The wellness market is booming, predicted to grow by almost 60% in the five years since the COVID pandemic, with consumers taking greater care of both their physical and mental health. It’s now understood, of course, that wellness – the virtue of feeling good in both body and mind – is more affected by our environment than we used to admit.

Since 2020 we’ve been quickly migrating away from cities, with attitudes on work and living also shifting to include more natural beauty and the hunt for the nirvana of greater wellbeing. These four wellness centers take care to complement the rejuvenating surroundings of the outdoors with healing activities and architecture, helping visitors to feel at peace with themselves and the world around them.

Ever since the birth of our cities, we’ve made sure to protect the green spaces within them. Civilizations as far back as the Romans built expansive parks in the heart of the city with ‘Rus in Urbe’ – translating as ‘Country in the City’ – still referenced today. In order to control the urbanization boom of the mid-20th century, meanwhile, greenbelt policies across many European cities literally ring-fenced the natural environments surrounding them, making air quality and easier access to nature a part of city life.

The post-pandemic city, however, is a new breed of conurbation, and these city parks and greenbelts are no longer enough. As we migrate away in search of greener, healthier climes, the cities we’re leaving are evolving, proving they can be green too by exchanging lesser-used black surfaces of roads and structures for natural grass- and parkland. These four projects from across Europe transform unused city spaces back into the natural and regenerative green environments they once were.

If you find yourself baffled by the confusing world of baffle paneling, don’t be concerned. That’s what they’re there for. The purpose of baffles of any kind – and where they take their name – is to confuse matter. In other industries, baffles are used to direct water flow, to control airflow and heat exchange, and to stop traffic from traveling too quickly.

When used in the scientific world of acoustics, baffles are positioned to disrupt sound waves by projecting out into our busiest environments, to catch, absorb and soften the sound, either in naturally noisy or specifically quiet areas or to selectively filter sounds from making a return journey. That doesn’t mean, however, that the slatted sight of regimental baffles can’t give an aesthetic advantage to interiors, providing often much-needed visual activity to an otherwise bare ceiling.

Designers and architects have a mountain of modern, high-performance flooring options at their disposal. From standard choices like wood, carpet, ceramic tiles, or natural stone; to heavy-duty commercial favorites like terrazzo, concrete, or poured epoxy. Add less well-tread options like cork and leather and then multiply them all with imitation solutions like laminate and luxury vinyl, and it’s easy for decision-makers to get lost in indecision.

Despite the size of the marketplace, however, we tend to just make our choices and stick with them, using just one type of floor for each room. Not so in the case of the following four projects, which select and arrange various flooring types together in the same room, adding functionality to the floor and helping to improve how we interact with the spaces above.

Architects and designers are often looking for ways to make building facades and interior surfaces stand out from the crowd. But sometimes just the smallest change can have the biggest impact once you step back and see the whole picture. By employing an illusionary pattern such as dithering pixels or halftone dots, or by making subtle but intentional changes to the position or orientation of materials, flat surfaces can be transformed into curved, moving forms.

Halftone patterns work by reducing a solid surface of color into dots of decreasing size. As the dots gradually reduce to nothing, they leave nothing behind except a background color. The result is a flat surface with a gradient that mimics the shadows or highlights of a three-dimensional curve. Dithering, meanwhile, is the process of feathering multiple shades of the same color to blend them together. The effect allows designers to, on a large enough scale, create images with depth and curves, while using only a single color. Or even to create the illusion of an intermediary color.

+ 28

Ever since humans started building (about 10,000 years ago), settlers looking for sites to build new villages or homesteads have kept a simple list of criteria: access to water, proximity to arable land, and, ideally, as flat as possible. Modern development sites instead look for industry and transport links rather than water and farmland, but a level site is still the preferred option.

Whether you cut and fill into the landscape by digging in a retaining wall, or balance the structure above the hillside on stilt supports, building on sloping ground always adds time, cost, and difficulty to the project. With immense views and extra space both inside and out, however, the results can be worth the extra effort.

At first, adding a mezzanine floor to a layout either seems like a complete waste of good floorspace or a clumsy attempt to squeeze two stories into one – like wearing skinny jeans after Christmas – both spaces end up feeling constricted and uncomfortable.

But whether the intermediate-level floor is achieved by addition – erecting an extra level in a high-ceilinged room, or by subtraction – removing part of the floor to connect with the one below, mezzanines are a relatively simple way to dramatically change and improve how we use and interact with our existing environments.

Essentially beginning as a way to use old offcuts of natural stone materials such as marble, quartz, and granite, the 600-year-old technique of creating terrazzo surfaces is enjoying a particularly strong moment in today’s reuse culture. But sustainability isn’t the only calling card Terrazzo has.

The features that really put the manufactured composite material at the top of many designers’ wishlists are its mixture of hardwearing durability, crack-free water resistance, and a near endlessly customizable palette of color and pattern. And although the use of terrazzo originates, as the name suggests, from floor-level surfacing, it also lends itself perfectly to other surfaces and even products, too.

Here’s how and where to use it.

Houses and buildings are one of the first subjects children learn to draw. The simple arrangement of squares and rectangles with a triangle on top is easy and efficient, and quickly identifiable. Once we graduate from drawing to building, however, perhaps there is a better way. These five examples of domed buildings, pavilions, and installations support the thinking that there is an easier way to do it when you think outside the square.

Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity introduces the mind-blowing concept that time – as we know it – is not as stable and reliable as it first seems. As a defining characteristic upon which all of human history is referenced, the fallibility of time is a confusing prospect. 15 minutes, for example, seems an eternity while waiting in line, and yet the 300,000 years of human history equates to less than a day in the lifetime of the Earth.

So when we talk about ‘saving the planet’ by slowing and reversing climate crisis, what we really mean is extending our own existence upon it. Because no matter what we do, this rock will continue to spin for billions of years yet. In reality, humanity itself is only a temporary installation.

These four outdoor installation projects use the Earth’s environment and borrow its resources to investigate our human relationship with time, and how it affects our lives down here on the surface.

I always consider myself fortunate to have grown up outside the city, where my ‘cross-country’ lessons, for example –national right of hardship for 11-16-year-olds– were through the actual countryside rather than the high street. For many children, however, modern school life is not so close to nature.

Already over-populated cities are continuing to expand, meaning more schools are suffering from the limitations presented by inner-city architecture including noise, air, and light pollution; a lack of space, especially green space; restrictive budgets and building regulations resistant to change.

With innovative and considered design solutions, however, these four inner-city schools show the rest of the class how to work through their architectural answers and provide quality, green spaces for all.

Let’s talk. Good communication is key to building and maintaining working relationships, be they personal, romantic, business, or geopolitical. The importance of communication with and respect for one’s neighbors is a lesson that has featured heavily in many texts and teachings from all religions and cultures for millennia, possibly sparking civilization itself. 

Some of the fastest growing economies are keen to shout from their garden rooftops about their growing environmentalism, infrastructure, attractive investment opportunities, and rising architectural scene, but also to keep alive the history and culture of their past, and build socially active environments.

These four building projects from across East Asia and Europe both visually and symbolically invite guests inside to see how they operate, building positive relationships with residents of the building and the city, and visitors from beyond.