Captain's House. Image Courtesy of Vector Architects
In 2014, a home reconstruction program called "Dream home" was launched in China, inviting architects and interior designers to redesign some old houses that have problems. Some of these homes are oddly shaped, some are tiny, and yet others have extremely inadequate lighting. The design concepts conveyed by the designers together in this program are respect for people, understanding human relationships, and the definition of home. These renovations or reconstructions are not just home updates for clients, but a reinterpretation of "home" that gives them a new life with dignity.
In terms of Covid, 2022 is more likely to be like 1920 than like 2020 or 2021. “Change or die” is a cliché, but often a true one. The past two years under the pandemic have forced many kinds of changes across society that may have helped prevent a lot of deaths. But many other aspects of our culture had already been changing in ways that predated the pandemic, gradual shifts that, once Covid hit, became instant and ubiquitous: remote work, remote learning, the dominance of online shopping and the death of brick-and-mortar retail, the obsessive focus on health and well-being. All of this, and more, is now a fundamental aspect of our daily lives.
Whether or not architecture is an art, buildings and spaces shape daily life. Pushing the boundaries of architecture and the categorization of art, contemporary investigations between disciplines are rethinking tradition. As transformations grounded in human experience, these installations and structures share qualities of purpose, function and creative expression. At the same time, they reorient the limitations and possibilities of each profession.
Designing houses in tropical climates, as is the case in Brazil, means paying special attention to openings, both in relation to the functioning and conviviality of the house, as well as in relation to issues of environmental comfort. In this article we bring you 16 Brazilian homes that take advantage of their strategic openings to create cozy, stunning, well-lit and ventilated environments.
Latrinas medievais. Image Cortesia de Geopizza, usada sob os termos de "fair use"
The bathrooms that we usually have in our homes are legacies of European colonization around the world. Its current form, however, dates back millennia and would not have been possible without investments and the evolution of basic sanitation.
The health of a population is directly related to the physical environment it inhabits, as stated by Hippocrates in his text “Ares, waters and places”, written during the 5th century BC, in which the Greek thinker known as the 'father of medicine', states that in order to properly investigate health and the cause of disease it is necessary to observe and understand the inhabited environment from the seasons, the wind, the water, its geographical position, the land and the landscape and also the habits of the people who live there. Each civilization has developed a way of dealing with what we understand by sanitation today, depending on its time and also on its geographical, cultural, political and economic context.
A look inside Plethora Project’s Common’hood, an immersive multiplayer game centered on building a new community inside an abandoned factory after an economic collapse.. Image Courtesy of PLETHORA PROJECT
Michael Beneville opened his studio in the Flatiron district of New York City a decade ago. The renovated two-floor office has 20-foot-high ceilings, custom furniture, and a wall of arched windows that look out onto 19th Street. Beneville and his team haven’t been inside the studio together on a regular basis for months—at least not physically. The employees of the small creative studio, known for its design work on immersive experiences like Las Vegas’s mega–entertainment complex AREA15, are scattered across the country due to the pandemic, but they regularly gather in a virtual replica of the studio for meetings, sitting around a digital table, their avatars carrying digital cups of coffee.
Focused on 3 main titles, "the European city: a model for the sustainable smart city", "defining common European culture while reflecting the diversity of expression" and "an architecture that has social impact and transmits a cultural message", we have grouped the selected projects, nominated by a jury formed by Tatiana Bilbao, Francesca Ferguson, Mia Hägg, Triin Ojari, Georg Pendl, Spiros Pengas and Marcel Smets to give a better understanding of the selection criteria and the architectural situation in Europe.
As we continue to navigate the ongoing pandemic, the future of offices and workspaces has been widely debated. However, some immediate effects are clear: the rigid, primarily in-office model has been quickly replaced by hybrid work, with adaptability and comfort becoming the top priorities. Therefore, even as long-term consequences might be unclear, businesses will certainly have to strive for the right balance between traditional and remote methods in order to promote efficiency and employee well-being. From a design and architecture perspective, demand will focus on flexible working environments that foster creativity, productivity, and comfort – as well as addressing the associated technological, economic, and sustainability challenges.
Although they are not considered long-stay areas in a home, kitchens and bathrooms are spaces where functionality is essential for the daily lives of residents and visitors. Of all the elements in wet areas, the ones that need special attention are the worktops. In this text we will point out some tips for designing functional wet area countertops, easy to maintain and appropriate for their uses.
