Cinema is an excellent tool for stimulating discussions and reflections on the spaces we inhabit, deeply engaging with architecture and urbanism through sets and locations. Films can address current issues within these fields of study and integrate them into their narratives, opening pathways for new debates.

The 2018 feature film Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, raises a series of questions about urbanism, social relations, contemporary cities, environmental conflicts, and how new technologies can interfere with an individual's relationship with public spaces. This article explores how these factors manifest in our daily lives and shape new concepts of the city. 

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More and more people are concentrating in major urban centers. While cities are full of people and possibilities, this is far from making them welcoming environments. Loneliness and anxiety are common in the fast-paced life of the "concrete jungle," and nature may hold the key to alleviating these feelings.

Numerous studies have been published showing how contact with nature positively affects our health. Listening to birds chirping, getting your hands in the dirt, or spending time in contact with greenery—all of this benefits our physical and mental well-being. Now, researchers have shown that green spaces also help alleviate feelings of loneliness.

Digital spaces and fabrication technology have become as prominent as ever within the current state of our post-pandemic society, becoming increasingly more accessible and enabling quick and spontaneous acts of iteration and evolution. These technologies have resulted in the ability to mass-produce non-standard, highly differentiated building components within the same facility as their standardized counterpart, transforming how buildings and their respective components are conceived, designed, and represented, and how they are manufactured, assembled, and produced.

The beauty of digital fabrication is its ability to blend aspects of mass and artisanal production to the point where costs nearly disappear. Technology’s capacity to fabricate so simply and almost seamlessly raise the issues for its potential to significantly alter our current perception of architecture, thus producing the question: has the influence of mass production in architecture resulted in a loss of intentional design?

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The design for what was then called the Ministry of Education and Public Health was developed during 1936 by a team comprising architects Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Reidy, Jorge Moreira, Carlos Leão, and Ernani Vasconcelos, under the coordination of Lucio Costa. At the request of the then-Minister Gustavo Capanema and with guidance from Le Corbusier, the team of young Brazilian modernists was tasked with giving a national identity to the building that would become one of the greatest icons of Brazilian architecture, in direct opposition to the dominant aesthetic of the time. The decision not to commission the original design, which had won the public competition held for this purpose, is just one part of this incredible story.

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Designing a limited space like an apartment can be a genuine challenge. Creating new layouts and projects over what has already been imagined by someone else is an exercise that demands a keen eye and respect for the existing structure. In addition to this, there is the need to bring character to the space through interior design without overlooking spatial functionality, ensuring the best possible quality of life for its residents. 

Wood is an incredibly common material in the construction industry, utilized across various stages and for multiple purposes. Below, we explore its potential to shape residential facades through 17 examples of Brazilian houses.

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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 introduce 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 what its small population or territorial scale might suggest.

In this week's episode, which closes the second season of interviews, Sara talks with architect Manuel Aires Mateus about his design for the EDP Headquarters in Lisbon. Listen to the interview and read the transcript of the conversation below:

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The Mayor's Office of Santiago de Cali, the Special Housing Fund (FEV), and the Colombian Society of Architects – Valle del Cauca (SCA Valle) launched a public competition for the preliminary urban, architectural, and landscape design of a sustainable rural social housing prototype. This project is designed to resettle families with productive vocations.

For the project, located in the city of Cali, within the Valle del Cauca region of Colombia, the jury awarded first place to the architecture firm DARP – De Arquitectura y Paisaje + Ana Elvira Vélez.

Following nearly 50 years of rapid urbanization, urban renewal has transitioned from an era of incremental growth to one of existing stock. Urban planning has shifted from expansion toward the high-quality renovation of existing assets to reactivate spaces. Looking back at recent adaptive reuse projects by Pritzker Prize laureates, we examine how these masters respond to today's challenges of urban stock renewal.

