Architecture: Research Guide

The flat terrain with generous dimensions, intended for a residence with a maximum area of 250 m², motivated us to position it in a way to maximize the interface between the covered program and the external areas. The resulting distribution follows a logic already tested in other residential projects by the office, where the circulation between the rooms is configured as covered passages, yet open laterally — without frames or masonry — to extend the experience between the interior and exterior.

Brooklands is a new workplace campus in central Cambridge, containing the city's first major Net Zero Carbon* office building. It fills a gap in the Cambridge workspace market, meeting tenant expectations for high-quality space while at the same time offering sustainable, characterful buildings that contribute to the city. 6,000 sqm of flexible workspace is arranged across two buildings (B1 and B2) around a courtyard garden, linked by a colonnade. Brooklands aligns closely with the government's strategic growth agenda for Cambridge and its ambition to boost the knowledge economy. Growth in Cambridge is not limited to expanding the city's fringes; it also involves optimizing existing urban ar..

Bindloss Dawes Architects has completed a unique zero-carbon eco house created from the adaptive reuse of a former tractor shed on the edge of the idyllic village of Nether Compton in Somerset. The project embodies qualities central to Bindloss Dawes' approach: agricultural architecture, contemporary design, and exemplary environmental performance. The result is a home that feels both spacious and intimate.

The House of a Writer is born from a central courtyard that articulates and gives meaning to all the spaces around it. The project embraces the traditional concept of the house with a courtyard, where a bookshelf —the protagonist in the double-height of the central space— becomes the axis that connects the various activities of the home centered around writing.

Terraco, a global leader in Exterior Insulation Finishing Systems, has demonstrated through independent studies that when planning building renovations, it is essential to adopt a deep retrofit strategy that includes energy-efficient measures, such as thermal insulation of external walls and roofs.

Greece's built environment is shaped by the coexistence of multiple architectural layers, where historic structures, modern interventions, and evolving urban systems intersect. Classical landmarks and their surrounding urban fabrics continue to inform the spatial character of cities, while postwar developments, infrastructural upgrades, and contemporary projects add new dimensions to the country's architectural landscape. This continuity between past and present provides the foundation for current design approaches, which increasingly focus on balancing heritage, environmental considerations, and contemporary urban needs.

Founded in 2018 by Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne, HEMAA is an architecture firm that embraces a contextual, sobriety-based approach rooted in the living world. Each project emerges from a careful reading of its surroundings, seeking a balance between nature, use, and material. In Evry-Courcouronnes (Greater Paris – France), the Parc des Loges Childhood and Sports Center fully embodies this philosophy: a gentle, landscape-based composition built from bio- and geo-sourced materials, serving a public facility that is open, generous, and sustainable.

From the pavilions of Osaka and Venice, to the roundtables of Belém, another year comes to a close. December invites us to pause and look back at the moments that defined architecture and cities in 2025. Reflection is not only an act of memory, but of foresight — a way to understand where we've been in order to imagine where we might go next. From shifting cultural narratives to material and technological breakthroughs, this past year underscored the importance of experimentation and adaptation across the built environment.

For 20 years, this building stood abandoned — a silent reminder of forgotten spaces and wasted potential. Yet every abandoned structure carries hidden stories waiting to be reimagined. A century-old granary, left unused for decades, has now been thoughtfully transformed into a boutique farmhouse through architectural ingenuity and carefully chosen materials. Set against the backdrop of the Western Ghats and nestled between lush paddy fields and a serene pond, Kalam embodies rustic charm and timeless beauty.

UNS has revealed images of SeoulOne, a master plan designed for Hyundai Development Company (HDC) in Seoul, South Korea, intended as a new model for multigenerational living. The project, already under construction on a brownfield site in the northeast of the city, reimagines an existing industrial site and railway area as a 405,000 m² car-free neighborhood for a multigenerational community. A never-sleeping, green master plan for Seoul, SeoulOne is envisioned as a mixed-use mini-city where all essential services for people of all ages are available within a 10-minute walk. The design includes 24/7 residential towers, retail spaces, offices, a hotel, sports facilities, daycare centers, seni..

Collective housing remains one of the most active areas for unbuilt architectural exploration, revealing how architects are rethinking domestic life, density, and shared living across different cultural and environmental contexts. In this curated Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected proposals investigate new forms of dwelling that span mobile units, vertical developments, adaptive reuse, and landscape-driven residential clusters. Rather than treating housing as a purely functional container, these projects position it as a social and spatial framework that shapes everyday life, community ties, and long-term urban resilience.

The regeneration of the Linear Park of Doca, located in Belém do Pará, arises as a strategic urban intervention that combines infrastructure, landscape, and memory to reconnect the city to its waters through the enhancement of public spaces. Established over the old Igarapé das Almas — now a canal about 1.2 km long in the central median of Avenida Visconde de Sousa Franco — the project recaptures the hydric identity that historically structured the Reduto basin and which, throughout the urbanization process, has been buried under fragmented and functional logics.

Situated in the urban core section, the project is located along the southern bank of the Jiaojiang River, to the west of the Taizhou Bay estuary. It is adjacent to the Jiaojiang Bridge, the Submarine Sightseeing Base, and Hehe Avenue.Jiaojiang's riverfront development coincides with the phase-out of industrial activities on both banks. Brownfield waterfront areas are undergoing comprehensive greening and transformation into livable spaces. Taking advantage of the opportunity to upgrade the seawall, the design transforms existing structures and spaces to foster a symbiotic relationship between public areas and the seawall.The design imbues the previously detached hydraulic infrastructure wit..

Starting from 10 splines, we have developed a system to construct structurally strong walls with the least possible amount of material.

