Seeing from above – the aerial vantage point – is the illusion of knowledge. This was the idea of Frenchman Michel de Certeau, a historian who was interested in the everyday practices that occur on the ground, on the streetscape. In contrast to Certeau's view, satellite images can be a powerful tool to understand, predict, and strive for a better future for humankind. This is the mission of Benjamin Grant, founder of Overview, a platform that explores human activity on Earth through aerial imagery.

Interested in fostering "an experience of awe" through elevated vantage points of our world, Overview offers snapshots featuring traces of human activity on the surface of the planet. Photos of cities and other cultural artifacts join pictures of mesmerizing topography and natural beauty in an impressive archive of drone and satellite images. Awe abounds as we face not only some of the most impressive human endeavors seen from the sky, but also as we are confronted with the rather gruesome side-effects of our very existence on Earth.

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Hungarian analyst and cartographer Robert Szucs shared with ArchDaily another of his series of maps, this time addressing the population distribution on Earth. A large blackboard, identifying only the geopolitical boundaries of countries and continents, reveals bright constellations, representing human agglomerations and the world's great voids.

Across the world, urban clusters have —to a greater or lesser extent— social and economic differences. Reflected in space, these imbalances of income and access to education, health, sanitation, and infrastructure generate ruptures more or less visible —although drastically felt.

Although a daily reality for some, socio-spatial inequalities can often go unnoticed. Photographer Johnny Miller states, "Discrepancies in how people live are sometimes hard to see from the ground... Oftentimes, communities of extreme wealth and privilege will exist just meters from squalid conditions and shack dwellings." Miller's photo series 'Unequal Scenes' seeks "to portray the most 'Unequal Scenes' in [the world] as objectively as possible."

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GIS analyst and Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs has shared an impressive collection of maps that bring together all the drainage basins of the world in vibrant colors. Titled Grasshopper Geography, the maps showcase the rivers and watercourses of the world, featuring the basins of selected regions, countries and continents.

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Following the recommendations of public authorities and the WHO general guidelines towards the COVID-19 pandemic, The International Union of Architects, UIA, the Institute of Architects of Brazil, IAB and the Executive Committee UIA2020RIO have decided to postpone the 27th World Congress of Architects to July 2021. The announcement echoes several other events related to architecture that had to be postponed, including the Venice Biennale and the Salone del Mobile.

The recent success of Parasite, the award winning film directed by South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, has created a conversation around the emphasis of architecture and interior spaces in movies. This particular film does an excellent job of blurring the boundaries between the two disciplinary fields, to the point where the architecture is not just the background of the set, but it has been placed at the forefront of the storyline, and takes on the leading role in many scenes.

Mulher, Mujer, Woman, or simply MMW, is an online platform dedicated to architectural representations, whose objective is to spread the women's production within our professional field. Created by the Brazilian architects Carol Vasques and Débora Boniatti as a reaction to the still scarce diffusion of female references, the platform seeks to "highlight the importance and relevance of women in the past, present and future of the profession."

Users now can virtually visit museums all over the world thanks to Google Arts & Culture. The project offers 360 ° views of places that can often be inaccessible due to financial costs or distance.

With a vast built heritage, Lisbon's contemporary architectural production is rich in rehabilitation projects. Lacking space for new buildings - unless one is willing to pay for the land's high market price - Lisbon's current architecture prescinds tabula rasa and faces the challenge of working with what already exists - often limiting itself to design only interior spaces. 

digital collages with soft colors, still images or moving GIFs, Kim shows a ludic look over these buildings that are more than 5 decades old.

With more than 40 years of professional experience, Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara, partners and co-founders of Dublin-based Grafton Architects, are the first women to be jointly awarded the architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize. In addition to a very welcoming breath of hope towards greater female representation in the field, the selection also cast light over an equally urgent theme in the profession: recognizing architecture practice as a collective effort.

Architecture enjoys a close connection with moving picture, perhaps because of the limitless imagination it allows. Our mind can be taken far away to utopian worlds where we live different realities with our eyes and skin; movies can carry us to new and distant places, where we face new unusual realities.

However, besides carrying us to distant places, movies can also be a vehicle of social criticism. This is not news, as it has been done for almost as long as cinema has existed. The evolution of this role is relative to the topic of critique that has developed over time, as have our habits and ways of living. In this sense, one of the most emerging problematic of nowadays is climate change.from architecture to arts and, clearly, the movies.

Angola, like many African countries, is experiencing a process of rapid urbanization. For the most part, these changes are happening under little to no regulation, filling cities with spaces that lack the infrastructure to provide a basic quality of life for residents. However, in spite of this unregulated development, it's worth noting the quality of contemporary architecture being produced in the second-largest Portuguese-speaking country, where projects draw inspiration from the strong local identity and blend with modern materials and technology.

In this article, we highlight 4 current projects in Angola. While it is a small sample, not only from the capital city of Luanda, but from smaller cities as well, it showcases the richness of Angola's local architecture--an art form that deserves worldwide recognition.

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho, or simply Oscar Niemeyer, (December 15, 1907 – December 5, 2012) was one of the greatest architects in Brazil's history, and one of the greats of the global modernist movement. After his death in 2012, Niemeyer left the world more than five hundred works scattered throughout the Americas, Africa, and Europe.

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Lina Bo Bardi (December 4, 1914 – March 20, 1992) was one of the most important and expressive architects of 20th century Brazilian architecture. Born in Italy as Lina Achillina Bo, she studied architecture at the University of Rome, moving to Milan after graduation. In Milan, Bo Bardi collaborated with Gio Ponti, and later become editor of the magazine Quiaderni di Domus.

With her office destroyed in World War II Bo Bardi, along with Bruno Zevi, founded the publication A Cultura della Vita. As a member of the Italian Communist Party, she met the critic and art historian Pietro Maria Bardi, with whom she would move permanently to Brazil.

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