Home elevators have always increased a home's functionality. Now, they can also enhance its aesthetic appeal, not to mention value. Photo: Arash Moallemi. Image Courtesy of Savaria
Home elevators are increasing in popularity. For one thing, people are living longer and the vast majority plan to age in place. Indeed, a US survey found that 90% of adults over 65 would like to stay in their current residence. A lift in one's home serves a number of practical purposes besides enhancing mobility, like the convenience of moving groceries or heavy objects between levels. In addition, a home elevator is a real conversation piece – not to mention that it can add up to 10% to the value of a home.
The Santa Creu & Sant Pau Hospital Research Institute, designed by Pich Aguilera Arquitectes in conjunction with 2BMFG Arquitectos, stands in the Santa Creu & Sant Pau Hospital complex in Barcelona –one of the biggest Modernist Spanish architectural ensembles, declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.
The Research Institute stands out for its striking ceramic envelope and its capacity to blend in with Sant Pau Hospital’s Modernist buildings, while also focusing on high energy savings and improved comfort inside the building. The ceramic slats were made to measure for the project by Faveker, a specialist in high-tech façade solutions.
The Futuro House is a unique, futurist-style dwelling designed by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen in the late 1960s. The house was envisioned as a portable, prefabricated structure that could be easily transported to remote or difficult-to-reach locations.The house has a distinctive flying saucer shape, with a circular floor plan and a domed roof. The outer shell of the house is made of reinforced fiberglass, with a high-gloss finish that gives it a futuristic look. It sits on four legs, which elevate it slightly off the ground and provide stability on uneven terrain.
Renovations are not only a popular way to update and modernize homes, offices, and other structures but also a critical component in reducing carbon emissions and achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The existing building stock is responsible for a significant portion of global carbon emissions, with energy inefficient buildings being a major contributor.
According to a report by the Financial Times, there is a large energy efficiency gap in the UK housing stock, with many buildings falling short of their potential energy performance levels. Unsurprisingly, old buildings in the UK are seen as one of the primary factors contributing to this energy efficiency gap.
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Help an essential global industry decarbonise
The Innovandi Open Challenge is a global programme which brings together tech start-ups and the world’s leading cement and concrete companies to help accelerate the next wave of innovations to achieve our net zero mission.
The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) and its members understand the key role that innovation will play in unlocking a net zero future for concrete –the world’s most used material after water– which is essential to building the sustainable world of tomorrow.
Every two years, starting in 1998, the Saint-Gobain International Gypsum Trophy has awarded the most recent developments for quality craftsmanship in drywall systems and plastering. This year, the 13th edition of the Gypsum Trophy took place in Athens on April 28th, 2023. From the Americas to Asia, from Europe to Africa, 73projects from 27countries competed in six categories to win one of the 15prizes of the competition.
Participating contractors combine their know-how and creativity with Saint-Gobain plaster and dry lining systems to carry out high-performance projects. Whereas some are built on existing historical structures, others create something completely new. Similarly, some projects were completed with the help of over a thousand employees/teammates, while others by just a few.
See this year's winners below, as well as the details of the Awards.
Fields of Being: Architecture Traditions in Yunnan, China, is an exploration of the rich architectural heritage of China’s most culturally diverse province at the crossroads of China, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas. The exhibition features research by the Kunming University of Science and Technology, China Folk House Retreat, and other institutions regarding unique architecture forms and practices in the province. The exhibition also presents cases of contemporary architecture inspired by these traditions.
For thousands of years, nomadic Mongolians have lived in gers – circular ‘yurt-like’ structures made of timber, felt, and canvas that are ideal for moveable life on the Steppe. Since 1990, due to major political, social, and climatic upheaval, hundreds of thousands of people have abandoned nomadic life and moved to the country’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar. The gers, cheap and easily moved, are now grounded, exacerbating the extraordinary growth of the city, which has increased its size 35 times in the last thirty years. The living situation in these ger districts is increasingly unsustainable and detrimental to the health and well-being of those that live there.
'City parks' takes a stroll around the world’s most beautiful public spaces. A visual celebration of park life around the world, from the author of Lido, Christopher Beanland explores what city dwellers have come to appreciate more than ever over the last few years: parks are an essential part of modern urban life.
