In late 2020, La Seigneurie Funeral Home approached ultralocal architects to undertake a major renovation and expansion of their building in the Beauport neighborhood of Québec City. The initial request was to double the existing floor area by adding a second level. However, early in the design process, our team proposed a different, more meaningful approach: to expand horizontally rather than vertically.
This house was built in the 1980s, following the design codes of the time: a semi-subterranean ground floor housing the garage and boiler room, a raised floor above the garden for the living areas, and an attic converted into bedrooms. In the early 2000s, an extension was built on the garden side to accommodate a large living room, but it quickly showed signs of deterioration. After a decade of legal proceedings, the owners were finally compensated for the damages suffered. They then decided to move on from those difficult years by considering the construction of a new house. However, the architect proposed a different approach: to retain as much of the existing structure as possible and demolish only the damaged sections.
In a world facing ecological exhaustion and spatial saturation, the act of building has come to represent both creation and consumption. For decades, architectural progress was measured by the new: new materials, new technologies, new monuments of ambition. Yet today, the discipline is increasingly shaped by another form of intelligence, one that values what already exists. Architects are learning that doing less can mean designing more, and this shift marks the emergence of what might be called an architecture of restraint: a practice defined by care, maintenance, and the deliberate choice not to build.
As an extreme coastal beach environment, the park site must solve for flooding and constant salt spray. The park had to solve for multiple issues related to permitting and flooding.
Snøhetta has revealed new images of their winning design for the new Düsseldorf Opera House. First launched in 2017, the "Opera House of the Future" competition experienced several interruptions over the years due to shifts in the planned construction site, extending the decision-making process for this significant cultural project. The new building is set to accommodate the Deutsche Oper am Rhein alongside the City of Düsseldorf's Music Library and the Clara Schumann Music School, forming a consolidated cultural venue. The proposal aims to establish a contemporary opera house that strengthens the city's cultural infrastructure and public life.
The project completes and reinterprets a residence in the countryside of Ostuni, surrounded by centuries old olive trees and long views toward the Adriatic Sea and the white skyline of the city. When the owners first encountered the site, the house existed only as an unfinished concrete shell abandoned on the slope. Instead of demolishing it, they chose to work with what was already there, using the existing volume as the starting point for a new spatial and material vision.
The Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt, Germany, has opened a new interactive exhibition, on view from October 25, 2025, to February 8, 2026, presenting 100 years of architectural construction kits. Developed in collaboration with graphic designer Claus Krieger, Professors Andreas Kretzer and Philipp Reinfeld from the Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences (HFT), their students, and the wider DAM team, the exhibition brings together around 80 construction kits produced between 1890 and 1990. Many of these systems have been recreated at an enlarged scale so visitors can test their assemblies at eight central play stations. Additional digital features include VR model worlds programmed by HFT students. Dozens of completed models illustrate the range of architectural ideas represented across the kits, and the full collection is documented in an accompanying catalogue. The exhibition is accompanied by a public competition titled How Small Can Architecture Be?, which invites participants to submit miniature architectural models for display.
Public spaces remain some of the most dynamic sites for unbuilt architectural experimentation, revealing how cities and architects can imagine accessibility, gathering, and civic identity. In this curated Unbuilt edition, submitted by the ArchDaily community, the selected proposals examine parks, pedestrian corridors, cultural landscapes, and open-access urban environments that invite people to meet, move, rest, and participate in collective life. Rather than treating public space as leftover terrain, these projects position it as essential infrastructure—shaping urban health, memory, and social interaction.
At the heart of Casablanca Metropolis, the forthcoming Financial City presents itself as a tool for regional influence and a laboratory of architectural renewal. In this ambitious context, we envisioned the project for the new headquarters of BCP Bank to embody both modernity, as a Casablanca tradition, and projection into the twenty-first century, while expressing an institutional image, in service of the bank's mission and values: solidarity, proximity, citizenship, and performance.
Our goal for this project is to have a fluid spatial experience that enables the family members to feel connected to each other and to nature right in the heart of a bustling city.
