In the state of São Paulo, this eco-residence cuts gently through the landscape with its soothing curves. Its owners were after a home that was designed with sustainability and self-sufficiency at the forefront. They called upon Mareines Arquitetura, a studio based in Rio de Janeiro, known for its organic and considerate designs.

Tour Passive House, a new eco-residence in Brazil

Titled Passive House, the residence is defined by its ‘wave-like’ roof and a discrete volume placed on top. Equally distinctive is the curving exposed-brick structure that nods downward in one specific spot. This gesture was implemented to create a striking visual effect while also serving as a rainwater collector.

‘The design was inspired by the concept of constant change,’ explain Ivo Mareines and Matthieu Van Beneden, founders of the firm. ‘The waves represent movement, while the unexpected volume on top symbolises a rupture – a contrast, a modernist intervention that anchors the entire project.’

Finding the right materials to achieve the curvature without compromising the clean aesthetic was the team's biggest challenge. ‘Choosing solid brick, made from the site’s own soil, was a real discovery in terms of both sustainability and aesthetics. The next challenge was balancing the complex geometry of the structure with the engineering requirements, ensuring that the fluid design remained both functional and beautiful,’ say the architects.

The land was originally an open field. The architects sought a partnership with the landscaping company Vistara Paisagismo to restore the forest and help botanical spaces flourish. This harmony with nature is at the residence's core.

The architects created a triangular yard surrounded by walls and plants of many different species. From here, various passages trail into the house's entrance. ‘It’s a reinterpretation of cloisters, common in monasteries. We wanted this to be an area of tranquillity, contemplation, and meditation,’ says Mareines.

The materiality is raw and honest. Nearly all the masonry consists of exposed brick, paired with wood and glass. Each material was selected or combined with others to ensure thermal comfort independently of mechanical means.

The house is split into two sections, with the ground floor being entirely open plan. ‘The main atrium is my favourite area,’ says Mareines. ‘The way natural light plays across the curves changes throughout the day, making the building feel alive’

The guest bedrooms are also found here. Frames with sliding doors and glass increase the fluidity of the space, with an effortless connection to the outside pool area. The second floor hosts the primary bedroom, an office space and a bathroom.

The founders conclude, ‘We want visitors to feel a sense of awe and curiosity, as well as a deep connection to the space as they move through it. Walking through this house evokes the calm and spirit of the paths that once surrounded the cloister gardens of ancient monasteries.’

mareinesarquitetura.com.br

‘If we’re serious about low-carbon and regenerative construction, we need much more testing and experimentation,’ says Justin McGuirk, director of the Future Observatory, a research programme of the Design Museum, London. With construction supply chains heavily reliant on fossil fuels and extractive processes, developing viable low-carbon alternatives has never been more urgent.

In response, the Future Observatory, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), has awarded £280,000 to four design studios that are creating environmental innovations. Selected from nearly 140 applicants, Searo Labs, Local Works Studio, WeCanMake and South Yorkshire Ecofit will each receive £70,000 to develop their proposals.

The Design Museum's new Prototype Grants explained

‘We felt that £70,000 would enable recipients to develop a proof of concept and take their research towards commercialisation,’ says McGuirk.

Cambridge-based Searo Labs will use its funding to create SearoSoft, a biodegradable, seaweed-based earplug. Founded in 2022 by Royal College of Art graduates Ayça Dündar and Francis Field, the studio develops alternatives to plastic, including foams, films and adhesives.

Described as the world’s first seaweed-based single-use earplug, SearoSoft offers an alternative to the estimated 40 billion disposable earplugs discarded every year. ‘It contains no petrochemicals, every ingredient is food-grade, and it biodegrades in soil and water within 30 days,’ says co-founder Francis Field.

‘The grant gives us nine focused months to take SearoSoft from a working prototype to a product ready for the world’, says Dündar.

Taking a different approach to material innovation, Sussex-based Local Works Studio will develop Ferment, an insulation material made from fermented plant by-products. The project aims to repurpose agricultural waste, transforming it into a resource for sustainable building retrofits.

Local Works Studio’s proposed Harvest-to-House system will enable farmers to produce fermented insulation using existing machinery, skills and infrastructure, establishing a local supply chain for sustainable construction materials. ‘Without the grant, research trials would be too much of a departure from the norm and a financial risk to take – for farmers, the construction industry, or our practice,’ says director Loretta Bosence.

In Bristol, community land trust and regenerative design studio WeCanMake will investigate a homegrown timber construction system for low-rise apartment buildings. Based in the Knowle West estate, the project will produce a timber kit-of-parts prototype, including innovative approaches to materials for shared walls.

‘The prototype grant will enable us to test some important things that would not have been possible otherwise. For example, investigating and prototyping a 100 per cent biomaterial party wall for use in apartment blocks,’ says director Melissa Mean.

Meanwhile, South Yorkshire Ecofit will work with environmental service company Phyona and design practice Studio Bio to investigate insulation made from biomass generated through phytomining. This process involves growing plants on contaminated former industrial land to extract pollutants from the soil, helping to regenerate the land while producing biomass that can be repurposed as a sustainable construction material.

‘We are particularly excited by the possibility of turning materials arising from land remediation into a useful resource,’ says founding director Jonathan Hind.

The social enterprise aims to transform this biomass into carbon-sequestering insulation while establishing a local supply chain for warmer, more sustainable homes.

‘The grant will allow us to expand our work beyond how buildings are improved and begin investigating where the materials we use come from and what wider environmental role they can play.’

By supporting projects at the prototype stage, the Future Observatory aims to bridge the gap between experimental research and practical application. ‘Funding research in practice is critical because construction is slow to change and bound up in established supply chains,’ says McGuirk.

Together, the four initiatives demonstrate how rethinking construction and design materials and supply chains can challenge established practices and help lay the foundations for a lower-carbon, more regenerative built environment.

designmuseum.org

A sound artist, designer, and electronic musician, Yuri Suzuki was born in Tokyo but has been creating his wonderful, thought-provoking, and fantastical work from London since moving here in 2005. Now, his newest show, 'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia,' co-curated by writer, curator and Wallpaper* contributor Vicky Richardson, has just opened in an Islington gallery and is just as fun and mesmerising as you might expect.

Suzuki's work is on show at Osh Gallery, the exhibition space within Pentagram's London headquarters at The Old Sorting House – the artist was a partner at Pentagram between 2018 and 2024. He often works with sound to create or define space, and this display is an evolution of this take, too.

Step inside 'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia' in London

'Onomatopia', specifically, taps into ongoing research by Suzuki on large sites of display and leisure, such as amusement parks, world fairs and expos. The exploration spans notions of sound and landscape, and how they can combine into structure – and in the case of this show, movement too.

There is a roller-coaster, a Ferris wheel, dodgems, a helter-skelter and a sonic carousel – all colourful and set in motion, inviting the visitor in. Every attraction has its own soundtrack.

'Sound can be a powerful tool for good and bad, but it is often overlooked in a world that is dominated by visual culture. My Onomatopian dioramas use the forms that create sound to build a landscape of escape, from where we can look back at reality and consider how we want the world to be,' says Suzuki.

Suzuki used as inspiration real-life theme parks, such as the Disney attractions, as well as World Expos.

The new show is the conceptual continuation of Suzuki’s 2025 exhibit at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition under the curation of Ryan Gander, titled Coaster of Sounds (Onomatopoeia Series).

'Yuri Suzuki: Onomatopia' runs 10 November 2026 – Thursday 7 January 2027 at Osh Gallery, The Old Sorting House, 46 Essex Road, London N1 8LN

yurisuzuki.com

Since its founding in 2020, the Elie Khouri Art Foundation (EKAF) hasn't had a permanent home – that is, until now. Elie Khouri, a Lebanese-French art collector and founder of his eponymous foundation, has commissioned architect Sumayya Vally, principal of the architecture and research studio Counterspace, to design the contemporary art foundation’s future home.

Discover Sumayya Vally's first project in the UAE

The project, which is set to open in 2028, will see a repurposed villa become a hub for contemporary art exhibitions, education, and public programming in Jumeirah 1. 'Art belongs in everyday life, not apart from it,' says Khouri. 'My foundation will be a home for contemporary art, open to everyone.'

The existing villa and surrounding grounds will be renovated into a series of galleries, educational spaces, pavilions and a garden, while also introducing hospitality and outdoor spaces. The architect looked to the intertwining streets of Beirut and the courtyards of Gulf houses for inspiration – those are territories where the inside and outside collide.

The architectural vision is to move away from seeing the project as a conventional museum building and instead look at its relationship with the site's context, creating an open and accessible place to enjoy art.

The South African architect has worked on numerous projects so far. She was the youngest architect commissioned to design London’s Serpentine Pavilion in 2021; she has directed the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah; and she serves as ‘Architect-in-Residence’ at Ibraaz in London.

Khouri was drawn to Vally's practice, which sits between architecture and artistic research, something that EKAF also celebrates.

‘I think of buildings as having many lives,’ says Vally. ‘At EKAF, we begin with a house that has already held a world within it. Its doors, cornices, balustrades, and particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms contain the traces of another life.

'I am interested in what happens when we take these intimate geometries and give them a new public scale: when the architecture of a room becomes the architecture of a city-facing façade, and the memory of a house becomes the beginnings of an institution. I hope that artists, designers, researchers and makers from the region will bring other imaginations into the work, and that the institution will continue to acquire forms and meanings we cannot yet anticipate.’

counterspace-studio.com

Powerhouse Parramatta sits on the banks of the Parramatta River, in Western Sydney, framed by the glass towers of the city’s fast-growing second CBD. The building was designed by Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki and local architect Genton, with Arup engineers. It is a second venue for the nearly 150-year-old museum of applied arts and sciences, 30 minutes by train from its central Sydney origins.

Its two rectangular forms are strikingly wrapped in a lattice exoskeleton that expresses monumentality while offering a relatable human scale. It is a defining feature that sets Powerhouse Parramatta apart from its neighbours – it is also a key architectural response to a brief that called for a new type of museum.

Step inside the new Powerhouse Parramatta in Sydney

Placing the structure on the outside leaves the interiors free of columns, so large-span galleries can host very different kinds of programme. The lattice exoskeleton also expressly puts the effort of defying gravity on show. This is especially palpable in the elongated V forms that reach 18 metres from the ground to the first platform.

They support one of the largest galleries in Australia and a dramatic entrance and undercroft between the two building forms. With the exoskeleton’s 1,300 unique human-scale components, it feels like an apt expression of a museum whose roots lie in science and technology.

The building’s spatial layout is legible from the outside. Large black-box spaces are stacked across floors, marked by the lattice’s horizontal members. Facing the river, double-height circulation and unprogrammed, flexible space run the length of both buildings. These neutral spaces come alive with the play of shadows cast by the lattice exoskeleton. After dark, the exoskeleton is artfully backlit, adding an appealing glowing presence on the city edge.

In comparison to the open expanses of the public spaces throughout the building, the rooftop terrace with spectacular views across the city and a productive garden with enticing aromas offers a pleasingly intimate experience. Out of public view, there are dormitories hosting overnight stays for school children and residential studios for international scholars and creatives. Interior fit-outs have been realised by leading Australian designers and include new furniture commissions, as a key aspect of a museum committed to supporting design and industry.

The large exhibition spaces allow for inventive installations but inevitably require major builds. Investment has been made in the opening exhibitions, and the results are impressive. The standout is ‘Task Eternal’, which focuses on flight in the vast 18m-high gallery. Open Architecture has worked in partnership with the curatorial team to develop an exhibition that provides a spatial journey from the intimate to the epic, where visitors encounter drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, a giant F1 rocket engine, a zero-emission electric aircraft, space suits and film costumes, and a James Turrell installation reached by ascending a tower.

The ubiquitous typology of the shopping centre is explored in ‘The Mall’ through an array of materials, objects and installations staged within a two-storey structure with distinct thematic and spatial zones. A design and curatorial partnership with OMA/AMO brings together the likes of US architect Victor Gruen’s archive with Western Sydney material and community memorabilia, highlighting the role Australia played in the global model. Both these long-running shows include new local and international commissions that offer valuable critical perspectives.

Sensory immersion and reflection underpin other shows. ‘The Turning’ by Es Devlin includes poetic films and a mirror maze, invoking humanity, connection and ecology. In a First Nations-led installation, ‘Overflow’, a tidal terrain occupies an upper gallery with city views, allowing a poignant and welcome connection between content and context. The film commission is best experienced with shoes off, wading in the water, taking in the stories of care for saltwater and freshwater ecosystems by seven community organisations.

The programming pushes new bounds, and the building, with its expressive structural framework, rational planning and muted material palette, works as a refined infrastructure for it. It wants to be taken on by community and visitors, and over time, tested, allowed to get messy and occupied in unexpected ways.

moreaukusunoki.com

genton.global

powerhouse.com.au

Antara, the commercial destination in Mexico City's Colonia Granada, draws more than 12 million visitors a year. However, after several decades of carrying the title of the first open-air retail hub in the heart of the Miguel Hidalgo neighbourhood (an area also known as Nuevo Polanco), it was time to raise the cultural bar for the community, too. The plan? To offer improved everyday living through ‘cultural placemaking’ and the infusion of art, where retail, hospitality, residential, and commercial tenants can thrive.

The next chapter for Antara

Built on a former industrial site for developer SOMA by third-generation architecture and design firm Sordo Madaleno, Antara is now conceptually evolving into a place where fine art can be found in unconventional places. The development's next chapter will hold a shopping plaza with brands from Assouline to Brunello Cucinelli and Zimmermann, along with Alo, Farm Rio and Zadig & Voltaire. New dining options range from international and stateside favourites Nobu, Milos, Mastros, and Carbone, to a Rosewood Mexico City hotel and corporate offices for Google’s Latam HQ and Sony Music. All are coming in the first quarter of 2027.

‘It's just a completely different approach to retail,’ says SOMA vice-president Javier Sordo Madaleno de Haro. ‘I think that today it's not enough to just make a nice architectural place and bring in good brands. I think the experience gets to be elevated to a different level.’

Working with SOMA and local art foundation Arte Abierto, Javier is leading the way at his family-run studio, which has been achieving groundbreaking results in the city for over 80 years. Founded by Javier’s grandfather, Juan Sordo Madaleno, who was an architect and pioneer of Mexican modernist architecture, Sordo Madaleno Arquitectos was established in 1937, influenced by Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. The firm specialises in hotels, residential, and commercial buildings.

‘One of the interesting things is that my grandfather,’ says Javier, ‘back in the day, was also very intrigued about collaborating with artists, like Mathias Goeritz and Chucho Reyes.’

Carrying on his grandfather’s legacy by leading the practice, Javier is also the founder of Arte Abierto, a non-profit foundation devoted to creating opportunities for people to enjoy contemporary art exhibitions. These are often unexpectedly found in public forums and various real estate developments in collaboration with SOMA.

‘I like the idea of giving a platform to artists, so they can create not just a large installation, but also something that's architecturally related,’ he says. ‘I've always been in love with art, but through this foundation, the collaboration with artists was extremely difficult at the beginning, because artists like the cultural part, but are usually very distant from the commercial side.’

Javier and his team developed a completely different approach to artists than, say, a museum would have about ten years ago. ‘We just give a blank canvas to the artists, a budget, and then they can just reshape it in any way they want. We started with these urban sculptures that were open to the public – not just the cultural public.'

'It should also be for kids and people who encounter it in different ways. And that was the mission behind it: I want people to go shop in a store, eat at the restaurant, find a cultural space, and interact with it. And I want the people who visit the cultural place to also have some amenities, have some fun and enjoy having lunch there. So, it's a mix of things.’

To that end, German conceptual and installation artist Carsten Höller’s Mexico City ‘Slides’ is an ambitious series of four slides of different lengths and locations. They twist and turn, and all spill out into the Antara courtyard below. Höller's work merges scientific experimentation with immersive, participatory environments – and is known for works such as Test Site at Tate Modern, The Slide at the ArcelorMittal Orbit and winter 2025’s pink carousel in St Moritz. For this project, the stainless steel slides were manufactured in Germany with transparent polycarbonate upper portions so you can look out and also see other people sliding at the same time.

‘This thing with these slides is that it takes people from very different places, metaphorically speaking, and backgrounds, from status to income, takes them all to the same place,’ says Höller.

The longest slide is from the Rosewood Hotel's rooftop, by the pool. Another slide starts at the Google headquarters. The third one starts from one of the family-style restaurants, and the final one is at the art centre. ‘There's almost like a knot in the middle, where all the slides are kind of intertwined, so it's a great equaliser,’ he adds.

‘Political artwork, it's like a slide effect. It's what life is really about. It's not about what you represent, necessarily, but the fact of being alive. So, if you're a child, you just see a slide; if you're an architect, you see it maybe as a way to bring people from one place to another in a safe and energy-efficient way without escalators and stairs. But there's a sculpture with people inside, and that is a high level of diversity. On the other hand, it comes back to the essential: we are the same.’

In addition to the permanent slides, the site and Arte Abierto will offer rotating art installations on an annual basis. For the first collaboration, Copenhagen-based artists Superflex rose to the occasion to create several pieces that are in stark contrast to the linear architectural surroundings.

Comprised of three artists, Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjørnstjerne Christiansen, Superflex continually explores the expanding idea of art and its social, political and ecological implications.

Pink has been an overriding colour theme in the group’s work for the past ten years – including the 2019 site-specific building installation, Dive-In, at Desert X in the Coachella Valley, California, and an underwater Super Reef off Denmark. For this work, what looks like a giant wad of bubble gum (they even handed out a cheeky container holding Goma de Mascar Sabor Tutti Frutti at the opening event for each guest to chew) is a large temporary architectural installation called Romeo.

This is somewhat of a full-circle moment for Superflex, which had one of its first Mexico City shows at Fundación Jumex next door to Museo Soumaya, which can be seen just across the street from Romeo. At night, the curved steel structure casts a purple-blue glow on the upper-level installation, which can also be viewed from the street.

Collectively, what drew them to the project was the challenging location – in a mall on a rooftop – and that a new, unexpected audience could experience their work. According to Fenger, ‘Hyper-commercial architecture is all around this area, and everything is about straight lines and control, so we wanted to create something that looked quite different. We thought it would be interesting to work with a piece of architecture that is not formulated by humans, but formulated by other forces.’

In this case, that was gravity and clay. ‘[A piece of clay] all of a sudden dropped to the floor,’ recalls Neilsen. ‘We picked it up and thought, this is perfect. So that was the shape – there are no fingerprints. It looks from out of this world like an alien. In a way, it celebrates chance. And maybe we are not in control as much as we think. This mirrors a little bit how we think of ourselves in the world as the sort of animal on top of everything. And this architecture that we're proposing here is celebrating the opposite.’

