Rio de Janeiro has been selected to host World Congress of Architects UIA 2020, one of the world's most important architecture forums. The news was announced yesterday by one of the UIA's former presidents and current Secretary of the Session, Vassils Sgoutas, during the General Assembly of this year’s congress in Durban, South Africa. Rio's application was spearheaded by Brazil's most important architecture institution - Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil (IAB). The South American city beat out two strong candidates: Melbourne and Paris.

After the presentations of the three candidate cities, two rounds of voting began. In the first round Rio got 85 votes, against Melbourne’s 73 votes and Paris’ 44 votes. In the second round Rio beat Melbourne with 107 votes against 95. 

Textures and Ants is one of five videos on display by Studio MK27 at the Palazzo Mora as part of the "Time Space Existence" exhibition, running parallel to the Venice Biennale.

Produced by Pedro Kok and Gabriel Kogan, the video shows Studio SC, a photography studio based in São Paulo and designed by Marcio Kogan.

One of the 100 architects and offices taking part in the "Time Space Existence" exhibition, running parallel to the Venice Biennale, Studio MK27's Marcio Kogan has contributed to the exhibition with five videos that, often comedically and/or dramatically, portray the daily lives of the residents of his works.

In this video, produced by Hugo Oliveira, Portuguese architect Álvaro Siza denounces the "hyper-specialization" of architecture, outlining its academic roots as well as its practical implications for practice. Siza mentions how, in Portugal, a law was considered to limit architects to their specific specialities - exterior architects could not design interiors, for example. According to Siza, this tendency towards "hyper" or over specialization is unfortunate, as it gives rise to the segmentation of the discipline into subcategories - interior architecture, exterior architecture, landscape architecture, etc. - that undermine collaboration and team work.

Also make sure to check out the first part of this interview, where Siza discusses the obsolescence of buildings.

This last Wednesday, April 9th, Herzog & de Meuron opened its first project in Brazil - Morro Arena - located in the city of Natal. With a capacity for 350 people, the arena features multipurpose rooms for dancing, classrooms, a terrace overlooking the sea, locker rooms and a sports court.

The project is the first finished part of a broader urban plan for the region developed by the Swiss Office in partnership with the Centro Sócio Pastoral Nossa Senhora de Conceição in 2009.

Videos

The Italian furniture brand Arper recently reissued Lina Bo Bardi's signature Bowl Chair. The pioneering project of the Brazilian-Italian architect presents a more relaxed approach to "sitting" - one that was fairly radical when it was originally released in 1951. The reissue of the chair - presented at the Salone del Mobile 2013 - is a testament to the forward-thinking vision of the architect.

Arper, who worked in partnership with the Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi to produce the Bowl Chair, based the design on the original prototype drawings. The genius of the chair is in its simple execution: consisting of two loose parts - an upholstered shell on a metal structure - the seat remains free to move in all directions. It is a chair for living, not just for sitting, and (as with all of Bo Bardi's works) places the human at the center of the design.

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The academic and critic Kenneth Frampton, who in the 1980s was instrumental in disseminating Portuguese architecture, as well as the idea of "critical regionalism," around the world, has won the third ever Lisbon Triennale Millenium BCP Lifetime Achievement Award, which distinguishes a person or practice whose work and ideas have been influential and continue to have a profound effect on architectural thinking and practice today.

"It is an excellent ending to this year's triennale, to give the Career Award to someone who has devoted his life to thought and architectural culture, demonstrating once again that architecture does not live only as built works," says André Tavares, director of the Architect's Journal and coordinator of the publisher Dafne.

Praça das Artes, designed by Marcelo Ferraz and Francisco Fanucci (Brasil Arquitetura) and Marcos Cartum, has won Building of the Year at the Icon Awards in London. The project competed with works by great names in international architecture: Herzog & de Meuron (with their Parrish Art Museum in Long Island, New York), Renzo Piano (The Shard in London), SANAA (the Louvre-Lens, in the north of France) and Hugh Broughton Architects (the Halley VI Research Station, the world’s first relocatable research facility, located in Antartica).

Después del incendio, el futuro del Memorial de América Latina de Oscar Niemeyer, es incierto.

De acuerdo con el presidente del Memorial, João Batista de Andrade, se está esperando que terminen las investigaciones del Departamento de Bomberos y la Policía antes de determinar qué acción se tomará: "Tenemos que saber cuál es el impacto del fuego en la estructura del edificio. Si tenemos que demoler, lamentablemente, tendrá que hacerse. Si la seguridad lo requiere, vamos a demoler".

Más detalles, después de la pausa...

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Producers Monstro Filmes have shared with us a gorgeous animation: an homage to the city of Sao Paulo and its five major architectural icons.

São Paulo: 5 Grandes Construções (Sao Paulo: 5 Great Buildings) highlights the Martinelli Building, Banespa, MASP, COPAN and Unique. Clearly inspired by "Chicago - Five Great Buildings," by Al Boardman, the video uses simple, fluid lines to represent and reveal each building's unique form.

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