Description via Amazon. In 1925 a journalist from the Barcelona newspaper El Escándalo used the term Barrio Chino in a somewhat derogatory way to describe part of the older city. While the area in question represented a dystopian underbelly of the city, known for its impoverished living and working conditions together with its ‘red-light’ subcultures, it never existed as a ‘Chinatown’ in either a physical or social sense. However the name of this mythical community stuck from the 1920s onwards, appearing on maps and descriptions of the inner city but devoid of any hint of Chinese inhabitants or their culture.The book takes this as a starting point to chart the development of Barcelona over two hundred years using a series of ‘diaries’ and drawn images. These are set around four generations of a fictional Chinese dynasty and their imagined architectural participation in some of the major events in Barcelona’s modern history. As residents of the Barrio from the mid-nineteenth century, they individually document diverse contributions to the city during periods of dynamic growth. This is set against a backdrop of cataclysmic political change and exemplary forms of urban regeneration which have provided Barcelona with its contemporary ‘World City’ status as it plans for the future.

Soil is the foundation of the Earth in which we all inhabit. We grow from it, prosper from it, build upon it, pollute it, and dichotomize it. Soil is an organic material providing a sustainable base for life. Yet, polarized as degrading and dirty. How is it that soil can unite nations, yet divide people? What power does it have in cultivating the built environment and defining its boundaries?

The Biocities Seminar will discuss the future of our territory and our cities from new principles that emerge around the interaction between the science of forests, ecological urban development and the fight against climate change. The objective is to gather multiple actors working in these fields to explore ways of collaboration and shared projects from the presentation of innovative visions and pioneering projects and that should encourage a paradigm shift in our urban and territorial development.

As the world is continuously transforming and expanding, the amount of data and information created every day is also increasing constantly. Human intellect today is expected to evolve at the same rate as our world to continue our journey into the future. Despite all the information, reading and self-learning remain the most powerful tools available to mankind to consume knowledge. Learning bolsters awareness, exposure and productivity, which in turn results into development.

CA'ASI is organising an architectural competition to highlight the vitality and originality of young European architecture.

The best projects in this international competition, which is open to young architects from across Europe, will be exhibited at CA'ASI as part of the 17th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (May 23 to November 29, 2020). This competition represents a unique opportunity to showcase the important role contemporary European architecture plays in finding innovative solutions to improve living conditions on our fragile planet.

San Francisco is one of the trendiest and most-popular cities in the United States, which also happens to make it one of the most expensive cities in the world. Home of Silicon Valley, San Francisco has become the go-to city for tech companies within the US, and with countless tech employees flocking to the area with sizeable paychecks, it’s not hard to see why the prices in the Bay Area have skyrocketed in the previous decades.

ACA has been organizing the International Design Competition annually since 2013 to establish connections among the global architectural student community and academia, to create reference points much beyond its immediate context and have a meaningful and progressively enriching dialogue on architecture by breaking regional and contextual boundaries that we create for ourselves. In its 6th year, the competition has grown to be reckoned among the best events for Architecture students to test their learning, skills and showcase their capabilities. The last date for submission is 10th December 2019.

A humanitarian crisis has taken place along the borders of US-Mexico. In May 2019, around 19000 people were waiting in Mexico to seek asylum in the United States.

From men crossing over to the States for employment in 2000, to families seeking refuge in 2014 for a better livelihood, there has been a tectonic shift along the borders of US-Mexico. This led to ‘American Immigration Crisis’ in 2014, following which a crackdown implemented by the Trump government. With ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’ in 2018 and ‘Metering’ in 2019, the total border crossings have been constant but the no. of people seeking asylum has increased. This has led to thousands of asylum seekers waiting for refugee status along the US-Mexico border.

This is not an easy competition to win. So ask yourself these questions.

Do you have an artistic take on animation or motion graphics? Can you turn drawings of architecture into beautiful and meaningful digital imagery?

