To celebrate its tenth edition, Open House will open the doors of more than 160 spaces and buildings of great architectural, cultural, and heritage value in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires on October 1 and 2, 2022. As it does every year, this architecture and urbanism festival will offer the public the opportunity to rediscover the city's architecture and urban design, as well as its people, stories, and anecdotes, through free activities, visits, gatherings, and tours.
During the fourth day of the 18th Buenos Aires International Biennial of Architecture, the Biennial Awards were announced, highlighting architectural projects and works developed over the last four years both nationally and internationally. Awarded by the Biennial's Steering Committee, the categories spanned from single-family housing, multi-family housing, and interior design to landscape, urban space, and public and private facilities.
From July 7 to September 2, 2023, the exhibition “Nicolás Campodonico: Muros” is on display at the Bisman Ediciones Architecture Gallery and Residence, located on the Buenos Aires corner that houses the “Casa de Estudios para Artistas”, a 20th-century housing masterpiece in Argentina designed by Antonio Bonet, Abel López Chas, and Horacio Vera Barros.
Recently, Airbnb has begun to approach the architectural field, both by offering unique experiences in world-renowned buildings and by creating Archibnb, a platform that offers hosts the option to create architectural floor plans.
Through these initiatives, guests from various locations have had the privilege of spending a night in places like the Great Wall of China, the Louvre Museum, or the LEGO House.
But if your destination is Latin America, specifically Argentina, you can now stay in exemplary works by architects including Norman Foster, Clorindo Testa, Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, Juan Kurchan, Fermín Bereterbide, and Luciano Kruk. Explore below the list of works available for booking in the country.
Siting a building in a city is no easy task. The quest for isolation and privacy within a complex, heterogeneous, and constantly changing urban space creates a dual condition during the design process. How can an urban building offer privacy and openness at the same time? Consequently, there arises a need for various control mechanisms to mediate between exterior and interior spaces, filtering sound, screening views, managing intimacy, and ensuring anonymity without losing the connection to the city.
Ponds and reflecting pools are frequently used in architectural projects. These features significantly improve the thermal comfort parameters of buildings, acting as environmental regulators. Beyond their technical benefits, they serve as elements of aesthetic interest, creating spatial situations with shifting atmospheres influenced by the effects of light hitting the moving water surface.
Brick is, without a doubt, the building material most widely validated by the collective imagination; from children's fables to the most experimental narratives, many have drawn inspiration from the diverse meanings shaped by its distinctive character.
So begins "Arquitecturas Argentinas con Ladrillo" (Argentine Brick Architecture), a book edited by Bisman Ediciones and co-published by the Universidad de Morón and Grupo UNICER, with the participation of the Universidad Católica de Córdoba. Conceived as a compendium, it features a meticulous selection of recently built projects in Argentina sharing a clear common denominator: the study and use of brick as a fundamental building material to create architecture.
Through various graphic resources such as floor plans, photographs, and unprecedented construction details, the book functions as a true catalog of typologies, exploring the diversity and versatility of masonry applications in the region. The volume compiles history, technique, and contemporary reference projects, demonstrating how brick has inevitably established itself as a characteristic and defining material of Argentine and Latin American architecture.
Campo Baeza asserted that “Light is the most beautiful, richest, and most luxurious material used by architects. The only problem is that it is given to us for free, is within everyone's reach, and is not valued enough” [1]. Today, many architects agree on the importance of lighting when creating architectural spaces, reflecting on its quality, quantity, nuance, and directionality. Despite this, when determining the characteristics of their building enclosures, many choose to work with materials that ensure a high degree of privacy, either by incorporating opaque elements or envelopes that screen views and diffuse contact with public outdoor spaces.
In certain cases where solar conditions permit, modern technological developments allow for the incorporation of translucent enclosure systems that ensure the entry of abundant, controlled natural light throughout the day without sacrificing privacy. These self-supporting treated glass panel systems offer the possibility of generating completely glazed, continuous, homogeneous, unobstructed, and translucent surfaces while simultaneously screening views into the spaces. Below, we present 6 projects located in Argentina that exemplify different ways of working with these systems.
Building sandcastles on the beach is an ancient practice that allows us to dive deep into our imagination, ideas, and dreams. For many, it was likely our first approach to construction. Water and sand merge, transforming into space—something greater than the sum of its parts. While fortresses, bridges, and moats are a thing of the past for some, another typology has emerged to take their place: the house.
Below, we present a selection of Argentine houses built on sand dunes, designed by architects who turned castles into houses, sand into concrete, and dreams into reality.
Argentine architect Daniel Silberfaden, founder of Estudio Silberfaden, passed away on October 29 at the age of 66, according to local media reports.
How do nature and landscape dialogue within spaces designed for children? How are architecture and urban design capable of shaping natural atmospheres that integrate practices of play, participation, and exploration? From participatory projects that involve children in the design process to built environments that incorporate furniture adapted to their needs, the conception of spaces for childhood entails the creation of places for encounter, learning, and coexistence. At times, these spaces are able to strengthen the relationships between interiors and exteriors, connecting their users with nature and the surrounding environment. Depending on their cultures, customs, and histories of attachment to place, several contemporary projects deploy tools and strategies that integrate architecture, nature, and pedagogy to form broad experiences of learning, play, and discovery.
