A new private home draws on the drama and natural feel of the Karijini National Park, set within the vast, open landscapes of Western Australia. The project, fittingly titled Karijini House, was designed by Tenille Teakle, design director at Studio Gritt. Her goal? 'To create a home that offers the same sense of solitude and connection to nature [as the national park],' she explains.

Explore a house inspired by Karijini National Park

The property is located in the Perth suburb of Wembley Downs. Inspired by the materiality, tactility and wild feel of the Karijini nature, the 409 sq m house (spanning two above-ground levels and a basement) features 7m-high rammed-earth walls and large glass windows that connect it to the outdoors at every turn.

Explaining the connection between her inspiration and the home's context and reality, Teakle writes: 'Horizontal banding in the imperfect and damaged face brick (weathered by age) evokes the carved Karijini rockfaces. The undulating texture of the rammed concrete walls echoes the tactility of the rockface. Burnished concrete floors and soffits are reminiscent of blackened sand.

'Upstairs the lighter hemp render and palette replicate the experience of re-emerging onto the plains from a hike down the gorge, being bathed in natural daylight, no longer in the dark and dank and mysterious. Large, banded iron boulders feature as architectural monuments, sparking curiosity and storytelling.'

The designer and her team sought to craft a home that feels like a sanctuary, a solitary cocoon, cool and calm – making the everyday appear like a holiday, even in Karijini House's dense urban and suburban broader setting. '[It evokes] the experience of traversing a gorge,' she says.

The creative team took into account sustainability principles, as well as questions around provenance and longevity. As a result, the home features recycled rammed concrete walls, repurposed second-hand local materials, and a rich green garden of native planting that allow the local wildlife to thrive.

Teakle highlights: 'To distil the Karijini experience into identifying features, they would be scale, grandeur, light and shade, horizontal banding and privacy.'

@gritt_studio

Imagine the Barbie Dream House was designed by an experimental Hungarian studio – the result might look something like Remise Rosa, a 2,500 sq m permanent timber complex in Zurich, conceived by Budapest-based Hello Wood.

The destination occupies a formerly abandoned railway site, breathing new life into it across three levels of open-air, year-round space comprising a restaurant, a beer garden, entertainment areas and relaxation spaces. Clad in an immediately arresting rosy pink, the structure makes no attempt to blend in – nor should it.

Behind the visual intrigue lies a rigorous technical framework. With Remise Rosa, the studio set out to demonstrate the extent of what timber can achieve in an urban environment. The entire structure is built from CLT (cross-laminated timber), chosen for its sustainability credentials – renewable, durable and well-suited to long-term urban use. Every component was manufactured to millimetre precision using CNC-based prefabrication, a process in which building elements are designed digitally and fabricated off-site before final assembly – allowing the entire complex to come together in just five months.

Hello Wood has been active in Zurich since 2019, steadily shaping its neighbourhoods through projects including Urban Surf, a timber-clad surfing venue inspired by coastal landscapes; June & Julie, a seasonal pop-up bar blending architecture with nature; and Fräulein Holle, a public installation inspired by the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

But Remise Rosa represents something more. For CEO András Huszár, it is ‘the culmination of [the studio's] journey in the market – a permanent landmark where architecture is not merely the backdrop to a business, but its heart and soul’: ‘[It shows] what is possible when timber architecture meets a truly visionary business goal.’

‘People feel special when they enter Remise Rosa; it's a space designed to bring out their inner child,’ adds lead architect Balázs Szelecsényi. ‘The project proves that visionary architecture can inspire, strengthen community and also be good for business.’

The space is unabashedly photogenic, turning heads and inviting exploration, and a reminder that serious architecture and genuine joy are far from mutually exclusive.

As trends in workspace and retail keep shifting, Cubitts, the British spectacle maker, unveils today (25 June 2026) its new headquarters – a home for the brand's entire operation. Set near King's Cross, on the edge of north London, the new HQ is titled The Yard, and brings together frame and lens making, creative, repair, consultation, exhibition and training under one roof, in a subtly spectacular space that blends from design, production and client-facing services and events.

Tour the new Cubitts headquarters in London

When he came across their current base, Cubitts' founder, Tom Broughton, had been mulling over the idea of a permanent home for his business for a while. The makers' previous studio and office were located in the area (Cubitts was founded in Kings Cross in 2013), but had far outgrown the available space – and given the brand's attention to detail and design-led aesthetic, it made absolute sense for them to have a bespoke home.

'We were constrained by the [old] space rather than enabled,’ says Broughton. ‘And here, I'm hopeful we will be enabled by [the new one]. We want it to be a space where you can be really proud to bring passers-by, neighbours, customers... It can be a place where people can spend time with each other.'

The new building occupies a former Victorian stables that once served the nearby Crosse & Blackwell vinegar brewery – the biggest in the capital. It had gone through different lives and uses since then and, when Cubitts came into the picture, it was in need of a refresh.

Keeping the original architecture's utilitarian, brick materiality, and warehouse-like character felt intuitive. It also aligned well with the sense of honesty, efficiency and calculated rawness that can also be detected in the spectacle brand's product.

Now, the project, on which Cubitts worked closely with studio 51 Architecture, is a mix of exposed period surfaces, refreshed historic details, colour pops, and carefully selected, tactile furniture – which makes the whole at once full of personality, comfortable and of its time.

Beyond style, however, Broughton's vision is indeed one of community, as he sees the new company's home as more than just a production facility or a set of desks. 'When we took on this [project], it was always like, how do we design it so it doesn't feel like an office? Which was why the office bit is a footprint of probably about 15 per cent of the building... The rest of it can be everything else that we want the [brand] to represent. Put the product at the middle. Have production under one roof.'

Enabling human potential through spaces that people want to inhabit in a meaningful way, fostering relationships and collaboration, was also a key driver: 'Our biggest cost by far is people. If you can create an environment where those people can flourish and work more effectively, it will pay for itself 100 times over. I don't think this is indulgent. I think it's necessary.'

In that spirit, everything is arranged around a central, double-height space – a kind of indoor 'plaza' – where a frame-making workshop operates: the business's heart. Also on the ground floor, around this area, are the company's production facilities and optical laboratory, which mix handmade elements and cutting-edge five-axis CNC machines.

A sequence of smaller, more cocooning areas offers space for private consultations, meetings and also room for the large Cubitts archive. Deskspace is upstairs, alongside a generous central kitchen and entertaining area – a fluid space Broughton hopes to use for the Cubitts community, from clients to creatives and locals. More rooms on the top level might develop into apartments for guests and residencies.

Beyond the architects, Cubitts collaborated with more designers, artists and makers from its broad universe, who were involved in different parts of the building, helping to craft a home that feels a collaborative effort – but also a true representation of the brand's ethos as a whole.

'[The paint specialist] chose the [yellow] colour [throughout the interior] to match the yellow from a dress worn by Brigitte Bardot from the late 1960s,' Broughton explains, elaborating on his discussions with paint maker Simon March. Meanwhile, artist David Shrigley created a large mural – a brightly coloured cockerel – on the building's side, marking its creative nature and public-facing intentions.

The mural, the open-door policy and the series of events Cubitts is planning for the next few months all indicate the brand's vision to not only set strong roots in its new home but also be an active part of the neighbourhood.

'There's a little bench built into the front. And we found out from the neighbours that locally, it has been called “the seat of wisdom”. And people just stop there and have a think,' Broughton says. It's an element, and a spirit, he intends not only to maintain, but to build on – fostering creativity and community, hand by hand, in Cubitts' new London home.

cubitts.com

What happens when brutalist and modernist references unite? Coy Yiontis Architects’ Glenblaith house is the answer – a quirky concrete residence in the prestigious Manifold Heights neighbourhood in Victoria, Australia.

Tour Glenblaith, a residence where brutalism and modernism collide

The single-storey residence was designed as a ‘forever home’ for a professional couple. Its façade is smooth, geometric and mysterious, with a timber entry that acts as a moveable screen to slowly unveil its introverted core.

‘The client approached us after following the work of the practice for over ten years,’ explains the firm’s director, George Yiontis. ‘Armed with magazine clippings of our previous projects, there was a clear focus on the courtyard house typology and use of robust, natural materials.

'Concrete and timber were the protagonists in the vision of their new home, integrated with a prominent and lush landscape to satisfy her green thumb and provide a focus in retirement years.'

The home's anchor is the 4.8m oculus, a subtle nod to midcentury design hinting to the fluid curvature of The TWA Flight Center and architect John Lautner’s 1979 Hope Residence. This architectural ode foreshadows the intricate design codes within the rest of the home.

Yiontis notes, ‘The building’s appearance from the street is unassuming but different; the low-lying concrete form is recessed from its fenceless boundary and the lush front yard contrasts the endless stretch of newly volume-built and post-war neighbours with their pitched roofs and fenced, manicured lawns. While conforming to planning guidelines, the house is an anomaly in the streetscape.’

In this context, Glenblaith was conceived to challenge the traditional conventions of suburbia and its landscape. The architecture firm made sure to utilise unorthodox materials and small nooks to keep an element of surprise.

The monolithic concrete columns frame the large atrium-cum-courtyard space, complete with a lily pond, offering a central green utopia with the residence. Beyond this, the house is divided into separate wings; one intimate, one for living and entertaining.

Other unexpected design details include a small alcove in the bedroom, which has been utilised as a desk space, while a window has been artfully barricaded with an intriguing brick pattern, allowing the shadows to dance on the floor below.

Coy Yiontis Architects has redefined suburbia, stepping away from the white-picket-fenced, cookie-cutter mould, and presenting a new benchmark for living: a vibrant garden house that doesn’t shout or demand attention, but is slowly discovered and enjoyed.

coyyiontis.com.au

Your latest cartographic assignment from Blue Crow Media is this map of modern Rome, a guide to over 50 examples from among the eternal city’s best-known and most impressive 20th-century architecture.

Mappa di Roma Moderna has been edited by the architect and author Jacopo Costanzo, while Stefano Perego has contributed original photography, showing these buildings in their contemporary state. The folded map is the newest addition to a long-running series of architectural city maps and monographs – see also BCM’s guide to Brutalist Boston and Concrete Montreal amongst many others.

Rome’s contemporary gems are spliced into a cityscape that’s evolved over millennia, with the outer suburbs better represented with contemporary work. One of the cradles of both modernism and rationalism, the city has an impressive collection of contemporary churches and public infrastructure, as well as large-scale housing by the likes of Carlo Aymonino, Mario De Renzi and Studio Passarelli.

Other highlights include Luigi Moretti's Palazzina Girasole, the Palazzetto dello Sport by the famed structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, and Sir Basil Spence’s British Embassy. Blue Crow’s maps are a must for the modern architectural tourist, providing insight and context into the major 20th century works that have shaped European cities, whilst also highlighting overlooked gems that are due for a revival.

A joint project between artist Rana Begum and Steve Webb of engineering firm Webb Yates sees a pink, fenced sculpture erected in the heart of London. Fabricated in collaboration with open-access workshop BLOQs, with materials lent by Albion Stone, No.1616 Fence (2026) is a timely response to the 2026 London Festival of Architecture's theme, 'Belonging'. The sculpture is reflected and refracted by the wide windows of the central London brutalist architecture landmark Space House, offering a moment of quiet contemplation on what it means to belong, and indeed to not belong.

Explore Rana Begum and Webb Yates' installation for LFA 2026

The piece is the latest in a series of collaborations for Begum and Webb. As with their previous installation in Verbier, No. 1387 Fence, the pair set themselves the challenge of erecting their sculpture with minimal environmental impact, by using a base of materials native to the site. In Verbier, these were logs; in London, Portland stone.

Webb explains: 'So much art has a big lump of concrete under the ground… Here, the context is the City of London and Portland stone. We have a good relationship with Albion Stone, so they lent us a block. The reason [the sculpture is] clamped [to the plinth] is so the block isn't cut or broken [...] there's no welding or cutting, everything can be taken to bits.' He continues, 'We’re trying to do something that brings a lot of joy, but actually isn't wasteful or impactful.'

On the origins of this body of work, Begum explains: 'I think for me, when I'm making (the work), it wasn't about identity, it wasn't about culture, it wasn't about religion. I realised one of the things I've been really driven by is this idea of the infinite. Like, how tall Steve can get this to go, but I love that you can play with the idea of the infinite. You can push the boundaries of some of the limits of engineering as well as this visual splendour that you have with material and sculpture and spaces.'

Begum and Webb are quick to highlight that the making of this sculpture goes beyond just the hands of an artist and an engineer, with many other actors involved; namely, Arnauld Nichols, director of BLOQs (the UK’s largest open-access factory) and Sam Kennedy of Commissioned by You, a studio that operates from the facility. Says Nichols: 'We've been around for 14 years. We call ourselves a pay-as-you-go factory, and we're there to provide anyone access to really good manufacturing equipment and workspace.'

With more than 1,000 small and medium businesses, BLOQs boasts a network of users working at all types of scales. 'Our whole mission is, don't tie people down to creativity, let them do [manufacturing] when they need it. [We offer] machines that are normally unaffordable to small, medium, or even large businesses; you put amazing modern tech together with new or existing talent, and then that brings great stuff.’

This way of working couldn’t have been a better fit for Begum and Webb’s site-specific, temporary installation. 'It's a combination of vision and sign-off and delivery, when no one's doubting each other,' affirms Begum.

With uncharacteristically hot and stormy weather expected for the month of June, when LFA runs, Webb Yates had to conduct climate-related stress tests and even consider the possibility of people climbing on the piece – a totemic-like sculpture that commands a moment of pause, pushing the gaze upwards to see how it contrasts with the giant skyscrapers that enclose it.

On the theme 'Belonging', Webb says: 'Belonging had a slightly sinister edge to me. And I think with the vision, the fencing, our collaboration is [about not belonging]. You know, we're working together across fields and across fences and barriers, and we're going where we don't belong.'

ranabegum.com

webbyates.com

London workspace One Triton Square has just been given a refresh by the architecture studio Piercy&Company, bringing the nine-storey 1990s office building into the 21st century through smart internal arrangements and a considered, timber-led materiality. The project is part of the Regents' Place campus and was developed by British Land and Royal London Asset Management (Arup is leading the building's overall reconfiguration). Within this context, Piercy&Company spearheaded the communal areas' transformation, crafting an interior that is not only fit for contemporary purpose, but also exudes a soft, organic minimalism and a welcome balance.

Discover Piercy&Company’s One Triton Square interior

Piercy&Company worked on the full range of common areas within the tower – from the ground-floor entrance lobby to event, collaboration and breakout spaces throughout. Meeting rooms and shared amenity spaces at Levels 1 and 2 and flexible offices and the Triton Lounge and its adjacent terrace at Level 6 were also included.

The vision was for all these areas to adhere to a single vision – one that prioritises innovation and accessibility within a cohesive 'ecosystem of adaptable spaces', the architects explain.

Fiona Neil, director & head of interiors at the London-based practice, explains: ‘Unrecognisable from its previous life as a trading floor, the shared Level 1 now exudes calm and sophistication, becoming an interconnected sequence of spaces that flow in and out of one another, creating pockets of activity alongside places to rest. We took our lead from the rigour of the original building’s design, as well as from scientific work, and juxtaposed this with more playful and softer moments.'

Throughout the building, crisp, clean geometries have been juxtaposed with soft, organic or engineered, tactile materials. Sensory warmth and richness have been at the forefront of the team's surface selection, in order to craft an interior that encourages both concentration and collaboration.

The material strategy is supported by carefully controlled lighting and careful acoustic treatments everywhere. The project features clear wayfinding designed by Frost Collective.

For its efforts, the building has been rated BREEAM Outstanding for its sustainable architecture approach, while art curation by New Public further enhances the interior's layering. Featured pieces include works by artists such as Anicka Yi, Majeda Clarke, Eleanor Lakelin, Richard McVetis, Blast Studios and makers from Cockpit Studios.

Tim Downes, development director at British Land, said: 'Piercy has really delivered on the brief to humanise the interior of a big, intensely engineered building. Many of the occupiers who will take space at One Triton will spend hours performing highly concentrated periods of deep work, and the ability for them to step away from their screens or lab benches into a place of calm tranquillity to recharge and recalibrate has been a big draw. The ambience of the space hits you the moment you walk in.'

piercyandco.com

AlUla Manara is a proposed new destination for the burgeoning world of Astrotourism. Located in Saudi Arabia’s AlUla region, around 1,100 km to the west of Riyadh, the 22,561km² area has a diverse landscape of lush valleys and sandstone peaks, as well as heritage sites dating back over 2,500 years to the Lihyan and Nabataean kingdoms, with the ancient city of Hegra one of many important locations.

Apart from its history and geography, AlUla is also designated as a Dark Sky Park, an officially certified area (see DarkSky.org) that receives special protection thanks a minimal approach to external lighting and development. As well as benefitting flora and fauna, the designation is a boon for sky-watchers, and Manara is designed to make the most of this remote desert site.

The proposed observatory has been designed by Heatherwick Studio, drawing on surrounding geographic and natural forms as well as the spiralling forms of distant galaxies. The structure will blossom out of the desert floor like an indigenous plant, clad with a specially textured stone that asserts its geographic place.

Looking as if it wouldn’t be out of place in the Dune universe, it’s a typically bravura piece of Heatherwick form-making, one that the region hopes will lure in tourists looking to have an otherworldly experience.

According to Stuart Wood, Executive Partner and Group Leader at Heatherwick Studio, ‘Space observatories are often remote, sterile places, technical outposts that feel distant from the public. We saw an opportunity to dissolve those barriers and create a place where visitors can step inside the wonder of the cosmos: an environment that is both immersive and inspiring, standing alongside the most advanced science of our time.’

The shell-like forms that spiral out from a central hall resemble a cluster of lenses, complete with iris diaphragm like shutters that can close off each viewing gallery. Other facilities will include gallery spaces and immersive exhibitions, as well as a planetarium and restaurant. The plan is for scientific research to also occupy the site.

The project, located close to the Gharameel Nature Reserve and Harrat Uwayrid Reserve, is part of the Saudi Vision 2030. Phillip Jones, Chief Tourism Officer at the Royal Commission for AlUla, describes Manara as having ‘the potential to become a defining symbol of AlUla's future as a destination for exploration, learning and inspiration.’

There’s no word on start or completion date just yet.

ExperienceAlula.com, @ExperienceAlula, RCU.gov.sa
Heatherwick.com, @OfficialHeatherwickStudio

Halle 2 Safety is a welcome slab of austere Swiss modernism, strictly shaped for function yet rich in detail and quality. Designed to house the emergency services at Payerne Air Base, a Swiss Air Force facility just south of Lake Neuchâtel, the building is described by its architects as a ‘high-performance working tool’ as well as a pleasant place to live for teams that need to live on site whilst on duty.

The project was designed by RDR architects, a firm founded in 1993 by Jacques Richter and Ignacio Dahl Rocha and initially based only in Buenos Aires. Today, it also has outposts in Madrid and Lausanne, and it was the latter team, led by Kenneth Ross, Antoine Barc, and Frédéric Comby, who have overseen the delivery of this substantial 4,000 m² complex.

Halle 2’s main function is to house the fire service and rescue units, with living accommodation alongside the hangars and garages for the base’s fire tenders and associated vehicles. The building has to provide for about 100 personnel at any one time, with all the accompanying space for logistics, training and administration in addition to temporary living spaces.

Halle 2 is an unashamedly authentic representation of the oft-quoted maxim ‘form follows function’. Long and low, with supergraphic signage that leaves no question about what happens within, the structure represents, in RDR’s words, ‘architectural restraint, environmental sustainability, and spatial quality.’

The new building brings together the functionality contained within a number of obsolete older buildings, consolidating the airbase’s needs in a single structure and follows a new Halle 3 for aircraft maintenance.

In addition to garaging and maintenance bays in the central hall, complete with high ceilings for emergency service vehicles, Halle 2 provides accommodation for the base’s Rescue Standby Unit, including command areas and living spaces. Access to the vehicles is prioritised for emergency situations, a consideration that also resulted in wide corridors and the all-important inclusion of pole access to the garage area.

The large spans are made possible by glue-laminated timber beams and steel trusses, along with concrete cores for the accommodation blocks. Internal walls are formed from rammed earth to give the structure greater environmental performance, while the whole building is swathed in a ventilated perforated aluminium envelope, with individual windows rather than expansive glazing.

This nod to the aeronautical environment also cuts down on glare for approaching aircraft. On the roof, around 1,600m² of photovoltaic panels supplement the energy requirements of the building.