If your answer is “yes”, this is your change to join the international competition Utzon Unbuilt and help Utzon Center bring the Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s unbuilt masterpieces back to life.

Utzon UNBUILT seeks to understand the innermost being of Jørn Utzon’s architecture and to reimagine some of his many unbuilt projects.

Text provided by MasilWIDE. The Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism was held for about two months, came to an end in great success on November 10. First carried out in 2017 under the theme of 'Imminent Commons', the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (hereinafter Seoul Biennale) gathered 450,000 people in the first year and marked the beginning of the Seoul Biennale. This year, the much-expanded scale and interest of people were able to be seen as the attendance numbers of the first year was already exceeded in October, at the height of the Biennale.

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Archstorming is collaborating in this new competition with His Hands on Africa. a non-profit organization born in 2016 that wants to address the lack of dental services by equipping communities to achieve sustainability with dignity. The chosen location is Rwanda, a small country in the heart of Africa.

The SKYHIVE 2020 Skyscraper Challenge is the third annual architecture competition which searches out the latest and greatest designs for an iconic high rise structure. Participants of the SKYHIVE Challenge are tasked with creating a concept for a state-of-the-art tower that breaks from the norm.

ARKxSITE is pleased to announce the ‘SITE MONASTERY’ international architecture ideas competition for architecture students and young professionals  (≤ 40 years old).

This book considers the contemporary house through close scrutiny of works designed by Ian MacDonald, and the ideas that are embedded within them. The architect explores boundary and illusion, and considers site and sightings in both the city and countryside to create houses that appear, disappear, and re-appear. Energetic explorations of land and considerations of weather provide the basis for MacDonald's designs of residential spaces that capture particular views, establish sequences of movement, and make inspiring places to live in nature. Featuring a well-illustrated selection of projects designed over the past twenty years, the book outlines MacDonald's way of working, notably his engagement with landscape. By carefully observing a site's topographic features and vegetative cover and by using these observations in the design of a house, from early conceptual sketches to detailed construction documents, MacDonald ensures that the essential character of the site is present in the experience of the house.

It is a great honor and a particular pleasure for us to warmly invite you to attend the 3rd International Conference on Innovative Technologies for Clean and Sustainable Development co-sponsored by American Concrete Institute (ACI) and RILEM Association in February 2020 in Chandigarh, India.

Layered Landscapes Lofoten — Understanding of Complexity, Otherness and Change adresses today’s most urgent issues about living together in landscapes and territories under severe pressure and transformation. The landscape holds essential information about our common history, ecology and social behavior — both rational and cognitive experience, and even hidden enigmas. The authors suggest how an open and unbiased approach to the landscape enables us to understand and operationalize knowledge and theory into valid proposals and projects for the future — not primarily through the traditional and habitual idea of the architectural object, but rather in contact with a global, collective and spatial territorial reality.

Archistart promotes the fourth Architectural Thesis Award, the international thesis award, launched with the aim of promoting, rewarding and giving visibility to young talents in architecture.

In our present moment, the incessant production of culture and knowledge imparts an important task to the notion of commitment. Knowledge and culture are produced in excess in institutions and popular culture, making it the impossible task of critics and scholars to sift through endless amounts of cultural material and make value judgements. Partly a consequence and a cause of a shift in thinking that began in the 1960s and 1970s, a phenomenon that could be called a democratization of production (of narratives, images, cultures) has had some positive effects for the civil rights movements, leading to the inclusion of underrepresented demographics into fields that were previously hostile to them. However, the consequences of the Postmodern debunking of universal truth (that was necessary for and produced by such a shift in thinking) has carried with it the accompanying erosion of the concept of morality. The last decade has seen a further dismantling of the universal notion of “truth” and its effects in politics—note the great difficulty for contemporary politicians to convincingly assert that something is morally correct and necessary. The statement that “truth is subjective,” once a great tool to undermine the dominant grand narratives of the past, is now freely used in the name of individual freedoms, often without assessing the morality of such freedoms.