This article is part of "Thresholds", a special edition printed newspaper by Cobe Notes x ArchDaily.

Post–World War I modernism broke sharply with historicist and neoclassical traditions, stripping buildings of ornamentation and historical or religious reference to focus on priorities, clarity, and efficiency. Architecture embraced rationality and social reform, while art moved in the opposite direction, exploring self-expression, experimentation, and freedom from academic conventions.

This tension between objective order and subjective perception has defined a threshold between the arts evident in contemporary architectural practices, where personal intuition increasingly gives way to measurable facts. Is our pursuit of answers, facts, and truths distancing us from something fundamentally human: questions, doubt, and ambiguity? The answer may lie in public, building-integrated art, a practice that sits precisely at that threshold, and asks practitioners in architecture and urban design to trust values that resist direct measurement.

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For much of the twentieth century, affordable housing in the United States was conceived as a distinct residential category, shaped by financing structures and development practices that separated housing for lower-income residents from the broader civic and commercial functions of the city. Federal housing legislation and subsequent urban renewal policies contributed to the construction of large residential developments that were frequently financed and managed independently of surrounding urban infrastructure. The consequences of this approach, including concentrated poverty, deteriorating buildings, unequal access to services, and the eventual demolition of prominent public housing projects, are extensively documented.

Today, the provision of affordable housing is closely tied to economic and regulatory mechanisms that determine feasibility, from land values and construction costs to zoning regulations and public subsidies. Programs for housing credits play a significant role in financing affordable rental housing, while competitive allocation of resources and pressure to maximize housing delivery place considerable emphasis on regulatory compliance.

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At Bishan–Ang Mo Kio Park in Singapore, a river does not occupy a fixed boundary. Under ordinary conditions, water moves through a naturalized channel bordered by grass, planting, and paths that bring visitors close to the river. During heavy rainfall, water spreads into the surrounding park, which is designed to accommodate flows beyond the capacity of the narrower channel. What appears to be a public landscape is also working infrastructure. Singapore's approach retains drainage engineering while assigning a wider role to the land around it.

For decades, Singapore's network of concrete canals has been central to managing stormwater in a densely developed city exposed to intense tropical rainfall. Their hard surfaces and defined channels were designed to convey water efficiently. These channels moved stormwater efficiently, but offered limited space for public access, planting, or other uses along the water's edge. Through its Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme, launched in 2006, Singapore began integrating waterways with parks, ecological systems, and public spaces. The programme links stormwater management with the design of parks, waterways, and public spaces.

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Architecture has treated water either as a backdrop or a problem: a view to be framed, a hazard to be drained, or a utility to be connected. In contemporary India, a more consequential relationship takes shape. Water remains a shared ecological resource, yet the land and infrastructure around it are increasingly financed and defended as economic assets. Coastlines are extended to carry traffic and lake edges become lucrative development zones. The decision to do so passes through multiple institutions with different vocabularies, thereby challenging who determines how water and its surroundings are used, and who faces the consequences.

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Videos

AI has become a consumer product faster than it has become a discipline. Each week brings new models and more information than anyone can absorb, and the easy response is uncritical consumption. Architecture needs a different strategy, built on criticism and method. AI is now acquiring spatial intelligence, the capacity to understand how physical space behaves, and architects can test a project against its environment while they design it. Used with judgment, AI can bring architects closer to nature and its complexity, and make them better builders. We simulate the world to learn how to inhabit it.

Last October 24th marked the centenary of the birth of Brazilian architect Francisco de Assis Couto Reis (1926–2011), who lived and built most of his work in the city of Salvador, Bahia. Assis Reis, as he was better known, had a career shaped not only by the buildings he designed but also by his urban renewal proposals, his design for the Brazilian Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan (unbuilt), and the Scale Model of the City of Salvador, landmarked in 2020. His vast and diverse body of work belongs to a specific moment of modern expression in Brazil, when architects of this "second generation" were particularly concerned with adapting to local climatic, geographical, and cultural conditions.

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Direct contact with a material allows one to appreciate textures, compare finishes, and observe how its appearance changes under different lighting conditions. At an exhibition, these possibilities are complemented by exchanges with manufacturers and professionals, helping to understand applications and resolve questions about their use. This relationship between material exploration and architectural practice was one of the central pillars of the seventh edition of Obra Blanca, which drew more than 23,000 professionals to Expo Santa Fe in Mexico City.

Balsa Crosetto Piazzi is an architecture practice founded in 2015, based in Córdoba, Argentina, and Boston, USA. Led by architects Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocío Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi, the core of their work is the material side of architecture. For them, a building is not just a finished object, but rather a way to organize everything that goes into making it. Their work is shaped by a slow process; during the construction and design stages, they pay attention to where the materials come from, who does the work, what skills those people already have, and what's actually available nearby. This allows their built work to become a platform that serves as a starting point, bringing all of these pieces together. In that sense, they also describe their projects as opportunities to "deconstruct entrenched conditions."