Inside the pink cube, the artists take a ‘fly on the wall’ approach to another level with 164 hand-painted black-green, small cast flies with silver-hued wings forming two straight lines from wall to wall, and facing off each other with beady red eyes.

‘Inside Romeo, there's another logic,’ says Fenger. ‘So, the outer lodging is just kind of loss of control, and inside, there's control. It's not normal that flies line up like that. The flies are always landing on us, like an animal that likes humans. Maybe it's just a rare moment in the universe, the way they are sitting, or they are maybe plotting against us.’

The third phase of the installation is a simple sign outside the pink pavilion: ‘Now What.’ It can be a question, or can be a call for action, or maybe it's just a state of mind. Neilsen adds, ‘Because we live in a time where things are sort of moving fast, and maybe, in some state of crisis. Where are we now, and what is the moment? It’s also the sense of our relation to our surroundings, and the other creatures on the planet. Here in the work, the animals are sort of behaving in a way that is a little human-like, but the architecture is behaving in the opposite way, and what is this new way of being in the world?'

As for SOMA and Sordo Madaleno, this‘cultural placemaking’ is about the evolution of retail and mixed-use developments around the world, always through architecture. They started working with this approach about ten years ago. ‘We position cities to achieve their greatest potential, thoughtfully integrating society, nature, and the built environment.’

As for the slides connected to the corporate offices, hotel, restaurants and retail, Javier feels it all boils down to engagement. ‘It's just changing the dynamics of how people perceive the shopping or the F&B experience. I want people to be surprised and to interact with it and move through the building in a different way. If you finish lunch and you want to go down the slides with your kids, you can. It's all about creating experiences, and I think this is one of the best examples that we've done as a collaboration between an artist and an architect, just blending together the same vision. We have 500 collaborators (across all the projects) all interacting for the same purpose.’

Javier and his team also created Ánima Village in San José del Cabo, which is an open-air retail and art destination next to the new Soho House in Mexico. There is a residential component in the same development as the Park Hyatt residences and a Four Seasons (the latter was independently designed).

As for the future of SOMA's collaborations with Sordo Madaleno, after the recent Soho House opening in Mexico City, the team has nine big developments in Mexico rolling out in the next year. Among them are the tallest tower in Mexico City, a world-famous bank, and more retail spaces, including at an Aman and a Mandarin Oriental.

In other expansion news, Sordo Madaleno recently opened its first studio outside Mexico, in King's Cross, London, and will continue to develop projects in the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. ‘I think by having the office in King's Cross, we have this new place where we can open up new frontiers, and really export what we've been working on in the past 85 years with Fernando, my brother, who’s a very talented architect, now in charge of the UK office, and also my other brother Jose, who is a very talented financier,’ says Javier. ‘We work close together, collaborating – always searching for the same vision.'

This includes the belief that: ‘The most valuable square metre in a property is […] the space that you give to the city – not the one that you lease,’ according to Javier. In short, maybe it’s a park and not more stores, but making an interaction with people and giving back. ‘Our biggest asset is those spaces. That has been our philosophy.’

sordomadaleno.com

soma.group

Mexico is home to some of the most exciting modern and contemporary residential architecture in the world today. A new generation of architects is shaping a distinctive design language that reveres and reinterprets the forms, motifs, geometries and siting principles first employed by the Mesoamerican cultures that came before them.

By examining the architecture of Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Zapotec and other Mesoamerican peoples – from their construction of monumental pyramids to their innate understanding of how light and shadow can influence movement through a space – today’s architects are crafting innovative, atmospheric and deeply personal private residences for their clients.

For Su Wu, a writer and curator who has called Mexico City home for the past 12 years, the re-emergence of these ancient ideas is akin to a ‘renaissance’, she tells Wallpaper*. Her new book, Mesoamerican Modern (Phaidon, 2026), includes 16 exemplary residential projects that provide tangible evidence of this movement. ‘These ideas are not some part of dusty prehistory, but they're alive, and they have relevance,’ says Wu.

While Mesoamerican architectural forms and motifs have previously appeared in large-scale cultural projects, such as Mexico City’s Museo Tamayo and Museo Nacional de Antropología, their appearance in private homes is a relatively recent phenomenon. ‘That feels to me like a shift,’ says Wu, who was drawn to the residential sector for precisely this reason. ‘It's not a nation-building effort, but a deeply personal effort based around what people are willing to live with, and a reflection of an expanded sense of what we consider beautiful and valuable.’

While researching and writing the book, ‘there were a few very surprising principles that came up over and over,’ Wu says. To demonstrate these recurring themes, Wu reflects on five projects featured in the 305-page, photographically-illustrated volume, each representing a specific manifestation of Mesoamerican Modern.

Su Wu on Mesoamerican modernism

Casa 720 by Fernanda Canales

'Casa 720 is a beautiful example of geometric precision in Mesoamerican architecture, and also of the idea of the patio, or open space, as a central feature of the Mesoamerican home. Canales also spoke so beautifully of ‘giving space back above’ and considering the top of the house to be the sky, rather than the roof, with activated rooftops.'

Casa Bernal by Marcos Ruiz and Emmanuel Picault

'Many architects spoke of the importance of siting to Mesoamerican homes: the relationship of the house and its orientation to cosmological and natural elements, and of deriving meaning from specific topography. Examples in the book include a home built over two seasonal waterfalls, and this one, built in the shadow of the Peña de Bernal monolith in Querétaro, where every view, window orientation and roof slant was determined by its relationship to the mountain.'

Casa Nancarrow by Juan O’Gorman

'This house is by one of the patron saints of this book (the other being Agustín Hernández). Juan O’Gorman was known as the progenitor of functionalist architecture in Mexico, but this home, which he built for the avant-garde composer Conlon Nancarrow, shows his earliest turn away from what he called ‘square rooms with square windows’, towards the mosaic style he later applied to Museo Anahuacalli and the central library at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).'

'For me, it also shows another type of reverse syncretism: instead of colonial structures being built on top of Mesoamerican sites and using their stones as quarry, Mesoamerican motifs are applied to modernist or colonial structures.'

Casa Reyes Fernández by Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernández

'There’s perhaps no clearer expression of the idea that the past is still vividly part of the present in the distinct architecture and design of the Americas. This manifests not only in the material palette, the volumes of spaces and the deliberate application of the handmade, but also in how Pedro and Carla spoke of the space and advocated for the ideas of Mesoamerica as a source for the avant-garde and radical. Pedro describes "counterfactual scenarios where you can imagine how this place would have evolved without the colonial influence’ – ‘how they would have become, and what that would have led to."'

Tlalocan by Gerardo ‘Geraz Ato’ García and Marino García

'Hand-carved over more than 12 years by artist and construction worker Geraz Ato, this space in the shadow of the archaeological site of Teotihuacan offers both erudition through specific iconography and the capacity for ongoing interpretation. A large bas-relief overlooking the central patio features scenes of migration from present-day Oaxaca to the site in the Valley of Mexico, suggesting the complexity of Mesoamerican cities, with their ethnic enclaves, apartment complexes and gridded streets. The mural also features an image of Tlaloc, the rain god (the original sculpture now sits outside the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City). But Geraz’s version shows the deity still in an unfinished state, flanked by carvers – his own predecessors! – returning a sense of authorship to anonymous artefacts.'

Houses by Richard Neutra, R.M. Schindler and other masters of Los Angeles modernism line the steep streets of the Silver Lake district, though many are well concealed. Now, an unsung gem has come up for sale: a residence that John Lautner designed in 1955 for artist Joseph Baldwin and his wife, Rosemary. She survived him and lived there for 71 years until her death earlier this year. They changed nothing, so the Baldwin Residence is a time capsule, down to the space-age stove; modest in scale but packed with invention.

Explore Baldwin Residence by John Lautner, now on the market

Lautner is best known for the monumental houses of his later years, including the Chemosphere, Silvertop and the Elrod House in Palm Springs. These concrete palaces overshadow his early work in wood and brick, though they share the humanity that the architect brought to all his homes.

In an interview a year before his death in 1994, Lautner insisted that architecture 'has to be something that improves human life, with some spirit, some feeling, some real ideas contributing to human welfare; joyful; with light, air, free spaces; things that are alive, that are art.'

The Baldwin Residence embodies all those qualities. It is perched on a downslope, and you enter at the junction of a bedroom wing that hugs the hillside and the wedge-shaped living room that is cantilevered out from two concrete piers. The kitchen, dining area and the three bedrooms are tiny by contemporary standards, but high ceilings combined with the play of light make up for that limitation.

The house is a frugal masterpiece of inventive detail and expressive materials. Joists project out over a narrow sculpture garden to form a pergola. Sunlight filters through trees, highlighting the redwood and earth-toned stucco walls. The playful geometry of the interior parallels that of Schindler, and there’s even an echo of Frank Lloyd Wright in the triangular wall openings. Look up in the smaller bathroom, and the ceiling seems to be in motion.

Terrazzo floors give way to parquet, and Douglas fir wood is employed for built-in furniture, panelling, and to shade lighting. The expansive, glass-walled living room is bathed in northern light and doubles as an artist’s studio. It opens onto a wood deck and a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley and San Gabriel Mountains. It’s anchored by a brick chimney and animated by a subtly folded ceiling. The void beneath may be built out, as Escher GuneWardena Architecture have done in their restoration of Lautner’s own 1939 house, a block north.

The Rosemary and Joseph Baldwin Residence, John Lautner (1955) is presented by Louis Magnano and the Modern California House at $2,099,999.

Part of the Micasa furniture campus in São Paulo, Casual Store is conceived as both a functioning exhibition space and a beautifully designed spatial object in its own right. The new showroom for the well-known design and product destination in Brazil was created by Studio mk27, the architecture studio founded by Marcio Kogan – also behind a number of other Micasa buildings, such as the retail space Volume C, completed in 2022.

Discover Casual Store by Studio mk27

Casual Store is located in Micasa's complex in the Brazilian metropolis' Jardim neighbourhood. The architecture team applied its signature warm, invitingly minimalist approach to craft a seemingly simple volume – three orthogonal floors, neatly stacked on top of each other, wrapped in glazing and featuring elegant shading on the inside to protect from the hot sun.

Kogan (a long-term Wallpaper* presence, who guest-edited our October 2024 edition and shared with us his top 50 films of all time) worked on the architecture with colleague Samanta Cafardo. Interiors were created by Diana Radomysler and Pedro Ribeiro.

The practice's well-established cinematic approach is ever-present in Casual Store. The double skin of glass and slim white shading fins creates a dynamism and a sense of movement as visitors journey through the space. And while the volume might at first appear opaque from a distance, upon approach, peeks inside allow glimpses that tantalise the guest and beckon them in.

This play of transparency and light draws one in, but once indoors, the atmosphere changes to a serene, cocooning environment clad in light, neutral colours (mostly white) and clean surfaces. This is Studio mk27's contemporary interpretation of the 'white cube' of a gallery, the architects explain, putting the displayed furniture and products front and centre.

This seemingly simple geometry is not arbitrary, the team hastens to add. It serves functionality and supports the store's daily shows and other activities.

They say: 'A single geometric order governs the entire project: the Cartesian plan unfolds into the floor pattern, the orthogonal ceiling grid, the freestanding central volume, and the modulation of the façade. Across different scales, these elements become reflections of the same architectural gesture, lending the space a sense of coherence without compromising its flexibility.'

Everything is connected by a central core, a freestanding volume at the centre of the floor plan, which hosts circulation and any auxiliary spaces needed for the showroom’s smooth operation. Around this element, everything can move and adapt according to each display's needs.

This gives Casual Store more of a light, pavilion-like feel rather than that of a heavier, fixed structure. Here, exhibitions, events and other commercial functions can seamlessly merge, blurring the lines between retail and theatre.

mk27.com

Jan Jakub Tesař of Prague-based Stempel & Tesar architekti, has completed a house in the city for his own family. The Minimal Maximum House is very much a crafted, self-directed project for Tesař, who joined the practice with his former teacher Ján Stempel in 2008.

Describing the house as ‘a personal manifesto in which more than two decades of designing residential architecture for others is condensed into a single, highly concentrated response,’ the new house sits on a tightly constrained and challenging spot in the city.

‘Every centimetre became a deliberate decision, resulting in a ‘minimal maximum’ – a house without corridors,’ says Tesař. The key feature is the three-storey central dining space that forms the core of the house. Over four metres tall, it connects to the various levels via a winding steel staircase and a series of half landings.

The site itself had been vacant for many years, located on a slope between two apartment buildings and villas, home to some ancient garages. Measuring 240 sq m, it also sits close to a railway track and contains a protected mature cherry tree, all factors that have dissuaded commercial developers from having a go.

For an architect, looking for a site for his own family, it presented an opportunity. ‘The plot shaped it, ambition motivated it, and responsibility refined it,’ Tesař says, ‘I built the house for us, for the whole family, but it reflects my ego. An ego shaped by twenty-five years of learning from the experienced and by building homes for others.’

By building high on a tight 70 sq m floor plan, Tesař and his team have created a three-bedroom house with a distinct vertical character that has around 100 sq m of accommodation. Light rights for neighbouring properties guided the shape and setback of the new house, with a frontage along the existing street line and its own garden to the rear.

The use of offset floor levels makes the most of the available space, with a sunken living area set into the hillside on the lower ground floor, stepping down from the entrance level. As one progresses up the house, this arrangement replaces a conventional hallway and corridors, with the staircase serving as the circulation and the 4.2m high dining room serving as lightwell and focal point.

The concrete structure required for the partially subterranean levels are left exposed and built-in furniture is used extensively to maximise the sense of space and the purity of the wall planes. Detail is everything. A single walnut tree provided the richly grained wood found throughout the kitchen, living room and doors, while in bedrooms have a more pared back, neutral finish.

This simplicity and minimalism is also carried through to the façade, which is clad throughout with vertically ribbed white profiled aluminium sheeting. In the dining room, a large sliding glass window opens up the space to the garden in the warm summer months.

Environmental performance has been carefully considered, with triple-glazed windows, high levels of insulation and underfloor heating powered by an air-to-water heat pump. The garden is irrigated by collected rainwater and a modest photovoltaic array on the roof deals with day-to-day energy needs.

As Tesar notes, the house is a unique creation, shaped by necessity and the demands of the site, but also highly crafted and individual in its detailing, right down to the custom front door handle, with ‘precise and functional geometry [that] also serves as an artistic statement.’

Stempel-Tesar.com, @Stempel_Tesar

Building with wood has always been part of White Arkitekter's DNA – and it is a topic increasingly on many architects' minds lately, too. In the search for sustainable architecture that can mitigate the risks brought on by climate change and other challenges of our times, creatives around the world have been looking at alternatives to the conventional building methods. So far, the latter have resulted in the construction industry's infamous reported 37% to 40% of global carbon emissions.

The road is not an easy one, as architecture studios navigate fashions, market forces, perceptions and regulations (which can all differ across territories) in the hunt for options. In this context, timber, one might argue, is not a new material at all. It has been in the design canon of the Nordic nations (and beyond) for centuries, and it's also a renewable resource when managed correctly. White Arktekter has been at the forefront of a global movement to spotlight timber as a go-to, no-brainer solution for contemporary architecture. We met with the practice's new CEO to hear about its exciting applications within White's growing portfolio.

Oskar Norelius of White Arkitekter on Wood City and more

2027 will mark 20 years at White Arkitekter for Oskar Norelius. The Swedish architect started at the studio as an intern and is now its youngest-ever CEO. The 550-strong firm, with bases in Sweden and the UK, handles work in a variety of territories, including Europe and Canada, and has carved a unique niche in timber building. This is not through small, experimental, one-off projects. It's about taking wood architecture and scaling it up – applying its construction techniques to high-rises, large-scale buildings, and even an entire city, as Wood City, an ongoing scheme in south Stockholm, proves. The long-term project is now entering its third year on site.

We caught up with Norelius to find out more about White, Wood City, and why building with timber is worth it.

Interview with Oskar Norelius

Wallpaper*: You have been with White Arkitekter for 20 years and are now CEO - congratulations!

Oskar Norelius: White, as a studio, is very non-hierarchical. Even as an intern, you get into a project, and you are in the room with the people making the decisions about the project. You learn a lot, and I think this is one of the reasons why many people in the industry in Sweden have worked at some point at White.

W*: How do you describe what the studio does? What is your strength?

ON: The thread that goes through all our projects is not going to be whether it's minimalist or maximalist or organic or parametric; that can vary depending on the planning situation, the project, the location, and the collaborators. The common thread is our approach and our process, which has long been people and sustainability.

W*: Tell me about Wood City. What an amazing case study to work on; there's nothing else like it.

ON: Wood City is a large development on the outskirts of Stockholm, in Sickla. And It's not just a showcase made to be published and talked about globally. It's the development of a place, a real project happening. It is unique and quite ahead of its time but also it is based on very rational decisions. It can be a challenge to imagine the new possibilities of timber at that scale, but once you put everything together, it makes sense. The site spans 250,000 square meters, and its development plan spans 15 years.

W*: What stage is the project in now?

ON: We are currently finishing the first block, and as soon as we have tenants, we will move on to the next, and then the next. Because of the long time scale, there will be some natural variation because what we're designing today is best practice for 2026; and what will be designed in 2032 will likely be different.

W*: How fast are things changing with timber construction?

ON: If you look at the number of buildings made with conventional construction techniques, it's huge. So the experience and the knowledge are very wide, and the building construction skills too – everything is aligned to produce more of those buildings. This has been built into the vision [of Wood City]. The successive buildout means that buildings will be designed at different times, as timber construction evolves. It's been five years since we delivered our Sara Cultural Centre [an award-winning, 20-storey cultural venue in Sweden's Skellefteå and one of the world's tallest timber buildings], which is a very tall and big building, and we learned there that it's not always a linear path towards 'better'. You have to keep working and evolving.

W*: Is Wood City a different beast to the Sara Cultural Centre?

ON: Wood City is not very tall, so we don't have those kinds of structural issues. But Sara was a very complex project, and in that, actually, it was our proof of concept in many ways. The most interesting part is how far you can push the vision, because working with this material gives so much, and I think a lot of people don't really realise the benefits you can get.

W*: What are some of the challenges?

ON: You can't just hire people coming in and telling you exactly how it's going to work. You need collaboration because you can't copy something that was done three years ago; the industry is evolving. You need to work with innovation. That means everyone needs to be open. And that's also the essence of what you asked earlier about our approach; if you start with openness and sustainability as your main direction, you get more freedom of design. We want to far exceed the ambitions for sustainability.

