Mike Smith, co-founder of the Costa Rican firm Entre Nos Atelier, has become the first Central American to receive the Loeb Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD).

Led by John Peterson, founder of the NGO Public Architecture, the program annually selects a cohort of architecture and urban planning professionals, aiming to "strengthen their ability to advance positive social outcomes and support a more equitable collective future." During their one-year residency, fellows receive financial support and unrestricted access to the digital educational resources of Harvard and MIT.

It no longer makes much sense to say that BIM technology is the future of architectural design; it is the present and will become increasingly widespread. However, professionals and students often note that the technology's complexity can make it user-unfriendly, particularly regarding parametric element families.

While there are websites that offer ready-made families, the vast majority focus on engineering and other building systems, leaving few options for architectural and interior design elements.

The City of São Paulo has opened a public selection process for professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, agronomy, and geology, offering a total of 118 positions in these areas, in addition to 50 openings for organizational development and planning analysts. The positions are for roles within municipal secretariats and other government agencies. 

The initial question—and with it, the proposed discussion—stems from the original title of the article War-chitecture: How guilty are architects in urban violence? by Tomas Beverina, one of our readers in Argentina, who invites us to reflect on urban violence and prompts an even broader, collective debate.

The Council of Architecture and Urbanism of Brazil (CAU/BR) has sent an open letter to the president of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan), historian Kátia Bogéa, demanding the professional minimum wage for architects selected through the national competition launched last week.

Extensive academic literature documents the detrimental effects that massive, monofunctional public housing complexes, isolated from urban centers, impose on cities. These areas typically become highly segregated and stigmatized, often plagued by deteriorating living conditions. Once occupied, residents frequently begin to modify their surroundings—opening small businesses and adapting spaces in ways that diverge sharply from the original design. Yet, can urban design improve the quality of life within these developments? Consider this proposal developed for João Pessoa:  

Featuring a total of 53 proposals, 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 issue of social housing is one of the highlights of the proposed “Solidary and Inclusive Urban Planning.” For these organizations, it is crucial to establish a housing policy consisting of diverse solutions rather than a single model based on the construction of massive housing complexes, typically on the outskirts of cities, as is currently the case.

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In late January, the Citizen Forum "Modern Landscape, Transforming Territories" took place in Chillán, offering three days of reflection on the cultural heritage of the newly designated capital of the Ñuble Region. The event began with a tribute to architect Osvaldo Cáceres, who was close to the architects involved in the reconstruction of Chillán and nearby cities following the 1939 earthquake.

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Engineers and architects looking to integrate structural design techniques into their architectural projects will find interest in this free online course: professors from the Department of Structural Engineering and Building Physics at the School of Architecture of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (ETSAM) are offering the course “Structural Design: Learning Through Case Studies” through the Ibero-American digital platform Miriadax.

The course offers case-study-based learning, allowing students to draw their own design conclusions. To do so, the curriculum explains the structural design process of ten buildings of increasing complexity, starting with residential and small institutional buildings and ending with more complex projects featuring structural solutions for large spaces.

A Point of View

This text was written for the French edition of the exhibition catalog The Universalists: 50 Years of Portuguese Architecture, an event organized by the Delegation of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Paris to mark its 50th anniversary, co-produced with the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine. The exhibition is now being presented, in 2018, in Portugal, at the Casa da Arquitectura in Matosinhos.

To facilitate reading, we have divided the text into two parts. The second part is available at this link.

In Mexico, INFONAVIT's Urban Redensification project aims to identify strategies to curb urban sprawl across various Mexican cities. This initiative seeks to reconfigure the urban fabric by repurposing underutilized land and abandoned housing, aiming to create compact, efficient cities that offer a better quality of life for their residents.

The landscape master plan to revitalize the western bank of the Magdalena River in Mompox—a Colombian city declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site—is the winner of the III Latin American Biennial of Landscape Architecture (BLAP).

Designed by the Colombian firm OPUS, the Revitalization of the Albarrada de Mompox is the grand prize winner of the competition organized by the Mexican Society of Landscape Architects (SAPM). The biennial also recognized works, proposals, and publications in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Chile across its six categories. Established in 2014, the BLAP seeks to highlight the role of landscape architecture in building habitats in Latin America, with a particular emphasis on the region's environmental and social challenges.

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Since 2016, Chile has been undergoing a gradual transformation of its building regulations thanks to the enactment of the historic Decree 50 of the General Ordinance of Urban Planning and Construction (OGUC). This decree mandates a national standard for universal accessibility, ratifying both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008) and Law 20,422 (2010), which establishes standards for equal opportunities and social inclusion for people with disabilities.

This regulatory shift prompted the team at Corporación Ciudad Accesible to update their 14 “Accessible Fact Sheets,” now that compliance is a requirement rather than an option. "We want to achieve an accessible and universal vision where design envisions people beyond the traditional mold, so that those who do not move, see, hear, or understand the environment in conventional ways find the same opportunities and participation," explains their team.

Do identical brick blocks confuse you? Are you unsure whether to turn at this corner or the next because all the perimeter-block buildings look exactly alike? Do you lose your way in the narrow, winding streets of the city center? As it turns out, this is a common challenge for many, which is why it is essential for cities to invest in wayfinding systems designed specifically for pedestrians.