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An opening between two rooms shapes how people move through a building, what they see from one space to another, and whether an area feels connected or separate. Although doors are among the most frequently used interior architectural elements, their impact on the interior organization is often considered late in the design process. Yet their movement and relationship to surrounding surfaces influence circulation, furniture placement, and the perception of space.

In residential renovations, these decisions are particularly important. Existing walls, structural elements, building services, and ceiling heights can limit options, while new layouts often balance open-plan living with the need for privacy. In new construction, architects have greater freedom to coordinate wall cavities, suspended ceilings, and door mechanisms from the outset.

When the Ostrogoths besieged Rome in 537 AD, their first military act was to cut the aqueducts. Eleven gravity-fed channels supplied the city with up to a million cubic meters of water per day, more than enough to sustain a population of over a million, fill the public baths, and scour the sewers. Without the aqueducts, Rome became a fortified enclosure around a contaminated river, proving that water was essential to the city's existence.

Unlike land, which can be fenced off, or oil, which can be stored, water is a resource that nobody can fully own, yet everyone depends on. It moves through aquifers, across borders, and down rivers. The Romans were cognizant of this fact; as the aqueducts constituted public infrastructure, the water flowing into fountains was accessible to all. Frontinus, the administrator who oversaw Rome's water system in the first century AD, documented every allocation, every illegal connection, and every abuse of the system with the rigor of someone who understood that water management was a civic act. Architecture, in this sense, has always had the capacity to make water a common good, and equally, by the same means, a privilege.

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Inhabiting a space involves multiple economic, social, cultural, geographic, political, and environmental factors. Beyond these considerations, however, it engages with processes, boundaries, and possibilities that have repeatedly become subjects of architectural inquiry. "We are builders of a society," declared Solano Benitez during his lecture titled The Place of Architecture at the Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial. Through a series of international lectures, exhibitions across different locations in the city, and activities open to all generations, the 20th Buenos Aires International Architecture Biennial examined the value of inhabitation, recognizing architecture as the discipline that gives meaning to how and where we live and, consequently, how we exist within society.

Across its six main venues and numerous partner institutions, a common theme emerges: human existence explored through different ways of inhabiting, sharing knowledge, contrasting experiences, and debating the contemporary challenges facing architecture.

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A canyon is a space no one designed. Its walls expose layers of rock deposited over millions of years, and the passage between them exists because water slowly wore that rock away. Glaciers shaped valleys in a similar way, leaving slopes behind as the ice retreated. Long before architects began shaping spaces, the Earth was already producing them.

Architects have long looked to the ground for geometry. A cliff can suggest a section, a cavity a room, and layered rock a way of stacking material. Some architects build directly into an existing formation, occupying a slope or a cavity on site. Others study a formation and reproduce some of its characteristics elsewhere, from precise geological data to the general experience of a landscape.

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Wood has been used in buildings for thousands of years. It is natural, renewable and versatile, but its response to moisture requires consideration in design and specification. Changing moisture conditions can cause it to swell and shrink, while prolonged moisture exposure can create conditions for fungal decay. Historically, using wood outdoors has therefore meant choosing naturally durable species, protecting the material or designing around the way wood behaves. Wood modification offers another approach: changing certain properties of the material itself.

Every large dam divides as much as it connects, and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is no exception. A monumental feat of architecture and engineering, the mega-dam has brought everyone together, for better or worse, to interrogate who gets to declare sovereignty over the riches of the river, be it water or momentum, and to challenge colonial-era Nile treaties.

Inaugurated in September 2025, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD, is a grand concrete structure on the Blue Nile, Abay, in western Ethiopia within the Benishangul-Gumuz region, just 30 kilometers upstream along the river and east of the border with Sudan. It is built as a major source of hydroelectric power, generating an estimated 51.5% of total national output in 2025/26, and symbolizes Ethiopia's national sovereignty, rise to exponential economic development, and technological self-determination. So, why has it become the center of a protracted dispute over regional water security and international law between Ethiopia, Sudan, and Egypt?

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Throughout history, people have sought ways to see the world. In Renaissance painting, linear perspective made this impulse explicit by transforming the canvas into a window, organizing depth from a fixed viewpoint. In his treatise De Pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti described painting as a window onto what one wishes to represent. Landscape, in this sense, ceased to be simply what lay before the eyes and became a visual construction, a reality selected and organized by the gaze.

Architecture operates in much the same way. A window determines what can be seen, from where it is seen, and, consequently, what becomes part of everyday experience. This question was central to modern architecture and found one of its most emblematic debates in the 1920s.