W*: And what of wood building's longevity; do timber structures age in a different way?

ON: They do, but the way that mass timber buildings are made today, it's not the wood that's going to limit the lifespan of the building. It's about adaptability, as at some point, people may not want to use them any more. A lot of the work on the structure has to be done at the same time as the programming to make sure that we can get columns in good locations that also allow very flexible use.

W*: Do you find the resistance to using timber is from the buyers, or is it actually the developers and construction?

ON: I think it's more within the industry than with the end user. I've never met anyone who said, I'd rather not have a timber building. The issue is often industry risk aversion.

W*: What kind of timber are you using, and where does it come from?

ON: This often varies depending on the project. The first element at Wood City is a combination of CLT (Cross-laminated timber) and Glulam (glued laminated timber). There are plenty of local resources in Sweden. In fact, there's an overcapacity right now in the country. Finding the timber is not the issue.

W*: What else is on your plate right now?

ON: We recently won a new development in Amsterdam – a smaller Wood City, if you will. This is going to be 500 homes in 20 buildings that are all made from mass timber, but also with biomaterials. So, there's a lot of experimentation. It's not in construction yet, but it might finish before Wood City.

W*: And in terms of completions?

ON: We just finalised a sports centre in Stockholm called Ulvsunda. It's a former brewery that we've transformed into the largest sports centre in the city.

W*: Beyond wood, are you looking into any other materials that you want to or have experimented with?

ON: Once you switch from conventional construction to timber, you open the door to all of the biobased materials that work really well with timber – for example, hemp, clay and lime chalk plaster.

W*: Where does nature, in the form of greenery and landscape, come into your designs?

ON: I think we have probably 100 landscape architects in the company, so it's a very big part of what we do. We have the technical knowledge, so how can we bring as much of it as possible into our designs? In Sweden, for example, we did this central plaza in Stockholm, Södermalmstorg, a very technical project with water management between the lake and the sea. The whole plaza is a bridge, and we planted these roofs, so it's a plaza, but it's actually a roof with a lot of greenery. You can get a lot of trees, a lot of green in a project like that. It's definitely something we're pushing.

whitearkitekter.com

Sierra Leone's Freetown Memorial, a monument to First World War fallen soldiers created by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1931, has been refreshed. Oshinówò Studio is the architect behind the project, which features an extension to the original structure in the shape of a prism in structural glass, boldly illuminated in a nod of respect and honour to the local Carrier Corps.

Explore the new Freetown Memorial by Oshinówò Studio

Oshinówò Studio's founder, Tosin Oshinówò, worked with the commissioner, the Commonwealth War Grave Commission (CWGC), on integrating the geometric structure and its mesmerising lighting design with the etching of the names of more than 900 fallen Sierra Leone Carrier Corps members – individually commemorated within the memorial for the first time.

This type of project was a first for Oshinowo too, who was attracted to take part in the competition by the challenge of a new typology, as much as by its importance. 'It has been an absolute privilege to design this monument. That said, I have always been drawn to new challenges, and it was precisely the unfamiliarity of this commission that attracted me. At the time, I was also exploring the relationship between public space and memory as part of an academic enquiry, and I became increasingly aware of these spaces' cultural and historical significance. I brought that curiosity and personal interest into the project, allowing it to inform my approach to the design,' she said.

The structure reaches 8.4m in height, its four glass 'fins' (weighing a total of 4,000 kg) emitting a colourful glow that culminates in a pillar of light projecting upwards and visible from a 5km radius across Freetown. This was the result of the design team's ambition for their scheme to expand its impact and conceptually resonate beyond its physical space.

'Through our engagement with the site and its context, we recognised that the monument, located within the forecourt of the Ministry of Finance, now sits within a controlled-access area. We wanted to create a memorial that could transcend the limitations of its physical location and extend its presence into the wider city. Light became a natural medium through which to achieve this,' Oshinowo explains.

'While the monument serves as a memorial to the fallen, we also saw an opportunity to create a broader space for collective remembrance, acknowledging some of the other tragedies that have shaped Sierra Leone's history. The beam of light will be illuminated on significant days throughout the year, allowing the memorial to extend beyond its immediate commemorative purpose. In doing so, it becomes a contemporary monument that speaks to the people of Sierra Leone today while carrying its message of remembrance and hope to future generations.'

Oshinówò worked with an expert international team to realise this technically complex and important commission. Engineers, glass designers, laser consultants and construction partners from Nigeria, the Netherlands, Spain, Sierra Leone and the UK worked on the project. Meanwhile, stonemasons and bronze specialists worked on the existing memorial, restoring it to its former glory to accompany the new elements' public reveal this weekend.

This didn't come without its challenges, Oshinowo recalls: 'Conceptually, the project came together quite naturally; the real challenge lay in its technical delivery. It has been an incredibly rewarding experience, but one that presented a number of significant technical and logistical challenges.

'Our first obstacle was that Sir Edward Lutyens’ existing structure had not been designed to carry the additional weight of the new monument. We therefore developed a reinforcement strategy, which I have fondly called a root canal, to accommodate the new structure without compromising or damaging the existing masonry.'

An epitaph from poets Nii Ayikwei Parkes and Julianknxx, written in Krio and English, and inscribed on the pavilion, reads: 'From today you will be carried, you are borne, now and ever.'

'This memorial is part of one of the most significant projects we have undertaken since the Second World War. It is about righting a historic wrong and renewing a promise we made a century ago: that everybody who died for the Commonwealth in the First World War, no matter where, no matter how, no matter who they were, would be commemorated equally,' says Claire Horton CBE, director general at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

'We were looking for a response that was ambitious yet accurate, one that would allow us, for the first time, to honour by name the servicemen of the Sierra Leone Carrier Corps. We wanted to commission a memorial that would transform historical research and knowledge into meaningful action, helping people in Sierra Leone and around the world to have a fuller, international understanding of the global scale of the World Wars and the diverse individuals whose service helped shape our shared history.'

oshinowostudio.com

A 1960s rural Ukrainian midcentury house near Kyiv has been transformed into a rich tapestry of found materials, antiques and creative interventions. Hata Yarova, which stands out in the village of Derev’yana thanks to a mural on its facade inspired by Ukrainian modernism and Suprematism by Levchenya, is the first of three neighbouring Soviet architecture-era homes that Ukrainian artist Oksana Levchenya (Konstantinovska) is remodelling as guesthouses, turning an ordinary, anonymous typology into something distinctive and woven with narrative.

Inside Oksana Levchenya's Ukrainian midcentury house project

The idea for the guest houses emerged during the pandemic, but the project has taken on new meaning since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 'Continuing to build during the war is, in a way, an act of defiance against the death and destruction that Russia has brought to us,' Levchenya tells me via video call from Kyiv, her background darkened by a power cut.

She relies on a small group of builders, led by a man approaching his seventies, and the goal of renting the houses is largely about covering costs and sustaining the teams’ livelihoods. 'These houses serve as places of calm and restoration for those who have remained in Ukraine. We are all working enough for three people now, and all of us need rest and comfort.'

Levchenya’s own childhood was another spur. After her parents’ divorce, she stayed with her grandmother and later her aunt while her mother pursued a career as a surgeon. At the age of nine, she went to live with her mother in one of the meagre apartments allotted to physicians during the Soviet era in low-cost blocks, called Khrushchyovka.

'Throughout my early childhood, I was always staying in other people’s homes, dreaming of a place of my own,' she explains. 'The Hata Yarova project was born from a desire to create a space in which time is somehow suspended – a place that does not belong to any particular period.'

She calls her approach 'intuitive additive architecture': an organic method of adaptation, in which the final form emerges through a slow process of interventions and additions, rather than from a fixed blueprint. Replacing the roof gave her a chance to add an attic level housing guest rooms. The original porch was dismantled, its timber planks reused as the staircase. In its place, Levchenya added an extension housing the kitchen and bathroom.

Salvage is a defining feature of the project: oversized arched windows rescued from the renovation of a private residence have been cut up to suit the scale of the house and reassembled in a new composition, while an old timber platform from the former Kosmos factory was refashioned as outdoor decking.

In the bathroom, reuse becomes even more expressive, with unglazed tiles from the 1960s and 70s mixed with rare, hand-painted pieces from Kharkiv, and contemporary Spanish ceramics.

The interiors are kitted with vintage finds and pieces collected from friends, such as a stove from a restaurant. An antique wooden chest from the 1930s purchased from a fair is a poignant nod to her family history, made during the time of Soviet collectivisation, when privately owned farms were consolidated into state-controlled collective farms.

‘My family has lost its inheritance and material possessions several times: first in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917, and again during the upheavals of the 1930s,' she explains. 'Today history has cruelly repeated itself; the elders of my family - my mother, her sister, and her brother – have once again lost their homes in Krasnopillia, a rural settlement in Sumy Oblast.'

Rebuilding from these ruptures has shaped a particular understanding of value within the family: that the most enduring forms of inheritance are not material, but intellectual - one’s knowledge, skills and capacities. The chest becomes a metaphor for the limits of what can be carried through history: only what is essential, portable, and internalised. It is more than symbolic, however. 'It is an authentic domestic object, originally used to store textiles and rugs, and therefore carries a direct connection to the material culture of the home,' she adds.

Textiles have always had a particular emotional resonance for Levchenya, who describes them as a 'matriarchal medium' that connects women across generations. Thanks to her mother’s medical supplies, Levchenya’s favourite plaything as a child was gauze, which she used to create toys. Later, she was drawn to them again through her research into traditional Ukrainian craft heritage, but also a frustration with painting, 'which began to feel too confined and controlled,' she says. 'I wanted to have more freedom to experiment and make mistakes.'

Today she creates textile sculptures and woven wall-hangings that draw from local traditions, spliced with Ukrainian modernism and contemporary imagery. 'I find a particular magic in combining opposing textures and creating structures that contain a certain paradox within themselves,' she explains. 'This can happen through visual imagery - for example, Pac-Man combined with traditional Ukrainian ornament - or through the contrast of materials.'

Her own work is present in the house, including a white totem made from remnants of textile from a knitwear factory, and rugs made by her brand OLK Manufactory.

Hata Yarova and the subsequent houses are about 'combining contrasting aesthetic worlds that seem almost incompatible,' she says. While the other two houses undergo their transformation, Levchenya and her team are developing a philosophy to unite this growing community. 'I would love to make the project larger in scale, and perhaps eventually international,' she says. 'But the immediate plan is to survive – and to win the war.'

oksanalevchenya.com

The ability to update a historic structure – such as this barn in Kent – should be in every architect’s toolset, but the reality is different. In heritage-obsessed countries like the UK, with its rich seam of listed buildings and copious accompanying legislation, even the simplest of changes can be a daunting prospect.

That’s often for the best, given the cavalier attitude some have to history, but when necessity, sensitivity and innovation finally come together, the process is no less protracted.

Tour this refreshed barn and its new extension

This re-jigged barn conversion is a case in point. The original building dates back to the 16th century and is now Grade 2 listed. Built in the 16th century, the oak framed barn has a clay tiled roof and horizontal weatherboarding and also lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The owners, a curator and joinery designer, wanted to update and enhance the layout of the original conversion into a dwelling.

That work, carried out back in 2003, left the barn divorced from its context by closing off the connection from the original farmhouse and entrance yard. As a result, the orientation left it disconnected from the tranche of garden allocated to the new dwelling.

Sandy Rendel Architects, the South London-based practice best known for Bury Gate Farm, an award-winning house on the South Downs and an elegant village residence, were commissioned to update and improve the outlook.

‘The main aim of the project was to help reorientate the house and offer a much clearer connection with the external spaces and views across the fields to the southwest,’ says Rendel, citing ‘extensive negotiations’ with the planners that resulted in a breakthrough for the design of the new kitchen extension that transforms the interior arrangement of the former barn.

‘It was actually the heritage officer who suggested a Corten steel roof to provide a clear distinction and contemporary twist on the clay tiles,’ the architect recalls, noting that the practice has become all too familiar with the material in recent works. ‘We ran with the idea and developed the concept of expressing the roof very directly and abstractly as these simple sheets of metal with fine crisp edge that stands out against the wavy softness of the sagging original roof and its original handmade tiles,’ Rendel continues.

It’s here that the practice’s obsession with detail stands out, with a recessed gutter tucked beneath the eaves, with water collecting in laser-cut slots running around the perimeter of the Corten steel. Beneath the roof, the gutter and downpipes are formed from dark zinc so as to blend with the black stained larch cladding on the extension.

The new addition is a timber framed structure, in keeping with the construction method of the original barn. To showcase the carpentry skills of Scott Partnership, who constructed the framework, everything is revealed, from the roof rafters to the ridge, hips and collar ties.

Large sliding glass doors provide the all-important connection to the garden, with the span supported by single slender square column, rotated at 45 degrees to the other timbers, supporting the ring beam.

Although the new extension is spiritually connected to the barn through the construction method and the material juxtaposition, there’s still a sense of separation between old and new thanks to the glazed structural link between the new buildings. Inside, the meticulous joinery of the kitchen cabinets – executed by the client – follows the grain and texture of the roof structure.

‘The project is one of the smallest things we have done but it was great to really get into the fine details of the timber connections,’ says Rendel, ‘it was a truly collaborative process with engineers Foster Structures and St Pierre Contractors, along with the frame makers and the clients themselves.’

SandyRendel.com

A Blue Wave may have just crashed into Washington, DC, but today, the United States Department of State had a topic other than politics on its agenda: architecture.

The federal agency announced that the University of Miami School of Architecture (U-SoA) will be representing the US at the 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale. Organising the pavilion will be award-winning architect and educator Germane Barnes, alongside historian Vyta Pivo.

The 2027 theme, according to a release from U-SoA and the State Department, will be ‘Earth Craft,’ a topic that will look at the materials that comprise America’s architecture – brick, adobe, rammed earth and more – and the hands that make them.

‘Most of the buildings we celebrate were made from ground somebody dug, shaped, and fired, and we rarely ask who did that or what they knew. "Earth Craft" represents the United States through its makers and not through its icons,’ Barnes said in a statement.

This won’t be Barnes’ first time in Venice. In 2023, along with his practice Studio Barnes, he presented Griot, an installation in the Arsenale that explored the architecture and hidden histories of the African diaspora. He’s also exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennale, Exhibit Columbus and was part of MoMA’s 2021 exhibition ‘Reconstructions Architecture and Blackness in America.’

Pivo, meanwhile, is an expert in construction labour and materials; she’s currently writing a book on the history of the US concrete industry. Other preliminary participants in ‘Earth Craft’ will include Nader Tehrani of the Boston-based practice NADAAA; Miami and Guatemala-based architects Carie Penabad and Adib Cúre; Rodolphe el-Khoury, dean of U-SoA and principal of RAD-Lab; Leah Wulfman, Merritt Chase and Barnes himself. U-SoA students will work with assistant professor Maxwell Jarosz on an installation in the US Pavilion’s courtyard.

While design details on the installation, to be set in a 1930 Palladian-style building in Venice’s Giardini, have yet to be released, it’s bound to include plenty of raw, earthen materials. The announcement also alluded to fabrication workshops, and cited visual and research references ranging from America’s indigenous landscapes to industrial brickworks to plantation kilns – all in service of telling a story about materials and labour.

It will also assert that technology isn’t here to take over the architectural profession: ‘[The worker's] knowledge of soil, water and heat is not a relic, and we are putting it in the same building as robotic fabrication and computational design,’ Pivo, the co-curator, said, ‘because the new tools work best when they learn from the hands that came first.’

Mounting an architecture exhibition at the US Pavilion is a costly and logistically challenging endeavor. While the State Department awards a $375,000 seed grant, the expectation is that curatorial teams raise the rest of the needed funds themselves – costs that can soar upwards of $1 million, according to past organisers.

But, just like its theme implies, ‘Earth Craft’ will inevitably be a group effort. As U-SoA dean Rodolphe el-Khoury, said, ‘As an American school of architecture, we study the full range of what this country has built, and that includes the work of the people who built it – not just the designers whose names are bolded in textbooks.'

Arranged as a trio of interconnected structures, this seaside, Atlantic coast house project by BAL architects is a self-contained compound on a sloping site in Lacanau Océan, with the structures themselves providing weather shielding, privacy and carefully framed views of the ocean, just 200m away.

Tour this Atlantic coast home in France

The strategy of creating three discrete structures partly camouflages the scope and scale of the house, which has a total of six bedrooms across 300 sq m. The rhomboid-shaped plot itself isn’t much larger, at 500 sq m, but there’s still space a pool, playhouse and cycle storage, in addition to off-street parking and a careful planting scheme using local species.

The three structures are connected at basement level, with a separate connection at ground floor level adjacent to the entrance. With the volumes set at an angle to one another, the plan produces gaps, vistas and slices of garden, as well as enticing views between each building and the promise of secret passageways, underground connections and pathways through the garden.

The basement in particular is a world of discovery, with the building closest to the road housing a games room and home cinema, connected by tunnels to a pair of basement bunkrooms in the adjoining building and to the hammam, surf workshop and cellar area in the other.

At ground floor level, the main living and dining space sits above the basement games room, connected to another sleeping level. Across the terracotta paved upper terrace, the furthermost structure houses a double-height living space; both can be fully opened up to the exterior via large sliding glass doors. This living area also has a staircase that connects directly with the basement via a planted courtyard.

The architects had 30,000 terracotta tiles made locally especially for the project, colour coded to match the sandy soil of the garden – they run inside and out in a herringbone pattern to give a unity to the surfaces.

Each ‘house’ is very similarly shaped, with angle-cut Douglas fir cladding that references the tiling. The architects cite the area’s historic tobacco-drying sheds as a precedent for the quasi-industrial vernacular of the project.

The walls themselves are highly insulated with lime-hemp and plant-based wool, the concrete used is low-carbon certified and rainwater is collected for reuse, while solar shading and air circulators are included in every room.

The first structure also has an additional floor, where a further pair of bedrooms can be found. Despite the region’s high summer temperatures and strong winds, the house is designed to be comfortable all year round, as well as being fully permeable to soak up the sound of the ocean.

Thomas Sabatier, Thomas Cestia and Jeanne Mauvezin established BAL in nearby Bordeaux in 2015. All three studied at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles before working around Paris and Bordeaux for various firms before coming together for their first project, the refurbishment of the Hôtel Splendid in Dax.

