The Instituto Tomie Ohtake AkzoNobel Architecture Prize has announced the selected projects for its 2018 edition. In its fifth year, this is the first time the prize has selected 13 finalist projects, rather than 10 as in previous editions.

It is time to welcome @archdailyco to Instagram! Our dedicated account on this social network is a new showcase for Colombian architecture. It offers both a local and global perspective: classics and rising talents; historic works and must-see future projects; brick, guadua, and concrete; the Caribbean and the Pacific; you and us.

To kick things off, we have selected three projects designed by El Equipo de Mazzanti, CONNATURAL, and Estudio Herreros alongside Bermúdez Arquitectos, featured below.

We invite you to follow our Instagram account and tag your photos of Colombian architecture with the hashtag #ArchDailyCo. On Tuesday, July 17, we will share the best photos uploaded by our readers!

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The Federation of Associations of Architects of the Mexican Republic, A.C., invited all Mexican architects to participate in the XIV National and International Biennial of Mexican Architecture 2018. This event aimed to identify the country's best architectural works, as well as publications, research projects, and theses, while recognizing their authors and disseminating the most relevant works. Through analysis and criticism, the goal was to foster reflection on responsible contemporary architecture and sustainable solutions. A single Gold Medal was awarded in this biennial, and the projects were classified into 23 categories, which featured various Honorable Mentions and Silver Medals. Read on to discover the winners.

Mike Smith, co-founder of the Costa Rican firm Entre Nos Atelier, has become the first Central American to receive the Loeb Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD).

Led by John Peterson, founder of the NGO Public Architecture, the program annually selects a cohort of architecture and urban planning professionals, aiming to "strengthen their ability to advance positive social outcomes and support a more equitable collective future." During their one-year residency, fellows receive financial support and unrestricted access to the digital educational resources of Harvard and MIT.

In late November, we published the winners of the second call for thesis projects in Colombia, which received 70 submissions from 14 cities and 29 universities. Ultimately, nine projects passed the three stages of evaluation, standing out for addressing critical contemporary issues, conducting deep research and analysis, and proposing challenges in both urban and rural contexts, just as in 2016.

Here, we take an in-depth look at CAM Marsella: Municipal Administrative Center of Marsella, a project selected in the 2016 Colombian Biennial of Architecture Students, developed by Manuel Murgueitio and Edward Zapata, both graduates of the Universidad Católica de Pereira in Colombia.

From the Fundación Arquia Blog, architect Virginia Navarro brings us an article reflecting on the reasons for and importance of bringing architecture closer to children.

Recent years have seen a notable increase in the number of architects who, occasionally or continuously, have dedicated part of their practice to conducting architecture workshops for children. Their objectives have been both educational (developing critical thinking about the built environment, understanding cultural and urban heritage, and fostering spatial intelligence and creativity...) and informative: gathering data on children's needs within larger, typically social or participatory, projects.

In a city like Lima, where cars continue to gain ground over pedestrians, a competition that attempts to reverse this dual inertia by prioritizing the pedestrian use of urban spaces is highly welcome—allowing people to not just cross a vehicular roundabout, but to linger in a plaza, for example. One only has to look at the finalist proposals to understand these aspirations, all of which present plazas of high architectural and artistic quality. If we can imagine it, we can make it happen. Beyond the results, each project inspires and paves the way for new ways of rethinking and cohabiting the city through public space.

The Paz Soldán roundabout, an iconic, central location and one of the busiest points in the San Isidro district, will be given a new lease on life thanks to a comprehensive transformation that will convert it into a public plaza. The Plaza Paz Soldán National Competition, sponsored by the Municipality of San Isidro and Grupo Centenario, and directed by architect Gary Leggett, invited architects and artists to collaborate on proposing a public space to serve as a gateway to El Olivar forest. The call for entries received a massive response, with 160 teams registering and 60 architectural projects submitted.

Held since 1949, the Raffle House Competition is a historic contest that has given new generations of architects at the School of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism (FADU – UdelaR) the opportunity to design and build a real project in Uruguay. The winning design becomes one of the prizes of the Architecture Raffle, an initiative through which each graduating class from the school takes a trip around the world to experience the best of global architecture.

This annual competition is open to all students at the Universidad de la República's School of Architecture, "contributing to collective construction and serving as a fundamental academic tool in the education of all students in general, and the competition participants in particular." For this edition, the brief was based on the concept of a sustainable city, utilizing existing infrastructure and connectivity while enhancing the landscape, urban, historical, and cultural heritage of Montevideo's Rambla Sur area.