Salzburg seen from the Festung Hohensalzburg (Hohensalzburg Fortress). Image via Flickr User Janusz Sliwinski
Rivers have long been considered as Earth’s arteries, serving as the essence of urban communities as human settlements developed their shelters and crop beds around them. Centuries later, riverside architecture remained vital as these areas expanded beyond residential typologies, and harnessed dynamic mixed-use developments and public functions. As valuable as they may seem though, these landscapes come with the risk of unexpected floods, increased water levels, or complete droughts, which has forced architects to design built environments that are able to respond to these abrupt changes. So how were these settlements built in the past, and how has today’s urban densification and technological advancements influence the way they are built?
It has been said that we are living through a trans-apocalyptic era. Not pre-or post-apocalyptic, but something in between: a series of interconnected crises that demand action, at a time when it’s too late to prevent the world from changing, but not late enough that all hope has been lost for a (changed, yet positive) world. Architecture is deeply involved in this process, as the transformation of the built environment and the construction industry are key to the way we live.
For ArchDaily, this means our mission rings truer than ever. After a record-breaking 2021, with over 22 million monthly visits across the ArchDaily network, we continue to ask ourselves and our readers: how can we continue to provide inspiration and tools to a new and evolving generation of architects, designers, and - increasingly - architecture enthusiasts, home-owners and anyone who is interested in how we live, where we live and how to move forward? One of the most important ways that we have of doing this is through the Building of the Year Awards.
ArchDaily exists thanks to our readers - you - and so it makes sense that you are also the ones that continue to pick the best of the year in architecture, this time for the 13th consecutive year of the Building of the Year Awards. It is your turn to recognize and reward the outstanding projects that are making a difference, as part of an unbiased, distributed network of jurors and peers that has elevated the most relevant projects over the past decade. Over the next two weeks, your collective intelligence will filter over 4,500 projects down to just 15 stand-outs for the best in each category on ArchDaily.
The 2022 Building of the Year Awards is brought to you thanks to Dornbracht, renowned for leading designs for architecture, which can be found internationally in bathrooms and kitchens.
In 1929, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich design the German National Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. The official reception for the exhibition was held there, presided over by King Alfonso XIII and the German authorities. From then on, the story is well known to everyone. A symbolic work of the Modern Movement, the Pavilion has been extensively studied and interpreted, and has inspired the work of several generations of architects.
Staircases can seem like an unalterable part of a building’s DNA. Whether part of a new build or a refurbishment, it can be difficult to imagine changing the angle, direction, or even the placement of the stairs, so choosing the right type can be key. Here are ten different ways to unlock that dream interior.
Over the last century, cars have been the dominant element when designing cities and towns. Driving lanes, lane expansions, parking garages, and surface lots have been utilized as we continue our heavy reliance on cars, leaving urban planners to devise creative ways to make city streets safe for pedestrians and cyclists alike. But many cities, especially a handful in Europe, have become blueprints for forward-thinking ideologies on how to design new spaces to become car-free and rethink streets to make them pedestrian-friendly. Are we experiencing the slow death of cars in urban cores around the world in favor of those who prefer to walk or ride bikes? And if so, how can it be done on a larger scale?
Architect Cino Zucchi (b. 1955) grew up and practices in Milan, Italy. He was trained at MIT in Cambridge and the Politecnico di Milano, but claims to be largely self-taught, although influenced by such of his countrymen as Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. He is internationally known for diverse projects across Europe. Many are both abstracted and contextual residential complexes in Italy, particularly in Milan, Bologna, Parma, Ravenna, and, most notably, in Venice. Zucchi’s D residential building in Giudecca, attracted international attention and praise when it was completed in 2003. I met Cino Zucchi last year during the Venice Architecture Biennale; that meeting led to an extensive interview that we recently engaged in over Zoom between New York and the architect’s sunlight and books-filled Milan studio.
Creating an educational setting is a specific and sensitive task. Merging children’s safety and learning optimization requirements with an aesthetic appeal and solid concept can birth some of the most beautiful unique projects around. One configuration we see quite often is the elliptical or circular school.