The name – Bureau des Architectures Libres – was chosen to emphasise the studio’s commitment to freedom of design, as well as a ‘love of beautiful things, a taste for bespoke environments and unique projects, whatever the scale, from the tiniest coloured chamfer on a stair tread to the major refurbishment of a listed building’.

Their approach to this particular project highlights their love of a non-linear solution fused with a close attention to detail.

BAL-Archi.com

The London Museum is a full-circle moment for Asif Khan. The east London-based creative was a first-year student at the Bartlett School of Architecture when he was tasked with surveying Smithfield Market for a design workshop; 26 years on, he is about to complete a major collaborative project there and mark a landmark cultural moment: the first-phase reopening of what was formerly known as the Museum of London, which has relocated from London Wall to the site of the famous meat market.

Asif Khan talks to us about the London Museum and more

Khan worked on the project alongside architecture studio Stanton Williams and conservation specialists Julian Harrap Architects. While Stanton Williams led the project and tackled the poultry market, basement galleries and covered street linking the two markets, Khan took charge primarily of the general market's above-ground interiors and exterior. This includes its ground-floor public spaces, upper storeys and entrances (working closely with Julian Harrap Architects), and forms part of the first stage in a staggered launch of a project that will eventually also take over the poultry market next door.

The general market, containing a wealth of public-facing areas, was a fascinating one for Khan, who had set a personal goal in 2012 to work on a big cultural institution within the next ten years. Khan started practising independently when he set up his studio in 2007. Smaller-scale commissions, such as a beach café in Littlehampton and the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion at the London Olympics (a key moment for the firm), put him on the map for his unique blend of spatial design with a dynamic, interactive twist. He was the only British studio among the finalists for the Guggenheim Museum Helsinki in 2014, the largest architectural competition in history. Since then, he has expanded significantly, with work from a broad range of commissions across 12 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, North America, Australia and Africa, and he was awarded an MBE for services to architecture in 2017.

Recent projects include a meandering red boardwalk across London's Canada Water basin, 6km of public realm at the Dubai Expo 2020, and the transformation of a Soviet-era cinema in Almaty, Kazakhstan, into the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture. Beyond the London Museum, his presence in the capital takes in exhibition design, including the 2025 ‘Cartier' show at the V&A Museum, and a shared lead architect role (with Allies and Morrison, working alongside a wider team) on the overhaul of the Barbican Centre. It is currently ongoing, a stone's throw from the London Museum.

And just as the London Museum featured in Khan's own story long before it became part of his portfolio, there are similar personal connections to more than one of his other projects. The Tselinny building was deeply important to Khan's wife, Kazakh architect Zaure Aitayeva, while the Barbican is a space he felt close to throughout his life. ‘We were taken there as children, as babies. I've been going there all my life. It was our family living room.' He explains: ‘All the projects I do are very personal. I don't take on projects where I don't have a personal reason to be there. I think this one is as much a self-portrait as a portrait of London and of this possibility for the institution.'

What remains constant in all of Khan's projects is his ability to create spaces that connect, flow and allow a high level of interaction. His works rarely prescribe, but rather create a framework for exploration – and ultimately, all look towards the future. Khan regularly employs cultural sensitivity, sensory experiences, material explorations and a desire to bring people together. Speaking of his ongoing Museum of the Incense Road in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, he says, ‘We are trying to think of the museum not just as a repository of history but as a melting pot for the community to meet each other and to transform their livelihoods.' He could be describing the London Museum, too.

At the Smithfield site, his suggestion to transform 48 historic shop units into 12 ‘houses' was welcomed. Six of them would be reserved for the institution's use, and six would be given to external ventures in a mix that the museum would curate. The idea was that it would become an incubator, a ‘coral reef of multiple institutes', as Khan puts it. Alec Shaw, the London Museum's director of new museum project and estate, says: ‘We were constantly doing open-heart surgery into different parts of the building to try and adapt them to make them more welcoming. Without being too grand, I'm hoping this is a complete game changer for city museums across the world.'

Khan describes the new museum as a ‘sponge for city life', and it's easy to see why, as it has been designed to be able to absorb different uses, meanings and activities. The same attitude can be found throughout his work, be it the relatively small Canada Water boardwalk, with its gentle undulation and integration of nature and history, or the Tselinny Center, which, he told us at the opening in 2025, is designed to blend contemporary architecture and culture with a ‘mythological force from ancient memory.'

With the London Museum, Khan tackles past, present and future, as well as big concepts addressing community and culture, ensuring a sense of fluidity remains central so the museum can move alongside its ever-evolving host city. ‘It can always be an unfinished project,' he notes. ‘This is what has been missing, in a way, from the museum of the 20th century. Here, it's baked into the architecture, the capacity and the need to change.'

asif-khan.com

londonmuseum.org.uk

A version of this article appears in the December 2026 issue of Wallpaper*, available from 5 November in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

The development of Barcelona’s Eixample district has been shaped by an unexpected source: washerwomen. The clothes of the Catalan bourgeoisie were washed, scrubbed, rinsed, and cleaned in the wells of Calle Aiguafreda, a quaint and picturesque street. It is here that Casa de las Lavanderas – a historical washerwomen's house – was restored by architect Raúl Sánchez.

Step inside a historical Barcelona house that scrubbed up nicely

The architect’s clients were a couple with a newborn baby. Sánchez wanted to make sure that the narrow two-storey house reflected its history, having accommodated washerwomen and their families, who went out daily to their wells to hand-scrub clothes.

‘The history of the place, the existing wells, the washerwomen... I tried to take all this history and translate it into the present times,’ the architect told Wallpaper*. ‘The biggest challenge is always to make something that can move you, to bring that narrative element of the well of light into the functionality of the house, and create a space which can enhance the level of complexity that any house has to have.’

The washerwomen's house overlooks two streets, Calle Aiguafreda and Calle Granollers. However, there is a 1.5m drop in level between them. The architect had to carefully integrate access to the house at mid-level on the 40 sq m ground floor. A new staircase leads down to the lower level, while another ascends to the first floor, which houses bedrooms and a bathroom.

While the building lost its original laundry purpose, the architect made sure to nod to its context through bright cobalt blue lacquer, reviving the memory of the wells in a contemporary way. In the heart of the building is a lightwell, topped with an openable skylight, allowing the sun to shine down through the semi-subterranean ground-floor spaces. 'The well of light, with the glossy blue lacquer, is the element which creates the entire project’, says Sánchez.

The ground floor features an open-plan living, dining, and kitchen area. The client, who spent time living in Japan, adored the integration of folding doors made of wood and rice paper, which nod to the old washrooms’ use of large screens as room dividers.

The material palette is a dialogue of terracotta tiles, glazed tiles, reddish lacquers and paints, all an ode to the traditional clay of neighbouring orchards. The interior overhaul marks the first phase of the project's new look, with a garden redesign currently under development.

Casa de las Lavanderas provides a strong narrative of preserving historical context without slipping into conventional clichés. As the architect concludes, ‘I would like [people] to feel that the house is part of the history of the place, and at the same time, it is adding a new contemporary layer.’

raulsanchezarchitects.com

Culture has long claimed abandoned industrial structures, drawn to their atmospheric voids and the freedom found in their decay. In 1990s Amsterdam, one such structure, a 19th-century gas holder in Westerpark, was revered as a ‘temple to techno’. Now, after hosting one-off events for years, Gashouder (Dutch for 'gas holder') has opened as a permanent cultural venue for live and electronic music, performance and art with capacity for 3,500 revellers.

Tour the reborn Gashouder

Gashouder’s new chapter balances its restoration as a heritage-listed ‘Rijksmonument’ with a subterranean extension that enables its functional, long-term operation. Arriving through historic red-brick arches, visitors now descend into the old gasholder’s futuristic new concrete ‘underworld’ that directly mirrors the perimeter of the concert hall above.

Amsterdam-based interdisciplinary studio Inside Outside designed the architecture and interiors of this underworld as an experiential and flexible 21st-century system driven by the venue's 19th-century geometry. 'We love restoring historic industrial buildings, but we also want to lift them up with an extra layer that gives them new life,' says Aura Luz Melis, partner at Inside Outside.

Radial strips of light echoing the former steel skeleton guide visitors towards a central gathering space lit with a glowing lamp by Lumus Instruments, inspired by the gasholder’s former flame. A series of curved sliding and demountable walls of aluminium and polycarbonate shift into five different event configurations, dividing the functions of the bar, toilets, backstage and merchandise kiosk.

Glitches in this sci-fi scenography reveal the raw roughness of the steel sheet-pile retaining wall, almost at one with the texture of the earth. Meanwhile, sections of glossy, reflective PVC flooring contrast with ‘ghost’ sections of matte-black corrugated steel, energising the space, alongside lighting informed by the minimalist experimentalism of the 20th century’s avant-garde Zero art movement.

Founded by Dutch designer Petra Blaisse in 1991, Inside Outside has pioneered shifting interior atmospheres through textile design, landscape, light and perspectives. Rather than being superfluous or aesthetic, those ‘layers’ are in fact 'functional, flexible and demountable', explains Melis, and over the past ten years she’s seen their work become even more relevant as cultural institutions seek to be less extractive and more resourceful.

A staircase twists up to the expansive concert hall, which has a soaring 14.5m ceiling height. The exposed architecture dates back to 1881 and was technically restored by architect André van Stigt of Buro van Stigt. Inside Outside printed new acoustic panels with a grainy, to-scale photograph of the building’s brick walls, camouflaging them abstractly into the historic atmosphere.

For Lennart Rottier, founder of Universe Building and co-owner of Gashouder and the wider Cultuurpark Westergas (together with Duncan Stutterheim), the roof and the bricks are essential to the performances, forging a moment of connection between time, creativity and place. The venue’s programming plugs a gap in Amsterdam’s music scene for mid-career artists, and has an alternative edge inspired by its rave history, yet you’ll also find the National Ballet and Royal Orchestra on the agenda.

Rottier hopes the industrial architecture will challenge these more traditional art forms, while attracting younger audiences to them. 'The monument determines our direction, the heritage determines our values,' he explains, proud of the place-making vision that’s been forged under an owner-developer-operator model in collaboration with the municipality.

This means that the cultural experience of the Gashouder starts at the entrance to the 23-hectare Westerpark, and in the village of 19th-century red-brick ‘Hollandsche Neorenaissance’ buildings hosting bars, restaurants, clubs and galleries.

Inside Outside’s collaboration extends across the park with a scheme of lighting, wayfinding and bike parking (80 per cent of Gashouder visitors arrive by bike) set to unfold in 2028. Amidst the trees, the authentic silhouette of Gashouder sculpturally looms, preserving its original power, before revealing its futuristic underworld that equips it for the next century.

Gashouder, Klönneplein 1, 1014 DD Amsterdam, gashouder.nl

insideoutside.nl

universebuilding.com

The site of Connaught House is a storied one. Its corner of north London on St John's Wood Terrace is a stone's throw from Abbey Road Studios, Lord's Cricket Ground and Regent's Park. The building itself was initially a chapel, but then evolved into a squash club for a while, and the studio where Queen filmed Radio Ga Ga. Now, the Grade II-listed structure is entering a new chapter in life, as owner Marcus Cooper Group and developer Valouran reveal a new, boutique family of homes within, featuring architecture by Darling Associates and interiors by Gunter and Co.

Explore Connaught House in London

Connaught House was originally built in 1841, a handsome neoclassical religious structure, featuring intricate Corinthian columns and crisp white stucco. Designed by architect John Tarring, it's been a local landmark and popular community spot for decades. The redesign project has been a painstakingly detailed one, transforming the interior into just five contemporary homes.

The original chapel's striking crowning cupola, which was lost for almost 100 years due to past alterations, was beautifully restored. Meanwhile, handcrafted windows and refined rooflines help bring the building into the 21st century.

The resulting five apartments are all unique, designed using a common language of green and neutral tones, and timber and stone surfaces to create a coherent whole. Gunter and Co's Irene Gunter says:

'Our approach to the interiors was shaped by a pursuit centred on bringing back the chapel's original character- celebrating the arches, the period detailing, and the quality of daylight, and restoring features lost to a series of unsympathetic alterations over the years. We were careful, though, not to simply wind the clock back. It was just as important that the five homes felt luxurious, refined and considered for modern-day living, not a museum piece.

'The overarching approach was to let the architecture dictate the language, room by room, rather than applying one flat design across all five homes. The apartments with the arched windows at the front of the building lean into a more classical style, in keeping with the chapel's original proportions and detailing. To the rear, where the building is more contemporary, the interiors shift into a more modern design language,' she continues.

'What ties the apartments together is a shared material palette - sympathetic wood tones, neutral paint colours, and consistent ironmongery and tapware carried through both the classical and contemporary spaces. That common thread is what gives the collection cohesion, even as each apartment's character shifts depending on where it sits in the building.'

Soft furnishings, curated artwork and the building sense of space and generosity – through tall ceilings and large windows that open up to the surrounding green spaces – complement perfectly the design studio's craft-led approach.

Says Gunter: 'Every supplier and maker was chosen through the same lens as everything else on this project – quality, craft and longevity. We leaned heavily on a team of suppliers we've tested and trusted over years of projects, with a strong focus on UK makers. Around 80 per cent of what you'll find across the homes is UK-made. This is a proudly British project, and investing in that craftsmanship felt like the right way to honour it. We also wanted this to be a chance to shine a light on new artisans we've discovered along the way. In each of the apartments, you'll find beautiful bespoke pieces created by makers we've met at craft fairs, and others discovered along the way and beyond.'

gunterandco.com

valouran.com

connaught-house.com

In the Arruda Dos Vinhos, just north of Lisbon, a new project by (Umtodo) architects transforms a ruined watermill into a striking Portuguese house. Carefully shaped so as to exist completely within the footprint of the original structure, Casa da Azenha retains only fragments of the thick exterior wall and an internal retaining wall, which has been kept in order to delineate the shift between the three levels of the new house.

‘The project seeks to enhance both the existing fabric and its natural setting, reinforcing the dialogue between architecture and landscape,’ the architects say, explaining how all the original openings in the mill have been preserved and used as the basis for the internal plan, doors and windows of the new house.

One enters at road level, which was originally the upper floor of the mill building, which steps down towards the riverbed. This level houses the main reception room, which soars up into the void of the pitched roof around a central fireplace. From here, stairs lead up to the kitchen and dining area, alongside a guest bathroom. The dining area features a large frameless picture window with views across the valley.

An additional level sits directly beneath the kitchen and houses two bedrooms and second bathroom. The building is practically set into the hillside, giving these rooms a monastic, cell-like feel that is quite distinct from the light-filled upper floors. The new structures features rendered grey walls that stand in contrast to the honey stone of the ruins.

‘To emphasise the contrast between the permanence of the historic ruin and the new intervention, the inserted building is conceived as a single, monolithic volume which recalls the archetypal form of a pitched-roof house,’ the architects explain.

Ultimately, Casa da Azenha is about retaining the memory of place without compromising the demands of contemporary living. The studio, led by João Pedro Cavaco with Hélia Pereira and Rafael Jaleco, is based locally and specialises in refined residential projects with a calm, reflective relationship with the surrounding landscape.

umtodo.com, @umtodo.sobrearquitetura

We love houses here at Wallpaper*, and we strive to spotlight only the best architectural gems from around the world. Every day, the team is presented with a portfolio of boundary-pushing residences, which span the spectrum of modern design. Here, we bring together a selection of those that impressed us the most each month.

This month’s finds include a few listings: The Stahl House – one of LA's most famous midcentury homes, still hasn’t found a buyer; Sylvan Rock, designed by S3 Architecture with Aston Martin; and a Ventura Beach house that could also be yours. Other projects include a residence shaped like an avocado in the Californian desert and a charming Victorian townhouse in London. Here are the best new house stories of October 2026.

The stunning Stahl House for sale

Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House, a midcentury modernist landmark in Los Angeles, languishes on the market despite a $5 million discount. Now at $20 million, buyers still hesitate: its two-bedroom, 2,200-square-foot floor plan is remarkably modest for the price tag. Compounding the challenge, building alterations are prohibited, and demanding maintenance required for ageing materials makes preserving architectural history a costly, labour-intensive proposition. Whether or not the discount will compel the right buyer to make a move remains to be seen. But one thing’s for sure: they’ll be owning a piece of America’s architectural history.

Read more here

A spooky ‘Verity’ House

Beyond its erotic plot, Michael Showalter’s psychological thriller Verity lures design aficionados with an architectural rarity: a secluded lakeside retreat. The Armonk residence was originally built in the 1960s by Danish designer Jens Quistgaard for Dansk's founders. One of its defining features is its evocative, jagged sawtooth roof. Production designer Amy Williams channelled Quistgaard’s midcentury modernist designs for the sets, layering brutalist furnishings, custom woodwork, and Dansk artefacts into a menacing domestic stage.

Read more here

An avocado home

Architect Arshia Mahmoodi’s newly unveiled Avocado House translates a minimalist geometry of three intersecting circles into a striking hillside sanctuary. Perched above California’s Yucca Valley, the residence is shaped around a central crescent courtyard that forms its namesake 'pit'. The curved retreat captures panoramic desert vistas from its sculptural framework.

Read more here

A quiet Victorian townhouse redesign

Architecture for London has sensitively reunited two divided flats into a single Victorian family residence. Located in Kentish Town, the house is designed to prioritise quiet refinement over dramatic overhaul. The reconfiguration pairs restored period elements with the clients’ midcentury furniture collection. A light-filled Shaker-style kitchen, anchored by reclaimed brick and exposed timbers, forms the heart of this unfussy home.

Read more here

A green ceramic extension

In Brockley, south-east London, Bolans Architects has transformed a Victorian terraced home, saving its boldest design statement for the rear garden. Named Ceramic House, the project features a playful yet sophisticated green ceramic façade crafted from arches, recesses, and shifting planes. Beyond the glazed extension, the refurbishment reconfigures the ground floor to create space for a cosy loft conversion.

Read more here

A minimalist Melbourne house

Casa Piva is a minimalist residence offering privacy and seclusion. Found in suburban Malvern East, Melbourne, B.E. Architecture has crafted the residence to be a serene cocoon for practice director Andrew Piva and his family. An austere white-brick façade conceals a series of hidden courtyards and tactile communal spaces. Rich interior layers of travertine, brick, and antique oak joinery nod to the owners’ Italian heritage.

Read more here

An Eichler House could be yours

The celebrated Eichler X-100 in Northern California is seeking a new custodian. Conceived by developer Joseph Eichler alongside architects A. Quincy Jones and Frederick Emmons, the steel-framed residence was designed as a living laboratory for postwar modernism. Restored to its 1956 glory, the 2,310-square-foot home integrates interior gardens, expansive glass, and Santa Cruz Mountain vistas.

