After at least five years of study, the time comes for Architecture and Urbanism students to complete their final graduation projects—often called TCC, TFG, or Graduation Projects. In choosing their topics, students highlight civil, urban, or theoretical projects that play a crucial role in sparking debates about the future of our cities, the built environment, urban infrastructure, mobility, and many other fundamental topics that shape how we inhabit space.
On October 29, the 2020 Inequality Map was launched virtually. Produced by Rede Nossa São Paulo and the Cidades Sustentáveis program, the study maps indicators such as mobility, human rights, education, and health across the city's 96 districts.
Although the mapping was conducted using pre-pandemic data, the goal is for the information to guide the development of public policies to mitigate inequality indicators, which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Decolonize. You have probably heard this word before, but if you have no idea what it means, you might guess it has something to do with colonization. We Brazilians know all too well what colonization is: we were a colony of Portugal for many years, we speak Portuguese, we eat salted cod at Easter, and we are, for the most part, Catholic because of it.
To understand the word "decolonize," however, is to recognize that colonization brought not only linguistic, religious, and culinary heritages, but also involved widespread exploitation: cultures were erased, local leaders were killed, riches were stolen, and memories were destroyed.
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The Ícaro Jardins da Graciosa Building, designed by Studio Arthur Casas, was recognized in the Rethinking The Future Awards, an initiative that honors architecture and design projects from around the world across more than 40 categories. Located in Curitiba, the building features 21 apartment units distributed among three exposed concrete towers.
Competing in the residential (over five floors) category, the building designed by Casas features a facade defined by circulation pathways that double as balconies, emphasizing the towers' horizontality. With landscaping by Renata Tilli, these horizontal lines are accentuated by the lush greenery of plants grown in planters along the perimeter of each floor.
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A recently published study by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) reveals the world's best cities for those looking to avoid driving to access basic services, such as schools and healthcare centers, alongside pedestrian access to other amenities.
Among the top-ranked cities for pedestrians are London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Bogotá. More than a thousand cities were evaluated based on the access they offer to those who need to find goods and services relying solely on their own feet. According to the report, US cities are among the least pedestrian-friendly, due to their urban sprawl.
In the book “Quarto de Despejo – Diário de Uma Favelada” (published in English as Child of the Dark), Carolina Maria de Jesus recounts, in poetic and dramatic everyday language, the harsh reality of life as a waste picker living in the former Canindé favela in São Paulo, which at the time had about 50,000 residents.
Published in 1960, her text is considered a milestone in Black women's writing in Brazil and has been translated into more than thirteen languages. Carolina's entries offer a unique perspective on the extremely precarious living conditions of a favela resident in late-1950s Brazil—a narrative previously ignored or simply unknown to the general public, let alone to policymakers.
The 5th edition of the {CURA} Award continues its proposal of hosting ideas competitions with themes aligned with current discussions on architecture, the city, and society, always understanding that architecture is an action-based profession. This time, participants were challenged to design the renovation of an apartment in the iconic Copan Building, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in downtown São Paulo.
The abandoned city is a classic suspense setting, a place of terror and degeneration, a stimulating blend of danger and freedom. An ambience that ambiguously incites both repulsion and curiosity. A dark, hidden, and marginal space that seems to mourn, in its haunting silence, the void left by those who once lived there. Among its fragments scattered across the floor, fear, discovery, and the inevitable nostalgia for a past that is not necessarily one's own recreate stories of abandonment. Spaces that once had names, dates, and functions, now slowly decomposing in the solitude of the present.
Located in the central region of South America, Paraguay features a wide variety of geographical conditions, with diverse landscapes and resources. Generally, the territory is characterized by **high humidity** and **mild temperatures** that prevail year-round, with hot, rainy summers and mild winters. Under these conditions, cooling indoor spaces is highly critical, making passive ventilation systems a key consideration during the early stages of design.
As concerns grow regarding the consequences of human activity on a global scale, the search for lower-impact environmental alternatives across various fields has also become more common. In civil construction—a sector where buildings alone account for 33% of global energy consumption and 39% of greenhouse gas emissions—practices such as bioconstruction point toward a different approach, addressing human needs in a way that is inseparable from nature.
Generally speaking, bioconstruction is understood as the design of sustainable environments using low-impact materials and building techniques, taking into account parameters such as adaptability to local conditions and waste management.
Small-scale renovations are among the most common projects in Brazil, but that does not mean they are immune to budgeting and specification issues. A useful tool to avoid these headaches is Pro-Reforma, a free web app that automatically specifies, quantifies, and estimates the products and services needed for a renovation project.
In October, the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI) launched a free basic online course on BIM (Building Information Modeling). Divided into two modules, the Democratizando BIM course is aimed at all professionals in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sectors. To register, simply visit the website and fill out the form.
