Colombian artist and architect Santiago Pradilla captured my interest through his many passionate pursuits—he has dedicated as much of his life to traveling to and working within small, rural communities and as he has to producing architecture that tells the rich history of Colombian cities.

We discussed the relationship between academia, auto-construction, and rural living as well as the exploration of other artistic disciplines. We even breached the topic of the importance of heritage and projections about the direction of Colombian architecture.

+ 19

Guallart Architects has won the international competition for the design of a mixed-use community in Xiong'an, China, defining an urban model that merges the traditional European urban blocks, the Chinese modern towers, and the productive farming landscape.

ArchDaily has created a list of best articles, news and projects that address everything you need to know about concrete.

Rodolfo Lagos shared a series of photographs capturing the Brutalist architecture of Barcelona, illustrating how the movement has evolved in this iconic city.

Luca Tranchino is a production designer well known for his participation as an art director in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, the Aviator, Hugo Cabret, and Disney’s Prince of Persia, among many other productions. His work is designed to take us to magical and historical worlds. We recently interviewed Tranchino to look behind the scenes and uncover connections between film and architecture.

Manuel Lima is a designer, researcher and author well known for his work on visualizing and mapping complex networks. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he was named one of the "50 Most Creative and Influential Minds" by Creativity magazine, and is both the founder of VisualComplexity.com and a Senior UX Manager at Google.

We talked with Lima to find out his thoughts on the connection between data visualization and architecture. The following conversation explores his inspirations and process, as well as his views on how data visualization can help improve the quality of our cities.

Many times I have not been able to decipher whether the video or the image I was looking at was real. In the same way, I had to convince friends or relatives —namely, people unfamiliar to the idea of the architectural render— several times that a building featured in a storefront advertisement or in a printed magazine was not real. There is no longer a gap —or limits— between hyper-realistic, computer generated visualization and reality itself. Are we reaching the limits of visualization of our spaces? Do our architectural visualizations meet our architectural expectations?

Production designer Annie Beauchamp contacted me shortly after reading an article about Black Mirror series and what it can teach us about the future of architecture —something exciting for me since she was in charge of the visual look in Striking Vipers, the first episode of the dystopian series' fifth season. Beauchamp who has extensive experience working on major productions such as Sleeping Beauty, The Yellow Birds, Adoration, Top of the Lake China Girl, LEGO's Ninjago Movie, also served as an art director in nothing less than Moulin Rouge.

We've talked with Beauchamp to get to know her thoughts on the connection between films and architecture. The following conversation explores her beginnings and inspirations, her work process, as well as her views on the era of computer visualizations. In addition, we concluded the conversation with a couple of recommendations for a new generation interested in production design.

In the 1920s, work was completed on the Cité Frugès housing complex in Pessac, France. The project, meant to house Pessac's industrial workers, would be one of seventeen Le Corbusier works on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites.

How does architecture contribute to the current climate crisis? 

We invited our readers to weigh in on this issue and were overwhelmed by the number of responses that we got. After reading through and compiling the replies from industry professionals, architectural students, and architecture aficionados, we were struck by a common theme: there are few resources when it comes to researching how materials and products used in construction are sourced and produced. 

Floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, war, economic and social conflicts, pandemics. The number of refugees in the world is setting records year after year. Immediate and temporary solutions, produced in batches in response to crises, mark the difference between doing what is possible and doing what should be done, always doing a lot with what's at hand. But how temporary is emergency architecture? Is it more permanent than we think?

We want to offer our readers the possibility to openly express their opinions and experience on the matter. If we were aware of the difficulty of coping with major losses, that result in the temporary becoming "permanent", would it change the way we design emergency architecture? Would we demand a higher quality emergency architecture? Would we propose other types of solutions?

We invite our readers to fill out the following form and share their ideas on this topic -- the opinions will be collected and processed by our team to form a future article.

ArchDaily has created a list of best articles, news and projects that address everything you need to know about bamboo.

ArchDaily has created a list of best articles that address all the tips and recommendations you need to know about materials, construction, design, education, work (and life).

Postcards from Quarantine is a series of illustrations by Alvaro Palma y Alvaro Bernis inspired by touristic postcards that analyze the purpose of travelling and the desire to share the experience--a topic that has been brought to the forefront in times of quarantine during the COVID-19 outbreak.

ArchDaily has created a list of best articles, news and projects that address everything you need to know about glass.

+ 31

I met with Juan Alberto Andrade and Cuqui Rodríguez from the JAG Studio in Ecuador during their conference for the sixth edition of EARQ (PUCE-SI). The young couple dedicate themselves to documenting and writing about Ecuadorian architecture. By covering the now famous works of Al Borde, Daniel Moreno Flores, Natura Futura, Rama Estudio, among others, the couple have become the unofficial emissaries of their country.

We sat down with the couple for World Photography Day where they shared, not only their start in and work in photography, but the role of photography in contemporary architecture.