Read more here

An Aston Martin-branded home

Set across a 55-acre Hudson Valley estate, Sylvan Rock is the first private single residence designed in collaboration with Aston Martin and S3 Architecture. Defined by a jagged, blackened-cedar and faceted-metal roofline snaking around a rocky ledge, the compound features bespoke Aston Martin-designed furnishings, a subterranean automotive gallery, three guest pods, and an architect-designed treehouse. It is now listed for $19.5 million.

Read more here

A monolithic Ahmedabad house

Architecture studio FLXBL has completed Solidus, a residence crafted through the progressive subtraction of a monolithic concrete volume. In Ahmedabad, India, the shuttered-concrete form is punctured by courtyards and carved-out terraces that add native vegetation across every level. Inside, stone floors and a brick spine wall balance monumental scale with shaded, microclimate-moderating spaces.

Read more here

A Ventura Beach house

Architect Carl Maston’s 1984 Susman House in California’s Faria Beach Colony has hit the open market for the first time, listed at $5.1 million. Overlooking a renowned surf spot, Mondo’s Cove, the residence channels the rustic spirit of classic coastal cabins into late-period modernism. The residence boasts cedar cladding and exposed brick fireplaces, and frames 240-degree panoramic Pacific views.

Read more here

A geometric Thai home

Khao Yai Mountain Grounded Villa is a crisp white family retreat in northeastern Thailand. Designed by HAS Design and Research, the residence features a distinctive zig-zag roof that mirrors the local mountain ridges and traditional shadow puppets. Through natural ventilation and rainwater harvesting, the contemporary, open-plan home maintains a comfortable climate without air conditioning. Cultural heritage sits neatly within modern design.

Read more here

A Nigerian lagoon house

Perched on Ikaare Island off the Lagos lagoon is OA House, a four-bedroom retreat. Architect Tosin Oshinowo spearheaded the project, which features sculptural, matte off-white volumes and timber flooring. The redience is defined by its minimalism, which frames the Atlantic Ocean. An open, breezy pavilion living space and swimming pool deck maximise sea views, while ground-floor and terraced upper bedrooms provide serene, private sanctuaries.

Read more here

River Forest Lookout was built in 2023, designed and constructed by Mark Derenthal as the perfect getaway in nature. Built from galvanised steel set into a concrete plinth on the forest floor, the watchtower has enjoyed a healthy career as an Airbnb but is now looking for a new owner.

The accommodation is located in two modified shipping containers set 60ft up, atop a custom steel stair tower – the attached winch is most definitely not designed for pets, let alone people.

Consisting of a kitchen, living and sleeping area with a modest balcony, alongside a full bathroom, it’s a tight 300 sq ft space that is mitigated by the panoramic 360-degree treetop views across the Chattahoochee National Forest to the Cohutta Mountains. Warning: things get insanely photogenic in fall.

The site itself winds across 14 acres of forest and includes around 3,000ft of private frontage onto the Jacks River. This is fishing territory (trout), and there are waterfalls and swimming holes to discover as well. The structure made extensive use of prefabricated industrial components.

Derenthal, who collaborated on the project with the structural engineer Bill Seeber, not only re-used shipping containers but adapted a tower crane mast for the support structure. Derenthal did much of the construction work himself, creating a project that is low maintenance, fire resistant and self-sufficient.

Atop the tower, reached by a spiral staircase set between the two shipping containers, the Forest Lookout offers a rooftop terrace complete with firepit. It sits between the solar array, which works alongside propane heaters to create a totally off-grid living space.

The property, which is being sold through Mountain Sotheby’s International Realty, is offered as a fully furnished, totally turnkey operation, a nod to its current role as a popular Airbnb destination. The site also has permission and utilities in place for a second structure, should the new owner want to expand the hospitality concept.

The River Forest Lookout splices the technological transfer beloved of High-Tech architecture with a very specifically American picturesque, one that frames the individual within the wilderness in an elaborate and dramatic way. By eschewing a more austere architectural approach in favour of gutsy, durable post-industrial architecture, the lookout is a fortress of solitude that offers the ultimate escape from the day-to-day.

For sale via Mountain Sotheby’s International Realty, priced at $1,200,000, SothebysRealty.com, @mountain.sir

In 2018, Japanese architect and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto was selected to refresh the lobby of Gordon Bunshaft’s brutalist Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. – one of 11 Smithsonian institutions to line the National Mall. Eight years later, Sugimoto has returned with an even more dramatic revamp of the contemporary art museum’s sculpture garden.

The project had several aims: to make the sunken space more visible; to shade it more effectively; and to showcase more art. This has all been accomplished in a scheme plotted out by Sugimoto’s architecture office, New Material Research Laboratory, in collaboration with New York-based YUN Architecture.

Sugimoto’s lobby work was a light and clever tweak of the Bunshaft original. The sculpture garden was different. The project, acting museum director Aaron Seeto stresses, is ‘a complete rethink. It is not just a renovation of an existing plan.’

The logic of the redesign makes full sense: The 1.3-acre sculpture garden has long been somewhat concealed, depressed up to 14 feet beneath the surface of the National Mall (a typically Bunshfatian balancing device: the Hirshorn’s circular museum volume begins 14 feet above street level). For the last several decades the garden has only had two entrances (a third, an original passageway under Jefferson Drive, has been closed since 1981). Sugimoto restored the shuttered entrance and widened the northern entrance, a move that’s been transformational, Seeto says: ‘It means that our front door is the National Mall,’ Seeto says.

Sugimoto acted in rough accord with Bunshaft’s original wishes for a larger reflecting pool with a scheme of two pools in the center, with the addition of a platform that can be used for performance in the centre, inspired by Noh theatre in Tokyo. Bunshaft also took inspiration from zen gardens, according to Sugimoto.

‘Having “void space” amid greenery is the essential precondition for a proper Zen garden. Placing a lifeless, empty space amid vigorously flourishing vegetation has the paradoxical effect of presenting the viewer with a powerful visualization of the concept of life,’ the architect said in a design statement.

There was one problem: Bunshaft’s garden didn’t have many plants. ‘While the original Bunshaft-designed garden succeeded in establishing this void space, I believe it was missing the surrounding green plantings,’ Sugimoto said.

The Smithsonian first realized this some time ago, commissioning a partial redesign by Lester Collins in 1981, which greened Bunshaft’s rather bare scheme. Preservationists have objected to the redesign largely for effacing these Collins elements. The Cultural Landscape Foundation classified the garden as ‘threatened.’ Sugomito’s intense attachment to new stacked stone walls were also the focus of particular critique for abandoning a central concrete element cohering with the museum’s form.

Sugimoto has unquestionably sought to complement Bunshaft’s museum in multiple forms, in a design that provides a considerably more dramatic forecourt for the museum. It has emerged somehow as both more comfortable and more monumental space, a conversation pit rather than a secret garden.

The stone walls, containing 950 tons of stone from Gloucester, Massachusetts, hand-stacked by Japanese stonemasons, are certainly attractive in themselves. The redesign has provided considerably more seating and shade, both welcome in Washington’s acutely miserable summer climate. Seeto says, ‘We want people to linger longer and to really use the space for contemplation of our extraordinary collection.’

Historic elms were retained at the garden’s perimeter, otherwise the architects, working with Rhodeside & Harwell landscape architects, have added 57 new trees, from American elms to Katsura cherry trees, and over 30,000 plants. Sugimoto’s aim was ‘the perfect forest’ with somewhat different characteristics in each spot.

An unambiguous benefit is a leap in the number of sculptures on display, which have risen from 35 to 60. Nineteen of these works have never been displayed at the museum. ‘There is a little bit of an art historical narrative. Our collection of Rodins have been presented as a kind of foundation to think through modern sculpture. Then it moves through history. Hirshhorn had personal relationships with Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth and we have an amazing collection. We have created a gallery specifically for those two artists,’ Seeto explains.

Eleven new works were added to the garden, ranging from Woody De Othello, to Chatchai Puipia. Four of them are specific commissions. These include works by Izumi Kato and KAWS, plus a piece by Sugimoto himself, Passage of Reflectance – a stainless steel work nestled under the bridge between the museum and the garden that lends elegant volumetric accentuation to Bunshaft’s museum. Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, a work created for the garden which incorporates a live dogwood tree has also returned.

Another new addition may bring to mind other activities in Washington: Danish sculptors Elmgreen and Dragset have contributed Eight, a stainless steel work which fancifully evokes a backyard swimming pool turned on its side.

‘We have been asked if there’s a relation to other pools that have been tremendously infamous in Washington recently,’ Michael Elmgreen jokes. ‘To that we have to say we planned this for four years. More than us commenting on reality, reality sometimes starts to comment on our pieces.’

King's Cross has evolved into more than a pass-through transit hub. Coal Drops Yard has a bustling independent Japanese crafts market, cool listening bars and design shops galore. Meanwhile, visitors can soak in the creative energy of the neighbouring arts college, Central St Martins.

Adding to this mix, positioned at the northern edge of Lewis Cubitt Park, are the newly finished Cadence residences by London-based architecture firm Alison Brooks Architects (ABA). The red brick facade, with dramatic arched windows, makes the complex instantly intriguing, and you can’t help but think as you pass by, ‘I bet it's nice in there.’

Wallpaper* got a look when we toured the new ‘courtyard tower’ with its architect.

Step inside Cadence in King's Cross

Cadence houses 163 residential units, with commercial and social spaces, including an open courtyard and a gym. Upon entering, its lobby towers above you – almost like a cathedral, thanks to towering arches and mirrored walls that create a sense of infinite space. Ahead, a large glass door frames a courtyard, which is surrounded by small cloister walkways.

At the heart of this courtyard is a sunken reflection pool, with low-hanging sculptural lights carefully suspended above. Brooks explains that the pool was inspired by Venice, and she initially wanted the water to rise and sink like the changing tide. In the end, it sits peacefully still. But there are still overt references to the Floating City: Receding steps, just like the ones along Venice's canals, descend into the water, and small enclaves filled with greenery are reminiscent of canal algae.

Brooks looked to the building’s context and used red brick throughout to pay homage to London’s St Pancras station. The Canadian-British architect also was inspired by the arched buildings of Paris and Rome, where she studied for four months in 1985. It's all typical of her style, which blurs the boundaries between period, places and materials. ‘We can draw on memory which in turn enriches a pragmatic approach to a place,’ Brooks explains.

The building is placed within a six-sided block, with two towers of 12 and 16 storeys. The first two floors of both buildings are devoted to commercial, social and service spaces, while the remaining levels comprise homes and apartments.

There are plenty of perks to be had at Cadence. The apartments are spacious. ('Residents love it because they get morning sun, midday sun and afternoon sun. It's filled with light,’ says Brooks), plus the building sits on top of the Thameslink line.

The latter proved crucial to the design of the towers. ‘There are two tunnels that go under the building, and so that determines the geometry and the alignment of this building,’ the architect explains. ‘It had to be designed with isolators and very special consideration of the structure to come down on either side of the tunnels’.

While Cadence has a made-in-place feel, nearly 85 per cent of the buildings are made from prefabricated components – including the world's first prefab lift system. ABA, working closely with contractor Laing O'Rourke, leaned into the innovative construction method.

‘Everything you see in the building has been manufactured off-site: the columns, the beams, the slabs, the lift shafts, the facade panels and the bathroom pods,' Brooks says. ‘Everything came in and was lifted into place, which made it very clean and practically very little waste.’

Construction moved quickly, but there was an unexpected setback: a bird’s nest was found on the site. ‘It was on top of one of the cores, so the construction had to stop until the eggs had hatched. It was a protected species, a redstart. It was a three-month delay,’ Brooks says.

Of the 163 residential units, 60 are affordable rentals acquired on behalf of the CBRE UK Affordable Housing Fund. These are offered at discounted market rents, with priority given to individuals and families from the Camden community. The market-rate one-bed homes were listed or resold from £585,000 to £860,000, while larger residences are listed between £1.9 million to £2.4 million or more (Penthouses, for instance, are listed for upwards of £15 million).

The mix feels reflective of Cadence's blend of styles and ideas – playful and robust, solid yet soft. Above all, the project is a welcome addition to the ever-evolving King's Cross neighbourhood.

Have you always dreamt of living in an icon of brutalist architecture? The forthcoming Torre Velasca Residences in Milan can offer a vision of just that, thanks to an exclusive new group of luxury homes that are soon coming to market.

Occupying the top eight floors of the legendary high-rise, first designed by BBPR in 1958, the 72 new residences, which have launched their first phase this autumn, have been curated to perfection by Matteo Thun & Partners.

Explore the new Torre Velasca Residences by Matteo Thun & Partners

Thun's design draws on the tower's prominent position in the Milanese skyline and its architectural avant-garde spirit. The interiors, as a result, are elegant and nod to 20th-century modernism, yet still remain perfectly tuned to 21st-century needs and contemporary mod-cons. And while the project comprises levels 19 and 26 (the rest of the building is a hotel operated by METT Hotels & Resorts), the design scope also included a rethink of some of the communal areas, such as the main reception, the welcome lobby at the rear of the ground floor, and the corridors.

Says Thun on his approach in working with such a historically significant location: 'Reinterpretation is our key methodology when engaging with a legacy. At Torre Velasca, we allowed the masters and the building itself to speak, imagining a way of living within it that could accompany the building a little further into the future, adding a new chapter to its history.'

'In our design, we did not seek contrast with the existing building; instead, we started building our colour codes from the iconic pink plaster and the green and blue tiles of Torre Velasca. Where we felt the architecture had already achieved a sense of completeness, such as at the loggias and the rooftop that have an almost sacred quality, we chose not to intervene further. Sometimes designing also means recognising when there is no need to add anything,' he adds.

'The interiors look to Milanese design from the 1950s through the 1980s, where we collaborated with some of Milan's iconic companies, such as Molteni, Oluce, Cassina and Dedar, who had shaped the city’s identity as an international design capital. Different eras and locally rooted realities come together in a shared narrative of evolution and continuity: the ability to change over time while maintaining an intact sense of identity.'

To match the existing tower and the new interiors' vision and refinement, the residences will now be operated by Sunset Hospitality, which will offer high-quality resident services that will ensure frictionless living.

Thun concludes: 'Although the project focused on interior design, Torre Velasca first and foremost challenged us to think and work as architects. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this experience was precisely this: every time we crossed the building’s threshold, we discovered something new. It was, in every sense, a lesson in architecture.'

'Working within its walls meant constantly engaging with composition, construction details, and the relationship between the building and the city. At Torre Velasca, domestic space and urban space cannot be conceived as separate entities, but rather as parts of a single, deeply interconnected system,' the architect continues.

'In this sense, the project became a journey of discovery, in which the building itself became our first teacher,' Thun says. 'And perhaps this is the most important lesson it has left us with: in attempting to intervene in a work of architecture so rich in meaning, we received far more than we were able to give back.'

Blue Crow Media cements its reputation as one of the leading purveyors of guidebooks to contemporary architecture with a new publication, Concrete New York. It joins their burgeoning library of brutalist celebration, a series that has already taken in London, Berlin, Paris and a more generalist guide to Asia.

New York’s concrete legacy doesn’t immediately spring to mind; it’s a city of history, verticality, innovation and architectural drama. It’s true that the rough-hewn textures of brutalism are largely absent from the five boroughs, but concrete, in all its forms, is one of the drivers of the city’s skyline.

As ever, Blue Crow Media’s approach mixes the well-known with more off-the-beaten track examples. The cover features Frank Lloyd Wright’s instantly recognisable Guggenheim, but author Allison C. Meier has taken a more eclectic path through the city’s architectural history, taking in everything from Pier Luigi Nervi’s muscular George Washington Bridge Bus Station (1960-63) to the ribbon wall of the Tribeca Synagogue (William N.Breger Associates, 1965-67), which offers a proto-Zaha relationship between building and street.

Throughout the book there is photography by Jason R. Woods, rendering these disparate but dramatic structures in elegant black and white. All in all, there are more than 50 featured buildings, ranging from the familiar and the friendly to the faintly sinister. It also serves as an excellent companion to the publisher’s earlier Concrete New York Map.

Alongside classic works by Wright, Saarinen and Marcel Breuer, Concrete New York continues right up to date with works by Studio Gang, David Adjaye and Steven Holl, providing an all-round introduction to New York’s concrete architecture old and new.

Concrete New York, £24, BlueCrowMedia.com, @BlueCrowMaps

The book is also available as part of a three-book Architectural City Guides set, £56

This hempcrete structure may be small, but its architects are hoping its impact will far outweigh its physical size. The project, titled Biobuilding, was created by the emerging architecture studio Lúdika, based in Reykjavik, Iceland, and founded by Anna Karlsdóttir and Jan Dobrowolski.

The architects' goal? To showcase how site-specific and less conventional building methods and biomaterials can offer better results than the industry's more typical contemporary responses to construction. In the past, the country has regularly used locally sourced materials, for instance in the traditional Icelandic turf houses, so there is a precedent to build on.

Step inside this hempcrete experiment in Iceland

'Biobuilding began when we moved from London to Iceland and found a construction industry built on concrete and imports. We set out to learn what it takes to build here with natural, locally available materials,' the architecture duo explain.

'Around 80 per cent of buildings here are concrete, and almost all building materials are imported. An opportunity arrived at the same time. Industrial hemp cultivation had been legalised earlier that year, and the first growing trials were successful.'

Karlsdóttir and Dobrowolski started looking at hempcrete – a biocomposite based around the hemp plant – as a construction material and realised that they could make the most out of industrial hemp grown at the island nation's Sandhóll. They used a family-owned plot in a verdant part of Grímsnes to self-initiate a small building project that would serve as a 'demonstrator' for their experiments.

The result is Biobuilding, which they composed together with a team of growers, researchers, engineers and craftspeople. A group of German journeymen craftsmen, passing by on their traditional travels, helped them build it.

Physical feasibility and building completion were not the only goal here. The architects also wanted to follow and study the building's life post-delivery, to assess and monitor its performance and behaviour.

They did this for two years, conducting a life cycle assessment to show 'what is possible, and also what stands in the way: current regulations and certification rules are prohibitive and policies need to change,' they say. 'To us the building is also a sáluhús, a house for the soul.'

Beyond the hempcrete core, the building uses more locally sourced and specially fabricated components. A collaboration with textile designer Alberte Bojesen resulted in sheets for the internal window screens made of Icelandic seaweed. Glulam beams help support the building, and foundation footings were prefabricated off-site. Solid timber joinery, lime plaster, limewash and wool are included in the build.

