StudioAC is an interdisciplinary architectural practice based in Toronto, led by Andrew Hill and Jennifer Kudlats. The studio works closely with clients, consultants, and contractors at every stage of its work, from conception to realization. The studio believes that any problem presents limitless opportunities, and they address each new project with enthusiasm and a willingness to listen in order to create something unique and special.
The Pyramid of Tirana by MVRDV is an architectural project that shows how a building can adapt to a new era while preserving its complex history, and demonstrates that historic brutalist buildings are ideal for reuse. The work of MVRDV’s design team encompasses and encircles the existing structure, using the structure as a blueprint to which publicly accessible spaces and boxes for education and events were added.
Arrive East Austin Hotel designed by Baldridge Architects is a powerful, original response to a street of multifamily residential buildings. The 77,000-square-foot building effectively communicates its mission by referencing East Austin’s older buildings’ architectural language, avoiding superfluous tropes and meaningless articulations. The design prioritizes a high-quality building that honors its location and redirects cheaper design strategies to the west.
Baldridge Architects is an architectural practice that lives for the fascinating chaos that makes design human, seeking both the fever dream and the quiet reflection. The designers chase neither form nor surface; they practice clarity, sensitivity, and obsessive detail to pursue the transcendent. They believe that what is dreamed can be drawn, and what is drawn can be made precisely.
The Container (for Kochi Muziris Biennale 2023) by Samira Rathod Design Atelier is an architectural project that focuses on sustainability, recycling materials and resources. The project is built on dual narratives – one of the debris from ruthless demolition, and another of the poetics of construction – an honest admission of materials and methods of making buildings which often remain hidden under its skin, unknown.
Casa dos anos 40 by Frari – architecture network is an architectural restoration project that intervenes discreetly, without disturbing the original design. The design was respected, but the intervention is denoted in the chromatic option, where the colors by compartment were abandoned, giving way to a total white, which unifies, softens and assumes a contemporary language.
Saransh’s KSH House is a residential project centred around a courtyard that serves as the main attraction for all of the spaces. Two L-shaped masses that are connected to one another by small bridges form the house’s detailed volume, resulting in a loop. This house’s focal point features a metal grid that changes the atmosphere by serving as a transitional element between the spaces formed by the two masses.
Nha Be House by Tropical Space aims to separate individual needs and facilitate family interaction by incorporating a central void. External and internal approaches are included in the project’s design. With views to the outside, the exterior approach preserves interior individuality while shielding the interior from the sun’s harsh rays. To provide occupants with positive feelings, vitality, and comfort by exposure to nature, all interior spaces have access to both indoor and outdoor gardens.
Rcubo Arquitectura’s Tatakua House is an example of a project that combines urban and rural elements to create a unique landscape in the southern Global area. The project explores various locally and naturally available materials that support the site’s structural integrity and climate. Waste is kept to a minimum by using uniform materials for floors, walls, and ceilings—bricks, cement, earth, and a single kind of wood.
Rcubo Arquitectura is a practice that aims to create architecture that adheres to the principles of collaborative ethics and sustainability. They believe in a tactile architecture that generates its own atmospheres, enhancing the experience of inhabiting spaces. Their projects aim to minimize the elements of a design, using the least amount of material possible, thereby reducing waste and, consequently, carbon consumption.
‘Al Sweimeh Development Project – The Forgotten Village’ is an architecture thesis by Lara samara and Nancy al-akhras from Department of Architectural Engineering – Hashemite University, that seeks to tackle the issue of marginalisation in Sweimeh, Jordan, through community development. The aim of the project is to create a place that values the local skills of the Sweimeh people and encourages them to invest in the development of the area through food production cycles.
Yunjian Gallery by DCDSAA Architecture Office and Yodogawa Architects is an adaptive reuse project of a creative restaurant as a part of an urban renewal. The design responds strategically to the operator’s explicit demands and the natural attributes of the site. In interpreting the endogenous dynamics of the spirit of the place, the designers do not stick to the old ways and use the original materials, but edit, integrate, preserve and intervene in the scale and space, materials and atmosphere.
