Curated lists of the best new building-products, materials and design solutions to inspire your next project.
Cruise ships are a rare spatial typology. Combining transportation with leisure amenities, commercia l spaces, and living quarters, these massive vessels create a unique experiential microcosm. For individuals on these pleasure voyages, ports and maritime architecture are often far from their minds. But it is these structures that must accommodate the cruise ship’s large volume of…
Behind every great building there lies a story: one of diligence, determination, and creative inspir ation. Telling this story with a visceral flourish can help architects communicate concepts to clients, as well as convincing doubters and inspiring trust in the design process. One of the most powerful ways to do this in recent years has been…
While the practice of drinking tea has a long history in China, the nation’s relatively modern relationship with coffee dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, when China opened to foreign trade and Western missionaries and businessmen brought the bean to treaty ports. Among the industrialized treaty port cities, Shanghai became known as “Paris of the…
On the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, Latvia’s landscape is composed of lowland fields, farms, an d hilly pastures. The country’s natural beauty has been well preserved, and offers hundred of miles of untouched seashore and scenic forests to explore. Wooden houses dating back centuries can still be found in the countryside and in Riga,…
The primary role of fences is to keep the outside out and the inside in; however, preventing escape and intrusion is quite a limited take on the role of fences. More interesting is the function of providing a boundary: fences used to indicate edges and planes instead of spaces that are defined by being enclosed.…
Every great western film begins with a wide shot of the open road or an expansive landscape. While t he image of the open road is seminal to American culture, the traditional landscape photo or painting captures what is periphery, what borders the shoulder of the road. A fleeting glance to the side would, more often…
Outside of sports stadiums and mini-golf courses artificial grass is often considered taboo. From in door offices to pop-up restaurants, new examples of artificial turf point towards a new acceptance, and even pleasure in the artificial. Architects and designers are celebrating the good points — forever green, resilient, low-maintenance, and in some cases safer — rather…
In over 25 countries across multiple continents, Jewish museums are dedicated to the preservation of Jewish identity and culture. Museum visitors of all backgrounds are invited to learn about the triumphs and tragedies of Jewish history. Exhibitions explore a wide variety of subjects, ranging from ancient artifacts to the events of the Second World War…
Few places on Earth are as beautiful and remote as Iceland. The country’s architecture is equally un ique, both formally and spatially, but also in terms of the context and communities from which buildings emerge. Both contemporary and pragmatic, the following projects stemmed from careful problem solving and thoughtful response to extreme environmental conditions. This gives…