Videos

All buildings move — of course, some more than others. There are a host of design considerations that architects keep in mind that allow for, or even promote movement in almost every building. But some architects fall back on their training as broad-based thinkers and problem solvers to devise solutions that literally roam the earth. From tiny homes on wheels, to train-based educational institutions, to design programs in a truck, sometimes buildings and architecture need to travel to the people it serves or to other environments. This video features a few examples on this spectrum, beginning with how architects typically deal with movement in structures and foundations, to Cedric Price’s Potteries Thinkbelt, and finally Chicago Mobile Makers, a traveling maker workshop for children founded by Maya Bird Murphy.

This article begins with the premise that cities are not neutral spaces. Territories, much like architecture, urbanism, literature, culture, and politics, are conditioned by the values of a given society at a specific point in time. Consequently, the configuration of these spaces is shaped by societal values—in this case, those of a patriarchal, racist, and capitalist society. As a result, this lack of neutrality in the production of urban space leads to different ways in which cities are used and experienced by their inhabitants. These unique experiences, in turn, are deeply intertwined with issues of social class, race, and gender.

This article by Maya Orzechowska was originally published under the title "Five Principles for a Vulnerable and Intimate Architecture: Drawing Alternative Boundaries and Openings to the Home and the Self" in the 31st issue of Dearq journal on September 1, 2021 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.18389/dearq31.2021.04).

This article investigates how the boundaries and openings of the home are not separate from one another; rather, they play an active role in the politics of bodily and social health. For an increasing number of people, both the idea of the home and the reality of housing fail on a daily basis; therefore, this article seeks alternatives to the narrative of the home, of a utopian internal intimacy that endorses withdrawal, and of a non-responsible relationship toward the public realm. It suggests that the result is dystopian, concealing and exacerbating vulnerability and its resistance to change. In contrast, a vulnerable and intimate architecture focuses on the vulnerable body, drawing the uncanny, repressed, and emotional into the home.

We present it below as part of a joint collaboration to contribute to the dissemination of research, analysis, and opinion produced by the national and international academic community on architecture, urban issues, and related fields.

While research seems intrinsic to the design process, architectural research is a professional path in itself, whose purpose is to highlight scientific evidence and explore alternatives outside of pre-established norms or empirical considerations. Its purpose is to create a framework of knowledge that can inform the design to reach objectively better outcomes. The following discusses the role and state of research in architecture, some prominent areas of inquiry, and the architects or institutions that dedicate their work to these subjects.

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Ennead Architects has been selected to design the new headquarters of electronics designer and manufacturer Xiaomi in Shenzhen. The winning design, which was a competition entry held in celebration of the company’s 10th anniversary, reflects the relationship between technology and daily life by integrating a digital interface into the fabric of the building. The structure resembles a Rubik's cube with a 360-degree LED screen surrounding the building’s podium, representing Xiaomi’s success and aspirations for the future.

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the winners of the 2021 President's Medal and Awards for Research, highlighting the best research concerning architecture and the built environment. The President's Medal was awarded to John Lin and Sony Devabhaktuni from the University of Hong Kong for their research project As Found Houses, which explores vernacular practices in rural China. Two more awards were granted to the development of an ethics guide for architectural practitioners and a study of thin-tile vaulting in Cuba.

90Grados specialises in creating high-quality architectural renderings - and this time they present the virtual construction of a skyscraper that was left unfinished in New York after the Great Depression of 1929: the Metropolitan Life North Building.

In 2014, a home reconstruction program called "Dream home" was launched in China, inviting architects and interior designers to redesign some old houses that have problems. Some of these homes are oddly shaped, some are tiny, and yet others have extremely inadequate lighting. The design concepts conveyed by the designers together in this program are respect for people, understanding human relationships, and the definition of home. These renovations or reconstructions are not just home updates for clients, but a reinterpretation of "home" that gives them a new life with dignity.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In terms of Covid, 2022 is more likely to be like 1920 than like 2020 or 2021. “Change or die” is a cliché, but often a true one. The past two years under the pandemic have forced many kinds of changes across society that may have helped prevent a lot of deaths. But many other aspects of our culture had already been changing in ways that predated the pandemic, gradual shifts that, once Covid hit, became instant and ubiquitous: remote work, remote learning, the dominance of online shopping and the death of brick-and-mortar retail, the obsessive focus on health and well-being. All of this, and more, is now a fundamental aspect of our daily lives. 

