Throughout the years, urban settings have been shifting and taking on new forms. Workspaces became more flexible, home-based offices are common and the increasing costs of housing have led to changes in the way dwellings are designed and built; while turning us towards public and communal outdoor areas for leisurely activities and social gatherings. Our shifting lifestyles are therefore shaping a new urban landscape that’s influencing the way we conceive and use these spaces. Despite everything, some smaller and often unrecognized typologies have persisted and remain as necessary as they’d always been.

They are not places of defined function, yet they still host valuable instances within our day-to-day lives. The latter are the Interstitial (or In-between) spaces, that act as buffers to, and link our private spaces to the public and functional buildings or landscapes. They are the hallways, waiting areas, elevators, staircases, entrances, and transitional zones weave our built environment together. 

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Since the creation of BOGDAN & VAN BROECK in 2007, we have been focusing on the realisation of caring architecture, the activism for a high-quality urban culture and the redefinition of the traditional role of the architect. However, it was my experience in politics in Romania that helped me most with my involvement in public policy in…the Brussels-Capital Region. My position as Secretary of State in Romania, coordinating the field of cultural heritage from the perspective of heritage as a strategic resource in 2016-2017, and as co-founder of a Romanian political party in 2017-2019 made me embrace a holistic approach to regenerative development.

Foster + Partners has completed the new headquarters for the National Bank of Kuwait, a 300-meter skyscraper with a distinctive presence among the buildings of Sharq, Kuwait city's growing financial district. The new tower promotes employee synergy and enhanced wellbeing by bringing all of the bank’s corporate employees together under one roof. The design combines environmentally-conscious features and structural innovation, providing an energy-efficient passive architecture that shields the offices from the extremes of Kuwait's climate.

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EHDD has recently launched the Early-Phase Integrated Carbon (EPIC) Assessment tool, a free new web-based application developed to designers set goals and strategies to reduce carbon emissions from building and construction projects. The tool aims to fill a gap in the life-cycle assessment process and allow designers to identify the most impactful measures early in the project process. At the same time, other resources like Tally and EC3 are seen as crucial later in the design.

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Over the years, interior design has evolved according to the needs that arise, but above all according to the experiences it seeks to evoke in the user. In the last two years we have witnessed a radical change and a special interest in this subject because the pandemic forced us to pay specific attention to the configuration of the places we inhabit. This has brought about much more holistic designs that seek to address the wellbeing of the user, combining colours, sensory experiences, technology and natural elements that promote health.

Food pyramids are familiar to all of us. They are visual guides that show us the proportions of foods that we should supposedly eat on a daily basis, in order to stay healthy. Composed of a series of layers with different food types–such as grains, flour, fats, vegetables, and others–, at the base are the foods that should be consumed in larger quantities. Towards the top, each layer becomes successively smaller, indicating the foods that are meant to be ingested rarely. The pyramid can vary according to countries and cultures, but its main purpose is always to provide a guide for a balanced life. There are no prohibitions, but it does indicate some foods that should be consumed with caution because of their impacts on our health.

If we are what we eat, is it possible to also replicate this in the construction industry and our buildings? Using this same easy to understand visual language, the Royal Danish Academy Center for Industrialized Architecture (Cinark) developed the Construction Material Pyramid. The idea was to highlight the environmental impact of the most used construction materials, focusing on the analysis of the first three life phases: extraction of raw materials, transportation and manufacturing.

The Europa Minimal Frame, a new aluminum architectural system, was developed by the company's R&D Department as a high-performing sliding system, emphasizing functionality, design and aesthetics. Recently awarded the Red Dot Award: Product Design 2022 in the Interior Design Elements category, the Minimal Frame aluminum system and its innovation, functionality and longevity present a number of benefits for designs which aspire to a minimalism that combines aesthetic simplicity and luxury.

As part of the London Festival of Architecture, French-Lebanese architect Annabel Karim Kassar and her award-winning studio AKK have unveiled a new installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London titled The Lebanese House: Saving a home, Saving a city. The installation explores the aftermaths of the Beirut explosion, and the rebuilding of the city with a life-size replica of a typical Lebanese home, one of the few remaining classic Ottoman-Venetian houses left in old Beirut, along with documentary films.

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UNStudio has been announced as the winner of the international competition "Un Iași pentru Viitor" to design a new residential district in the historical center of Iași, Romania. For this competition, organized by Iulius company, four offices have been invited to participate, Foster + Partners, MVRDV, UNStudio, and Zaha Hadid Architects. The main challenge of the competition brief was designing a building well integrated into a complex urban environment marked by historic monuments of different ages, new archeological discoveries, and open public spaces and gardens. The winning proposal, titled „Bridging Time, Bridging Communities,” aims to offer a coherent response to the particularities of the site.