‘Halle 2 constitutes a high-performance working tool designed to meet both current and future security needs of the Payerne Air Base, as well as the evolving military infrastructure and the introduction of new combat equipment,’ RDR say. The building continues the long tradition of austere but finely resolved and beautifully built Swiss infrastructure.

RDRarchitectes.com, @RDR.lausanne

The aspirational charms of remote living are laid bare in gestalten’s new monograph, Northern Exposure. Although the blurb promises a ‘shift away from rustic clichés toward an architecture of profound ecological responsiveness and sensory clarity,’ we all know that monographs like this exist to soothe the existential angst of everyday life by transporting us to a warm, wood-lined cocoon perched on the edge of a pristine wilderness.

In this respect, the book does not disappoint. Across 32 projects, the reader is treated to sylvan retreats, back-to-basics construction and neo-vernacular experiments. Some will be familiar from our pages, like Bishop McDowell’s Lawrencetown House on the Nova Scotian coast and Quinzhee Architecture’s Chez Léon retreat in Charlevoix, and you’ll certainly recognise many of the featured firms, which include Omar Gandhi, Pierre Thibault and Mackay-Lyons Sweetapple.

When assembled in the context of a monograph, the FOMO is almost overwhelming, with endless sylvan vistas framed by picture windows, kitchen countertops that overlook rocky shores and decks beneath dark skies and wide horizons.

The editors describe the featured projects as representing a ‘shift away from rustic clichés toward an architecture of profound ecological responsiveness and sensory clarity,’ and in practice this comes across as a new form of rural minimalism. It’s not an architecture of white walls and rough concrete, but of natural materials, modest proportions and a desire to be more attuned to the landscape instead of dominating it.

Often the sense of splendid isolation is an exaggerated one, created by careful siting and orientation, bolstered by the photographic framing, be it on the ground or from the air. Nevertheless, these contextual images give a sense of the scale of the Canadian landscape, emphasising how important it is for rural architecture to tread as lightly as possible on the surrounding environment.

Northern Exposure: The New Canadian Cabin, €50 / £45 / $75, Gestalten.com, @Gestalten

In a new Wallpaper* summer series, architect Carlo Ratti explores Italy through the ordinary objects that define daily life. First up: the humble mosquito coil, a lesson in design, climate and the art of living outdoors.

Carlo Ratti's 'Objectify' explores the mosquito coil

Summer has arrived. And with summer come the mosquitoes – buzz, buzz, buzz. From the plains or the marshes, from the seaside or the mountains, they turn up punctually at every outdoor party, like uninvited guests. And with climate change, it is easy to imagine they will keep knocking at our doors with ever-greater insistence.

The Anglo-Saxon approach to the summer mosquito is one of total war: seal the windows, lower the blinds, and turn the house into an artificial lung with air conditioning. In Italy, however, the response is different, more ambiguous and more theatrical. The windows are thrown open, the evening comes in, and the house becomes porous. It is a kind of climatic diplomacy, where the boundary between the living room and the night is constantly negotiated rather than rigidly defended. After experimenting with citronella candles (for the environmentalists) and anointing ourselves with chemical repellents (for those who trust in progress), lo and behold, we fall back on it: the mosquito coil.

Its origins date back to the second half of the nineteenth century in Venice, a place that knows a thing or two about mosquitoes. It was here that a pharmacist, Giovanni Battista Zampironi, began experimenting with powders made from Caucasian chrysanthemum, shaping them into small insect-repellent cones that burned slowly for about forty minutes. It was a start, but it required constant attention: every half hour, no matter how intimate the conversation, you had to light another one.

Then came the geometric breakthrough, imported from Japan. Yuki, the wife of an incense manufacturer, noticed a snake coiled on the ground and realized that by winding the material into a flat spiral, the smoke could last up to seven hours. Her name has largely been forgotten, but her insight is now a global standard, from Tokyo to Lagos, from São Paulo to Milan. In Italy, the object became a household name derived from its creator: the zampirone.

We might say its design is radical and minimalist. Once lit, it begins to work as an environmental filter, but also as a clock: the time of the evening is measured by the amount of spiral left and by that small ember flickering in the dark. The smoke it slowly releases is a thin line that redraws the boundary between humans and mosquitoes, between the living room and a wild night of bites.

We might also say that the zampirone is a typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise. It does not build a barrier, but creates a temporary condition of habitability. It is the opposite of the house promoted by the Modern Movement, born from the hygienist obsession that emerged after the 1918 pandemic and led to a sterilizing ideology: homes sealed against external agents, regulated access, the elimination of disorder. The zampirone, on the other hand, taps into an older tradition of coexisting with nature in all its forms, itchy or otherwise.

And perhaps that is precisely why it still feels so current, and so beloved. Until the fuse reaches its end. And then… boom! A new explosion of mosquitoes.

About 'Objectify' – a summer series from Italy by Carlo Ratti

Italy’s design canon has been told many times. The Bialetti moka pot, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, the Arco floor lamp: you know the list, and so does every airport bookshop and first-year design student. This column will discuss, poke, investigate, prod, ridicule and beatify the less glamorous Italian objects. They are the ones you ought to know, so that when you visit Italy, or spot apparitions of it on a friend’s social media, you can smugly point out: “Did you know the mosquito coil is a masterpiece of Italian design? The condom? The motorway toll transponder?” Objects so ordinary that Italians walk past them, or handle them every day, without registering that someone, with a mellifluous surname, designed them.

Proust wrote a seven-volume novel because a small cake dipped in tea, the madeleine, unlocked an involuntary flood of memory. For followers of the Italian version of this column, published weekly in Il Sole 24 Ore, the nation’s favourite Sunday read, perhaps these objects will have a similar effect. For you, anglophone readers peering at this somewhere between Rummidge and Euforia, they offer something else: beach conversation topics, an eye trained on unexpected places, and perhaps a few new madeleines for when you visit the peninsula yourself. After all, objects are never just objects. As the great Milanese designer Achille Castiglioni of Arco-floor-lamp fame once declared: “Objects should keep us company.” Especially during this scorching summer.

carlorattiassociati.com

Communing with its tropical jungle context, this new patio house in Costa Rica was conceived as an experimentation on its time-honed typology. The project, created by Mexican architect Manuel Cervantes for a private client, is a personal home but also an architectural exploration, seeking to blend the warm comforts of a residence with the leafy landscape of its setting – all, centred on the idyllic waters of a pool set right at the heart of the design.

Tour this sculptural patio house in Costa Rica

True to its patio identity, the house is arranged around a generous central courtyard. This open-air space becomes the heart of the home, connecting physically and visually different parts of the project, from creating a flow between al fresco rooms and circulation areas to bringing them all together around its blue swimming pool.

The ancient Roman impluvium provided ample inspiration, Cervantes explains: 'The courtyard acts as a climatic, spatial, and social condenser, collecting light, air, reflections, and human activity at the centre of the composition.'

The home's internal layout is organised around this central space – each 'wing' housing a distinct family of functions, and each of these contained within an interconnected, yet somewhat independent, 'pavilion.' So, rather than journeying between rooms, the residents are invited to cross thresholds and transition through different internal experiences as they inhabit the residence.

Spanning over 400 sq m in total, the project includes two generous living spaces, housed in two discrete volumes placed opposite each other. The other two 'pavilions' contain private areas – five large bedrooms with an en suite bathroom each. Everything is accommodated on a single ground level, with just an underground garage tucked under one of the volumes.

The structure's tactile textures – Pacific cedar, Nicaraguan brick, and chukum plaster – not only bring an organic feel to this very contemporary house but also connect it to its setting; they are all local materials and building techniques, perfected through centuries of indigenous skills. It is one more way for this private, 21st-century home, to be linked meaningfully to its green, natural island setting.

The architect writes: 'The project seeks to recover certain spatial values deeply rooted in Latin American domestic architecture. The courtyard, the shaded corridor, the thick wall, the intermediate space, and the constant presence of nature are reinterpreted through a contemporary architectural language. The objective is not nostalgia, but continuity; not the reproduction of historical forms, but the preservation of relationships between climate, culture, and habitation.'

And while a swimming pool at its heart might scream 'luxury' in some settings, here, the feature feels organic and entirely of its place. The architect adds: 'The pool is conceived not as an isolated amenity but as an extension of the central court itself, a reflective plane that amplifies light and reinforces the collective character of the house.'

'Emerging from this surface, two inhabitable pyramids introduce a sculptural dimension to the composition. These elements function simultaneously as landscape, architecture, and infrastructure, blurring conventional distinctions between object and building.'

A new waterfront house in Miami Beach exemplifies the region’s sun and sea lifestyle. Designed by KODA (Kean Office for Design and Architecture), a local practice set up by architect Wesley Kean, the Pine Tree Residence enjoys its own private water frontage, creating a sanctuary away from the hustle of downtown and the densely arranged residential context.

Explore this new Miami waterfront house

Kean and his team have divided the 6,350 sq. ft residence into a series of zones, starting with the public/private street frontage, then moving through into an internal garden courtyard before leading out onto the rear deck. This sequence of space not only creates an interior realm for the client but helps cross breezes filter from the water through the entire house.

Arranged on an east-west axis, the house is set across two floors. The ground (first) floor has a processional entrance that rises up from street level and the two-car garage, beneath one of two oversailing bedrooms wings to the main entrance. This living, dining and lounge area is the heart of the house, flanked by glazed walls that open onto the outdoor rear terrace.

A separate family room also has direct access to this terrace, along with an outdoor kitchen and the pool area, beyond which lies the waterfront. Upstairs, the twin bedroom wings wrap around this internal landscape, which is densely planted with tropical specimens to create a rich backdrop.

‘Rather than orienting every space outward to the water, the design balances expansive views with a quiet interior landscape that anchors daily life,’ say the architects, ‘This approach creates a layered living experience where architecture, nature, and family life converge around a shared central garden.’

The ‘west bedroom wing’ contains three ensuite bedrooms as well as a shared balcony, utility room and ‘loft’ seating area (separate staff accommodation is located downstairs adjacent to the garage). A corridor links the two wings, past the staircase, to the principal suite, which incorporates extensive wardrobe space, a private waterfront balcony and direct access to a study/media room (that can also double up as another bedroom).

Downstairs, there is also a separate outdoor courtyard on the west side of the plot, accessible immediately upon entering the house – this adds to the sense of a continuous relationship between architecture and landscape. It also helps orientate the visitor to the house, with views of the water beyond and the sense of the accommodation contained within the upper levels.

‘The courtyard becomes both threshold and destination, an outdoor room that welcomes guests while orienting them within the spatial organization of the home,’ say KODA.

KODAMiami.com, @KODA_Miami

Concéntrico 2026 launched in Logroño on a scorching hot summer’s day (18 June) – yet the crowds braved the 30-degree-plus temperatures, arriving in droves to stroll through its 22 installations and meet their creators, an international mix of architecture and design studios, who were present to discuss their concepts and issues around urban space and public access – the architecture festival's core concern. The growing engagement the festival gets from both visitors and locals every year (this, its 12 edition since it was founded in 2015, being the biggest ever) is a mark of success for any design fair.

The achievement feels all the more notable when when you factor in that this is not Venice, London or New York; Logroño is the capital of La Rioja, a small town of 150,000 core inhabitants, amid countryside just south of the Basque Country (the nearest airport is a 1.5-hour drive away).

Explore the 22 installations at Concéntrico 2026

The status of Concéntrico 2026 is particularly thanks to the drive and fortitude of a single man – its director, Javier Peña Ibañez. Tirelessly working with local authorities, sponsors, schools, creative councils and architecture and design practices across the world, the Logroño-born architect founded and runs the festival every year, his ambition fuelling its success.

'Concéntrico emerged from the desire to make architecture accessible again, not as an abstract discipline but as something real, physical and collective,' he told us in an interview previewing the festival, earlier in the month. 'One thing that still defines the festival today is that everything happens at a 1:1 scale. There are no models or speculative renderings; the projects are built directly in the city. People can enter them, touch them, play with them, ignore them or completely reinvent how they are used.'

Now, the festival takes over sites across town – from locations in established parks and sports grounds to in-between or neglected sites awaiting redevelopment, and even the ruins of existing structures. Every studio (or group of architects) is assigned a site each, proceeding to craft a pavilion or intervention, which are then erected for the town to explore and to instigate global conversation. This year's installations tick all the boxes – they are open and playful, colourful and thought-provoking. Importantly, they are available and accessible to all, and Logroño embraces them.

2026 participants, AAU Anastas' Elias and Yousef Anastas, highlight this accessibility and communal spirit as a key driver to the festival's success: 'What we really appreciated about Concéntrico is how unpretentious it feels. It feels connected to the city and its inhabitants. The installations have in common that they are all defined by their relationship to their surroundings- sometimes harmonious, challenging, unexpected, contradictory, or useful. It is the collectiveness of all these interventions that ultimately becomes Concéntrico. Together, they transform the experience of the city in a way that no single project could achieve on its own. Achieving this is both brilliant and incredibly difficult, so credit to the organisers for making it happen.'

Concéntrico 2026 trends

Concéntrico 2026's contributors include 2026 Pritzker Prize winner Smiljan Radić Clarke, AAU Anastas, 2050+, Future Firm, DC DF, PPAA and Taelon7 (whose past work includes the new Accra pavilion Limbo Engawa). We explored their efforts – and more – to bring you the trends and highlights of what the architecture world is thinking and feeling through the festival's output.

Architecture and the senses

Do you think architecture can be predominantly experienced through the eyes? Think again. In Concéntrico 2026, smell, touch and hearing played a key part, with installations expanding creatively to include all senses through a number of designs – making engaging with architecture through one's senses a big trend in this year's iteration.

The aforementioned team – AAU Anastas – are among them; their piece, Cathedral for One, explores not only building with stone – one of the studio's key fascinations at the moment – but also offers an intimate cocoon made of marble where visitors can enter and listen to an audio piece by Hania Rani. More aural delights across the festival include Sounds of Architecture Records' Concéntrico vinyl (the architectural label is producing an album dedicated to Logroño by recording sounds of the city).

A mature garden developed by IC 98 and Suomi/Koivisto Architects over a year in the ruins of a dilapidated house offers both blissful calm and a joyful blend of smells, from various floral and herb mixes throughout.

Meanwhile, while many of the designs on show invite the touch – Terroir by Boltshauser Architekten and Garbizu Collar, made of earth, is a key one – few bring the warmth and sense of participation quite the same way as Dancing on Architecture's El Plano Latente, which invites passersby to dance around it, proposing walking as urban choreography, and will eventually be set aflame to celebrate the summer solstice.

Nature and climate

No surprises that climate is at the forefront of the participating architects' minds. This is expressed through several projects focusing on nature and gardens – such as the IC 98 and Suomi/Koivisto Architects scheme mentioned above. The library garden by Sahra Hersi also touches on gardening but from a different angle - urging the local community to take part, but centred, undoubtedly, on nature and planting.

Hersi said at the opening: 'We workshoped with the local residents to see what community garden means to them. Some thought of it as a balcony, a garden for their mother, a play garden. So, I developed this idea of the shed. Some of the flora, the birds, the bees and the fish that were present in all of the gardens [in the workshop] were imagined here. There will be a seed library. The idea is that this space will be a space for people to come and get free seeds, and then the seeds will be spread out across the city or the town.'

Natural materials abound too. Apart from Terroir, there is also Raumlabor's Hot, Cool, Soft, which utilises a natural fabric roof to create its own climate zone within the dense city centre. Shade, Breeze, Cooling by Noof Group looks at similar issues, addressing the thermal vulnerability of public spaces by crafting a cool mini garden with its own micro-climate.

Play

Walking through and sitting are available and indeed necessary at most of the exhibits, a part of what makes Concéntrico a highly participatory, bodily festival. A strong group among the installations actively encourage pay within the displays too.

Smiljan Radic Clarke's Circus piece places the visitor into a miniature, typical circus tent, where a film showing performers doing their acts encourages guests to feel part of the activity. At Summer Shapes Memories by the Ebro River, boats on rollers invite visitors to climb on and imitate a boat ride in its waters – a typical summer memory of many of the local inhabitants in the region.

Frontones Danzantes (Dancing Pelota Walls) by 2050+ revives the collective spirit of Basque pelota, offering the space for contemporary players to take part and make their own games. A similar spirit appears at Sidelined: A Game To Rethink Togetherness by Amanda Pinatih and Gabriel Fontana, who use a series of exercises with local students to highlight the inclusive nature of sport.

Taelon7's Juergen Benson-Strohmayer, whose installation offers rest and respite to shoppers on a busy street, says of the festival's tactile and dynamic nature: 'Concéntrico is special because of the opportunity to realise something physical with a lot of interaction and engagement on the ground all the way from the production, engaging with the teams, the landscapes of Rioja but also, then in the setting up and then the city, how people work with and interact with the structures that we built. I have heard it's always different.'

More Concéntrico 2026 highlights

Standalone pieces across town took over anything from car parks and regular pavements to the plaza outside the Rafael Moneo-designed city hall. Looking beyond trends, these are some of the Concéntrico 2026 highlights.

Edge Assemblies by Taelon7

Architecture Ritual

Los Sabados by TŁO

Resonancia by PPAA

La Serrana de San Barnabe by Matilde Cassani Studio

Temblores de Superficie. Vino Y Smithson by Bear

Escalera de la Gigueña by Future Firm

Transtation by Parabase

Bayn by Farisalo-Saimi

Concéntrico 2026 runs 18-23 June 2026 in Logroño, Spain

concentrico.es

They say dogs look like their owners. But what about houses? When Madeleine Blanchfield Architects was approached to craft a residence for an artist and his family, the studio leaned into sculpture to mould a contemporary Australian house on the outskirts of Sydney. Raw and rooted in its hillside context, the building is cubic and angular, with echoes of brutalist architecture, but softened by locally sourced, earthy-toned Krause ‘Bronte’ bricks and oak, and is devoid of finishes.

Step inside a sculptural house in Australia

Sculptor Aaron Crothers worked with the architect to create the three-storey house that evokes an artwork itself – and is fittingly titled 'Sculpted' – nodding to the owner’s work in ceramic and timber. Collaborating closely with his architect, Crothers even added the personalised finishing touch, carving the house number into a raw brick before it was laid within the wall.

‘The main conceptual principle was to build a home with zero superfluous layers,’ says practice director Madeleine Blanchfield. ‘The project explores materiality in its rawest form while taking on board our core values of solar-passive design, rigorous planning and finessed detailing, while delivering the same joie de vivre we seek in all our work.’

The team was sensitive to the site's context too. The intention was to create a space that drew on its location (the ancestral home of the Cammeraygal People of the Eora Nation) while also acknowledging neighbouring buildings. Blanchfield explains: ‘The home is immersed in the native landscape and [gives the feeling of] living outdoors when opened up. Light floods in from all directions throughout the day.’

The residence is accessed from the ground level. The first floor hosts the kitchen, equipped with a pink ‘Patagonia’ honed quartzite island and bench, as well as the dining and living areas. A second lounge to the south showcases the building's high ceilings and houses a monolithic concrete fireplace at its core. A terrace stretches out from this part, shaded by the canopy of a tree, the sun trickling through the leaves occasionally to cast golden beams across the interiors.

The concrete floor acts as a structural foundation, anchoring the building to the ground, while the brick walls are exposed, bearing the house's 'bones'. ‘It is very unusual for the slab to be the finished floor, and there is no room for error,' says Blanchfield. ‘After the pour, the wind blew gum leaves onto the concrete in the girls’ bedrooms. Nature’s accidental marks became akin to a ceramicist’s intentional stamping process, and are embraced as part of the house’s story.’

The sculptural touches don’t end there. Each interior furnishing is a considered choice – from the Michel Boyer brutalist coffee table to a vintage ‘Le Bambole’ B+B Italia sofa. A Max Lamb lounge chair, an ‘Albireo’ sofa from De La Espada, and a daybed by Skupa finish the living room.

The garage has become home to Crothers’ sculpture studio, a place for him to hone his craft, such as his new ‘Interconnected’ series of stoneware ceramic sculptures. This entire residential design is a thoughtful example of how a house can reflect not only its context or a sole architect's formal experimentation, but also the person who resides there. Sculpted House perfectly echoes the creative, collaborative spirit that birthed it.

madeleineblanchfield.com

The ocean breeze from Tuscany’s Romito Coast cloaks the Castel Sonnino in a mysterious veil. The building’s origins date back to the 16th century when the Medici family built a watchtower to overlook and protect the town of Livorno. After centuries as a military garrison, the castle finally became a residence at the end of the 1800s.

