On InstagramSee every project featured on the ArchDaily Instagram account

Sitting on a sloping plot at the edge of a protected green area, the house interferes in the landscape in two radically different approaches, divided in 3 main blocks.

My clients were a couple – an office worker and a stay-at-home wife - with a child and two dogs. “We want a garden and… a local community to feel that we are part of the community.” This was the wish list my clients shared with me when I received an order for designing their house. For the clients, who have already moved more than 10 times so far, building their own house is part of making their dream come true - “to have their own local community.”

Residential architecture is one of the most popular categories among our readers. During 2020 we’ve published more than 2,000 houses, featuring projects from different regions of the world and offering a variety of solutions, materials, contexts, environments, scales, and typologies. Providing a broad source of inspiration for those seeking references for their own residential project.

Below you will find the 20 most-visited residential projects featured on ArchDaily during 2020. This selection represents the best content created and shared by the ArchDaily community over the past 11 months.

Videos

Human Rights Day is celebrated every year on the 10th of December. After visiting numerous sites that commemorate the scenes of regrettable crimes against humanity and violence, one common observation can be made: the place of memory is not only a building. In fact, it is more about the encounter, the appropriation, and the gesture.

On December 9, Pantone announced its color(s) of the year for 2021: PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray and PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating. Selecting two colors for only the second time in 22 years, Pantone described the chosen yellow and gray as independent but complementary, representing a theme of unity and mutual support. Whereas PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating is bright and vivacious, PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray is firm and dependable, the marriage of which represents strength, optimism, and fortitude following a markedly challenging year. In architecture, this palette combining playfulness and solemnity has been used in social spaces, domestic spaces, care spaces, and more to communicate similar themes of resilience and positivity.

Below are 14 examples of projects using Pantone’s 2021 colors of the year.

The Le Monde Group comprises some of France’s most famous publications, including Le Monde, Courrier International, Télérama, La Vie, and HuffPost, and their new home unites them under a shared roof together with the publication l’Obs, which is also owned by the group’s shareholders. Previously scattered across different sites in Paris, the six newsrooms now share a common home on the Rive Gauche of Paris, all while remaining independent and retaining their own space in the building.

The new Billie Jean King Main Library is more than a traditional library of decades past. Positioned at the heart of Downtown Long Beach, it is designed to provide a welcoming and flexible environment that now serves more than 1,000 daily visitors. The state-of-the-art, structural timber building features distinct and identifiable interior spaces that maximize square footage and enhance user accessibility and staff efficiency. It also offers a rich program of activities in which reading and browsing through bookstacks are only a small part of the experience.

Continuation of identity and cultural vitality
During the 10 years from 2000 to 2010, an average of 250 villages disappeared every day in China, and the traditional rural society was irreversibly declining, and its economic structure, ethnic structure, cultural heritage, and value system were also gradually disintegrating. Sanxi Village in Zhongshan bypassed the process of historical city development and entered the new era in its true state. It is a village that has been completely preserved.

Bridging Harlem’s active 125^th Street corridor and the quieter 126^th Street, The Smile is a mixed-used development that houses a nursing school on the street level and residential apartment units above. One-third of these residential units contain affordable housing units that strengthen and provide housing diversity within the neighborhood. East 126’s unique T-shaped footprint offers a diverse set of unit sizes and layout organizations, while also strengthening the connection relationship with the neighboring buildings. This southern cantilevered portion of the building appears to hover over the existing commercial building on 125^th Street, creating a dynamic component in the evolving uptown streetscape.

On behalf of the entire ArchDaily team, we would like to thank you for your continued support and for making 2020 our best year so far! We are now reaching more architects around the world and inspiring them in the creation of better built environments. With more than 5500 different projects published during the year, our curators are excited to share this collection of the 100 most visited projects of 2020. This selection represents the best content created and shared by the ArchDaily community over the past 11 months.

Before the pandemic, the world was already facing a series of global transformations in the field of construction, where emerging countries were at the forefront of a powerful economic shift. As the world's population is expected to reach the 10-billion milestone before 2100, the construction sector should be able to understand and adapt to the megatrends that are reshaping the globe.

CONTEXT
Chamanga is a fisherpeople town located on the Cojimíes River Estuary, in Esmeraldas, a predominantly Afro-Ecuadorian and historically underserved province in coastal Ecuador. After the April 2016 earthquake severely damaged 80% of their buildings, the majority of chamangueñxs migrated farther inland. The disaster not only threw Chamanga in a situation of social and physical transition, but also deepened the historical inequalities that have put 100% of Chamanga’s population below the poverty line.

Intergenerational play is the focus at Paco Sanchez Park, with the goal of improving physical, mental, and societal health. This is manifested through accessibility, inclusivity, different levels of physical challenge, and spaces to support community gatherings and events.

The works consist of energy efficiency upgrading, structural renovation, along with the total restyling of a residential building from the Sixties, which can be divided into three independent apartments. From the original structure, we can appreciate its impressive volume in relation to the surrounding, residential area on the hills of Ivrea. The project highlights this feature by removing all the overhangs from the existing building; solids and voids are redesigned with large squared holes and the roof is transformed into a useful floor area – a private rooftop from where you can enjoy a high view over the Alpes and the Serra Moraine of Ivrea.

The brief. My friends Mr. S and Ms. P wanted a cheap, easy to build a beach house with a triangular-shaped roof.

Community empowerment via urban development, Hormuz Island, Iran  - Hormuz is a formerly glorious historic port in the strategic strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, South of Iran, that controls the shipment of petroleum from the Middle East. The island has outstanding colorful surreal landscapes. Oddly, the local inhabitants of the beautiful, touristic and politically strategic island struggle economically, getting involved in illegal trafficking activities using their boats. Presence in Hormuz is a series of urban developments by a semi-public institution that hired ZAV Architects, in order to empower the local community of the island. Its second phase is a multipurpose cultural residence called Majara residence (meaning adventure) that ties together the lives of local people and visitors both culturally and economically.

Why don't seaside restaurants offer canned sardines on their menu when industrialization has made it possible to qualitatively optimize our food resources? Construction materials are also subject to qualitative constraints. The use of glued wood, in particular, makes it possible to use a bio-based material with optimized assembly qualities. Other construction choices are possible. 

Casa quattro designed by LCA architetti (Luca Compri Architects) is a sustainable house characterized by extremely simple architecture.