As cities continue to develop, we are seeing ever more well-planned, thoroughly executed, and tightly regulated approaches to shaping urban centres and their surrounding spaces—for better and for worse. As codes, restrictions, and guidelines improve and tighten, urban environments become safer, more balanced, and less prone to surprise. Yet the flip side is that highly managed districts can drift toward over-order and sanitisation, shedding the messy, accretive character that once produced alleyways, residual spaces, and unexpected sequences of movement—conditions often born from ongoing community improvisation in the grey zones of regulation.
In response, a growing number of initiatives around the world are proposing short-term urban installations that test alternate futures for the city. These works aim to provoke dialogue between what the city is and what it could offer its communities through thoughtful, context-specific spatial practices. One notable example is Concéntrico, the international festival in Logroño, Spain, conceived as an urban innovation laboratory. Marking its tenth edition, the festival is about to publish Concéntrico: Urban Innovation Laboratory, a book that surveys a decade of urban design and collective transformation shaped through successive editions of the festival. Its launch is paired with an international tour designed to share a decade of insights on collective transformation and design.
On the banks of the Amazonian river Piraí, the rings and canals of Santa Cruz de la Sierra not only enclose buildings of Bolivia's contemporary and modern architecture (curious examples of formalist rationalism, brutalism, and postmodernism are evident here) but also include a part of its diverse ancient and everyday architecture: from a historic center with endless arcades and colonial mansions to local markets and sheds such as the pahuichi cruceño.
On the occasion of the Latin American Architecture Students Meeting (ELEA) where we were invited to provide on-site coverage, we encountered ten of these places that can help you get a general overview of the city and its heterogeneous architecture.
How many times have you been faced with the challenge of designing a cultural center? While this may seem like quite a feat, many architects have had to design a program that blends a community center with culture.
Among the projects published on our site, we have found numerous examples that highlight different responses, from flexible configurations to sites that prioritize central gathering areas for citizens and activities. See our series of 50 community centers and their plans and sections below.
The spatial distribution of a restaurant or bar is essential to its success. Faced with this design challenge, several architects have experimented and proposed configurations that both enhance the use of space in different culinary experiences.
With this being said, take a look at 50 gastronomic establishments in plan and section to inspire your next design.
Sebastián Bravo leads Oficina Bravo, an architectural practice founded in Santiago de Chile that has been developing projects with a clear strategy: to contribute to the city by efficiently using architectural, economic, and constructive resources through renovation and remodeling. Among their projects are spaces that openly interact with the immediate context, including works of patrimonial, administrative, and residential value such as Casa Compañía and Zagreb Office, as well as a large series of gastronomic and commercial spaces such as Felix Café and Apolo Helados.
Due to its design process and its ability to transform and restore spaces, Oficina Bravo was selected by ArchDaily as one of the best new architectural practices of 2023. They make a point of talking with clients, understanding them, and involving them in the process. This, they say, is the only thing that ensures that the ideas behind the project survive with dignity.
We have selected seven coffee and ice cream shops in Santiago that were designed by Oficina Bravo, while also conducting an interview to get to know their inspirations, working methods, and future projects. The result is a true daily guide for you to enjoy their work, their design process, and a good cup of coffee.
Mar del Plata is an obligatory reference to the Modern Movement in Argentina. Not only for being the scene of some architectural classics such as the House on the River, the Parador Ariston, or the Terrace Palace but also for the Cementerio Parque designed by Horacio Bucho Baliero and Carmen Córdova in the 1960s.
Biennales, exhibitions, and architecture focused festivals provide a platform for opening debates, conducting research, and driving innovation, but they can also contribute to the incremental changes that shape the image and the character of a city. Through temporary installations and experiments, this type of events have the opportunity to open lines on inquiry into the quality of urban spaces, inviting visitors and residents to slow down, break away from their daily routine and interrogate their local environments. The effects might not be immediate, but by cumulating these impressions and moments of contemplation, architecture and design festivals can have a long-lasting impact on the cities that welcome them.
Staged stories on community and identity, ephemeral architecture showed that in 2022 it doesn't have to be permanent to be powerful. A direct and popped-up public installation can shift from preparation to action, reclaiming and defining what makes a community unique. Highlighting installations to acknowledge linguistic diversity in NYC, a giant table to celebrate culinary in Barcelona, and a large-scale net in Dubai to represent the local culture, among others, these initiatives seek to understand ways in which local and regional expressions can help cities to be more equal and diverse.
Globalization has connected the world boundaryless. While it has also made information more accessible, it has led to homogeneity and identity crisis at melding unique societies and cultural expressions. Cultural differences are undeniable as globalization grows. Hence, as architecture produces common living standards, it can also highlight singularities. Festivals, installations, and pavilions, 2022 was the year to express local memories to be recognized and celebrated, setting Community and identity as central topics in ephemeral architecture throughout the year.
In recent years hair salons and barbershops have begun to incorporate different activities - a programmatic hybridization almost necessary in today's service economy.
Several architects have been commissioned to propose alternatives to the standard beauty salon/barbershop to not only address an efficient configuration but stunning interior aesthetics.
Take a look at 10 barbershops and beauty salons with their plan and section.
The building on the corner of Suipacha and Paraguay Streets in the city of Buenos Aires, designed by the Spanish architect Antonio Bonet, established from its realization the basis to begin certain reflections on international modern architecture in the Argentinian context of the 1930s.
In the central Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, in a large lot between Austria Street, Agüero Street, and Del Libertador Avenue, stands the current building of the Mariano Moreno National Library, designed by architectsClorindo Testa, Francisco Bullrich, and Alicia Cazzaniga.
Built on the basis of the project that won first prize in a national competition in 1961, and completed in the early 1990s, it has become a landmark of modern Argentine architecture and an example of the variant of 20th century expressionism known as "brutalism".
Every year, the Concéntrico festival in Logroño, Spain, brings together architects and designers from all over the world with the hope of employing creativity to create a better city. During this year's event, a few overarching themes could be observed as critical points of interest for the participating architects and designers. Many urban installations hoped to help citizens rediscover places of interest in their city and beyond, while others challenged the often-fixed ideas of what a home can and should look and function. Many designers saw opportunities in the concept of unstructured play, as the exploratory activity can activate unused public spaces and engage people of all ages.
Since 2015, the Concéntrico festival has presented 91 installations and pavilions during its seven editions. The festival is primarily known for bringing together emerging architects and designers who are given the freedom to experiment with new fields of environmental design. The festival is organized by the Cultural Foundation of the Architects of La Rioja together with Javier Peña Ibáñez, promoter of the initiative, in collaboration with the Logroño City Council, the Government of La Rioja, Garnica and Bodegas LAN, and 30 other supporting institutions.
"Concéntrico wants to achieve a better city", says Javier Peña as he inaugurates the International Festival of Architecture and Design of Logroño in Spain. An event that since its first edition in 2015 has proposed rediscovering the spaces of interest in the historic center, reflecting on the urban environment through different proposals for installations and ephemeral exhibitions. This year, it celebrates its eighth meeting from the 1st to the 6th of September.
Eva Franch I. Gilabert is one of the three artistic directors of Model. Barcelona Architectures Festival, together with Beth Galí I. Camprubí and José Luis de Vicente. The first edition of a project that has taken the city of Barcelona as a place for experimentation and debate.
From the 5th to the 15th of May, they took the public space and transformed it into both a playground and platform for international voices, local architects, policymakers, politicians and citizens, to engage and discuss what the future of Barcelona and other cities could be.
On the 5th of May, the first edition of Model. Festival of Architecture of Barcelona was inaugurated. An event organised jointly by Barcelona City Council and the Architects' Association of Catalonia (COAC) that brings us closer to experimental architecture and helps us to rethink how we want to live together through new city models and new imaginaries.
Located in a particularly natural setting in the city of Mar del Plata, the "Casa sobre el Arroyo" (House on the River) - known as the "Casa del Puente" (The Bridge House) - is considered a paradigmatic component of 20th-century architecture and an obligatory reference of the Modern Movement in Argentina and Latin America.
The house designed by the Argentinean architect Amancio Williams, commissioned by his father, the musician Alberto Williams, is constructed evidence of the capacity to establish a link between the modern rationality of human beings with nature and its topography.
