From May 7 to June 25, the National Fund for the Arts (FNA) is opening the call for entries for its 2019 Architecture Award, aimed at young architects who provide creative and effective design solutions for cultural spaces.

The new and growing demands for change driven by urban population growth mean that, when designing, we face a highly heterogeneous and constantly transforming fabric.
Increased urban density directly impacts the open space available for new, standalone construction, leading to a juxtaposition of buildings where the simultaneity and coexistence of individual pursuits result in a varied fabric.

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Oficina Nómada de Arquitectura (ONA) is an Argentine studio established in 2017 in the province of Mendoza. Specializing in architectural design, project management, coordination, and business management, ONA operates through a collaborative cloud-based virtual work platform. This digital, nomadic framework enables the interaction of various disciplines and trades, allowing team members to carry out their work from anywhere in the world. Additionally, seeking to expand their design reach, the studio operates two parallel initiatives, ARCINECTURA and ONALAB, where they experiment with the intersections between architecture and cinema, and develop new representation and visualization techniques.

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The results of the ideas competition to rehabilitate the Raixa estate in Mallorca, Spain, have been announced. Organized by the Department of Sustainability and Environment of the Consell de Mallorca with the collaboration of the Official Association of Architects of the Balearic Islands, the call invited participants to design architectural proposals to rehabilitate the existing building complex (a traditional estate of Moorish origin and high heritage value located at the foot of the Sierra de Tramontana) and transform it into an agroforestry training school (Margers) and a mountain shelter that highlights the Dry Stone Route (which begins in Valldemossa, passes through Raixa, and reaches Bunyola, Orient, and Alaró).

Through IMPSOL (Metropolitan Institute for Land Development and Property Management), the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) has begun construction on a new series of social housing (VPO) units on Anselm Clavé Street in Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Barcelona, Spain). Project design and construction management are led by Guillermo López of MAIO Architects.

The ECOM Rosario (Metropolitan Coordination Agency) is a voluntary association of municipalities and communes, an institutional space for the planning, coordination, and promotion of public policies with regional impact, organized on the basis of a strategic partnership among 26 localities. It is essentially an organ for driving the formulation, development, and execution of projects at a metropolitan scale, established with the goal of supporting balanced and integrated territorial development in the Metropolitan Area of Rosario (AMR), Argentina.

Observing the reality of our built environment allows us to recognize that certain identities are not represented by existing models and scales. Unsurprisingly, these voices have been conspicuously absent from the planning and construction processes of cities and their architecture. Their desires, ways of being, and modes of inhabiting the world have been excluded and rendered invisible. This prompts us to rethink: Which voices are legitimized in urban debates, and for whom is the city designed?

FRAM arquitectos is an Argentine architecture firm founded in 2011 in the city of Buenos Aires. With a body of work focused on small- and medium-scale single-family homes designed and built in both Buenos Aires and the province of Río Negro, they have explored the complexities of domestic living, engaged in material research of various kinds, and tackled challenging commissions with minimal dimensions and tight budgets. Alongside this, they have actively participated in consecutive provincial and national competitions, seeking to expand their design scope and deepen their study of larger-scale programs.

Alarcia Ferrer is an Argentine architecture firm based in Córdoba, founded in 2009. Focused on medium-scale private residential projects in suburban and rural settings, they have worked for over a decade in close dialogue with the province's landscape, constantly reflecting on the tensions and interactions between nature and artifice. Each project can be read as the result of a material and spatial exercise that serves as a prompt to rethink deeper issues such as permanence, authenticity, and simplicity.

The winners of the "Sustainable Urban Housing" National Ideas and Master Plan Competition have been announced. Promoted by the Municipality of Mendoza (Argentina) and organized by the provincial Association of Architects (CAMZA), the call invited professionals from across the country to reflect on **ways of inhabiting the contemporary city** through the development of ideas for a Master Plan and a preliminary architectural design for housing units. The sites considered in the competition—an urban sector of more than 13,000 square meters—are remnants of railroad lands that, over time, have transformed into urban voids, remaining as vacant areas within the consolidated fabric of the city.

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.

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The La Carcova Educational Park project is defined as an ongoing, long-term collaborative effort, initiated by the creation of a university network united by a common goal in a specific territory with many unmet basic needs.

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CCPM is an architecture studio founded in 2017 in Buenos Aires. With a body of work initially focused on small- and medium-scale projects—particularly renovations and additions to existing PHs—they have developed their own reflections on domestic living and urban densification, exploring various technological and material inquiries. In parallel, they have also undertaken socio-territorial research centered on water and technology, conceiving urbanity from a hybrid perspective that blurs the boundary between nature and the city.

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Built in collaboration with the architecture firm Colette Studio, the showroom for Verdi, a textile studio from Colombia, Bogotá, invites visitors to immerse themselves in a phenomenological experience that bridges textile tradition and contemporary industry. The exhibition space is not only designed with the studio's moving family and cultural legacy in mind, but also reflects the company's belief that exceptional, sustainable craftsmanship is one of today's ultimate luxuries.

Modernism played an undeniable role in the renewal of architectural ideals, contributing a new attitude toward understanding new ways of living, construction techniques, and aesthetics, marking profound changes in the general perception of the world. In Argentina, while it is complex to define modern architectural production periodically, it is possible to mention some architects who began, starting in the 1920s, to engage with these ideas. The intellectual contributions and architectural creations of Alejandro Virasoro, Alberto Prebisch, Ernesto Vautier, Fermín Beretervide, Wladimiro Acosta, Alejo Martinez, Antonio and Carlos Vilar, Juan Kurchan, Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, Antonio Bonet, Abel López Chas, Eduardo Catalano, Eduardo Sacriste, and Amancio Williams, among others, often included original approaches associated with new modes of thought, manifesting an architecture resulting from the analysis of the local and regional conditions of their cities.

Operating in urban environments often requires us to make decisions regarding pre-existing structures. The increase in city density has directly impacted the availability of space for developing new and independent constructions, sparking debates about what stance to take toward built heritage that has become obsolete—either due to deterioration or because it no longer meets the functional needs of the contemporary population. In cases where buildings have seriously deteriorated or new projects differ greatly from the spatial possibilities an old building can offer, preserving only the façade—as an exterior envelope, almost like a superficial element—can be seen as a partial solution that allows for the preservation, in part, of the urban character of a structure if it holds some public or cultural value. The controversy arises, certainly, from the lack of relationship or connection between the transformed interior and the preserved exterior.

Many buildings often fall into disuse due to our cities' constant economic, social, and technological changes. The programmatic inconsistency of current times demands great versatility and adaptability from our infrastructures, increasingly leading projects to become uninhabited, and left to abandonment and decay.

Next, we present a series of 20 Latin American projects in which old warehouses, homes, prisons, mills, and markets were recovered and transformed into Cultural Centers, Museums, and Galleries.

At first glance, building a pool right beside another body of water seems a little redundant. After all, why would someone choose to swim in a pool when they have a river or ocean to enjoy? However, for people with limited mobility and younger more inexperienced swimmers, natural bodies of water can prove both daunting and dangerous. Pools not only provide a controlled, secure space for them to enjoy aquatic activities, they also provide a connection with the surrounding landscape.