Since colonial times in Brazil, Black people have organized in resistance to the slave-owning and colonial regime. Brotherhoods, quilombos, famílias de santo. The Black press, domestic workers' associations, the Brazilian Black Front, and the Black Experimental Theater. Blocos-afro, the Unified Black Movement (MNU), literary groups, Black women's organizations, and international fronts. A political activism interwoven with the arts and spirituality that has brought us to where we are today.
Guilherme Wisnik talks with Bianca Santana, a journalist, writer, PhD in information science, and holder of a master's degree in communication from the University of São Paulo. Santana is the author of Quando me descobri negra, a columnist for ECOA-UOL and Gama magazine, and a member of UNEafro, one of the organizations that make up the Black Coalition for Rights.
Solar energy is officially the cheapest way to generate electricity today, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its newly released annual World Energy Outlook 2020 report. “With sharp cost reductions over the past decade, solar PV is consistently cheaper than new coal- or gas-fired power plants in most countries, and solar projects now offer some of the lowest electricity costs ever seen,” the document states.
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The barn, closely related in nature to silos and sheds, is an essential building typology in rural and agricultural landscapes. Featuring highly simple and functional design solutions, barns serve specifically as storage spaces for large volumes of livestock feed and are commonly characterized by high ceilings, generous spans, and relative spatial flexibility, protecting hay and grain from the sun, rain, moisture, and animals.
What is comfort in living? How does the city serve as a stage for your life? How do gender and race issues influence the way you walk down the street at night? Why is the villain's house always cooler than the hero's? These are some of the topics discussed on Betoneira, a podcast hosted by architects André Scarpa, Marcelo Barbosa, and Paula Otto.
The core premise of Betoneira is to cover a bit of everything in order to speak deeply about architecture, people, and cities, blending a wide range of topics, guests, opinions, theories, and memes through the unique lens of each of the three hosts.
Altamira Editorial has made the book Arquitetas e arquiteturas na América Latina do século XX available for free download on its website. Authored by Ana Gabriela Godinho Lima, the publication features a "survey of the work of 20th-century Latin American women architects in the field of theoretical and practical building production."
Following the digital panel “How to be anti-racist in professional practice,” the collective Arquitetas inVisíveis released a short guide outlining fundamental points for building an equitable and anti-racist profession. The guide includes a selection of texts that help navigate the social landscape and offer ways to address racism, not only within architecture and urbanism but in life as a whole.
São Paulo is immense and full of challenges. With twelve million inhabitants, Latin America's largest city struggles to provide a good quality of life for its residents. Traffic congestion is relentless. Public transit is still far from ideal. The Expanded Center concentrates a volume of jobs disproportionate to its population. Unsurprisingly, the daily commute is one of the main complaints of paulistanos.
"The world is highly polarized." This is a phrase we have all heard recently. While this is an undeniable fact, there have been times when the planet was just as, if not more, polarized than it is today. In particular, the period between the end of World War II and the early 1990s was marked by intense tension between the capitalist and socialist blocs, leaving deep marks on many countries and societies. The dismantling of the latter, symbolically represented by the fall of the Berlin Wall, dissipated the tension but did not eradicate communism, which remains the political system in several countries today.
There are currently six countries under a communist regime: China, North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Transnistria. Despite differences in their economic systems—China, for example, has an economy considered mixed by some experts, with regions regulated by a capitalist market system—these countries also clearly present social, cultural, and geographical particularities that are reflected in their cities and architecture.
Casa 239, designed by the São Paulo-based office UNA Arquitetos, has been selected as a finalist for the Pan-American Prize of the 2020 Quito Architecture Biennial. The only Brazilian project on the extensive shortlist, it was led by architects Fernanda Barbara and Fabio Valentim, now partners at UNA barbara e valentim, and is competing for the final award in the Single-Family Housing category.
There are countless possibilities when designing the transition between public and private spaces. In residential architecture, the landscaping of the main facade plays a key role in this regard. By integrating different elements such as vegetation, paving, steps, and even artwork, it is possible to create a composition that not only highlights the architecture but is also generous to the public space.
An impressive building has risen in Rudrapur, a village in northern Bangladesh. Local techniques and materials were used to shape a space designed to meet a critical need. Named the Anandaloy Center, its first floor functions as a care center for people with disabilities.
The project won the 2020 OBEL Award, an international prize that honors outstanding architectural contributions to human development worldwide.
Geared toward Latin American architecture students, the Acero Prize aims to promote and encourage initiatives that complement pedagogical models, fostering innovative architectural ideas that use steel as a raw material. This year's edition, themed "Sustainable Cities and Communities," awarded first place to a team of two Brazilian students from FAUUSP.
“Architecture that does not touch the ground” is the name of the proposal developed by Augusto Longarine and Luiz Sakata, advised by Professor Luciano Margotto. With the same project, they won the 13th CBCA Competition (Brazilian Center for Steel Construction), the national stage preceding the Alacero competition. See the project below, accompanied by the project description written by the students.
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