A Danish company named KiteX has developed a wind turbine for those seeking an “off-the-grid” lifestyle. Collapsible and portable, the turbine can be carried in a car to generate power even in remote locations.

Constructed with fiberglass rods, the turbine weighs only 10 kg and is easily transportable. When needed, users simply unpack, assemble, anchor it to the ground (using a set of high-strength nylon tension straps), and begin capturing wind energy. The company estimates that 15 minutes is enough for one person to set up all the components.

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The book “The High Cost of Free Parking,” by retired University of California professor Donald Shoup, demonstrates that parking can impose a significant social cost. Shoup argues that the car-centric city model is irrational, allocating increasingly more resources and space to a machine that goes unused 95% of the time.

Last week, we announced the 15 finalists for the 2021 Obra do Ano, an award celebrating the best of Lusophone architecture by inviting our readers to select their favorite projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries. The day has come to find out the winners of ODA 2021.

In the face of contemporary changes, architects and urban planners must revisit their roles. In contrast to planning approaches that produce increasingly massified and generic cities, establishing practices of resistance to reclaim the city for pedestrians is paramount. To be effective, these practices must foster connections between the people who experience the city daily and the urban space itself, moving away from technical definitions that treat public participation as fragmented. Instead of fueling collective paranoia that builds insurmountable walls in search of excessive security, the city should align with technology to promote openness, open-source models, collaboration, and collective creation. Beyond its practical connective function, the street must enhance lived experiences, becoming a space for chance encounters, reflection, and, above all, appropriation.

Madrid will demolish the M-30 highway overpass, located between the Puente de Vallecas and Retiro neighborhoods. This was the unanimous decision of the councilors of the Plenary of the Ayuntamiento de Madrid—the city's elected municipal council—who met on March 30. According to the author of the proposal, councilor and member of the Más Madrid party Francisco Pérez Ramos, the decision is crucial because the overpass has turned “into a wall.”

The 27th World Congress of Architects is hosting, from April 19 to 22, the UIA2021RIO Open Week on Diversity and Mixture. The event will feature three debates and the Weekly Live Session – where specialists will delve deeper into the main issues raised in the discussions and answer questions from the public.

Portugal is a fascinating country when it comes to architecture. With a population of just over 10 million, its architectural output far exceeds what its population or territorial scale would suggest, and this art is not only a part of but deeply rooted in the national culture. With the aim of exploring the architects, projects, and stories behind landmark Portuguese architecture, Sara Nunes, from the architectural film production company Building Pictures, launched the podcast No País dos Arquitectos, where she talks with leading figures of contemporary Portuguese architecture.

These conversations offer a chance to discover the people, behind-the-scenes moments, processes, and references of prominent architects. For the first episode, Sara talks with none other than João Luís Carrilho da Graça about his design for the Lisbon Cruise Terminal, completed in 2018. Read the full interview or listen to the podcast below.

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From using linguistic theory as an analytical methodology in architecture to understanding buildings as mediums of communication, the intersections between language and architecture are closer than they might first appear. 

Understanding the building as a medium of communication can occur in various ways—such as integrating paintings, engravings, sculptures, and ornamentation into the architecture—but also through the literal incorporation of letters and symbols as architectural elements. 

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Designing spaces below ground level is always a major challenge, particularly regarding lighting and ventilation. However, creative solutions make it possible to create welcoming, airy subterranean spaces, such as the use of perforated panels to bring light into Casa K or even the strategic implementation of a glass-bottomed reflecting pool on the ground floor, allowing natural light to reach the basement of Jardim do Sol House.

Arquicast dedicates this week's episode to the 2021 Pritzker Prize, providing an opportunity to reflect on the laureates, their body of work, and the jury's citation. The discussion adopts a broader perspective, also considering the history of the award and the potential agendas behind a not always cohesive group of past laureates. Architects Bruno Sarmento and Caio Dias join the conversation.

The 6th edition of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, taking place in 2022, is themed Terra. Carrying different meanings depending on the scale and the observer, Terra expresses territory, the city, the landscape, the place where we belong, or a continent seen from the sea. It can be a habitable planet or matter for cultivation. It can be in excess or lacking, and it can be an obstacle or an element in building communities. Driven by a sense of urgency, the Triennale 2022 calls for reflection on all these dimensions, which are closely related to architecture.

With the aim of getting to know the architects, projects, and stories behind landmark Portuguese architecture, Sara Nunes, from the architectural film production company Building Pictures, launched the podcast No País dos Arquitectos, where she talks with leading names in contemporary Portuguese architecture.

In her first episode, Sara spoke with architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça about his Lisbon Cruise Terminal. Now, for the second interview, she welcomes João Mendes Ribeiro for a conversation about heritage, the adaptive reuse of historical structures, and landscape architecture, focusing on the rehabilitation of the greenhouse at the Botanical Garden of Coimbra, the city where the architect is based. Read the full interview or listen to the podcast below.