Tour this restored Italian castle

At the time, Baron Sidney Sonnino was looking for a summer home that allowed for secluded intimacy with the sea and its surrounding context. The Italian statesman fell in love with the location and decided the watchtower would be his eponymous home – he now rests here forever, his tomb located in a natural cave overlooking the cliffs.

After Sonnino’s passing, the castle remained closed for years – until now. A recent restoration led by Tono architectural and interior design studio has revived the mysterious coastal property.

The project, which was officially completed in 2025, was spearheaded by the Florence- and Livorno-based studio that wanted to give the windswept walls a new lease of life. His aim? To reimagine the castle through a contemporary lens.

The exterior remains historic. Perched on a hill, the building's façade offers textural details of stone, lime and travertine. However, beneath its regal, period shell, its interior is far from dated. The Italian design studio carefully tiptoed between old and new, restoring the existing Venetian terrazzo and marble flooring, and repairing the bastion, from where guards would once have watched out for enemies.

The sea is visible from every room. Its lapis lazuli shades offer organic inspiration for the internal colour palette, seamlessly blending the interior and exterior. Windows frame the views, while the space is accessorised with carefully selected antiques and custom-made furniture.

The castle’s restoration has reignited its mysterious and whimsical quality, adding energy to its long-overlooked spaces to bring Castel Sonnino into the 21st century.

tono-design.com

Belonging. The more I have sat with this year's London Festival of Architecture theme, the more I have realised that much of my life and work over the last decade has been shaped by precisely that search – for something I, at times, feel, and something I am continually looking for.

Architecture has given me the opportunity to work across many places, but London remains home. While much of what I share now is rooted here, projects, conversations and experiences come from beyond, from Venice, New York, the Caribbean and elsewhere. Places that have shaped my understanding of culture, exchange, memory and belonging.

These thoughts are also a reflection on London as a global city, a springboard and a place of encounter – a place where people, ideas, traditions and ambitions from around the world meet, overlap and evolve. A place that has provided the foundation for a practice that now works internationally, supported by studios here and in New York, and by collaborators, clients and communities across multiple continents. They are, in many ways, an expanded reflection on that search – on the qualities that make belonging possible.

Jayden Ali discusses the idea of belonging

I will start with a story from this year's Venice Art Biennale, where I found myself taking in Lubaina Himid's contribution to this year's British Pavilion. For those unfamiliar with the exhibition, Himid's presentation centred on painting. Large-scale works that reflected on memory, identity, movement and making, and which continued her decades-long exploration of Black life.

There was a strength to the ensemble of paintings born from the relatively solitary pursuit of mining a lifetime's vulnerability, resistance, experience, and observation to churn them into images of resilience on a vast scale. Multiple, high-saturation paintings, some 8m wide, offered a meditation on what curator and writer, and now Studio Museum in Harlem director, Thelma Golden, encourages us to focus on: ‘the way in which people make work’.

Despite the obvious skill needed to work at such a large scale, the work’s potency comes from inserting into the white void of Venice a vision not only of what could be, but of what is – a complexity embodied in the shifting of a predominant Euro-centric lens to bring into frame the obvious, but that which is often overlooked, that Black people make and have always made.

For me, this engagement with Lubaina's work frames a broader conversation about my own and an examination of some of the qualities that I think are critical to belonging – both for myself and for others:

• Reciprocal dialogues across time
• Multiple ways of making
• The reframing of ‘the centre’

In other words:

• Antiphony
• Polyphony
• Polycentrism

Antiphony

Recently, we [at JA Projects, founded by Jayden Ali] established a studio in New York, which currently covers North America and the Caribbean. The latter geography is a place where I am currently artistic director for an upcoming major theatrical performance.

It is a commission that has brought me into dialogue with the work of Kamau Brathwaite, Barbados' cultural north star, credited with helping give the island and its people a distinctly Caribbean voice rooted in a Black Atlantic sonic tradition – one where cadence, rhythm and performance are deployed in challenge to inherited power structures and imposed ways of speaking, writing and being.

Much of Brathwaite's writing is concerned with questions of arrival, becoming and belonging – questions shaped by a Caribbean history of displacement, migration and survival. And in his work The Arrivants, he has written about those who have come before us.

In my own Venice [Architecture Biennale] moment in 2023, I found myself actively tuning in to the presence of those who had occupied the British Pavilion before me. In addressing the neo-colonial building sitting within the Giardini – representing a nation whose wealth and influence were profoundly shaped by empire – I wanted to build upon how Black and Brown people had occupied space before.

In particular, my work Thunder and Simsek – the steel-pan sculptures that stood within the portico and were fabricated with Jamps and HS Design Studio – was inspired, in part, by Chris Ofili's intervention for the British Pavilion 20 years earlier, in which three flagpoles flew an artwork entitled Union Black. Both mine and Ofili's work were in dialogue and joined their mission to challenge institutions of power. My resonance to, and inspiration from, Ofili's work was an exercise in antiphony – call and response – which the scholar Paul Gilroy defined in his seminal work The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness as a principal formal feature of Black musical traditions.

Polyphony

At the studio, we are interested in collective living – in how people come together to build, maintain and continually remake our shared constructed world, which we understand to be constituted through both immaterial and material components: stories, rituals, performances, agreements and social contracts, as much as buildings, objects, infrastructures and landscapes. These domains are not separate, but mutually reinforcing.

If antiphony concerns itself with a dialogue across time, then it is the idea of polyphony that concerns itself with a dialogue across difference. Much of our work is about listening, seeing and feeling those expressions of difference with a view to understanding how architecture might create conditions in which they can continue to coexist, collide and occasionally find resonance with one another.

Within this, we are particularly interested in moments of cultural confluence. Much of that interest can be traced back to east London, where I grew up, and where, before I was an architect, I was a playworker. For a number of years, I worked at Cherry Trees School in east London, supporting children with complex behavioural needs through the construction of novel play environments – those powered by stories, sound and smoke, as much as by physical props like costumes.

My job was, in many ways, to challenge the power dynamics imposed upon these young people from an early age by the forces of society and the city. It required creative responses to entrenched ideas of exclusion, permission and access, but importantly it taught me to pay attention, acknowledge the contribution of others, be responsive and ‘build’ in the round. When I later studied at the Cass [the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University], in the Free Unit under Robert Mull, Catrina Beevor and Peter Carl, I found a similar spirit. The premise of the unit was that students could define their own interests and develop their own methodologies. Architecture was not presented as a fixed discipline. It remains the basis of how I practice and, also, how I teach.

Many of us creatives and those involved in architecture and planning know the excitement that comes with seeing an idea move from imagination into reality. My hope is that by embracing and designing for the full suite of spatial conditions, value can also be found in the exchange of knowledge and the building of collective confidence. That making becomes something expansive and empowering, challenging inherited assumptions about who gets to participate.

Polycentrism

More recently, two things coalesced at around the same time. The first was attending a conversation by J Kameron Carter at the Swiss Institute in New York as part of a public programme connected to Nolan Oswald Dennis' exhibition ‘overturns’.

The discussion reflected upon the distinction between a circle and an ellipse. The circle, with its single centre, became a way of thinking about systems organised around singular authority. The ellipse offered something different, a geometry structured through multiple points of focus.

Around the same time, I first encountered the text The Theater of Refusal: Black Art and Mainstream Criticism, in which Golden reflected upon the relationship between margin and centre. She wrote: 'Even though I feel that the whole margin/centre debate has been adequately theorised by cultural critics from bell hooks to a whole slate of poststructuralists, I think the salient debate, as we enter the 1990s, is going to be the debate of the centre of the margin… Nobody has adequately talked about the way in which the margin itself has become a hugely conflicted site.'

While reflecting on a different period in time, Golden's observation has stayed with me. Taken together, these two reflections prompted me to think differently about where our work sits in relation to power, authority and influence, and I enjoy it most when it challenges those distinctions.

In our studio, we are inspired by artists, architects and world builders who have acted in that spirit, opened up dialogue and brought collective reading in how we understand the world. It is an influence that has resulted in us overtly considering gathering as a type of infrastructure – ie, that the way the city can support the movement of knowledge and offer care, opportunity, solidarity and belonging is as important as the way more conventional infrastructures support the movement of people, water, energy and goods.

Much of my work and mission is driven by a desire to afford these softer forms of city-making the same seriousness that architecture has traditionally reserved for physical infrastructure. The quality of ‘belonging’ itself can be understood through this lens – as something that must be built, maintained and cared for over time, supported by a network of relationships, rituals, institutions and spaces that allow people to recognise themselves within a wider collective.

These conditions have always been relevant to architecture, yet this remains a disruptive proposition to systems that assume authority resides within established centres and flows outwards. Instead, it suggests something closer to polycentrism. That the centre depends upon your lens, and perhaps this is where antiphony (listening across time) and polyphony (listening across difference) ultimately lead.

Polycentrism asks us to recognise that neither history nor the present is organised around a single point of view. Cities are richer than that; London is richer than that. And belonging, I think, emerges through our capacity to recognise multiple centres of value, knowledge, meaning and influence existing simultaneously alongside one another.

The text is an edited version of Jayden Ali's Murray Lecture, kicking off the London Festival of Architecture 2026 through an exploration of the 2026 theme of 'Belonging', and delivered on 1 June 2026 at the London Centre

The National Museum of Finland in Helsinki was always supposed to be expanded, says Samuli Miettinen, founding partner of JKMM Architects and lead designer of the museum’s gleaming new extension due to be inaugurated in spring 2027. Even the famous architect trio of Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen, who designed the original museum, which was completed in 1916 and built in the National Romantic Style, had 'drawn plans to expand the wings and add a courtyard,' he explains. There were other projects too, including a brutalist architecture extension by prominent Finnish architect Aarno Ruusuvuori in the mid-1980s, Miettinen continues, but the resources and capital were never there, and the plans floundered.

Tour the refreshed National Museum of Finland in Helsinki

'So there have been decades of plans, but now it’s finally happening,' says Miettinen of this once-in-a-generation commission located across the road from Alvar Aalto’s Finlandia Hall and won by JKMM Architects in an anonymous competition in 2019. The expansion will see the museum gain, among other things, a new fully glazed entrance pavilion with a restaurant and art installations, new exhibition spaces for temporary shows and events, a glazed courtyard that acts a link between the old and new building and a new access route into the formerly enclosed garden and museum; the idea is that visitors and residents will have plenty of public spaces they can enjoy without having to pay for a museum entrance ticket.

About 90 per cent of the new extension is below ground, explains Miettinen, but the ten per cent that is above is a bright and airy 600 sq m sculptural pavilion with a 43m-wide saucer-shaped roof that appears to float above 5m-tall undulating glass walls. With its relatively low height and the fact that its connection routes to the historic museum building (which has also undergone a refurb and collection redesign) are all below ground, the new pavilion is low enough and discrete enough that it 'adapts well to the older construction,' says Miettinen with a smile, 'despite its controversial shape.'

The spherical structure is intended as a forward-looking 21st-century counterpoint to the ornate historic building it stands next to, and its pioneering structural engineering underlines this fact. 'The pavilion’s bowl roof weighs 1,400 tonnes and is the same diameter as the Roman Pantheon but stands on a pedestal of reinforced concrete three metres wide,' explains Miettinen, likening it to 'a water tower structure.’

The pedestal sits inside a slightly asymmetrically placed perforated golden box of bronze aluminium at the pavilion’s heart, which also conceals lift shafts, a service kitchen, and technical installations. The suspended ceiling inside the pavilion is covered in 5,000 handmade white ceramic tiles in the shape of hearts, clovers and crosses that weigh 20kg each and took a year to create – they are cast using plaster moulds and subsequently fired at temperatures above 1,100°C – and assemble into a pattern that looks at once organic and geometric.

The curved ceiling tiles and the roof’s globe-like shape radiate a celestial quality and 'reference our world, symbolising a universal message of tenderness, hope and a better future,' says Miettinen. If the original National Museum, which was built while Finland was still part of the Russian Empire, was symbolic of Finnish aspirations for independence, this pavilion and its handcrafted dynamic ceiling represent an evolution of what it is to be Finnish, says Miettinen, a less homogeneous identity in which 'people from different cultures and backgrounds can find themselves.'

Miettinen refers to the extension project as ‘quarry architecture’ as the concrete pedestal is anchored to ancient granite bedrock 30m down and much of the technical installations, storage spaces and services are carved into it too. Fittingly, as you travel down from the ground floor of this new airy, light-filled ‘public piazza’, things get darker, and the two new black box exhibition spaces (measuring 840 sq m and 270 sq m respectively) are stained with black fire protection paint inside and out.

The material palette of the project is rich yet also deliberately minimal. Brass and bronze aluminium are featured in beautiful touches; the former on the handrails in the new extension; the latter to luxuriant effect on all the bathroom stall walls and doors in the new pavilion. Timber too is used effectively in different hues; painted black on the new temporary exhibition space walls and left untouched in the museum shop lined in spruce.

On the journey down to the exhibition spaces, you can sit on informal auditorium-type seating covered in light green woven horse tail hair, 'the most durable fabric in the world,' says partner and interior architect at JKMM Päivi Meuronen. By spring, the lobby will also be filled with benches carved out of the elm trees felled to make way for the extension and then carefully charred and painted. Like all the interior architecture in the extension, and many of the design elements, these have been designed by the 15-strong in-house interiors team at JKMM led by Meuronen.

As is often the case with JKMM projects, integrated art also features prominently and is used to add layers, ornament and depth to the project. There are two nature-themed mosaics by Finnish artist Tuula Lehtinen in the foyer that feature 92,000 tiles made and glazed by hand by the artist and her team in the industrial city of Tampere, 170km north of Helsinki. Continuing with this theme of Finnish arts and crafts are the 103 bespoke white pendant luminaires placed at different heights above the restaurant and designed to 'create a smaller and more intimate scale so you don’t have the feeling that you are sitting in a big hall,' says Meuronen.

Designed after the lily of the valley (Finland’s national flower) by Finnish glass artist Milla Vaahtera in collaboration with JKMM, each one is made by hand — and therefore unique — in the historic Nuutajärvi glass factory in western Finland that has been active since the 1790s. 'Almost everybody in Finland collected these flowers when they were kids and would put them in their pocket so they could preserve their beauty,' says Vaahtera. 'We wanted to provide a humble but collective experience of beauty that people would remember from their childhood.'

kansallismuseo.fi

jkmm.fi

This lakeside retreat's authors, Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis of yh2 architecture, have long experience of building in the Potton region of Québec. The architectural design studio, which was founded in 1994, takes a workshop-led approach, minimising the number of projects it takes on in order to dedicate itself to the holistic scope of each individual building, regardless of scale or programme. The award-winning studio has also worked in India, but its speciality is creating residential works that feel embedded in their surroundings.

Explore a lakeside retreat on the shores of Lake Memphremagog

The Counter-Slope House is a case in point. Set on a sloping site in a prime location on the shores of Lake Memphremagog, the house is embedded in the hillside, with a multi-functional windowless basement (containing stores, a gym and a cinema room) set beneath an expansive ground floor.

Here you’ll find an open-plan living area, with floor-to-ceiling glazing that takes advantage of the sloping site to make the room feel immersed in the forests at the water’s edge. With polished stone floors and exposed timber beams, one half of this floor is given over to living, with the other half occupied by the main bedroom suite. The staircase bisects the two areas, while the lake-facing façade is edged with a generous terrace.

The terrace includes a spa and dining area, with the cantilevered upper floor providing a sheltered courtyard in the heart of the plan. The upper floor is also the entrance level, given the way the site slopes away from the access road, with a bridge reaching across to a glazed entrance hall adjoining the stairwell.

There’s a separate deck up here (the ceiling of the living space below), from where there are uninterrupted views of the lake. A butterfly-roofed structure houses three bedrooms, two of which double up as offices when the house isn’t fully occupied.

According to the designers, ‘the project unfolds as a response to the dramatic nature of the site, an attempt at respectful coexistence with the expressive qualities of the terrain’. Unusually, the house doesn’t reveal itself all at once, with the roof of the main volume serving as what the architects call a ‘belvedere’, a space that is ‘threshold, reception area, and visual vanishing point’. It creates a rare horizontal space in a crowded, steep wooded site, a place to pause and contemplate the landscape.

Internal joinery is finished in white oak, while the exterior is clad in natural cedar, which will weather as the house ages. The combination of unusual vantage points and close integration with nature throughout the living spaces create ‘an architectural meditation on landscape’.

‘[The Counter-Slope House] questions how architecture can inhabit a site not as an object, but as a condition for experiencing place,’ say Hamelin and Yiacouvaki. ‘[It is] an architecture of subtraction that reveals more than it imposes.’

yh2architecture.com

Shoreditch, buzzing with creatives and City workers alike, rarely pauses for breath. But head to the east London enclave this summer and you'll find a moment of respite amid the chaos: a new pavilion in Principal Place, imagined by Athens and New York-based design duo Objects of Common Interest. Commissioned by Brookfield Properties and co-curated with Alter-Projects, the installation runs from June through September as part of the London Festival of Architecture 2026, joining a lineage of ambitious temporary structures at the site by the likes of Simone Brewster, Foster + Partners and John Booth.

Objects of Common Interest co-founder Eleni Petaloti describes the installation, entitled ‘Colour Field’, as 'part landscape, part modern ruin, part meeting place'. The work is a series of geometric blocks arranged across the plaza, hewn from various types of stone. They sit at all angles, some low to the ground and others rising up to two metres. It is not a single object but a composition – one that shifts with the light and angle from which you approach. Pampas grass softens the edges and reinforces the sense that the structure has simply always been here, open to the elements.

What gives ‘Colour Field’ its particular resonance is the provenance of its materials. The installation is constructed entirely from unpolished marble, quartzite and travertine sourced from Solid Nature – surplus stock, offcuts and remnants of unrealised projects from Brazil and Iran to Italy, China, Spain and Turkey. Rather than concealing these origins, Objects of Common Interest celebrates them, reworking discarded pieces into a collage-like composition that feels simultaneously ancient and freshly assembled.

‘As designers, architects and artists, we fundamentally disagree with the idea of a “rejected” natural material. We don't accept the notion that a piece of stone can somehow be considered unworthy,’ says Petaloti. ‘So we went through the Solid Nature archives and created this composition based on what we found.

‘Working with salvaged materials did not feel like a limitation,’ she adds. ‘Instead, it became a process of composition, similar to that of a painter working with a palette of colours. Each stone contributed different qualities, and the way they were arranged shaped the final experience.'

At a formal level, the blocky massing of the work functions as an extruded cityscape – a scaled-down skyline brought to human proportion. 'If you imagine viewing a city from a helicopter, you see these large buildings and volumes. Here, those forms have been scaled down into something that feels welcoming and accessible,' explains Petaloti.

That accessibility is literal as well as conceptual. The blocks double as seating – and workers from the surrounding offices, residents from nearby buildings and passers-by are taking full advantage, making the structure genuinely usable rather than merely decorative. Throughout the summer, meditation sessions and other programming will take place around the pavilion, deepening engagement with the space.

'Whether you are taking a break from work in the nearby offices or simply stepping away from daily life, you can come and sit within the artwork. By touching these materials, you are momentarily reconnected with nature, even in the heart of London,’ Petaloti continues. ‘The main protagonist of the plaza is not the artwork itself; it is the visitor. The viewer becomes the central figure within the work.’

It is a philosophy that both Petaloti and Brookfield Properties adhere to: treating public space not as a backdrop, but as a cultural resource: ‘We never want visitors to stand in awe of our work from a distance. We want them to feel welcome within it,' she says. 'We are not seeking admiration; we are seeking inclusion.’

In a neighbourhood defined by its contradictions, ‘Colour Field’ makes a virtue of exactly that – disparate parts, brought together, forming an unlikely whole.

'Colour Field' is on display at Principal Place, Shoreditch, London EC2A until September 2026. Entry is free.

Read our full guide to London Festival of Architecture 2026

A new addition to the Vitra Campus, 'Water Garden' by Bas Smets, marks the start of summer for the celebrated furniture manufacturer and its famous headquarters on the Swiss-German border. Launched today (17 June 2026), during Art Basel, the design is a highly site-specific piece by the Belgian landscape architect – and one that is more than it might initially seem.

It's been a tradition for the Vitra home in Weil am Rhein to unveil an exciting new project on its campus every summer. Water Garden follows Vitra's reveal last year of Doshi Retreat, 2024's Khudi Bari, and 2023's Tane Garden House. This time, the offering is the result of a long and ongoing collaboration between Smets and the manufacturer. The aim? To make the latter's large campus, full of landmark architecture, more climate resilient.

