At the center of a dispute since the early 2000s, the land adjacent to Teatro Oficina, in São Paulo's Bixiga neighborhood, drew media attention again late last year when CONEPHAAT approved the construction of high-rise residential towers on the plot owned by Grupo Silvio Santos, located on the floodplain of the Bexiga Creek.

In response, and coinciding with the 464th anniversary of the city of São Paulo, the offices Brasil Arquitetura and Urbeflux Engenharia Consultiva released an open letter to the city of São Paulo. The letter outlines guidelines for a "necessary change of direction in the management of urban waters," aiming to resolve the impasse over the land's future "for the greater benefit of its citizens and Brazilian culture."

Tec de Monterrey, in collaboration with the Architectural Association (AA), is launching a new certificate program titled Metropolitan Landscapes / Escenarios Metropolitanos. This program combines Tec's commitment to urban development with the AA's experimental tradition, addressing the emergence of a metropolitan discipline worldwide.

Based in Mexico (Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey) and the United Kingdom (London), the program explores the visionary role that design can play within the so-called "urban age" and "Anthropocene epoch," given the scale of global urbanization processes. To do so, it utilizes the latest urban, critical, technological, ecological, and landscape concepts to shape the discipline.

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Shifting the street design paradigm that has been applied for decades in Brazil is challenging. Viewing every road through the eyes of someone who thinks first of people, rather than automobiles, is an increasingly necessary and urgent exercise in urban planning. Against this backdrop, the Complete Streets concept seeks to build safer, healthier, and more equitable streets.

To help professionals from various fields understand and implement the principles of Complete Streets, WRI Brasil and the National Front of Mayors (FNP) created the Complete Streets Online Seminars. Eight webinars were held throughout 2018, exploring various topics related to the stages of project development. Hundreds of people from 150 Brazilian cities attended presentations by 17 specialists representing ten different organizations.

While the founding of Spanish-American cities has always been linked to the availability of water sources, they have not always successfully integrated their urban development with the rivers that run through them. In the case of Córdoba, this is evident in its relationship with the Suquía River, which the city turned its back on during the twentieth century, treating it as an industrial boundary.

Conversely, the partial channelization of the La Cañada stream is perceived almost as an inherent element of the city, becoming a defining feature of the urban landscape both as a structuring, organizing axis and as a major scenic and tourist attraction.

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photographic reportages, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the era, as well as in images from the city's public and private archives. These photographs reveal a deliberate, even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and put new buildings and urban spaces in relation to the existing urban landscape.

When analyzing the impact of photography on architecture, it is essential to discuss Paul Beer and Germán Téllez. While both captured a wide spectrum of subjects, these two photographers dedicated themselves more specifically to architectural photography. Commissioned by the most prestigious architectural firms of the era, their photographs reveal distinct yet complementary values, relationships, and aspects of modern architecture and the city.

In this edition of Bogotá in the Eyes of 10 Photographers we explore the legacy of Germán Téllez:

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Projects from Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, and Brazil have been selected as winners of the 2018 CICOP Chile Award. This is the fourth national—and second international—edition of the Latin American competition open to graduation projects that develop interventions on buildings, built complexes, or areas of heritage value.

"Acting with sensitivity and technical expertise regarding built heritage helps unite efforts toward conservation and reinforces the contribution that the professional field can make to transmitting heritage values to future generations," explained the organizers of the competition, which received 92 submissions in this edition.

The competition director was Nicolas Iza, while general coordination was led by Marco Antonio Orellana. The jury comprised Arturo López Bachiller and David Avila, representing the firm Luis Vidal + Arquitectos, along with María Inés Arribas, Mabel Briceño, Antonino Pirozzi, and Carolina Vergara, representing CICOP Chile.

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Celebrated globally every year, World Car-Free Day was established to encourage reflection on the excessive use of private cars for daily commutes and its environmental impact. The initiative encourages drivers to leave their vehicles behind for a day, improving air quality and urban life while promoting walking and non-polluting modes of transportation, such as cycling.

The event was officially launched in France in 1997 under the title "Car-Free Day," later spreading across Europe and, eventually, the world. Building on this momentum, European Mobility Week was launched in 2002, featuring an agenda dedicated to discussions and activities aimed at raising public awareness about the negative impacts of car dependency on air quality, the environment, human health, and cities. Urbanists and researchers such as Jane Jacobs, Jan Gehl, and Jeff Speck, among many others, have long demonstrated that the indiscriminate use of automobiles has severe consequences for urban environments.

