Recognized for completing 36 distinct yet cohesive public projects across Mexico in just 36 months, Colectivo C733 showcases the impact of collaborative design on public spaces and communities. The 36 projects were part of a national effort to revitalize vulnerable urban and rural areas in Mexico, earning them the 2024 Obel Award focused on the theme of "Architectures With". The team behind the designs, Colectivo C733, is a collaborative group formed by the joint offices of architects Gabriela Carrillo (Taller Gabriela Carrillo), Carlos Facio, and José Amozurrutia (TO), along with Eric Valdez (Labg), and Israel Espin. In a recent conversation with ArchDaily's Editor-in-Chief, Christele Harrouk, the collective discussed their approach to public architecture, the process of integrating diverse voices, and remaining flexible to the challenges of local conditions.
Collaborative: The Latest Architecture and News
“Architecture is a Work of Generosity:” In Dialogue with Colectivo C733, Winners of Obel Award 2024
Designing with Empathy: Architecture for Social Equity
Architecture has long been understood as a powerful tool for shaping the physical environment and social dynamics within it. However, its potential to foster social equity is often overlooked. Empathy-driven design invites architects to approach their work not only as creators of space but as facilitators of human connection and community well-being. This approach centers on understanding people's lived experiences, struggles, and aspirations — particularly marginalized communities — and responding to their needs through thoughtful, inclusive architecture. It goes beyond aesthetics and functionality, instead focusing on creating spaces fostering dignity, accessibility, and social equity. By prioritizing empathy, architects can design environments that uplift communities, address disparities, and create inclusive spaces that promote positive societal change in a tangible, human-centered way.
Sumayya Vally on Incorporating Diverse Knowledge in Contemporary Architecture: The Obel Award 2024 Theme
Sumayya Vally, architect, curator, and founder of Counterspace architecture office, joins the jury for the 2024 Obel Award. This international architectural prize, organized by the Henrik Frode Obel Foundation, honors projects that significantly impact people and the planet. The 2024 theme, "Architecture WITH," invites a re-examination of the architectural profession, emphasizing collaborative and co-creative processes that integrate diverse bodies of knowledge into the core of design. Vally's perspective on redefining architectural roles aligns with the theme's focus on non-hierarchical, co-creative approaches.
Democratizing Architecture Practices: Restructuring Firms
Discontent among employees in architecture firms is at an all-time high, demonstrated in the push for architectural unionization in the US in response to the lack of overall well-being in the profession. This discontent can be largely attributed to the inherently exploitative nature of the regular top-down architectural firm structures, fostering a disconnect between the direction firms take and the people working to make it possible. In these, leadership often takes on projects beyond the firm's financial capacity, with the expectation of underpaid staff taking on the brunt of the work through unpaid overtime. In these structures, employees are not to be a voice guiding the firm but to be profited off of. So, what are ways to address this disconnect? Is it time to restructure firms to give architects more agency? What are ways to create non-hierarchical firm structures?
The Bridge Between Conceptual Design and BIM: A Real-Time Collaborative Platform to Optimize Building Design
In the ever-changing world of design and construction, the tools at architects’ disposal have remained the same for decades. With its ability to deeply understand how architects design, Snaptrude has emerged as a collaborative 3D building design tool that incorporates smart, parametric modeling, live building information, easy real-time collaboration, and offers strong interoperability with other BIM tools like Revit.
By analyzing its wide variety of features, we showcase how Snaptrude empowers the design process to operate faster, smarter, and more collaboratively.
Exploring the Bay State Cohousing Model: A Unique Approach to Multi-Family Housing
In Greater Boston's city of Malden, Massachusetts, an inter-generational community of thirty households hired an architecture firm and collectively designed their cohousing community. Responding to the cohousing community's request for collective living in an urban setting, French2D designed a typology-challenging building with individual residential units connected by a framework of shared spaces. The result is a 48,700 sqft unique and colorful type of multi-family housing. It is one of a growing number of cohousing projects in the United States.
The Second Studio Podcast: Interview with Mark Bullivant
The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina of FAME Architecture & Design are joined by Architect Mark Bullivant, Principal of SAOTA to discuss his background; attending architecture school in South Africa; working on projects across continents; the differing roles of contractors in different areas of the work; their collaborative approach; leadership and management of a large office; the various types of projects they work on; and more!
UNStudio and BIG Invest in Virtual Design Platform SpaceForm
UNStudio and Bjarke Ingels Group have partnered up with Squint/Opera to develop SpaceForm, a virtual, cloud-based platform that facilitates design, review and collaboration processes for architects and developers. The new virtual workspace explicitly developed for the architecture and construction industry aims to fill a gap by creating a viable and sustainable way of collaborating and designing remotely across global teams, thus reducing the need for travel.
Egyptian Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Biennale Sheds the Light on Local Egyptian Laborers
Titled "The Blessed Fragments", the Egyptian Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, sheds the light on local Egyptian laborers and their value to the community, in a space designed with optical illusion fragments. Curated by Algorithm Architecture's Mostafa Rabea Abdelbaset, Mohamad Riad Alhalaby, Amr Allam, and Ahmed Essam, the pavilion will be on display at the Giardini from May 22nd until November 21st, 2021.
Exploring New Forms of Collaboration Through Do-It-Together (DIT) Architecture
In our previous article, Why the New Do-It-Together (DIT) Architecture has Radical Potential, we uncovered a new practice that focuses on ‘we’, not ‘me’; celebrates collaboration, not competition; mobilizes human connections, not transactions.