Explore Bas Smets’ Water Garden at the Vitra Campus

The patch of land that is now transformed, in true Smets-style, into the fresh, living, breathing ecosystem that is the Water Garden, sits right by Frank Gehry’s Vitra Design Museum. It all started in 2023, when Smets proposed planting 8,000 young trees across the site in order to establish 'micro-forests' based on the principles of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who argued for the restoration of ecosystems by mimicking the way natural forests grow and evolve. It formed a thoughtful response to Vitra's mission to rewild its home.

'The first building on the campus was a factory and office building completed in 1954. It was built on what had previously been a garden. So, the campus began with the destruction of a beautiful natural site. And over the following decades, with the expansion of factory space, many cherry trees disappeared without anyone questioning the loss,' says Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus at Vitra.

'A shift in thinking began in 1994 with Tadao Ando’s conference building, which was placed within a cherry orchard so carefully that only three trees had to be removed. This marked the first moment when the relationship between architecture and nature was reconsidered on the campus. Tree planting began in front of the VitraHaus by Herzog & de Meuron in 2010, followed by the first comprehensive landscape plan developed with Günther Vogt around 2015. But the true breakthrough came with the Oudolf Garden in 2021 – a project that felt like a reconciliation with the earlier decades of destruction. With the garden as a new point of reference, every aspect of the campus was re-examined through a different lens.'

The Water Garden plot is centred on a large pond. It is wrapped in trees and aquatic vegetation, with an emphasis on biodiversity and resilience, as the species were carefully positioned and selected to attract birds and support fish, allowing wildlife to thrive within the campus. Some 500 cubic metres of earth were dug out to make the pond, and were then used to make the berm surrounding it.

'It is this beautiful combination of landscape architecture and art,' Smets says, highlighting the way he hopes his work will grow to play a role within the wider campus, amid the classic works by the likes of Gehry, Ando, Balkrishna Doshi, Zaha Hadid and more. Smets continues to explain: 'The landscape is also something that connects all these objects, which changes the relationship [between them].'

Working with Vitra was an exciting challenge and fruitful collaboration for Smets. 'I love the idea that they're so used to testing a chair before it goes into the market [and] I thought, “OK, let's prototype a landscape”, and they wanted me to do it,' he says. 'No city would want you to prototype. They want the real thing now, right?'

More is yet to come. Beyond the growth and care of the wider project across the site, at Water Garden, three large-scale ceramic sculptures by designer Hella Jongerius – part of her Angry Animals series – are set to be installed as fountains. Plans won't stop there, Fehlbaum explains. Right now, a fish-shaped bench by Doshi and a small, original demountable 4x4 prefabricated house by Jean Prouvé are also positioned by the pond.

'With the Oudolf Garden in mind, we looked at all aspects of the campus with new eyes,’ says Fehlbaum. ‘It was at this moment that Bas entered the picture. He analysed the entire site and proposed a long-term ecological strategy that would gradually transform the campus biosphere. The first visible result is the Miyawaki Forest, followed by the Water Garden. More steps will follow: reducing paved surfaces, planting additional Miyawaki forests, and continuing to restore biodiversity across the grounds.'

The Water Garden opens to the public on 17 June 2026 at Vitra Campus, Charles-Eames-Straße 2, 79576 Weil am Rhein, Germany

bassmets.be

vitra.com

The birth of La Hacienda shows that even the most sprawling ambitions call for flexibility. What began in 2016 as a selection process among architecture firms based in Guadalajara, Mexico, to design a large-scale, holistic complex for distillation, ceramic production, and an experience centre for Clase Azul México tequila in the country's Jalisco state, took a markedly different turn. 'You don't have a competition - you have a team,' architect Alejandro Guerrero of Atelier ARS recalls stating to Clase Azul founder and CEO Arturo Lomelí.

What followed was anything but simple, but the process of engaging five prominent local firms to each create a part of the campus on a previously undeveloped, nearly 22-hectare site in the area known as Los Altos de Jalisco yielded a distinctive yet cohesive result that was recently opened to the public by reservation. Simultaneously ancient and contemporary, La Hacienda introduces a new chapter in Mexican modernism and spirits hospitality.

Discover the architecture at La Hacienda by Clase Azul

'We had total freedom on the part of the client, because he knew that we as architects shared the vision,' Guerrero adds. Certain common values and themes emerged to lay the groundwork for the technically demanding effort, composed of multiple buildings that function independently yet are part of a whole. Immersive tequila adventures aren't unfamiliar to the brand; in February, Clase Azul opened Casa de Los Leones in Mexico City's Polanco neighbourhood with an art- and design-centric focus and a bespoke experience for tequila enthusiasts and collectors. But La Hacienda, where construction began in 2017, became a testing ground, as well as what Andrea Soto of Atelier ARS calls 'a learning experience for everyone.'

Each firm took on an assignment that, for all the designers engaging with it, presented fresh challenges in terra incognita. The welcome pavilion, bottling plant and nave, and landscape architecture are by Atelier ARS; the visitors' centre is by Elías Rizo Arquitectos; the distillery and ceramic production spaces are by Estudio Macías Peredo; the dining areas, including OYA restaurant, are by Tacher Arquitectos; and the technical and production system facilities are by Huber Design Studio.

La Hacienda's master plan and subsequent steps began with a fundamental respect for the land and traditions. Guerrero explains that 'the whole idea was to have the architecture transmit this artisanal knowledge' of all elements - from the process of construction itself to Clase Azul's signature handmade ceramic bottles, which the company largely relocated from Puebla, Mexico, to the new headquarters. 'The materials that we wanted to use had to be linked and feel anchored to the region, but also to artisanal craftsmanship,' Guerrero says.

Instead of a set of fixed guidelines and rules, the site itself was a grounding, orienting element that established a shared material vocabulary and functioned as a collaborator. The newly formed de facto design collective then embarked upon what architect Diego Quirarte of Estudio Macías Peredo describes as 'a reading of the place. We realised at the beginning stages that it would be very complicated having an architectural form or language for all the different components, so the material became the line that would stitch together all the projects,' he notes.

The structures integrate old and new in startling ways. Estudio Macías Peredo's distillery and ceramic production areas are composed of a network of hexagons, 'almost like a honeycomb,' Quirarte says, to contain and then link the multiple functions. Using a concrete mix incorporating reddish-hued elements from the site itself, the lower exterior walls transition from earth to building, emphasising its connection to place. Volcanic stone makes appearances throughout La Hacienda, too (meanwhile Estudio Macías Peredo's working materials related to the project have been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York).

The tequila factory integrates the terrain's slope to accommodate massive tanks at lower levels, with elevated walkways that are at grade with adjoining parts of the property. Soaring interior spaces with clerestory windows positioned above the walls to mitigate extreme temperatures create a cathedral-like atmosphere, while operable windows and doors in other areas provide access to courtyards and passages inspired by traditional Mexican town plazas and passageways. 'The important part was trying to create a space that is meant not just for machinery, but for human beings,' Quirarte elaborates.

The result is a highly technically capable exercise in compelling dualities. 'There is a tension between two architectural languages,' observes architect Salvador Macías of Estudio Macías Peredo. 'That is like a link between ancestral and industrial, between the mass and lightness, and I think that this is the energy of this project.' Meanwhile, on a smaller scale, the welcoming pavilion by Atelier ARS relies on a subtle show-don't-tell approach. 'We wanted to provide certain experiences through the objects,' Andrea Soto of Atelier ARS says. Instead of relying on extensive wall text, sensitive presentation in an already rich context 'communicates that these objects belong to this architecture. It is a feeling.'

The surrounding coarse, diverse ecology is equally significant and informative for La Hacienda at both macro and micro levels. 'The landscape unifies everything,' Soto says. 'We wanted to expose people wandering all over the place to understand how this landscape is, and why you can find a certain kind of architecture in this place that you can't really find in other places.' Habitat restoration, where boulders are left undisturbed and young native plants are added, was another objective - not resort-like perfection.

Soto shares how a project horticulturalist, Juan Montaño, whom the team came to call the 'maestro,' describes the particular dynamics of respecting nature's timeline. 'The magic will be to see it change and evolve through time.'

Approximately four-and-a-half and seven-hour La Hacienda experiences can be booked online

Designed by architect John Lautner in 1962, in the Los Angeles suburb of Beverly Crest, the instantly recognisable Sheats-Goldstein Residence has long played a starring role not only in architecture history books, but also in popular culture (from The Big Lebowski to Helmut Newton photographs). Originally commissioned by the Sheats family, the house and estate were acquired in 1972 by businessman and basketball fan James Goldstein, who, recognising its importance, bequeathed it to LACMA in 2016.

Explore the Sheats-Goldstein Residence by John Lautner

The modernist architecture fabric's longevity and the site's continuous functionality and health owe much to Kristopher Conner and James Perry, of LA firm Conner + Perry, who have overseen works and designed additions there since 2015 (both had worked for Lautner's associate Duncan Nicholson, who continued working at the property following Lautner's death in 1994).

Putting their intimate knowledge of the estate to good use, the pair not only worked on the restoration of the main residence, but also completed the most recent phase of the ongoing entertainment complex project, known as Club James, which is tucked underneath the estate's infinity tennis court on an adjacent site bought by Goldstein.

It now complements the residential element perfectly, providing users with a fully functioning nightclub, including a VIP room/library, offices for the owner and his assistants, an outdoor terrace with dining and kitchen facilities, and a pool and spa.

Conner and Perry are becoming the go-to architects for Lautner restoration, having recently completed the refresh of another of the modernist's masterpieces from the early 1980s, Lautner's Castle, a private home in California.

‘What Lautner understood, and what working on the Sheats-Goldstein house proves every day, is that great architecture isn't a finished object. It's a living idea,' Perry says. ‘We've been privileged to be part of that conversation and the continuously evolving work.'

conner-perry.com

People generally have one question for architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien when they find out the duo designed the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago: How involved was the 44th president in the project?

‘We joke that Barack was one of those clients that comes in and says, ‘If I weren’t a ______, I’d be an architect.’ Which is always a little problematic when you are an architect,” laughs Tsien

In fact, the former president has spoken several times about architecture as a youthful ambition. No surprise then, “[His] was a very dynamic and very interesting involvement,’ Tsien says.

The engagement of both the former President and First Lady Michelle Obama is evident throughout the site, which formally opens on Juneteenth (19 June, a holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the US), nearly a decade after Williams and Tsien won a competition to design the centre. Barack pushed for boldness, at one point invoking Constantin Brancusi; Michelle kept returning to the word ‘fun.’

From the outset, the architects, who were awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Obama in 2013, framed the project around the values of ennobling and enabling. The first represented a landmark worthy of the nation’s first Black president; the second reflected Barack’s years empowering residents as a community organiser on Chicago’s South Side.

‘We’ve always thought very much about not trying to just make a building, but trying to make a place,’ says Tsien. That place now unfolds within Jackson Park, the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed landscape that once hosted the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

The surprise of the 19.3-acre campus is how little it feels like a monument. Instead, it reads as a series of spaces for everyday life, with small surprises throughout. While the 225-foot museum tower is the most recognisable image, an argument could be made that the real story happens at ground level: a forum, a Chicago Public Library branch, a 21,000 sq ft playground, gardens, beehives, a picnic area (complete with grills, per Barack’s request) and a regulation basketball court (in a separate building designed by Moody Nolan), all woven into a landscape by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates (MVVA). With the exception of the museum, everything is free and open to the public.

'Play and fun was such a big part of what the Obamas wanted,’ says MVVA principal Matthew Bird, adding ‘having spaces to gather, and a variety of spaces, was extremely important.’

Interiors were the purview of Michael S. Smith, the Los Angeles designer responsible for the Obama White House interiors, and author of Designing History: The Extraordinary Art & Style of the Obama White House. He advised on furnishings and oversaw the museum’s full-scale recreation of the Oval Office circa 2014 (where visitors can have their photo taken at President Obama’s desk).

Art is everywhere, with more than two dozen commissioned works by artists including Julie Mehretu, Mark Bradford and Nick Cave, most of which can be viewed without a ticket.

About the tower. First: it is a museum, not a library, which explains the limited windows. The hand-made edifice is clad in what Williams describes as ‘very figured’ New Hampshire granite; other buildings on the site are clad in ‘a quieter stone.’

Visitors traverse the levels of exhibitions via escalators positioned directly next to the 83-foot-tall Mehretu stained glass piece, offering a colourful, filtered view of the city while ascending, often accompanied by music from Barack's own playlist.

Near the top, five-foot-tall concrete letters, creating sentences drawn from Obama’s 2015 Selma speech, wrap two elevations of the building. The installation, entitled You Are America, emerged from a collaboration with Pentagram consulting partner Michael Bierut, who suggested language as an alternative to an abstract pattern. The words – in the same typeface used by the former President during his campaign and his presidency - are intentionally difficult to read to avoid feeling ‘oppressingly bombastic,’ per Bierut.

Standing in the Sky Room at the top of the museum (the architects’ favourite space), visitors find themselves enveloped by those words, while gazing out across Chicago’s South and West Sides.

In a video posted by the Obama Foundation, Williams recalled that when the architects first met Barack, he said he wanted the centre to be ‘exactly the opposite of all presidential libraries.’ Mission accomplished.

In that same video, Barack lays out his hopes for its legacy: ‘Twenty years from now, 30 years from now, I want young people all across the South Side of Chicago, all across Chicago, all across America, to be able to look at this centre and say “this is a sign I count, and this is a sign that I can change the world."'

So here I am in Sri Lanka, at the end of almost 20 days spent exploring the work of Austrian architect Carl Pruscha. I arrived on a red-eye flight out of New Delhi, stepping onto the island as the damp weight of tropical humidity settled over the coastline. My mind is still tethered to where this journey began: the high, crisp altitudes of the Kathmandu Valley. I have spent this time moving between the bookends of a single architect's life, from rounded brick monuments in the Himalayas to the floating minimalism of the tropics.

Who is Carl Pruscha?

Born in Innsbruck in 1936, Pruscha studied in Vienna and at Harvard. While working in New York in 1964, the UN appointed him as a planning expert adviser to the Nepalese government, which brought him to the region, and he set up a small architecture studio in Kathmandu. My own introduction to Pruscha’s work was accidental. I stumbled upon a striking brick complex in Kathmandu while working on post-earthquake reconstruction in 2018. The project, Taragaon Next – currently a private gallery and cultural hub – features brick floors that stretch into walls that curve into barrel-vaulted roofs. It felt ancient and hyper-modern all at once. I remember touching those walls and realising that to occupy an architect's pure vision is to step inside their mind.

Before my trip, I called Pruscha at his home in Vienna (he returned to Austria in 1974) to ask which buildings to prioritise seeing when in Nepal. ‘Just see Taragaon, don't go anywhere else,' he said. The problem with that is that the buildings pull you in – one leads to another, and another – until you find yourself piecing together a life spent building across three countries and 60 years from the fragments that remain. And I wanted to see it all.

Walking through Taragaon Next with its curator, Roshan Mishra, the subtlety of Pruscha's work becomes apparent. Built in 1972, the complex sits near the landmark Boudhanath temple, like a modern intervention next to the ancient titan. Doorways are intentionally low, a gesture borrowed from Newari tradition (the Newar are the indigenous people of the Kathmandu Valley). Lotus motifs etched in stone mark every threshold, while courtyards echo the sunken steps of temples in the nearby city of Bhaktapur. The building, originally commissioned by the Nepal Women's Association as a hostel, had an afterlife as a hotel, then a casino, then a project office for the Hyatt Regency next door, then a dead space until it was revived in its current form in 2010.

For the Centre for Economic Development and Administration campus at the nearby Tribhuvan University, Pruscha's exploration took a different form. Walking through the now-abandoned student hostels, I stepped onto the balconies and saw it: the building's terraces cascade down the hillside in a geometry that overflows directly into the adjacent agricultural terrace farms. No boundary between the two. The built environment and the ancient land art of Nepali farmers become a single, continuous landscape. ‘There is an effort to restore them,' local architect and academic Biresh Shah told me, but the decay is palpable.

When I asked Pruscha about the dramatic shift between his Nepali brick and his Sri Lankan steel structures on stilts, his response was almost impatient: ‘There is no ideological change. I am always the same person. If I design something in the US, in Nepal, in Sri Lanka, or even in Austria, it's always of the same spirit. The only thing is that the people are different.'

However, in Nepal, that spirit was under siege. His master plan for the Kathmandu Valley – protecting the agricultural heartland and temple towns – was not accepted by local elites protecting their real estate. His private homes are vanishing: the House at Bansbari is now a restaurant; the Rana Residence, as Shah confirmed with visible sadness, was demolished to make way for a hotel. ‘People didn't like brick buildings, they wanted everything in concrete,' another local architect, Saurav Shrestha, told me, echoing Pruscha's own frustration. Pruscha refuses to return. ‘I don't want to go back…' he told me. ‘I want to keep it in my memory as it used to be – a paradise in the 1960s.'

Sri Lanka, where he started working in 2005, demanded an entirely different architecture. ‘In Nepal, people still built using bricks because they weren't colonised,' Pruscha explained. ‘Sri Lanka was just the opposite.' Beneath centuries of colonial imposition, he saw a far older vernacular – buildings on stilts, lifted above the wet earth. His anchor here was Kathrin Messner, a Viennese intellectual who, with her late husband Josef Ortner, established the One World Foundation (OWF), a ‘social sculpture' inspired by Joseph Beuys. The income generated from the guesthouse that Pruscha built for them – the House Above Trees – funds a free school for more than 1,000 students. Pruscha didn't win this commission through a bidding process. ‘He came to visit because we were friends,' Messner told me. ‘He took out some paper and made a design.' The result was a school in the OWF and three bungalows. I got a chance to stay in all three, each one very different from the others, yet similar in principle.

The Lagoon Bungalow is made from steel pillars that lift the living space 2m into the air. Between the wooden ceiling and the corrugated roof, a 1m void acts as a passive thermal engine, the ocean breeze flushing the sun-heated air out before it reaches the rooms below. No air conditioning is needed. Materials dismissed across South Asia as the vocabulary of poverty, such as visible I-sections, steel pipes and corrugated iron, are elevated here into breathable elegance.

In December 2004, a devastating tsunami tore through its lightweight walls, but the structure held. ‘The building wasn't destroyed,' Pruscha told me. ‘We could repair it again.' The school was not so fortunate and was obliterated. Eva Schlegel, Pruscha's wife, organised an art auction, raising more than €250,000 in one evening. Pruscha then designed the replacement building on a 6m x 6m grid: cross-shaped columns, waffle-slab ceilings, walls stopping 1m short of the roof for cross-ventilation. The Sri Lankan minister of construction declared that every tsunami-destroyed school should follow this design, and the Austrian ambassador pledged to donate money. None were built.

On one of my final days in Sri Lanka, I walked around the House Above Trees as the team working on its yearly maintenance finished sealing the floorboards. The coat hadn't fully cured, and with every step the timber gripped at my shoes – the house, freshly maintained, asserting itself against my departure. Through the open lattices, the Indian Ocean stretched to the horizon. I could imagine the school's principal resuming the term and training the 1,000-odd students each year in those halls – in English, photography, tailoring – building lives their parents could not have imagined. The architecture is doing exactly what it was designed to do: disappearing so that life could happen inside it. ‘For the people who come after me,' Pruscha had said. They were already here.

cpruscha.com

This article appears in Wallpaper’s July 2026 Design Directory, available from 4 June, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Curator and founder of Mbari Kola: The Arts Society, Ugoma Chinelo Ebilah, has transformed a 1960s two-storey house with views of the Lagos Lagoon into a home for her new vision – a thriving cultural club for the Nigerian capital.

The property, originally built by Italian construction company G Cappa, featured a patio that encouraged an indoor-outdoor living style which was common at the time. She enlisted the help of architect Kelechi Odu to realise the project. ‘Ugoma wanted to create an oasis of art, culture, and luxury within the bustle of Lagos,’ he explains.

Step inside cultural club Mbari Kola: The Arts Society

‘The house has been renovated, and we decided to interfere with the structure as little as possible,’ Ebilah explains. ‘We extended out to the rear, maintaining the views and the original connection.’ Odu adds: ‘The building is tucked discreetly at the end of a close, revealing itself only upon approach.’

The perimeter walls have been retained and the floor slab structurally reinforced. The roof has been raised while the rear extensions have been constructed using a steel frame system. ‘We kept the staircase, which remains the central artery; the railings, now emblematic of residential buildings of that era, were refurbished,’ Odu says.

