Tag: roof | ArchDaily

An Era of Renovations: 6 Reasons Why Roofing Membranes Can Extend the Lifespan of Existing Structures

Agustina Iñiguez — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 01:30:00 +0000

Building roofs are advancing through a multidimensional optimization process that encompasses technological innovations, new materials, energy-saving performance, and faster construction methods. From green roofs and rainwater harvesting systems to solar panels, contemporary architects are working to balance aesthetics, performance, durability, and environmental impact in their projects. Roof renovation not only extends the service life of buildings but also reflects an environmental commitment by improving efficiency and sustainability.

Rethinking the Flat Datum: Designing Space with Incline and Intent

Jonathan Yeung — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

Historically, architecture and the built environment have insisted on creating flat, hard surfaces. In earlier eras, walking without paved ground meant mud-caked shoes, uneven footing, tripping hazards, standing water after rain, and high maintenance. Hence, as we shaped cities, we prioritized a smooth, continuous, solid horizontal datum. The benefits are real: easier walking, simpler cleaning, and straightforward programming—furniture, equipment, and partitions all prefer a level base. This universal preference for building on flat ground remains the norm and, for many practical reasons, will likely continue to be.

BIG Reveals “The Sail” Congress Center on the Seine Riverfront in France

Reyyan Dogan — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 06:30:00 +0000

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has unveiled the design for a new congress center in Rouen, France, featuring a distinctive sweeping timber roof that reflects the city's long-standing relationship with the water. Located along the Seine riverfront, the building, nicknamed "The Sail," is envisioned as a public gathering place that reconnects the city with its waterfront while offering new cultural and civic amenities. Designed for the Rouen Normandy Metropolis, the project combines contemporary architectural expression with references to Rouen's maritime and urban heritage.

The Ukrainian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Presents a Parallel Between Vernacular and Emergency Architecture

Antonia Piñeiro — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 05:30:00 +0000

The Ukrainian pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia explores the intersection of traditional building methods and improvised construction during wartime crises. Under the title "DAKH (ДАХ): Vernacular Hardcore", the exhibition refers to the concept of the roof ("dakh" in Ukrainian) as a primary shelter in architecture, examining the roofs of an "architecture without architects" both in the country's constructive tradition and in the contemporary reality of aerial vigilance over its national territory. Curated by Bögdana Kosmina, Michał Murawski, and Kateryna Rusetska, the Ukrainian display consists of a six-element exhibition at the Arsenale's Sale d'Armi and an accompanying nomadic program titled Planetary Hardcore.

Extending Roofs from Brazil to India: Parallel Residential Design Elements as Seen in 10 Projects

Susanna Moreira — Sat, 05 Apr 2025 07:30:00 +0000

It shouldn't be too surprising that architectural concepts were traveling around the globe long before the online spread of information. While many regions share certain historical events and hence references (such as colonization and the mid-20th-century independence movement/ turn of political systems), others might have simply developed parallel solutions to similar climates and material availability. Additionally, it was only natural that with the dissemination of a more uniform architectural pedagogy acquired while studying abroad, followed by the internet boom, we would find almost twin projects from every corner of the world. While these might look nearly identical from some angles, they might bear different layers and stories. Then again, they might also display the same reasoning and prompts shared by counterparts from across the seas.

Designing with Humidity: How Architecture Adapts to the World’s Dampest Climates

Olivia Poston — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Humid environments present some of the most complex challenges in architectural design. From the tropical monsoon season of Southeast Asia to the equatorial heat of Central Africa, these environments demand solutions that account for intense moisture, high temperatures, and the constant battle against mold, decay, and stagnation. Yet, for centuries, communities in these regions have developed architectural techniques that do not fight against humidity but instead work with it, leveraging local materials, climate-responsive design, and passive cooling techniques to create sustainable and livable spaces. By considering atmosphere as a sensory and climatic phenomenon, architects will craft spaces that are not only evocative but also responsive, adaptive, and sustainable.

BIG Unveils Design for Kosovo’s First Opera House with Undulating Photovoltaic Roof

Nour Fakharany — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 05:30:00 +0000

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), in collaboration with ALB-Architect, has unveiled the design for the Opera & Ballet Theatre of Kosovo, a new cultural venue set to reshape Prishtina's performing arts landscape. As the first opera house in the Republic of Kosovo, the theatre will serve as a home for the country's Philharmonic, Ballet, and Opera, marking a significant step in the development of Kosovo's artistic institutions. The project includes multiple performance halls and a public plaza, reinforcing its role as a cultural hub within the capital.

Creating Winter Retreats: Snow Resorts and Vacation Home Typologies

Jonathan Yeung — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 07:30:00 +0000

As we move past Thanksgiving and step into December, the festive season is fast approaching. This time of year brings celebrations, holidays, and travel plans into full swing. Particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, there is a strong association between end-of-year festivities and cold, snowy weather.

Roofs of Trade: A Look at 12 Public Market Architectures

Hana Abdel — Fri, 10 May 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Public Markets are complex cases that beautifully combine an engineering exploration with the instigation of a beneficial public function. In fact, it doesn't take much to designate an open and accessible commercial hub that would encourage commercial exchange and economic development for small or local businesses. All one needs is a lot and a sheltering roof. However, many designers and architects have chosen to take this exercise beyond the social level and into further material and technical exploration.