This renovation project is an exemplary alternative to the all-too-common practice of demolition and reconstruction, which tends to replace complexity with standardized solutions. Here, the approach was to recover and transform, minimizing waste and giving new value to materials via preservation rather than replacement.

Every city carries, woven into its fabric, fissures that resist capture: ruins, vacant lots, leftover infrastructures, and gaps that persist at the margins of the official narrative. These are places that slip through the logics of planning, emerging as unexpected counter-scenes within a territory that seeks to present itself as coherent.

MICROSCOPES – "Architecture is a microcosm". The concept of "place" and "Ego" in architecture has also become the theme of Contemporary Architecture over the past decades. MÔhe'ritage does not exaggerate, does not turn architecture into a mark that goes with the years, MÔhe'ritage is simple, close, and gentle like someone's innocent and emotional childhood. Being part of a series of projects on resort villas and small homestays, "MÔ" originates from the word "where" in the Central Vietnamese dialect, and is also a friendly invitation from indigenous people.

Jakarta has become the world's most populous city, according to the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Using an updated and harmonized method for defining urban areas, the report estimates Jakarta's population at nearly 42 million, placing it ahead of Dhaka, which is about 40 million, and Tokyo, 33 million. The revised ranking illustrates how updated measurement criteria and continued demographic growth are reshaping understandings of urban scale in Asia and globally.

Finland's first hybrid football stadium was completed in spring 2024 in the Tammela district of Tampere. The new stadium has been eagerly anticipated in the city. The project, which is a collaborative effort between the City of Tampere, Pohjola Rakennus, and JKMM Architects as part of an alliance, was in design and construction for over a decade. The stadium project covers 13,500 square meters and provides high-quality facilities for both residents' sports activities and top-level football experiences for 8,000 spectators. The stadium meets the main UEFA category 4 requirements, which means it can also be used for example UEFA Europa League and national team matches. Every seating position i..

MVRDV and SYNRG have received approval to construct Schieblocks, a 47,000-square-metre office building in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Designed for developer LSI, who markets the project as The Bluezone Offices, the building will occupy a narrow site along the railway line, reaching 61 metres in height and extending almost 150 metres in length. The programme includes commercial spaces at ground level, offices throughout, and a restaurant and event venue on the upper floors. Conceived as a "3D neighbourhood," the design breaks the large volume into a series of colourful, distinct blocks that incorporate numerous references to Rotterdam's architectural character.

Located on a prominent north-facing corner allotment, with frontage to a primary road with tramlines and a quiet cul-de-sac, this inner southeastern site required a considered balance between creating street presence and scale commensurate with its position, whilst also establishing internal amenity and privacy for its occupants.

The square in front of the Kunshan Municipal Government, together with its subway station, has underwent a comprehensive transformation since 2022. With the new retail and parking facilities introduced to the underground, the landscape above ground followed the original cross-axis structure of the city square, placing a water feature and a large grass slope along the central axis, dividing the site into four sections. Dazhou and Associates was commissioned for the design of the landscape architecture above ground.

Between the Andes, the coast, and the Amazon, Ecuador's architecture has evolved as a reflection of its layered geography, a place where climate, topography, and culture unite. Throughout the territory, architecture has been an act of adaptation: from vernacular traditions rooted in collective labor and local materials to the colonial and modernist influences that reshaped its cities. This diversity has produced distinct constructive systems, from bamboo and cane structures along the coast to earth and stone constructions in the Andes, forming an archive of adaptive design that continues to influence contemporary practice.

MVRDV's pixelated façade design brings variety and identity to prefabricated modular towers in Singapore. At Irwell Bank Road in Singapore, two 36-story residential towers have been completed, with a lively, pixelated façade design contributed by MVRDV. Taking as a base the highly efficient, prefabricated, modular building design by Singapore-based ADDP Architects, MVRDV's variegated façade adds liveliness to the buildings' external appearance and highlights the green communal spaces on the buildings' 24th floor and roof. The design is the latest in MVRDV's oeuvre to show that efficiency and cost-effectiveness can happily coexist with character and individuality.

What defines a space first when entering: the sound or the visual impression? Architecture is often communicated through structure and surfaces, yet one of its most essential components moves unseen through the air: sound. It shapes how a space feels long before a wall or ceiling is noticed. Computational design brings these dimensions together, allowing architects and designers to create unique structures where acoustics and aesthetics inform one another rather than exist in parallel. By leveraging advanced algorithms, complex design processes transform into intuitive, accessible solutions that shape bespoke acoustic and visual highlights for every project. This approach combines parametric..

In the buzzing financial district of Hyderabad, Tabula Rasa 2.0 makes its presence known through its popular charm, its vibrant music scene, and more evidently its remarkable visual identity. This urban oasis, designed by 23 Degrees Design Shift, stands in stark contrast to the vertical glass facades that dominate the area, offering a much-needed cultural respite for the local IT crowd.

A large residential compound, located in traditional city villas quarterHanspaulka, is surrounded by a historical garden park, on sloping terrain. The garden itself, together with panoramic views of Prague's skyline, are the main inspirations for the design concept. Its massing and apparently minimalist composition are formed by ingenious stacking of five blocks – storeys.

Toronjos is a vacation home designed to harmonize with its natural surroundings. From its inception, the project prioritized a minimal footprint and a fully sustainable design.

New façade and interior adaptation of Cercle Calongí.

Situated at the foot of the Lillooet Range and bracketed by the Garibaldi Range, Camera House is a two-bedroom residence set on a sloped, five-acre site in the Pemberton Valley. The home frames a swimming pool, outdoor dining area, and a detached workshop, drawing focus to the rich natural surroundings of the Pacific Northwest.