Archinect - News

MoMA exhibition on 20th-century Latin American design is a 'gem' says Michael Kimmelman

2024-04-05T13:31:00-04:00

The show is a gem. It focuses on domestic design from six countries (Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Venezuela), produced between 1940 and 1980. Latin America had entered a period of transformation, industrial expansion and creativity. Across the region, design was becoming institutionalized as a profession, opening up new avenues, especially for women.

Critic Michael Kimmelman has heaped praise on the 'Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980' MoMA exhibition in a new piece for The New York Times. As we reported in December of last year, the show looks at the growth of modernism through an industrial and entrepreneurial lens, using a selection of examples from well-known and revered architects and designers such as Joaquim Tenreiro, Lina Bo Bardi, and Oscar Niemeyer.

"The role that women and immigrants played in shaping professional design and developing a national design vocabulary in Latin America will be emphasized, including the work of designers such as Clara Porset in Mexico, Cornelis Zitman in Venezuela, and Susi Aczel in Argentina," MoMA said about their exhibition at the time.

Heatherwick Studio previews first South American project in Bogotá, Colombia

2024-03-21T16:45:00-04:00

Heatherwick Studio has made public details of a new project in Bogotá, Colombia, for a client in the higher education industry. The studio’s first South American design will be realized as a seven-story academic building and makerspace with a uniquely colorful facade composed of setbacks, free columns, planting, and small circular outdoor terraces.

The client is Bogotá’s Universidad Ean Design School, a 56-year-old private institution founded to provide "comprehensive training of people and stimulate their entrepreneurial aptitude so that its action contributes to the economic and social development of people."

Image: Heatherwick Studio/NOD

Traditional Werregue basket-making practices serve as the inspirations for the design, tipping off Heatherwick’s war on blandness and desire to elevate craft into a primary role in his building practice.

This homage to Colombia's Wounaan Indigenous community will serve as the new centerpiece of the campus, complementing the architecture of the su...

Studio Cadena hits all the right angles with Masa, a new restaurant in Colombia

2018-11-30T09:45:00-05:00

In Bogotá a new restaurant stands in a northern residential neighborhood in Colombia. Studio Cadena, known for their playful and stylistic approach, creates a 7,500 square foot restaurant built with interconnected volumes each with a particular function. Built at residential scale, the restaurant is the second project the studio has done for Masa. Built on the same site as a former house that had gone through several rebuilds, Masa's Bogotá restaurant is the studio's largest built space.

Masa Restaurant in Bogotá, Colombia Image © Naho Kubota

Image © Benjamin Cadena

According to Benjamin Cadena, the studio's founder and principal, “The idea is that everything is connected, but the spaces remain fragmented for intimacy. In any space in the restaurant you might hear or smell things that give a sense of the adjacent spaces, but it isn’t completely open. The design defines distinct spatial volumes yet allows you to move through them with the freedom of an open plan.” Split into three area...

William McDonough + Partners unveil their first Latin American Cradle to Cradle-designed building in Bogota

2017-09-07T17:39:00-04:00

The architecture firm of William McDonough, who co-developed the Cradle to Cradle design philosophy, unveiled the scheme for a new 20,000 square-meter academic building at the Universidad EAN in Bogota. The project marks the firm's first signature building in Latin America. They also hope the new building will be a catalyst for integrating more Cradle to Cradle Certified products in Colombia's building industry.

The building's main feature will be a colorful, perforated sun shade, which will be constructed using McDonough's WonderFrame™ technology. The panels will block glare while provide views, and energy, water, and resource use will be optimized. For natural ventilation, solar chimneys will draw air through the building and exhaust it at the roof.

Featuring 10 floors above ground, the scheme comprises science labs, classrooms, administrative offices, seminar rooms, as well a...

Holistic design tool HOMEKIT takes on issues of resilient community and sustainability in rural Colombia

2016-06-28T13:14:00-04:00

This post is brought to you by Boston Architectural College.

Population growth and lack of shelter are the main indicators of increased poverty in developing countries. Every year, millions of people in rural communities in tropical climates migrate to cities in search of a better life. Informal settlements proliferate on the cities’ peripheries. However, what often awaits them is misfortune: few employment opportunities, lack of clean water, crowded housing spaces, crime, and other threats to their family traditions and lifestyle.

