Once again in its eighth edition, the Prix Versailles 2022 awards have honored the best achievements in contemporary architecture. A total of 24 projects from different parts of the world have been highlighted paying tribute to innovation, creativity, the reflection of local heritage, eco-efficiency, and the values of social interaction and participation upheld by the United Nations and aligned with the principles of intelligent sustainability considering the ecological, social and cultural impacts that surround the projects.

The world-renowned brand, AZULIK announces the new project in Tulum, Quintana Roo which confirms its creative expansion and the growth of architectural scope: "Habitable Sculptures" its first residential complex that they describe as "a new proposal for lifestyle and sustainable luxury." The residential initiative was born from the firm Roth Architecture, continuing with the characteristic aesthetic that "puts nature as the protagonist and the user as a priority."

"What characterizes and gives meaning to Brasilia is a game of three scales... the residential or everyday scale... the so-called monumental scale, in which man acquires a collective dimension; the urbanistic expression of a new concept of nobility... Finally the gregarious scale, in which dimensions and space are deliberately reduced and concentrated in order to create a climate conducive to grouping... We can also add another fourth scale, the bucolic scale of open areas intended for lakeside retreats or weekends in the countryside." - Lucio Costa in an interview with Jornal do Brasil, November 8, 1961.

Photographer Joana França shared with us an impressive series of aerial photographs of the national capital of Brazil, Brasilia. The photoset is divided into four sub-series each presenting a scale: residential, monumental, gregarious and bucolic.

Playgrounds are spaces with equipment dedicated to children's leisure, where they can develop motor and social skills. However, these spaces are new to our cultures and cities and emerge from the recognition of childhood as a fundamental stage of human development.

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In commemoration of the International Year of Glass, VASA (Vidriería Argentina SA) commissioned the Central Society of Architects (SCA) to organize, run, and promote a national preliminary design competition for the construction of an Urban Pavilion. Sponsored by the Argentine Federation of Associations of Architects (FADEA), the initiative aimed to design a VASA Urban Pavilion that uses glass as its predominant material and is situated in a green public space, either urban or waterfront, within the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA).

When organizing the elements, materials and colors of an architectural layout, architects can successfully guide users through a room and its different spaces, therefore creating an easy and seamless trajectory for those inhabiting it. By exploring innovative strategies to create new ways of arranging a space, architecture can use color to boost certain aspects of a project’s scheme. The use of color in architectural design combines different factors beyond aesthetic preferences by also affecting the user’s emotions and behavior. Before launching into the color selection, the design process entails certain decision making, such as which architectural elements to highlight, if there is a zonification or division of spaces within the use of colors, the creation of focal points, and the consideration of how each color is associated with a determined mood.

With a breakdown of five architecture projects, the following article analyzes how color is applied as a design strategy to define spaces through three categories: structure, elements and objects, and definition of spaces.

'Color in certain places has the great value of making the outlines and structural planes seem more energetic' - Antoni Gaudí

Videos

'Los Ríos Territorio Arquitectura' is a program that seeks to highlight the value of architecture in Chile's XIV Region, while bringing visibility to the work of the territory's architects through three short films featuring interviews with 15 professionals across 22 different locations.

As another year comes to a close, the ArchDaily team gathers the highlights of architecture in a series of retrospectives reflecting on the content featured over the past twelve months. As part of this effort, our curation team turns its attention to one of the most popular categories among our readers, residential architecture, selecting the projects that represent the best of a vast global architectural production, as seen through the eyes of our audience.

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This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights office spaces submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a TV station in Vietnam to a bazaar-inspired business center in Iran, this round-up of unbuilt projects showcases how architects structure corporative spaces to serve as a model for sustainable, innovative, and future-oriented workplaces.

Featuring the firms AEXN, HGAA, Ho Khue Architects, Kennon, Macroepsilon Architects, Plinthos Architects, Rvad Studio, and 3deluxe, the following list explores office buildings at different scales and varying stages of their development. Whether competition-winning projects or ongoing planned execution, each project advocates for local social-economic development and responds to the growing energy-efficient demand.

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Cities are fascinating and challenging spaces. While they serve as arenas for exchange and encounter, they also present seemingly unsolvable problems. Episode 58 of Betoneira features a conversation with urban planner Mauro Calliari on the potential of cities, considering the complexity of the post-pandemic landscape.

The first point Calliari addressed was the very concept of the city. According to him, defining it precisely is one of the central debates of urbanism, as there are many ways to approach the issue. A city is usually a reasonably large, dense, and diverse place. Cities presuppose a certain concentration of people, commercial activities, and other functions necessary to sustain life.

The Fountainhead, released in 1949 and based on the 1943 novel by Russian-American writer Ayn Rand, portrays the journey of a young, avant-garde architect caught in an architectural debate between individual “creation” and the industrialization of the profession. The novel introduces Rand’s Objectivism, a philosophy she championed throughout most of her career, which defines the human being as a heroic figure whose noblest activity is productive achievement, even if attained through renunciation and self-sacrifice.

The House of Music Hungary is one of the biggest cultural investments in the European Union. Designed by Sou Fujimoto Architects, it is becoming a hub for city dwellers and worldwide visitors wishing to attend concerts, visit the exhibition or record music in the building's open studios.

ArchDaily editors first got in touch with the Liget Budapest Project in the summer of 2021 and were treated to an impressive site visit at the House of Music Hungary. We were among a few select invitees that caught a glimpse of the finishing phases at one of the city's major projects located in its 200-year-old park. Developers and contractors were racing to catch up on the time they’d missed due to the pandemic – a challenge they certainly fulfilled, with the project completed in less than six years and being opened to the public in December 2021.