The winners of the German Design Awards 2023 approach design in ways that are both clever and sustainable, with a focus on ground-breaking product solutions and visionary ideas. The cradle-to-cradle principle, modular construction methods, sustainable use of materials and energy efficiency have long been mainstays in manufacturing and the construction process. But real estate branding is also increasingly coming into focus and becoming an important instrument in architectural communication and marketing.
Of the 4,200 submissions that the German Design Awards 2023 received, 98 projects in total were honored with the highest ‘Gold’ distinction. The German Design Awards are one of the most well-recognized international design awards, distinguished by its diversity and the quality of the projects. The awards are given to companies whose products stand out in the categories of ‘Excellent Product Design’, ‘Excellent Communications Design’, and ‘Excellent Architecture’. In the three different design disciplines, this year’s winners include companies such as Duravit, Mono and WMF, as well as the architecture firm MVRDV and start-ups such as nevi and X Shore AB.
The search for the world’s best building continues as the World Architecture Festival extends the entry deadline for its annual global awards programme to Monday 22 May. The 16th edition of the festival is open for award entries in 44 categories across architecture and interiors.
World Architecture Festival (WAF) is where the world architecture community meets to celebrate, learn, exchange and be inspired. This year, for the first time since 2015, the festival returns to Singapore on 29 November – 1 December.
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WasteBuild Zero will take place at the NDSM in the heart of Amsterdam’s architectural and circular economy hotbed
WasteBuild Zero is a 2-day event that unites the built environment to showcase the latest materials, techniques, solutions and innovators that are helping to deliver low carbon and circular construction schemes today. Our aim is to support the transition towards a circular and regenerative built environment and in the process to tackle the climate emergency.
The city is the largest human artifact. It is made by us, yet simultaneously it makes us, as well as all other nonhuman entities. The particular discourse to which this book on the city contributes is the discipline of architecture. It explores a simple question: How does the city effect the mode of existence of its buildings? The tradition within architectural history that identifies the city as the origin of our buildings poses a challenged to us, as architects, to theorize about the city’s form and use in order to rationalize our own actions. In opposition to other disciplinary approaches to the city and its architecture, however, the book argues not for type (Rossi, Ungers) as the deepest aspect of the architecture of the city. Neither will it be the function (Venturi & Scott Brown, Koolhaas) of the city to explain its material organization, nor is matter considered (Jacobs, Banham) to be deeper than the real city. Instead, this books argues that the mode of existence of architecture is inherent to the city itself, which originates its architecture as part of its being as a technical object.
The book examines the contemporary Asian city through the prism of urban design in assimilating new and established drivers of growth. This includes intensified forms of residential development, specialized commercial centers and technology parks, that drive the momentum of the contemporary city, while acting to restructure and reshape forms of capital investment. New spatial patterns are facilitated by tranches of urban expansion, redevelopment, regeneration and suburbanization that have emerged as by-products of both formal and informal development processes. The book also examines the Asian city language embodied in the local morphology—the essential values of the street, block, temple precinct and monument, and how these can be incorporated as drivers of new urban identities that relate to the changing culture and configuration of city neighborhoods. All of these continue to impose different levels of impact on the creation of livable cities and the quality of life for their inhabitants. In this way urban design can look to the future while respecting the past.
The photography collected in A View from the Top may have arisen out of a desire to document a singular body of work—the Viewpoint Collection. Through Kelley’s eye, lens, and postproduction choices, however, it advances the very way that buildings can be photographed and understood, allowing us to visit residences that most of us will never see in person.
Experiential Design Schemas presents a new theoretical and practical framework for designing architectural experiences developed by two seasoned researchers, an architect, and a building scientist.
Hillier: Selected Works presents the design work of the husband-and-wife team of J. Robert and Barbara A. Hillier during the last 25 years coupled with a brief graphic retrospective of the Hillier practice of architecture over 57 years of operation. Despite taking unconventional paths to architecture, both Hilliers enjoyed exhilarating careers growing the firm to 500 people and executing nearly 4,000 projects in 27 U.S. States and 34 Foreign Countries. The quality of the firm’s work has been honored by over 350 design awards. The selected projects in this monograph are driven by strictly disciplined programing and then conceived by bringing into balance all the forces at work on a project: culture, climate, site, economics, market, and even politics. The resultant architecture is distinctive of its time, its place, and its client, rather than of a particular language or style.
