This guide covers a workflow that moves from project parameters to generated floor plans, 3D perspective views, exterior design exploration, and site context visualization, using AI tools in place of preliminary CAD and rendering work.

Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architects Matías González Ulloa and Sofía Carrión Bobadilla, creators of Área Verde and leaders of ⁠Arquitectura Maulina⁠, a digital platform focused on the architecture, territory, and reflections of Chile's inspiring Maule region.

Nicolás Valencia speaks with Chilean architect Germán Valenzuela about the book ⁠Del territorio al detalle⁠ (Bifurcaciones), a selection of the most interesting contemporary architects in Latin America, from Al Borde to Rozana Montiel, including Mauricio Rocha, Inés Moisset, and Solano Benítez.

"There is coconut candy and peteca
Let the child play
Today is a day of celebration
The ibejada comes to bless."
— Song for the erês

Streets come alive when they belong to the erês and die when they belong to cars. I dream of a project that I intend to put into practice when time allows: writing a manual of the fabulous rules of hopscotch, carniça, button football, preguinho, capture the flag, ring-around-the-rosy, lenço-atrás, slope soccer, dodgeball, and the variations of marbles. The title is already set: "The Loving Ecology of Street Games."

What happened at the conventual Church of Saint Francis of Assis in Salvador is yet another sad chapter in a process afflicting Brazilian cultural heritage, which has intensified in recent years with the fires at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, the Cinemateca, and the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo. Consequently, over the last few days, there has been intense debate regarding who is to "blame" for what occurred in Salvador, or who bore the "responsibility" to prevent this disaster, which also claimed the life of a young tourist: whether the church administrators, IPHAN (the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage), or local cultural and heritage agencies. This is a difficult and indeed important issue to discuss, demanding careful investigation into the causes of the incident. Yet the debate must be broader, aimed above all at considering how we can prevent such events from happening: greater investment, greater appreciation of artistic and architectural heritage, stricter and more effective safety protocols, preventive conservation, and heritage education. In the days following the incident in Salvador, numerous colonial-period buildings were closed across the country under the claim that they, too, might collapse. Our heritage demands attention—in many cases, urgently.

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The MArch Valencia Postgraduate School offers a unique educational proposal, featuring three postgraduate programs and two master's degrees designed to effectively connect academic knowledge with professional experience. Its teaching methodology is based on a practical approach and collaboration with renowned professionals and architecture and design studios, providing students with the necessary tools to excel in a highly competitive job market.

In July of this year, UNESCO designated the Roberto Burle Marx Site as a World Heritage site. As a result, Brazil now has 23 sites and practices inscribed on the World Heritage List, which brings together properties, ensembles, and practices of tangible and intangible value.

According to UNESCO, the 23 listed properties and practices in Brazil can be divided into Cultural Heritage—"composed of monuments, groups of buildings, or sites that have outstanding universal historical, aesthetic, archaeological, scientific, ethnological, or anthropological value"—and Natural Heritage—"outstanding physical, biological, and geological formations, habitats of threatened animal and plant species, and areas of outstanding scientific, conservation, or aesthetic value." 

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On August 17, Brazil celebrated National Heritage Day, 21 days after a protest set fire to the statue of Bandeirante Borba Gato in the southern zone of São Paulo. This contradiction opens up an important discussion: how are we constructing memory in our cities? What are we valuing as our country's heritage? 

The term historical and cultural heritage refers to the tangible and intangible creations of a given culture within society. What defines a cultural asset as heritage is its historical and social relevance, which can be linked to collective and individual memory, as it is through these memories that we understand the past. From an architectural perspective, the term heritage is constantly associated with historic buildings that typically embody Catholic religious values or the bourgeois lifestyle of the elite.

We invite you to participate in the ArchDaily Brasil 2025 Building of the Year Award. Now in its ninth edition, we task our readers with the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that have made the greatest impact on the profession. By voting, you become part of an impartial network of jurors recognizing the most relevant projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries over the past year. Only a few days remain in the voting stage, which will select the three winners of the ArchDaily Brasil 2025 Building of the Year Award from the 15 finalists.

Registered users can vote for their favorite project once a day. The voting stage closes on April 9 at 11:59 PM (GMT-3).