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Usually, a window is an exterior opening that provides lighting and ventilation to the interior of a building. This connection with the context, added to appropriate lighting, makes it fundamental in the house. It is possible to improve your design so that it has different uses. Therefore, we have compiled some tips on how to take advantage of the sill to assign new functions to a room.

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In this interview episode, Arquicast sits down with the founder of Sotero Arquitetos, architect Adriano Mascarenhas. A graduate of the Federal University of Bahia, his work spans a highly diverse range of scales and programs.

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This article by Carmen Espegel was originally published in the 16th issue of revista rita under the title "Alegato pedagógico en Talca" (A Pedagogical Plea in Talca). The following text explores the unique approach to teaching design studios at the School of Architecture of the University of Talca (Chile), where territory, materiality, and the social sphere converge in a constructive thought and action carried out by students in their own homes, aiming to critically reformulate how we dwell.

The "Public Spaces in the City of Hope" competition in José Carlos Mariátegui - San Juan de Lurigancho has announced its winners. Promoted by the CENCA Urban Development Institute in partnership with Ocupa tu Calle, the initiative is part of the project "Promoting sustainable, fair, and participatory social and environmental transformation processes on the hillsides of San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, Peru," led by CENCA and supported by the German Ministry and the "City of Hope" institutional strategic proposal.

Interior design has progressively become a subject of interest among architects and designers. Having spent more time indoors recently, practitioners have been experimenting with their spaces and exploring different approaches to scale, comfort, and aesthetics. Much like everything else, design is highly influenced by external factors; any change to people's lifestyle influences how they respond to it, whether consciously or subconsciously. And while this dynamic is often seen in fashion or graphic design, it has been noticeable in interior design as well. Following years of linear, clean-cut, and refined spaces, curved silhouettes were revived, becoming one of the dominating interior design trends across the world. 

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Sustainable cities demand sustainable solutions, which imply the development of a new mindset for the reformulation of conventional creation processes. Within the fight against climate change, the circular economy concept is known as a key factor for the sustainable solutions of the future. Part of this concept is known as circular design, which aims to transform the traditional paradigm of ‘using and throwing away’ into a commitment to reusing existing materials.

Circular design rethinks the creation process of products from the first steps, guiding architects and designers to create products that can be reused, recycled or transformed. Applying circularity in architecture opens the debate of rethinking the life cycle of construction materials. In this manner, fiber cement cladding –a combination of basic earth elements, mineral materials, water, air and fire, in a simple filtration process– proposes a design solution that meets the basic principles of circular construction. In addition to its composition, strength and durability, these products are designed as a system that can outlast a building's lifecycle.

What are the stories of the first Ibero-American women architects? This is the main question we seek to answer in celebration of ArchDaily's theme: Women in Architecture.

Seeking to put their motivations, inspirations, and trajectories on the table, we carried out a research project to make visible and highlight some names that have not had their deserved recognition. Meet Doris Clark Núñez, Guadalupe Ibarra, Matilde Ucelay Maórtua, Filandia Pizzul, Dora Riedel, Luz Amorocho, María Luisa Dehesa, Arinda da Cruz Sobral, and Julia Guarino, below.

Renée Gailhoustet, French architect, pioneer of social housing, and winner of the 2022 Royal Academy Architecture Prize, has passed away aged 93. As announced by the Royal Academy, she passed away in her home in Le Liégat, Ivry-sur-Seine, one of her best-known projects, which was completed in 1982. Throughout her career, stretching back to the 1960s, Renée Gailhoustet was a strong advocate for social housing, exemplifying through her work a vision of generous housing in harmony with their urban environments.

Urban public spaces can transform the life of neighborhoods and cities and, therefore, need to be open to the social, cultural and technological changes that occur in society. From urban vegetable gardens to pet spaces, from rain gardens to art pavilions, life in today's cities has created new demands and ways of using and appropriating public spaces.

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This article was originally published on Common Edge.

It’s finally time to write this down. For years—in meetings, on-campus tours, and informal conversations—I have talked about the University of California Berkeley’s Wurster Hall, now Bauer Wurster Hall, encouraging people to see and appreciate the significance, and beauty, of this building. It hasn’t been an easy case to make.

Bauer Wurster Hall is the home of the school’s College of Environmental Design (CED). Originally, it housed the departments of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and design. The building was purpose-designed and built for the CED, a new college founded in 1959 that brought these departments together for the first time. William Wurster, for whom the building was originally named, was the college’s founding dean and the building’s visionary client. 

What does it mean for the Costa Rican Architecture Biennial to have reached sixteen editions? Clearly, it represents a significant accumulation of exhibitions, conferences, and diverse programs that reflect the concerns and shifts in the country's architectural agenda over the past three decades.

'A Project of Trends: 30 Years of Architecture Biennials in Costa Rica' is the exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MADC) that reviews this trajectory in detail, under the precise curation of Paz Monge Cortés and José Daniel Picado-García.

Following over 10 months of restoration and preservation work, Bisman Ediciones decided to set up its Architecture Gallery and Residency in two spaces of the renowned Casa de Estudios para Artistas in Buenos Aires. In August 2022, the first monographic exhibition, "La trama infinita," was inaugurated here alongside the residency of guest exhibitor Josep Ferrando. A new series is now underway to showcase notable works of the Modern Movement in Argentina, starting with an exhibition of the building itself.