Architecture: Research Guide

In Patrocínio, Minas Gerais, stands a residence that redefines the concept of contemporary living, harmonizing the lightness of a metal structure with the solidity of stone and the warmth of cumaru wood. This exemplary project was meticulously designed to establish a deep connection with the lush natural surroundings, offering a sophisticated refuge that is intrinsically linked to its environment.

Studio Gang, the international architecture and urban design firm led by Jeanne Gang, has completed an expansion of Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). The firm's expansion plan involves the construction of four new buildings–three mass-timber residential halls and the new Kresge College Academic Center – as well as improvements to the site that increase the College's accessibility and better connect it with the surrounding natural ecology and the greater UCSC campus.

The project consists of the design of a two-story single-family house. The plot has a significant slope of approximately 3 meters between the street level and its midpoint. To address this challenge while also taking advantage of the site's potential, a "split-level" system was adopted. The façade facing the public road appears as a single-story volume, while the rear part of the house is developed across two distinct levels. Thus, the pedestrian and vehicular entrances are positioned at the street level, leading to an upper half-floor where the private areas are located, and to a lower half-floor designated for social areas, situated approximately at the existing ground level.

Buildings are physical, static, and permanent. To imagine them otherwise often requires some creative thinking. The industry has operated with this strong association between structures and permanence, unknowingly constraining perspectives on building life cycles. Innovations in building materials have opened up avenues for cirular design that challenge the long-held notion that buildings must endure indefinitely. Emerging approaches promote architecture that ebbs and flows with nature.

In 2022, the architect was invited to design a comprehensive public art complex at the AYDC in Guiyang. AYDC (A Yun Duo Cang), derived from the Yi language of Guizhou, means "our land of dreams." It is a culture-driven experimental hub that integrates community, innovation, and nature. Curated to promote creative industries and community expression, this branded district is inspired by the spiritual essence of Guizhou's mountainous landscape. Here, people and ideas can grow freely within nature. The originally planned singular building was disaggregated into a constellation of public art pavilions across the landscape. These spaces, while embedded in nature, remain distinct yet connected, of..

The World Architecture Festival (WAF) has announced the shortlist for its 2025 edition, highlighting notable examples of completed buildings, future projects, interiors, and urban landscaping from around the world. The announcement comes ahead of WAF's first event in the United States, which will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center from November 12 to 14, 2025. Finalists will present their projects within their categories during the first two days of the festival. Selected from more than 780 entries, this year's shortlist features over 460 projects that span a broad range of categories, including Creative Re-Use, Housing, Education, Hotel, Sports, and Culture.

This project is grounded in a critical approach to sustainability issues related to residential architecture in rural areas. This approach is embedded in the site's context: a prestigious estate that had been occupied by the same family for nearly a century, located on the shores of a lake in the Eastern Townships region.

At this developer's headquarters, the factory steel frame outlines the layout, echoing with its founding origin of a brick kiln. Spaces are deconstructed and sequentially inserted. Diverting from the commercial setting, the design emphasizes "openness to the community" and shares its brand vision with the public, weaving a reinterpreted factory aesthetic and a Taiwan forest impression into the city.

This is a private lodging with a frontage of 5.2 m along a main street, with an effective internal width of 3.9 m. The client requested a space that evoked the atmosphere of traditional Japanese architecture. Based on the client's request, we envisioned a floating tea room-like lattice structure with shoji screens (traditional Japanese lattice-and-paper screens), which are visible from the outside, and a small garden path leading to the shoji box.

The Dongliang Xuan is located within the "Yangtze River Forest Farm" in Taicang, Suzhou. The site is defined by both stringent construction constraints and imaginative potential, making this project a particularly unique case.

During 2024, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) launched a three-part documentary and exhibition series titled Groundwork, exploring alternative modes of practice in light of the current climate crisis. The process began with a series of studio visits in search of offices addressing substantial questions for contemporary architecture through practice, culminating in the selection of three projects: Xu Tiantian's "minimal intervention" museum on Meizhou Island, Carla Juaçaba's community pavilions in a coffee field in Minas Gerais, and bplus.xyz (b+)'s European Citizens' Initiative for a new legal framework to facilitate the renovation and transformation of existing buildings. The lat..

Architectural landmarks often cluster together. In Tokyo, the iconic Omotesando is a well-known stretch where global "starchitects" built flagship luxury retail spaces in the 2000s. Hong Kong has a lesser-known but equally powerful architectural agglomeration along Queensway—though historically more corporate and less publicly engaging. Beginning in the 1980s, this corridor became home to a series of landmark buildings by some of the world's most prominent architects: Norman Foster's HSBC Headquarters, I.M. Pei's Bank of China Tower, Paul Rudolph's Lippo Centre, and the nearby Murray Building by Ron Phillips—now revitalized as a hotel by Foster + Partners. The area is further enriched la..

Sonoro is a project that intertwines architecture and music from its inception. More than just a built space, it is a synesthetic work, a habitable instrument where rhythm, scale, proportion, and silence are translated from the staff to the plane.

For about ten years now, Stephan Küng, head of Küng Holzbau (Küng Timber Constructions) in the second generation, has put a lot of effort into solid wood construction. "Holzpur" (Pure Wood) is the name of the system that Küng has established on the market. The basic elements of "Holzpur" are solid, about 20 cm thick wall parts consisting of seven layers of boards. The boards themselves are made out of "moon wood", which is usually cut around Christmas time before the new moon, when there is almost no water left in the trees. This results in less shrinkage and a smaller risk of infestation with wood pests. This is what the company is convinced about and they find more and more custome..

