The 13th International Architecture Biennial enters its final week of activities—ending on Sunday, July 17—and brings very special attractions for those who have already visited or have yet to experience the Biennial.
Between July 8 and 17, the event features debates, conferences, short film screenings, a cycling tour, and much more, in this first in-person edition since the pandemic. The exhibition has been running since May 27 at Sesc Avenida Paulista and Centro Cultural São Paulo.
National Public Architectural Design Competition for Social Interest Housing
The use of bicycles in urban areas has been steadily increasing. Health, leisure, cost savings, convenience—there are numerous reasons and benefits driving this choice. However, for people to choose cycling, a fundamental factor must be met: safety during the ride, which is primarily provided by bike paths and lanes. To highlight this, we present a ranking of which Brazilian capitals prioritize cyclists and the quality of their routes, fostering the construction of a better city through active mobility.
Approximately half of the children and young people between five and 14 years old killed in traffic worldwide are pedestrians, and nearly one-third are passengers in motorized vehicles. In Brazil, traffic is the leading cause of unnatural death for children in this age group. According to data from the Brazilian Association of Traffic Medicine, between January and August 2021 alone, the Unified Health System (SUS) recorded more than 6,000 children and youth hospitalized in serious condition due to being struck by vehicles in the country.
Reversing this scenario requires making our streets safer and more comfortable for walking, focusing primarily on the needs of children. A city that works for children is a more prosperous and pleasant city for its entire population.
In urban planning discourse, advocacy for public transit is as widely agreed upon as it is frequently repeated. Proposals such as transit-oriented development (TOD), which advocates for coordinating urban density with transit corridors, have gained traction over recent decades. They have moved from academia into the recommendations and case studies of institutions like the World Bank, into political platforms and official documents, and are already visible in various urban interventions worldwide—from Curitiba to Toronto, and particularly in Asia.
For another episode in the series on Social Interest Housing (HIS), Arquicast has selected a crucial chapter of our recent history: the Minha Casa Minha Vida Program (MCMV). The episode discusses the foundations of the so-called housing deficit, the program's progress, and its shortcomings.
A direct consequence of global warming, heatwaves have become increasingly devastating and frequent with each passing summer. The most recent of these has been sweeping across Europe for days, worsening in western nations, such as Belgium and the United Kingdom. The melting runway surface at Luton Airport and the fires in the village of Wennington, London, and in Calatayud, southwestern Spain, are just some of the incidents that underscore the critical scale of this crisis.
The question in the title of this article stems from the premise that if cities—in modern terms—are spatial entities possessing an originating and demarcating point of development, then they must also possess an equivalent point (or line) of finitude. One could easily resolve this question by turning to cartography. From an administrative and organizational perspective, maps allow us, to some extent, to define the boundaries of any urban agglomeration. However, the boundaries set by scalar representation fail to dismiss this reflection, as our perception of the city is far more complex. As Ferrão (2003) suggests, in a formulation that encompasses the socio-political dimension of the issue alongside geography and architecture: the city is an “object of increasingly invisible contours.”
Since 2011, the Aromeiazero Institute has been promoting the "Bike Parada não Rola" (A Stationary Bike Doesn't Roll) campaign. The initiative partners with residential building managers to identify abandoned bicycles in condominium bike racks.
"Less is more!", "ornament is a crime", are some of the modern phrases that shaped the western architectural language in the last century and still continue to be a strong influence when thinking about spaces. Minimalism, even if it is hardly carried out within its original essence, still tends to value emptiness, aesthetic cleanliness and the purism of space.
Project Conversations by the Ateliê Aberto at FAU UFRJ
Active Transformations - 1:1 Architectures
Taller a77
by Gustavo Diéguez and Lucas Gilardi
Breaking out of architectural bubbles and popularizing this field of knowledge so that more people engage with the subject is highly beneficial to society. Utilizing audiovisual media as a tool to disseminate this culture is exactly what several professionals have done in recent years, with documentaries such as Paisagem Concreta, about Álvaro Siza, which has just premiered on the Arte 1 channel.
The guest on episode 48 of the Betoneira Podcast is actor, writer, comedian, screenwriter, composer, singer, and television host Paulo Vieira. With humor and wit, he discusses serious issues, such as the importance of education and art as tools for generating new possible futures for the people of this country, and, of course, his relationship with architecture.
The Escola da Cidade graduate program—Geography, City, and Architecture—hosted Gabriela Carrillo for a series of lectures. In March 2022, the Carmem Portinho Feminist Collective interviewed the architect, who co-curated the Mexico module alongside Loreta Castro Reguera during the first semester of 2022.
Gabriela graduated from and teaches at the Faculty of Architecture at UNAM, where she leads the Estudio RX Research and Thesis Seminar. She is a member of the FONCA National System of Art Creators and has been a member of the Mexican Academy of Architecture since 2020. She was also named Architect of the Year in 2017 by *The Architectural Review* and by *Architectural Digest Mexico* in 2020. Read the full interview below.
