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Tucked beneath the dense trees of Al-Ozer Forest in Mount Lebanon, Byblos-based architects and visual artists of JPAG Atelier created a secluded retreat away from humans and the chaos of the urban life. The Earth Chapel is a unique sanctuary that lets its visitors experience both the simplicity of the architecture and the richness of the surrounding landscapes, all at once.

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Inner courtyards and gardens can provide many benefits, such as natural light, better ventilation, and increased contact with nature without losing privacy. 

For companies or leasers that own large buildings, building maintenance can seem daunting, costly, or even superfluous, particularly when building functions appear to be running smoothly. But proper and consistent building maintenance is imperative for a number of reasons. Buildings inherently function less effectively over time due to natural causes such as climate, daily occupant use, mechanical obsolescence, and more. When left unresolved, these issues can devalue user experiences, create dangerous and unhealthy environments, and even incur costs higher and more sudden than consistent building maintenance costs.

Five emerging architecture studio profiles from Portugal, Spain, France, and the Czech Republic have been chosen by New Generations, a European platform that analyses the most innovative emerging practices at the European level, providing a new space for the exchange of knowledge and confrontation, theory, and production. Since 2013, New Generations has involved more than 300 practices in a diverse program of cultural activities, such as festivals, exhibitions, open calls, video-interviews, workshops, and experimental formats.

Solutions for small-scale apartments are becoming more and more needed due to the increasingly smaller apartments being built in the centers of Brazil's major cities. The high price of land, combined with the current laws and regulations, has boosted the construction of gradually smaller dwellings - which can often translate into lower quality of life for its residents. 

However, that is not always the case, while architecture can play a fundamental role in transforming a small concrete and masonry box into a pleasant home that fulfills the needs of its dwellers. We have gathered 10 examples of apartments in Brazil, between 24m2 and 48m2, that transform small areas into quality spaces.

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Many of our childhood experiences take place in school. Whether these memories are good or bad, most children and teenagers spend a majority of their days in classrooms or other educational facilities. According to IQAir, “every year, children spend an average of 1,300 hours in school buildings.” But even as the world changes rapidly, and the internet in particular increases the accessibility of information, the design and operation of schools remain, in a way, outdated. As noted in a previous article, ideally the typology of educational spaces and the configuration of classrooms should suit more contemporary ways of teaching and learning, rather than the traditional organization of rows of desks facing a teacher at the head. But it is important that the analysis of educational facilities does not stop there. All surfaces and materials have a significant impact on both the well-being and learning of users.

Francis D. K. Ching [1] characterizes a chimney as an “incombustible vertical structure, which contains a duct through which smoke and gases from a fire or furnace are pushed outwards and through which an air current is created.” While its pipes can be hidden in walls or other structures, the chimney top usually remains prominent in order to transfer dangerous gases from the inside out without dirtying the interior or harming the health of the occupants. Being vertical elements, there are chimneys that become major landmarks in the urban landscape, especially in industrial projects. At the time of drawing, deciding on the “weight” that the chimney will have in a project is essential. At Casa Milá, for example, Gaudí crowns the building in sinuous and curvy sculptural chimneys. In other cases, the solemnity of the building aesthetic is mirrored in its chimney, whereas in others, the architects render the chimney as hidden as possible. Recently, too, many chimneys have been refurbished for new uses or to accommodate new cleaner technologies. Whether it takes a prominent role or is hidden from view, see below some chimney design tips and possibilities of use.

Whether you’re in a back bedroom in suburban Milwaukee or a carved-out office nook in a posh New York loft, you will see signs of successful remote work. Between video conference calls, moms and dads are checking in on their remote-working students, marketing managers are squeezing in a video yoga class, and designers are throwing in a quick load of laundry. And while tending to these household responsibilities, we’re also designing new products and spaces, completing financial audits, and making video sales pitches. On the surface, remote work is, well, working.

In response to the housing crisis in Europe after World War II, Le Corbusier began designing large-scale residential structures for the victims of the war. One of his most notable communal housing projects was the Berlin Unite d’ Habitation, also known as the Corbusierhaus. Completed in 1959, the project was designed to give Germany a more modern appeal, as it was trying to redefine itself after both the Second World War and Cold War.

To highlight the building’s particular exterior composition, architectural photographer Bahaa Ghoussainy explored Le Corbusier’s housing unit, putting its characteristics on full display.

In 2016, the last modern masterpiece designed by world renowned architect Marcel Breuer, the Atlanta Fulton County Public Library, was slated for demolition. One of the Fulton County commissioners described the original design as looking “more like a jail” than a welcoming space for learning and productivity. To save the iconic building from the wrecking ball, changes would have to be made. This case study from cove.tool shows how energy and daylighting analysis is useful not only in new construction, but for revitalizing existing buildings as well.

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When it comes to designing commercial gastromic spaces, aspects like space efficiency, equipment distribution, materials, and organization are essential when considering the users' experience within the space.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

In 2005, while I was an architecture student at Columbia, visions of Bilbao danced through my classmates’ heads as they flocked to an architecture studio whose brief was to design an all-new Guggenheim Museum on Governors Island. I will admit that the prospect of exhibiting a spectacle for Columbia’s end-of-year show was seductive. But conducting field research for that class required only subway and ferry rides, while a studio offering in the historic preservation program promised a trip to Rome. I passed on creating another paper icon for New York and traveled to the Esposizione Universale Roma for one week that fall.

Floors, roofs, ceilings. Speaking in a very generic way, they are practically all the horizontal elements that we can find in the construction of a building. These three parts have a very similar way of modeling in Revit and this is the reason why when learning this software, they almost always appear one after the other. The order is usually a rather logical and therefore similar order: starting first with the floors, later the soffits and, finally, the ceilings. All this, clearly after having modeled the exterior and interior walls of our building.

Over the past decade, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been widely adopted and become integrated to varying degrees into every aspect of the design, construction, and maintenance of buildings. But this isn’t where BIM stops, the future of BIM incorporates altered/virtual reality (AR/VR) and has the potential to go as far as automated and intelligent lifecycle management of assets. The concept of creating a “digital twin” to a physical building or system with the aim of making that real-world entity safer, more efficient, and more resilient begins by making our way towards fully-integrated BIM.