Archi News

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.

Architectural ornamentation has been a recurrent subject of debate across the industry for decades. A practice that was largely abandoned during the Modernist movement could now be standing on a platform that might, again, allow its resurgence, due to the current convergence of robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and digital fabrication. Technology has seemingly removed the primary obstacle to decorative detail: the high cost of skilled manual labor. However, this new technical capacity demands a critical examination: What does ornamentation truly represent, and what do we gain or lose by resurrecting it through algorithmic design?

Staal-Kade – A New Future for a Modernist Icon. On the southern bank of the river Schinkel in Amsterdam stands a thoroughly renovated office building that bridges the past and future. Since its transformation in 2024, the structure – originally designed by Arthur Staal in 1962 – has gained renewed significance through a revitalisation and extension by Office Winhov, commissioned by Flow Development. Among Staal's most iconic works is the Shell Tower, now known as the A'DAM Tower.

The design inspiration for this project stems from the image of a flower. The most beautiful parts of a flower—its bud and its petals—evoke softness, splendor, and refined aesthetics. Yet behind that beauty lies the slender stem, quietly bearing the entire weight of the structure.

The Zest Café project was defined within the seasonal villa context of Karimabad, Shahsavar; a neighborhood that, due to the transient presence of residents and lack of integration with daily urban life, has remained devoid of vitality, and existing cafés have failed to become sustainable social hubs. The client's request was the revitalization of an abandoned rental villa and its transformation into a public, youth-oriented space.

Dream - Carrying forward the honor and lineage of a family of Maratha sardars, the present heirs, the two brothers wanted to build a new house for their family. For their honor and societal standing they wished for an ornament of pride, standing strong in their ancestral grounds, beyond the crowds of the city, and secure as a fortress. Since generations they have been living in the traditional 'Wadas' and have developed a lifestyle of a similar understanding of a protected envelop, internal courts, large external open areas and farming. Accordingly, they wanted an architectural manifestation on a 1.2 acre of land, for their collective family to create an inward environment which will be independent and self-sustain its existence.

When planning a commercial space, it is not easy to sacrifice usable space. This is especially true in areas with high unit prices, where most prefer to maximize the display space by ensuring more circulation space in narrow areas.

Located on a steep slope in Nova Lima, Minas Gerais, Casa Ouro Velho folds and opens across multiple levels, establishing a continuous and respectful dialogue with the natural landscape and the exuberance of the Atlantic Forest. Designed as a direct response to the topography and surrounding forest, the project is organized into levels that embrace the terrain, establishing a continuous dialogue between architecture and nature, with precise cuts that ensure the preservation of the larger native trees on the lot.

The new Soldalhus Nursing Home in Northern Jutland provides 96 dementia-friendly residences, a central community building, and extensive shared and service areas. Designed by Cubo Arkitekter with a clear human focus, the project emphasizes dignity, independence, and connection for residents, staff, and visitors. The name Soldalhus, directly translated as "Sunvalley House," reflects the design's emphasis on light, openness, and integration with the surrounding landscape. Set on the edge of Northern Jutland's characteristic hill formations, Soldalhus links the landscape with the nearby town of Sindal. Its placement strengthens local urban life, creating new pathways between the care center and the city while offering open views of meadows and wetlands. Subtle terracing and reshaping of the terrain create a sheltered microclimate, using landforms and planting to temper prevailing westerly winds and provide comfortable outdoor environments year-round.

At the quiet end of a street, integrated in a cluster of buildings that belong to the same extended family, there was a ruin. A young and growing family decided to rebuild it, due to a deep emotional connection, as it once belonged to the client’s grandparents.  Right next to it stands her parents’ house, where she lived for many years. The desire to reinhabit this ruin stems from a longing return to a place of memories and to live close to family core, where the client’s parents, now grandparents, will closely witness the growth of their grandchildren.

What does optimism feel like in cities that can no longer rely on perfection as their ultimate ambition? Across the world, urban environments bear the weight of overlapping pressures: climate volatility, spatial inequality, political fragmentation, public distrust, and chronic infrastructural disinvestment. These realities render the idea of an ideal city increasingly detached from lived experience. Yet the hope for building better systems persists. While utopian visions may seem like an escape from the growing complexities of the modern world, the greater challenge for contemporary city-making is to confront those complexities rather than avoid them.

A model for healthy living and resilience, the Edwin M. Lee Apartments is the first building in San Francisco to combine supportive housing for both unhoused veterans and low-income families. This collaboration—Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects, Saida + Sullivan Design Partners, Swords to Plowshares, and Chinatown Community Development Center—supports an integrated, equitable, and sustainable community in San Francisco's Mission Bay neighborhood.

Nestled in the heart of Shanghai, this project reimagines a conventional mall space as a leisure table tennis gym. The design centers on the concept of "mixing patches," creating a dialogue between new and old, using these reclaimed elements as an aesthetic motif to craft a fresh identity for the popular sport.

The Ong Ang Canal Bridge transforms a historic waterway into a piece of contemporary urban infrastructure that connects heritage and innovation. Flowing through the historic core of Bangkok, the Ong Ang Canal once served as the city's defensive moat and later became a thriving artery of trade and daily life. Over centuries, this waterway has shaped the rhythm of the communities along its banks. The new pedestrian bridge reinterprets that living heritage through the language of water itself, capturing the canal's continuous motion in architectural form.

Opened in 1976, the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center was a professional performing arts center in dire need of transformation. The aging brutalist structure stood closed off from view and separated from the surrounding urban fabric. With aging infrastructure, the building needed a comprehensive modernization to meet the escalating requirements of contemporary performance and to present a new face to the public.

Contained Resonances - Between the silence of concrete and the echo of wood, a new building discreetly emerges on the campus of the University of the Andes. The Music Box is a piece that contains more than it shows: an architecture that seeks not to impose itself, but to resonate.

The new Simone Veil cultural centre is being built in the town centre, in an existing building (the Maison Hirsch), whose capacity will have to be increased by the construction of an extension. Located on Place Velotte, in the historic heart of the town centre and just a stone's throw from the station, the Maison Hirsch and its garden represent an important part of the town's heritage, a place of remembrance and a highly visible landmark.

Threshold House makes room for extended hospitality. Studio McW has extended and redesigned the lower ground floor of Threshold House, a semi-detached, split-level Victorian home in the leafy De Beauvoir neighbourhood of London.

The municipality of Cunha, located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, is a region known for its inland landscape, hilly terrain, and, especially, a major production of nationally renowned ceramics. It is within this context that the office messina | rivas has been working since 2017, with a set of projects located on a farm. Their work, which integrates design and construction in an indissociable manner, results in interventions that reveal a sensitive approach to pre-existing conditions and their surrounding environment.