This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

On Wednesday, February 28, global consulting firm Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) released the 2018 edition of its established annual ranking of the world's top universities. In the field of architecture, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States secured the top spot for the fourth consecutive year.

Looking specifically at Latin America, the list shows some changes compared to the previous year, with a Mexican university returning to the top three. Regarding Brazilian institutions, however, the same four from last year—USP, UFRJ, Unicamp, and UFRGS—remain on the list.

The Municipality of Cascais, with technical support from the OASRS, launched the "Sommer Pavilion International Ideas Competition" in May of this year for the construction of a temporary intervention in Jardim da Parada, next to Casa Sommer, in downtown Cascais, Portugal. The project "Gravidade em Suspenso," by architect Inês Abreu Ribeiro and engineer Fernando Coutinho de Vasconcelos Pereira da Silva, was named the winner. Out of the 49 proposals evaluated, the jury considered that the winning entry stood out for its “stimulating approach to the competition theme, exploring different states of water in the form of a 'rain pavilion' and a 'fog pavilion' that relate to each other.”

The History Channel has released its first entirely Brazilian production. Titled Mil Dias - A Saga da Construção de Brasília, the series tells the story of the construction of the new capital from the perspective of four characters who built the city in the cerrado: a surveyor, an engineer, an architect, and a construction worker.

On July 9, 2018, the National Ideas Competition for the San Juan Judicial City was launched. The goal was to generate ideas for its physical realization, addressing the exponential growth of institutional structures in recent years and the proliferation of their offices, which has led to fragmentation due to the lack of a single space to house them.

Here are the three winning projects:

What does the Swiss architect, urban planner, and Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer have to do with the eccentricity and ostentatiousness of US President Donald Trump? This article, written by the Arkrit Collective, reflects on this connection.

The site of a fire that left part of Luz Station in ruins in 2015, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, located inside the iconic station, had its new roof completed this week. Built with nearly ninety tons of certified timber from the Amazon, the new roof structure is another completed element of this project, which will ultimately cost around R$ 60 million.

This project, combining architecture and illustration, grounds its research in archives, publications, and photographs detailing the history of modern construction in Mexico. It offers a graphic narrative of the continuities and transformations of key 20th-century works, explored through the synthesis, interpretation, and juxtaposition of their ideals. These pairings confront thought and form through deductive inference, where the sum of the parts hints at deeper meanings and critical motifs in architecture for its future reconstruction.

The Fundación Arquia Blog shares an article reflecting on personal experience to show why memory must not be approached in an austere, detached manner. Technical and typological studies of architectural heritage, or the mere recognition of a site's characteristics, customs, and history, are not enough. Memory is emotional; consequently, we must grasp the true meaning of a place and the value of its architecture beyond the material. 

In 2010, humanity marked a new milestone: more than half of the world's population lives in cities. And by all accounts, this process only seems to be intensifying, alongside rising consumption, resource depletion, increased pollution, traffic congestion, water scarcity, and a lack of planning. Is urbanization spiraling out of control?

Drawing on a published study by Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope, British newspaper The Guardian reflects on an extreme scenario: if countries are unable to manage fertility rates and urbanization continues unabated, over the next 35 years, more than 100 cities will each have a population exceeding 5.5 million.

Videos

Today, July 25, Sérgio Ferro celebrates his 80th birthday. Born in Curitiba, he graduated in Architecture and Urbanism from the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP) in 1962, where he was invited by João Batista Vilanova Artigas to join the faculty between 1962 and 1970, teaching Art History. In academia, he also taught at the University of Brasília (UnB) from 1969 to 1970. A multidisciplinary intellectual, architecture is only one of his many facets; he is also an accomplished visual artist.

Videos

Last May, the Canary Islands International Environmental Film Festival (FICMEC) celebrated its twentieth edition in Garachico, a small coastal town in northern Tenerife. On this occasion, a group of students from the School of Architecture at the Universidad Europea de Canarias participated in the festival by designing and constructing a series of four ephemeral architectural installations that boldly colonized iconic spots along Garachico's waterfront promenade.

Through four interventions, the students transformed the promenade with the dual goal of raising visibility for the festival and increasing public awareness of the impact of our daily habits on the environment.

Explore the proposals below.

When we think of architecture in broad terms, certain masterpieces of the past inevitably come to mind—buildings constructed to withstand the passage of time, which have found an ally in the years, cementing their place in human history. Yet permanence is a heavy burden to bear, and architecture that is ephemeral by program should not be dismissed as less important.

Do you often find yourself complaining about a client’s lack of design sensibility? Do you frequently criticize the gap between renderings and reality? Do you often wish your architectural designs were closer to perfection?
How can these issues be resolved before a building is actually constructed?
There is only one answer: VR technology!
It allows clients to experience fully simulated designs, validating your ideas, while enabling designers to experience spaces beforehand to optimize their designs.
But what exactly is VR, and how powerful can it be?

Technological progress and development are increasingly shaping architectural design and representation. Because architecture inherently revolves around spatial experience, it provides a vast canvas for the application of VR technology. As a leading global provider of architectural VR technology, Sheencity has developed its core product, Mars, leveraging VR to allow projects to be immersively experienced and refined, while outputting animations and renderings at breakneck speeds. Directly compatible with the most common modeling software used by architects—such as SketchUp, Rhino, and 3ds Max—Mars instantly converts designs into VR scenes, delivering real-time rendering.

