Architecture enthusiasts now have another reason to visit the Azores, in Portugal, as the Pink House, designed by Mezzo Atelier, is now available for short-term rental on the Boutique Homes website. Formerly a stable converted into two residences, the project has attracted international media attention for presenting a rehabilitation solution where, according to the architects, "history and contemporaneity coexist in balance."

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The inclusion of cars in photographs of architecture is an interesting tool that can help the viewer to understand the scale of a building. The addition of an automobile to a scene can not only help to transmit a notion of the size of the photographed elements, it can also be used to generate interesting compositional relationships to benefit the photograph as a whole. Below, we've highlighted a selection of 10 images from prominent photographers such as Rafael Gamo, Michael Sinclair and Bruno Candiotto which make effective use of this technique.

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Unbeknown to many, cork is something of a dark horse when it comes to the environment—a model of a sustainable industry and building material. By its very nature, cork is both recyclable and renewable, as it is the only tree that regenerates its bark, while harvesting that bark causes the tree no harm.

Cork has been sneaking its way into our buildings for many years now; due to its hard-wearing properties it can be found, for example, in the checkerboard flooring of the Library of Congress. Even NASA has been wise to cork's light weight and insulation capacity, using it as an insulator for their space shuttles.

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Videos

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Proven to be tied to the areas of the brain responsible for emotion and memory, smells are more tied to a perception of place than any other human sense. And there are few sensations more powerful than the smell of delicious food wafting in from your own kitchen. In that regard, kitchens are the true heart of the home, the space most closely related to joyfulness, childhood, and family.

Here, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite kitchens that also double as dining rooms – spaces where you can bake your cake and eat it too. Each different in material and arrangement, these kitchens all share one thing in common: We can’t seem to shake them from our memory. Check out the list below!

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This article was originally published by Common Edge as "Enduring Principles of Art That Also Apply to Architecture."

It is safe to say that architects, academics, critics and even the public have been arguing about the merits of architectural style for centuries. Even during the course of my own career, the more general style categories of contemporary-vs-traditional have continued in an unabated battle. For better or worse, contemporary has generally won out as the default position for most schools and publications, probably because of the sheer visual entertainment value it offers, and the lucrative merits of its two stepchildren, branding and advertising.

I’d like to propose another position: that certain enduring principles of art, rather than any temporary style—and, remember, they are all temporary—should be our real architectural goal. This presumption means you must be agnostic when it comes to style and put aside any notion of an ideological stance regarding the right or wrong of your architectural preferences. There are those, of course, who say that to imagine that “my art” is better than yours, or even that I can define real art in the first place, is a fool’s errand.

I think otherwise.

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We are accustomed to seeing photographs in which architecture is recorded without any occupants, or perhaps captured only with models who give scale to the spaces shown. However, in recent years architectural photographers have increasingly decided to humanize the houses they document, presenting not only their architecture, but also those who inhabit these buildings. In this week's best photos, we present a selection of 15 houses captured by renowned photographers such as Luc Roymans, Adrien Williams and Fernando Schapochnik.

The following photo set by Fernando Guerra focuses on Porto's Subway, a project completed in 1996 and projected by the important Portuguese Architect Álvaro Siza Vieira.

Designing a subway station in Porto is about influencing the daily lives of thousands of people, where they daily circulate, establishing flows and routes, in a urbanistic and architectural intervention with large-scale dimensions. Although it demands an extremely functional and austere design, it is possible to see the gestures of the architect through the details and surprises. 

This week we have prepared a special selection of 20 images of architecture as seen from the sky. This style of image, made possible by the emergence of drones, is increasingly used in architectural photography. It makes it possible to understand, in a single image, the totality of a project, and to see how the project interacts with the context in which it is immersed. Read on to see a selection of renowned photographers such as Hufton + Crow, Fernando Guerra, NAARO, and Jesús Granada.

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For the animal lovers among our audience, this week we have put together a special roundup of images of architecture alongside some marvelous critters. While not exactly a mainstay of architectural photography, proponents of the form like BoysPlayNice, Jesus Granada and Rafael Gamo have dared to include animal inhabitants in their architectural compositions. Read on to see a selection of 20 creative images where you will find horses, sheep, cows, goats, dogs, cats, and even elephants.

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