Nowadays, the integral reform of flats in Barcelona is one of the most common activities for both freelance architects and local architectural studios. This is not surprising in a city with more than 4,000 years of history in which there is a lot of buildings and little room for new construction.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
America’s housing crisis is a longstanding problem. But recent reports of private hedge funds buying up detached houses and townhouses is likely to make an already difficult situation even worse. When hedge funds purchase such properties, those homes are not likely to come back on the real estate market. They are gone for now—and probably for the long term.
In the framework of the UIA 2022 International Forum "Affordable Housing Activation: Removing Barriers", the Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España (CSCAE) has developed a useful tool: the first dynamic atlas on access to housing. This atlas brings together on a single platform more than 4,000 financial, urban context and development indicators from the main international organisations, from official and non-structured sources, making it easy to understand, read and interpret. These organisations include, for example, the World Bank, the Ibero-American Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Health Organisation, among others.
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BEYOME, led by Project Consortium together with the architects of Enorme Studio, seeks to transform traditional dwellings by providing a greater degree of flexibility in their spaces, so that they can adapt to contemporary lifestyles, taking into account the different uses that their inhabitants give to them. But how can we make the same space capable of adapting to different uses? What strategies could be developed to double the surface area of our homes and make better use of them?
Over the last couple of years, terraces have become an important part of urban life, acting as a refuge, a space for enjoyment and gathering, for contemplation or as an outdoor workspace. As a result of periods of confinement around the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, these outdoor spaces where people can exercise, connect with nature, study or work, have become particularly popular with those living in large cities.
OF.studio has unveiled the design of PZ Torre Residencial, a residential building within the Zapata Palace in Mendoza, Argentina, seeking to recreate the traditional courtyard of Cuyanas houses, a common style in northern Argentina.
This week’s curated selection of Best Unbuilt Architecture highlights private residential projects submitted by the ArchDaily Community. From cabins in woods to oceanfront villas, this article explores private residential retreats and presents projects submitted to us from all over the world.
Featuring a house nestled in the Swiss forests, a private LA hillside house, and a hidden family house in the Lebanese mountains, this roundup explores how architects have merged landscape and contemporary architecture, and tucked away private residences, giving them the privacy and serenity they need. This round up also includes a collection of houses in Armenia, Mexico, Kenya, and El Salvador, each responding to different contexts, spatial needs, and topographies.
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Between 1945 and 1966, the Case Study Houses program, following the Weißenhof-siedlung exposition, commissioned a study of economic, easy-to-build houses. The study included the creation of 36 prototypes that were to be built leading up to post-war residential development. The initiative by John Entenza, editor of Arts & Architecture magazine, brought a team to Los Angeles that featured some of the biggest names in architecture at the time, including Richard Neutra, Charles & Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, and Eero Saarinen, among others.
The program's experiment not only defined the modern home and set it apart from its predecessors, but it also pioneered new construction materials and methods in residential development that continue to influence international architecture to this day. Take a detailed look at some of the program's most emblematic work together with recommendations for facing contemporary challenges.
Density has long been an essential consideration for architects and urban planners, yet its importance has only increased as the world’s urban population skyrockets and cities become denser and denser. For much of the history of urban planning, this term has been plagued with negative associations: overcrowding, poverty, lack of safety, and so-called ‘slums.’ The garden city movement, initiated by Ebenezer Howard in 1898, sought to remedy these ills by advocating for greenbelts and anti-density planning. Le Corbusier’s Radiant City is one of the most well-known urban plans building from these ideals. Yet in the 1960’s, sociologist Jane Jacobs famously overturned these long influential urban planning concepts: she pointed out that density of buildings was not identical to overcrowding of people; suggested that some highly dense urban areas, like her neighborhood in Greenwich Village, were safer and more attractive than nearby garden city projects; and highlighted how America’s conception of ‘slums’ were often rooted in anti-immigrant and anti-Black ideologies. Density is not inherently bad, she suggested, but it has to be done well. Today, we continue to grapple with the question of how to design for our increasingly dense cities – how do we keep them open, but simultaneously private? Free, but controlled when necessary? In particular, how do we keep them safe – both from crime and, in the age of COVID-19, disease?
