Architecture can be understood through many prisms but is often seen solely as the response to material demands - housing, leisure, commerce, etc. But perhaps no space is more emotionally and symbolically loaded than that of sacred spaces. Designing spaces for worship (religious or otherwise) can be one of the most creative and liberating tasks of this profession. These spaces transcend the terrestrial plane of mere material to become part of a universe of subjectivity and faith.

We present below a series of illustrations of such spaces by André Chiote, featuring famed architectural works by designers such as Gottfried Bohm, Oscar Niemeyer, and Peter Zumthor. 

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The Fundació Joan Miró presents Lina Bo Bardi Drawing, the first exhibition to focus specifically on the role of drawing in the life and work of the Italian-born Brazilian architect.

The exhibition features a carefully selected collection of a hundred drawings from the Instituto Lina Bo e P. M. Bardi, bearing witness to the importance of drawing in all the stages of Bo Bardi’s multifaceted career. The project has been curated by another architect, Zeuler Rocha Lima - also an artist, researcher, and international expert on Bo Bardi - with support from the Fundació Banco Sabadell.

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In many parts of the world, more women have architectural degrees than men. However, this fact hasn’t translated past university into the working world as women continue to be underrepresented across nearly all levels of practice.

The conversation regarding women in architecture gained tremendous traction back in 2013 with the petition for Denise Scott Brown to be recognized as the 1991 Pritzker Prize winner, alongside her husband and the consequent rejection of that request by Pritzker. The Architectural Review and Architect's Journal have, since 2015, jointly presented awards to the exceptional female practitioners as part of their Women in Architecture Awards program. The swelling of these movements have helped to promote not only the role but also the recognition of women in architecture.

In 2017, ArchDaily Brazil reported that Smart City Laguna would become the first “smart city” in Brazil. With its inauguration scheduled for that same year, the venture opened with 1,800 units in its first phase, and in its final phase, 7,065 units divided between residential, commercial and technological uses.

Located in the Croatá district of São Gonçalo do Amarante, the first Brazilian smart city occupies 815 acres directly connected to the federal highway BR-22, which crosses the states of Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão, starting in Fortaleza towards Marabá, in Pará. Its location has economic reasons: the proximity to Pecém Harbor, in Fortaleza, the Pecém Steel Company (CSP) and the Transnordestina Railroad make Croatá a strategic hub that has been recently occupied by technological companies, becoming a “digital belt” a little over 50 kilometers from the state’s capital.

Concrete may be the material most associated with modern Brazilian architecture; high resistance to compression and, when armed, capable of assuming various forms. Its plasticity has made it a favorite material for some of Brazil's most expressive architects of the last century.

Today, it is still widely explored in the architectural production of Brazil, either for its structural robustness, ease of maintenance, or aesthetic value.

The first Brazilian project by Safdie Architects has broken ground in Sao Paolo's Morumbi neighborhood on November 6. Developed in partnership with Perkins+Will, The Albert Einstein Education and Research Center is part of the Albert Einstein hospital complex.

The new center, named Campus Cecilia and Abram Szajman, will be one of the most advanced institutions in Latin America for medical studies. It will feature innovations in learning methods and technologies, as well as flexible research laboratories capable of adapting to the advancement of hospital techniques.

It’s been a month since Brazil lost one of its oldest and most representative assets. A fire destroyed and erased more than 200 years of the Paço de São Cristóvão’s architectural history. The building served as a residence for the royal family, and turned a great part of its collection into dust, with many of the items being one-of-a-kind. The National Museum is seeking to rebuild in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Wood is one of the oldest building materials used in architecture. Versatile, it can be used in structural solutions, coatings, partitions, fittings and, very often, in furniture. Another quality of the material is its sustainability - if well managed during planting, cutting, and treatment processes, it can be considered renewable and low carbon, adding value to the completed building.

"Residencial Casa Atlântica" in Copacabana, Zaha Hadid's first project in South America, was canceled. O Globo reported the cause as "the delay of the city hall to release the work license and the consequent delay of the launch and inauguration of the project." The luxury residential condominium was designed in 2013 and should have been opened in time for the Olympics.

