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.

Videos

The way you experience the city, the urban infrastructure provided in the areas you frequent, and even the job opportunities that come your way are all, to some extent, shaped by the color of your skin. These themes unfold across multiple layers to discuss racial segregation in the urban environment in the seminar "The City and Racial Subjection," organized in 2018 by the Laboratory of Race and Urban Space Studies (Labraça) at FAUUSP.

As it celebrates its 60th anniversary, Brasília has an opportunity to draw inspiration from the anti-racist and anti-colonial movements worldwide that have challenged the monumentality of official history, confronting the memorialization of colonialism within its own urban landscape. Rather than celebratory events that reiterate official narratives, marking the city as a *bandeirante* milestone of national modernity, we should pause—a pause moreover imposed by the pandemic—to reflect on how certain memories are eternalized while others are erased, and thus trace new memorial cartographies onto the urban fabric of the capital.

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Twenty-first-century urbanism will be marked by an increase in both the number and scale of global megacities—urban agglomerations with over 10 million inhabitants, according to the UN—alongside a geographical shift. By 2100, African metropolises such as Lagos (Nigeria) and Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are projected to exceed 80 million residents. The rise of these new, larger metropolises, especially in Africa and Asia, compounded by the urgent need to address the ongoing climate crisis, demands immediate changes in the discourse surrounding urban mobility.

Sesc São Paulo has made a series of catalogs, educational materials, and booklets produced for the institution's exhibitions available for free on its website. Fittingly, several of these themes intersect with thinking on architecture and the city.

While modern metropolises have verticalized our way of life, creative solutions are continually emerging to reclaim and redefine urban space. Rooftops are already widely used for events and leisure, and now, growing plants and crops on them is becoming increasingly common. In Paris, a massive 14,000 m² urban farm has just opened on a building's rooftop. Although cultivation does not yet cover the entire area, once fully completed, it will be considered the largest in Europe and, perhaps, the world. 

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Dia a dia is a three-part mid-length film miniseries developed by the Urban Policy Commission (CPU) of CAU/RJ. Each episode is dedicated to one of the three pillars proposed within the theme of the right to the city—sanitation, mobility, and housing—through the perspectives and daily lives of three women living in completely different areas of Rio de Janeiro: Realengo, Barra da Tijuca, and the Santo Amaro community (Catete). The first episode, which premiered on August 21 and addresses housing, is available online.

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São Paulo, Sociedade Anônima is a film with a complex and profound approach to São Paulo, crafted with a sensitive and distinct 1960s perspective by those who lived through a moment of urban and socioeconomic renewal in the metropolis. Capturing this unique social transformation, the film became a cinematic landmark of the era, tracing an intense relationship between character and urban space. It contains multiple layers of interpretation that dissect the meaning of the modern, the urban, the scenographic, and the architectural, using these concepts as tools to express a historical period lived and experienced by its population, capturing the transformations of both the city and its society. 

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Many factors influence people's well-being, but few have power as great as the quality of sleep. Adults spend, on average, a third of their day (and their life) sleeping. In the case of young children, this proportion is even higher. According to a study published by the WHO in 2019, babies (4 to 11 months) should sleep between 12 and 16 hours/day; and children up to 4 years old should sleep between 10 and 13 hours/day.

Quality sleep acts directly on the child's brain development, especially during his first and second childhood (from birth to 12 years old). During the rest period, the body releases the hormones necessary for growth and learning, and this is directly related to physical, motor, emotional, and cognitive development. It is also known that the environment where one sleeps interferes with the quality of that sleep, and some important aspects must be considered when designing sleeping spaces for children and babies.

Architecture is one of the most beautiful professions—there is an undeniable romance in building the spaces where human beings dwell. It is also one of the oldest: if considered as an activity that organizes space, some form of architectural thinking can be identified dating back at least hundreds of thousands of years. Its beauty, however, is partially eclipsed by widespread frustration within the professional field in Brazil. A general lack of awareness regarding its importance to society, difficulty securing contracts, fierce competition, scarce opportunities in public projects, low-paying jobs, and a willingness to work without fees all contribute to the precarious state of architecture and urban planning.

Downtown São Paulo will receive a statue honoring Joaquim Pinto de Oliveira, an enslaved Black 18th-century architect known as Tebas. The announcement was made yesterday, September 10, by Mayor Bruno Covas at the São Paulo City Council. 

The winners of the 2nd Tomie Ohtake Institute Leroy Merlin Design Award have been announced. Originally scheduled to take place in person at the Tomie Ohtake Institute alongside an exhibition of the projects, the awards were instead announced via video due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

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Launched last month, the Fortaleza Mais Verde program aims to create a network of micro-parks in the capital of Ceará and implement tree-lined bicycle corridors. Execution of the plan began in August.

"The purpose of the proposal is to preserve, secure, and progressively expand the green cover of the City of Fortaleza, making these areas usable for the population to enjoy," said the city's mayor, Roberto Cláudio. "We have several landscaping and urban planning initiatives underway. We expect to receive suggestions regarding this new pilot project. We want to ensure it is implemented and made irreversible," he added.