'For the design, we took cue from Japanese teahouses: small, humble and connected to the land. From inside, the views are framed rather than open: low towards the mossy ground and the mountains beyond in one direction and opening up towards a wooded area in the other. Three principles guided it: a light touch on the site, natural and locally sourced materials as far as practical, and honest, unfussy craftsmanship,' the architects explain.

Biobuilding is set to serve as a valuable case study in working with hempcrete in Iceland and beyond, the architects feel. They will continue to monitor temperature and relative humidity in the small cabin in order to further determine adjustments, challenges and opportunities. Their findings are being set out in a final report for Askur, Iceland's Housing and Construction Research Fund.

ludika.is

Craig Ellwood (1922 to 1992) was a charismatic and self-made architectural superstar, adept at whipping up mid-century modern confections throughout the hills and canyons of California for a coterie stylish, artistic, and creative clients.

Born in Texas as Jon Nelson Burke, Ellwood never formally qualified as an architect yet, remarkably, his name is now attached to some of the most iconic houses of the last century, including Case Study House #22, the Stahl House, the meticulous precision of Case Study House #16, the Salzman House, as well as houses 17B and 18.

Although the 1950 Ellwood-Zimmerman House in Brentwood was needlessly demolished in 2024, there are a still a notable number of surviving projects that bear his signature style, including the 1976 campus for the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, designed with James Tyler, and the renewed and restored Moore House, also from 1965.

Now Ellwood fans have another opportunity to buy into the legend, this time with slightly less of the cultural burden borne by the Stahl House. The Kubly House is located in Pasadena and has a close connection to ArtCenter. Completed in 1965 for the princely sum of $45,000, the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house covers a modest 2,277 sq ft.

The clients were Don and Sally Kubly, both ArtCenter alumni and educators; Don went on to become its second president. The process of building the house kickstarted the creative partnership that eventually led to Ellwood’s involvement on the new campus buildings a decade later.

The structure is simplicity itself, a glass and timber box with a clear Miesian inspiration (allegedly sketched on a napkin by Ellwood during a client lunch). All utility spaces sit within the glazed envelope, with a galley kitchen at the heart of the property, flanked by a living room and dining/family room. The corners of the rectangular plan are given over to bedrooms, with the primary ensuite bedroom on one side and two children’s bedrooms on the other, sharing a bathroom.

Steps and terraces, aligned with the centre of the house, lead down to the landscaped 0.6-acre garden and pool. The post and beam pavilion is raised up on short pilotis above the gently curving site, with mature trees along the perimeter providing framed views from every room.

The Kubly family retained the house until 2022. The subsequent owners undertook a sympathetic restoration of what is believed to be the architect’s only residential project in Pasadena. This included updating all the house’s major systems and restoring the surfaces, structure and glazing, readying the Kubly House for the next phase of its history.

The Kubly House, 215 La Vereda Road, Pasadena, for sale via Chris Suarez and Kimberly Benz of Suarez + Benz at Compass, TheKublyHouse.com, priced at $3,250,000

Have you ever wondered where creatives live? Artists’ Modernist Houses, a new book by publisher Batsford, looks at just that, taking readers on a fascinating journey across scales and territories in the midcentury movement and looking at homes 'which are or have been lived in by artists'.

The book, authored by Wallpaper* contributor – and former staffer – Harriet Thorpe, compiles 50 examples. The projects include residences not only commissioned by artists, but also, on occasion, co-designed by them, exploring how art and the owners' creative spirit help form space and the entire living experience.

Discover a treasure trove in ‘Artists’ Modernist Houses’

Projects span the globe, being built anywhere between the mid- to end of the 20th century – always in the progressive, for the time, modernist architecture style. Examples span from André Wogenscky and Marta Pan's home outside Paris to Barbara Hepworth’s studio and Georgia O’Keeffe’s ranch in New Mexico, the Bauhaus Masters’ Houses in Germany, and the studio and houses of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in Mexico City.

'I’ve always loved visiting artists’ house museums, where the aura of the artist remains, absorbed through their personal objects [such as] notebooks, sketches and books, [and] their daily views and working processes. I feel like in those kinds of rooms you can really start to understand an artist on a deeper level,’ Thorpe says.

The author says: 'Working on this book made me think about exactly why I love to get lost in those domestic worlds. My mother loves art, particularly the Impressionists and early abstract art, artists like Mary Cassatt, Modigliani, and Gabriele Munter – so paintings, in the form of postcards, books and exhibitions, were very present in my childhood.

'I went on to study art history and then developed a closer interest in the 20th century and domestic space while writing as a journalist about architecture. I realised that artists’ houses brought together all of these parts of me through a kind of journey into experiencing someone else’s life.'

Thorpe's investigations and analyses go beyond 'just' looking at the case studies – rich, varied and visually captivating as they are. Artists' Modernist Houses also includes a series of essays that lets readers dive deeper into what it means to have art in the home, how architecture enters into dialogue with art, and museums within homes, particularly artists' homes.

Meanwhile, luxurious photography, a mix of newly captured and archival imagery, adds a sense of expansiveness to each case study, transporting the reader into the beautiful dwellings.

'During the process, I felt a growing nostalgia for a “modern” way of life. These houses were imagined as personal vessels for thinking and creating; many of them feel like private worlds, where objects and resources were well-made and treasured. Today we live faster, with far more connection and convenience, yet it comes at a mental and spatial cost on the atmospheres of our homes and what they mean to us,' says Thorpe.

'While writing the book, I did lose some of this nostalgia, particularly reflecting on the social challenges that women and people of colour faced and fought to break in the 20th century; and on the changing meaning of home during and in the aftermath of two world wars. Yet even in the face of these challenges, artists continued to carve out their ideas and philosophies into space and living in radical ways, which really inspired me.'

She adds, of the sense of discovery that working on this book afforded: 'I think what I discovered is the relationship between modern art and modern architecture in the 20th century. Modern art seemed to pave the way through theory and movements, then modern architecture had the task of translating this thinking into three dimensions. Art and architecture had moments of deep reciprocity, which can be seen in like-minded collaborations or echoing aesthetics, yet also developed on their own independent trajectories too.

'In the book, some artists gave an architect carte blanche, trusting their total interpretation of their artistic way of life; others collaborated with an architect sharing influences; while some artists used architecture as their medium, creating living sculptures; and others took on the formal role of the architect themselves. Every space reflects radical ways of thinking about how we can live creatively in the world, and the extraordinary ideas that can emerge when the two disciplines meet.'

'Artists’ Modernist Houses', Batsford, £30, published by batsfordbooks.com, also available from Waterstones

‘The role of the designer is that of a very good, thoughtful host,’ American designer Charles Eames once said.

Appropriately, a new cultural centre in Novato, California devoted to the legacies of Charles Eames and his wife and creative partner, Ray Eames, will soon be hosting droves of eager guests looking to immerse themselves in the design duo’s pioneering ethos.

Called The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, the new 88.5-acre cultural campus and museum in Marin County, will be a sprawling new destination for art, ideas and nature. Global architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron will be leading the architecture, which will convert a vacant midcentury warehouse into a future-looking cultural institution.

The project will be primarily an adaptive reuse one. The site is defined by an eye-catching midcentury warehouse designed by Polish architect Jan Lubicz-Nycz with celebrated modernist architect John Savage Bolles for the McGraw-Hill publishing company in 1965. Defined by an origami-like concrete roof that, from afar, resembles white mountain peaks, the striking building eventually became a warehouse for Birkenstock, who left the campus in 2020.

Herzog & de Meuron, working alongside San Francisco firm EHDD, will work to preserve the original 185,000 sq ft structure, while transforming it into contemporary exhibition space, with warm, timbre-clad spaces and column-free galleries, with amenities that include a café, museum shop, theatre and maker spaces. A neighbouring former office building on the site will host retreats, talks and other programming. Visitors can expect to encounter design rarities from the Eames archive, in addition to contemporary art exhibitions.

Renowned landscape firm Field Operations, meanwhile, will transform the site with gardens, groves, play spaces and water features, with plantings like herbs, olive trees and other plantings that typify the Northern California landscape.

The project is expected to break ground in 2028, and will open to the public in 2030, Institute officials anticipate.

Llisa Demetrios, a granddaughter of Charles and Ray Eames and a co-founder of the Institute, sees this as a major milestone in the continuation of her family’s legacy. ‘For my grandparents, design was always grounded in curiosity and intention — looking closely, asking questions, embracing constraints, and finding beauty in the practical and the functional. The Museum carries that spirit forward,’ she said in a statement.

‘I hope our Museum campus feels vibrant with that same sense of potential and that people leave feeling inspired not just by what they’ve seen, but by what they might make or discover themselves,’ Demetrios added.

Short-term aid cycles have long been the traditional way to address human displacement. However, this is not necessarily a long-term, sustainable solution, as the global population of refugees is projected to reach 1.2 billion by 2050. In response to this urgent issue, today (29 October 2026), a group of global architects, humanitarian leaders, and financial strategists has announced the launch of ‘Refugee Cities’, a decadal infrastructure project designed to provide permits and a self-sustaining ‘city’ design, funded by institutional investment rather than relying on finite philanthropy.

Discover BIG's 'Refugee Cities' project

Architecture juggernaut BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) partnered with to.org, a platform that delivers infrastructure projects within refugee settlements, including the Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre in Uganda, to work together on the project and redefine the economics of human displacement.

'By scaling our previous work into a permanent urban ecosystem, and working alongside Bjarke Ingels Group, our philanthropic supporters and our investment partners, we are shifting the global paradigm from temporary relief to long-term economic empowerment. We are showing the world that refugees and vulnerable people deserve beautiful buildings that win prizes, that could be anywhere in the world. If you bring infrastructure and a platform to talent, talent can thrive,' shares Nachson Mimran, co-founder of to.org

The collaboration aims to rethink refugee settlements and turn them into urban economic hubs. So far, the first building prototype comprises a modular structure designed as a ‘single-family base unit’.

‘If the average stay in refugee camps is around two decades, then the term temporary cannot be said to suffice. If we start thinking of cities rather than camps, then charity becomes investments into the future, and if companies can be incentivised to locate their production in refugee cities, then the refugees can be given economic opportunities that they currently long for. We have attempted to design a scalable, phaseable, modular blueprint for a new way to accommodate the global flow of refugees,’ says Bjarke Ingels, founder and creative director of BIG.

The city is focused on ten design principles. Its foundation is the family unit, clustering homes into neighbourhoods, which evolve into districts that can eventually expand over time. At the core will be shared infrastructure, logistics, and production facilities, such as a food market, a co-working centre, an arts and crafts hall, a football field, technical workshops, a fitness rooftop, a healing garden, a health centre, and training spaces to support the city as it evolves.

The project’s financial modelling is designed to acquire land and develop infrastructure that helps provide sustainable commercial returns over several decades. Named ‘Opportunity Zones,’ these buildings will span manufacturing and agriculture. The project also requires host-nation governments willing to grant regulatory flexibility and legal work rights to refugees.

The first phase of the plan begins immediately, starting with the construction of a single-family base prototype, which will be located at the Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre and will present a tangible look at the project's long-term durability. To launch full-scale execution, there is an active call for both host governments to designate land and regulatory zones, and funders to commit early-stage capital.

When Zaha Hadid died, back on a spring day in 2016, the architecture world froze in shock. It was unexpected – the legendary Iraq-born British architect was only 65 and was in Miami when she passed following a short illness. It took the industry a while to digest the news, and her absence was felt for years; which is why now, a decade later and in the year that would have marked her 76th birthday, it feels fitting and indeed necessary to celebrate Zaha Hadid's enduring legacy and incomparable impact.

Celebrating with the Zaha Hadid Foundation

Marking the occasion, the Zaha Hadid Foundation, which the architect set up in 2013, is announcing an exciting new chapter in its life with the reopening of a newly refurbished building at 10 Bowling Green Lane (the original Hadid office headquarters) in London's Clerkenwell this week, and a series of events and shows that aim to showcase the breadth and visionary and lasting nature of the architect's work.

The new Zaha Hadid Foundation hub

The handsome old brick Victorian school building on 10 Bowling Green Lane is part of Hadid's story, housing her office for 30 years (ZHA relocated in 2021 to another location, not too far away), and has been intrinsically connected to her memory. It is now part of the Zaha Hadid Foundation and has just been refurbished by London-based Studio KA to become a hub of architectural showcases and debate for the local and global community.

The space, which soft-launched with a preview today (29 October 2026) ahead of the public opening on 3 November 2026, includes galleries, a learning space, a lecture hall and a collection display. More spaces reserved for the foundation's use will become a hub for exhibitions, talks, workshops and even creative residencies in the future.

Meanwhile, the building will remain the home of Zaha Hadid Design, and will naturally feature furniture and objects designed by Zaha and her studio. Surfaces throughout have been updated, while original features such as a fireplace and doorways have been restored.

The three opening showcases span the architect's work and reveal its breadth. The first, 'Zaha Hadid: Architecture of Performance', is the foundation’s first collection-based exhibition dedicated to stage and set designs and is curated by Catherine Howe, with Libby Sellers as guest curator.

The second event is titled 'The Rebar Beneath', and it's a special commission by artist LionHeart. Inspired by the archive, it brings together film, poetry, performance and spatial installation. Thirdly is another special commission, by Pulitzer Prize-winning illustrator Mona Chalabi. 'The Completely Exhausting Inexhaustibility of Zaha Hadid' offers a 'playful approach to data visualisation' by creating a timeline of the architect's influence.

The symposium: ‘89° of Zaha Hadid’

A two-day symposium, ‘89° of Zaha Hadid’, on 30 and 31 October 2026 (the latter being Zaha’s birthday) will bring another dimension to this moment's celebration. Organised by the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the Architectural Association and the Serpentine, the event will take place across all three partner venues, spreading across London for all to enjoy.

A star-studded list of speakers – some 40 in total – includes architectural photographer Hélène Binet, architects Nigel Coates, Sir Peter Cook and Rem Koolhaas, Vitra’s chairman emeritus Rolf Fehlbaum, Walbrook owner and chair Hayat Palumbo, and artist and OMA co-founder Madelon Vriesendorp. Topics range from Hadid's early life in Baghdad and her studies to her professional career, influence, body of work and vision for the future.

The Zaha Hadid Foundation's director, Aric Chen, told us about Hadid's forward-thinking attitude when we toured the archives for our October 2026 issue: ‘Zaha was immersed in the present – she didn't think she was futuristic. She was about invention and imagination, re-envisioning spatiality and the ways we live and operate in the here and now.'

A fresh identity

London-based agency Made by ON worked on a complete refresh of the Zaha Hadid Foundation's new website design. This is perfectly complemented by a new visual identity crafted by Amsterdam-based studio Experimental Jetset. It was born from the development of a dynamic system, or 'visual language,' as the studio puts it.

Inspired by Hadid's knack for experimentation and pioneering, uncompromising attitude, the foundation's fresh look is not logo-based, as is often the way. Instead, it centres its new identity on a 'flexible typographic system, perpetually mutated by a distorting grid, that evolves and transforms across the foundation’s programmes and communications,' the ZHF explains.

It is perfectly fitting to the late architect's life work and overall approach to architecture. 'It was Zaha’s wish for the foundation to preserve her legacy while carrying her ideas forward: advancing education, supporting future generations and contributing to the wider field of architecture,' says Rana Hadid, chair of the trustees of the Zaha Hadid Foundation.

'At the heart of that mission is her extraordinary archive, a profound record of her work, imagination and intellectual life. This next step will allow us to safeguard that archive, open it to wider audiences, and create new opportunities for learning, scholarship and creative discovery, ensuring that Zaha’s ideas continue to inspire generations to come.'

The Zaha Hadid Foundation exhibition space at the former headquarters on 10 Bowling Green Lane opens to the public on 3 November 2026

The symposium '89° of Zaha Hadid' runs on 30 and 31 October, presented in partnership with the Serpentine and the Architectural Association

zhfoundation.com

It was 1963 when construction finished on Jens and Wenche Selmer's Oslo home. Wielding a considered yet very simple material palette, the celebrated Norwegian architects crafted their house to embody the restrained aesthetic that Wenche, in particular, had become known for.

The house, known as Trosterudstien 1, went on to win the Sundt Prize for outstanding architecture three years later, and is, to this day, regarded as one of Norway’s finest post-war homes. Yet for photographer and editor Marte Garmann – the Selmers' granddaughter – Trosterudstien 1 is not just a landmark building but a backdrop to some of her most treasured childhood memories. Her new book, Own House, aims to give an insight into these moments and what it was like to grow up in an architecturally significant property.

Explore ‘Own House’ and discover the home of Wenche Selmer

'It was a very special place because every detail was thought out,' says Garmann. 'I have many memories of being there, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, playing with wooden blocks, and eating homemade bread on the kitchen table.'

The 160-page book begins with a short essay by Garmann, which is then followed by a series of photos that she took in 2024 just before the family home was sold to private owners; the entire shoot had to be done in just 48 hours. 'It was good to have a limited time frame. Then I had to be absolutely present and capture the different lighting changes throughout the day in every room,' explains Garmann. 'As a photographer, I always work with what I have in front of me.'

The images allow readers to get a broad sense of the home, showing off its open layout and the way in which its rooms are arranged to seamlessly merge together. But it also provides a look at its charming details, from its quarry-tile flooring and concealed storage to its abundance of brass wall hooks, which the Selmers used for everything from hanging Christmas decorations to drying rolls of film.

Other pieces of media are dotted throughout the book, including the Selmers’ pencil drawings of Trosterudstien 1’s pine-lined interiors, a letter about the house that the couple penned in 1966, and some words from Garmann’s aunt Elisabeth, who recalls key points like watching her father, Jens, manually survey the house, and attending the topping-out ceremony with all the craftsmen.

Own House offers an intimate look into the past of Trosterudstien 1, but in no way is it overly nostalgic or sentimental; instead, it depicts the home in a warm, yet honest light. 'There is not much editing and retouching. I want it to be the way it is,' concludes Garmann. 'And for me, that was the perfect way to say goodbye to the house. Witnessing every detail, and then letting it pass on.'

'Eget hus / Own House', Jøss Bokstudio, NOK469 (£38), shop.joss.no

This Brazilian house is a statement that only reveals itself upon closer inspection, so deeply is it set into its context. Casa Lilaya ‘is located in Alto Paraíso de Goiás, in a rural area close to the Chapada dos Veadeiros National Park, in Brazil,’ says Alan Chu, the architect behind it. ‘It sits near a river that runs through the site, immersed in the native vegetation of the Cerrado biome. The sky is vast, and the hills and plateaus fade into the horizon.’