The word 'Mbari' in 'Mbari Kola' was the name of an older, local cultural club founded in the sixties in Ibadan, Nigeria. It is also the name of a cultural practice in the Owerri region of Nigeria that involves the construction of an ephemeral, highly ornamented artistic structure left to disintegrate after its ritual use.

Odu, who is from that region, took inspiration from the practice for the facade and its red laterite soil. ‘The ombre effect suggests a grounded base transitioning upward, rooting the project in its cultural context while also alluding to the aspirational goals of the Mbari Kola,’ he says. ‘I want people to return to a sense of wonder and discovery, and I learned a lot during this renovation,’ Ebilah adds.

She was particularly inspired by the artisan who restored the original terrazzo floors and installed a contemporary version in the extension. He will be part of a workshop they will hold on terrazzo. ‘I want people to be educated; I want to showcase the continent and encourage us to learn from and understand each other better,’ Ebilah says.

Access to the garden is through floor-to-ceiling windows that open up the views out to the water. Outside, many of the existing trees have been retained to create the oasis and space for vulnerability and discovery Ebilah wishes to establish. Here, a podium serves as an outdoor room and flexible space for gatherings, performances, and even yoga by the water.

Concéntrico 2026 is opening its doors from 18-23 June, and the northern Spanish city of Logroño is in fervent preparation. Now in its 12th iteration, the architecture festival remains relatively small by some metrics – typically comprising about 20-25 lifesize installations each year within a place of just 150,000 inhabitants – but its immersive, city-wide nature has attracted rich responses from global, emerging and established studios alike.

Founded by architect Javier Peña Ibañez, who serves as its director – and supreme driving force – this is an event conceived, at its core, to celebrate participation and urban space. Its mission? To bring architecture out of its bubble, into the city, and invite all its residents to engage with it as part of their daily life. It draws big names, too, with MVRDV, Konstantin Grcic and Studio Ossidiana having taken part in past editions.

Concéntrico 2026: who, what, where

For Concéntrico 2026, 32 participants will create 24 installations. These will be, as in past years, spread across the city of Logroño, built on public sites, available for all to engage with – intentionally or casually, as part of the city's daily life. Participants include 2026 Pritzker Prize winner Smiljan Radić Clarke, AAU Anastas, 2050+, Future Firm, DC DF, PPAA and Taelon7 (whose past work includes the new Accra pavilion Limbo Engawa). The festival will run 18-23 June 2026.

Curious to learn more? We spoke to Javier Peña Ibañez to delve into the details and help you navigate the world's biggest small architecture festival.

Concéntrico: history and mission

Wallpaper*: What is Concéntrico?

Javier Peña Ibañez: Concéntrico is an international festival of architecture and design founded in Logroño in 2015. From the beginning, I was interested in participation and in discovering alternative forms of urban spatial practice that could connect cities more closely to the people who live in them. At that time, I was already working independently through installations and temporary projects in public space, but I felt there were many architects, artists and designers exploring similar questions without really having a shared platform for dialogue.

I also found it surprising that cities were full of festivals dedicated to music, theatre, cinema or literature, while architecture – something everyone experiences every day – often remained confined to professional circles. Concéntrico emerged from the desire to make architecture accessible again, not as an abstract discipline but as something real, physical and collective.

One thing that still defines the festival today is that everything happens at a 1:1 scale. There are no models or speculative renderings; the projects are built directly in the city. People can enter them, touch them, play with them, ignore them or completely reinvent how they are used. That direct encounter changes the relationship people have not only with architecture, but with the city itself.

Concéntrico's evolution

W*: How has Concéntrico changed over the years, from its first iteration to the celebration it is today?

JP-I: The first editions were much smaller and more intuitive. We mainly worked in courtyards and small spaces in the historic centre of Logroño, trying to reveal hidden urban qualities or overlooked heritage. But very quickly we realised that if we wanted to change the way people related to public space, we also had to work where everyday life was actually happening.

That shift changed the festival enormously. Over the years we moved into parks, peripheral neighbourhoods, parking lots, riverbanks, vineyards and large public squares. We started working not only with architecture as an object, but with architecture as a way of producing encounters, conversations and new uses for familiar places.

At the same time, the themes became broader. Concéntrico today includes climate adaptation, sound, performance, accessibility, collective rituals, educational programmes and long-term urban processes. Some installations disappear after a week, but others leave traces behind: a new use, a new name, a memory or even the beginning of a permanent transformation. That tension between temporary action and long-term impact has become fundamental to the festival.

Over the years, Concéntrico has also made us understand that the street is not simply a transit space or an urban backdrop. It is a place of learning. It is where people negotiate how to live together, where identities are performed, where rituals emerge, where conflict becomes visible and where forms of belonging are constantly constructed and contested.

Public space is political not only because demonstrations happen there, but because everyday life happens there. Children learn how to relate to others there. Communities recognise themselves there. Differences become visible there. Architecture, in that sense, is never neutral. Even temporary interventions can alter the atmosphere of a place, the way people move through it, or the kinds of encounters that become possible within it.

Highlights over the years

W*: Could you pick some highlights from past festivals for us?

JP-I: I usually remember projects less as isolated objects and more as situations that changed how people occupied the city. One project that I often return to is Pabellón 1973–2021 by Lanza Atelier [the architects behind the 2026 Serpentine Pavilion in London]. It transformed Rafael Moneo’s town hall square through an experimental use of curved brickwork, creating a temporary civic structure that completely altered the perception of one of Logroño’s most recognisable urban spaces. It demonstrated how a familiar material could be used in a completely unexpected way.

Another project I often think about is Types of Spaces by Palma and Hanghar. Installed in the passage of the former tobacco factory of La Rioja, the intervention reconstructed the emptiness of the site through a sequence of brick rooms open to the sky. What was interesting was not only the architecture itself, but the way it altered the scale and atmosphere of public space.

The project introduced domestic proportions into an urban passageway, allowing visitors to inhabit the installation rather than simply cross it. Water mist, crushed brick flooring and the mass of the ceramic walls transformed movement through the space into something slower and more intimate. It explored how architecture can completely change the emotional reading of a place using very elemental means: brick, proportion, repetition and atmosphere.

I would also highlight The Garden of Intersections by Studio Ossidiana, which transformed an overlooked urban site into a landscape of encounters between people, plants and non-human forms of life. It was one of those projects that expanded our understanding of what architecture can be: less an object and more an ecology of relationships.

For me, these projects are important because they show that temporary architecture can create lasting shifts in perception. Sometimes the installation disappears completely, but the way people understand a place never returns to what it was before.

Concéntrico 2026: theme and more

W*: Let’s move to this year. What’s in store for this year’s festival?

JP-I: This year’s edition is structured around three curatorial lines: Identity and Fiction, Urban Ecologies and Ephemeral Agents.

Identity and Fiction emerged from a question that has accompanied the festival for years: how do we build a sense of belonging? Cities are full of inherited symbols, rituals and narratives that shape how we understand ourselves collectively. The projects in this section look at temporary architecture as a way of producing new stories, drawing from regional costumes, travelling circuses, celebrations, ceremonies and popular traditions. Rather than treating identity as something fixed, they understand it as something constantly performed, negotiated and reinvented.

Smiljan Radić Clarke’s Circo, for example, imagines a fragile travelling circus installed on soft ground in the historic centre of the city, recalling temporary architectures associated with itinerancy, gathering and spectacle. Matilde Cassani Studio’s project at the Arco de San Bernabé takes inspiration from the traditional regional costume of La Rioja, using textile references and ceremonial forms to explore the relationship between folklore, fiction and urban identity.

Urban Ecologies focuses on climate, landscape, material reuse, depaving and adaptation processes within the city. Ephemeral Agents looks at temporary architecture as a tool for activating social relations through sound, movement, accessibility and collective participation.

What feels different this year is the stronger emphasis on activation and collective experience. Many projects are not simply installations to look at, but situations that invite people to gather, listen, play, rest or participate together.

There is also a stronger ecological dimension running through the festival. We are not only talking about sustainability as a concept, but working directly with real urban processes: removing pavement to recover permeable ground, reusing infrastructures in disuse, creating climate shelters or working with discarded materials at an architectural scale.

2026 participants

W*: Who are some of the key participants for 2026?

JP-I: [As already noted] Smiljan Radić Clarke will present Circo, a temporary structure inspired by travelling circuses and fragile architectures of observation and gathering; [and] Matilde Cassani Studio is working with local textile traditions and rituals around the Arco de San Bernabé. AAU Anastas will present Cathedral for One, a stone structure conceived for a single visitor and activated through daily sound services with works by artists including Yara Asmar, Nicolas Jaar, Hania Rani and Mohammad Reza Mortazavi.

In the Urban Ecologies section, Sahra Hersi’s The Library Garden transforms a paved square next to the Rafael Azcona Library into a civic garden connected to depaving, seeds, care and climate adaptation. Parabase will reuse components from an electrical substation in Transtation, while noof group will develop a pilot project exploring shade, cooling and thermal comfort in public space.

We also have projects by raumlaborberlin, Boltshauser × Garbizu Collar, BEAR, Future Firm, DF DC, Gabriel Fontana and Amanda Pinatih, 2050+, TŁO and many others. The interesting thing is not only the names themselves, but the coexistence of very different ways of thinking about public space within the same urban framework.

This year's wildcard

W*: What’s the most unusual installation this year?

JP-I: Perhaps Circo by Smiljan Radić Clarke. What interests me is that it introduces uncertainty into the city. A circus is never entirely architecture, never entirely performance, never entirely public space. It belongs somewhere in between.

For one week, that ambiguity becomes part of the city. It creates a temporary condition, where fiction, gathering and urban life overlap.

AAU Anastas’ Cathedral for One would be another candidate, but for opposite reasons. While Circo is collective and extroverted, Cathedral for One is radically intimate. It is conceived for a single visitor and constructed entirely from recovered stone fragments. You enter alone into a stone structure activated through sound pieces by artists including Nicolas Jaar, Yara Asmar and Hania Rani. It feels suspended somewhere between architecture, ritual and listening space.

The Concéntrico legacy

W*: What are you hoping for visitors to take away from visiting the Concéntrico experience?

JP-I: I hope visitors leave with the feeling that cities are not fixed. Public space is often perceived as something already decided and already defined. Concéntrico tries to reopen that imagination.

The festival allows people to experience familiar places differently, even if only temporarily. A parking lot becomes a collective playground, a paved square becomes a garden, a courtyard becomes a listening chamber, a bridge becomes a social space. Once you experience that transformation physically, it becomes difficult to see the city as completely immutable again.

Many of the projects we develop are not only about spatial transformation, but about mediation. They create situations where people can recognise themselves differently, or recognise others differently. Through fiction, ritual, play, celebration or collective experience, architecture becomes a tool for imagining other forms of coexistence.

I think this is especially important today, because cities have become highly polarised environments where even very basic urban questions – mobility, climate, public space – are quickly absorbed into ideological conflict. In that context, architecture still has the capacity to produce shared experiences that escape fixed positions, even temporarily.

After 12 years, I increasingly see Concéntrico less as a series of installations and more as a cultural framework for reading the city differently. The projects are temporary, but what remains is often a shift in perception: the understanding that public space is mutable, and that the ways we inhabit it can also change.

Concéntrico 2026 runs 18-23 June 2026 in Logroño, Spain

concentrico.es

The brick: the most humble and commonplace of objects. Yet this unassuming building material is also the foundation – literally – of some of the world's most extraordinary structures.

The brick has its moment biannually at the Brick Awards, a ceremony held in Vienna and presented by building solutions company Wienerberger, which brings together the finest examples of brick and ceramic architecture from around the globe. This year's six winners were selected from a shortlist of 50 projects across 21 countries – and together, they prove that one of humanity's oldest building materials remains as vital and versatile as ever.

Grand Prize award: Đạo Mẫu Temple and Museum, Vietnam

The evening's highest honour went to this 5,000-square-metre temple and museum in Soc Son, designed by ARB Architects for folk artist Xuân Hinh. A carbon-negative project, it upcycled approximately six million clay tiles sourced from more than 500 local homes – forging a literal connection between the building and its community. Spiritual tradition meets contemporary design here with striking results. The project also makes a powerful statement about sustainable architecture's capacity to serve the present while honouring the past.

Feeling at Home award: Ca na Birgit, Mallorca, Spain

This prize went to a compact 194-square-metre home perched on the cliffs of Ses Penyes Rotges, designed by TEd'A Arquitectes. Using locally sourced brick, the architects solved a seemingly impossible brief – face the sea but remain hidden from neighbours – with elegant simplicity: two deep parallel walls that frame the view while ensuring complete privacy.

Living Together award: mixed-use residential development, Barcelona, Spain

Peris+Toral Arquitectes created 54 social rental apartments centred around a bioclimatic ‘Social Atrium’ connecting homes with ground-floor communal amenities. Biomass-fired brick on both interior and exterior facades acts as a natural thermal regulator – warm in winter, cool in summer.

Working Together award: La Hacienda Jalisco, Mexico

Atelier Ars designed a warehouse and office complex for tequila producer Clase Azul using local ceramics and stone excavated from the site itself. Viewed from the east, the building rises as a 'ceramic horizon', its clay-clad roof dissolving into the volcanic terrain.

Building Outside the Box award: Endless Brick Playground, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, China

Perhaps the most unexpected winner was not a single building, but the cumulative result of a decade-long undergraduate masonry course. Since 2014, nearly 80 students have constructed 48 brick structures on the same site – some dismantled each year to make way for new ones – creating a shifting, collaborative environment and a living exploration of brick’s material possibilities.

Special Prize: urban infill project, Belgium

In a first for the awards, the jury introduced a Special Prize, presented to Maker for reimagining a neighbourhood of 54 homes in Kortrijk, Belgium, as a contemporary garden city, using reclaimed bricks and tiles throughout.

Wienerberger CEO Heimo Scheuch reflected on the evening: ‘Tonight's winners show the versatility of these timeless materials to address the most pressing needs of climate change and modern living – while still creating wonder and beauty.’

Walking through a serene, abstract forest – complete with smells, sounds and shapes of logs, stumps and trunks, arranged across the room in all directions – is an inviting proposition. Yet this installation, taking pride of place in a large, high-ceilinged ground-floor area in the Material Matters show at 3 Days of Design 2026 in Copenhagen this week, is much more than a calming, grounding experience. Titled 'Wood for the Trees', led by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), designed by London studio Mitre & Mondays and made by specialist furniture maker Benchmark, the hardworking piece was conceived to celebrate timber as a design and building material; but also to express the richness and vulnerability of our forests as natural ecosystems.

Walk through AHEC's abstract forest

The project came to life after Mitre & Mondays met with AHEC at the latter's documentary film screening in London last year. Forested Future, directed by Petr Krejčí, explores tree ecosystems and forest environments – going beyond the wood as an end product and delving into its provenance and natural home. It also highlights how forests are living systems that can regenerate and support and give life to those around them, from fauna to human communities.

Suggesting they translate the film's vision into an immersive installation, Mitre & Mondays' three directors, Finn Thomson, Josef Shanley-Jackson and Freya Bolton, set off to create their new piece using American hardwoods. The result is now displayed at this year's 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen (10-12 June 2026).

The emerging London studio is fast making a name for itself for combining design and making through inspiring material explorations. The trio have a distinctly hands-on approach that allows them to deep dive into each material's properties, advantages and challenges, working with anything from timber to metal and stone.

'We've had this huge renaissance around food produce and understanding where our food comes from recently, for example,' Thompson says. 'As designers, we need to understand that [provenance of materials] as well, especially with really natural products, like timber. And we need to try and get closer to the natural forest to understand what we can use out of it instead of demanding what we want.'

Here, the Mitre & Mondays team blended wood structures with audio recordings of forest sounds and smells to recreate the experience of walking through nature. There are representations of 'fallen logs', which now serve as benches, 'stumps' that are seen here as stools, and 'live tree trunks' – columns of varying heights dotted across the room. The tree canopy becomes a series of delicate veneers hanging from the ceiling. Species are mixed, just as in the real forest scenario, and work together beautifully.

The team were mindful about how they use their raw material throughout, Thomson flags: 'We've kept the timber in plank form, so in future it can be used for other projects. All of this show could go back into a stack and become something else, which is really nice. We haven't affected it too much. The material retains its value.'

'Wood is nature's gift to the material world. We're surrounded by it,' says the European director for AHEC, David Venables. 'But we take the material for granted because we're in a world where there are so many materials. Nature's made it available to us; we need to respect it and value it. It is beautiful, varied and renewable.

'Wood is so unusual because you can use it in its raw form. The beautiful things we're sitting on, the objects that are part of this exhibition are all raw planks of wood. They've been cut with a fine knife, and they've been oiled with a natural oil. That is all.'

Part of the mission of AHEC and this abstract forest experience is to highlight the natural resource that forests can provide, one that we can cleverly use and must also protect. 'The power of the architect and designer to influence should never be underestimated. It starts and it ends with them,' Venables adds.

'Mitre & Mondays came back with this brilliant idea of creating an abstract forest. They were so inspired by the elements of the film, about the growth of the trees and the dynamism of nature, the selection, the planning and stewardship that foresters and communities and timber people put in place to look after their woods. This is the context that we're talking about.'

americanhardwood.org

mitreandmondays.co.uk

benchmarkfurniture.com

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has announced the 34 winning projects of its RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2026 (from a shortlist of 52), recognising the world's best new architecture across 15 countries. From a carbon-neutral furniture factory in Norway to a performing arts centre inside one of the world's largest refugee settlements in Uganda, this year's cohort reflects the full breadth of what architecture can achieve when it rises to meet the challenges of our time. All of the winners are now in contention for the prestigious RIBA International Prize, to be announced at a ceremony in London on 15 October 2026.

Several themes run through this year's selection, which serves as a snapshot of the concerns and ambitions that define architecture in 2026.

Breathing new life into old structures

One of the most striking threads is the imaginative reuse of existing buildings. In Kristiansand, Norway, Mestres Wåge, Bax and Mendoza Partida have transformed a former grain silo into a contemporary art museum, Kunstsilo. In Berne, BHSF Architektur & Städtebau's Transformation Warmbächli converts a disused Chocolat Tobler warehouse into cooperative housing.

David Chipperfield Architects and Arquitectonica have reimagined a historic Shanghai neighbourhood as Rockbund, a new cultural district. And in Jingdezhen – China's porcelain capital – two abandoned ceramic factories have been reborn as the Taoxichuan Ceramic Culture Industrial Park, by Jie Zhang, Beijing An-Design Architects and THUPDI.

Designing for a changing climate

Climate-responsive design has always been central to good architecture, but it carries particular urgency in 2026. In Courthézon, France, Studio Mumbai and Studio Méditerranée’s Château de Beaucastel winery relies entirely on natural airflow and shade for cooling. Parikrama by Spasm Design Architects, in Nandgaon, India, uses shaded walkways and natural ventilation to counter intense regional heat. On Australia's exposed coastline, Wardle's Burnt Earth Beach House uses handmade terracotta to create a resilient, multi-generational family home.

In Ho Chi Minh City, VTN Architects' Urban Farming Office wraps its façade in greenery – cooling the building while also growing food in the urban core. Perhaps the boldest sustainability statement of all comes from Norway, where Bjarke Ingels Group's The Plus is a carbon-neutral furniture factory and public park built from local timber, which cuts energy demand by up to 90 per cent through solar power and rainwater harvesting.

Architecture in service of community

Several winners demonstrate architecture's capacity to strengthen the communities it serves. Hassell's Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre brings a dedicated cultural space to the Yumbe District of Uganda, home to one of the world's largest refugee settlements. In Sydney, Fjcstudio's Darlington Public School weaves indigenous heritage into a contemporary learning environment. Woha's Brac University in Dhaka transforms a former landfill into a vibrant, climate-conscious campus. And Schmidt Hammer Lassen's Shanghai Library East reimagines the public library as an open, connective landscape which functions as a gathering place for the city while housing 4.8 million books.

Awards group chair Neil Gillespie captured the spirit of the selection: ‘These projects demonstrate a confidence in architecture's ability to create delight and dignity while working within existing constraints – whether environmental, social or economic. Rather than relying on spectacle, they show the value of thoughtful, enduring design that is rooted in context and capable of enriching everyday life.’

The Riba International Prize shortlist will be announced ahead of the ceremony on 15 October.

On the crest of the forested slopes that form the suburbs of Nova Lima, a town in the south-eastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, sits Xingu House, the most accomplished private residential project to date from Tetro Arquitetura. For the studio, based in nearby Belo Horizonte, this was a dream commission, starting with a completely blank slate and a client willing to push boundaries to make a bold statement.

