It is envisioned as one of the grandest parties in the Western Hemisphere—the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro will be the first South American city to host the quadrennial showpiece, and the events in “Cidade Maravilhosa” (Marvelous City) are expected to constitute one of the most expansive Games ever. [...]

However, concern that Rio might not be ready in time for the Games is growing louder. — urbanland.uli.org

Your assignment is to come up with an idea so revolutionary that it could be considered an important advance in industrial design.

Students at Rice University in Houston accomplished that with plans for a floating city that is being considered by one of the world's largest oil companies. Last year, the students won the inaugural Odebrecht Award for a radical design of man-made floating islands where as many as 25,000 oil workers and their families could live. — npr.org

Rio de Janeiro is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and there are two starkly different visions of what that will mean for the "marvelous city," as it is known[...]

"Instead of creating a space of conviviality, a space of shared culture, of community, of conversation, you are going to have this very isolated element where after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's going to be dead. You are creating banks, parking lots, Trump towers," Gaffney said. "It's been rezoned for 50-story buildings." — npr.org

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning received a $1.3m grant Monday from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The gift will fund architecture and humanities research on metropolitan issues in cities like Detroit, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro for the next four-and-half years. The Mellon Foundation delivered the “Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities” grant to the University, which supports scholarship and higher education at the intersection of architecture and the humanities. — record.umich.edu

Rio de Janeiro remains the hottest subject for architectural ideas competitions around the world right now. Just last week, we published the winners of the [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition, hosted by British organizers [AC-CA], and today we have received the results of the latest challenge by Italian architecture publication Cityvision, Rio de Janeiro: Two Presents, One Future. — bustler.net

Earlier this week, we published the winners of the recent [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition which challenged architects to design a freestanding World Cup Structure on Rio de Janeiro's central Lapa Square during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Winner of the First Place was the Mekene Architecture-designed entry 'Wing of Glory' which you can find in more detail below. — bustler.net

The [RIO DE JANEIRO] Symbolic World Cup Structure competition has announced its winners. Hosted by [AC-CA], the international ideas competition invited architects and students of architecture and engineering to design a freestanding World Cup Structure on Rio de Janeiro's lively Lapa Square during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. — bustler.net

Since 2011, Studio-X Rio has been bringing together professionals, academics, decision makers, students, and the general public to confront the city’s most pressing challenges. — Domus

A new boutique hotel perched on top of one of Rio's previously most dangerous favelas is about to open. And yes, there is a jazz club and yoga, too.

These are new services catering to a new kind of favela resident.

"It's actually very conveniently located for my work," says Natalie Shoup, a 22-year-old American who lives in a favela called Babilonia, or Babylon. "This has a good amount of transportation to every part of the city. It's nice. It worked out really well." — npr.org

Atlanta and Rio are but two chapters in the long history of displacement that has accompanied mega-events like the Olympics. Similar dynamics reshaped London’s Clays Lane Estate, Beijing’s hutongs, the Marousi Roma settlement in Athens, Barcelona’s Poblenou and Seoul’s hanoks. . . . Today the people of Vila Autódromo are struggling for what housing scholar-activist Chester Hartman has aptly called “the right to stay put.” — Places Journal

In the competition for the Olympic Port in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the winning entries have been announced. [...] The competition aims to rebuild the old harbor area of ​​Rio and thus be an important agent of this long-awaited process of urban renewal for the city and the entire region. — bustler.net