The HOMEKIT training program educates people in rural areas to sustainably cultivate bamboo and empower their villages to be self-reliant and to meet their own shelter needs. The system reduces forest depletion and contributes to the socioeconomic infrastructure of the villages. It provides safe, dignified, highly functional homes that respond to the local environment and natural disasters, connects people with the natural systems that support them, and he...

Medellín wins 2016 Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize

2016-03-29T16:34:00-04:00

The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize 2016 is conferred on Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia after the capital Bogotá. Having overcome challenges of uncontrolled urban expansion and years of violence due to social inequalities, Medellín has undergone a remarkable transformation over the past two decades. Through bold leadership, long-term plans and social innovation, the city’s leaders have tackled its most pressing issues and improved the economy...

The Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize is a bi-annual award give to a city to honor "outstanding achievements and contributions to the creation of liveable, vibrant and sustainable urban communities around the world."

Organized by the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the Centre for Liveable Cities, the prize comes with a $300,000 check written by the Keppel Corporation.

For more on Colombian urbanism, check out these links:

2015 Holcim Awards grand prizes given to Colombia, Sri Lanka, and U.S.-based projects

2015-04-20T19:46:00-04:00

The Holcim Foundation finally announced today the three winning projects for their global 2015 Holcim Awards. Every three years, the awards competition seeks architectural design interventions that address sustainable building and construction issues worldwide. As a global competition, the Holcim Awards highlight people's different lifestyles and draws attention to their specific communal issues.

At the same time, it promotes the innovative sustainable strategies that architects and designers can create in effort to improve a community's quality of life. The Holcim Awards jury -- chaired by Harvard GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi -- chose the three grand-prize winning teams, who each won a trophy and shared the $350,000 prize.

The $200,000 Gold prize went to "Articulated Site: Water reservoirs as public park | Medellín, Colombia" by Colombian team Mario Camargo, Luis Tombé, Colectivo720, with Juan Calle and Horacio Valencia, and EPM Group (Empresas Públicas de Medellín). Their proposal tra...

Medellín Miracle or Marketing Ploy?

2014-04-15T13:59:00-04:00

Mainstream sources such as CNN and The New York Times have sung the city’s praises as a stunning success story. However, now that the conference is over, there are signs that there’s trouble in Medellín’s urban planning paradise.

Medellin's Outdoor Escalator Part of Plan to Remake City

2013-01-02T13:07:00-05:00

The Colombian city of Medellín was once the murder capital of the world and ground zero for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. But Medellín has lately emerged as a hotspot for urban planning and innovative mass transit. The projects are part of a long-term plan to fight poverty and remake the fortunes of the city.

Another hopeful Medellín design initiative previously featured on Archinect: Student Works: INSITU Medellin

Bogotá, With Pockets of Hope in Recent Architecture

2012-07-06T14:46:00-04:00

The canopy can look like a lot of architecture for such a small project, but that’s partly its value: to put Cazucá on the map and create a de facto town square beside the school (made of shipping containers, serving a population in which a quarter of the children are malnourished, I was told by the school’s principal). Now children play soccer under the canopy and clean up the square every day, and there’s a vegetable garden with tomatoes and herbs.

Colombia architect leads bamboo building crusade

2011-11-29T00:02:42-05:00

Swiss architectural historian Pierre Frey describes [Simon] Velez as a leader in the "vernacular" movement in architecture, a school of design using local materials and anchored firmly in a designer's surrounding "context." His tile-roofed, bamboo-supported structures, often with monumental overhangs, are a trademark, reflecting the sheltering function in a country with an equatorial sun and monsoon rains.

Steven Holl Architects Unveils Design for Bogotá, Colombia Building

2011-05-16T19:33:00-04:00

Steven Holl Architects has just unveiled its preliminary concept design for a new Doctorate’s Building for the Schools of Law and Economic Sciences at the National University of Colombia in Bogotá. Holl and his partner, Chris McVoy (with whom he is collaborating on the project), say the 70,000-square-foot, two-story building is intended to re-energize the original campus master plan and encourage social connections.