This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

Last September, Corporación Ciudades alongside Fundación Mi Parque presented the guide "Water Efficiency in Green Spaces: Best Practices," aiming to provide concrete examples and solutions for maintaining parks, plazas, and gardens within Chile's current water context. The guide is an interactive document covering three major areas: Design and Maintenance Initiatives; Educational and Public Awareness Strategies; and Regulatory and Planning Strategies. You can access more information and download the guide for free at the following link.

EUROPARC, a pan-European design collective, has been announced as the winners of the international competition to renew the Paul Henri SPAAK Building in Brussels, Belgium. The building housing the Parliament of the European Union has many shortcomings, yet the winners of the competition recognize that demolishing and replacing it might not be a responsible or sustainable solution. The existing building is, therefore, reimagined and adapted better to fit the needs and the identity of the EU. EUROPARC is made up of five architectural studios from five European countries: JDS Architects (DK/BE), Coldefy (FR), CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati (IT), NL Architects (NL), and Ensamble Studio (SP), with the support of engineering companies from UTIL (BE) and Ramboll (DK).

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The Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito (BAQ2022) will take place at the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana until November 18. Organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador, Provincial de Pichincha (CAE-P), the biennial has been held since 1978, aiming to foster dialogue, exchange, and reflection on architecture and the contemporary city. This edition's theme, "Inflexions: Looking Back," aims to provide a space for discussion and debate on architecture surrounding turning points in history.

Danish design studio CEBRA won the planning competition to develop the business district at Hannemanns Allé, in Ørestad Syd, Copenhagen, Denmark. With a project emphasizing urban quality, urban life, and area identity, the 150,000 square meters plan will define the framework for future design and completion of the area between the Royal Arena and the Øresund motorway. Expected for completion in 2024, the project is commissioned by Copenhagen Municipality and By&Havn, an organization tasked with developing Ørestad and the city's port.

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The inaugural MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission opened on the 6th of October, 2022, unveiling a large-scale installation by Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, who explores the concept of clothing as a symbol of protection and the associated practices of domestic labor, gender, and community. The MECCA x NGV Women in Design Commission is an annual series that invites an international female designer or architect to create a significant new space for the NGV Collection. As the first and only initiative of its kind in Australia, the Commission will create a platform for the presentation of world-premiere topical works that amplify the contribution of women designers and architects.

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Expanded polystyrene (EPS) was discovered in 1839 in Berlin and became a widely used material in airplanes manufactured for World War II due to its extremely low density. It is this characteristic that makes it a suitable material for thermal and acoustic insulation, often specified in buildings, but also widely used in packaging. A rigid cellular plastic, it is the result of polymerizing styrene in water, whose end product are expandable beads that have a diameter of up to 3 millimeters. Unfortunately though, this material takes more than 500 years to decompose and, in the process, leaches harmful chemicals into the environment. Recycling is possible, but it is complex and costly. This means that most of the Styrofoam produced to date still remains on the planet, taking up valuable space in landfills, or worse, broken into tiny pieces and interfering with ocean life. "Decomposition Farm: Stairway" is a temporary installation that offers a possible solution to the environmental issues related to construction waste in the architectural field.

550 Madison Avenue (née the AT&T Building, more recently Sony Plaza) is among the more recognizable figures on New York’s skyline. Designed by architect-provocateur Philip Johnson, the 37-story skyscraper stands out thanks to its curious headgear: a classical pediment broken by a circular notch, inviting frequent comparisons to the top of a Chippendale grandfather clock. A singular, if largely inoffensive presence on today’s icon-heavy streetscape, the design was positively shocking on its debut in 1979, when Johnson himself appeared on the cover of Time holding a model of the project, then still four years from completion. The image heralded the arrival of something new in American architecture: the fading of the flat-crowned Modernist towers of the midcentury and the onset of the Postmodernist wave.

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When designing an architecture project, defining the flooring is a key element in achieving the comfort, style and functionality imagined by the design team. Depending on the type of use and its requirements, architects can choose the most suitable materials, textures and finishes for each project. Terrazzo & Marble offers a sustainable option to traditional materials like wood, carpet and ceramic with Terroxy Resin Systems, which are known for their sustainability, design flexibility, durability and low maintenance.

