This is an incredibly well done video by Pablo Casals Aguirre of BIG's recently completed IQON tower in Quito, Ecuador. What's great is that it both showcases the building's architecture and gives you a sense of what it might be like to live in a tower like this. And it does this beautifully.

If you can't see the embedded video above, click here.

BIG just announced its first project in South America. It is a 33 storey residential building in Quito, Ecuador. When completed, it will be the tallest building in the city. The developer is Uribe and Schwarzkopf. 

Here are a couple of other images:

The building is made up of “concrete boxes” that, when rotated, create terraces for the apartments. On one corner of the building the apartments are “through-units”, meaning they have two exposures. In this case, it is north and south.

While different, we are starting to see some similarities across BIG’s projects, which isn’t meant as a criticism. I am thinking of Telus Sky, Vancouver House, and even KING Toronto. 

They are, at least partially, about expressing the individual apartments and creating opportunities for outdoor spaces. This also serves to break down the overall scale of the building.

What do you think of the project?

Images: BIG

This morning I woke up to an email from the Urban Ecology Agency of Barcelona. They are a public consortium dedicated to urban sustainability and made up of the City Council of Barcelona, the Municipal Council and Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, and the Barcelona Provincial Council. The email was about this upcoming “urban congress” taking place in Barcelona from May 22-24:

Sadly, I have no plans to be in Barcelona next month. But if any of you are based or traveling there, the conference is all about the future challenges that cities will face and about contributing to the new urban agenda. The main topics are: sustainability, city planning, social cohesion, and competitiveness. 

Habitat III – which is in the title of the conference – was a United Nations conference on housing and sustainable urbanization. It took place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. However, it forms part of a much larger framework around sustainable global development. More info here.

Barcelona is also one of my favorite cities, so I am happy to share this one with all of you. If you’d like to register for Post-Habitat III, head over here.