Sauna Kolo by Avanto Architects and Hiroko Mori is a modern interpretation of a traditional log sauna. It represents both the timeless qualities and the contemporary concept of wellbeing. The space is created simply by laying massive 150×150 mm timber logs on top of each other and joining them with wooden pegs so that the temporary structure is easy to dismantle and re-erect.
‘Small House in San Ber’ by Equipo de Arquitectura reduces architecture to its most basic components in a clear and effective manner. The served and servant spaces are separated into two sectors of the project. The aim to create a synthesis of a reflective process on resource management and result maximisation is reflected in the project’s scale, component ratios, and material selection.
Archidiaries is excited to share the Project of the Week – Đạo Mẫu Museum | ARB Architects. Along with this, the weekly highlight contains a few of the best projects, published throughout the week. These selected projects represent the best content curated and shared by the team at ArchiDiaries.
Nisarga Art Hub, designed by Wallmakers, is a residential architecture project featuring traditional Kerala roofs, crowding the horizon around it. Despite being excellent temperature regulators and insulators, traditional roofs are becoming less common in contemporary architecture because of how unpleasant and uncomfortable they make spaces for the dark. Thus the concept of piercing the roof to make room for light-streaming skylights emerged.
Butterfly House designed by Alexis Dornier is an architectural experiment that features a four-bedroom off-the-ground structure on stilts. A circle encircling a cross serves as the house’s plan figure. The cross is the primary component of the building, while the circle is the secondary element. Programs like the atelier, sound studio, pool, and back of the house are contained in this circle.
Alexis Dornier’s architecture formulates a design aesthetic that mediates between elements of tropical modernism and industrial architecture. This design aesthetic is realised through an iterative design process and careful selection of locally available natural materials, spatially composed to respond to the site and natural setting in which they are placed. The Studio’s projects are designed within the tropical, forested hills of Ubud, Bali’s cultural epicenter.
Planning the design of a bathroom is an integral aspect of architectural endeavors. Bathrooms serve not only as utilitarian spaces but also as sanctuaries for relaxation and self-care. In order to fashion a bathroom that seamlessly merges aesthetics with functionality, architects must take a range of pivotal considerations into account. The article elaborates on essential insights that every architect should bear in mind when tasked with crafting a bathroom design.
‘Topographic Voids’ is an architecture thesis by Juan Ramirez from Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño – Universidad de los Andes, that explores verticalization in order to incorporate topographical and environmental scenes into an architectural body. The project is based on a modular structure that expands in tandem with the city’s vertical development process through a wooden structural system distinguished by three construction stages.
Happy Valley Residence by Swatt Miers Architects re-uses the footprint of a pre-existing home as the basis of the design to preserve the beautiful mature landscaping that surrounds the home on all sides. The result is a home that had a timeless quality the day it was completed, perfectly knitted to its beautiful site. The layout features a big covered lanai on the south side and an entry courtyard on the north side, forming a simple “H” shape.
Casa CMMY, designed by Estudio Galera, is a modern and warm house featuring a gable roof with fluid, warm, and spatially flexible interiors. From the outside, CMMY stands as a rigid single volume with recesses and folds. On the inside, the typology is completely decomposed to generate spaces that articulate through the air, and it is precisely this air that is in charge of linking the living spaces.
HMZ House by Lucio Muniain et al is a project that showcases ways to approach space in terms of lighting, pathways, silence, sobriety, dramatism, and many other romantic ways. The designers focus on all the spaces that nobody asks for and all the curiosities that make them interesting. More than rooms and bathrooms, a library, a dining room, a kitchen, laundry, a room—all the spaces are connected by a designed path.
Lucio Muniain et al is an architecture and urban planning office based in Mexico, founded in 1997 by Lucio Muniain. Their work is distinguished by their interest in exploring aesthetics deeply without sacrificing functionality, thus creating timeless buildings with a particular sculptural seal. They have worked on projects of varied scale and type, from large-scale hospitals, residences, boutiques, and hotels to a taqueria of 7.5 sqm.
