A window into the world of architecture

Two young minds decided to start a blog on architects and construction. Read on to know what became of it

David A. and David B. were in a bit of a tizzy. They had just realised that their hugely popular website for architects, http://www.archdaily.com, had generated clones in China. Their content was being lifted, translated, uploaded. They didnt know what to do. They lived literally at the other end of the world Santiago, Chile. So they sent mails: cease and desist, you will hear from our lawyers. It didnt make a difference.

Then came an invitation to the Pritzker Prize ceremony in China the Pritzker is the Nobel of architecture. Immediately they sent the main clone, http://www.archgo.com a mail saying they were coming. Sure, he responded, Id love to meet you. When they were fact to face, he said, Look, Chinese architects really need your information. And youre not giving the information in Chinese, so Im doing that job. I dont have a business model, Im not making money. I just want to help Chinese architects. The Davids were stunned. They understood.

What is it that was considered so important for Chinese architects? Lets rewind a little, to the story David Assael, 33, shared with this writer over breakfast in Moscow recently.

Discovering urbanism

When David discovered urbanism, or city studies, as a student of architecture in Chile, he felt a sense of belonging. With the same time and effort that you need to make a home for a single family, he says, you can make a park for a lot of people, or a city plan.

Later, when he began teaching, he realised that all the amazing projects his students did remained only on paper. On an exchange programme in Barcelona, Spain, he had seen an exhibition on the next 10 years of urban projects in that city. It was the first time I saw an exposition about cities for citizens, not urbanists, he says. Then he heard what ordinary people, such as his friends grandmas, had to say about a new building a French architect was doing there. It sort of resembled a cucumber and the elderly women were offended. It looks like a big dildo, they complained, it ruined the look of their city.

When he returned to Santiago, he started thinking about the relationship between cities and citizens, about how citizens had no clue what buildings and structures would do to their cities. Or even if they did, they didnt know what to do about it. And so, along with David Basulto (David A. and David B., isnt that funny?), a computer whiz from college, he started a website to give information about cities to Chilean citizens. They called it Urban Platform (Plataforma Urbana), and with the permission of the university, uploaded ideas that came from students.

It was 2006, about the time blogs were getting popular, and very soon, their platform with information from and about architects, became the most recognised blog in Chile! But they wanted something else a site where my grandmother could go and understand what was happening in her city. Thats when they started taking the work happening in private circles, mostly to do with homes for high income people because that was good work you dont see on the street, and loading it on the site. They hoped this way to raise the level of public works, and a new site was born, in 2007, called Plataforma Architectura.

Now, with the growing visibility of the site, it was time to get more professional. So they asked architects to send information about their projects. If youve done good work, you want everyone to see it, says David A. The projects began pouring in. Next, they approached companies to send information about products that would be useful to architects, and pay for it. The companies too saw something in this proposition. They complied.

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A window into the world of architecture