Step inside Xingu House, a contemporary home in Minas Gerais

‘The client initially approached us before even owning the site,' says Tetro's Carlos Maia. ‘He asked us to help him find a very special plot with abundant nature in Nova Lima. Together, we visited a number of options and eventually found this site.' The 8,000 sq m plot was occupied by an old, rundown house. The bulk of the original structure was demolished, but some key elements, such as the garden walls that divided the landscape into terraces, were retained, thus ensuring the new house felt embedded in its plot from the outset.

Above all, the new owners sought a house with a dramatic presence. ‘The client wanted something genuinely different and innovative,' says Maia. ‘He has a strong interest in sculpture, and the idea of a house with a sculptural presence was part of the brief from day one.' Given the breadth of this request, there was no immediate programmatic solution; instead, the architects continuously iterated the design. ‘We developed it through a long process of study, especially using physical models,' says Maia. ‘We tested how the building could both sit on the existing terraces and keep a direct relationship to the ground, so that daily life could naturally extend outdoors and one could step straight onto the terrain.'

In part, the form was dictated by the available views. ‘There's an extraordinary panorama from the higher portion of the site, looking out to the mountains and hills of Minas Gerais,' Maia says. ‘We wanted the architecture to preserve and amplify that experience.' The result is a house that pinwheels around a central axis, raised up above ground level, with the living and sleeping areas arranged in three wings.

One of these wings, housing the primary suite, is cantilevered over the slope, while the other two touch the ground lightly at the top of the site. This form is supported by six hefty concrete pillars, whose faceted forms give an angular brutality to the ensemble, while also housing key elements, such as the stairs, bathrooms and an lift. The pillars can clearly be seen through the glass façades of the upper level, their ‘inhabitable thickness' anchoring the house to the terrace and the site.

Concrete was the most appropriate choice for the construction, especially given the relationship between the thick, cast-in-situ pillars and the existing stone terraces. The latter have been repurposed as a generous outdoor living space, complete with sitting and dining areas, a kitchen, two reflecting ponds and a swimming pool. A grotto embedded in the existing walls is now the wine and cheese cellar.

Despite the effortless appearance of the new house above its weathered site, Tetro faced numerous obstacles during construction. ‘The pillars are highly complex, organic geometries, developed through a triangulated “faceting” logic,' says Maia. ‘We had to design and coordinate the pattern triangle by triangle, and the on-site formwork required real precision.' Wherever raw concrete is visible, both outside and in, the finish is meticulous. The large floor and ceiling slabs also had to be poured in place.

With the primary suite occupying the house's most dramatic component, along with a secondary suite, two more bedrooms, an office and a self-contained guest suite are located in the other wing. The hollow concrete columns that puncture the floor slab house bathrooms and staircases, with roof lights bringing daylight into these cavernous forms. Meanwhile, a separate structure houses a spa, sauna and gym.

A linear kitchen occupies the central part of the plan, with an extended concrete counter that becomes the dining table. From here, one heads to the main living wing, which extends to the final tip, with a ribbon of glass offering up views across the site and beyond, culminating in a balcony. Key pieces of art and furniture are interspersed around the generous 1,800 sq m floor area, including a striking balancing sculpture made of steel and glass by Brazilian artist Túlio Pinto.

Acknowledging that the house ‘embodies the client's boldness and desire for innovation', Maia and his co-founders, Débora Mendes and Igor Macedo, along with the rest of the Tetro team, describe it as a demonstration of the practice's search for freedom of approach within every project. ‘Xingu House represents one of our most significant formal investigations to date,' Maia concludes. ‘[The project] brings together our recurring interest in the relationship between architecture and landscape with a new level of structural and sculptural experimentation.'

Rising dramatically above its site, the house is a contemporary take on the geometric exuberance of high Brazilian modernism, sensuous and sculptural yet also implicitly tied to its location.

tetro.com.br

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The central vertical void that runs through this Kuwait home, Faye House, is architect Abdulaziz AlHumaidhi’s favourite architectural element. ‘It is both the architectural and emotional core of the project,’ he explains.

‘Beginning as a focused skylight at roof level, the void descends through the building, gradually opening and expanding in section until it resolves at the ground floor ceiling as a wide, organic form. What might otherwise have been an unbroken horizontal plane of white ceiling becomes, instead, a sculptural moment of vertical depth, drawing light downward and anchoring the ground floor around a single, quietly powerful gesture.’

Step inside this modern Kuwait home

The new-build, contemporary home is located in Kuwait City’s Shamiyah neighbourhood and its form is a response to its corner-plot setting. AlHumaidhi, founder of his namesake firm, was inspired by the idea of creating a smooth and symbiotic relationship between inside and outside, as he tells Wallpaper*, ‘The corner plot offered a generous setback condition that allowed us to place a lush private garden at the heart of the composition, and from there, the entire design logic followed.’

The ground floor is an open-plan space, housing the kitchen, dining and living areas. However, it is the transition to the upper level that brings in that considered approach to the outdoors that AlHumaidhi values – achieved through recessed openings and layered façades. The roof terrace overlooks the garden and the vertical void below. Says the architect, ‘Nature is never absent from the experience of the home.’

However, the project did pose its challenges, some of which influenced its development. 'Two challenges defined the project, and both influenced the design equally,’ shares AlHumaidhi. ‘The first was reconciling transparency with privacy. Exposed on two street edges, we wanted the interiors to feel bright, open, and deeply connected to the landscape – while still offering the residents genuine shelter from the surrounding city.’

The answer, he discovered, emerged in the form of a curved travertine wall. Rather than approaching privacy as a problem to be solved by concealment, the architecture team instead approached it as a design opportunity. ‘The wall became both sculptural and functional – filtering views, casting moving shadows across the interiors, and creating a protective edge that never makes the house feel closed. From within, the vein-matched stone curves around the pool and becomes a luminous backdrop, its surface animated throughout the day by light reflected off the water.’

The second challenge was more programmatic. In Kuwait, multigenerational living is common. AlHumaidhi didn’t want to design a home for a specific moment in time, but rather to create a space that would evolve with its inhabitants’ lives.

This was addressed with the building’s upper floor, which was designed as a family space, accommodating guest suites and play areas. The architect designed this level to be flexible, and, he says, when the time comes, the floor can allow for two fully independent living units. He says: ‘The challenge was making that latent future invisible – so that the house feels entirely complete today, with no trace of what it is quietly waiting to become.’

Faye House is a residence that rewards slowness. Its balance of natural light, soft materials and greenery generates an immediate sense of calm. ‘And beyond all of this, there is meant to be a subtle sense of discovery,’ notes AlHumaidhi. ‘The feeling that the home reveals itself gradually, as the eye begins to move through layers of light and shadow and registers the quiet spatial dialogues between levels.’

alhumaidhiarchitects.com

A new rural house engulfed by peaceful Australian nature sits nestled in the Red Hill area of the Mornington Peninsula, Australia. Set in a part of the world rich with indigenous greenery and distinguished natural beauty, the home, simply titled No 41, was conceived as just that; a contemporary rustic idyll and the home of a family looking to revegetate its 2.5 hectares of landscape, establishing a garden of indigenous species centred on a large natural pond.

Step inside this new, idyllic, rural house in Australia

No 41 was designed by architect Tristan Burfield, who jumped at the opportunity to create a piece of residential architecture within such a layered and serene setting. From wine production (the local Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are renowned) to truffle and berry farms, markets and walking trails, the plot is surrounded by nature - yet a number of Monterey Pines, brought into Australia in the 19th century and since smothering local vegetation, causing environmental concerns in Australia, also thrived on site.

Burlfield and his team removed the invasive species and crafted a new landscape (this was worked on by specialist Sam Cox), while forming a leafy environment offering views of the native garden, lake and Red Hill nature beyond.

Within this context, dominated by foliage, flowers and fruit, the architect designed this rural house in a simple, minimalist style, working with a restrained palette of materials - namely brick, timbers and a bit of steel for the battens. The neutral colours - grey blocks, black shou sugi ban spotted gum cladding and warm brown cypress - make for a fitting choice that lets the organic growth around it take centre stage.

Inside, spaces are composed to favour a generosity of scale - in their comfortable ceiling heights, the luxury of the natural materials used, and the openings that frame the surrounding landscape. A circulation space pierces the rural house's core, with kitchen and living areas flanking it on the main ground level.

The upstairs contains a primary bedroom suite and a study, with terraces offering an elevated view of the wider area. A wing extending off these main areas hosts guest rooms and secondary, breakaway rooms.

'In many ways the design and construction of this home took a backseat to its landscape. The home pushes its occupants outside, literally and figuratively. It goes without saying for all my work, but there is something particularly special about this project in seeing just how well it has grown into being a facilitator of life and living both within and on the greater site beyond,' the architect writes.

tristanburfield.au

In deepest Maida Hill, Studio Weave has provided a public toilet block encased in reclaimed stone. The project represents the final phase of Maida Hill Market improvement works – funded by Westminster City Council, with help from the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund - and involved replacing outmoded underground toilets with three fully accessible cubicles, one wheelchair friendly, brought conveniently to grade.

Explore this reclaimed stone public toilet by Studio Weave

On paper, the project is unimpeachable. It responds to, and serves to highlight, an all too familiar problem in the city. One that the architecture practice's director, Eddie Blake (Studio Weave is co-led by Blake, founding director Je Ahn, and director JJ Cliff), is on a mission to redress. According to the British Toilet Association, nearly 40% of public toilets have closed in the last decade. This has been put down to poor accessibility and high maintenance costs. Plus the absence of viable, replicable, low-cost alternatives. Enter the Maida Hill lavatories.

Like all good work, the project answers its brief in a way that poses interesting questions about how we might elaborate on a similar commission next time. Chiefly, here, it tackles material and procurement. The stone was sourced from the dismantling of a former corporate headquarters in Broadgate. Large-format slabs of pink Finnish granite and plain Norwegian larvikite were split, recut, and reassembled in their new location. Transplanted from the heart of the financial district to the site of the original, grassroots economic activity of a neighbourhood market square.

This ‘trickle-down’ trajectory of the material, from private to public, is telling. The stone is of an exceptionally high quality, far exceeding the spec of what would ordinarily be committed to this kind of project. It’s all about ‘cost-efficient public luxury,’ say the architects, in what sounds like several contradictions in terms. But it works.

Once supported on a steel frame, the slabs are now stacked like a heavy house of cards. To this end, the architects benefited from a close collaboration with The Stonemasonry Company and Webb Yates, who were the structural engineers on the project (both parties are serial collaborators with Amin Taha’s Groupwork, a pioneer in building with stone in the capital, so have experience in working with the material).

The ‘architecture’ is independent of its contents, which, like a mollusc, may be extracted, leaving the shell intact. Once shucked, the ‘automated public conveniences’ within, a high-spec ‘total toilet solution’ by Swedish company Danfro, may be upgraded and replaced. The stone is detailed so as to be demountable also. The building is built to last, but needn’t.

Perhaps the most notable, noticeable thing about the building is its refusal simply to fit in. London is awash with buildings born of facade studies, and concessions to type. But this project is refreshingly blunt in its approach. It is not so much a patchwork as a skin graft. It takes the flayed facades of other buildings to make a mask for its own.

The standards of so-called civilised society may be judged by the state of its public provisions – the availability of toilets, bins, and benches – and the durability of a culture by its ability to accommodate unusual and not straightforwardly appealing things. On both counts, this is an eminently interesting little building.

studioweave.com

Cirk is a new book charting the little-known but widespread existence of the ‘permanent circus’, an architectural typology unique to the former Eastern Bloc. Cirk is not just a monograph and history of these austere, brutalist yet ultimately playful structures, but also a chance to do it yourself and explore the architecture via five press-out paper models.

Explore the typology of the 'modernist circus'

These permanent circus buildings typically took the form of a concrete interpretation of the classic Big Top, often with abstract decoration in the form of panels or elaborate roof structure. Capable of seating several thousand people, they served as permanent homes for the numerous state circuses that provided officially sanctioned mass entertainment.

As the book notes, ‘the circus occupied a prominent place in the performing arts throughout the former USSR and other socialist countries. Combining elements of both art and sport, it was an egalitarian form of entertainment: simple and direct, easy to understand yet complex to perform and equally attractive to children, students, workers and intellectuals.’

Russia has a long history of purpose-built circus buildings – the Saint Petersburg Ciniselli Circus dates back to 1877. Following the revolution, circuses, like ballets and orchestras, were nationalised, overseen by Gos-Tsirk and later the Soyuzgostsirk (the Union of State Circuses). There was even a state-administered system of professional circus training and the Moscow State Circus in particular toured the West.

Written by Zupagrafika’s David Navarro and Martyna Sobecka with a foreword by architect and researcher Jelena Prokopljević, the book contains seventeen such structures, each surviving as a remnant of past political priorities and the importance of a strong architectural presence. As well as classic circus iconography, there’s a science fiction element to many of these buildings, resembling giant UFOs set down in the cityscape.

Designed explicitly for a singular purpose, interiors often included elaborate mechanisms for trapeze and high-wire acts, as well as spaces for animals in addition to the performers. Some have survived into the post-Soviet era as performance spaces, while others have been more neglected. Taken together, the structures in Cirk showcase an important but often overlooked aspect of socialist architecture, the provision of communal entertainment spaces.

The five models that can be made include the Kyrgyz State Circus in Bishkek, the Chișinău State Circus, Dnipro State Circus, Tashkent State Circus and the Great Moscow State Circus.

Cirk: Build Your Own Socialist Modernist Circus, €32, Zupagrafika.com

One London is not simply another tower in the City of London. Upon completion, come 2033, this high-rise, formerly known as 1 Undershaft, is set to rival the Shard, becoming the UK capital's joint tallest building, its developers, Aroland Holdings and Stanhope, emphasise. This is no small feat – and the ambitious scheme's architect, Eric Parry, also highlights his design's provision for extensive publicly accessible green spaces, carefully planned environmental performance and amenities, including the highest bar in London and an 11th-floor public garden.

One London – the capital’s newest high rise

Construction is planned to start in 2028, and the numbers are impressive. The tower reaches 309.6m high and spans 74 storeys (the London Museum will operate education spaces on the top two, for school children and young people to learn, experiencing London from on high). The project's creators are also exploring BREEAM and NABERS UK rating frameworks for its sustainability credentials, and underline that its landscape strategy 'delivers a 960 per cent Biodiversity Net Gain'. But what does this mean for the capital? We spoke to Parry about what is aiming to be the future tallest building in the City of London.

Eric Parry on One London

Wallpaper*: Let's start with the basics – what is One London?

Eric Parry: Well, first of all, it has to be said that the building is the centre of the Eastern City Cluster. That's an interesting concept, because it's a very English one, this sense of a cluster of buildings that relate to a landscape idea, placed as sort of foothills, as if one's looking at an image of landscape. It is completely different to the way in which tall buildings are conceived in Canary Wharf or Frankfurt, or Paris at La Defense. They're closely bound. One London will be at the cluster's heart and that has been part of the ethos of this building, having a certain dignity, carrying with it a lot of responsibility for being in its position.

W*: So you speak about clusters, tall buildings. We're in the City; is the building office space, or mixed-use?

EP: The majority is commercial workplace, and that's incredibly important for the 7,000 to 10,000 people that will be working in the building. But at the same time, I think there's a spirit of generosity in it, which is really important. So, from the outset, I had a vision for the top of the building to be civic rather than commercial.

W*: That is very important, and it also sets it apart from similar tall and super tall buildings. Would you like to tell us a little bit about the brief? How did you balance commercial needs and architectural and urbanistic vision?

EP: This is the 11th year of working on this project for us. It was a competition, and it had a pre-Covid life as a proposal that was much more a plaza with a tall building. After the pandemic and the City of London Plan for 2040 [approved in 2024], there was a realisation that there's a massive problem with supply [of office space in the City]. There was a need for space, but also for breathing space, for access to air and the environment, to get away from the sealed box, which gave rise to this idea of a building that works on multiple horizons in a way that really is beneficial to the wellness of the occupant.

W*: It sounds like there were different iterations and the design evolved a bit over time. Was it always meant to be this tall?

EP: Oh, yeah, it was always up at the centre of the cluster.

W*: Did the height itself attract you; was it a challenge, an opportunity? I know your studio, and you, often undertake large-scale projects, but not necessarily super-tall.

EP: There was no sense of muscular desire in the height, particularly. But I think there's a real interest in the complexity that height brings. And then, of course, there is the thing about the sky. In lower buildings, architecture is about the urban block, about streets, about squares. A tall building is about the skyline; you address the clouds, the weather. There is something incredibly important about the way a building develops from the ground and reaches to the sky.

W*: Agreed. And there are different ways a building is experienced from afar and from up close. How did the very famous buildings around the site factor into your design development?

EP: You know, this iteration is very similar in height and in various aspects to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Towards the bottom, the Eiffel Tower has this deck above the great arches and the deck here, which is public at the 11th floor – an amazing set for the public, an amazing set of new views of that very precious surrounding. I didn't want to do another sloping glass surface.

W*: Tell me more about the public spaces and the special place for the London Museum and the education spaces at the top.

EP: We made a deal with them. From a personal point of view, I took my own child's class up the Heron, when it was completed but not occupied, to look down on the city they dwelt in. And that was amazing. They all remembered it, you know, and I thought when we were dealing with this, let's do this here. So every school kid should get the opportunity to go up to the top of the building and see the view.

W*: There is something to be said about the democratisation of that space, because traditionally, you would have the tallest point of a tower, and it would signal maybe corporate wealth or power. But now it's open to everyone who wants to use it.

EP: That has also been reflected at the ground, of course, because the ground has two sides, actually. There is the 11th floor, the public garden. And the eastern side has this great reception space, the celebration of entry, I would say. It's incredibly levitational. The proposal has an expression of structure. The pillars I like to call the 'giant redwoods'. They are huge, made of weathering steel and slim like a beautiful tree. They branch to support the garden, but they also continue to support the 300m up. So this huge building comes to the ground in an incredibly light way.

W*: Your work, for me, is associated with craft and attention to material and detail, and everything on that ground level speaks to that. There is also an elegant restraint overall; it's not flashy.

EP: Thank you. I didn't want to make another building all in glass with a closed cavity system with blinds that come down. We wanted it to be passive, with shading. It is very high performing, and I wanted it to be white, not glass. This also has to do with longevity.

W*: Let's talk about that too, and about sustainability at One London.

EP: There are very few buildings over 200m that are ever pulled down, so there's a responsibility. This is going to be there, perhaps, as long as the Tower of London. I've got a bit of an obsession about biodiversity and planting, so we like to practise what we preach. With One London, there's a 1,000 per cent increase in terms of biodiversity from the existing site to this. Urban greening is very important, and we have shaded, hanging gardens. There's a great mix in the building that allows it to rise with great confidence from a beautiful ground plane. I have seen from past projects the joy a beautiful garden can bring.

ericparryarchitects.co.uk

When it opens, the new Gordie Howe International Bridge is set to become an important addition to North America's network of busy land border crossings. Named after Canada-born Detroit Red Wings hockey player Gordie Howe, this piece of architectural infrastructure looks elegant, almost ethereal, from afar – and up close, its dynamic form appears sculptural, designed to delicately guide traffic through a subtly shifting moiré effect.

Delivered by client WDBA – the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority – to connect Detroit, Michigan (USA) and Windsor, Ontario (Canada), the project looks sharp and modern (and it's currently getting ready for an imminent opening by the US and Canadian governments). It also aims to become far more than a piece of smart (and smart-looking) bridge design.

Explore the new Gordie Howe International Bridge

Its architect, Erik Behrens, explains that the Gordie Howe International Bridge was not created to just carry the traffic from A to B. It will also accommodate broader border facilities, such as a customs plaza and more – these operations and traffic are currently being stress-tested ahead of its official opening to the public. Many of its facilities are 'hidden' within its slender form to avoid detracting from the bridge's inherent sculptural effect.

'The bridge was designed to do more than move people – it creates a shared civic experience at the scale of a city,' Behrens said. 'Bridges, transit, towers, and large urban systems must do more than function – they must belong, endure, and inspire.'

Howe, who lent his name to the project, is also referenced in the design, which is composed as a slender construction of cables and tower legs – the latter poetically resembling the curvature of the athlete's hockey stick mid-slapshot. Its subtly curved bridge (an 853m main span, the longest in North America) connects to ultra-light stay cables whose size and crisp white colour make them appear almost transparent and gravity-defying.

