LAB.PRO.FAB: The Latest Architecture and News

Candles shaped like icebergs that melt to increase awareness for global warming. Reconstructions of Brutalist playgrounds. Geometric overalls with patterns representing the taste buds. These are just a few of the projects tackled by the young minds selected by Metropolis Magazine as their “7 Designers to Watch.” The list includes architects RAAF, LAB.PRO.FAB and Assemble Studio, alongside furniture designers, industrial designers and a design strategist.

Between Sunday, May 17 and Monday, May 18 projects developed under the second phase of Espacios de Paz (Spaces of Peace) were inaugurated in five cities across Venezuela. A genuine exercise in participative design, 20 Latin American architecture groups worked for five weeks with communities in neighborhoods dominated by violence, high dropout rates and crime to convert deteriorated and abandoned spaces into public places of peace.

For each project, four groups of young architects worked together to carry out a process of dialogue, research, design, and ultimately the construction of either an athletic, social or educational facility to be administrated by the local community. Espacios de Paz is coordinated by the local office of PICO Estudio, with guidance from public institutions and under the leadership of Isis Ochoa, the High Presidential Commissioner for Peace and Life.

ArchDaily en Español Editors, Nicolás Valencia M. and José Tomás Franco, were invited by PICO Estudio to document and view the five projects in their final phase of construction and speak with the architects and community representatives about the development of the projects and some of the challenges faced in the process.

Learn more about each of the five projects after the break.