Designing spaces intended for the exhibition of furniture pieces with high structural, ergonomic, artistic, and historical complexity requires a distinct design approach, as the goal is to showcase the product while persuading the viewer-client to purchase it. In Brazil, prime examples such as the Forma store (1987), Micasa (2004), Casa Matriz (2004), Micasa Volume B (2007), Ouvidor (2013), Dpot (2016), Líder (2016), and Micasa Volume C (2017) stand out for masterfully combining these principles. Generally speaking, they provide the “white box” required as a backdrop—akin to works of art within the neutrality of exhibition spaces—while arranging the pieces to evoke the desire to buy.

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Torre Helea is a residential building designed by Bulnes Arquitectos currently under construction in Puebla, Mexico's second fastest-growing city. This project is an architectural response to the significant challenge of catering to the most demanding segment of the local real estate market. The qualities that define Torre Helea recently led it to be nominated for the 2018 World Architecture Festival in the residential category.

Featuring a geometry that stands out in its context, this 33-story tower with a stepped rise will include 93 residences and over 41,000 square meters of built area. Each floor features three rectangular apartments arranged radially like a propeller, which in turn rotates 15 degrees counterclockwise at each level as it ascends to a total height of 142.5 meters.

"Hidden within the co-residence and overcrowding of our Chilean cities lies the solution to the chronic housing deficit: people want the city, not just housing." So begins a statement released on May 24 by academics from the Universidad de Chile and the Universidad Católica, which to date has been endorsed by more than 50 prominent figures, including members of parliament, mayors, foundations, professional associations, universities, research centers, and former public authorities in the field.

Supported by the authors' own research and state metrics such as the CASEN survey and the national census, the signatories argue that in recent years, co-resident households have grown and the overall deficit has decreased, yet housing subsidies remain unused by citizens "because people prefer to forgo subsidies that would ultimately displace them to other municipalities."

The coordinators of the statement—Juan Pablo Urrutia, Cristián Robertson, Francisco Walker, and Javiera Martínez—propose "consolidating an agenda that prioritizes addressing this social phenomenon through integrated policies of medium-density development, urban regeneration, and social integration" through a cross-sector working group to help draft concrete proposals. The document has already been delivered to the Minister of Housing and Urbanism, Cristián Monckeberg.

Below, we present the full original text, titled "Co-resident households grow, overall deficit decreases, and subsidies go unused":

The initial question—and with it, the proposed discussion—stems from the original title of the article War-chitecture: How guilty are architects in urban violence? by Tomas Beverina, one of our readers in Argentina, who invites us to reflect on urban violence and prompts an even broader, collective debate.

The Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil (CAU/BR) has sent an open letter to the president of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan), historian Kátia Bogéa, demanding the professional minimum wage for architects selected through the national competition launched last week.

To start at the end: last Saturday, September 8, 2018, the award ceremony was held for the XVIII National Biennial of Architecture and Reconciliation “Rethinking the Territory”, an event co-organized by the Architects' Association of Peru - La Libertad Region, and the Architects' Association of Peru. This concluded a three-day series of events designed to foster reflection and showcase the work produced in Peruvian architecture over the last two years. We attended the biennial in the city of Trujillo, where its decentralization, return to long-forgotten values, and rethinking of the territory invite deep reflection—points we will return to later. For now, we focus on presenting the results.

La propuesta El Final del “Efecto Arenal” presentada por el equipo de OOIIO Arquitectura ha obtenido una Mención Especial en el “Europan 14”, el concurso de urbanismo para jóvenes arquitectos más importante a nivel internacional en la actualidad. El proyecto destaca por su representación gráfica a través de un cómic, explorando nuevas formas de comunicación arquitectónica. 

El emplazamiento propuesto por el concurso es uno de los ejes marcados por el Plan General vigente de la localidad de El Arenal (Playa de Palma de Mallorca) para su peatonalización y su puesta en valor, mejorando la conexión de la playa con el barrio en el que viven permanente sus habitantes. En el entorno hay una serie de problemas urbanísticos como un centro comercial en desuso que sin embargo presenta un gran potencial como contenedor de futuras actividades y es el elemento de rótula entre el mundo turístico y el mundo local. 

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Chile's history can be read through its towns. Blending the architectural and building traditions of its indigenous peoples with the influence of European immigrants, these small localities reveal how their inhabitants have occupied and appropriated the territory according to their needs, customs, and specific contexts.

With a landscape that changes drastically from north to south, certain patterns emerge, shaped by climate and geography. From the use of adobe and stone in desert regions to meticulous craftsmanship with native woods in the south, along with the rich colonial architecture of the central valleys, these 24 examples offer significant lessons that every architect should study closely. Read on to discover them below.