One of the most famous series of numbers in history, the Fibonacci sequence was published by Leonardo of Pisa in 1202 in the "Liber Abaci", the "Book of Calculus". The famous sequence of numbers became known as the "secret code of nature" and can be seen in the natural world in several cases. But, after all, how does this sequence relate to architecture?
https://www.archdaily.com/975380/what-is-the-fibonacci-sequence-and-how-does-it-relate-to-architectureEquipe ArchDaily Brasil
Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong. Image Courtesy of 'City of Darkness Revisited’
Cities are growing, and they are growing upwards. This is far from just being a contemporary phenomenon of course – for more than a century, high-rises have been an integral part of urban settlements worldwide. This growing of cities encompasses a complex web of processes – advancements in transport links, urbanisation, and migration to mention a few. This growth of cities, however, is all too often linked with governmental failure to adequately support all facets of the urban population. Informal settlements are then born – people carving out spaces for themselves to live amidst a lack of state support.
Taiwan proposes that architecture can transform a place, and to represent this idea, the work of Sheng-Yuan Huang and his practice, Fieldoffice, were chosen for the Taiwan Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia in 2018, entitled Living with Sky, Water, and Mountain: Making Places in Yilan. Sheng-Yuan and Fieldoffice demonstrated that the notion of making places is more than building a physical space, but is equally about establishing a linkage between people, as well as people and their environment.
Alessandro Martinelli explores Sheng-Yuan and his colleagues at Fieldoffice as the avant-garde of a new architectural movement in his book, The City Beyond Architecture, which seeks to produce a new form of collective living through the lens of design and culture, touching on what the design culture of the majority of future urbanization could become. In the following, we will discuss Shen-Yuang's impact on Taiwanese architecture as he spearheaded the call to integrate and imagine public spaces that inhabited the capacity to structure a particular landscape to provide both social spaces and a sense of identity to its occupants.
Videos
The Digital Twin . Image via Shutterstock/Videoflow
The emergence of the Digital Twin phenomenon has heralded a great change in terms of urban planning. It essentially presents the city as dynamic, in virtual form. Ensuring every element from the historic fabric, new construction, and public transit is accounted for in one three-dimensional model. Not only does it present key elements in terms of the landscape, but it also encompasses often overlooked conditions such as the presence of light throughout the day, shadows, and the presence of vegetation and trees. All of which contribute to a better preliminary process of site analysis.
Architecture and fashion seem like unlikely bedfellows. However, in more ways than one, they are cut from the same cloth. Ancient nomadic tribes lived in shelters made of cloth and animal furs, the very same materials used for clothes. So, clothes and buildings were made from the same craftspeople. Over time, as our constructions filled the basic needs for protecting the human body, these pursuits were elevated into distinct artforms. Today, designers like Virgil Abloh, formally trained as an architect, stitch the two pursuits back together with shows that reference designs by Mies van der Rohe, or jackets filled with puffy 3D buildings. Fashion retail environments also bring space and clothes together, often in thoughtful and interesting ways. This video looks at the history of architecture and fashion and visits a fashion retail store in Chicago called Notre, designed by Norman Kelley.
This week's curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights conceptual works, competition entries and projects in different stages of development submitted by the ArchDaily community. From a village made of 3D-printed cacao waste for a chocolate manufacturer in Ecuador, the transformation of a shopping centre in Ontario into a sustainable and walkable neighbourhood, to the refurbishment and redevelopment of Brutalist estates in London, the following projects illustrate a wide array of design approaches shaping the built environment.
This week's selection of unbuilt projects highlights worldwide interventions addressing a range of highly-relevant topics, such as circular construction, the adoption of sustainable materials, biodiversity, urban redevelopment of obsolete infrastructure or adaptive reuse and the reconsideration of the existing building stock.
Founded by the architect and professor Angelo Bucci, spbr arquitetos works in different scales of construction of buildings with a distinct and particular language in its works. Its projects are the result of an intense exercise in architectural thinking, combined with the use of drawing as a tool for dialogue between architects and clients.
The "Casa de los Milagros" (House of Miracles), located in the cloudy forest on the outskirts of Xalapa, Veracruz and designed by Mexican architect Danilo Veras Godoy, is a space conceived with organic forms, earth, unexpectedly shaped openings and mosaic glass in different shades. It was designed to meet the needs of Rosalinda Ulloa, a single mother who would live there with her two young children. It was built in stages, starting in 1995, and was completed in 2002, with some changes being made between then and 2006.
