The International Garden Festival is launching a call for proposals for its 24th edition, to be held in June 2023. Gardening and land art enthusiasts are invited to apply—the selected projects will be featured in the temporary gardens of Les Jardins de Métis, also known as Reford Gardens.
In 2021, more than 60,000 visitors explored 25 garden installations under the theme "adaptation," in reference to the pandemic. Following the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival returns with the theme "roots" and aims to highlight traditional knowledge. Designers are invited to imagine an environmentally, economically, and culturally responsible present and future based on the teachings of past generations.
“Art aims to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”, Greek polymath Aristotle remarked. Public art in cities worldwide seeks to pursue this aim by offering a sense of meaning and identification to its residents. Taking the form of murals, installations, sculptures, and statues, public art engages with audiences outside of museums and in the public realm. This art presents a democratic manner of collectively redefining concepts like community, identity, and social engagement.
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina are joined by Mitchell Joachim, PhD, Associate Professor, NYU and Co-Founder, Terreform ONE to discuss the complexities of urban design; the role of the urban designer; the real-life applications of his research; funding projects; cricket farms; and more.
For a long time, cars were the primary protagonists of major cities. This prioritization resulted in territories occupied mostly by highways, leaving them uninviting to people. In recent years, however, many cities have undergone spatial transformations, seeking to reshape their relationship with automobiles and prioritize pedestrians and the human scale.
“Don't build walls, no more; Or the city dies.” I discovered this poem on a solitary wheatpaste poster stuck to one of the endless walls that make the city of São Paulo a worse place to live. I must admit that every time I take my youngest son to get vaccinated at the local health clinic (UBS) in Vila Romana, I think it would be nice to have a can of spray paint to graffiti the poem onto the walls of one of the apartment complexes recently built right across the street, which occupies nearly an entire block in the neighborhood.
https://www.archdaily.com/1132622/a-tax-on-condominium-wallsVitor Meira França
Since 1968, the firm Mariani – Pérez Maraviglia – Cañadas Arquitectos has been practicing in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. Facing the sea, this city has steadily grown and expanded over time. With a career spanning over 50 years, the firm's extensive body of work—including buildings and projects not only in Mar del Plata but also in Santa Fe, Asunción, Punta del Este, and beyond—demonstrates how their perspective on the past serves the present and future.
In architecture, the most common is to design for humans only. However, covering the scope of the project for other species is an exercise that has been proposed in several orders. From specific furniture to interior design planned for the animal, the possibilities of creating a more playful and comfortable ambience, both for humans and animals, are diverse.
Ana Pinto da Silva, Co-Founder & CEO at Minka Homes & Communities, will give the closing keynote address at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Lisbon on Friday 2 December 2022. She will follow a stellar line-up of the industry’s most influential figures shaping the global architecture agenda over the three-day event, including Ole Scheeren, Christina Seilern and Reinier de Graaf. The festival runs from 30 November to 2 December.
https://www.archdaily.com/990979/jean-mah-ole-scheeren-and-ana-pinto-da-silva-join-line-up-of-speakers-at-world-architecture-festival-2022-in-lisbonArchDaily Team
Stairs are often an inevitable part of a building's DNA. Nowadays, staircases not only serve the function of practicality but are also a showcase of their own kind, especially if paired with a color that is guaranteed to grab attention. Among warm colors, red is considered to be the most powerful one. On one hand, it evokes feelings of joy and energy, and on the other, feelings of alertness and danger. Red can stimulate a whole range of emotions. Therefore, its usage should be attentive, delicate, and thought out.
Cortesia de Francisco Pinto, Francisco Pina, Maria Souto de Moura e Luís Caleiro
No País dos Arquitectos is a podcast created by Sara Nunes, who also runs the architectural film production company Building Pictures. The podcast aims to profile the professionals, projects, and stories behind leading contemporary Portuguese architecture. With just over 10 million inhabitants, Portugal is a fascinating country when it comes to this professional field, and its architectural output far exceeds its population or territorial scale.
