The Rijksmuseum, one of the largest museums in Europe dedicated to arts and history, made 250,000 works from its huge collection available for free online viewing or download.

During the golden age of sailing ships (roughly between 1584 and 1702), when Dutch ships dominated the trade routes of the world, the Netherlands became the first capitalist power in the west. The growing bourgeoisie class demanded a vast production of portraits and paintings, which enhanced trade, promoted the sciences and especially stimulated the arts. Few countries have such great quality artistic productions such as the Netherlands from that time.

Today, one of the most recognized and respected architects in the world turns 83: Álvaro Siza Vieira. Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1992, the Portuguese architect charmed the jury at the time, who explained their choice by saying: “his forms, shaped by light, appear deceptively simple, they are honest.”

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Description from The Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art: The first of a developing programme at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art of exhibitions talks and events dedicated to contemporary architecture, ‘Raw Material’ presents plans, sketches, correspondence and photographs that offer a fuller understanding of the process of architectural design, beyond the self-sufficiency of the realized project. This will be the first exhibition to draw upon the recent gift to the Fundação de Serralves of 40 projects from the archive of Álvaro Siza as part of a collaboration between Fundação de Serralves, the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal and Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon.

Álvaro Siza’s practice is distinguished by his use of drawing as a working instrument in the prefiguration of forms and spaces within the process that brings him successively closer to the desired result. But an archive is more than just a set of drawings. The architect’s correspondence with his clients, the photographic record of the places where the works are to be built, relations with regulatory authorities and the opinions of the multiple actors involved in the construction processes, the models that support the perception of the proposals, the minutes of meetings and reports of the tensions arising at the building sites are documents that record an infinite number of episodes that remain invisible in the finished work. Offering insight into their contingent processes, the exhibition also offers invaluable understanding of the processes associated with the inventory, classification, and conservation of Siza’s archive, which will serve as a focus for future research and discussion about the role of architecture in contemporary society.  

Jean Nouvel has unveiled the design of his latest project: a 22-story tower located near Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. The skyscraper, dubbed Rosewood Tower, is part of Cidade Matarazzo, a 27,000-square-meter site containing historic buildings that once made up the Filomena Matarazzo maternity hospital. A heritage-listed site, the Allard Group is restoring the buildings and creating a cultural center, of which Nouvel’s new tower will be a central component.

Set to contain a hotel as well as residential units, Nouvel’s tower is designed to be a vertical continuation of the local landscape. Thus, the nearly 100-meter-tall tower develops at different levels, forming terraces and large gardens with small and medium-sized trees.

A 50-meter stretch of Rio de Janeiro's Tim Maia bike path, which was built in preparation of the 2016 Olympic Games to connect neighborhoods Leblon and São Conrado, collapsed this morning. Adjacent to the Avenue Oscar Niemeyer, in the south of the city, the bike path was inaugurated on January 17 this year. According to the fire department, the deadly accident was caused by the surf of the sea.

According to passersby, the bike lane was hit by a strong wave that, in addition to collapsing the site, broke the windshield of a bus and dragged a woman on the boardwalk. The location is near the exit of the sewer pipe.

Establishing professional contacts in architecture – and well, in any field, really – has changed dramatically in the last decade, passing from the paper world to the virtual realm. However, small details can still make a big difference when it comes to captivating a potential new client or establishing a new partnership -- and these details aren’t unique to the virtual world.

Among these smaller, but powerful, details is the business card. Timeless and effective, the impact that a business card can have when meeting someone new cannot be overlooked. While simple, monochrome cards with muted prints are well liked among architects, exploring new forms, unusual materials and bold colors can result in a unique card that will leave a lasting impression on the person who receives it.

Below we’ve compiled some examples of cards that can serve as inspiration for architects, engineers, designers, landscapers and urbanists: 

Due to a fire in 1988, the Chiado district of Lisbon had many of its buildings damaged or partially destroyed by the flames, and an intense restoration and recovery project led by Álvaro Siza has been going on for over a decade.

Among the strategies employed by the Portuguese architect (and winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize) is the reorganization of routes and walkways, creating elevated walkways to facilitate access to the area and the flow of locals and visitors. According to the Municipal Council of Lisbon, Siza has recently completed the connection between one of the courtyards of the Carmo Convent (Patio B) to the Largo do Carmo square and the Carmo Terraces with a pedestrian path.

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Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX offers more than 800 free, online courses as well as certificates from top universities around the world, including Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley. The courses cover everything from literature to poetry, medicine, biology, urban planning, engineering, history and architecture.

