Tag: informal-architecture | ArchDaily

Coffee or Tea: Third Places, Kiosks, and the Retail Architecture of Duration

Jonathan Yeung — Sun, 24 May 2026 07:30:00 +0000

"Coffee or tea?" is one of those phrases that follows you across contexts: asked on airplanes, after a meal, in hotel lounges, and in meeting rooms. It sounds like a small question—mere preference, a quick fork in the service script. Yet it also carries a quiet cultural inheritance. Tea arrives with the long history of ritual and domestic pacing, tied to older geographies of trade and everyday etiquette. Coffee arrives with a different lineage of circulation, later industrialized into the modern café and its public-facing rituals. In both cases, the drink is never only a drink; it is a practiced relationship to time and space.

Urban Banquet at the Curb: Hong Kong’s Third-Space Dining

Jonathan Yeung — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Across cities worldwide, architecture unfolds continuously at the scale of people and community—not only through new buildings, renovations, or monumental works. "Third spaces" are especially revealing. Consider the street-side culinary realm: how seating, serving, and lingering occupy the edge of the street often discloses a city's cultural codes and spatial habits. What forms of dining and inhabitation have emerged in response to local climate, regulation, and social custom—and how have they evolved over time?

Improvised Aesthetics: The Appropriation of Grassroots Adaptive Reuse

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Adaptive reuse has become a buzzword in the architecture industry. Framed as a sustainable and economical solution to urban decay, the practice has been adopted by cities facing pressures of climate change, real estate constraints, and cultural preservation. Architects are increasingly being hired to rehabilitate the old rather than build anew. Within this discourse is a growing sentiment towards who gets to reuse and how.

Grupo Finca in Cuba: "We Found in the Informality of Our City a Legal Void Where We Can Operate"

Paula Pintos — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Resisting an adverse context and navigating its restrictions, Grupo Finca emerges, a collective that explores the practice of architecture from an artistic and pedagogical dimension in Havana, Cuba. Given the complexity of the country's political and social situation, informal architecture is common: low resources, difficulty in obtaining materials, high costs, and a lack of skilled labor, among other challenges, are some of the obstacles faced by independent architecture professionals. Coupled with the absence of a regulatory legal framework that would allow them to work formally in the labor market or acquire materials and supplies, the construction of contemporary architecture in Cuba is relegated to independent processes that can somehow overcome these barriers.

How Do You Design for Informality?

Paul Yakubu — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Informal architecture is the dominant mode of urbanization in rapidly growing and industrializing cities worldwide. In Delhi, the city with the largest population in India has half of its residents living in informal settlements. Lagos, with a population of over 22 million, also has 60% of its residents living in informal settlements. This pattern is also observed in Cairo, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, and other cities in the global south that face similar challenges of inequality and housing shortages. As their population grows and urbanization progresses, the exploration of informal architecture schemes to address the demand for affordable housing and basic services will only increase. While the primary purpose of design is to provide structure, lessons from informal architecture offer insights into how architects can respond to such schemes.

What are the Spatial Possibilities for Enclosures Within the Highway Interchange?

Paul Yakubu — Fri, 19 May 2023 07:30:00 +0000

Highway interchanges have evolved from important infrastructures that help distribute traffic to unique landmarks that define cities. As multiple road networks embrace and form distinctive sculptures, these road intersections range from singular bridge connections and roundabouts to numerous, layered and multi-layered interchanges. They twist, turn, loop, and wrap around sparse land, vegetation, or existing structures in a bid to transfer travelers from one roadway to another. However, they also create a moment of enclosure, forming partially bounded areas and a sense of space. These spaces could be viewed as liminal and transitional, with no fixed typology able to be hosted. But that blurring character calls for ideas of urban intervention to disrupt the notion of what these spaces can be. They can be readapted from car-dominant sculptures into more human-friendly places and re-integrated as extended schemes of the city's architecture.

How Can Informal Retail Preserve Pedestrian Zones as Car Dependency Increases in African Cities?

Paul Yakubu — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 07:30:00 +0000

African cities are expected to experience a significant increase in population over the next 30 years. According to United Nations projections, these cities will welcome an additional 900 million inhabitants by 2050. This demographic shift will create both opportunities and challenges that will reshape the nature and structure of these cities. These challenges include the need for economic growth, increased demand for housing and infrastructure, and the development of supplementary transportation systems. So far, most African cities have responded to this rapid population growth with sprawling horizontal development patterns that expand the fringes of the city, increase social fragmentation, and ultimately lead to greater car dependency.

Ecological Design: Strategies to Protect Latin America and the Caribbean's Vulnerable Cities in the Face of Climate Change

Fabian Dejtiar — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 05:00:00 +0000

Throughout the world's cities, in the midst of current and projected crises-- environmental, health, economic, and otherwise--one question looms: How can we prepare our urban centers' most vulnerable sectors?

TED: Ingenious Homes in Unexpected Places / Iwan Baan

Karissa Rosenfield — Wed, 16 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Iwan Baan’s curiosity for the built environment has led him to be one of the world’s most preeminent photographers whose skills are in constant demand by architectural elites worldwide. Constantly on the move, Baan has found himself documenting fascinating testaments to human ingenuity. From the informal vertical community of Torre David in Caracas to the floating Niagara slum of Makoko, Baan’s encounters with thriving communities in some of the most unexpected places has led him to believe that there is “no such thing as normal” and humans can truly adapt to anything.

Beyond the Tent: Why Refugee Camps Need Architects (Now More than Ever)

Katherine Allen — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 09:30:00 +0000

In 2013 alone some 1 million people have poured out of Syria to escape a civil conflict that has been raging for over two years. The total number of Syrian refugees is well over 2 million, an unprecedented number and a disturbing reality that has put the host countries under immense infrastructural strain.

Video: IKEA Foundation Design a Shelter for Refugees

Rory Stott — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:00:00 +0000

To mark the occasion of World Refugee Day on June 20th, the IKEA Foundation announced an important new collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the Refugee Housing Unit to design a new type of shelter which will replace the outdated tents currently in use in refugee camps worldwide.

Taksim Square's Temporary Structures, Rendered

Vanessa Quirk — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Architecture emerges with every "occupy" movement or protest. From whatever meager resources at hand, occupiers create structures to fulfill very specific purposes - from makeshift tents for sleeping, to instant podiums for speaking, or perhaps even a swing to kill the time. Unfortunately, these architectures are, by their very nature, fleeting: often disappearing instantly the moment the occupation ends.

A Refugee Camp Is a City / World Refugee Day 2013

Ana Asensio — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000

June 20th. World Refugee Day.