After visiting numerous sites that have been the setting for tragic crimes against humanity and violent conflicts, one can make a simple observation: the space of collective memory is not solely confined to a memorial building that commemorates through names and stories. Particularly in Latin America, it is also a place evoked through gatherings and public demands.

Designed by the firm of Ramos de Azevedo and built in the famous Praça Clovis in downtown São Paulo between the 1920s and 1940s, the Palácio da Justiça de São Paulo occupies an area of 25,000 square meters. The building features a symmetrical layout with four corner towers whose wings house the interior spaces.

Between 2004 and 2009, the building's facades and the copper roof of the Jury Hall were restored by the firm APBA – Arquiteto Paulo Bastos e Associados. Later, between 2014 and 2016, another section of the building was restored by Kruchin Arquitetura.

+ 6

The exhibition dedicated to Mario Merz (Milan, 1925–2003) showcases, for the first time, the largest gathering of igloos brought together from various private collections and museums. This landmark display highlights Arte Povera’s profound exploration of the relationship between humanity and nature. This art movement, which emerged in Italy in the second half of the 1960s and was named by Germano Celant (art historian, critic, and artistic director of the Prada Foundation since 1993), is characterized by the use of humble, generally non-industrial materials that decay over time, naturally transforming the artwork in the process.

Portuguese studio FAHR 021.3 has created a temporary wooden installation that transformed the facade of the Cine-Teatro Garrett, a historic building in the city center of Póvoa, Portugal. Titled Ensaio 04, the project is a geometric study of a curved surface built from straight planes of poplar wood, resulting in a distorted perspective.

+ 13

Since ancient Greece, public space has been the primary setting for gathering and socialization in cities and towns, supporting a wide range of activities as well as political debate and collective empowerment. It is a common good from which to foster equality, respect, and solidarity as the foundation of a fairer society. One of the primary characteristics of public space is its capacity to adapt and open itself up to new challenges and uses. 

However, in recent years, licensing the commercial use of public spaces has become a growing source of revenue for municipal governments. The regulation and legal restriction of how our plazas and other spaces are used, enforced through municipal ordinances and codes, represents one of the primary dimensions of the privatization of public space. Privatization is understood here as the process of establishing conditions that restrict free access to a common good. The overexploitation of public space for corporate profit promotes a consumerist urban model that is detrimental to the citizenry.

One of the most highly anticipated collateral events of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale was the *Young Architects in Latin America* (YALA) exhibition, an open call organized by Architecture-Studio through its CA’ASI cultural center to mark its tenth anniversary.

Following editions focused on Chinese, Arab, and African architecture, CA'ASI's fourth open call invited young architects from across Latin America to showcase their built work on a global stage. Out of more than 200 submissions, 60 Latin American practices were selected for the digital catalog and the exhibition presented in Venice. In the digital catalog, the organizers note that "in a region so vast, diverse, and in constant flux, we find common characteristics among the submitted works that bear witness to the efforts of young architects to improve habitat conditions in Latin America."

At the exhibition's opening ceremony on May 25, the organizers announced 15 honorable mentions and 3 winners, including practices from Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Brazil, among others. Discover them below:

Designed by Esteban Ramírez, the Teatro Navegante project was chosen as one of the 10 winners in the Thesis Projects category of the Concurso Arquitectura Caliente 2018 (CAC 2018), a Chilean competition organized by Grupo Arquitectura Caliente and funded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

Historically, the Chiloé Archipelago has been defined by its own inhabitants as an annex to the mainland due to the physical, social, and cultural isolation existing since the beginning of the last century. Sea and land define the everyday lives of its people. From these environments, they extract the resources for their survival, and their land routes extend through the channels and fjords vital to connecting the islands and their communities. In this isolated and fragmented territory, climatic and geographical conditions make it difficult for nearly 15,000 inhabitants to access educational, health, and cultural infrastructure, which remains concentrated in the region's urban centers kilometers away—an ongoing issue that the State has yet to address.

The NGO Soluções Urbanas launched a crowdfunding platform earlier this month to enable technical assistance, the purchase of materials, and renovation work in precarious housing. Named Arquiteto de Família, the tool was developed with sponsorship from CAU/RJ.

The platform's goal is to facilitate access to better housing conditions, and the funds raised through the tool can be combined with resources from other sources, such as microcredit and barter fairs.

The third edition of Hello Wood Argentina is approaching—the renowned timber architecture and design festival that aims to teach thinking with your hands and learning through experience.

From March 2 to 10, 2019, 10 selected projects will be built around this edition's theme: a space of containment, a space of CON-TENSION.

Discover the projects selected for Hello Wood Argentina 2019, described in the words of their creators, below.

The Institute of Architects of Brazil - São Paulo Department (IABsp) stands in solidarity with the victims of the fire and collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida building. Beyond the tragedy this episode represents, it must be emphasized that we are facing systemic problems afflicting most large Brazilian cities—issues that demand discussions integrating urban development, housing, cultural heritage, and public asset management policies.