Taught mostly in English, the courses have different weekly requirements, and generally require participants to be online at designated times of the day. There are also classes offered in other languages like Chinese, French, Spanish and Portuguese. They also offer certificates that can be purchased at the end of the course, costing between $50-$70.

A volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with 140,000 inhabitants has become a stage for artistic experimentation in the last four years through the Urban Art Festival “Walk & Talk”.

The open-air festival takes place in Ponta Delgada, capital of the Archipelago of the Azores in Portugal, but the events are spread out in other areas of the São Miguel Isle as well. 

While well-known street artist murals characterized the first editions of the festival, the most recent ones gathered other artistic expressions, like dance, cinema, design and architecture, developing a multidisciplinary cultural event, which has put the island under the contemporary art radar.

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Portugal has unveiled the theme of its contribution to the 2016 Venice Biennale: “Neighborhood – Where Alvaro Meets Aldo.” Curated by Nuno Grande, a Portugese architect, teacher, critic, and curator, and Roberto Cremascoli, an Italian architect and longtime collaborator of Álvaro Siza Vieira, the exhibition will focus on the works of both Álvaro Siza and Aldo Rossi.

The Portuguese exhibition is unique in that it will be installed on Venice’s Giudecca island, where Siza’s 1985 social housing project Campo di Marte is located. Campo di Marte is part of a larger plan on the island, which includes designs by other architects such as Aldo Rossi, and was never fully completed.

Part street furniture, part data visualization, Guto Requena’s “I am” installation in São Paulo invited passers-by to interact with the city and connect with one another. Observers were asked to sit on a bench and take a picture of themselves, while also selecting which of six emotions they were feeling at the time: love, joy, surprise, anger, fear or sadness.

Each emotion was associated with a color through which the photo was filtered before appearing on the main façade of the FIESP Building along Paulista Avenue. The images then faded into a graph to colorfully display the predominant emotions at the moment. 

In August 1975, Architectural Design magazine published a special edition about Women in Architecture. At the time, director Monica Pidgeon sent letters to 100 architects asking what women can contribute to architecture that men can’t (and vice-versa), as well as the advantages and disadvantages of being a woman in the profession.

Now, 40 years later, a new version of the study aims to repeat Pidgeon’s initiative through an online survey with similar questions.

Architect, illustrator and cofounder of the Miniatura project, Bruna Canepa has shared with us a stunning collection of her illustrations and collages, which offer a fresh gaze onto one of architecture’s most common tools: the drawing. Beyond depicting examples of unreal architecture, her works present architecture that replaces firmitas, utilitas and venustas for complexity, wonder and irony.

From extrusions and explosions of familiar typologies to surreal and sterile atmospheres of empty spaces, we suggest three subcategories to frame Bruna’s illustrations as shown below: Houses, Cubics, and Displacements. 

Architecture photographer Haruo Mikami has shared with us a series of black and white photographs of some of Oscar Niemeyer’s most important works in Brasília. From the Cathedral of Brasília to the Alvorada Palace and the National Congress, see some of the Brazilian architect’s most iconic works after the break.

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Drone Brasília has shared with us a brief video filmed by a drone that gives a bird’s eye view of a signature feature of Brasília -- the “tesourinhas,” the so-called cloverleaf interchange that the city’s highways form.

In just thirty seconds the video shows the scale of the space, marked by cars traveling through the wide avenues, which themselves are projected onto an expansive green plane.

For the recent inauguration of the Museu dos Coches in Lisbon, between September and October Sopro Colectivo hosted their exhibition "Fado Tropical," including 26 photos by Fernando Guerra and an interview with the building's architect, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, who today turns 87 years old.

Constructed on the banks of the Tagus River, the first building in Europe by the Brazilian Pritzker Prize winner was surrounded by controversy during its construction, and today surprise visitors from all over, housing the world's largest collection of carriages. In the interview given at his own office, Mendes da Rocha talks about the specificity of the area, his approach to the historical context and memory related to coaches, and his concise adaptations of the extensive program to the complexity of the surroundings.

The ruestungsschmie.de architectural collective has shared with us their latest video mapping project on the façade of the Karlsruhe Palace in Karlsruhe, Germany. Designed to celebrate the city’s 300-year anniversary, the projection illuminates all 300 meters of the building’s façade.

The Karlsruhe Palace is the architectural and urban center of the city, from which 32 streets stem out, structuring the urban design of Karlsruhe. This unique city design served as part of the inspiration behind the audiovisual work. The project was created in partnership with Sound Selektor, who composed the soundtrack using only noises recorded from inside the castle, including doors, switches, stairs and the sounds of specific exhibits.