Looking back at 2021, two pivotal developments exerted a transformative influence on the architectural design community.

The first was the passing of High-Tech pioneer Richard Rogers (Richard Rogers). German art historian Hans Belting once remarked: "When people call for a new art, it is architecture and design that step forward as a symbol of a new society, carrying the hope of changing living space. And as people envision changes to their living space, they themselves change as well." Rogers was among the first to step forward at the close of the 20th century. His bold, rebellious, and iconoclastic design approach unlocked a new paradigm for the urban landscape. Having practiced continuously until his retirement last year, his career was a constant testament to the critical importance of design direction. In turn, one cannot help but ask: as the giants of our era gradually depart, are we prepared to shoulder the true mission of architecture?

The second was the controversy surrounding architect Tao Lei's design on the television show Dream Home. A 1.32-million-yuan red-brick house designed for an elderly client was met with widespread online backlash, laying bare the deep friction between architectural aesthetics and daily life. It prompts us to ask: Is the aesthetic pursued by architects truly aligned with the expectations of everyday people? Can architectural design reshape public aesthetic perception? Does social class dictate design outcomes? And should a project be dismissed based on sensationalized, fragmented headlines by those who have never actually experienced the space?

"Despair, like hope, is but vanity." ArchDaily’s keyword for this year is: Cultivating internal strength and external reach. Internally (Platform Responsibility): Providing tools, inspiration, and knowledge gathered from all directions to continuously overcome, triumph, and transform, building a broader "design universe." Externally (Communication Responsibility): Stepping outside the architectural "comfort zone" to center public needs, delivering clearer insights and evidence-based processes, and crafting more creative architectural content.

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The public architectural design competition for the Velodrome in Gibraltar Metropolitan Park in Bogotá, D.C., was organized by the District Institute for Recreation and Sport (IDRD). Located in the Kennedy locality, the competition—with advisory support from the Colombian Society of Architects (SCA)—aimed to select a preliminary architectural proposal for the design, technical studies, architectural and technical coordination, and related design tasks.

The jury comprised architects Leonardo Álvarez Yepes (representing SCA Bogotá D.C. and Cundinamarca), María Elvira Madriñan Saa and Fernando Montenegro Lizarralde (representing the SCA National Presidency), and Nelson Yovany Jiménez and Felipe Alberto Morales Sánchez (representing the District Institute of Recreation and Sport). Out of 17 submissions, three prizes and several honorable mentions were awarded. Read on to learn more about the winning projects.

Marcelo Villafañe (1951), an architect from Rosario, passed away on Wednesday, January 26, as announced on social media by the Colegio de Arquitectos Distrito 2.

Whether or not architecture is an art, buildings and spaces shape daily life. Pushing the boundaries of architecture and the categorization of art, contemporary investigations between disciplines are rethinking tradition. As transformations grounded in human experience, these installations and structures share qualities of purpose, function and creative expression. At the same time, they reorient the limitations and possibilities of each profession.

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Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the 15 winning innovations of its 2021-2022 Global Mayors Challenge. Hailing from six continents, the chosen projects "seek improvements in the areas of economic recovery and inclusive growth, health and well-being, climate and environment, and gender and equality". The winning cities include Istanbul, Rotterdam, Butuan, and Wellington, and will all receive $1 million and external support to develop their programs.

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Earlier this month, a series of cities worldwide have revealed various initiatives that would help them better understand the effects of climate change and shape a more environmentally conscious environment. From several American cities creating digital twins to help curb carbon emissions to the city of Brighton mandating bee bricks to foster biodiversity and Central Park becoming a laboratory for studying climate change adaptation in urban parks, cities take on a multidisciplinary and multi-scalar approach to environmental issues.