AECOM was the engineering practice and is the design lead for Bridging North America (BNA), WDBA’s private-sector partner – and they were instrumental in making the Gordie Howe International Bridge's slender form a reality. The bridge was conceived to be high-performing, with a projected 125-year lifespan to ensure its durability.

'It turns mobility infrastructure into a shared civic experience – where movement becomes meaningful, strengthening connection and rekindling a sense of collective pride. Through elegance, technical rigour, and enduring purpose, the bridge emerges as both contemporary infrastructure and a work of civic art,' Behrens explained.

The set of twin 220m towers and their fan-shaped cables look majestic, marking this important gateway across the river between the two sport-loving countries. 'The bridge captivates through a precise interplay of form, light and movement,' Behrens added. 'Its paired arrays of white stay cables produce a subtly shifting moiré, endowing the structure with a quiet kinetic elegance and a sculptural depth that reveals itself from every angle.'

Behrens worked with Canadian visual artist, designer and writer Douglas Coupland on the bridge's lighting art installation. Coupland (the project's lighting artist – RBLD acted as the lighting designer) created a spectacular show using almost 5,000 white bridge lights to creatively illuminate the structure. He said: 'It’s a relief to see infrastructure that feels like it belongs to this century. There’s a generosity to Detroit right now – you can feel the future being tested in real time.' (We agree – and named Detroit our City of the Year at the 2026 Wallpaper* Design Awards.)

'I’ve somehow become a person who arranges light into sentences. This was unexpected,' the writer added.

Originally set to open this spring, the bridge doesn't have an official launch date yet – due to the aforementioned final checks, yes, but also because the bridge has been part of political movements around trade negotiations between the US and Canada. The project was paid in full upfront by Canada and is co-owned by the Government of Canada and the State of Michigan.

When it does open, the Gordie Howe International Bridge will no doubt become an important vehicle for trade between the two neighbouring countries – while also paying tribute to the 'hockey-loving nations who share this great man’s sporting legacy', its creators highlight.

gordiehoweinternationalbridge.com

erikbehrens.com

aecom.com

Pre-orders have opened for one of the most anticipated Lego Architecture sets to date, the monumental scale reproduction of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família. 2026 marks a century since the Catalan architect died, as well as the year the Barcelona cathedral reached its final height, 172.5m, some 144 years after the project broke ground.

The Lego equivalent can’t quite match up the majestic statistics of this Catholic church (due for official completion in 2034), but it still offers some impressive numbers. For a start, there are no less than 12,060 pieces in the set (the largest set by piece count in Lego’s history), all coming together to make a model that stands 62cm high by 47cm wide and 39cm deep.

Gaudí’s design was famously evolutionary, with structure and decoration coming together in a cascading process. The set itself has been carefully designed so that the build process mirrors the different stages of construction of the basilica itself.

For example, you start with the Apse and Crypt, then assemble the east-facing Nativity façade and the west-facing Passion façade, before putting together grand naves, Western Sacristy and the cathedral’s six towers, including the tallest, the Tower of Jesus Christ.

The final pieces of the set are the Eastern Sacristy and the Glory façade, which will serve as the cathedral’s main entrance when it is finally completed. Attention to detail is unrivalled, from the way in which Lego’s many complex pieces have been combined to evoke the richly decorated structure.

According to Lego Architecture Designer Rok Žgalin Kobe, ‘We felt an immense responsibility to do justice to the Sagrada Família through this design. Our goal was to honour Gaudí’s vision with the utmost respect, capturing the rhythm of the basilica’s construction, its extraordinary complexity and ambition, and translating that into an immersive building experience.’ This includes the use of the Lego Builder app, with its 3D instructions and ability to track build progress.

Other impressive details include the use of translucent bricks to evoke the stained glass interiors and the passage of light through the structure throughout the day, with the completed model designed so that it can be viewed from all sides.

‘This is not only the largest Lego set ever, but a model of one of the most ambitious architectural works in the world. Balancing scale and precision, while remaining faithful to a living monument that has been evolving for more than a century, was a unique design challenge – and one we’re incredibly proud of,’ Kobe concludes.

Although set number 21065 won’t be available on the open market until November, collectors and enthusiasts can put their pre-orders in today on the Lego website and in Lego stores worldwide.

Lego Architecture Sagrada Família, set 21065, £649.99 / €749.99 / $799.99, Lego.com

Cut Out House's distinct geometry is not random; nor was it an architect's flight of fancy or a purely aesthetic gesture. Set in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, this home, a family's holiday retreat, posed the challenge of navigating shelter and openness – offering the protective, all-mod-cons cocoon of a comfortable 21st-century residence, and connecting with the site's dramatic natural setting.

Explore Cut Out House in the Canadian Rocky Mountains

As a response to this brief, its author, architect Bryan Young and his New York-based team at the creative collective Young Projects, composed a structure that opens to the landscape but also features a 'cut out' element, forming a curved opening – an embrace, where the home encircles nature while also creating an inviting, protective space away from winds and the wilderness. This concave shape is informed by a large boulder found – and retained – on site, which now signals the entrance to the residence.

The 3,320 sq ft Cut Out House is striking – respectfully rivalling its context, a sweeping, lush natural landscape and the point where the local forest and mountains meet. A butterfly roof becomes another key feature in this project, defining its overall volume as seen across the nearby body of water from a distance.

Internally, the house balances serenity and dynamism, orientated towards its long vistas, which are framed through large openings on the opposite side of the rounded entrance patio. Behind those openings, a main piano nobile spans an open-plan living, kitchen, dining area and a study. One primary suite and three further guest bedrooms are nestled underneath, into the slope.

The material palette was conceived to mirror the home's natural setting, using primarily textured concrete, light wood, and warm stone. Furnishings and colour tones nod to midcentury architecture icons, blended with contemporary pieces from companies such as B&B Italia, Bocci and Bloc Studios.

A fast-emerging and extremely versatile studio, Young Projects has a strong focus on material explorations and work that plays with form, textures and scale to dramatic but also highlight function-driven effect. Past work includes the playful Six Square House in Long Island – while the studio has more underway, including private residential, retail and hospitality work.

young-projects.com

In Marble Falls, a Texas Hill Country town of about 10,000, a new gallery along Main Street, called Arthouse, offers an unexpected surprise: access to one of America’s great collections of private art.

Arthouse’s owners, Mickey and Jeanne Klein, have been gathering work for close to half a century. Their collection spans many of the most influential figures in contemporary art, from blue-chip names like Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell to emerging voices, across painting, photography, sculpture, large scale installation and more.

They developed their refined eye under the mentorship of legendary Houston patron Dominique de Menil, who toured them around the world in search of art. 'You learn about art by looking at art,' Mickey tells Wallpaper*. He adds: 'When we were with Mrs. de Menil we saw everything. We went to Moscow. We went to Chicago. We saw so much art. And we started seeing it through her eyes.'

The idea of providing that kind of exposure in a place that largely lacks it is a major driving force for the project. 'It will affect everyone,' he adds. 'It will open peoples’ eyes.'

The project began as an office relocation. After decades in Midland, in west Texas, Mickey sold much of his oil and gas operation, making a permanent presence there unnecessary. Two longtime employees asked to move the business, and Klein agreed. 'Find a place you love,' he told them. They chose Marble Falls. Then the Kleins chose San Antonio-based Lake Flato, which had designed (and later added to) their current house in Austin’s Westlake neighbourhood. After a few conversations, their office project had morphed into something much more ambitious.

Arthouse occupies a narrow infill lot. A front wall of unadorned, locally quarried Leuders limestone anchors it to the region. A perforated metal canopy, complemented by corrugated and meshed metal surfaces throughout, merge local vernacular with a lighter, more contemporary layer.

Lake Flato project architect Grace Boudewyns describes the material approach as 'off-the-shelf' where possible. The building is elegant, but not precious. 'We wanted it to feel like it belongs here,' says. 'But it also has to be a quiet backdrop for the art.'

Third generation Japanese gardener Sada Uchiyama designed a small, minimalist courtyard between the entry wall and the gallery, providing a brief pause and a buffer from the street. Low black mondo grass is punctuated by stone sculptures.

Inside, the 2,000 square foot gallery occupies the ground floor, with 12 foot ceilings and an off centre linear skylight that provides even, diffuse light. An open web metal truss provides exposed structure, and a touch of 'ranch tech,' as Boudewyns puts it, while mechanicals are hidden behind perforated ceiling panels. Other materials are simple but luminous. Polished concrete floors softly reflect light. High white walls carry the art, enveloping portions of the trusses above. A movable central partition allows the layout to change between exhibitions.

The opening exhibition, 'Words Matter,' pulls together text-based work by iconic figures like Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer and Faith Ringgold alongside fast-rising talents like Kenturah Davis and Nicolas Galanin, whose Never Forget depicts his full size recreation of the original 'Hollywoodland' sign, made to spell 'Indianland.' Upstairs, the offices are warmer, almost domestic, dominated by wood surfaces and big views. They’re also full of art, from conference rooms to bathrooms.

The Kleins are currently curating Arthouse’s exhibitions themselves, drawing from their sprawling collection. Shows will change every few months, including an upcoming exhibition focused on photography. Works range widely in medium and scale, but installations will be carefully edited, Jeanne says. 'We’re not putting as much around anymore,' she says. 'Just have excellence.'

The project, both rooted in place and elegantly modern, adds a powerful cultural layer in Marble Falls – which has chiefly drawn visitors with its small-town charm and access to several lakes – without changing its character. Reinforcing the Kleins’ focus on promoting looking and exploring, it is easy to read, not intimidating. It allows people to move through at their own pace, in any direction. Already local students have begun arriving, and a preview event for civic leaders drew nearly 100 people, many of whom had never met the Kleins before.

Mickey shares a simple guideline: 'Don’t try to see everything. Pick one work, spend time with it, then move on.' At 90, he says he’s less interested in accumulation than in sharing. Some of his grown children have wondered why he has put so much time and money into this faraway project.

'I’m getting so much pleasure out of it,' he says. 'Why not do it?'

Aficionados of concrete construction will surely recognise the brutalist architecture of Étoiles d’Ivry. This monumental apartment building in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine was designed in 1975 by architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie, a sprawling complex of stepped terraces and jaunty angles, with a relentless palette of concrete offset by a vivid planting scheme.

Explore this brutalist duplex for sale

In fact, it’s as a piece of green urbanism that the scheme is usually remembered, rather than as an intimidating example of brutalism at its least human. The complex was under construction from 1971 to 1981, during which time Renaudie died and the late Gailhoustet (who died in 2023) completed the scheme.

Gailhoustet was a rare woman architect in post-war France, but her work has more than stood the test of time. Living in Ivry-sur-Seine until her death, she had worked in the town since 1969, when she was appointed Chief Architect for the renovation of the city centre.

As well as winning the 2022 Architecture Prize from the Royal Academy of Arts in London, specifically for her contribution to social housing in Franc, she was also awarded the French Ministry of Culture’s Lifetime Achievement Award later that year.

This modest 55.6 sq m sits on the top floor of the Marat building, one of 40 interlocking housing units that make up the complex along with office spaces, stores, a school and more. As well as two small sleeping spaces on the upper level (originally designed as a single bedroom), the duplex includes a study area and office on a half-landing, with the main living spaces on the entrance floor, reached via a sculptural staircase.

Here you’ll find a living room, lounge and dining area, as well as a compact kitchen and access to the 20 sq m terrace, complete with mature trees and views across the rest of the apartments. The apartment also comes with its own garage area. Ivry-sur-Seine has direct access to central Paris in 20 minutes thanks to the Line 7 metro and the RER C Line.

Gailhoustet and Renaudie’s vision was for mass housing integrated into the heart of the city centre, not isolated towers with no ground floor facilities. The buildings that make up the Étoiles d’Ivry complex all take a stepped, ziggurat-style approach, with a modular triangular grid system create a sense of consistency across the whole project.

From the balconies and terraces, down to ground floor planters, passageways and public areas, the whole complex remains an intriguing and inviting urban landscape.

This free approach to planning also plays out in the apartments themselves, which revel in unconventional plans and unexpected nooks and crannies.

The duplex is available from Architecture de Collection, priced at €315,000, for more information visit ArchitecturedeCollection.fr, @ArchitecturedeCollection

Seen after a summer storm, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026's tactile brick body looks fresh, orange and inviting. Some of Serpentine Galleries’ past commissions in London's Kensington Gardens may have sought to convey a sense of enclosure – either as discrete structures with traditional walls and windows, or objects that discussed shelter or a meditative space. This year, the design by Mexican studio Lanza Atelier looks open, fluid – and yet smartly delineated by simple forms: a bench, a wiggly wall, a light, translucent flat-roof structure. It is clear, legible, yet somehow deconstructed – and we can't wait to step inside.

Explore the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by Lanza Atelier

When the fast-emerging practice, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo (their past works include Mexican retreat Casa Jajalpa, featured in the December 2020 edition of Wallpaper*), was announced as the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 designer in January this year, its directors spoke of a curvilinear wall snaking across the site. Their pavilion was fittingly named a serpentine and nods to the crinkle-crankle wall, an outdoor, typically brick structure found lining site borders, often enclosing a garden. The duo talked at the time about creating moments that frame 'movement and pause', 'gentle geometries' and 'permeability'. The real thing, opening its doors this week, does not disappoint.

The Lanza pair explain that the pavilion's core idea was there from the very beginning, and once they started researching their project's setting, place and history and linking it up to their own fascinations about materiality (and specifically brick, which they have often used in their past works), it all made sense and came together cohesively quite organically. Arienzo recalls: 'Initially, we tried making a patio, and a lot of things, but the crinkle-crankle wall appeared and it was perfect because it's like a serpent.'

The structure sits slightly offset from the site's centre, its curvy wall gently echoing the orientation of the path that leads from the street to the Serpentine South Gallery's entrance. It subtly divides the north and south parts of the site – true to the historical positioning of the crinkle-crankle, the architects explain, which often looks south. 'We also wanted to have something in the perimeter,' Abascal explains. 'We didn't want it right at the centre, and we put a bench on the south side of it.'

This way, they stress, the pavilion embraces the entire plot. The aim is to encourage visitors also to use the lawn between the bench and the wall and make full use of the gallery's outdoor areas. One cannot help but think that their pavilion makes a beautiful floorplan drawing, and they seem rightly proud of it too.

The pavilion has a strict budget, so architects always need to get inventive with their designs. Being smart and frugal with restrictions, materials and finances came naturally to the team, too. 'It relates to our way of building in Mexico,' Abascal says. 'You have to be very clever in what elements you need in the structure. We always try to build less. And we also try [to get the] different elements to perform more and work hard. I mean, maybe a wall carries a roof, and also divides, but what else?'

Using brick - and a focus on beautifully crafted materiality - in clever and unexpected ways naturally resonated with the duo, and they worked with blocks neatly tied together through metal fastenings and rods that go through each element's holes. It's a universal material with a strong history in the UK's built environment (and the brick they used comes from the region), but it gave them a challenge, and in turn, they gave it a twist.

Arienzo says: 'The challenge was creating a disassemblable pavilion out of brick. A brick wall is typically solid; it's opaque, it's permanent. Usually, the brick's features are almost invisible, but here we are flipping them. So it's just brick, but with a twist, you know? Meanwhile, the roof is softer, lighter.' The floor is ceramic and follows the brick walls' colouring, producing a pleasingly unified effect. The pair also used their designs for the chairs within.

Adding to the delights of having a brand-new park folly to play with, Serpentine Galleries is also celebrating its pavilion project's 25th anniversary – a landmark moment and a bonus to the popular public piece of architecture that pops up in Kensington Gardens each year. And appropriately, since it all started with a Zaha Hadid-designed pavilion in 2000, this year's iteration includes a collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation. It takes the form of a dedicated programme of panel discussions and talks, set to take place inside the Lanza-designed construction throughout the summer.

Bringing together festivity and texture, the British garden and the idea of a folly, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 will no doubt find itself comfortably at home in one of central London’s biggest green expanses – orange brick, curvy walls, and all. And don't forget, feel free to sit on the lawn.

Sponsored by Goldman Sachs, the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 by Lanza atelier will be on show at Serpentine South 6 June – 26 October 2026

IM Pei designed only three private houses; the grandest of these, the Westover House in Fort Worth, Texas, is now for sale for the first time.

This seven-bedroom, 13-bathroom 19,333 sq ft house features Pei’s trademark geometries, most notably in its garden room, a sloped atrium reminiscent of volumes found in the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Louvre Pyramid in Paris and many other of the late architect’s most notable buildings.

At a moment when Pei’s Dallas City Hall 30 miles away is at active risk of demolition – topping Preservation Texas’ 2026 list of Texas’s Most Endangered Places – this property is clearly valued quite a lot, with its $22 million price tag.

The house was designed in 1969 for Anne Burnett Tandy, an oil heiress, and her husband Charles Tandy, who built RadioShack into an ubiquitous retail presence. It’s located in Fort Worth’s swank Westover Hills on the same block as Paul Rudolph’s largest residential commission, the Bass House. Pianist Van Cliburn also lived nearby and played the Tandys’ grand.

Pei designed a house suited for sociability and art. He observed in House and Garden in 1970, ‘Mrs. Tandy loves parties and she gives them very often, so she wanted lots of space. She needed a house that would be comfortable for two people — or two or three hundred.’

Pei cited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston as well as Mediterranean and North African houses as inspiration for the home’s enclosed courtyards. The garden room has the largest, featuring a fountain (and for the moment a Frank Stella piece).

A wide art gallery near the center of the house neatly cinches off the private from public areas of the home. The garden room’s sloped windows are echoed at four other points, in the dining room, living room, primary bedroom and guest sitting room. The garden room also features a glass ceiling where light is diffused by a wooden lattice.

There was close attention to surfaces inside and out. Walls are poured concrete with an aggregate of rose-quartz granite. Pei searched for a year to find that mine, he said. Fluting was then hand-hammered.

There are other elegant details; the building has no window frames, Pei explained in House and Garden: ‘It was quite a feat inserting large sheets of glass into concrete and took much time and effort. Simplification always takes more time. But not having the intermediary metal window frames also gives the illusion of transparency, so you feel the rooms are open.’

Pei wished to make the house as ‘maintenance-free as possible’ even for those who could easily afford it, choosing, ‘durable, serviceable materials all as permanent as you can find.’ These include white Portuguese marble and Burmese teak floors inside and granite surfaces outside.

The primary suite features a bedroom, sitting area, bathroom, closets and a library containing a fireplace and wet bar. There are two living rooms, two formal dining rooms, three kitchens, two wine cellars, and much else. Some elements have been modernised but the bones of the house remain strikingly original.

The house, listed by Ashley Mooring, Ralph Randall and Madeline Jobst of Briggs Freeman Sotheby’s International Realty, sits on nearly four acres containing a greenhouse, putting green, heated pool, garage and carport. It is surrounded by live oaks, which Pei preferred.

Still, Pei thought that only time would allow the home to reach its ideal: ‘We shall have to wait for nature…to make it perfect!’

Clearly, the moment has arrived.

Global Protection Corp., the gender-inclusive safe-sex product manufacturer, now has a new home to show off, along with its decades-long history of innovation in public health, queer advocacy, and education services. The project, comprising all aspects of making, including office, assembly and distribution, is set in the seaside town of Lynn in Massachusetts, north of Boston, and was designed by New York-based Studio J Jih, led by J Roc Jih.

Step inside Global Protection Corp.’s new HQ

The scheme was centred on adaptive reuse, spanning some 45,604 sq ft across two storeys of a former dairy creamery. The top level, which hosts the office and product development spaces, was the biggest challenge, the architects explain, having to balance privacy, warmth and comfort with the creative fluidity that encourages connections and collaboration.

Studio J.Jih employed colour and transparency to navigate the borders between these two atmospheres. A series of gestures, textures and elements, from translucent fabric and draped chainmail to undulating felt partitions, help serve as space dividers – but can also be pulled back or feel permeable enough to promote interaction and views through the workspace.

J Roc Jih says: 'We often see a highly renovated office that is full of design elements referencing the domestic environment, which is often in opposition to adaptability over time. For this project, our strategy became all about diaphanous surfaces that can fit the commercial office in scale, but provide a sense of domesticity through a material softness that scatters and moderates light for the work environment.'

They continue: 'In an incidental, tongue-in-cheek way, the “filters” make reference to the product itself, but it’s really a way of thinking about a condition of translucency overlaid with veils of privacy in the workplace, and how to design for the different types of privacy and collaboration that might be required among co-workers.'