On Tuesday, November 15, the public announcement of the finalists for the BAQ 2022 Competition (Pan-American Architecture Biennial of Quito) took place at the National Theater of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana.

During the event, jurors Nuno Grande of Portugal and Carla Hermida of Cuenca announced the selections for the Publications Award, which was an open call for books and magazines—both print and digital—produced throughout the Americas during the four years prior to the event. Read the full list below.

The awards ceremony for the Preliminary Design Competition for the expansion of the Country Club Villa – Chorrillos branch in Lima has taken place. The Lima Region of the Peruvian Association of Architects was invited by the institution to organize the competition, the first to be held following the guidelines of the National Competition Regulations. With 489 registered proposals, 48 formal submissions, 3 finalists, and 2 honorable mentions, the competition sought to provide the institution with design proposals for its new gym, restaurant, and service areas, in line with the club's requirements and high standards of architectural quality.

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Videos

"Understanding precedes action." That is the motto of the Urban Observatory, an interactive installation and web app created by TED founder Richard Saul Wurman that compiled a wide range of urban data for over 150 cities, allowing users to compare various characteristics of those cities – from population density to traffic speed limits – side-by-side. Urban Observatory was first created in 2013, a banner year for news about urban big data; later that same year, Waag made headlines with its interactive map visualising the age of every building in the Netherlands. The emergence of such platforms allowed people to see the world around them in new ways.

With the rise of Google Earth and other GIS tools, and platforms like envelope.city, or environmental simulations based on digital twin models of cities, urban big data has quietly come to underpin a wide range of tools used by professionals who shape our cities, with both the amount of data collected and the influence it has over decision-making expanding dramatically. However, these advances typically happen behind closed doors and in undemocratic spaces. How long must we wait for software that has all the user-friendliness, accessibility, and appeal of those older platforms, but which provides the average person with the tools to shape their city? In other words, if "understanding precedes action", then why after almost a decade are we not seeing big-data-driven apps that encourage the public to actually do something?

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According to the World Population Clock, the human population reached 8 billion on November 15^th. According to the UN, this milestone represents a celebration of human longevity due to improvements in public health and medicine, but it also comes with warnings about inequality, limited access to food and resources, and environmental damage. Despite the impressive number, the annual World Population Prospect report shows that the global population is growing at the slowest rate since 1950, and it predicts a continued deceleration in the second half of this century.

As more than half of the world population lives in cities, an estimated 55.7%, according to UN-Habitat’s latest reports, the urban challenges are growing exponentially. The UN expects this number to increase to 68% by 2050, with close to 90% of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa. Accelerated urbanization can pose significant risks, such as increasing inequality, poverty, sectorized development, social exclusion, and pollution. In this context, a well-balanced urban agenda becomes crucially important in achieving inclusive, safe, and sustainable cities.

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Milan-based architecture studio Peter Pichler has designed an eco-resort to develop a new concept of hospitality in the European Alpine region. Dubbed the YOUNA Nature Resorts, the complex follows the mountain’s silhouette to offer a maximized relaxation experience. The A-shape typology allows wide opens the front facade to connect with nature while reaching high-private interiors under the same roof. The resort is the last of the studio’s series of projects in the Italian rural area, including a hotel in Maranza and a prototype of a treehouse in the forest of the Dolomites.

CIERTO ESTUDIO was founded by six young architects in 2014. Since then, the team has not stopped growing and thus consolidating its professional practice in Barcelona. These six women architects are: Marta Benedicto, Ivet Gasol, Carlota de Gispert, Anna Llonch, Lucia Millet, and Clara Vidal.

The studio was born from plurality, therefore its thinking is inevitably diverse and this is reflected in its collaborative work methodology, always looking for the maximum architectural claim and its own character. 

Rozana Montiel has been awarded the 2022 International Prize for Women Architects, organized by ARVHA (Association for Research on Cities and housing) with the support of the Ile de France Region, the French Higher Council of Architects Associations (CNOA), the Pavillon de l'Arsenal and the City of Paris.

