Bamboo is a building material that has been used since antiquity in various structures. Thanks to its countless benefits, it has proven superior to newer materials like plastic and steel, while its unique aesthetic appeal has established it as one of today's most prominent architectural trends.
The National Academy of Architecture is a non-profit civil association whose primary objective is to study, promote, and recognize contemporary architecture, as well as to acknowledge, honor, and reward the outstanding performance of architects. The association has local chapters across various states of the Mexican Republic. It invites architects to join its ranks who, through the high caliber of their professional careers, have contributed to the advancement of architecture, the arts, and culture.
The construction of theaters in the Province of Córdoba, Argentina, was closely tied to the second wave of immigration that arrived between 1880 and 1930, alongside the expansion of the country's railway network. Today, the city boasts a large number of theaters, most of which date back to this period and form an integral part of Córdoba's cultural heritage, despite having suffered for many years from the neglect of successive governments.
On October 5, the XI Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (BIAU) will begin, held for the first time in the city of Asunción, Paraguay.
The open call for the Panorama of Works section sought architecture and urban planning projects built in Ibero-America by architects, either individually or in teams, completed between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2018, that had not been submitted in previous editions.
From the open call, 210 projects were selected by each country's national committee out of a total of nearly 1,000 submissions. Subsequently, the jury—chaired by Gloria Cabral and Solano Benítez, and composed of Gabriela Carrillo and Mauricio Rocha, Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse, Josep Ferrando, Carlos Quintáns, Nicolás Campodónico, Carla Juaçaba, Javier Corvalán, and curators Ana Román and Arturo Franco—selected the following 32 finalist works:
The City Image Barometer, conducted by the consulting firm Visión Humana, measures the perceived image of 24 Chilean cities through a survey designed to identify the best cities to live, work, study, and visit in Chile.
Sometimes, architecture presents itself as an object of responsibility—an exercise in recognizing authorship, aiming to define and delimit it. We feel an urgent need to know who its author was, to credit whoever was capable of such inventions. Just as often, however, architecture does not claim any author; hence the terms anonymous architecture or "architecture without architects"—that is, a merely vernacular architecture. In the case of Carme Pinós, what is built inevitably speaks of who built it. Her architecture offers a glimpse of the energy that emanates from her persona: a vibrant, direct, tense architecture, swept by a continuous, dominating agitation. Within it, elements are in constant motion in a completely ungrounded way, rather than by their own virtue.
Color is considered one of the most influential phenomena when it comes to human emotions, attitudes, and decisions. It can impact an environment both positively and negatively, and workspaces are no exception.
Nearly 200 students from 18 countries are currently working on TSL Costa Rica 2019 in the city of Santa Cruz, organized by the Latin American Coordinator of Architecture Students (CLEA) and the local organization Estudiantes de Arquitectura en Movimiento (EAM).
Since 1979, the Colegio de Arquitectos de Nuevo León has organized the Bienal de Arquitectura de Nuevo León, one of Mexico's longest-running events recognizing and promoting regional architectural production. To celebrate this year's milestone twentieth consecutive edition and the 40th anniversary of the Colegio de Arquitectos, the organization partnered with CONARTE, Parque Fundidora, and Cultura de San Pedro to present activities centered on the theme *Urgent City, Alternative City, and Possible City* (Ciudad Urgente, Ciudad Alterna y Ciudad Posible), reflecting on the motivations driving different urban stakeholders. This year's jury—composed of Aarón Seward, Arch. Carlos Rodríguez Bernal, Dr. Daniela Frogheri, Eugenia González Gómez, Dr. José Manuel Prieto, Lorenzo Díaz Campos, and Arch. Marcelo Espinosa—selected one Overall Gold Medalist, 17 Calli Medals, and 24 Honorable Mentions across 21 professional categories. Read on to discover the winning projects.
The Barcelona City Council, the Architects' Association of Catalonia (COAC), and the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, in collaboration with Barcelona Building Construmat and ArquinFAD, are organizing Architecture Week 2019, a public-facing initiative taking place at various venues across Barcelona from May 9 to 19.
During this time, Barcelona will become the epicenter of a wide range of activities related to architecture and the city, transcending disciplinary and territorial boundaries. Additionally, marking the centenary of the founding of the Bauhaus school of design and architecture, this year's edition will highlight the legacy of various early-20th-century architectural movements.
In an interview with El Espectador, Colombian architect Simón Vélez opens a debate on the state of the discipline, prompting us to question the role of the architect in both economics and politics.
Estúdio Módulo de Arquitetura, a firm led by Marcus Vinicius Damon and Guilherme Bravin, has won the competition for the new headquarters of the Association of Engineers and Architects of Sorocaba (AEAS). Below, see the proposal along with the project description.
The subject of a fire that led to its collapse, the Wilson Paes de Almeida building, located in downtown São Paulo, is the focus of the documentary Pele de Vidro, directed by Denise Zmekhol, daughter of the architect responsible for the skyscraper's design, Roger Zmekhol.
