As part of the activities taking place at LIGA, Espacio para Arquitectura in Mexico City, the Mexican-Bolivian duo Escobedo Soliz has created an installation titled Tórax. Built from wooden posts, the piece forms a rhythmic oval structure whose construction evokes the ribcage of a great whale, trapped inside LIGA's gallery space.
The Venice Architecture Biennale is an event organized by the Italian State that brings together some of the world's most prestigious international architecture exhibitions. The Giardini and the Arsenale serve as the event's main venues. These spaces have hosted various exhibitions, national pavilions, and collateral events spread throughout Venice.
After eight days of intense work in Santiago, architecture students from 12 universities across Chile developed urban activation prototypes to facilitate mobility and public use in various areas of the Franklin neighborhood. The projects were created for the XXI Chilean Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism.
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This month we presented a grim future for the world's urban centers: the temperature increase of 520 cities by 2050. The warning that "Madrid's climate will resemble Marrakech's today" highlights not only a major concern but an urgent call to action, especially for designers of the built environment.
In a timely response, the Higher Council of the Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE) issued an institutional declaration of climate and environmental emergency, committing to establish and reinforce measures to halt global warming and transition the country to a low-environmental-impact economy.
The following is an overview of the declaration issued by the CSCAE.
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To mark World Architecture Day, the architects' collective efimerARQ, alongside the Association of Architects and the School of Architecture of Valladolid, developed a design exercise involving collaboration between students and professionals. The activity, titled “Ephemeral Architecture as a Pedagogical Device,” took place at the Patio Herreriano Museum of Contemporary Art in Valladolid, Spain, aiming to create an open-air classroom that allowed students to study current and past trends through fieldwork, viewing the discipline as a medium for exploration, research, discussion, and collaboration. The base structure used to build the three installations was a fundamental "auxiliary" construction material: scaffolding.
Together with a group of researchers, over the last five years we have been studying working-class housing developments in southern Chile: the coal basin in Lota, Schwager, and Pilpilco; the textile towns of Bellavista and Carlos Mahns in Tomé; and the working-class settlements in Valdivia and Magallanes.
Within the framework of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), the Official Association of Architects of Madrid (COAM) will host, from December 2 to 13, the conference “Architecture Facing Climate Change: Time to Act,” as part of the Castellana Verde Axis. The objective of this initiative, which stems from a collaboration between COAM, the Higher Council of Colleges of Architects of Spain (CSCAE), and the CSCAE's “Observatorio 2030,” is to raise public awareness about the key role cities play in the fight against climate change and to promote shared strategies within the building sector to help curb global warming.
A few months ago, we witnessed how one of the most iconic Gothic monuments in Paris and Europe was consumed by a massive fire that broke out shortly before sunset. The fire reached the north tower of the cathedral's twin belfries, claiming the cathedral spire, which was part of a 19th-century addition built with a timber and lead structure.
On August 30 and 31, 2019, the Encuentros 2019 Festival was held in Cancún under the theme Let's Talk About the City, featuring various activities that established a dialogue between residents and key stakeholders in urban development. This was the first time the event was held in Cancún and the second time nationwide, in an effort to decentralize and bring knowledge to citizens and architecture students to help them rediscover their own city.
Recently, a Mexican-pink installation by design studio Rael San Fratello on the US-Mexico border went viral on social media. Its powerful political message resonated as residents from both countries gathered to ride the seesaws, symbolically breaking down the geopolitical barriers of one of the hemisphere's most violent regions.
The third edition of the “Architecture and Wood” exhibition was held in Puerto Montt, Chile. This edition aimed to continue expanding the range of exhibitors by once again inviting prominent professionals to participate in an architectural commission, exploring and speculating on the constructive and formal possibilities of the material. The event serves as an invitation to showcase the value of timber architecture in the southern part of the country.
The history of the Triadic Ballet dates back to 1919, when the Bauhaus was founded in Weimar, Germany, including a theater workshop within its curriculum. Directed by Oskar Schlemmer, this theater workshop focused on staging new concepts and reflections on the relationship between humans and space, based on a geometric analysis of bodily forms and movement in space.
The volume of debates, ideas, discourses, and discussions triggered by theater at the Bauhaus—and its subsequent influence on architectural production—is almost incalculable. Schlemmer opened a door to an architectural study centered on the body. One of his most famous works is the Triadic Ballet (Das Triadische Ballett), staged in 1921. It comprised 12 small-format pieces featuring 18 costume and lighting changes spanning several hours.