Description courtesy of the project team:

Located in the heart of this neighborhood, at Marsella #59, Vitrina was born from the desire to create a design-focused exhibition space that goes beyond commercial interests. Inspired by the window displays of early 20th-century department stores, the space fosters a dialogue between designers, pedestrians, and the neighborhood, exploring recent trends in the design scene and how each creator expresses their vision.

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With Socially Responsible Design as its central theme, the World Design Capital CDMX 2018 program proposes an agenda to establish a forum for connection, reflection, and dialogue on design as a force that shapes material life and ideas to build a livable city.

The agenda for the coming months (April–June) of World Design Capital CDMX 2018 includes official events, academic, cultural, and design activities. The official events, organized under the guidelines of the World Design Organization (WDO), will take place in April; meanwhile, the local program—highlighting the Interuniversity Circuit and the cultural agenda—will run throughout the year.

Notably, the exhibitions, conferences, urban interventions, and educational projects are guided by six cross-cutting themes: inhabitants, mobility, identity, environment, public space, and creative economy. 

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photographic essays, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the era, as well as in images from the city's public and private archives. These photographs reveal a deliberate, and even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers, juxtaposing new buildings and urban spaces with the existing urban landscape.

To analyze the impact of street photography, one must look to Leo Matiz, Armando Matiz and Hernán Díaz. These three photographers captured the people, events, and urban life of Bogotá. From their extensive bodies of work, we have selected and highlighted images of streets, plazas, intersections, and landmark buildings. Whether capturing iconic or anonymous locations, these photographs cement modern heritage in the collective memory, casting architecture and urban spaces as the main protagonists.

In this edition of Bogotá through the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Hernán Díaz:

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If you are taking your first steps in Revit, or would like to understand its practical integration with BIM, today's tutorial will be of great help. This course was developed by Mexican architect Alan Rodríguez Carrillo on his YouTube channel, where he has published a step-by-step tutorial to model the legendary Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe in the 1940s, in Revit.

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On February 9, residents of Ciudad Bolívar (Bogotá) were able to see the progress of TransMiCable, the Colombian capital's first cable car line, in the sky: two cabins traveling between the future Juan Pablo II and El Tunal stations.

This was one of the technical tests that are part of the verification work led by the Institute of Urban Development (IDU), supervising “the proper functioning of the pulleys, sensors, grips, and the nearly 8-kilometer-long steel cable,” according to the Mayor's Office of Bogotá. Each cabin will have a capacity of 10 people, moving 3,600 passengers per hour over a route of nearly 4 kilometers. Traveling at a speed of 20 km/h, TransMiCable will reduce the current 50-minute travel time to just 14.

In late 2017, downtown Santiago (Chile) added a new temporary pedestrian promenade. This was Paseo Bandera, a colorful, 400-linear-meter intervention by local firm Estudio Victoria, led by muralist Dasic Fernández, gallerist Esteban Barrera and architect Juan Carlos López.

The project began as a temporary intervention backed by the Municipality of Santiago, taking advantage of the street's closure to vehicular traffic due to the construction of Line 3 of the Santiago Metro. Although its dismantling was scheduled for August of this year, today, Friday (August 31), Minister of Transportation Gloria Hutt confirmed to Chilean newspaper El Mercurio that Paseo Bandera would remain a permanent pedestrian space.

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Just hours before the opening ceremony of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, FIFA will announce whether the hosting rights for the 2026 World Cup will go to the joint bid of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, or to Morocco.

Ahead of the host announcement, Morocco has unveiled the design proposal for its proposed World Cup stadium. Should the North African nation win the bid, the World Cup final would be held in this brand-new, 80,000-seat arena. The stadium is designed by Spanish firm Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos, which recently completed the Wanda Metropolitano stadium in Madrid. The firm is also designing a stadium for China's Dalian Yifan Football Club and has participated in several stadium projects in Switzerland.

Córdoba is one of the pioneer cities in the implementation of landscape architecture as we know it today.  Moving beyond the paved plazas of the colonial era, it was the first city in the country where the renowned French architect and landscape designer Carlos Thays designed a major urban park: Parque Sarmiento. Inaugurated in 1911 along the ravines that then marked the city's limits, the park became an integral part of the Nueva Córdoba neighborhood.

