Tag: urban | ArchDaily

Designing Inclusive Cities: The Role of Universal Design in Creating Accessible Urban Atmospheres

Enrique Tovar — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Contemporary cities are vibrant, complex, and constantly evolving. Above all, they are ever-changing, mutable, and diverse. What transformative changes are occurring, and where are they leading us? Urbanization continues to gain momentum in many regions of the world, generating visible and structural transformations. As this unfolds, data on the evolution of its configuration and the challenges we encounter begin to emerge. According to the World Bank, the urban population will continue to trend upward, with 90% of new urban residents concentrated in Africa and Asia. This growth raises essential questions: How can we consolidate a design approach that ensures equitable access to spaces, resources, and services? How can we make emerging and consolidated metropolises more inclusive and accessible?

The Rise of Prosumer Coffee Experience: Designing Beyond Traditional Interiors

Jonathan Yeung — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 04:00:00 +0000

Coffee culture continues to thrive in the contemporary world, with a noticeable shift from the dominance of chains & franchise stores to a growing market for prosumer coffee. As more and more coffee consumers become prosumers, individuals who both produce and consume, they are turning coffee-making into a hobby, even a ritual, and are expecting coffee shops to keep up. Consumers are becoming more knowledgeable, paying close attention to the source and type of beans, brewing methods, and equipment. They also appreciate the design of coffee machinery, not just for its functionality but for its aesthetics, efficiency, and space management. This surge in interest, especially in Asia, has led to changes in coffee shops' operations. Many individual coffee shops, responding to the rise in consumer spending power and interests, are motivated to focus on creating unique, immersive experiences for an ever-growing marketable audience.

How Bicycles Empowered Women to Occupy Public Spaces

Camilla Ghisleni — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 05:00:00 +0000

“Let me tell you what I think of the bicycle. It has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a sense of freedom and self-confidence. I appreciate every time I see a woman cycling... an image of freedom”. Susan Anthony, one of the most important American suffragette leaders, said this at the beginning of the 20th century, praising the libertarian power represented by women and their bicycles at the time.

Leclercq Associés Explores the Use of Wood in Urban Architecture and Assesses The Future of Wood Construction

Jullia Joson — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 07:30:00 +0000

To wholly document a survey on the state of French forests, the wood industry, and forestry R&D, François Leclercq and Paul Laigle, from the architecture and urban planning practice Leclercq Associés, are in collaboration with architecture editor Michèle Leloup and photographer Cyrille Weiner.

Discontinued Aesthetics: The Effects of Abrupt Changes in Urban Landscapes

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 25 May 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Public spaces play a significant role in organizing the life of every community but defining what differentiates them from other spaces within the city is not an easy task. Once these spaces start to settle into the collective memory of the local communities, they become key elements that concentrate the mental image of a city. While this process usually happens with urban spaces, monuments and isolated architectural elements can also become markers for the urban life of an area. So, what happens when dramatic events like fires, war, or even the pandemic alter that image?

What is Design Justice?

Marília Matoso — Thu, 12 May 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Design Justice is a branch of architecture and design focused on redesigning cities, products, services and environments with historic reparations in mind.

Why Walking Can Be Faster Than Driving

Cristiano Scarpelli — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 05:00:00 +0000

In 1854, the American writer Henry David Thoreau wrote the classic work “Walden”, recounting his experience of life in the woods and extolling the advantages of simple and self-sufficient life. Right at the beginning of the book, the author comments that, if someone wants to travel 48 km to visit the countryside, it would be faster to walk than to opt for a locomotive.

The Use of Artificial Intelligence as a Strategy to Analyse Urban Informality

Agustina Iñiguez — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 05:00:00 +0000

Within the Latin American and Caribbean region, it has been recorded that at least 25% of the population lives in informal settlements. Given that their expansion is one of the major problems afflicting these cities, a project is presented, supported by the IDB, which proposes how new technologies are capable of contributing to the identification and detection of these areas in order to intervene in them and help reduce urban informality.

The City in Space: A Utopia by Ricardo Bofill

Elías Barczuk Pasamán — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 05:00:00 +0000

It was 1968 when Ricardo Bofill Architecture Workshop's published a kind of manifesto in reaction to the pressing demands of a society in constant transformation. The idea of the City in Space saw the light of day for the first time and was proclaimed as an absolute architecture, capable of resolving all the complexities of its contemporaneity through a unique open, flexible and three-dimensional model.

“Our Architecture Is Very Hostile and Not Very Hospitable”: Interview With Father Júlio Lancellotti

Romullo Baratto — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 05:00:00 +0000

An architectural project conceived from the neoliberal system can only be hostile. That's what Father Júlio Lancellotti, an active figure in actions to support homeless people in São Paulo, says. His work at the head of Pastoral do Povo da Rua has deservedly received the attention of national and international media, as well as being frequently published on his own social networks, drawing the attention of the public and authorities to urgent issues of inequality, invisibility of the most vulnerable and the hostility of our architecture and public spaces.