The region is known for ecotourism, but perhaps not as you’d expect. Those interested in holistic living may have heard of the area's strong mystical connections, credited to the high concentration of crystals in the local soil.

Casa Lilaya sits low in a clearing and is accessed by a winding dirt road. It comprises a low, single-storey volume, with crisp lines that seamlessly extend into the landscape.

Inside Casa Lilaya, a minimalist Brazilian house

The client asked for a simple country retreat that was cost-efficient. The two-bedroom home is an example of elegant restraint; however, it was not conceived in pursuit of a specific aesthetic, as Chu explains.

‘It grew out of the experience I wanted to create. How can we perceive time, and how can we create a journey, within a simple building with a limited area? Dividing the plan into quadrants automatically creates four distinct dimensions; I would say at least four different moments in time, without using more area to achieve this. Each quadrant has its own orientation and its own views.’

Chu was careful to note that the region has a long dry season and a rainy one, so he felt it was important to lift the house off the ground to protect it from seasonal changes. It is reminiscent of similar Japanese house typologies.

A long wall extends out from the project's primary volume and acts as a welcoming 'arm' guiding guests towards the main entrance and into the home. It also provides a cosy seating area. This wall is 80cm thick and runs 31m, crossing the entire house. It takes on different functions along its length: seating, the kitchen counter, shelving, the entrance porch, and closets.

Chu, however, designs from the inside out, ‘but always with a sense of aesthetics and proportion’, he says. ‘The experience begins before arriving: a drive along a winding road through the vegetation, then the first glimpse of the house, a moment of mystery and approach. Inside, each room reveals a different landscape.

‘The walls that extend beyond the building create a sense of movement and freedom, and at the same time they give the house a longer, more horizontal, and elegant proportion. The monochromatic palette reduces noise and the amount of information. It is a way to quiet the mind and reinforce the presence of the natural landscape.’

Stepping inside is an invitation to relax. The material palette is minimalist and calming, comprising terracotta, cement, and solid-wood joinery. Large floor-to-ceiling windows open up to nature outside.

Chu concludes: ‘I like the harmony and coherence of the whole. Above all, I am glad to have designed a house that escapes the stereotype of the country cabin. It is hard to imagine it anywhere else. It was made to be there, and that is essential.’

chu.arq.br

There are trophy houses and then there are icons. California is liberally scattered with the former but also has more than its fair share of the latter. Now another example of a prototypical modernist residence has gone up for sale, a house that helped set the template for what was to come.

The Lovell Beach House was the first property commissioned by a far-sighted, forward-thinking couple, in more ways than one. Built for Leah and Philip Lovell, the house was designed exactly a century ago by the architect RM Schindler (1887-1953), with Richard Neutra, no less, working on the landscaping.

Philip M Lovell wrote for the Los Angeles Times. A committed naturopathic health advocate, as well as a vegetarian and a fanatic advocate of naturist sunbathing and avocados, although not necessarily at the same time, he wrote a column called ‘Care of the Body’. In many respects, he is the prototypical modern Californian, healthy, wealthy, and committed to natural wellness with a light side order of eccentricity.

Happily, his wife, Leah Press-Lovell, shared his enthusiasms. The couple had met through her work at a private progressive school in East Hollywood, on land owned by the heiress Aline Barnsdall, whose own residence was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and finished in 1921: the Hollyhock House (now open to the public, and having survived recent threats of closure).

One of the architects working with Wright on the Hollyhock House was Rudolph Michael Schindler, a Vienna-born architect who had arrived in the US in 1914, having studied under such luminaries as Adolf Loos and Otto Wagner.

Although Schindler was to ultimately fall out spectacularly with Wright, as well as have a fractious relationship with Neutra, his fortuitous place in this creative and somewhat cultish milieu led to a connection with Lovell – both men’s wives taught together at the progressive kindergarten.

Together, the Lovells commissioned Schindler to design them a new house in Newport Beach, a shining piece of concrete and glass modernism that fulfilled their love of the open air, freedom, light and health.

The Lovell Beach House was completed in 1926 and appeared to tick all the boxes for the Lovell’s radical lifestyle, with sleeping porches on the first floor that could be opened up to the Pacific air and floor to ceiling glazing.

The Lovell’s unconventional living requirements allowed Schindler to experiment, using reinforced concrete – still a relatively new material, especially in private residences – to raise the house high up off its plot. This created spectacular ocean views from the terrace, while the thin but strong structure allowed for the ribbons of glazing that illuminate the double-height living space in the heart of the 2,741 sq ft house.

As originally conceived, the ground floor contained only a garage and an open area between the angular concrete pillars, with twin staircases leading off in two directions from a central plinth. The first floor contained the double height living room, alongside a dining area, kitchen and breakfast area.

Upstairs, four identical bedrooms were reached off a galleried landing, with an appropriately private roof deck on top. The chilly Pacific fogs quickly put paid to the open sleeping areas and the balconies were enclosed by the end of the decade.

Neutra’s contribution was the modest landscape plan, overlooked by a balcony reached from the sitting room, which in turn had the beach and ocean in the distance. Featuring a curvaceous raised flower bed and semi-naturalistic planting and seating, it’s enhanced by the house’s excellent position on the last building plot before the beach.

Remarkably, the Beach House has stayed in the Lovell family ever since, a focal place where key family gatherings and celebrations have been held over the past hundred years.

The last Lovell to live there, Philip and Leah’s daughter-in-law Barbara, died in 2025, prompting the family to finally sell a place that has been so integral to their life for so long. Over the decades, changes have been sparse and sympathetic, with almost all Schindler’s original built-in furnishings retained.

Philip and Leah went on to commission Richard Neutra to design their next house, the equally famous Lovell Health House, completed in 1929. Ultimately, they chose to spend more time at the beach residence, even though it was initially the Neutra building that won more plaudits and attention from the world’s architectural press.

Taking on such an icon – in such a prominent spot – is not for the faint-hearted. We reported recently on the struggle to sell the Stahl House (Craig Ellwood's Case Study House #22), another slice of American architectural history that comes with caveats as well as kudos.

Although the Lovell Beach House is a veritable antique by Californian standards, it’s still a monument to the kind of innovation and thinking that defines the state today.

Lovell Beach House, 1242 West Ocean Front, Newport Beach, California, is for sale at $18.8m, co-listed by Nate Cole of Modern California House and Todd Bousman of Bouhaus Properties, TheLovellBeachHouse.com

Nestled in the green landscape of Khao Yai in northeastern Thailand, this new home clearly stands out – not just for its colour, a crisp white that pleasingly pops within its leafy setting, but also for its unapologetically contemporary form and the zig-zag roof that defines its volume. Welcome to Khao Yai Mountain Grounded Villa, a new countryside retreat designed by Thai architecture practice HAS Design and Research and its founders (and 2022 Wallpaper* Architects Directory entrants) Jenchieh Hung and Kulthida Songkittipakdee.

The project was conceived as a family dwelling which responds to 'the philosophy of the Sufficiency Economy, initiated by Thailand's King Rama IX, which advocates self-reliance through sustainable, environmentally conscious living,' the architects explain. This means that old and new building methods and spatial arrangements merge for the optimal result that creates ample and comfortable living space while respecting the surrounding environment and its resources.

This means the home uses passive environmental strategies to both work harmoniously with its context and operate in the best way for its users. Techniques used include maximising sun exposure and ventilation to help maintain a comfortable internal environment, and a harvesting system that collects and reuses rainwater for irrigation in the garden.

The house itself looks decidedly modern, yet takes its cues from context and history. Its L-shaped footprint references the local agricultural vernacular's courtyard arrangement – which also helps control sun and airflow within the home, protecting some areas while opening up others to the outdoors. The result is a residence that 'maintains an average temperature of approximately 26°C without the need for air conditioning,' the architects explain.

At the same time, its tongue-in-cheek, jagged roofline is not just a playful geometric design, but echoes in an abstract way the outline of the region's surrounding mountains, seen from the home's large openings. Meanwhile, these shapes cast distinctive pixel-like mountain shadows on the floor, and reflections on the extensive glazed surfaces, bringing a sense of fun and dynamism into the design.

This approach, the architects add, 'draws inspiration from the dramatic silhouettes of Nang Yai, Thailand's traditional shadow puppet theatre. While Nang Yai is one of Thailand's most celebrated cultural traditions, its visual language has never before been translated into contemporary Thai architecture. Here, the project reinterprets this cultural heritage through architecture, transforming light, shadow, and landscape into an immersive spatial experience.'

Inside, a flowing open plan is designed to allow for maximum flexibility in terms of how to use the spaces – gathering, communication, yoga, meditation, and a range of everyday activities can all be easily accommodated. Further auxiliary spaces discreetly support a tatami room, music room, water closet, kitchen, and wine cellar. One arm of the 'L' contains social areas, and the other hosts the house's two en suite bedrooms.

The architects conclude: 'More than introducing a new residential typology, the project redefines the role of the villa by shifting its architectural paradigm from Le Corbusier's free plan to Mies van der Rohe's transparent façade, and ultimately to the roof as a new architectural manifesto of shade and shadow. In doing so, the project proposes a new paradigm for contemporary tropical living, where wind, rain, light, landscape, culture, and nature become the primary generators of architectural space.'

hasdesignandresearch.com

It was only a matter of time before Isay Weinfeld designed a cinema. The São Paulo-based architect is celebrated worldwide for his buildings, interiors, and furniture, but fewer people know that film is an equal passion. In 1988, he co-directed the feature Fogo e Paixão with his former business partner, and he is a professor of kinetic expression at the Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, a private, non-profit university and cultural centre in São Paulo. Those who know Weinfeld are familiar with the boyish glint in his eye at the first mention of the movies. At Cine Tutu, that glint is everywhere.

Discover the world of Cine Tutu by Isay Weinfeld

The 114-seat independent movie house is the first street cinema in Vila Madalena, the city’s bohemian-chic enclave. Located on Rua Girassol, the building was conceived as a theatre but sat unfinished and empty for years. Founder Paulo Velasco, also behind Cinesala – the beloved street cinema in neighbouring Pinheiros – has delivered it to its original cultural calling, and Weinfeld has staged the experience as a sequence of scenes, each a sophisticated take on the moviegoing ritual, none resembling the shopping-mall multiplex.

The first unfolds at street level in Barouche, Velasco’s café-bar, open with or without a ticket. Expect speciality Brazilian coffee, sandwiches, draught beer and craft cocktails, plus popcorn from vintage countertop pipoqueiras – a buttery, nostalgic touch. Contrasting stainless steel and rich, warm native wood sets a stylish tone, and lush tropical flora behind the glass façade puts on a show of its own.

Downstairs, the waiting area feels more like a cocktail lounge than a pre-show holding pen. The walls are full of framed classic film posters, and stylish custom olive-green banquettes are clustered around a central column. Above, a one-of-a-kind centrepiece chandelier stretches its slender arms, washing the ceiling in pools of warm light that are a design feature in their own right. It all makes the room hard to leave, even as the coming attractions are calling.

Inside the screening room, a cheeky floral print developed in partnership with renowned Brazilian textile and design house Entreposto covers the rows of seats and lounge chairs prototyped to perfection by Weinfeld’s famously detail-obsessed studio. By nature, the technology maintains a lower visual profile, but delivers an eye-opening experience with an 8.9m-wide screen, Christie 4K projection, and Dolby 7.1 sound.

When the credits roll, the bar beckons for a drink and a debate about the film’s high points, low points, and, of course, the denouement. This month, there is plenty to discuss: Cine Tutu has joined the line-up of venues for the 50th São Paulo International Film Festival. Look for Weinfeld in the front row.

isayweinfeld.com

This autumn in London, the Hermès Maison window at 166 New Bond Street unveils a spectacular new display dreamt up by architects Space Popular. Scenes across its six arched windows sweep passersby up into a cosy and surreal drawing room built of cotton-and-silk-blend quilts in warm and toasty colours, inspired by the Georgian history of the Maison’s architecture.

Discover the new Hermès Maison window design in London

Titled ‘Ciel de Lit’, the storybook tableaux are wrapped in quilted sash windows ready to lift off into quilted clouds, a roaring fireplace, and a door that opens just ajar, hinting at imaginary worlds beyond. There’s humour in the details – floating Hermès gloves draw open the curtains, a silk scarf adorns an easel and a leather belt plugs into a stitched socket – sparking contrasts between the softness of the fabric-world and the exquisite reality of fine craft.

'We like to create things that make you look twice, widen your mind and spark curiosity,' says architect Fredrik Hellberg, one half of the Space Popular duo with architect Lara Lesmes.

Interested in virtual worlds, surrealism and trompe l’oeil, they were inspired by the strange magic of ‘moments between sleeping and waking’. The duo also looked to Hermès’ 2026 guiding creative theme of the year, ‘Venture Beyond’, and the whimsy of the London Maison itself, a magical village of six buildings and 55 uniquely designed rooms that unfolds beyond the windows.

After working together for many years, Space Popular has, over the past decade, turned increasingly to textiles, resonating with how the medium resonates deeply with the body, humanises architecture and tells stories over millennia. This first foray into quilting evolved in collaboration with a group of artisans and London-based crafts specialist Andy Knight, who joined nearly 500 pieces of quilted textiles together to create the vast installation, their largest endeavour to date.

'It’s incomprehensible how many hundreds of miles of stitching there is, yet how slow and precise it is too, because of all of the ornaments and details. You'll see that the stitching doesn't miss a millimetre,' says Hellberg, reflecting on the awe of the craft.

Space Popular worked closely with the Hermès team to curate the house’s objects within the display, many of which were drawn from the Home collection. There’s the Pippa stool, originally designed in 1983 by architects Peter Coles and Rena Dumas (1937-2009), the latter whose studio, Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieure (RDAI), now under the artistic direction of Denis Montel, is behind the design of the London Maison and establishing the interior vision of Hermès stores worldwide. As well as a luxurious sofa re-edition by Jean-Michel Frank; the Les Trotteuses d’Hermès occasional table; and Pantographe arc floor lamp.

When viewed in-person, one absorbs the architectural reflections, shifting light, the shiny speed of black cabs, and the elegant bustle of New Bond Street as another illusion, softly mirrored into the scene.

This history of Hermès’ windows is a tradition and art form in its own right, which was overseen for many years, between 1978 and 2013, by Tunisian designer-decorator Leïla Menchari (1927-2020), then in charge of the Hermès windows at Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Her work is celebrated in the book ‘Leïla Menchari, the Queen of Enchantment,' published by Hermès.

'This is the kind of legacy that you’re stepping into,' says Hellberg on Space Popular’s participation in this window display, recognising in admiration previous artistic collaborators of their generation such as Wang & Söderström. For Space Popular, part of the beauty of this installation is in reaching the broad public audience of the street with its wonder: 'We are called Space Popular for a reason,' he says, 'At our core we are really interested in what people like and what people enjoy.'

'Ciel de Lit by Space Popular' is on display at Maison Hermès at 166 New Bond St, London, W1S 4RB until 30 October 2026

It's exactly ten years since Dame Zaha Hadid passed away unexpectedly at the age of 65, leaving an unassailable legacy in her Issey Miyake-clad wake. In a strange piece of synchronicity, there’s now an incredibly rare chance to own one of her buildings in the heart of London.

Constructed from 2014 onwards, this house in Belgravia’s Grosvenor Crescent Mews has the distinction of being one of only two private residential projects completed by the studio (the other being the Capital Hill Residence outside Moscow).

A unicorn in the London property market, 6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews isn’t just a rare example of Hadid’s work but it’s also a 3,980 sq ft house with integral garage just a stone’s throw from Hyde Park Corner, located in what is Belgravia's only private gated mews.

Gaining permission for such an avant-garde structure in the midst of a thicket of Conservation Areas and listed buildings was no mean feat, even for an architecture of the calibre of Zaha Hadid. The site had boundaries with no fewer than nine different neighbours, placed in such a way that the only public-facing façade was just six metres in width.

That element, a rippling curtain of back-lit brickwork lattices and patterned glass, belies the scale of the house behind it, which extends over four generous 1,000 sq ft floorplans.

The garage was a planning condition, but it was fitted out to a residential specification so that it can be used as a study area if needed. It adjoins the main reception room, a space bounded by the curved interventions of the polished balustrade rail and the custom-designed staircase, formed from polished concrete and shaped to wind sinuously between the floors.

Like many London mews and conversion projects, the house goes down as well as up, with a kitchen and sitting room located in the basement, beneath a double height space which in itself is topped by a glazed terrace at first floor level. With windows, parapets, courtyards and walls arranged so as to avoid overlooking from surrounding properties, the entire house is cleverly folded into its site, making the most from the available space.

Utility, plant and stores are tucked away in the basement behind the kitchen, another area that is defined by a trademark Hadidian swoop, this time in the form of a polished kitchen counter that projects out from the wall like a geological form.

From here, the two-storey atrium rises up to the gauzy light that filters through the glass roof, with the polished balustrade playing off the curved concrete stair risers contained behind a glazed wall.

The first floor houses the principal bedroom suite, complete with curved glass and sole access to the terrace. A living wall flanks the perimeter of the property (it’s joined by a brown roof system designed to improve the house’s insulation), while the glazed stair tower rises up beneath the fluted forms of another skylight. On the second floor there are two further ensuite bedrooms, each winding around a central dressing room space.

The artistry and style of 6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews is sadly unrepeatable, making this project a rare opportunity to acquire a functional work of art in the heart of London.

In the decade since her death, the firm Hadid established in Studio 9 of a former school on Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell has gone all out into making her wildly exuberant approach into a clearly defined architectural style, Parametricism, translating Hadid’s wild, analogue forms into a heady, AI-infused cocktail of data-shaped aesthetic adventures.

If you can ignore the Succession-like shenanigans that have swirled around ZHA in the years that followed, the Zaha Hadid Foundation holds a fascinating archive of her work.

6 Grosvenor Crescent Mews, London SW1X is for sale at £11.95m through Forbes Gilbert-Green, ForbesGilbertGreen.com

What happens when a Southern California desert home is designed around just three circles? This curved residence was born of such a minimalist premise, taking its cues from, and unfolding around, its surrounding landscape.

Avocado House is a newly completed retreat perched above the Yucca Valley, created by Arshia Architects' principal architect Arshia Mahmoodi. The starting point was three simple circular shapes. One forms the house's core, another defines the yard, and a third connects the two. Sections of that geometry were then carved away to create a crescent-shaped courtyard and frame views across Yucca Valley to the San Jacinto Mountains.

