As part of our coverage of the 2018 Venice Biennale, we present the participation of the São Paulo-based firm GrupoSP: an installation titled "unnamed spaces" that is part of the FREESPACE exhibition. Below, the architects describe their contribution in their own words.

"Unnamed spaces" [espaços sem nome] was a term that professor and artist Flávio Motta [1] used to describe the free, generous, and open spaces of radical architecture that accommodated the unpredictability of life. They can also refer to the open spaces or clearings within our city.

Today, August 17, is National Historical Heritage Day, a date that honors the efforts to preserve assets of cultural, historical, and artistic significance across Brazil. This date coincides with the birth of historian and journalist Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade, who played a crucial role in founding the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN). Established in 1937, IPHAN is the agency responsible for promoting and organizing the preservation of Brazil's National Cultural Heritage, aiming to “protect and promote the country's cultural assets, ensuring their endurance and enjoyment for present and future generations.” [1]

Frequently used in residential design as an extension of the roof slab, eaves have shed their modest dimensions and traditional role of simply protecting outer walls from rain. Today, they are being reinvented to create new living spaces, such as verandas, which seem to reinterpret the historic alpendre bandeirista and extend the interiors, blurring the boundaries between inside and out.

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Coexist is the new work by Erik Harley, an audiovisual artist and urban studies expert from the University of Barcelona, created for Biel Blancafort, a Spanish music producer based in Barcelona.

The music video uses digital imagery from Google Earth paired with electronic music to explore the built condition of our globalized world and the way we understand the environment as we construct and digitize it. Theoretically grounded in the ideas of British geographer and social theorist David Harvey, the video critiques the continuous and unlimited growth of our cities, which leads to design solutions driven by financial arguments and executed rapidly while the next development is already being planned.

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The Chilean firm Biourban Arquitectos has been awarded the design of the new bus terminal in Castro, located in the far south of Chile. The project will be situated in the historic center of the main city on Chiloé Island and will feature parking, a supermarket, a shopping mall, and an urban viewpoint.

"Part of the challenge of the new concession is to leverage the social and urban benefits of being in the heart of the city, with excellent accessibility to all basic services," the authors state.

For the third edition of Casa FOA, architects Giulia Carboni and Macarena Canales collaborated to create "Genderless Bathroom," a space that champions the shared, unisex nature of public restrooms. Guided by this concept and inspiration, the design focuses on gender-neutral restrooms constructed from planes of color and light.

Furthermore, the layout guides visitors along a path highlighting a mural by Santiago Ascui, where human figures facing mirrors fragment both the artwork itself and the reflections of those passing by. 

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The results of the design competition for the Carcavelos Health Hub, in Portugal, were announced last month. The jury, comprising architect Luís Campos Guerra, engineer Paulo Nunes, and architect Gabriela Gonçalves, evaluated 40 proposals. The competition was organized by the Municipality of Cascais, with technical support from the Southern Regional Section of the Order of Architects.

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Conversatorio FA is a project born out of the desire to create a space for reflection on contemporary thought, aiming to foster a dialogue enriched by diverse perspectives within these very spaces. It seeks to reclaim various spaces and generate new questions and inquiries through critical and pluralistic thinking in open university areas, fostering democratic dialogue on topics chosen based on student interests.

The structure of Conversatorio FA seeks to bring external guests closer to the community, establishing connections and raising new questions about the future of the profession. Past guests have included renowned figures such as Alberto Pérez Gómez, Néstor García Canclini, and, most recently, Carlos Amorales. As part of its eighth edition, an event was held focusing on gender perspective in architecture. It featured Argentine architect Inés Moisset, coordinator of the project "Un día, una arquitecta," and Zaida Muxí, author of several publications on gender perspectives and co-director of the Master's Laboratory of 21st Century Housing at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia.

In June, the Federal Government released the publication Urbanized Areas of Brazil 2015, produced by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) using images from the RapidEye satellite captured between 2011 and 2014. The mapping shows that the largest urbanized areas in the country are São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Curitiba, and Goiânia. Together, these five urban agglomerations cover more than 2,500 km².

Physical distance is no longer an obstacle for the world's major museums. Once limited by their geographic locations and accessible only to those who could visit them in person, many museums have now digitized their collections, while others are in the process of doing so—a strategy that broadens reach and, to some extent, democratizes access to culture.

Aedas has unveiled its design for Alacarte Halong Bay Condotel, a new development in Vietnam's renowned coastal destination. Famous for its thousands of towering limestone karsts, Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Occupying a prime beachfront plot, the Alacarte Condotel is designed to offer unobstructed views of this spectacular natural heritage.

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After a week of nominations, more than 25,000 readers selected their favorite projects from nearly 1,000 built works across Latin America and Spain. Today, the finalists for ODA18 have been announced.

Now in its tenth edition, this award has become a true tradition. We invite all our readers to recognize the projects published during 2017 that inspired them and represent the identity of their local contexts in a globalized world, shaping how architecture is practiced in Latin America and Spain within an increasingly diverse and multicultural landscape.

The third edition of Hello Wood Argentina, the distinctive wood architecture and design festival, has arrived. A creative, professional, and social program, it seeks to teach thinking with your hands and learning through experience.

Portugal will be home to another project designed by Álvaro Siza. The renowned Portuguese architect was invited by the authorities of Oleiros to design the revitalization of the Miradouro do Zebro, a prominent tourist attraction located in the country's central region.

Budgeted at two million euros, the revitalization project will also feature the construction of a suspension bridge connecting Oleiros, Pampilhosa da Serra, and Fundão.