In this episode of the fourth season, Sara talks with architects Francisco Pinto, Francisco Pina, Maria Souto de Moura, and Luís Caleiro about the affordable housing project in Lordelo do Ouro, Porto.
Cities have been, and will always be multi-faceted, elastic sites. They are settlements in continuous evolution, molded by proximity to natural resources, by migrating populations, and by capital. Despite the diversity in the urban character of disparate cities, it has been said that cities look alike now more than ever before, a uniformity that means a glass-and-steel tower in Singapore would not look out of place in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex.
Castro Abierto is the architecture, landscape, and heritage festival of the city of Castro, Chiloé. The event will take place from October 19 to 23, 2022, featuring various activities such as talks and tours centered on local architecture and culture. These itineraries will visit different architectural works, islands, and neighborhoods in the area, highlighting contemporary projects like Hotel Estancia, Casa Barco, and Casa Muelle. Other featured activities include a cooking class by Lorna Muñoz, a scholar of Chilote cuisine; an afternoon of illustration with the Ilustra Chiloé collective; a visit to the Quilquico Rural School; and the opening of the MAM Chiloé Museum of Modern Art, among many others that can be found on their website. Finally, a key highlight is the opening of the exhibition “Imaginarios Archipelágicos” (Archipelagic Imaginaries), which the organizing team invites us to discover in more detail below.
Architectural projects have been growing in complexity at an exponential pace while delivery times have shortened. In response to these demands, specialized visualization studios have become essential to architects and firms with high demands and tight deadlines. Brick Visual, the Budapest-based high-end visualization studio, reflects on its 10 years in the industry and the current state of architectural visualization.
Brick Visualwas founded in 2012 by a few ambitious young professionals whose dream was to create visuals for the most reputed architecture firms around the globe. From a small downtown apartment in Budapest, the handful of visualizers worked to address the needs of its clients while building a culture of innovation and artistic excellence. Since then, the small Hungarian collective transitioned into an international team of nearly 100 experts, who are based in their loft headquarters in Budapest, and satellite offices in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and Verona, Italy.
Updated exterior view. Image Courtesy of Selldorf Architects
Selldorf Architects have released a revised version of the plans to remodel the National Gallery and the Sainsbury Wing, both classified as Grade-I-listed monuments. Sainsbury Wing is also the recipient of the 2019 AIA Twenty-five Year Award. The plans for the Sainsbury Wing, designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown and opened in 1991, have faced intense criticism, with former RIBA Journal editor Hugh Pearman calling the remodeling plans “unnecessarily destructive”. The plans to remodel were first revealed earlier this year as part of the NG200 Project to celebrate the National Gallery’s bicentennial in 2024. The project proposes the remodeling of the Sainsbury Wing’s front gates, ground-floor entrance sequence, lobby, and first-floor spaces.
Pompidou Center Competition Model, 1971. Image Courtesy of Safdie Architects
From October 2022 through January 2, 2023, The Boston Architectural College (BAC) and Safdie Architects will display the most groundbreaking unbuilt projects by Moshe Safdie. With Intention to Build showcases the architect's creative process throughout the 55 years of his career, including models, drawings, and various texts and photographs. The exhibition provides context and tells the story behind these radical unrealized designs that have influenced projects such as Habitat 67 in Montreal, Canada, and Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.
A famous skyline can evoke rich associations and unleash imagination, but the real experience of a city is in its streets. Early humans evolved to see the first 20 feet in front, above, and around them so they could identify potential threats in the landscape. In our modern urban environment, this is still how we experience buildings and places. While aerial views and Google Earth imagery are useful for reference, the main experience of the outside of a building is what we pass by on the street, up to about the second or third story. The height of a building doesn’t necessarily matter if the street experience is rich and accessible.
https://www.archdaily.com/990889/activating-the-edges-how-to-create-lively-active-streetsAmanda Loper, Daniel Simons, David Baker
Lessons Learned is a podcast by Dutch Design Week and ArchDaily. In each episode we pair young design talents with seasoned designers to further their practice and help them learn from the mistakes of the past. The young talented individual asks one pressing question, and the designers share their learnings and their biggest fuckups.