Located at the intersection of Nove de Julho and São Gabriel (formerly Flora) avenues and Groelândia Street, between the neighborhoods of Jardim América and Itaim-Bibi, this complex, with its three twelve-story buildings, became a prominent landmark on one of the most important corridors connecting downtown São Paulo to the city's southern zone.

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Architect and urban planner Maria Elisa Baptista is the new President of the National Board of the IAB. She succeeds Nivaldo Andrade, whose term ended on September 26 of this year. In nearly a century of existence, this is the first time a woman has held the position.

The leadership team also includes Rafael Pavan dos Passos (National Vice President, IAB-RS), Cláudio Listher Marques Bahia (Secretary General, IAB-MG), Rosilene Guedes Souza (Administrative-Financial Director, IAB-MG), Luiz Eduardo Sarmento Araújo (Cultural Director, IAB-DF), Fernando Túlio Salva Rocha Franco (Extraordinary Vice President of Institutional Relations, IAB-SP), and Luiza Rego Dias Coelho (Extraordinary Vice President of Affirmative Action, IAB-DF).

The Industrial Workers' Retirement and Pension Institute (IAPI) commissioned the prominent Rio de Janeiro architect Paulo Antunes Ribeiro, national president of the Institute of Architects of Brazil (IAB) in the 1950s, to design this project in the industrial neighborhood of Mooca, an area already highly consolidated by the 1940s. Occupying a large urban void, the housing complex consists of seventeen blocks arranged to follow a rational layout, though without the same geometric rigor that Attilio Corrêa Lima had adopted at Várzea do Carmo. Within Mooca's fragmented urban fabric, Ribeiro introduced a modern urban design that eliminated traditional subdivision lots, creating a large public space where the blocks are integrated into green areas.

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The IAB-SP, organizer of the São Paulo International Architecture Biennial, following a public consultation on the open call guidelines from October 10 to 25, is launching a competition on November 4 to select the co-curatorial team for the 13th Biennial, which will take place in 2022. Proposals can be submitted through the Biennial's website until January 24, 2021. This edition features a 12-member committee, which includes IAB representatives from other Brazilian states to ensure a diverse perspective in overseeing the event, which has both national and international reach.

Just like us, words have a history. The word cure comes from Latin and is linked to the act of caring. This same root gives rise to the word *curator*, the person responsible for a collection or an institution, for example. Meanwhile, care, in the medical sense, was perhaps first described by Celsus: In hoc casu medici cura esse debet, ut morbum mutet (In this case, medical care is indicated to change the course of the disease) [1]. Today, when we think of a cure, we often speak of it as an isolated event within a given treatment. A cure for the flu. A cure for cancer. A cure for the novel coronavirus. A finish line that ends a journey. However, it is important to think of healing as a process that depends on multiple factors.

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Videos

Most real estate brochures proudly showcase a specific feature: the gourmet balcony. Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps these spaces, typically equipped with a barbecue grill, say more about real estate speculation than about the actual barbecue culture in Brazil?

Have you ever thought about walking? This is the question that GUIAPÉ SP — a guide presented here through an essay — asks its readers. From the cover on, it proposes walking through the city of São Paulo, charting a route that strategically passes through places where arriving on foot is precisely the point, revealing overlooked details, people, and urban life. This guide was not made for sightseeing, but rather to take its readers on a journey. Within its pages, the route and the sidewalks are not merely paths leading to destinations; they are part of the journey itself.

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A watercolor-illustrated tourist map, a mobile application available for Android and iOS, and two books gathering stories from the neighborhoods of Rio da Luz, in Jaraguá do Sul, and Testo Alto, in Pomerode—both in Santa Catarina—comprise the Projeto Lumiar. The initiative will launch these products online at 7:00 PM this Thursday, the 8th. The result of two years of research with local communities, the launch event is supported by the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (Iphan).

Living, working, and experiencing cities with vibrant streets, downtowns, and parks, adequately sized sidewalks, efficient public transit, and low congestion levels are shared aspirations worldwide. Achieving these conditions is no easy task, and cities that offer them certainly did not do so through car-oriented planning.

With populations daily subjected to poor examples of how a city should function, certain paradigms, phenomena, and policies continue to hinder the planning and operation of “cities for people.”

To talk about architecture and social media is to immediately think of Instagram. Launched in 2010, the app was characterized from the very beginning by combining photo sharing with typical social network features. Its success was extraordinary; within hours of its launch, it was already the most downloaded free photography app. Within two months, the number of registered users surpassed the one-million mark.

Sesc São Carlos, in upstate São Paulo, has launched a short video series on how permaculture works in practice. Produced by Associação Veracidade, the entire series will be available online for free.

Over six episodes, various social technologies will be presented, such as composting toilets, composting, solar ovens, and rainwater harvesting, among others. Viewers can explore the various ecological possibilities that can be integrated into a sustainable home—even in urban spaces. 

Paul Romer, a Nobel laureate in economics, believes that a key factor in the success of urban agglomerations is a clear definition of public and private space before the construction of a neighborhood or city begins.

The author illustrates the success of this strategy with a classic case: the New York street grid. Long before Manhattan Island was physically developed with streets or buildings, the Commissioners' Plan was established in 1807, outlining the gridiron of public and private spaces that would define the city's future.

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