A Brief History of Ibiza’s Instant City

Elías Barczuk Pasamán — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 05:00:00 +0000

André Ricard and Daniel Giralt-Miracle, the member responsible for ADI/FAD, proposed the island of Ibiza as the venue for the ICSID Biennial Congress in 1971. That's how the story began. At that time, the so-called "Urquinaona Open Design Group" already existed in Barcelona. From the group, and with Carlos Ferrater at the head, they offered their help to the organization of the congress. They refused, as everything seemed to have already been organised. Together with Fernando Bendito, Ferrater asks about accommodation for the students. They still had nothing. They get the opportunity they were waiting for. Thousands of invitations are sent out to students all over the world. The number of replies was greater than the number of registered students.

Colombia’s Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai: A Fusion of Geography, City and Culture

Agustina Iñiguez — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 04:30:00 +0000

The Colombia Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai is thought of as an artefact with the ability to tell the past, present and future stories of the country's culture through its music. Supported by its geography and its cities, the pavilion designed by Pacheco Estudio de Arquitectura intersperses dense vegetation with water, representing the great biodiversity of its plant and animal world, and is composed of a reticular structure in three dimensions symbolising the urban centres that are constantly growing.

Urban Sprawl and Ghost Towns: The Impact of Mining on Cities

Matthew Maganga — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 07:30:00 +0000

The urban settlements we inhabit today exist in their present form due to a host of reasons. There are cities that have grown due to their proximity to water – such as the growth of Dar es Salaam to the major port city it is today. There are the planned capital cities scattered around the world, governments of countries such as Brazil and Nigeria building cities from scratch from the input of acclaimed architects. There are also the settlements that exist and grow because of certain industries, such as Silicon Valley in the American state of California being home to giants of the technology industry. There’s an industry, however, that has spawned both pulsating cities and abandoned towns – the mining industry.

Nomadland: Journey of a Modern-Day Nomad across the Landscape of the American West

Christele Harrouk — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 07:30:00 +0000

“No, I’m not homeless. I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right?" Questioning the notion of home and house, Nomadland tells the story of a sixty-year-old woman who loses everything during the great recession, leaving her hometown after the collapse of the sole industry that supported the rural settlement and the death of her husband. She decides consequently to embark on a journey and experience life as a modern-day nomad, setting off in her van through the vast landscape of the American West.

Tips for Choosing Tree Species in Urban Settings

Ignacio Rodríguez — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 07:30:00 +0000

In the early modern period, Taoist monks cultivated Bonsai trees seeking to bring their beauty from the outside to the inside, considering them a link between the human and the divine. Likewise, in the 18th century, different tree-lined walks and avenues arose on the outskirts of some European cities, generating spaces for rest and socialization that were previously non-existent in cities at that time.

The Evolution of Shared Space: Privacy vs. Openness in an Increasingly Dense Architecture

Lilly Cao — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:30:00 +0000

Density has long been an essential consideration for architects and urban planners, yet its importance has only increased as the world’s urban population skyrockets and cities become denser and denser. For much of the history of urban planning, this term has been plagued with negative associations: overcrowding, poverty, lack of safety, and so-called ‘slums.’ The garden city movement, initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898, sought to remedy these ills by advocating for greenbelts and anti-density planning. Le Corbusier’s Radiant City is one of the most well-known urban plans building from these ideals. Yet in the 1960’s, sociologist Jane Jacobs famously overturned these long influential urban planning concepts: she pointed out that density of buildings was not identical to overcrowding of people; suggested that some highly dense urban areas, like her neighborhood in Greenwich Village, were safer and more attractive than nearby garden city projects; and highlighted how America’s conception of ‘slums’ were often rooted in anti-immigrant and anti-Black ideologies. Density is not inherently bad, she suggested, but it has to be done well. Today, we continue to grapple with the question of how to design for our increasingly dense cities – how do we keep them open, but simultaneously private? Free, but controlled when necessary? In particular, how do we keep them safe – both from crime and, in the age of COVID-19, disease?

Construction Begins on OMA's CMG Qianhai Global Trade Center in Shenzhen, China

Christele Harrouk — Mon, 11 May 2020 05:30:00 +0000

The OMA-Designed CMG Qianhai Global Trade Center has broken ground in Shenzhen. Unveiled during the inauguration ceremony for Qianhai Significant Projects in China, the mixed-used 360,000 square-meter development will create a Micro-City environment, blurring traditional boundaries between building and city.

City of the Future Elaborates on Responsive Architecture

Christele Harrouk — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000

City of the Future is a bi-weekly podcast from Sidewalk Labs that explores ideas and innovations that will transform cities.