Tag: street-culture | 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.

After Le Corbusier: How Southeast Asia Turned the Satellite City Into a Transit Megaproject

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 07 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Southeast Asia is often narrated as a kind of architectural playground—an arena where modern and contemporary ideals have been tested at full scale through singular, iconic buildings. One can trace an easy lineage through names that have helped shape the region's skyline imagination: Paul Rudolph's Lippo Centre in Hong Kong and The Concourse in Singapore, I.M. Pei's OCBC Centre and Hong Kong's Bank of China Tower, Norman Foster's Supreme Court of Singapore and the HSBC Main Building in Hong Kong, Ron Phillips' Hong Kong City Hall, Moshe Safdie's Marina Bay Sands. Yet this familiar history—told through objects, colonialism, authorship, and signature forms—risks missing a deeper, more consequential layer of influence: the planning logics and infrastructural frameworks that have quietly structured how these cities expand, densify, and distribute everyday life.

Podium–Tower Urbanism in Southeast Asia: Density, Management, and the Disappearing Street

Jonathan Yeung — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

If elevated networks reveal a city that increasingly walks above the street, the podium–tower is the typology that often makes that condition feel inevitable. Across Southeast Asia, podium–tower projects have become one of the dominant languages of metropolitan growth: a system that concentrates housing, jobs, retail, and transit connections into highly legible and managed parcels. From an urban planning perspective, the model can be remarkably effective—absorbing congestion, formalizing circulation, and delivering density quickly. Yet as it spreads, the typology also raises a quieter question: what does it optimize for, and what does it erode—especially at the level of the street, where urban life is meant to be negotiated rather than curated?

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?

New York City Unveils Plans to Transform Fifth Avenue into a Pedestrian-Centered Boulevard

Maria-Cristina Florian — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 06:30:00 +0000

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, along with the Future of Fifth Partnership, announced plans to transform Fifth Avenue, between Bryant Park and Central Park, into a pedestrian-centered boulevard. The project includes expanding sidewalks by 46%, reducing traffic lanes, improving pedestrian safety with shorter crosswalks, and adding greenery and lighting. The initiative begun with the Future of Fifth public-private partnership, which selected Arcadis, Sam Schwartz Engineering, and Field Operations to lead the design and study, and schematic design, scheduled to be completed by summer 2025.

A Skyward Shift: Exploring the Social Impact of Elevated Public Spaces in Cities

Jonathan Yeung — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000

With escalating land values in urban centers, there has been a growing trend to float public spaces from ground level to elevated locations, such as rooftops or podiums between buildings. From a development perspective, maximizing floor area has become crucial as urban environments expand. Ground-level spaces are highly sought after for retail use due to their strategic location, which attracts foot traffic and potential customers and drives city development and economics.

Field Operations and SITELAB Reveal Urban Design Plan to Revive One of San Francisco’s Iconic Streets

Maria-Cristina Florian — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 06:30:00 +0000

SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations have revealed a design proposal to reimagine San Francisco’s iconic Powell Street. The street used to be one of the busiest pedestrian corridors in its district and a popular tourist attraction, with cable cars running up and down the street and connecting Union Square and Hallidie Plaza. Across the most popular three-block stretch, the storefronts have become mostly vacant. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the reasons was the Covid pandemic, which led to a further decrease in tourism and in commercial activities. Now a new project led by designers SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations aims to revive the now underutilized transit corridor and to catalyze a renewed interest in the area.

UN-Habitat Launches “My Neighborhood,” a Practical Guide for Achieving Sustainable Urban Spaces

Maria-Cristina Florian — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 07:30:00 +0000

The UN-Habitat Urban Lab has published “My Neighborhood,” a publication that offers a checklist of urban design principles aimed at creating more sustainable and resilient cities. Containing actions that are applicable at the neighborhood scale, the guide strives to present an integrated approach that responds to key sectors such as transportation, local urban initiatives, housing, public spaces, utilities, and more.

Unlocking Urban Potential: Street Vending Integration Strategies in Informal Settings

Nour Fakharany — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 08:30:00 +0000

Usually defined by their open-air settings, diverse offerings, local and independent sellers, temporary nature, and acting as social hubs, street markets have been around for thousands of years. From the days of the Roman Forum to the Silk Road and the markets of ancient Greece, they are undoubtedly essential parts of urban life, or “the center of all that is unofficial.” Mostly categorized under the informal economy due to lack of regulations and authorization, street markets in the global south have often been seen as a threat to urban development. However, these erratic and adaptive urban spaces serve core functions in any developing city, acting as pillars of community in many different facets of society.

How Neighborhoods Rely on Graffiti to Protest Gentrification

Paul Yakubu — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 07:30:00 +0000

Graffiti, as an art form, has a complex relationship with gentrification. On one hand, it has engaged the streets and urban fabric as a canvas for people to express themselves culturally and socio-politically. This expression could be a form of rebellion by ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups in certain neighborhoods, or it can build up a sense of cultural uniqueness and social expression, giving a neighborhood a positive character and attracting newcomers. However, over the years, the latter has been an agent of gentrification, spiking up property values to accommodate richer residents and alienating the native communities of those neighborhoods.

Activating the Edges: How to Create Lively, Active Streets

Amanda Loper, Daniel Simons, David Baker — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 03:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

EFFEKT's Winning Proposal Converts Abandoned Warehouse Into Cultural Hub

Osman Bari — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 06:00:00 +0000

Copenhagen-based firm EFFEKT has won a competition to design a new Streetmekka in Viborg, Denmark, through the repurposing of an abandoned former windmill factory in the city’s industrial sector. The winning proposal, aims to instill a newfound sense of identity and value into one of the many leftover warehouse buildings, in the form of a new cultural center for street art, sport, and culture.