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Heatherwick Studio has revealed their first public library design, planned for Howard County Libraries in Maryland, United States. The building will serve as a community center and was designed to reflect the changing and complex role of libraries within cities. The program expands beyond book lending services, providing spaces for cultural events, collective learning, workshops and lending of objects of use. Construction is expected to begin in 2024, and the library is scheduled to open to the public in 2027.

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Japan's Pavilion has announced its exhibition “Architecture, a place to be loved – when architecture is seen as a living creature” curated by Maki Onishi, for the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Centered around our post-pandemic reality of faceless developments taking over cities globally, the intervention's main question explores how people can once more find amazement in architecture and joy in shared physical spaces.

Gender is an undeniable layer of inequality in cities, which distinctly and effectively marks the experience and daily life of men and women in urban environments. Public lighting is crucial to ensure more inclusive and equal spaces, and often it is not planned from a gender perspective.

Poorly lit public spaces reinforce feelings of fear in these environments and must be rethought to promote safer cities, especially for women. With more than half of the world's population living in urban areas – a scenario expected to increase – how can we make public spaces safer and more comfortable so that they can be fully enjoyed and accessed by everyone?

With offices in Zürich, Barcelona and Majorca, the work of Gus Wüstemann Architects is a constant evolution between matter and context. From the strong heritage of timber and concrete construction in Switzerland, to the blurry boundaries of inside and outside found in Mediterranean architecture, Gus' work always put an emphasis on the core values of the local construction and craftsmanship, mixed with the cross learnings of working across different regions.

Currently working on projects such as A Barn, for Demna’s Atelier and Loïc’s Studio, and a mixed use hybrid concrete/timber in Feldmeilen, along with several residential projects in Italy and the Balearic Islands, Wüstemann's architecture can be seen as archetypical, essential or even raw. The interiors are a direct expression of these core concepts, with a brut aesthetic.

“How to give your home: Dark Academia vibes” reads the title of a popular YouTube video targeted at homeowners fascinated by the aesthetics relating to liberal education and the arts. A subculture born in the age of social media, Dark Academia is one of many internet aesthetics that have gained prevalence in the last decade. Image-based platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok have amplified internet aesthetics, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media allows users to support and create their own trends that rapidly amass a following. Today, the creation of aesthetic trends lies in the hands of the general public and will dictate the way interior design trends develop.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

George Smart is an unlikely preservationist, almost an accidental one. The founder and executive director of USModernist, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation and documentation of modern houses, Smart worked for 30 years as a management consultant. “I was doing strategic planning and organization training,” he says. “My wife refers to this whole other project as a 16-year seizure.” Recently I spoke with Smart about his two websites, the podcast, the house tours his organization conducts, and why documentation is such a power preservation tool.

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