15 Landscaped Offices With Garden Space For Free-Range Employees to Roam

James Wormald — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Representing 32% of the global population, Generation Z (those born between 1995 – 2010) accounts for a healthy chunk of the workforce (27% by 2025 and rising every year). These are the fresh young minds employers are fighting to attract. With prospective employers’ impact on society (93%) and a healthy work/life balance (77%) the two biggest motivators in deciding where Gen Z’ers want to work, a large part of any new office building’s design brief is green space.

How to Improve Internal and External Environments with Glass Ceilings

James Wormald — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 07:30:00 +0000

As a highly transparent material that stands up to all but the most extreme of weather conditions, is easily formed into any size or shape, and, once formed, will last for thousands of years, glass is still one of the most innovative and crucial materials used in architecture. Although contemporary building practices allow us to form huge, glittering skyscrapers of glass that rise hundreds of meters into the air, the ancient material’s original purpose – to welcome light into weathertight and secure interiors – remains its most important more than a thousand years on.

Pushing Boundaries: 11 Exteriors That Use Fabric For Protection, Shape, and Longevity

Claire Brodka — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture – once it moved out from under its cavernous beginnings – started off largely nomadic. For a long time, the shade of trees and moveable tents made from animal skin were utilized instead of more permanent dwellings to meet nomadic lifestyles and basic survival needs. These early portable structures were primarily supported by wooden frames and were used by various ancient civilizations, including the Bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula and the Native American tribes in North America. The advent of woven cloth some 40,000 years ago made the dwellings even lighter and easier to transport, a boon to nomadic cultures around the globe.

4 Solutions for Roofs without Eaves (and their Construction Details)

Eduardo Souza — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 04:00:00 +0000

In his Robie House, Frank Lloyd Wright created an ingenious arrangement of public and private spaces that slowly moving away from the street through a series of horizontal planes. Pronounced eaves made the interior space expand toward the outside. Considered the first phase of the American architect's career, the so-called Prairie Houses had marked horizontality, mainly due to the enormous plans created by slightly inclined eaves. Eaves are ubiquitous in most traditional architecture, and in addition to their aesthetic role, they serve several important functions, the primary one being to keep rainwater away from the building's walls and structure. But for some time now, we have seen plenty of projects with sloping roofs without eaves, forming pure and unornamented volumes. This brings us to the question: in these projects, how are practical issues such as draining rainwater?

Pitched or Flat? Different Types of Roofs for Houses

Giovana Martino — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 05:00:00 +0000

In addition to their primary function, roofs are one of the most fundamental elements in the aesthetics of a building, taking different shapes, being composed of different structures and sealed by different materials. But, in addition to aesthetics, roofs need to meet the climatic conditions of where they are located, considering the periodic changes related to rain, sun and winds.

The Corrugated Iron Roof: Avant-Garde or Unaesthetic?

Matthew Maganga — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 04:00:00 +0000

It’s an essential architectural element, one we tend to immediately take note of when we look at buildings new to us – the roof. The roofs that shelter the buildings we see in our cities today are diverse in their typology. Flat roofs are a common sight in the city centers of urban metropolises, hip roofs are a popular choice for dwellings around the world, and the gable roof is arguably the most common of all, a roof type popular in stylized depictions of what a standard house looks like.

Why Do Architects Insist on Using Flat Roofs?

Diego Hernández — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 09:30:00 +0000

It is a commonly held belief by non-architects (and even some architects) that gabled roofs are inherently better than flat ones. The argument typically goes that a gable demonstrates a ‘form follows function’ sensibility, easily shedding water and snow using geometry and gravity. So, flat roofs might leak. While that’s true, this video blows the roof off the topic by taking a finer look at some points that might change your mind. This includes Louis Sullivan’s original reason for writing the phrase “form ever follows function,” as well as the ability of flat roofs to offer outdoor public spaces, supporting green roofs, structural simplicity, wind considerations, among many others. There’s also another, competing functional/formal reason for why a low slope roof might be more prudent than a more aggressive slope, even in snowy areas like Chicago.

Notre Dame Update: Restoration Work Advances and US Students Rebuild One of Its Roof Trusses Using Medieval Techniques

Andreea Cutieru — Mon, 02 Aug 2021 05:30:00 +0000

With three more years to go until the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and the re-opening date announced by French President Emanuel Macron, Notre Dame's restoration work progresses. After a long safety phase and months of work interruption last year due to the pandemic, all burned timber from the roof has been removed, and scaffolding has been installed inside the cathedral. As a homage to the heritage structure and "the collective effort to rebuild Notre Dame", the Catholic University of America is building a replica of one of the cathedral's roof trusses in Washington D.C., using medieval techniques.

Roof Folding House / MDA Architecture

Andreas Luco — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 20:00:00 +0000

Situated in a green, multifunctional precinct with villas, recreation grounds, tennis courts, cafeteria, swimming pools, and gardens, roof folding house is a smart design based on two parts: the permanently constructed one as the main building and the pre-engineered part as the veranda.