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.

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This October 2020, the Memory and Tolerance Museum by Arditti + RDT Architects in the heart of Mexico City marks the tenth anniversary of its founding—a space designed to raise awareness and showcase the terrible consequences of hatred and indifference. Over these ten years, the museum has welcomed 5,000,000 visitors, hosted more than 4,000 free workshops and courses benefiting 470,000 people, generated 1,500,000 scholarships for vulnerable students, and spearheaded countless initiatives that have successfully fostered a culture of peace and tolerance. It has become a national and international benchmark in matters of historical memory and Human Rights—a voice that gives visibility to diverse causes, a bridge for conflict resolution, and an ally to various sectors, including schools, civil associations, institutions, and socially responsible corporations. Above all, it serves the individuals who wish to transform their environment through knowledge, introspection, reflection, and social action.

The student collective Post_Arq from the Leopoldo Rother Architecture Museum at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia has shared this interview with Leonardo Álvarez Yepes. This is part of a series featuring seven Colombian architects, including leading figures such as Sebastían Serna, Santiago Pradilla, Lorenzo Castro, and Fernando de la Carrera, among others, whose interviews will be released on their channel.

Architectural firms have been deeply questioning the future projections reshaped by lockdown and the new dynamics of how the city and territory are experienced. On this occasion, ruta4 taller from Pereira, Colombia, presents their perspective on how the profession is practiced in the country and their shift toward a more participatory practice for the benefit of local communities. The Pereira-based architecture studio has built exemplary collaborative projects, such as the taller de Urbanautas and the Casa Ensamble Chacarrá, demonstrating through experience that empathetic architecture is a highly viable approach.

Seeking to design an immersive indoor environmental experience, design studio Aqua Creations created Manta Ray lighting. In this light installation, responsive RGB LED technology mixes red, green, and blue to produce over 16 million different hues. Programmed with a customizable color spectrum, the system is dimmable from 0.1% to 100% brightness and can even load images and videos directly onto its internal memory. This allows users to infuse expressive spaces with dynamic color and movement, or conversely, cultivate a warm, focused atmosphere for private, intimate settings.

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How does BIM incorporate materials like concrete?

BIM, the acronym for Building Information Modeling, utilizes information-rich 3D models to create the built environment and extract the data necessary for the documentation and construction of architectural projects. This is achieved by modeling various components—such as doors, windows, columns, and walls—which together make up an architectural project. Materials, however, are not 3D components in BIM; instead, they are part of the composition of these components. In this article, we will look at how materials behave in BIM, using the products offered by Melón Hormigones as an example.

Any 3D component created in Revit can have a Material parameter. Whether configured in the project or within the specific family, this material contains a series of default, customizable, and modifiable settings to provide technical and graphic data, as well as physical properties, to the 3D component.

We invite you to participate in the 2020 Building of the Year award. In its twelfth edition, we ask you to recognize the projects making the greatest impact on the built environment. By nominating and voting, you are part of an independent and unbiased network that has consistently helped us celebrate architecture of all scales, purposes, and conditions, from countries large and small. There are only a few days left to nominate your favorite project, filtering 1,000 projects down to just 15.

Remember, registered users can nominate their favorite project once a day. Nominations close on Monday, March 23, 2020, at 11:59 PM (GMT-3). Thank you once again for helping us continue to democratize architecture.

In the following article, José Javier Alayón González, PhD, Architect, and full-time assistant professor in the Department of Architecture at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, shares his perspective on exhibition venues and how they adapt to changing circumstances.

With their proposal “1878-1880”, Spanish architecture firm GVG, a multidisciplinary team led by Daniel Galar Irurre, Josecho Vélaz Ballesteros, and Javier Gil Ayesa, has won the design competition for the renovation of the historic Madrid-Delicias Station, home of the Madrid Railway Museum since 1983.

The Santiago Metropolitan Park is currently conducting a survey on user mobility. If you visited Parquemet before the quarantine, you can help by responding here: https://www.parquemet.cl/ayudanos-a-mejorar-parquemet/.

Cities are the synthesis of thousands of years of agreements—as fragile as we are, yet wonderfully adaptable to change. As a result, they remain the ultimate ecosystem for our lives to unfold. Thanks to density, they allow us to maximize the benefits of the infrastructure, services, and public spaces we have created to sustain the well-being to which we aspire.

At first glance, all of this is in crisis today as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, looking back at our history reveals far more lethal epidemics that ultimately brought substantial improvements to the way we live.  

Lightweight construction systems primarily consist of a base structure of galvanized steel profiles, which can be clad with gypsum or cement panels. Depending on their specific characteristics, each panel adds enhanced moisture and fire resistance to the system, as well as varying levels of thermal and acoustic insulation. Why are they effective when applied to facades? What possibilities do they offer based on their composition? Let's review the benefits of three types of exterior panels developed by Panel Rey.