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The mastery of stone is one of the most impressive features of Portuguese architecture. From the precise cut in fittings to beautiful floor designs, Portuguese architecture carries in its womb an almost born talent to manipulate one of -- if not the oldest material used in the history of construction.

In celebration of this material, experimentadesign, a research project focused on design and architecture founded in Lisbon, developed Primeira Pedra, or First Stone. This multimedia platform explores the characteristics and qualities of Portuguese stone.

The unfinished Tripoli International Fair, designed by Oscar Niemeyer for the Lebanese capital, could become a UNESCO's World Heritage Site. Conceived in the 1960s at the request of the then President Fouad Chéhab, the fair remained a symbol of projected modernity for the country.

The entertainment industry frequently captures unusual architecture from theme parks that explore bygone eras to remote locales in the hills of Las Vegas that often go unseen.

A two-hour drive from Rio de Janeiro's renowned beaches you can find a 20th century French Normandy building in the state's sierra region: The Palácio Quitandinha.

Few residential projects in recent years have attracted as much attention as Ricardo Bofill's Muralla Roja. Completed in 1968, the Mediterranean design has benefited from trends of millennial culture, having served as a backdrop for several photographic essays and even music videos.

With worldwide notoriety, it isn't surprising that residents of the famous pink estate have sought to bar access from the already fortified wall. This, however, was not enough to prevent the Lebanese photographer and architect Anthony Saroufim from venturing through the labyrinthine of corridors and staircases of the Bofill building.

One of the most influential 20th-century architecture schools, the Bauhaus experienced its glory days in the city of Dessau between 1925 and 1932. Under the direction of Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the emblematic educational complex was a place for work and housing for some of the most renowned personalities of architecture, design, and art of the last century.

Although the school in Dessau operated for a limited time with few people having the opportunity to experience the prolific environment, it left a deep impact on the architectural production that followed. The buildings that are part of the complex - both in Dessau and Weimar - were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996 and are now open for visitation.

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Brazil's National Museum, one of Latin America's most important museums, was completely destroyed by a fire that started at 7:30 pm on Sunday evening. It housed over 20 million items related to the history of the Americas, many if not all of which were lost.

A report in the Rio Times indicates that the museum had operated normally on Sunday and closed its doors at 5:00 pm, two and a half hours before the blaze began. The cause of the fire remains undetermined.

The concept and title Walls of Air was conceived as a response to the theme of Freespace proposed by curators Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara in order to provoke questions about: 1. the different sorts of walls that construct, on multiple scales, the Brazilian territory; 2. the borders of architecture itself in relation to other disciplines.

Therefore, a reflection began on how much Brazilian architecture and its urban developments are, in fact, free. Without the ambition of reaching an answer, but hoping to open the conversation to a large and diverse public, we chose to shed light on processes that often go unnoticed due to their nature or scale. The immaterial barriers built between people or neighborhoods, and the processes of urbanization in Brazil on a continental scale are examples of questions we considered.

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Portuguese architectural photographer João Morgado shared with us a series of images from Álvaro Siza's latest project, the Capela do Monte. This chapel is located in Barão de São João, in the Algarve region of Portugal. Part of the Monte da Charneca complex, Capela do Monte was commissioned in 2016 by a Swiss-American couple residing there.

Inaugurated in March of this year, the sandy colored, 10.34 x 6.34-meter structure was built at the highest point of a hill and can only be accessed by foot. Its monolithic geometry suggests, from outside, a serenity from the inner space. The wooden furniture within the chapel were all designed by Siza and manufactured by Serafim Pereira Simões Successors of Porto.

Brazilian contemporary artist Ernesto Neto recently realized a colorful sculpture made of hand-knotted cotton strips in the atrium of Zurich's Central Station. Titled Gaia Mother Tree, the installation resembles a giant tree and extends from the station's roof to its floor.

Exhibited by the Fondation Beyeler, Neto's sculpture is an immersive work of art, a space that one can enter into and walk around or remain and meditate. The Gaia Mother Tree will be on display until July 29th. A series of activities for adults and children, including musical concerts, workshops and debates, is scheduled to take place under the net of cotton.