Similar initiatives followed over the years, creating highly characteristic green corridors such as the canalization and urban development of La Cañada. Later, during the 1970s and 1980s, the creation of pedestrian streets in the downtown area featured the incorporation of green pergolas, paved surface treatments, and plaza designs—such as Plaza Italia and Plaza España—led by architect Miguel Ángel Roca.

Today, this same emphasis on public and green space is no longer evident. The city currently has only 8 square meters of green space per inhabitant, falling short of the 10 to 15 square meters recommended by the WHO.

Our cities are crying out for help. Brazil has the technical expertise to address urban problems, and there is no shortage of plans or laws to do so. However, implementing them is imperative—a task that requires a decisive political commitment to enact an urban reform based on the social function of the city, as established in the 1988 Constitution and regulated by the City Statute. 

With this goal in mind, the Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil and the Institute of Architects of Brazil launched the “Open Letter to Candidates in the 2018 Elections for the Right to the City.” 

The modernization of Bogotá between 1940 and 1970, captured in urban and architectural photo essays, has been documented in various books, magazines, and photobooks of the period, as well as in images from the city's public and private archives. These shots reveal a deliberate, even critical, approach to how modern architecture reconfigured city centers and positioned new buildings and urban spaces in relation to the existing cityscape.

When analyzing the impact of aerial photography, one must consider Rudolf Schrimpff and Saúl Orduz. Although the subjects captured through the lenses of these two photographer-aviators were broad and varied, their aerial views of the city are extensive. Together, they form a consistent body of work documenting a modern city in transformation, offering insight into its urban development, as well as how various modern buildings and urban spaces integrated into and related to their surroundings.

In this edition of Bogotá Through the Eyes of 10 Photographers, we explore the legacy of Rudolf Schrimpff:

With 15 years of experience, Cristián Pérez Navarro, an architect and urban planner from the Universidad de Chile, has focused his practice on Architectural Design and Sustainable Urban Planning across Central America, France, the United States, and Chile. In academia, he taught in the Real Estate Management program at Universidad Finis Terrae, integrating Sustainable Design as a business variable.

The skill set Pérez Navarro has developed throughout his career—designing high-performance buildings and sustainable systems and environments across three continents—has allowed him to understand the value of designing systemic, multidisciplinary solutions rooted in best practices and continuous innovation toward comprehensive collective visions in sustainable development.

Jaime Lerner, an architect and urbanist best known for projects in Curitiba, was named by the American urban planning magazine Planetizen as the second most influential urbanist of all time, behind only Jane Jacobs. The full list features 100 names and spans a wide chronological range, from 498 BC to the present.

We are close to the announcement of the world's premier architecture prize. Here, we open the discussion on which architects from Portuguese-speaking countries deserve this honor. What is your take? 

Designed by Nicolás Moraga, the project Chambeque Ruins Cultural Park was selected as one of the 10 winners in the Thesis Projects category of the 2018 Arquitectura Caliente Competition (CAC 2018), a Chilean contest organized by Grupo Arquitectura Caliente and funded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

A ruin does not only signal the end of a cycle; it is also the first stage of a long process of change. Based on this premise, the project proposes the progressive recovery of the Chambeque area through a series of architectural interventions that will shape a new public, cultural, and educational park for the city of Lota and the region.

As part of the 11th São Paulo Architecture Biennial, Ooze Architects was invited to develop Água Paulista, a project investigating the potential for decentralized, nature-based water treatment in the city and its informal settlements. The initiative builds on the experience of its parent project Água Carioca, winner of the 2017 LafargeHolcim Award for Latin America (Bronze).

The Colegio de Arquitectos de Chile (CA) has selected the curatorial team that will lead the XXI Chilean Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism 2019. After two editions at the Parque Cultural de Valparaíso, the biennial returns to Santiago in the Matadero Franklin neighborhood.

Named "Jardim," the new residential project by Isay Weinfeld in New York is nearing completion. Comprising two towers positioned perpendicularly on a site adjacent to Zaha Hadid's first residential building in the city, the Brazilian firm's project is structurally well advanced, and cladding installation has already begun.