Erosion is a fashion showroom designed by PHI+ Architects, located in a central commercial area of Pristina, Kosovo. The project reflects a deliberate architectural gesture, a stripping away of superficial design to reveal the raw, structural core of the space. The key concept draws inspiration from the natural process of erosion, a slow, transformative force that exposes the essence beneath the surface. This idea materializes through fractured walls and glass surfaces, where controlled cracks become intentional architectural statements. These ruptures symbolize the intersection between architecture and fashion, a dialogue of permanence versus ephemerality, structure versus expression.

Settling into the mountainside - Set on a dramatically steep site, the residence unfolds across two levels, totaling over 700 square meters. The compact, buildable area required blasting through rock, much of which was then repurposed for landscaping and retaining walls. Managing the runoff from the mountainside posed its own challenges, requiring careful water control around the 40-meter-long structure. The landscaping was designed to allow the lush natural vegetation to reclaim its place. Within the municipality of Lac-Tremblant-Nord, strict environmental regulations—such as a ban on visible exterior lighting—ensure the protection of local fauna, including the unafraid deer that roam f..

Ephemeral Bridge is one of the seven pedestrian bridges in Fuxi, Moganshan. Far Workshop won two pedestrian bridges in the 2022 Seven Bridges International Competition. Ephemeral Bridge is one of them.

Lithological Strata and the Dual-Skin Envelope as an Architectural Model – Quartz Plaza is an office building project located in İstanbul. The local vicinity has undergone frequent transformations due to a persistent race in construction projects since the earthquake of 1999. Against this backdrop of constant flux, the project seeks to establish a connection with an enduring layer of the city—its geomorphology.

Hibrew Coffee and Cuisine is a renovation project of an existing coffee shop that has been operating for over six years. Located within a residential area, the building initially resembled a traditional house. The client envisioned a comprehensive transformation—both interior and exterior—to create a more contemporary and inviting atmosphere while maintaining the intimate familiarity of the original setting.

Located on the site that once housed the old pony stable, the chapel was conceived as a space for introspection, retreat, and spiritual connection.The choice of location stemmed from a desire to give new meaning to that part of the property, making use of a pre-existing structure built among a bamboo grove — a natural element that became essential to the new architectural essence.

Brighton Girls was established in 1876 as a founding school of the Girls' Day School Trust (GDST). In 2020 the school wanted to consolidate all its accommodation on one site, which included listed buildings that were not put to their best use. From long discussions with the headteacher and GDST team, Walters & Cohen fully grasped the school's needs and came up with an innovative plan to make the best possible use of their existing spaces.

Every project is an opportunity to go further than what is initially thought possible. This loft conversion and top-to-bottom reconfiguration transformed a dark, cramped one-bedroom apartment into a bright, multi-level family home. By replacing the old roof with an energy-efficient one, we created space for a mezzanine level. This introduces a dramatic spatial variety, which is further enhanced by the contrast between dark materials and the natural light flooding through the oversized skylights.

The Corner House, located at the intersection of two busy streets in San Juan, Manila, responds to the city's need for open-air public spaces suited to its tropical climate. It becomes a refuge from the dense urban environment, offering a space for relaxation and social interaction.

Jiuguo Courtyard Inn is a youth hotel located in the scenic area of the Tianjin City Concession, and is the first practice of Modum Atelier to incorporate an operational perspective in its design.The original building is mainly made of masonry with a timber roof, showing the combination of early colonial style and local building materials. As the building is located on the inner side of the street, it lacks a prominent commercial display surface, so how to highlight the entrance and courtyard features became the focus of the design. We adopted a 'patchwork' approach to the design intervention, maintaining the original building in its current state to the greatest extent possible, respecting ..

By creating a large volume at the boundary between inside and outside and providing large openings, we have broadened the experience within the small space.

Set lightly on the edge of a ridge in the Sonoma Hills, the Sonoma Ridge House is thoughtfully designed to harmonize with its natural surroundings. Situated high above the Sonoma Valley, the home embraces sweeping views while integrating seamlessly with the landscape. Created for a young San Francisco couple, the residence steps down the ridge line, weaving around oak trees and carefully following the land's natural contours. Designed by Holder Parlette, a firm known for its integration of architecture, landscape, and interiors, the Ridge House exemplifies a deep commitment to connecting the built and natural environment, capturing the beauty of its site.

행정의 철학과 관점, 실행력이 경제, 교육, 의료, 문화 등 생활 각 영역에 실질적인 영향력을 행사한다는 것을 어...

Beach house built around nature, preserving original elements and providing a unique experience at any time of the year.

The new Kindergarten Kreuzfeld is an important milestone in the development of the Kreuzfeld neighborhood in Altach (Vorarlberg, Austria) and unites kindergarten and infant care beneath one roof. With the newly added building, a neighborhood center has been created, which establishes an identity and radiates into the village as a place of social encounter.

We were commissioned to transform a pre-existent 180sqm restaurant with the typical Chiado vaulted interior in a contemporary ‘Tasca’. Tasca is a traditional portuguese restaurant, that serve home-style food, where you eat at the counter or at tables with no cloth towels. It was at ‘tascas’ that most of the conversations started with a glass of wine and a shared plate of a “petisco”, maybe a salad made of a strange part of the pig or even a simple plate of lupines.