In 1952, American composer John Cage presented his groundbreaking piece "4'33''" for the first time. In it, the orchestra produces no intentional sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. What can be heard instead are breaths, movements, and subtle noises that would normally go unnoticed, but here become part of the composition itself. With this work, Cage revealed that absolute silence does not exist. There is always sound, even when unplanned.
Site Context: Lush Mountains and Clear Waters - Anji is a city embraced by verdant hills and meandering clear streams, renowned as China's "Bamboo Hometown" and the birthplace of the "Two Mountains" philosophy. The site is located in the core area of Anji's Liangshan Future Sci-Tech City, built on a former industrial zone at the edge of the existing urban area. This former factory district is being progressively regenerated into the heart of the Liangshan Future Sci-Tech City.
A request came in for a house on a high piece of land, deep in a forest. The location was a place called Sudaewool in Munho-ri, SeoJong-myeon, consisting of two plots designated as a residential development complex. The clients were a couple who run a mid-sized company, and the house was intended to be a retreat for the couple and their employees. For the couple, it would serve as a weekend home; for the employees, it would function as a "stay"—a place to stop by and rest for a while.
The Program
The buildings house a residential complex made up of 125 apartments, garages, and storage rooms, which during the project and commissioning process have allowed the development of 22 different types of apartments, both on a single floor and in duplex format. The complex is exclusively dedicated to residential use. In addition to the apartments, there is a free space for public use and three covered community spaces: a children's playroom, a gym, and a dining room.
The expansion of the Ser Cidadão Headquarters in Santa Cruz, the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, embodies in architecture the commitment of a social organization to human and community development. Since 2002, the organization has been involved in projects related to education, culture, work, and health, promoting opportunities for youth in vulnerable territories. In 2006, it received a donation of a historic mansion, the former residence of doctor and senator Júlio Cesário de Melo, whose legacy of care inspired the very essence of the project: to build spaces that welcome, educate, and transform.
Located in the heart of the Pont district in Marcq-en-Barœul, the new Youth Center is set within a dense fabric of terraced brick houses with narrow, colorful façades. This domestic landscape, composed of plots barely five meters wide, forms a subtle palette of orange and brown tones. Within this intimate context, the challenge was to establish a dialogue between a 600 m² public building and the delicate scale of the neighborhood.
Located in Hillsdale, MI, Baw Beese House is a multi-generational lakeside vacation retreat. The project is a contextual response to social, familial, community, economic, and health conditions, allowing multiple generations of family members to safely occupy a place together or separately for years to come. The lake house comprises three distinct living areas, which can operate independently or together as a whole, depending on which family members are present at the time.
Cities bring together the best and worst of the human condition. They concentrate opportunities for work, social networks, and cultural production, but they also expose deep social inequalities. Among the many forms of urban exclusion are limited access to transportation, housing, leisure, or safety issues. One form that is rarely discussed is thermal inequality. In lower-income neighborhoods, where there are fewer trees, parks, and permeable surfaces, heat accumulates and thermal discomfort dominates, resulting in higher energy consumption and health risks. As concern about the climate crisis grows, this discussion becomes more urgent: extreme heat is no longer just a climatic phenomenon but also a spatial expression of inequality.
On the outskirts of San Cristóbal de las Casas, in the misty forest of Huitepec, the house emerges from the landscape as another natural element. Its presence implies a convergence with the essence of the site, becoming a symbol and language of protection, a gesture of safeguarding the identity of the place. It is not a foreign object, but a fragment of the mountain, a inhabited sculpture that breathes with the same cadence as the forest. Its shape does not seek to impose itself, but to coexist; following the slope as one draws a dialogue with the earth. It only cements what is necessary, allowing the mountain to maintain its pulse.
Coldefy, in collaboration with Relief Architecture, has completed the Robert Badinter Secondary School, the first timber-framed school in northern France. Designed to accommodate 650 students, the project is situated on a former railyard adjacent to the city's train station and within walking distance of the town center. The new school forms part of a wider urban renewal strategy aiming to consolidate transportation links and introduce new civic amenities to the area.