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Designed to allow light to pass through spaces while ensuring greater privacy for users, the use of reeded glass expands the possibilities of applying glass in architectural projects.

The grooves that characterize reeded glass are produced through the drawing process of flat glass, fragmenting the image passing through the surface into vertical or horizontal bands, depending on its orientation.

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Arquigrafias. Guido Guidi and Álvaro Siza is the exhibition marking the public reopening of Casa da Arquitectura after the lockdown. Curated by Paula Pinto and Joaquim Moreno, the exhibition of photographs by Italian photographer Guido Guidi of the work of architect Álvaro Siza is on display at the Casa Gallery from April 17 to October 3, 2021.

The curators selected eight projects located in Lisbon, Porto, and Matosinhos, represented through 97 images captured by Guido Guidi's lens. Arquigrafias thus offers a “dialogue between the photographic work of Guido Guidi (Cesena, 1941) and the architectural work of Álvaro Siza (Matosinhos, 1933), constituting a unique encounter between two singular figures in their respective fields.”

Applications are now open for the National Wood Architecture Award, PNAM’21. Submissions for this prestigious Portuguese architecture award are open until June 30, 2021. Held biennially, PNAM aims to encourage and promote Portuguese forest reserves through innovation, enhancement, circularity, and the promotion and use of wood and wood-derived products in buildings.

Icon, an American construction robotics startup, was founded with the promise of building emergency housing using 3D printers. A model home was built in Austin, Texas, in 2018. Two years later in the same city, the company began delivering a series of homes for the unhoused.

A recovering heroin addict, Tim Shea was previously homeless, with his last home being a van. The 70-year-old American was the first to receive the keys to a printed home in September 2020. 

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The Arquicast Interview series aims both to showcase the work of architectural practices from different regions of Brazil and to shed new light on established architects. Through casual conversations about daily professional life, behind-the-scenes insights, and stories behind their projects, it explores the personal experiences that have shaped their worldviews.

In this episode, the team speaks with Francisco Spadoni, from Spadoni & Associados Arquitetura. Founded in 1996 upon his return from Paris after working with Kenzo Tange, the firm is led by Spadoni and Tiago de Oliveira Andrade. The practice regularly participates in architectural competitions in Brazil and abroad, earning recognition in several of them. Their projects are characterized by confronting challenges and complexities across multiple scales, always from a reflective and critical standpoint.

The Center for Studies and Research in Indigenous Technologies, Tecnoíndia—founded by UFMT professor José Afonso Botura Portocarrero, an architect with a PhD from the School of Architecture and Urbanism at USP, and retired UFMT anthropologist Maria Fátima Roberto Machado, who holds a PhD from the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro—is releasing a new book that compiles articles produced over 20 years of research and teaching on Indigenous technologies and architecture in Mato Grosso.

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While working on Raid on Bungeling Bay—a game about bombing cities—legendary game designer Will Wright discovered he had more fun designing the cities than destroying them. He then wondered if players would enjoy having that same opportunity.

Four years later, the result was SimCity, a game that broke away from traditional gaming conventions by swapping levels for open-ended gameplay and clear objectives for a sandbox—a blank slate for creativity. Players were given an empty plot of land, a pile of cash, and a few basic planning tools, and then left to do as they pleased.

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Far beyond mere repositories for books, libraries are spaces that, through the preservation of culture and knowledge, transform into places for gathering and exchange. Much like a book, they provide fertile ground for cultivating new ideas. To mark World Book Day, we present a selection of recently built libraries from around the world.

In primitive huts thousands of years ago, humans used animal skins and tree branches to build their shelters—the very same materials used to protect their bodies from the elements. From clothing to housing, these textile elements have accompanied human history, evolving alongside technology and securing a place in architectural production that goes far beyond membrane structures made of polyester/PVC and canvas. Today, they can be seen in other applications such as facade panels, interior partitions, openwork canopies, and more.

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Art Nouveau, or new art, was an artistic movement that emerged in Belgium in the late 19th century and rapidly spread across several European countries and the United States. It was "new" art because it rejected academic canons and marked a break with the past. Spurred by the developments and societal changes brought about by the Second Industrial Revolution, the movement's artists sought to create a visual language that aligned with the advancements of their time, transcending antiquity, academicism, and aesthetic conservatism. Consequently, their works combined classical elements with contemporary details, merging different styles to form an original whole.

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The Ipiranga Museum, located in São Paulo's south zone, has launched a virtual tour that allows users to follow the progress of the restoration and expansion of the building and its immediate surroundings. The digital tour features 360-degree camera footage captured across various spaces of the building and construction site, providing an overview of the renovation's progress.

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Methods of shading facades and preventing direct solar radiation from entering a building's interior have been present since ancient architecture. However, modern architecture popularized the use of the brise-soleil, one of the most widespread passive climate control devices, which shades spaces while allowing for cross-ventilation when necessary.