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Adding new floors on top of a historic building presents a challenge beyond accommodating additional space: how can a contemporary intervention respond to the character of an existing structure? Material selection plays an important role in establishing a relationship between different construction periods, whether the aim is to complement the existing building or create a more distinct architectural expression. The LH Residence in Varna, Bulgaria, designed by STARH, offers an example of how fiber cement can help relate a contemporary addition to a historic building.

In 1972, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour published Learning from Las Vegas, challenging architects to reconsider the underappreciated, largely dismissed commercial landscape in the United States. Their storied distinction between the "duck," a building whose form communicates its meaning, and the "decorated shed," an ordinary structure whose identity is conveyed through signs and symbols, questioned a widely accepted modernist assumption that architectural expression should emerge from form and function. By examining billboards, neon lights, casinos, and the commercial strips of Las Vegas, the authors argued that architecture should study the visual languages of American consumer culture.

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The concept of "eyes on the street" is perhaps the most famous within architectural and urban literature when it comes to urban security. Jane Jacobs uses this expression to refer to people who - consciously or unconsciously - use public spaces or observe them from their homes, generating natural surveillance. A movement that, within our discipline, is encouraged both through quality public spaces and through the powerful relationship between the public and private created through building facades. Advocating for this daily control, Jacobs believes in a way of making architecture and cities that condemns excessive verticalization, reinforced by isolated buildings and single-use ones that deny contact with the street.

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Buenos Aires is a city of rich history and distinct atmospheres. There are many reasons to explore its architecture: the city is the result of a complex interplay of cultural factors shaped by a multitude of architectural styles and trends. Its streets and heterogeneous buildings define its inhabitants, reflecting an identity forged by its history.

Beyond its historic and heritage buildings, the city offers a remarkable diversity of modern and contemporary architecture. Indeed, its architectural highlights are easily discovered on foot, framed by its prominent and beautifully designed green spaces. Below is a list of 31 sites that every architect should visit.

Scaffolding is perhaps one of architecture's most familiar temporary structures. It accompanies buildings through construction, maintenance, and renovation, only to disappear once its work is complete. Yet its apparent impermanence conceals a different kind of longevity. Scaffolding systems are designed to be assembled, dismantled, transported, and reused, with standardized components robust enough to withstand repeated handling and changing site conditions. Their temporary character lies less in the material itself than in the duration of each assembly.

This logic is not unfamiliar in furniture design. Dieter Rams's 606 Universal Shelving System, designed for Vitsœ in 1960, established a modular approach in which shelves, cabinets, and other components could be rearranged, expanded, or transported as circumstances changed. Similarly, IKEA's modular storage systems popularized and demonstrated how furniture can be understood as a collection of interchangeable parts rather than a singular, finished object. Although different in material and intended lifespan, these systems share an important principle: longevity can be achieved through adaptability rather than permanence of arrangement.

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As cities struggle to provide adequate and affordable housing, examining built examples of collective housing can help inform decisions about what to build and how. These projects offer opportunities to assess solutions, understand their limitations, and consider what might be applied elsewhere. In Paris, two recent examples combine apartments of different sizes with access to gardens, courtyards, and other outdoor spaces, working with structures already in place.

In architecture, the word "pavilion" can describe an endless variety of structures. It might be defined as a principle and a typology, a freestanding structure, a temporary intervention, a gathering place in the city, or a space for experimentation. This last quality is what unites the six unbuilt projects featured here, all designed and submitted by ArchDaily readers. Here, the definition lies in their sculptural qualities and formal exploration, while their permanence and location vary according to each structure's purpose. The proposals also demonstrate another quality inherent to the pavilion: the intention to symbolically represent a stance. Their exploration of form and material thus also reflects a search for a sense of boundary, wonder, or a shared future.

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About an hour's drive from New York, the Corwin House sits in hilly woodland high above the Saugatuck River. Completed by Richard Neutra in 1956, it is one of only three houses the architect built in Connecticut. Architectural designer Aziz Osko has updated the house, revisiting details from Neutra's original design that were never built.

The commission began when Betty and Henry Corwin asked Neutra whether he could recommend an East Coast architect working in a similar style. Neutra was so taken with the wooded site above the river that he took on the commission himself.

Brick and wood can establish a dialogue between architectural permanence and the textures of coastal environments. In Höllviken, on the southern coast of Sweden, Seaside House by Koistinen Hellborg Architects explores how materiality, light, and spatial organization can shape a home in relationship with its natural surroundings. Located among sandy terrain, heathland, moss, and pine trees, and within walking distance of the sea, the house responds to a landscape defined by subtle color variations, seasonal changes, and a strong connection to the outdoors.