An architectural project can always be viewed through a different lens. This time, Fernando Ayuso—creator of "Reflejos," a tribute to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion—offers a new perspective on the Sant Antoni - Joan Oliver Library by RCR Arquitectes. The video aims to explore an often-overlooked aspect: the building's relationship with "nature" within an urban context.
After receiving 216 proposals from 39 countries, the international ideas competition 'Viewpoint of the Fjords' (VOF), organized by arquideas, has announced the winning projects. VOF aims to provide a new space of contemplation for visitors, located near Homlungsaetra in the area surrounding the Geirangerfjord in Norway. The competition seeks to promote values such as appropriate integration into the landscape, alongside sustainability and energy efficiency criteria.
The jury consisted of Peter L. Wilson, Atxu Amann, Magüi González, Svein Lund, and the four winners of the previous arquideas competition (BaBH San Francisco). Following an initial evaluation phase in which 15 proposals were selected as finalists, a second round of judging was held to determine the 5 honorable mentions and 3 winning entries.
These are the winning projects:
On Friday, September 13, the 24th National Architecture and Urbanism Prize was awarded to the project Pasajes residenciales by Taller de (S). The awards ceremony concluded the 36th Colombian Congress of Architecture and Urbanism in Barranquilla.
In the fall of 2017, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck at least nine Mexican states, leaving several areas severely damaged across Mexico City, Puebla, Morelos, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tlaxcala, Guerrero, and the State of Mexico. Jojutla, a municipality in Morelos, was among the hardest hit, left in ruins after the September 19 disaster. Much of the local infrastructure was devastated, prompting a master plan initiated by Infonavit to reconstruct the municipality's primary public buildings.
In 1900, Dr. José Ignacio Capetillo and his wife, María de la Luz Servín, purchased the land located at General Prim 32 from Archbishop Eulogio Gregorio Gillow. On this site, the Capetillo-Servín family began construction on an apartment building commissioned to architect Manuel Gorozpe, who designed it in the eclectic style characteristic of the period and completed construction in 1906.
The National Ideas Competition “Buenos Aires and the River,” organized by the School of Architecture, Design, and Urbanism of the University of Buenos Aires, was announced in late 2018, receiving ten preliminary proposals for the Costanera Norte Park and the Youth District. The competition aimed to find a comprehensive plan to revitalize and enhance the 59 hectares and 7.6 kilometers of the city's northern waterfront.
In June, Japanese architect Go Hasegawa attended the first Porto Academy 'Visiting Barragán' Workshop in Mexico City. Held annually at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto—designed by 1992 Pritzker Prize laureate Álvaro Siza—this event is the result of a profound passion for architecture and a belief that practice, as the exercise of the profession, is fundamental to the future of the discipline.
Have you ever been curious to see inside someone else's home? With this tagline, Open House Buenos Aires has announced the details of its seventh edition, an invitation and a unique opportunity to rediscover both the architecture of Buenos Aires and its stories and residents. Like every year, this festival offers free admission to numerous architecturally significant buildings that are normally closed to the public. Over the weekend of November 9 and 10, more than 140 buildings will open their doors, making the festival one of the year's most important cultural events.
The School of Architecture, Design, Art, and Urbanism at the University of Morón (UM FADAU, Buenos Aires, Argentina) concludes its academic cycles with an Integrated Final Project (PFI). Through this project, since 2016, architecture students have designed full-scale community projects—designing, managing, building, and donating their work to non-profit organizations and local municipalities. The initiative is part of the Academic Program of Federal Assistance “PAAF!!”, created by the school, which allows students to graduate by building a fully operational building and donating it to a community in need in Argentina.
This reportage was originally published in issue 207 of Revista El Malpensante (Colombia), with Spanish translation by Andrés Hoyos.
Once subjugated by illegal armed groups and devastated by the largest urban military operation in Colombia's history, the Las Independencias neighborhood, located in Medellín's Comuna 13, is today an open-air graffiti gallery. Access and transit through the area are facilitated by an outdoor escalator system—the only one of its kind in the world installed in an informal settlement.
Can you imagine five school design models adapted to the country's diverse bioclimatic conditions? In response to its territorial diversity, Peru will soon realize what began as a dream for better education. To this end, the First International Architectural Design Competition for Modular School Catalogs launched a search for the best architectural school designs in five bioclimatic zones: Coast, Rainy Coast, Highlands, Frost, and Rainforest. This addresses the challenge of closing the educational infrastructure gap for the bicentennial.
Educational projects are one of the typologies most emphasized in Colombian architecture, and the Public Preliminary Design Competition for the Lombardía School breaks away from the typical format of public competitions to offer even greater benefits to the community.