Extending its interventions beyond the workspace interior, the studio also worked on a fun reimagining of the building's primary façade. The architects, working with the need for natural light in the corresponding spaces inside the building, cut out a series of windows in an organic arrangement. The openings vary in size and alignment to create an irregular pattern that draws the eye without detracting from the overall project's elegant simplicity.

On the ground level is Global Protection Corporation's provision for storage, staging, assembly and distribution. The architects conceived the space as a bright and playfully functional working area. 'On the lower level, freed from the lighting requirements of computer screens and glare, we sought to introduce natural beams of light throughout the day, and to reverse the typical lightless conditions warehouse workers face,' says Jih.

globalprotection.com

j.jih.studio

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is currently home to a special exhibition shining a light on an overlooked but brilliantly quirky corner of the architecture world: the modernist cottage. ‘The Modern Cottage: An Architectural Phenomenon’ documents a little-known yet radical chapter in the history of modern design.

Curated by architectural historian and Wallpaper* writer Adam Štěch, alongside co-curator and architect Jan Bureš, the exhibition turns its attention to cottages and weekend houses as overlooked bastions of modernism – a category of building long neglected in serious architectural discourse, yet one that tells us as much about the 20th century as any grand civic monument.

As European cities recovered during the interwar years and workers gained more leisure time, a new relationship with the countryside emerged. The concept of the seasonal retreat gained momentum, with city dwellers beginning to build holiday homes on the edges of towns, gathering in loosely formed colonies of like-minded nature lovers. This exhibition honours that specific moment in place and time.

Yet ‘The Modern Cottage’ does not succumb to overblown nostalgia. The modernist cottage is not framed as a peculiarly Czech sociological phenomenon, as it so often is in national sentiment – loaded with romantic association. Štěch and Bureš sidestep that framing, choosing instead to examine wide-ranging designs, typologies and architectural ideas by both celebrated and lesser-known architects.

The result connects Czechoslovak examples to wider European design: Alpine cottages reinterpreted through a modernist lens, Scandinavian dwellings, beach houses in the south of France. Across these contexts, the exhibition traces how avant-garde thinking and shifting social structures shaped even the smallest and most informal of buildings.

The material on display is varied. Štěch's own photographs – taken during visits to cottages across the Czech Republic and abroad – form the visual backbone of the show, supplemented by archival publications, period images and architectural plans and sketches. Original furniture from several cottages is also on display, alongside remains of a cottage designed by the artist Zdeněk Pešánek. The exhibition design, created by Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss, is inspired by a rural landscape.

‘The Modern Cottage’ makes a compelling case that the weekend house was never a footnote to modern architecture – it was where the blueprints of modern life were being drawn.

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague is currently home to a special exhibition shining a light on an overlooked but brilliantly quirky corner of the architecture world: the modernist cottage. ‘The Modern Cottage: An Architectural Phenomenon’ documents a little-known yet radical chapter in the history of modern design.

Curated by architectural historian and Wallpaper* writer Adam Štěch, alongside co-curator and architect Jan Bureš, the exhibition turns its attention to cottages and weekend houses as overlooked bastions of modernism – a category of building long neglected in serious architectural discourse, yet one that tells us as much about the 20th century as any grand civic monument.

As European cities recovered during the interwar years and workers gained more leisure time, a new relationship with the countryside emerged. The concept of the seasonal retreat gained momentum, with city dwellers beginning to build holiday homes on the edges of towns, gathering in loosely formed colonies of like-minded nature lovers. This exhibition honours that specific moment in place and time.

Yet ‘The Modern Cottage’ does not succumb to overblown nostalgia. The modernist cottage is not framed as a peculiarly Czech sociological phenomenon, as it so often is in national sentiment – loaded with romantic association. Štěch and Bureš sidestep that framing, choosing instead to examine wide-ranging designs, typologies and architectural ideas by both celebrated and lesser-known architects.

The result connects Czechoslovak examples to wider European design: Alpine cottages reinterpreted through a modernist lens, Scandinavian dwellings, beach houses in the south of France. Across these contexts, the exhibition traces how avant-garde thinking and shifting social structures shaped even the smallest and most informal of buildings.

The material on display is varied. Štěch's own photographs – taken during visits to cottages across the Czech Republic and abroad – form the visual backbone of the show, supplemented by archival publications, period images and architectural plans and sketches. Original furniture from several cottages is also on display, alongside remains of a cottage designed by the artist Zdeněk Pešánek. The exhibition design, created by Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss, is inspired by a rural landscape.

‘The Modern Cottage’ makes a compelling case that the weekend house was never a footnote to modern architecture – it was where the blueprints of modern life were being drawn.

Green Lodge sits in the London suburb of Roehampton on the edge of Putney Heath. Once a small village, the contemporary streetscape includes detached houses, some Georgian, many Edwardian, traditional terraces and large modernist council estates. Into this varied mix, Stylus Architects have found a slot of land behind a detached Victorian house on which to create a new build family home.

Step inside Green Lodge, a new-build home in South London

The new structure replaces outbuildings and wasteland and was built for a contractor with a long working relationship with Stylus. Aside from the programme, their only requirement was that Stylus, led by Matthew Withers, could ‘do whatever you want, but it has to be quick.’ Partly to maximise the environmental performance but also to help the project through planning, Stylus dug down and set much of the accommodation below street level, allowing the façade to remain single-storey.

As a result, the new house inverts the conventional layout and places the living room, dining area and kitchen on the ground floor, with three bedrooms on the lower ground floor. From the street, an angular, wood clad façade hints at something very interesting behind, with its seamless, faceted roof and flush roof-lights, but all is not revealed until you step through the gate.

While the living areas are flooded with light, the lower ground floor is illuminated by twin south-facing sunken courtyards that lead directly into the surrounding garden via external staircases, as well as a roof-light directly above the staircase.

The lightwells are cleverly placed to bring daylight into all three bedrooms, one of which is ensuite. The other two share a bathroom containing a free-standing tub from Lusso Stone, who also supplied the sinks and toilets. Illuminated roof panels are set above a wooden lattice ceiling, which neatly obscures the absence of daylight.

All bedrooms feature integral joinery and storage that has been carefully designed to abut the house’s exposed concrete structure. The result is a feeling of consistency and precision that maximises the available dimensions in every direction and creates a unified aesthetic throughout the house. In the children’s bedrooms, the wardrobes contain integral workspaces, while upstairs there’s a storage wall that includes a fireplace.

This clever use of single materials to expand the sense of space is especially obvious on the ground floor, where the ceiling heights rise into the pitch of the roof, with single pane roof-lights appearing to float above the openings in the slope.

Engineered wood floors pair with the cabinetry, with a bespoke oak and steel staircase, complete with angle balustrades, adding a clearly defined pathway to the lower floor. The exterior is clad completely in larch, maintaining a sense of unity and solidity.

At 175 sqm, the house is relatively modest in scale. A combination of photovoltaic panels and air source heat pump – complete with bespoke cooling grille design by Withers – make this a very low energy house indeed, thanks in part to the inherent thermal stability of the underground bedrooms.

According to the architects, ‘Green Lodge reads as a singular sculptural form that will weather and soften over time, embedding itself further into the wooded landscape of the heath. The result is a restrained and confident piece of architecture that is both highly resolved and deeply connected to its place.’

StylusArchitects.co.uk

At Wallpaper*, we love spotlighting incredible homes from every corner of the globe that span the spectrum of modern design.

To ensure you don’t miss a thing – and to showcase the scope of residential architecture today – we present our monthly series: The Architecture Edit. Each instalment will feature our favourite houses of the month: buildings that demonstrate creative planning, innovative methods and, of course, design excellence.

This month, we head to Mexico, North London and Norway, to name but a few, to visit several homes that are doing things differently.

Join us on our world tour as we highlight the best houses of May 2026.

An urban retreat in Mexico

Architect Taller Segovia Molina designed this family home in Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico, as a pocket of calm in an urban environment. Its street-facing facade is almost hermetic, giving nothing away, while the interior opens onto a rear courtyard garden. Inside spaces flow across levels connected visually and acoustically, with a barrel-vaulted staircase leading to private upper floors. Natural light, seasonal change and views of greenery anchor residents to nature despite the dense surrounding neighbourhood.

A reimagined care home

Formwork Architects transformed a dilapidated Edwardian care home in north London back into a generous family residence. Substantial basement excavations created a new kitchen-diner opening onto a sunken courtyard, topped by a bespoke open-tread metal staircase leading to a sitting room above. Original features – namely the stained glass and impressive main staircase – were carefully restored, while a double-height rear extension and new rooflights flood the interior with light.

A Viking-inspired cabin

This coastal cabin in Norway draws on Viking boat-building traditions, using whole tree trunks and roots as structural columns that simultaneously serve as shelves, benches, stairs and room dividers. Helen & Hard designed the undulating roof to mirror the surrounding topography, while panoramic glazing frames the ocean and locally-sourced stone forms the base. The result is a sensory space where timber scent, sea sounds and shifting daylight become central to the experience.

Brutalism in Milan

This brutalist family home in Cusano Milanino, designed in the 1970s by Francesco Castiglioni, stands apart from its Art Nouveau suburban neighbours through its raw concrete construction and sculptural massing. A monumental double-height living room dominates, with a sloping ceiling, dramatic internal ramp and double-sided fireplace. Glazed walls connect to expansive gardens, covered loggias wrap the exterior, and a 20-metre basement pool sits below. Owned by the original family, it is now listed for sale.

An Albuquerque desert home

Antoine Predock's final residential project – nicknamed the ‘dinodactyl’ – is a low-slung concrete home perched on a New Mexico desert ridge with extraordinary eastward views across the badlands. Five bedroom suites radiate from a central ‘amphitheatre’ living space, each functioning as a self-contained casita with its own terrace and fire pit. The building's orientation and form were carefully calibrated against extreme temperature swings, high winds and intense sunlight, while steel roof shingles will patinate naturally into the landscape over time.

A renovated painter’s house

Atelier Vens Vanbelle renovated this former home and studio of Belgian painter Antoon De Clerck, situated between Bruges and Ghent, into a vibrant residence befitting its artistic provenance. Drawing on De Clerck's De Stijl-rooted palette of primary colours and clean geometry, the architects layered Bauhaus and midcentury aesthetics with contemporary touches, including metallic roof detailing and a white brick fireplace. Each room carries its own distinct character within a cohesive whole.

Tetris-like Oaxaca apartments

S-AR's three-storey apartment building in Puerto Escondido treats its concrete, wood and steel grid structure as an inhabitable spatial system. Each of the three 180-square-metre apartments occupies one floor, with translucent wooden boxes providing bedroom privacy within an otherwise open framework. Each unit includes two bedrooms, social areas and a private plunge pool, with geometric detailing punctuating stairs, kitchens and storage, and few external walls interrupting the connection to the surrounding jungle canopy.

An off-grid, on-the-market home 

This off-grid prefab home in California's Eastern Sierra, designed by Linda Taalman and built over eight years by its owners, embodies the architect's desert modernism ethos, comprising open glass-and-steel forms, modular construction and minimal site disturbance. Set between Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada, the house frames sweeping vistas of surrounding peaks, including Lone Pine Peak and the Alabama Hills. Its sustainable design, wildfire preparedness and connection to the landscape reflect both the Taalman's principles and the clients' family ties to the region.

A forgotten Portuguese ruin

Pablo Pita Arquitectos rebuilt a derelict olive press in the Douro wine region into a pared-back country retreat, preserving the original footprint while dividing the plan into four quadrants – living, terrace, pool and courtyard. The house steps down the hillside, with raw concrete interiors paired with stone schist walls and timber cladding – it is deliberately minimal, material-led and rooted in the ruin's memory. Four bedrooms occupy the lowest level, while the uppermost floor offers views across the Douro River.

A robust coastal home

Hollaway Studio reimagined an existing cottage on Kent's otherworldly shingle headland, retaining its original silhouette while completely rethinking its interior orientation. Charred timber with white coating echoes the previous building, complemented by corrugated metal and Corten steel, while a salt-and-pepper concrete floor extends the shingle landscape indoors. The robust facade is built to withstand the coastal exposure of one of England's most distinctive – and challenging – landscapes.

With SE House, this Indonesian home's clients had a clear reference point. A family of five, they had studied and lived in Australia, and what they wanted to bring back to Surabaya wasn't a style so much as a quality of space: the ease of large openings and covered terraces, alongside spaces that spill between inside and out. As it turned out, local architect Giovanni Gunawan of KantorGG, who came recommended through a past client, had worked with that vocabulary before. The fit was immediate.

Step inside this new Indonesian home, in Surabaya

The site is a 1,261 sq m corner plot in a dense residential neighbourhood, rectangular and nearly square, making it well-suited, as it turns out, for a courtyard configuration. Two road frontages meant two exposures, and privacy became the project's first problem to solve. Gunawan's answer was to turn the house inward with a breathable skin of synthetic woven rattan wrapping the south-facing street façade to admit air and light while blocking sight-lines and the strong afternoon sun.

From the kerb, the house gives little away – four storeys and approximately 2,528 sq m of built area – before pulling you in through a concealed entrance. Inside, a water curtain suspended between two glass walls marks the threshold, plants flanking either side, before a gallery-like passage opens onto the central courtyard. This is the house's true centre: a U-shaped massing around a void of light, greenery, and moving air, with the street noise effectively blotted out.

The scale of the open-plan living spaces is generous. The ground floor holds the main gathering areas, kitchen, and dining. Connected by a cantilevered bronze staircase, the second floor opens into bedrooms, the principal suite finished in timber-stamped concrete that telegraphs warmth without relying on natural timber. The rooftop unfurls an office, tea room, and prayer room.

The basement is essentially an adult playpen – karaoke, billiards, bar, cigar lounge, golf simulator, and gaming at one end; indoor pool, gym, sauna, and a moss corridor inspired by Japanese dry gardens, or karesansui, at the other.

Gunawan was careful to keep these zones firmly distinct. 'The basement works precisely because the contrast between quiet and active is clear,' he says. Sound control, smoke separation, and careful partitioning do the work, while shared views toward the garden hold the level together.

The material choices cleave to a tactile logic. 'Australian residential design often carries a certain honesty, where materials are valued for their own character rather than made to imitate something else,' Gunawan says. In SE House, that translated into travertine, green marble, wood-stamp concrete, and rattan – an earthy palette smartly adapted to Surabaya's heat and humidity.

The Melbourne-trained architect’s favourite moment in the house is the waiting room behind the rattan screen at the entrance. Neither fully inside nor out, with breeze and the sound of water coming through, this space is where the house's central tension between openness and privacy is most plainly felt, and most cleanly resolved.

These are busy times for KantorGG with projects underway in Jakarta, Bali, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Phuket, and Dubai, including two houses under construction in Singapore and a villa with valley, mountain, and golf-course views in Indonesia. In Perth, a house facing a body of water is in the works – calmness and openness, once again, the brief.

kantorgg.com

How to build a Mexican home on an in-between space, where the urban sprawl of San Luis Potosí meets the arid landscape of the Altiplano? To create Casa Eco, a private residence making the most of its unique setting, local firm Sensacional Dinámica Mexicana (SDM) decided to bring down an existing wall on site that once separated the city and the plateau.

Step inside this desert Mexican home

Set between the edge of the Sierra de San Miguelito and a residential area, the plot was dotted with large existing rock formations. Rather than the old wall, it is this stunning geology that now forms a natural boundary for the new structure, with which the architects aimed to celebrate the terrain and natural environment rather than erase or ‘colonise’ it.

The replacement of the traditional signs of human-made enclosure with ‘a natural threshold founded on respect, ecological integrity and coexistence’ challenged the local construction regulations, and adjacent common land, say the architects, led by SDM founder Sergio Padilla. ‘The rocks now operate as the project’s perceptual structure: they delimit, orient, contain, and establish a direct relationship between the house and the mineral memory of the site.’

One rock also supports one of the new house’s concrete walls, which rises to form a frame for the surrounding landscape. It is part of a series of exposed concrete volumes that echo the site’s geology: ‘The volumes are organised, stacked, and counterbalanced; masses held in equilibrium that evoke the logic of the surrounding rock formations,’ say the architects.

These stacked volumes embrace the sloping site to create a garage and cellar topped by a large ground floor with a study and spacious living space and kitchen. The latter comes with a long counter integrating a large rock. It continues outside to form an outdoor kitchen worktop supported by a boulder. The floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a courtyard with a small pool, the rock formations composing a stunning natural backdrop.

Upstairs are two further floors housing three bedrooms, two bathrooms (with concrete walls rather than tiles), a TV lounge and a dressing room. Solid oak details and handmade pieces of furniture and joinery add warmth to the minimalist interiors throughout, while light flows into the space through carefully positioned openings.

‘The interior unfolds as a sequence of sheltered spaces opened toward the landscape, generating a system of chiaroscuro that continuously transforms the perception of space,’ write the architects. ‘In the private areas, openings are strategic, facing east and south in a cave-like condition with limited apertures that temper the harsh sunlight of the plateau.’

The light also reveals the different textures of the concrete construction, created by the imprint of three types of timber. There are vertical pine planks sandblasted to highlight their natural grain; smooth horizontal formwork; and diagonal sections designed to evoke the region’s local órganos cactus.

A row of actual cacti forms a natural boundary on one side of the residence’s courtyard, while other local plants such as mesquite trees and desert palms are incorporated naturally throughout the space, symbolically extending the Sierra into the design. To the east, another organic border is provided by a seasonal stream that carries runoff from the surrounding hills during the rainy season.

‘The landscape operates as an active boundary and an extension of the interior space, integrating into the everyday experience of inhabitation,’ says the SDM team. ‘The site itself becomes an inhabitant of the house rather than an external backdrop. To inhabit the house is to inhabit the territory – a fundamental principle within the studio’s architectural practice.’

Sober and rigorous, the design lets the surrounding environment take the lead. ‘The result is an architecture that, through its silence, does not impose order upon the landscape,’ hope its architects.

sensacionaldinamica.mx

One side of California architect Wallace Neff's practice was designing mansions for Hollywood A-listers like Groucho Marx and Judy Garland. Another was was designing wildly innovative houses. One such home is for sale right now in Pasadena, California for $1.95 million, the last of eight 'Airform' houses. Neff designed this two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in 1946 for his brother Andrew.

As a sideline to his tony mansion-crafting work Neff (1895-1982) conducted a number of experiments starting in 1932 with what were known as 'balloon' houses. What is that? Well, in this case, industrial-strength neoprene nylon was inflated to a desired dimension and then topped with Gunite, a type of concrete sprayed from a hose. Add a layer of insulation and another layer of concrete and you’d have an Airform house. They could be completed in as few as 48 hours.

Gunite enables easier curves than casting or pouring concrete does and is most commonly used in swimming pools. A number of architects made use of it, from Richard Neutra to Jacques Couëlle and John Covert Watson. In the case of Neff's Pasadena house, city officials were unsure it would hold up; Neff found a Caltech professor to vouch for its stability, and it stands as a futuristic presence still today.

The dome makes for a dazzling interior, 12 feet high at its apex with partitions for the two bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen. Neff observed in Architectural Forum in 1946, 'The absolute absence of girders, columns and jigsaw trusses startles the imagination.' The rooms are about half of the slices of this circle, rotating around a remarkable cantilevered chimney.

The owners, Priya Girishankar, a media executive, and Damon Cleckler, a Carvana product executive, were well familiar with the 1,204 sq ft house from two decades of visiting a friend there who died in 2023. Cleckler tells Wallpaper*, 'The moment you walked into the home, you knew how incredible and special it was. It blew our minds.'

They suffered another loss of their own when their Gregory Ain house was destroyed in the 2025 Eaton fires. Girishankar notes that this work was 'our path forward after losing the Ain house. The decision to buy and restore the Neff bubble was a labour of love. It allowed us to bring back the house to a place that we hope and believe Neff envisioned when he built it.'

The house required a little work, with electrical, heating, air, and plumbing updates, as well as concrete repairs. Their most consequential restorative act was healing a decades-old dent from an HVAC unit. With technological advances it was now possible to remove these and utilize a ducted mini-split. Cleckler says, 'This would allow for the shell to return to it's original glory as a standalone unit, unencumbered by the steampunk-like barnacles of big aluminum tubes, conduit and metal boxes.'

The property sits on a 9,000 sq ft lot and also contains a 1,000 sq ft detached studio space with its own living area, bathroom and bedroom. Fifteen feet beneath that is another atomic era surprise: an Airform bomb shelter.

Cleckler explains, 'It's not showy. It's not a statement. It's a type of solution that came with affordances not typically found in a rectilinear box. It's more organic than organic architecture, and therefore it has a kind of unusual purity to it.'