We invite you to participate in the ArchDaily en Español Building of the Year Award. In its sixteenth edition, we give our readers the responsibility of recognizing and rewarding the projects that have had the greatest impact on the discipline. By voting, you become part of an unbiased jury network recognizing the most relevant works built in Latin America and Spain over the past year. There are only a few days left before voting closes, where the 3 winners of the ArchDaily en Español 2025 Building of the Year Award will be selected from among the 15 finalists.

Registered users can vote for their favorite project once a day. The nomination stage ends on April 9 at 11:59 PM (GMT-3).

Last week, we announced the 15 finalists for the 2025 ArchDaily Brasil Building of the Year Award, which celebrates the best of Lusophone architecture by inviting our readers to vote for their favorite projects built in Portuguese-speaking countries. Now, the time has come to reveal the three grand winners!

This year, first place went to the Seedling Nursery - Ocupação Fazendinha, a simple and sensitive small-scale project developed by the Projects Department of the School of Architecture at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Second place was awarded to Casa da Carnaúba Várzea Queimada in the state of Piauí, designed by the firm Rosenbaum, while third place went to the Requalification of the Municipal Square of Ribeira de Pena in Portugal, designed by the studio AXR - Arquitetura e Design.

Over 60 years ago, Brasília emerged from the Brazilian interior. Developed in a desolate cerrado between 1956 and 1960, the city that replaced Rio de Janeiro as the nation's capital was a joint creation of urban planner Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer.

With its winged shape, Brasília became a powerful symbol, representing one of the purest embodiments of the hope, splendor, and ingenuity of 20th-century architecture.

The 8th {CURA} Award has announced the winners of its competition, which was themed around collective housing for the 21st century. The competition invited participants to reflect on new ways of living in the city, focusing primarily on issues of urban mobility, density, and bioclimatic efficiency.

Each project was evaluated individually, based on criteria such as consistency with the proposed theme; conceptual and architectural quality; creativity and critical vision in the proposed solution; suitability to the urban and territorial context; quality of graphic representation and clarity in communicating the proposal; social and environmental impact; and compliance with the competition brief. Team identities were only revealed after the jury's final decision.

Maps are fundamental tools for understanding the built environment. Rather than just representing locations, they allow us to visualize spatial relationships, recognize urban patterns, overlay layers of information, and produce new ways of reading a territory. In architecture, they can help reveal how projects are distributed across cities, identifying which areas concentrate investments or remain on the margins. Furthermore, maps are never neutral: all cartographic representation involves choices—such as data selection, spatial boundaries, and projections used—that can carry political intentions, reinforcing or questioning power structures and worldviews.

In partnership with the platform PLACE, developed by the firm OSPA, ArchDaily Brasil presents an interactive map featuring most of the projects published on the site in recent years. Each point provides information such as images, location, and technical data about the works. The initiative uses exclusively public data available on the platform and includes projects in almost every Brazilian state.

At a time of profound social, spatial, and cultural change, the 12th edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival invites reflection on how physical and symbolic borders shape the built environment, influencing daily life and collective dynamics. What role do architecture and urban thinking play in understanding this changing world?

Since the cultural center INSTITUTO took over its organization in 2021, the festival has established itself as a critical platform connecting cinema, architecture, and spatial practices to discuss urgent issues. In recent years, it has addressed migration, ecological crises, decolonization, and new ways of living. In 2025, the focus turns to the 'border' in its multiple dimensions.

At the FIESP Cultural Center in São Paulo, Nicolás Valencia sits down with Brazilian artist Giselle Beiguelman to discuss artificial intelligence, data centers, and coup plotters, drawing from her book Políticas da Imagem, her exhibition Venenosas, Nocivas e Suspeitas, and her research project Domingo no Golpe.

Play, as a human activity, is a multidimensional practice: it stems from biology, is socially transmitted, and is situated within the architectural realm. Within this interrelation, while play introduces dynamics and narratives that invite us to explore alternative ways of inhabiting the world, architectural projects provide the physical and sensory support needed to unlock these possibilities, with play structures serving as the medium connecting the two. Consequently, a defining relationship emerges between play, the built environment, and its evolution over time.

Contrast can be widely used in architecture as a tool to highlight what we want to showcase. Do we want to emphasize an entrance? Make the project stand out from its surroundings? Turn our architecture into a landmark in the urban—or rural—landscape? Do we need to create symbolism? Ensure legibility? How do we achieve this? How do we "shine a light" on something?

Whatever we want to highlight is amplified through comparison—by means of an exaggerated, antagonistic contrast. Intentionally, we can intensify the use of darkness to emphasize a single light source, framing a staircase in a dramatic and theatrical way. Or we can introduce solid, opaque walls to make a light, transparent entrance stand out.