The benefits are numerous. First, it is an excellent way to promote the cleanest form of transit: walking. The advantages of this include easing public transit congestion, reducing vehicular traffic, encouraging a deeper familiarity with the city, and revitalizing businesses on secondary streets—not to mention the positive impact on tourists and visitors. This is precisely what the #LeerMadrid project aims to achieve. The initiative is currently being developed by Paisaje Transversal in collaboration with Applied Wayfinding, Avanti Avanti, Urban Networks/CGR, and Dimas García Moreno.

Cities are shapeless, changing realities that expand unpredictably, driven by socio-urban and socio-economic trends. But can we anticipate these growth trends? Here is a tool that allows users to analyze road networks and calculate the percentage of streets oriented in any given direction relative to the north. 

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The initiative is part of the citizen forum held in January 2018 in the city of Chillán, titled “Modern Landscape, Territory in Transformation,” organized by CCE Santiago, CECAL of the Universidad de Concepción (Chillán campus), and the Heritage Unit of the Municipality of Chillán (UPA).

When Clorindo Testa was asked how he felt upon learning that one of his works, the Casa Di Tella, was going to be demolished, he replied: “I believe that buildings are not made to last. One can say that the Roman Colosseum will endure. They are not going to tear down Notre-Dame Cathedral, nor the Duomo in Milan. But when you design a project, you don't go around thinking it will be memorable and last forever. Works of this nature have owners, and owners change their minds. People and society also change: what was valid twenty years ago is no longer valid today. It is inevitable. Personally, it doesn't bother me in the least if they demolish a work of mine; I don't design things to last forever. You make things to function when they are commissioned, and they last as long as they need to. The Casa Di Tella was built for Di Tella, and Di Tella died. In a sense, it is no longer his house... It became part of an institute that bought it. Therefore, the functions it needs are different.” [1]

Testa's words reveal a remarkable humility that seems rare in the DNA of architects who yearn for the eternity of their work. Indeed, this desire for permanence was imposed on us almost as a mandate, a necessity. Palladio knew this well when referencing Vitruvius: “utility, perpetuity, and beauty.”

CODHAB has released the results of another one of its competitions. This edition sought design proposals for an Escola Classe (EC) elementary school located in the Crixá Neighborhood development in the Federal District. The facility aims to provide public educational services, as the first phase of the social housing project is already under construction.

The objective of the competition was to select the most suitable proposal to contract the responsible technical team, who will sign an agreement with the organizing entity to develop the Complete Detailed Design (Architectural Design and Complementary Projects). See the results of the competition below:

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Paparazza Moderna is a photographic project that emerged as part of the artistic work of the duo Lake Verea. Centered on the portraiture of modern architecture, the project began with Luis Barragán to showcase a perspective far removed from conventional architectural photography. If anything characterizes their approach to architecture, it is precisely this oblique gaze at space, which reveals the less obvious aspects of structures that have now become iconic.

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Most of us share childhood memories of drawing little houses—a triangular roof, a door, a window, and a tree beside it. What sets architects apart from the general public, however, is that we continue to make these drawings long after we grow up. Naturally, our skills usually mature along the way. Just as our residential architecture becomes more complex and refined, our representation of trees must also evolve (that broccoli-like scribble is unlikely to impress clients or professors). While trees are rarely the focal point of a drawing, they play a crucial role in architectural composition, establishing scale, casting shadows, and representing specific landscape designs.

Various scholars link the sense of belonging to a population's social and cultural appropriation of territory. Along these lines, authors such as Spanish geographer Joan Nogué connect human societies to the places they inhabit—spaces with which they identify and bond, granting them significance as vital shapers and consolidators of identity.

In this regard, the Matta Viel Housing Complex in Santiago, designed by the architecture firm Bresciani Valdés Castillo Huidobro, is significant for several reasons. It stands out as a remarkable example of appropriation—a model of public social housing in Chile that not only seamlessly integrates into the urban fabric but has also been fully embraced and brought to life by its residents.

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The city of Rio de Janeiro preserves an important and representative legacy of leading names in modern architecture. Affonso Eduardo Reidy is one of them. Born in Paris, France, he was brought to Rio at a very young age, growing up amidst the modernity and *bossa* of the "Marvelous City." Graduating from the National School of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro in 1930, he was a member of the group led by Alfred Agache for Rio's urban remodeling and was part of the team of young architects who designed the Ministry of Education and Health building under Le Corbusier's consultancy. Le Corbusier was one of his primary influences, alongside Oscar Niemeyer, the most prominent figure of the so-called Escola Carioca.

Given the architect's prominence in Rio's and, above all, Brazilian modern architecture, we have selected a few of his widely recognized works alongside some less frequently cited projects. We hope this guide to five of the architect's projects sparks interest among residents and visitors alike—or even those who have never been to Rio—encouraging everyone to experience Reidy's work firsthand. Discover them below!

The Housing Development Company of the Federal District (CODHAB-DF) recently launched Accreditation Call No. 001/2018 which aims to accredit companies to provide temporary home renovation and minor repair services in areas of social interest. Registration must be completed online at www.codhab.df.gov.br/credenciamento/01-2018 by 6:00 PM on March 26.

Cities are critical to the functioning of many countries. With the rapid population growth of recent decades, urban centers have had to face a series of challenges, a primary one being mobility planning. In Brazil, with the enactment of the National Urban Mobility Policy (PNMU) in 2012, Brazilian cities received new guidelines to plan and guide policy actions toward establishing more sustainable mobility. To this end, the PNMU requires the development of Urban Mobility Plans for cities with over 20,000 inhabitants as a prerequisite for receiving federal budget allocations. Ultimately, this requirement aims to transform cities and the way Brazilians commute daily.