Articles by Victor Delaqua

In a year marked by physical distance, social networks have gained an even greater dimension in the ways of relating to people and getting informed. Our channel on Instagram has surpassed its number of reach and brought to the public the best of what we publish on our page: projects, articles, interviews, and news from the world of architecture, inspiring new ideas and tools for a better future to our cities.

Understanding the relationship between body and space is fundamental to offer the many different experiences that architecture can provide. To reflect on the distinctive scales that encompass the work of an architect, from buildings to furniture, we interviewed Marcelo Ferraz, co-founder of Brasil Arquitetura and Marcenaria Baraúna. His outlook and experience illustrate how the body and its symbolism are crucial when designing a project regardless of its scale.

Sheltering is a fundamental issue in Architecture. The ways of living and interacting with the space in which we spend our daily lives is an everlasting debate in the field, which is committed to providing a better quality of life, but also to developing new ways of living. By adding other aspects such as real estate speculation, high housing density in urban centers, the pursuit of nomadism, or even the sheer desire to follow a trend, the debate around small-scale houses becomes even more relevant. And so, we ask ourselves, what is the smallest area required to live in?

Approaching the context of widening political divides and growing economic inequalities. A new spatial contract. Learning how will we live together. These thoughts brought by Hashim Sarkis, curator of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of Venice Biennale 2021, may raise important questions about how architecture crosses and materializes social and political conflicts. To understand a more decentralized point of view, which indicates possibilities other than those dictated by normative mindsets, we interviewed Tainá de Paula, a Brazilian architect and community mobilizer in poor suburban areas.

Nowadays, architecture museums, galleries, publishing houses, foundations, and experimental laboratories all have rooms to show their backstage, bringing about debates and proposals of the future of architecture. This is all part of Future Architecture Rooms, a project launched early this week on the Future Architecture Platform which showcases a collection of online spaces, each hosted by one institution and one member of the platform. We talked with the concept curator, Anastassia Smirnova (SVESMI) to better understand how the idea behind this project emerged, and what innovations it can present in the way of working on exhibitions and architecture.

Inspired by vernacular architecture, Kathryn Larsen is a bio-based designer working with seaweed. Throughout her career, she has been doing an intensive investigation into eel-grass, a material that has been used for centuries around the world. Larsen wants to apply all the benefits of this material (rot resistance, fire resistance, non-toxic, insulation characteristics comparable to mineral wool, and its ability to create carbon negative buildings) into prefabrication development and other technologies that enable the creation of new cladding and other elements, such as insulation batt and acoustic panels.

Gerson Castelo Branco is a self-taught architect from the state of Piauí in Brazil. His architecture is a collection of references and experiences that he describes as “an expression of freedom,” the Paraqueira.

Warehouses, whether industrial or rural, are a type of building that can easily be found all around the world. Some of these shelters are century-old and have probably been built to store products or to accommodate factories. However, due to urban phenomena and new technologies, many of them stopped operating as they were originally used to and started to spark interest in several businesses whose aim was to re-adapt these structures to meet new purposes.

We’ve recently passed the halfway point of 2020, and to date, we’ve published hundreds of residential projects featuring distinct ways of living on ArchDaily. In a year marked by the worst health crisis that humanity has experienced in the last century, the Covid-19 pandemic, the house has gained new meanings and values, reiterating that no matter how diverse its program, a home’s purpose is to shelter its inhabitants.

What would all the built environments be without its users? This question may make it easier to understand that not only do architecture and urbanism sustain themselves as physical spaces, but they also gain meaning mainly through the human and non-human movements and bonds, that – together with the architectural or spontaneous traces that make up the urban landscape – provoke the sensations that each individual feels in a unique way.