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The Urban Initiatives Map, created by OSPA Place in partnership with the Responsive Cities Institute, is a free, collaborative mapping platform showcasing urban transformation projects driven by innovation, technology, and citizen participation. The initiative aims to identify, highlight, and give visibility to transformative urban experiences; inspire other cities with open innovation models; strengthen collaborative networks among public, private, academic, and civil society stakeholders; and share solutions that have a real impact on the population.

A bamboo structure rises as a space of convergence between technique, ancestry, and collective practice. OCO is the first work by Cambará Instituto, an organization that grew out of the Arquitetas Negras Project. Conceived during an artistic residency at Cerbambu, in Ravena (Minas Gerais), with support from re:arc institute, the project brought together ten black women architects who, over seven days of immersion in July this year, worked alongside master builder Lúcio Ventania to explore the constructive and symbolic potential of bamboo. The process culminated in the presentation of the work at the 14th International Architecture Biennial of São Paulo.

The experience sought to reconnect architectural practice with knowledges rooted in the body and the earth. The process encompassed every stage of production—from selecting and cutting the bamboo to curing and assembling it—resulting in a structure six meters high and five meters in diameter. Its design draws inspiration from the xossas of Benin and features straw from the African country at its top. The installation was also “clothed” with 220,000 beads, known as Our Lady’s Tears, handcrafted by forty elderly women in situations of social vulnerability who live in the same region where the residency took place—strengthening both community and economic bonds.

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Chinese architect Sui Yanfei has won the 4th Kazuhiro Kojima Award in 2025, becoming the first recipient from outside Japan since the award's inception. The jury presented this honor to Sui in recognition of his deep insight into Chinese social realities alongside his continuous exploration of new, future-oriented possibilities for architecture. His work focuses on extending Eastern thought within a post-human context and excels at reinterpreting historically accumulated social structures. Grounding his practice in social, economic, and institutional realities, he transforms architecture within complex networks of relationships into a medium that connects people, objects, and time. The diverse practice of his studio is both deeply rooted in reality and brings a new poetry to contemporary life.

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The Arquiteturas Film Festival has opened submissions for its 13th edition, which will take pace from July 1 to 5, 2026, in Porto, Portugal. Organized by INSTITUTO and directed by architect Paulo Moreira, the festival was founded in 2013 and has established itself as an international platform dedicated to discussing and disseminating architecture in dialogue with cinema, visual and spatial arts, critical thought, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Under the theme "Urban Age," the 2026 edition invites filmmakers, architects, and artists to reflect on the urban era we inhabit and the ways in which cities and territories are shaped by contemporary social, political, and environmental challenges. The festival proposes a reflection on the lived experience of urbanization—from the material forms of architecture to the social and cultural dynamics that define contemporary cities.

An architectural award serves as a legitimizing mechanism, indicating which approaches, materials, and strategies are beginning to take center stage in the discipline's discourse. By bringing together projects with different programs, scales, and constraints, these initiatives bring to light emerging priorities and directions in the field. Within this context, the Shaw Contract Design Awards have established themselves as a global recognition platform for interior design and a barometer of the transformations reshaping the discipline, prompting reflection on the role of design in building more responsible, inclusive, and sustainable environments.

Videos

Taking a deeper look at the interplay of light and shadow in architecture seems to be a recurring topic on the agenda of many professionals in the field. Spaces of light and darkness are conceived to enhance circulation and spatial directionality, as well as to highlight the colors, textures, and forms of specific architectural elements. That said, the impact of natural light on building facades reveals the need to develop strategies that support energy savings, improve the thermal and visual comfort of interior spaces, and promote the reduction of carbon emissions. Considering light as another material in architecture, in what ways could its power contribute to the architectural experience?

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At the helm of architectural discourse on sacred architecture, attention almost always settles on the monument. Temples, mosques, monasteries, and churches dominate architectural histories, design criticism, and photography alike, becoming the physical symbols through which faith is understood. For millions of pilgrims across India, the most consequential architectural experience begins long before the shrine comes into view. It unfolds across mountain roads, river ghats, shaded streets, temporary camps, queue systems, bridges, water kiosks, medical stations, and countless ordinary pieces of infrastructure through which pilgrimage actually takes place. The architectural work of pilgrimage may lie less in the shrine itself than in the environments that allow millions of people to reach it.

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