environment. It should be generous, opening its constituent spaces to the city and its residents to create shared areas for participation, thereby enriching the experience of the city and its surrounding environment.

For this reason, we have selected 5 projects that integrate urban dynamics, providing spaces for civic gathering.  

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Few names fit the label of “cult writer” as perfectly as Raymond Queneau, who boasts a fanatical following of near-militant devotees of the cause: literature as a very serious game. From the outset, and even upon the most cursory reading, Exercises in Style, written by the French author in 1949, is radically different from conventional literature. The book positions itself—or pretends to—in a kind of no-man's-land between literary theory and practice, giving the impression of having been crafted based on the chapters of a style manual. Queneau rejects any preconceived schema that might have grouped the “exercises” by theme, gradual complexity, or simple alphabetical order. He does not even work from a single baseline text. At times, he opts for a purely mechanical game of textual transformation to produce a sense of sheer nonsense.

It is no wonder that this seven-decade-old book still feels revolutionary and remains an essential manual in literary programs. What Queneau showed us then—that playful, mocking creative freedom—remains difficult to match today. For this reason, such an exercise in variation, of refusing to set limits on the imagination, is and must be compatible with the craft of architectural model-making. What Queneau demonstrated, starting with an unremarkable text and transforming it 99 times, is precisely what any architect should attempt to translate into their model-making. It is the art of variation and accumulation—“difference and repetition,” as Gilles Deleuze would say. It means working 99 times on the same idea, watching it transform until, at some point, we are able to recognize its ultimate synthesis.

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The curatorial proposal for the Mexican Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale emphasizes the geographical, imaginary, and cultural weight of Mexican architecture. The pavilion responds to the theme Freespace—set by the Biennale's Artistic Directors, Irish architects Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara—and establishes the connections expressed through interaction with the intangible and the integration of cultural heritage in
architecture.

The Mexican Pavilion in Venice not only highlights the echoes between the territory and architectural thought of 21 participants, but also the voice and vision of those whose careers have listened to and captured the understanding and vulnerability currently represented by the morphology of a challenging territory for architecture.

On October 20, 2017, KAR Properties LLC—a New York-based real estate investment and development firm—celebrated the opening of the showroom for the new 2000 Ocean residential development.

The private event was hosted by developer Shahab Karmely and the marketing team from Douglas Elliman Development who fielded questions and discussed the amenities, vision, and design of the project.

Guests included world-renowned architect Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos, who is responsible for the design of 2000 Ocean; international representatives from Minotti; Howard M. Lorber, President of Douglas Elliman Realty LLC; Jay Phillip Parker, CEO of Douglas Elliman Florida; as well as prospective buyers, real estate brokers, and the press.

Emilio De la Cerda, director of the School of Architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile since 2014, has been chosen to assume the newly created position of Undersecretary of Cultural Heritage in the South American country's new Ministry of Culture, the Arts, and Heritage, an institution that began operations on March 1st.

Among his responsibilities, De la Cerda will coordinate the activities of the new National Cultural Heritage Service and will "propose policies, and design and evaluate plans and programs in areas related to folklore, traditional cultures, indigenous cultures and heritage, tangible and intangible cultural heritage, heritage infrastructure, and citizen participation in collective memory and heritage definition processes," according to the official regulations for the position.

In just over three months, Érica Oiticica and Sâmyla Souza, students at the School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU) of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), designed a Complete Street project that earned them an award and the opportunity to present their ideas to a global audience at a conference in Tanzania. The “As Cidades Somos Nós” (Our Cities Ourselves) competition inspired the duo to put their best urban planning ideas onto paper to transform a street in Belo Horizonte.

This week, the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) released the call for applications for a civil service examination that will open 411 positions across the country. Organized by the Brazilian Center for Research in Assessment and Selection and Promotion of Events (Cebraspe), the selection process was authorized on May 3 by the Ministry of Planning, Budget, and Management (MP) and is the result of a strong national mobilization aimed at highlighting the importance of preserving Brazilian cultural heritage to society.

This article is adapted from a South China Morning Post report titled "China's architecture should focus more on public space." In this interview, Peter Schubert, Design Partner at Ennead Architects, discusses how Chinese cities can achieve a "renaissance" amid today's rapid urban expansion. Below is the full interview:

Today, urban construction in China is expanding at an unprecedented rate. Skyscrapers are mushrooming, while various infrastructure projects and commercial complexes emerge one after another. Indeed, China has surpassed the rest of the world to become the nation with the largest volume, grandest scale, and fastest pace of construction. Monolithic, single-use, supertall buildings define city skylines, symbolizing the modernization and globalization of Chinese society.

Museums are vital sources of knowledge, housing some of the most significant works of architecture in history and bringing learning closer to the curious minds who experience them. On May 18, International Museum Day was celebrated with various activities taking place across some of Mexico's most representative venues. Because the country's cultural wealth deserves ongoing celebration, we have compiled a selection of iconic museums where art and architecture merge to define unique spaces. What are your favorite museums in your city?

The fourth edition of Open House Madrid has come to a close with record-breaking attendance. The open-door events, the Open House Madrid architecture congress, and more than 30 activities held throughout October drew nearly 82,000 visitors.

According to festival co-directors Paloma Gómez Marín and Pati Núñez, these figures confirm the city's interest in the initiative: “Open House Madrid includes a variety of activities that reach highly diverse audiences, from architects, interior designers, and students to residents curious to learn more about their surroundings. We are also seeing a growing number of visitors from outside Madrid who travel here specifically for the festival.”

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The Open Museum is a project designed by Mexican architect Fernanda Canales as part of the Arch Days CDMX and Design Week 2018 activities. It consists of three courtyards of different sizes that extend the museum into the park, creating a new meeting point alongside the Tamayo Museum. The pavilion's shape follows the natural flow of pedestrian paths in the area, introducing a new experience based on linked spaces that frame the existing trees, the sky, and the museum's sloped side wall, which is transformed into a new agora.