At the end of the 19th century, skateboarding emerged in the United States. Officially patented in 1936, the sport has already faced several prejudices, but like the social and urban dynamics of which it is a part, it has lasted to demonstrate that its experience goes far beyond conservative views and brought a new way of experiencing the city by trying movements of our own bodies in light of the urban or architectural design.

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At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, affluent Parisians flocked to second homes on France’s Atlantic coast as a nationwide lockdown came down on the country. In June 2020, as the lockdown was eased in England, residents headed to seaside towns like Bournemouth to soak in sunny weather. The former scenario reflects the widening gap between France’s wealthy and the poor, whilst the latter is a reflection of the democratizing power of public-access beaches.

In both situations, what is sought out is the ecological calmness usually found on beaches. Globally, however, there’s an unsettling phenomenon, where intertwined with climate change and policy decisions, beaches are increasingly becoming private, inaccessible spaces.

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Hello Wood launches the Builder Method; an international collaboration to develop a presence and action-based educational methodology. Through the process of building, participants not only build an object but they build a community and develop themselves.

Façades don't always have to be opaque. Whereas in the past the only options were heavy and raw–such as stone and brick–in recent years façades have adopted an increasingly lighter appearance, with innovative materials becoming the protagonists. These give the building a different look, delicate and transparent, while still maintaining privacy and thermal comfort. Examples of these include polycarbonate, translucent sheets, perforated tiles, glass and even metal chain links, which was the chosen material for a building in Montpellier, France.

The terms critical regionalism, popularized by theorist Kenneth Frampton, proposed an architecture that embraced global influences, albeit firmly rooted in its context. That is, an approach defined by climate, topography and tectonics as a form of resistance to the placidity of modern architecture and the ornamentation of postmodernism. Bringing familiar elements to a particular location can allow the building to be better accepted and incorporated into the local context. This was the case of the New Maitland Hospital, which incorporated a large brick panel next to the main façade, as a reference to the community's traditional symbols.

Aedas has unveiled the design of the Hangzhou Yun He Wan International Tourism and Leisure Complex in Hangzhou, China. Located in the southern area of the Grand Canal New Town in the Gongshu District of Hangzhou, the site is the first phase of a larger project, starting off as a vibrant international tourism and leisure complex that highlights the waterfront of Yun He Wan and the historical remains of the nearby industrial pier.

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In theory, urban planning is a process of elaborating solutions that aim both to improve or requalify an existing urban area, as well as to create a new urbanization in a given region. As a discipline and as a method of action, urban planning deals with the processes of production, structuring and appropriation of urban space. In this sense, its main objective is to point out what measures should be taken to improve the quality of life of the inhabitants, including matters such as transport, security, access opportunities and even interaction with the natural environment.

If you’re reading this right now, or have read an article on ArchDaily, it’s because you were in a place that enabled you to connect to the internet. Think about a time when you found yourself in a dead zone, where the internet was lagging and you were unable to connect your computer to WiFi to finish an assignment or even without the ability to connect your phone to quickly Google something. You likely dashed to the nearest coffee shop, or place where WiFi was more reliable, just to have the feeling of being online again. The internet, in an ideal world, is equally open to all providing access to knowledge and the ability to easily connect with others. But what happens when you don’t have internet? How is your life impacted if you’re on the wrong side of the digital divide and live in an area without broadband access?

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Architecture has always played a key role in exhibitions. Museums, exhibitions, and expositions are not only cultural offerings, but are defined by space, by an exhibition itinerary that is able to surprise and fascinate the visitor who is drawn inside an active and inspiring experience.

For an exhibition, architecture is as fundamental as works of art, collections, and artifacts and their contents. The “Architecture for Exhibition” course has been created on these premises: its aim is to train professional designers who are able to materialize diverse artistic and museum experiences, enhancing the ever-changing story behind each cultural proposal. The students will acquire new skills in exhibition design and will move into a very prestigious environment – culture – which nowadays registers an increasing demand by the most critical and exclusive customers.

One of the most urgent problems faced by Ukrainians today is the unsettled situation faced by displaced citizens, along with the challenge of returning to the cities they were forced to abandon earlier this year. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has shared that efforts to rebuild Ukraine will require ‘colossal investments’, and as leaders gather to work out ‘Marshall plan’ to rebuild the country, local architects have already begun developing emergency housing, healthcare, and educational facilities in cities further away from the Russian border.

As a temporary solution to the displacement of north-eastern and eastern Ukrainians, Drozdov&Partners, together with Replus Bureau and Ponomarenko Bureau, have begun refurbishing shelters for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Lviv and its region, using school campuses and other large-scale facilities as temporary housing.