Explore Avocado House, a new Californian desert home

Somewhere along the design process, the floorplan began to resemble an avocado, with the rounded core forming the ‘pit’ and the name stuck. The three-bedroom home is now part of Fieldtrip’s Signature Homes portfolio, the hospitality company behind Joshua Tree’s famed piece of desert architecture, the Invisible House, and other distinctive properties for home stays that include boutique hotel amenities.

The shape of Avocado House was conceived around its hilltop setting. Rather than placing the outdoor spaces behind the house, the architecture wraps around a central courtyard (or the pit, if you will) with a pool, spa and fire pit. Angled openings capture the surrounding boulders, desert sunsets and mountain views, while the main living room and two bedrooms open directly outside, serving as both a gathering space and a frame for the surrounding vistas.

The courtyard was a key element of the circular layout. ‘We wanted an outdoor space carved directly from the building volume, one that connects the house to the hillside and creates a quiet, intimate space within this vast hilltop landscape,’ says the owner of the home, Zhang Zhuo.

The curved interiors were developed by Xinlei Li of Xinlei Architecture, Inc., in collaboration with the ownership team, and include lighting fixtures by Flos with custom furniture pieces and artworks commissioned for the house to reflect the natural light at different times of day, while a lofted lounge with a pool table overlooks the main living area, creating a more intimate space within the open interior.

The curved wood framing and canopy were among the home’s most challenging elements to execute, but also some of its most defining. Following the geometry of the house, they create a sense of enclosure and privacy without closing the home off from its desert surroundings.

With the views as a core priority for the owners, Zhuo notes, ‘We explored a circular geometry for the layout with a central core for the living spaces, an outer ring defining the yard, and a connecting zone linking the house and yard together. We developed this circular idea into a volumetric form and wrapped it within an outer shell. We then made two intentional cuts into the building mass to frame the views and manage building height. The courtyard was carved out of this volume to tie the house to the hillside. The curved walls and canopy grew naturally from this circular geometry we pursued for the project.’

One of the main construction challenges for the team was building the curved wood framing and canopy accurately. ‘The most distinctive material we used is curved glulam timber,’ adds Zhuo. ‘It forms the sweeping canopy and roof structure, bringing warmth while following the building’s soft, rounded geometry.’

The project also incorporates a roof-drainage system with runoff directed to two dry wells on the property, and a solar-panel system to offset electricity demand.

‘When we started planning the home, the three-circle layout was our response to this hilltop setting. The three rings create a natural flow from the private interior living zone, through a transitional courtyard, out to the surrounding desert landscape. This layered arrangement lets us enjoy the panoramic views while still maintaining privacy.’

stayfieldtrip.com

This German house in the small city of Ludwigsburg offers a distinct proposition. House in Process, a residence for a family of four, is the redesign of an existing 1961 property. Yet what is different about this structure is that the architects, Stuttgart-based SOMAA Architektur & Innenarchitektur, worked with the owners to continuously develop the home between 2013 and 2026, eventually bringing it to its current form.

Explore the German House in Process by SOMAA

The aim was not to blindly 'replace the 1961 structure, but reread it', the architects explain. Their response focuses on wrapping the structure in a dark, calming envelope – a ventilated skin made of charred timber, following Japanese principles. The team adds that this 'surface follows the logic of yakisugi: fire is understood not as destruction, but as protection, depth and the ability to age'.

Gold-anodised window reveals and a brass front door stand out elegantly from this blackened exterior.

The property contains the main home and an additional independent apartment. The outside's bolder colours give way to light tones indoors, with lots of naturally coloured wood and refurbished existing surface fabric, such as white plaster walls and parquet flooring.

Overall, functionality rules, as rooms and operations were cut out and redefined around the family's daily life and needs.

The need to completely replace the ageing house's roof led to an opportunity – to work on a loft extension, which the architects crafted wrapped entirely in timber in a manner that proves warm and inviting, but also refreshingly minimalist. The team took its cues from studio founder Hadi A Tandawardaja's saying: 'Reduction is not renunciation, but the conscious focus on what truly matters.'

To ensure the German house is up to contemporary sustainability standards and the country's requirements for new buildings, the architects did a full energy assessment and retrofit during the redesign, too. The results led them to add wood-fibre insulation, an insulated pitched roof, triple glazing, an air-to-water heat pump and an in-roof photovoltaic system to support passive temperature control strategies and operational energy needs.

The property's outdoor areas were given just as much love as the interior, with the garden and decks carefully curated to bring in a welcome touch of green space to the family's everyday life. The later addition of a natural pool completes the constellation of al fresco living areas that become an integral part of the home's functions when the weather allows.

Importantly, this project was not a 'linear renovation story,' the architects hasten to point out. The close relationship the team nurtured with the clients and the luxury of time permitted them all to craft a different, slow type of architecture, which delved into not only the family's current needs, but also their future ones – building flexibility into the plan, too.

'The project shows that architecture does not only emerge through the design of a new object, but through the precise continuation of what is already there. A house can grow over years without becoming arbitrary. It can absorb layers without losing its legibility. And in the end, it can appear not as an addition, but as a house that has found its own way,' the architects conclude.

somaa.de

M Residence is an eye-catching sight. This Greek island home looks almost alien from the air: geometric and mysterious, its upper storey sits high on a cliffside, while its base is nestled low into the ground. From above, its pizza-box shape features a series of cut-outs, reminiscent of eroded rocks on the beach that slowly emerge as the tide goes out. The project is the work of Mold Architects, a dynamic, female-founded, Athens-based practice.

Discover M Residence, a new Greek island home

The residence is located in Lia, Serifos, a small island situated between Kithnos and Sifnos – and it isn't the first time the architecture firm has worked on the island. M Residence was actually first designed in 2011, becoming one of the firm’s very first projects. It wasn't built at the time, but now, a decade later, the new owners have decided to move forward with the scheme.

‘When the client expressed an interest in building it more than a decade later, I was thrilled,’ says Iliana Kerestetzi, founder of Mold Architects, ‘I still loved the idea, but opening that folder also meant confronting an earlier version of ourselves. The challenge was to look at the work critically while committing to its future. Our thinking had changed, and a design that had remained on paper was about to become someone’s home. That gave every decision a different weight. What still felt essential? What needed to evolve?’

Although the original idea held its strength, Kerestetzi explained that they began to see new possibilities with it, telling Wallpaper*: ‘The rooms opened more generously onto the courtyards, the materials became warmer and the details quieter. The house took shape through that exchange between our earlier intentions, our present perspective and the people who would inhabit it.’

This Greek island home's volume is compact and monolithic, inspired by local monasteries. However, internally, the building features smooth curves and rejects harsh angles, allowing the visitor to transition between each room and courtyard fluidly.

‘We combined this with two other local architectural languages: the crisp, cubic rooms of the villages and the softer contours of rural buildings and dry-stone walls. Within a square outline, rooms turn gently towards different views, while curved walls connect them and draw out a sequence of seven courtyards,’ notes the architect.

When the architects focused on revising the original plan, they decided to simplify and soften it. Interior spaces were opened up towards the courtyards, creating a more protected exterior. As a result, the residence feels at once both open and entirely sheltered, with this contrast forming the conceptual heart of the project.

Perhaps the most intriguing change was how the building sits, or in this case, doesn’t sit, on the ground. The entire volume is raised on a plinth, which in turn creates a shadow line that makes it look like it is hovering. A swimming pool was also introduced, positioned outside the main volume in a geometric placement gesture.

One thing that Kerestetzi wants visitors to feel is at ease, saying: ‘A room opens into a garden, a courtyard offers shelter, a shaded corner invites a pause. The warmth of the coloured plaster and the closeness of the planting make these spaces feel intimate. We hope people move through them intuitively, finding the spot that feels right for a particular moment.’

However, she also notes that part of the intention was to allow room for the home's inhabitants to add to its character and make it their own. She explains: 'The residents have already hung a piece of white fabric beneath one of the roof openings. It filters the light and moves gently, bringing a softness we hadn’t designed.’

Her favourite aspect is that the house reveals multiple facets and identities over time; the same spot easily evokes an entirely different vibe depending on light and seasons. She concludes: ‘A detail that recedes in the morning can become the most compelling thing in the afternoon.’

moldarchitects.com

A reimagining and wholesale refurbishment of a village house built at the turn of the century, this residence by architects Anna and Eugeni Bach expands the original structure with a series of geometric additions and insertions. The result remains in keeping with the sober restraint of this small, upscale village near Girona, in Spain’s north-eastern corner, whilst adding a layer of materiality and functionalism that better serves the owners.

Explore this contemporary village house in Spain

The House in Fonolleres occupies a prominent site on the edge of the village, bounded on three sides by roads with a south-facing garden. This part of the house underwent the largest alterations, with a new full-width extension and veranda, above which is a large terrace. Another extension was made on the front façade to create a more generous entrance and an internal garage that was better suited to the size of modern cars.

Additional smaller interventions take the shape of the five bespoke circular canopies on the terrace, a new circular pergola covering the outdoor kitchen table and a triangular notch that cuts into the floorplan at master bedroom level to create what the architects call a ‘studiolo’ (an Italian Renaissance term for a compact study room). Tucked in behind the bedhead and flanked by a bookcase that spans two storeys, this niche is just one of idiosyncratic design touches that abound throughout the house.

The Barcelona-based architects worked alongside their colleagues Roger Molas and Nuria Gómez on a project that feels like it has evolved over time, much like many of the other houses in the village. Each of the new additions appears to stand alone as a discrete object, thanks in part to its formal, geometric design, with a unifying palette of natural materials.

Many of the additions are guided by the desire to expand the range of ‘shade and shelter’ available to the occupants, making the house more liveable all year round. Plaster, timber and ceramic finishes have been carefully chosen to present a warm, common language and earthy palette.

Shade is carefully placed according to function; planting on the circular pergola will eventually screen the breakfast table from the morning summer sun, while the built-in barbeque is shaded at midday.

Other quirky details reveal themselves through familiarity, from the hidden studiolo to the shallow end of the pool shaded by the new covered seating area. Throughout the 350 sq m house the rooms are modestly scaled, kept anchored by straightforward materials and meticulously crafted details, from the precision of the roof beams to the notched stone anchors for the timber columns.

AnnaEugeniBach.com, @eugenibach, @anna_k_bach

A century-old Atlanta warehouse long home to a building supplies manufacturer is now a factory for art called Loop, thanks to a nimble renovation from architectural designer Jennifer Bonner and her practice MALL.

Georgia Tech purchased the property in 2018 from Randall Brothers, a building supplies company in Atlanta on the site since 1885. The seven-acre plot is slated to hold Georgia Tech’s new Creative Quarter, with academic buildings, student housing and even a hotel to come. Most buildings on the site were demolished. The historic warehouse that houses Loop was happily retained, now home to this event, exhibition and studio space operated by local arts organisation Goat Farm.

The project was rooted in felicitous chance. Bonner, who is based in Portland, Oregon, but formerly taught at Georgia Tech and has exhibited with Goat Farm, ran into Mark Dinatale, Goat Farm’s managing director on the site. She explains, 'Mark and I saw each other there and I said "we have to work together on this."'

Goat Farm operates nearly 200 artists’ rental studios at five locations throughout Atlanta. 'The revenue from studio rentals actually goes to support the arts programming. We can use it to subsidise harder-to-fund art forms and more experimental forms of art,' Dinatale explains. Goat Farm has worked with Georgia Tech in the past, and is collaborating on a three-year activation of the warehouse.

The building was in generally good condition. The design team made repairs to the roof and installed new HVAC, plumbing, windows and doors. A lingering layer of sawdust from its prior life was cleared out.

A temporary stay required a light touch, one successfully executed thanks to Bonner’s scheme. The structure provided easy guidance as to where to locate 17 artists’ studios, within the column grid along its two sides, while retaining the central volume for flexible use, including exhibitions, installations and performances.

To accommodate such a variety of uses, Bonner and her team relied on a literal loop, a translucent curtain composed of metallic flame-retardant polyester fabric which can be shifted or removed. 'Basically the curtain became a way to spatially close things off or divide them,' Bonner says.

Forty custom-fabricated planter carts, meanwhile, provide a cheap and easy source of ornament and spatial organisation. 'They can be recombined in terms of shapes and they can be all clustered together,' Bonner adds.

Lighting is another source of verve, consisting largely of LED strips. Bonner, working with lighting designer Pablo Gnecco of New York-based firm Studio Studio, placed the lights vertically on interior columns and horizontally on the building's front facade in a glowing band. '[It's] stretched the whole length of the facade, like Dan Flavin on steroids,' Bonner says.

The lighting design involves a range of shades from pink to purple to green, which can be fixed or pulsate.

The overall aim of Loop, as Dinatale explains, is to achieve 'an experimental space,' that grants artists access to space and technology. So far, Loop has provided a space for exhibitions and events, as well as performances by Hyojin Kwon and Frank Vigroux; dance companies; AI art; video game art; and even Georgia Tech’s Laptop orchestra.

Allie Bashuk, Goat Farm’s creative and design director, notes Loop's proven an ideal location for evening performances, with no residences around. Their aim has been to provide a strong platform for offbeat art. 'We try to elevate all these projects by giving them proper lighting and visual cues,' Bashuk says.

Bonner held an exhibition on roof designs at Goat Farm in 2014 titled Domestic Hats. This time, she's returned to work under a hat of her own devising – and an overdue accomplishment, she notes: Loop is the 'first building on the Georgia Tech campus designed by a female-led practice.'

Architect Carl Maston completed this exemplary Ventura Beach house in 1984 for a former actress and her partner. The Susman house sits above the shore in the heart of California's surf culture, looking back at the grand sweep of the bay with its Channel Islands beyond.

Step inside this Ventura Beach house, now on the market

The work of Maston (1915-1992) epitomises the aesthetic and spirit of midcentury California; his own house, completed in 1947, was subsequently owned by Ryan Murphy and then Dakota Johnson, and other local luminaries, including Ray Kappe, worked in his studio.

With Maston’s star riding high, this is a rare opportunity to acquire a late period work that embodies all of his architectural devices, set in an unbeatable location. Back in 1985, the house was extensively photographed by Julius Shulman, adding another layer of historical lustre to an already impressive project.

This is the Susman House’s first time on the open market. The original owner, Tracy ‘Babs’ Susman, acted and modelled before studying town planning and working in local politics and environmental planning, with the occasional foray into film production.

The house was built on a plot once owned by her sister and brother-in-law, and her brief to Carl Maston was to keep the spirit of the traditional Californian cabin alive in a contemporary structure.

Maston went to town. The Susman House was one of over 40 he completed in the area during his career, but probably most dramatically sited of all of them. Pairing traditional cedar siding on the interior and exterior walls along with exposed brick flooring and fireplaces, Maston integrated large areas of glass for lightness along with hefty concrete foundations to anchor the structure into the coastline.

From the roadside, the 2,640 sq ft house is nestled between mature trees and only hints at the views and space within. A large sitting room adjoins a kitchen with bay views from the sink, with sliding glass doors that open out onto a spectacular terrace with 240 degrees of Pacific views.

It’s a spot that has long been favoured by surfers, including one of the sport’s pioneers, Mary Monks, who became closely associated with nearby Mondo’s Cove in the late 1950s.

Upstairs, there are three main bedrooms and a separate sitting area with balcony. All of these incorporate the slope of the roof to achieve high ceilings, walls of glass and Pacific views. A central atrium and landing is arranged around the brick chimney with internal glazed partitions bringing light down into the heart of the house.

The house retains the modesty and feel of the original Faria Beach Colony, one of the classic Californian coastal retreats that began as a stretch of summer cabins in the years before WWII. As the original Shulman photographs attest, very little has changed in the four decades since the house was completed.

The family eschewed any extensive remodelling, keeping Maston’s architectural pristine and original as a testament to the fundamental rightness of the original design.

The Susman House is for sale through Shannon and Chuck Menzel at The Menzel Group priced at $5,100,000. More details at MondosCove.com

On a waterfront site in Delfinópolis in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, this expansive contemporary house uses the luxury of space to create a refined architectural experience. Designed by Filipi and Mariana Oliveira and their team at MF+Arquitetos, Casa Celeiro (Barn House) covers some 1,108 m², arranged as two forms set at right angles in the landscape on the shores of a large reservoir.

The simple lines of the upper volume is what gives the house its name. A long, single-storey pitched timber roof structure that runs north-south, it is flanked on all sides by covered verandas. Formed from glue laminated timber frames, the roof structure oversails the built-up area to create the verandas, providing solar shading as well as access to a steel-clad inner core of five ensuite bedrooms, culminating in a principal between suite at the northern end, complete with two walls of sliding glazing that can be opened up to the landscape beyond.

In the centre of the barn element is a grand living room, the only point at which the internal spaces open up to the full height of the pitched roof. The verandas are used for circulation and incorporate glazed and louvred panels that be swung open as required. On the other side is a small kitchen, gym and utility spaces, as well as a generously sized covered terrace.

This space also houses a grand staircase that descends towards the water to the east, leading to the lower level. Half sunk into the hillside, this is the location of the main kitchen and living room, with three sliding glass walls opening onto a pool terrace with the reservoir beyond. The house is therefore divided between public and private, with each component having its own relationship with the landscape and horizon.

On the lower, more public, level, there’s very little perception of the accommodation structure above it. Likewise, when looking out east across the reservoir, the flat concrete roof of the semi-sunken lower level is planted to make it all but invisible. Aside from the internal staircase, one key physical element unites the two components, a cascade of rough-hewn steps that leads down from the upper terrace into the heart of lower pavilion, flanked by mature planting.

‘Rather than an abrupt connection, this route proposes a gradual transition between architecture and nature,’ the architects explain, ‘For a few moments, the building partially disappears, and movement is guided instead by stone, topography, and vegetation.’ It’s a rare of incursion for nature in a house that prides itself of simplicity and grand structural gestures. The lower level also a sauna and changing areas for the outdoor pool, alongside storage and a wine cellar in the more sheltered, cooler subterranean section.

The architects point to the house’s inherent contradictions – barn-like in form but not in execution, with many layers gradually revealed from within. The monolithic wooden form gives way to multiple materials and textures, as steel, concrete, stone, vegetation, light, and water are brought together under one roof.

‘Casa Celeiro … is simultaneously shelter and openness, form and void, permanence and transformation. The memory of the barn remains present in its most elemental form, while the architecture reinterprets it in response to a different way of living - one that is more open to the climate, to movement, and to the constant presence of the landscape.’

MFmaisArquitetos.com, @MFarquitetos