Based on the Urban Design Planning and Implementation Scheme for Banxuegang High-Tech City, this international competition was launched to implement the phase results of the implementation scheme through four sub-projects. The project evaluation meeting has been successfully concluded. Following the competition rules (the jury has provided evaluation opinions on the top two winning agencies of each project and recommended them to the host; the host will further study and determine the final ranking of the top two winning agencies based on full respect for the expert evaluation opinions, and the top two winning agencies will receive different bonuses and undertake corresponding follow-up work), the host has decided to launch a public consultation based on these results to widely collect opinions and suggestions as an important reference for the final ranking and subsequent design refinement. The competition consists of four sub-projects, covering planning, architecture, landscape, and art, with two winners selected for each category.

Winners of the International Competition for the Architectural Conceptual Design of Banxuegang Art Center and Surrounding Plots: URBANUS Architecture & Design, Architectural Design & Research Institute of South China University of Technology & Shenzhen WAAO Architects (Consortium)
Winners of the International Competition for the Conceptual Design of the Integrated Connectivity of Characteristic (Country) Parks Around "Bantian in the Forest": Guangzhou Landscape Architecture Design and Research Institute, MLA+ B.V.
Winners of the International Competition for the Landscape and Greenery Enhancement of Urban Streets and Nodes in Banxuegang High-Tech City: Shenzhen Meidao Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning Design Institute Co., Ltd. & Beijing Vision 4D Directional System Planning & Design Co., Ltd. (Consortium), Beijing Zhonghai Huayi Urban Planning & Design Co., Ltd. & Shenzhen Gardens Co., Ltd. (Consortium)
Winners of the International Competition for the Visual Identity (VI) and Application Design of Banxuegang High-Tech City: Shenzhen Shida Creative Design Co., Ltd., Thonik Design Studio

On Friday, December 22, 2017, the inaugural MUGAK Basque Country International Architecture Biennial opened the exhibition "The City We Lost: Urban Heritage Management in San Sebastián, 1950-2017" at the Santa Teresa Convent in San Sebastián, Spain. The exhibition showcases recognizable local buildings that have disappeared over the last few decades. 

Curated by the Áncora association, the exhibition traverses San Sebastián's neighborhoods to examine a city that now exists only in collective memory—specifically, buildings lost over the past seven decades. Stretching from Martutene to Igeldo, and including Alza, Amara, El Antiguo, and Ibaeta, the survey goes beyond the city's iconic heritage, looking past San Sebastián's most prominent areas to highlight other architectural works.

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Designed by Camila Chaler, the project Cloister Typology as an Opportunity for Urban Reintegration was selected as one of the ten winners in the Thesis Project category of the 2018 Arquitectura Caliente Competition (CAC 2018), a Chilean awards program organized by Grupo Arquitectura Caliente and funded by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Heritage.

Santiago's urban fabric is home to numerous religious orders. These properties (convents and monasteries) are currently facing obsolescence because they operate under outdated models. This is due to two main factors: their urban incongruity, which isolates them as inward-facing cloisters within the city, and their programmatic obsolescence relative to the scale of the buildings, driven by a decline in religious vocations.

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Barcelona photographer Víctor Enrich (b. 1976) has defined himself as a "professional in architectural visualization" since 1998. His ultra-high-quality photomontages trick the eye. Is there really a Guggenheim on the periphery of Bogotá? No, it is the work of Enrich. What about that replica of the Chrysler Building dome in a residential neighborhood? Not that either; it's Enrich.

He is currently working on three simultaneous projects: the fiasco of the 'Castor' case in Spain, a series on the phenomenon of gentrification, and a final series on the political situation in Catalonia—all while venturing into oil painting. "But that is a whole other world," Enrich explains in the following interview.

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.

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As part of the commemorations marking the 30th anniversary of the passing of architect Luis Barragán, Cosentino and Arquiphilia invited 20 Mexican architecture firms to participate in a group exhibition titled "Inspiración, magia y embrujo 2018" (Inspiration, Magic, and Spell 2018). The initiative proposed an exercise to demonstrate how collaboration and creativity are key to design, challenging participants to create a sculpture using Dekton® by Cosentino to pay tribute to the work of the 1980 Pritzker Prize laureate. The resulting models were subsequently exhibited at the Instituto Cabañas in Guadalajara.

Operational coordination was led by Arquiphilia, represented by architects Bertha Elia Gutiérrez Gómez and Carlos Lassala Mozo, who previously organized the Do It Yourself exhibition in Guadalajara in September 2015. Mónica Urbán, from Cosentino's corporate team, was also part of the coordination team, serving as the liaison between the brand and the architecture firms. Before fabrication, the participants selected their materials from a catalog, evaluating different characteristics to find the ideal match for what they wished to express in their pieces.

I recently learned that the word "testa" means "head" in Italian. It made me think of Clorindo Testa and how fitting his last name was.

Yesterday marked the 95th anniversary of his birth. Possessing infinite creativity and charisma, he was one of those personalities that appear once every century. In him, the intelligence of the architect coexisted with the sensitivity of the artist, the precision of the professional with the joy of a child, and greatness with humility. His hand did not tremble when curving a line or adding color to a plan.

To mark this anniversary, we look back at some of his quotes and anecdotes.

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Earlier this week, we reported that New York-based Catalan architect Eva Franch i Gilabert was selected as the new Director of the Architectural Association in London. Prior to this appointment, Franch served for seven years as Chief Curator and Executive Director of Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York.

Architect Antonio Miranda, writing for the ARKRIT Collective, invites us to reflect in this article on romantic subjectivism in criticism, presenting a simple example in defense of the objective criticism of the object, which speaks to us much more honestly and sincerely than the author of the work themselves. He puts this assertion to the test by comparing two famous buildings in Madrid's Plaza de España: the Edificio España and the Torre de Madrid.

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.