Blending in with its urban context or standing out to draw attention, a façade tells a building’s story. It is an expressive medium through which we engage with architecture, defining first impressions and setting the tone for the interior by experimenting with transparency, movement, texture and color, among other aesthetic possibilities. Of course, the envelope also plays a crucial functional role, acting as a protective barrier against extreme weather conditions and directly impacting light transmittance, energy efficiency and acoustic comfort. Architects therefore face an important challenge: to achieve a balance between an attractive look and performance. To do so, it is pivotal to specify the right materials during the design stage.
On Friday, October 14, the jury announced its decision for the Long Stage of the 38th Alberto J. Pani Architectural Composition Award, organized by the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, in collaboration with an institution of the Association of Architecture Teaching Institutions of the Mexican Republic (ASINEA)—which this year was the Faculty of Architecture of the Universidad De La Salle Bajío in León, Guanajuato.
The noisier the environment, the harder it is to concentrate on the sounds we really want –and need– to hear. We spend about 90% of our time indoors, either at home or at work, often with little concern for acoustic qualities, making our body remain in a constant warning state. In offices this is an even more critical issue. While traditional open plan working spaces encourage teamwork and effective communication, many professionals face the challenge of being able to concentrate with the frequent noises, whether from a nearby conversation, the construction site next door, or a noisy espresso machine. Among the problems that noise pollution can cause in the human body are stress, accelerated heartbeat, increased blood pressure, insomnia, and a constant state of vigilance. Studies also show that poor acoustics negatively affect productivity.
This can be further amplified by the environment itself, often composed of "hard" surfaces (masonry, concrete, glass) that reverberate sound several times over, making it necessary for people to raise their voices to be understood. Furthermore, acoustic devices are generally perceived as accessories that are not very aesthetically pleasing, often with clumsy designs and with little or no flexibility.
The Transportation Alternatives and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have initiated a new digital tool, Spatial Equity NYC, to help users understand how space is distributed and restricted across the neighborhoods of New York City. The tool asses the use of streets, sidewalks, and public spaces, as they are key factors that influence data such as pollution, traffic fatalities, accessibility, or air quality. The data collected shows a direct correlation between neighborhoods with low-income communities and communities of color and the detrimental ways in which public space is used, leading to health and mobility issues in those communities.
International architecture office HENN developed a 300,000m² master plan for the City University of Hong Kong in the province of Guangdong. The construction will be split into two phases: the central library is planned for 2023 and the academic amenities, including student residences, are scheduled for completion in 2025. As the City University of Hong Kong's third mainland site, "CityU Dongguan" will connect researchers and industry collaborators across the Greater Bay Area Technology Innovation Corridor and create a multifaceted university district in the Pearl River Delta region. Moreover, the complex will be home to the Faculty of Science, Engineering, Business, and Medicine.
University Cities constituted the most powerful architectural and urban action during the period of progressive Latin American governments. Despite North American influences, which pioneered the concept of the campus [1], projects in Latin America emerged in different contexts and took highly unique directions. Because of the scale and complexity of these complexes, for instance, they required several decades to complete. This extended timeline allowed multiple generations of architects to participate, infusing their architecture with diversity. Another characteristic feature in Latin America is the close relationship between University City projects and developmentalist governments—as noted by Gorelik (2005)—which invested in public policies during periods of economic prosperity.
https://www.archdaily.com/1132578/from-diagram-to-project-the-university-city-of-the-national-university-of-colombiaMaria Julia de Castro Herklotz
Architecture office Partisans have recently revealed the design of a new high-rise planned for downtown Toronto, on 15-17 Elm Street. The shape of the tower takes inspiration from the process of cloud formation, more specifically from the cirrocumulus, a meteorological term describing the curl-like shapes that form cloud systems. The 32-storey building will accommodate 174 residential units equipped with personal balconies and necessary amenities.