In this episode of “Behind the Scenes”, where we showcase the work of visionary artists and ask about their experiences beyond what is seen by the public, we are presenting Nicolás Sánchez: a designer from Pehuajo, Buenos Aires (Argentina). Nicolás defines himself as an eccentric person with a strong obsession with symmetry and mathematics applied to the objects and spaces that surround him, which awakens in him the curiosity of wanting to understand everything and to find the reason for things. Through his illustrations and animations, he transmits and shares everything he perceives and feels with playful, surreal, and impossible spaces.

“Superstorm Sandy in 2012 was a wake-up call for NYC and made the city realize it needed to better prepare for climate change,” said Adrian Smith, FASLA, vice president at ASLA and team leader of Staten Island capital projects with NYC Parks. Due to storm surges from Sandy, “several people in Staten Island perished, and millions in property damage were sustained.”

On the 10th anniversary of Sandy, Smith, along with Pippa Brashear, ASLA, principal at SCAPE, and Donna Walcavage, FASLA, principal at Stantec, explained how designing with nature can lead to more resilient shoreline communities. During Climate Week NYC, they walked an online crowd of hundreds through two interconnected projects on the southwestern end of the island: Living Breakwaters and its companion on land — the Tottenville Shoreline Protection Project.

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On September 23, LIGA celebrated 10 years of supporting and empowering young Latin American architects with a dinner held at its main space in Mexico City. LIGA is housed within a former textile factory (La Laguna) that originally opened in the first decade of the 19th century. Now transformed into a collaborative multi-use space designed by the architecture firm PRODUCTORA, the venue hosts independent Mexican initiatives ranging from a coffee shop and an architecture studio to a ceramics workshop.

From November 18 to 20, 2022, Open House Málaga, one of the world's most important architecture and city festivals, will take place. Now in its second year in the city, the festival features over 40 free activities, including building visits, urban tours, and experiences. The event aims to connect the city with its residents and visitors, offering a unique architectural perspective alongside architects and industry professionals.

A Foster + Partners and Buro Happold consortium has been announced as the winners of the competition to design the new CPK airport, situated between Warsaw and Łódź, in Poland. The project is envisioned as a 21st-century transport interchange, bringing together air, rail, and road. The design seeks to strike a balance between operational efficiency, environmental responsibility, and a symbolic expression that reflects the country’s national identity. Initially, the airport will serve up to 40 million passengers but is planned to easily expand to meet the 65 million passengers target in 2060.

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The Swedish architecture firm Tham & Videgård exhibits a broad selection of projects celebrating over twenty years in practice at the ArkDes—Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, Sweden. For the first time, the studio’s work is being presented in its entirety, displaying in detail acclaimed buildings like the winning proposal for the Denfert art center in Paris and the 150-meter-tall +One Tower for the Swedish Exhibition in Gothenburg. From November 2022 to August 27, 2023, On: Architecture offers visitors a full-scale spatial experience involving models, new photography, and films – all set within a glass ground showroom.

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Registration is now open for the 24th IABsp Awards 2022—a traditional and prestigious award in the field of architecture and urbanism organized by the Institute of Architects of Brazil, an institution with over a century of history. “This edition seeks to consolidate the advances of the national edition held in 2021, aligning the categories and subcategories with the reality of our profession.” Hannah Machado, Co-president of IABsp

Until November 21, architects and urban planners can register for free through the website. Participation is limited to IAB members from any of the state departments across the country with works and proposals executed in the state of São Paulo since January 2017. Fortunately, applicants can also join the institute during the registration period.

A Hungarian proverb says "Aki tagadja a múltat, az nem talál jövőt", telling of the importance of using our past experiences to write our future, but balancing these two endless worlds – the traditions and culture of one, with the technology and innovation of the other – is often key to creating timeless design.

At the annual 360 Design Budapest event, Hungary’s most important cultural showcase of emerging and existing homegrown talent, the interconnectedness of both time and art inspired three key themes of storytelling (history and tradition), education (youthful talent and sustainability) and digitalization (technology and innovation).

Here are some of the standout designers, manufacturers, and their products from the week:

The motto of the Solar Decathlon Europe 21/22 was to convert and expand rather than to demolish and reconstruct. Recycling windows, using biodegradable materials for luminaires and connecting light with sensors represented just some innovative examples of the international university-level student competition in Wuppertal, Germany. For the first time, the competition presented an award for sustainable architectural lighting. This was a question of quality as much as quantity, and that applies equally to daylight and artificial light.

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