The city as we know it is collapsing, incapable of offering new ways of living. The virus is forcing us to confront the exhaustion of the buildings that make up the city and the systems underpinning how the entire urban landscape was conceived. Basic activities separated by miles along untraversable streets; halls and galleries acting as closed, artificially climate-controlled shells that can no longer accommodate crowds (and are therefore no longer visitable); subhuman capsules stacked atop one another in towers devoid of open spaces, common areas, or nature, with virtually no contact with the outside world—these will only become more dysfunctional as time goes on.

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During October of this year, the Photography and Architectural Image Workshop took place, aiming to introduce students from the University Center of Art, Architecture, and Design (CUAAD) of the University of Guadalajara to photography. This approach ranged from the retrospective analysis of the image and shooting with digital or analog tools to an introduction to the basics of post-production. Through the perspectives of various guest speakers and practical exercises, students had the opportunity to develop the sensitivity to enter the world of photography. The workshop instructors were César Béjar, Misael Covarrubias, Rafael Palacios, Carlos Irigoyen, AVEH Estudio, Ernesto Gutiérrez, Joel Alavez, and Daniel Mendoza. Read on to see the results.

Lockdown and preventive isolation have exposed the obsolescence of models that fail to meet contemporary needs, whether in housing, public space, or rural areas. The Colombian Society of Architects took action, bringing together its regional representatives and professionals from other related fields to rethink social behavior within territories, cities, and housing. 

As part of an initiative by ArchDaily and the Abierto Mexicano de Diseño, a call for entries was launched this year, inviting architects, urban planners, landscape designers, industrial designers, graphic designers, floral designers, and any creative discipline that understands public space as a place for fostering collaborative encounters in cities. Published in September, the call sought unpublished or previously published projects in the form of written essays, research papers, visual essays, lectures, or other digital communication formats that offered a personal or collective reflection aligned with the theme 'Public Space.'

Videos

As part of the 2020 program, and inspired by MUTEK Montreal’s Edition 21—which aligned two network cities in a simultaneous edition and used virtual convergence to expand activities and connect global digital art communities—comes the joint MUTEK MX & MUTEK JP Edition 17+5, featuring a series of hybrid events.

In a year marked by physical distancing, social media took on an even greater dimension in the ways we connect and stay informed. Our Instagram has expanded its reach, bringing our audience the best of what we publish on our website: projects, articles, interviews, and news from the architectural world, inspiring new ideas and tools for a better future.

Choosing high-performance BIM software is key to developing efficient projects by automating tasks unrelated to core design, such as documentation, calculations, and other tedious processes. This reduces the time spent on these critical details, minimizing errors that lead to project delays or cost overruns.

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This article is part of a collaboration with the website coolhuntermx and was originally published under the title "Housing Production in Rural Mexico."

Between virtual panel discussions and tweets sparking debate on housing and its role during the pandemic, addressing this issue in Mexico is as complex as the country's history and as vast as its territory. The article What About the Right to Adequate Housing in Mexico? offered an overview of the laws governing Mexico City and urban conditions. But what about housing in rural areas?

Peripheria Films shares a video about the emigration of a young Spanish architect couple "who thought that their reward would come after university."

On Tuesday, December 1, 2020, during the inaugural session of the new National Board elected by members in the 2020 CA Elections, the new Executive Committee and officers of the College of Architects of Chile were selected for the 2020–2022 term.

During the presentation of the Obra del Año Awards held earlier this month at the Mirador Pablo Neruda, ArchDaily CEO David Basulto shared a series of data with the audience, providing a quantitative and qualitative overview of Chilean architecture in 2019:

“Based on the data we have collected over nearly 12 years, at ArchDaily we have managed to build a highly representative profile of how architecture is designed and built in Chile. I hope this information is useful for creating more and better cities, and for understanding how the digitization of architecture has influenced how we inhabit our cities.”

This interview is part of a collaboration with the digital magazine Hysteria.mx. It was originally published on January 24, 2020, under the title "Stories from the US-Mexico Border" as part of Issue No. 31, titled "Bodies and Territories," and was conducted by Tadeo Cervantes.

Alejandra Aragón is a visual artist, photographer, documentarian, and activist from Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua—a city on Mexico's northern border infamous for the cases of femicide recorded from the early 1990s to the present. From this vantage point, Aragón narrates various aspects of daily life for women in a territory shaped by violence, conflict, and complexity.

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In Latin America, the concept of emergency architecture refers to spaces that serve as temporary shelter in the face of adverse circumstances, such as earthquakes, floods, and migration. Various countries, including Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Panama, have faced events that required redefining emergency housing according to each nation's specific needs.