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La Minerva is an iconic monumental sculpture in Jalisco's capital, created by Joaquín Arias in 1957 and commissioned by then-governor Agustín Yáñez. Years passed, and it was during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico that, following a victory by the Brazilian team, their coach gave the players the afternoon off, and the celebration ended up taking place there—at the intersection of López Mateos, Vallarta, Golfo de Cortés, and Circunvalación Agustín Yáñez avenues. Since then, La Minerva has become the preferred venue for both celebrations and demonstrations. However, weathering and traffic-induced vibrations took a heavy toll on its structure.

We are pleased to announce a strategic partnership between the ARKRIT Collective and ArchDaily en Español to regularly publish critical essays that foster debate, rigorous argumentation, and discussion around architecture.

ARKRIT is a research group within the Department of Architectural Design at ETSAM in Madrid. Over more than a decade, it has established itself as a hub for reflection and knowledge production by and for architectural criticism. Founded by Professor of Architectural Design Dr. Antonio Miranda Regojo-Borges, its members include PhDs and university academics working across various European and Latin American research centers.

Humanity has always been obsessed with pushing its limits, setting records only to break them time and time again. Consequently, our cities' skylines have always been defined by those who hold power in any given era: once it was churches, then state institutions, and in recent decades, private skyscrapers have arisen to remind us who can reach the highest—literally.

Do you know what the tallest building in Latin America is? Specialized organizations like the CTBUH (Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat) have established parameters to objectively measure a building's height, discounting antennas and other additions used to tack on extra meters. Let's take a look at what the CTBUH says about the tallest skyscrapers in Latin America.

This list was last updated in July 2018.

Heidegger wrote that humanity should dwell poetically.

Yet in a society driven by materialism, uniform residential buildings dominate the landscape. Is there a way of living that is better suited to human nature? This remains a question we cannot help but explore.

From October 12 to 15, World Architecture magazine, in partnership with Aranya, hosted the second Aranya Architecture Forum. Prominent Chinese and international architects, alongside cross-disciplinary leaders, gathered by the sea to discuss the relationship between architecture, art, life, and humanity.

Under the theme “My Perceptual Space,” the main forum was complemented by sub-forums featuring dialogues between architects and cross-disciplinary figures. The event also marked the launch of the Aranya Architect Debut Award, China’s first-ever award dedicated to architects’ debut projects. Additionally, a diverse program of cultural activities offered fresh perspectives on understanding architecture and space.

Around one in the morning in Cairo, despite the darkness of the night, everything feels yellow. Arriving in a city of 9 million people, with an airport that handles 3 million daily, is overwhelming, staggering—or, as Lovecraft might describe those lurking in the dark, indescribable and unnameable. In the gloom of a hotel room that saw its glory days long ago, I can see the Great Pyramid of Giza in the distance, shrouded behind the ever-present haze.

The relentless city devours almost everything in its path; the desert resists, tourism does its part, and, for now, the Sphinx simply watches. Restoration and archaeological work are always underway around the historic sites; you brush the dust off your feet only to uncover ancient remains. Saqqara—the Step Pyramid—is perpetually draped in massive scaffolding of dry wood, weathered from years of waiting for the next discovery that might finally let each prop rest. The heat in Cairo is stifling, and while collective memory associates the city with the pyramids and the Sphinx, its daily life breathes desert, diversity, tourism, commerce, and religion.

Prison to Prison, Uruguay's official exhibition at the 2018 Venice Biennale, explores the existence of an unprecedented Freespace within the intimate relationship between two different architectural models of prisons.

The exhibition, curated by Sergio Aldama, Federico Colom, Diego Morera, Jimena Ríos, and Mauricio Wood, is an invitation to spark new dialogues and discussions that transcend the objects of study themselves, enriching our perspective and reconnecting us with the cultural dimension of architecture.

The results of the Saint-Gobain Architecture Award – Sustainable Habitat have just been announced. The award is one of the most prestigious in the Brazilian construction industry, having recognized over 150 projects for excellence in comfort, innovation, and sustainability. A total of 25 awards were presented across the "Professional" and "Student" categories, in addition to highlights in "Comfort," "Innovation," and "Sustainability." The Best Project award of this edition was presented by Saint-Gobain's global CEO, Pierre-André de Chalendar, and awarded to the Children's Villages project by Rosenbaum® and Aleph Zero. Dal Pian Arquitetos, Vigliecca e Associados, and Estúdio 41 Arquitetura were highlighted in Comfort, Innovation, and Sustainability, respectively.

"The Award is already a benchmark in the Brazilian architecture market, having highlighted hundreds of projects by students and professionals who, in line with Saint-Gobain's values, promote sustainability and respect for the environment," said Thierry Fournier, CEO of Saint-Gobain for Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. "Through this award, we encourage the market to increasingly prioritize the concepts of comfort and people's well-being in buildings," the executive concluded.

Discover the winning projects of the 5th Saint-Gobain Architecture Award – Sustainable Habitat below: