Tag: beatriz-colomina | ArchDaily

Architectural Authorship in the Age of the Collective Practices

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 07:30:00 +0000

This article is part of our new Opinion section, a format for argument-driven essays on critical questions shaping our field.

The Project as Argument: What is Architectural Thinking?

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture is shaped not only by buildings, but by the ideas that make them possible. Before the constraints of capital, regulation, and procurement, there is a moment when architecture is allowed to think aloud. The first confrontation with this fertile moment usually takes place in academia, in the thesis. It is not merely a requirement for graduation, but a space of speculative freedom where architecture formulates hypotheses, builds arguments, and tests positions.

The Architect as Writer: Expanding the Discipline Beyond Buildings

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture has always been more than bricks and mortar. It is equally constructed through words, ideas, and narratives. From ancient treatises to radical manifestos, from technical manuals to poetic essays, the written word has served as a spatial, pedagogical, and political tool within the field. Writing shapes how architecture is conceptualized, communicated, and critiqued — often long before, or even in the absence of, physical construction.

24th International Exhibition of Triennale Milano Announces Bee Award Winners

Reyyan Dogan — Thu, 15 May 2025 06:30:00 +0000

The 24th International Exhibition of Triennale Milano opened to the public on May 13, 2025, at the historic Palazzo dell'Arte. Running until November 9, this edition explores the theme of "Inequalities", continuing Triennale Milano's tradition of addressing urgent global issues through the lenses of art, architecture, and design. The exhibition is formed by two main sections: one that presents a curated selection of exhibitions and installations by individual artists and teams, and another that features international participations, including national pavilions and their contributions. At the opening ceremony on May 12th, the Bee Awards were presented to recognize selected contributions across the exhibition. From both the exhibitions and the international participations, the jury awarded one winner and one honorable mention each.

Discover the Full List of Special Projects and Participants of the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

Maria-Cristina Florian — Thu, 01 May 2025 04:00:00 +0000

The 19th International Architecture Exhibition, organised by La Biennale di Venezia under Carlo Ratti's curatorship and the theme "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective," is set to transform Venice into a "Living Laboratory" of experimentation and collaboration. This year's special projects extend beyond the exhibition grounds, integrating into various city locations and Forte Marghera in Mestre, providing an alternative perspective that expands the reach of architectural discourse.

In Pursuit of Health: How Medical Concerns Shaped Modernist Architecture

Diogo Borges Ferreira — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 07:30:00 +0000

The intersection of architecture and medicine profoundly shaped modernist design, where transparency, light, and air became essential tools in the pursuit of health. Emerging from the tuberculosis crisis of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the sanatorium evolved beyond a medical facility into a testing ground for architectural innovation. The necessity of fresh air, sunlight, and sterility transformed these spaces into prototypes for modernist principles, influencing spatial organization, material choices, and design philosophies that extended far beyond healthcare.

Beyond the Lone Architect: Beatriz Colomina on Gender, Media, and Collaboration

Romullo Baratto — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 01:00:00 +0000

Architecture has long been framed as the work of singular visionaries, yet Beatriz Colomina, a leading theorist, historian, and curator, challenges this notion, arguing that architecture is inherently a collaborative endeavor. She critically examines how the myth of the lone genius—almost always depicted as male—has erased the contributions of countless women and entire teams involved in the design process. For Colomina, rethinking architecture means recognizing the complexities of collective work and dismantling the historical biases that have shaped the discipline's narratives.

Pioneers of Architecture Criticism: 5 Women Who Are Shaping the Built Environment Through Words

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 27 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Architecture criticism and journalism are often expected to announce "the good, the bad, and the ugly" in architecture and the built environment. Its purposes go however further than that. As Michael Sorkin put it, "seeing beyond the glittering novelty of form, it is criticism's role to assess and promote the positive effects architecture can bring to society and the wider world". In other words, by telling us what they are seeing, critics are also showing us where to look in order to identify and address the issues plaguing our built environment.

Graham Foundation Announces 56 Grants for Individuals Expanding Architecture Ideas Through Interdisciplinary Work

Christele Harrouk — Thu, 30 May 2024 05:00:00 +0000

The Graham Foundation has announced 56 new grants to individuals, selected from nearly 600 submissions. Centered on publications, research, exhibitions, films, site-specific installations, and digital initiatives, the funded projects "expand contemporary architecture ideas through innovative rigorous interdisciplinary work on the design and the built environment." The projects are led by 84 individuals, including established and emerging architects, artists, curators, designers, filmmakers, historians, and writers.

The 126 Best Architecture Books

ArchDaily Team — Sat, 30 Dec 2023 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture has deep wells of research, thought, and theory that are unseen on the surface of a structure. For practitioners, citizens interested, and students alike, books on architecture offer invaluable context to the profession, be it practical, inspirational, academic, or otherwise. So, for those of you looking to expand your bookshelf (or confirm your own tastes), ArchDaily has gathered a broad list of architectural books that we consider of interest to those in the field.

Expanding Architectural Horizons: LGBTQIA+ Perspectives in Space and Design Presented in 20 Books

Victor Delaqua — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 05:00:00 +0000

As we explore social practices that challenge the dominant model in architecture, we have come to recognize the significance of addressing issues related to identity, gender, race, and sexual orientation within the realm of spatial design. By considering these dimensions, we aim to highlight how the built environment can foster new ways of envisioning society and shaping our relationship with the world around us. To provide valuable insights, we have curated a bibliography that showcases the perspectives and experiences of individuals who defy the norms dictated by a universalizing approach. This collection of 20 books offers diverse narratives that invite us to perceive, imagine, and experience space through an LGBTQIA+ lens.

Disabling Form

David Gissen — Mon, 22 Aug 2022 03:30:00 +0000

Discussions of architectural form demonstrate how disability is negatively imprinted into the field of architecture. In architectural theory and the history of architecture, “form” typically refers to the physical essence and shape of a work of architecture. In the modern idea of form, it is a quality that arises from the activity of design and in ways that can be transmitted into the perceptions of a beholder of architecture. Form provides a link between an architect’s physical creations and the aesthetic reception of these works. It occupies a central place within a general understanding of architecture: the idea of the architect as “form-giver,” among many other turns of phrase, conveys the sense of some fundamental activity and aesthetic role of form within architecture, what architects create, and how people perceive works of architecture.

Vitamin D Architecture

Xhulio Binjaku — Fri, 19 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

Plague clouds

Care Beyond Biopolitics

Meredith TenHoor — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 04:00:00 +0000

What would it mean to design buildings that exceed the economic accountings of liberal biopolitics, that instead offer an entirely different rationale for supporting health? In the years that Michel Foucault conceptualized the term biopolitics, he was part of a constellation of researchers and architects who developed care praxes that defined the value of life and its maintenance through a desire-based calculus. The welfare state institutions of architect Nicole Sonolet in particular—mental hospitals, public housing complexes, and new village typologies built mainly in postwar France and postcolonial Algeria from the 1950s to the 1980s—were designed not only to support but to center the needs of people often excluded from design processes. Sonolet’s mental health centers for residents of Paris’s 13th arrondissement, in particular, were key projects for discovering a design practice tied to the provision of care for its own sake.

Sick Architecture: CIVA Exhibition Explores the Relation between Architecture and Disease

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 05:30:00 +0000

“Sick Architecture” opened on May 5^th at CIVA in Brussels. Co-curated by Beatriz Colomina, the exhibition investigates the intrinsic relation between architecture and sickness. The architectural discourse always weaves itself through theories of body and brain, constructing the architect as a kind of doctor and the client as the patient. Architecture has been portrayed as a form of prevention and cure for thousands of years. Yet architecture is also often the cause of illness, from the institution of hospitals to toxic building materials and sick building syndrome. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted this topic.

Anupama Kundoo Receives The 2021 RIBA Charles Jencks Award

Andreea Cutieru — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:30:00 +0000

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Jencks Foundation announced renowned Indian architect Anupama Kundoo as the winner of this year's RIBA Charles Jencks Award. The accolade given in recognition of significant contributions to the theory and practice of architecture acknowledges Kundoo's holistic practice that marries theoretical investigations, material research and sustainable building methods.

10 ArchDaily Interviews Reflecting on the Future of Architecture

Christele Harrouk — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 05:30:00 +0000

In order to inspire our audience, generate critical debates, and develop ideas, ArchDaily has been continuously questioning architects about the future of architecture. To define emerging trends that will shape the upcoming cities, examining “What will be the future of architecture?” became an essential inquiry. More relevant during these ever-changing moments, discover 10 interviews from ArchDaily’s archived YouTube playlists that will highlight diverse visions from 10 different pioneers of the architecture field.

Beatriz Colomina Receives Ada Louise Huxtable Prize

Eric Baldwin — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 05:00:00 +0000

Architecture theorist, historian, and curator Beatriz Colomina has been awarded the 2020 Ada Louise Huxtable Prize for Contribution to Architecture from the W Awards. As the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture and co-director of the Program in Media and Modernity at Princeton, Colomina is an internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist who has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology, sexuality and media.