The visual stimulus that triggered this research[1] was the suggestive ambiguity of the letter m/h. Less glamorous than roadside motels, these motel-hotels are an affordable invitation to sexual fulfillment. To capture both their material and intangible complexity, the work is structured as a fiction. In doing so, the narrator imagined within these motel-hotels the potential to reveal other component parts of herself—as if these places, in their ambiguity and anonymity, could facilitate this encounter. In a simultaneous process of liberation and frustration, the multiple narrators find agency.
The Federal District government announced mid-last month plans to build the Bible Museum based on Oscar Niemeyer's 1987 sketches. Local architecture and urbanism organizations have expressed concern over the plans, which could significantly affect the preservation of the federal capital's Monumental Axis.
Architectural representation, regardless of the platform—whether a plan, section, isometric, or perspective—is simultaneously a product and a procedure. As a product, it is the final outcome representing the object, articulating scale, information, and medium. As a procedure, it is the process of defining what and how to represent, dissecting and translating information—understood not only as a graphic product but as a process of analyzing, selecting, and translating from one medium to another, an objective way of thinking through which new truths about the augmented object are revealed. For this procedure and product to be complete, their information must be understood by the viewer. This gives rise to graphic standards and codes that regularize comprehension and typically relate to the constructive logic of the building or city, whether existing or proposed. Ultimately, this graphic product is an abstraction of reality—an idealized, orthogonal translation of the aspects chosen for systematization.
The Institute of Architects of Brazil - São Paulo Department has announced the winners of the IABsp 2019 Awards. Divided into 17 categories that cover social housing, commercial and cultural projects, urban design, and restoration—both built and unbuilt—as well as publications, photography, ephemeral architecture, and student projects, the IABsp 2019 Awards aim to identify the advancements and challenges in contemporary national architecture and urbanism. The initiative recognizes ingenious and significant proposals, particularly those that effectively contribute to the development of technique, knowledge, and the built environment in dialogue with nature, society, economy, and culture.
The Bamboo Experimentation Laboratory at UNESP - Bauru is one of the leading centers for bamboo research in Brazil. The group of researchers associated with the lab has produced a vast portfolio of research and products ranging from orthopedic prosthetics, furniture, and shoes to building components. In this thesis, engineer Marco Antônio dos Reis Pereira, the laboratory coordinator, presents the Bamboo Project, which is the result of his academic and research work conducted since 1994. The thesis was presented in 2012 at UNESP - Bauru to obtain the *Livre-Docente* degree in the discipline of Bamboo Design and Construction. Read the author's abstract below.
The exhibition “Vkhutemas: The Future in Construction 1918-1930,” curated by Neide Jallageas and Celso Lima, opens at Sesc Rio Preto, where it runs until July 21, 2019. The anti-exhibition reconstructs around 300 projects by 75 artists and aims to explore the pedagogy of the Soviet school of art, design, and architecture as a possibility for the future. An acronym for the State Higher Artistic and Technical Workshops, Vkhutemas opened in 1928, shortly after the Soviet revolution, and was closed in 1930 by Stalin.
Sculptural, elegant, and striking. Numerous adjectives can describe the stairs designed by Danish firm 3XN. With bold designs that challenge conventional vertical circulation, they add layers of inventiveness to the spatial experience, turning movement into a journey.
The Passeia, Jardim Nakamura project is a pilot initiative focused on citizen legibility. By leveraging community engagement to build local connections, the project co-created and implemented a neighborhood signage system alongside residents of Jardim Nakamura, located in Jardim Ângela, São Paulo. The project was developed by Instituto COURB and SampaPé!, with financial support from Fundo Casa Cidades. With this proposal, the objective was to foster residents' sense of recognition of their neighborhood, while also ensuring greater comfort and safety for pedestrian mobility, encouraging spatial connection, and promoting the appropriation of local history. In this light, the initiative sought to make the territory easier to read, fostering appreciation for local history and neighborhood actors, while also mapping key locations, walking distances, and the local boundary.
The life story of São Paulo-born landscape architect Mina Klabin Warchavchik is deeply intertwined with the history of modern art and architecture in Brazil, especially in São Paulo. Her father, Maurício Freeman Klabin, a Lithuanian immigrant, had left Russia due to a decree prohibiting Jewish land ownership. Upon arriving in Brazil in the late 19th century, he began working in a workshop producing blank books for the typography market, a business he would acquire within a few years.
The daily routine of psychologist and CAPS* (Psychosocial Care Center) coordinator Antoniella Santos Vieira centers on listening and walking: during the day, she listens to the stories of people experiencing homelessness, those struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, among other challenges. It is this challenging territory – half urban, half rural – that she traverses, showing that the center offers a range of services – such as yoga and pilates – in addition to psychological support.
In the book “Order Without Design”, Alain Bertaud mentions that indicators are crucial in urban management to give cities a real-time view of what is happening within them. One interesting indicator related to housing affordability is the so-called “Price/Income Ratio.” This is essentially the average home price in a city divided by the average resident's income. It is a highly generic indicator that does not account for differences between properties, such as location, nor does it address rental housing (still a minority in Brazil). Nonetheless, it provides a general overview of housing affordability in a city.
