Photographer: Clement Guillaume | ArchDaily

Pré de l’Enclos 2 Housing Rehabilitation / SOL Architecture & Urbanisme

Hadir Al Koshta — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:00:00 +0000

In France, where the housing crisis meets the urgency of energy transition, rehabilitation has become both a civic act and an architectural challenge. For SOL Architecture & Urbanisme, a Paris-based practice specialising in occupied-site upgrades, the transformation of Pré de l'Enclos 2 in Villiers-le-Bel exemplifies a new way to renew the existing through design, participation, and care.

Jean Macé School / SOL Architecture & Urbanisme

Paula Pintos — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Trappes is a French suburban city located in the great area of Paris, with a large part of the population suffering from poverty and undergoing major changes in its built environment. To be able to accommodate its growing population, the city initiated the revitalization of its facilities, including schools. The Jean Macé complex is a great example of French school buildings from the end of the 60s. The city commission included the thermic rehabilitation of facades, the reorganization of uses and flow, and two extensions to accommodate new classrooms and a new leisure canter. Taking this as a starting point our objective was also to embrace the potential of the school and make it a safe and stimulating building for children with an emphasis on local and bio-sourced material and thermic efficiency.

Crous University Refectory / graal architecture

Paula Pintos — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 02:00:00 +0000

Located in the heart of the Cergy prefecture park, the restructuring of the university refectory imparts a new radiance to this central facility of the campus’ student and tertiary life. Erected in 1993, the building has the privilege of being set in the François Mitterrand Park thanks to its topographical location and its openness to this large landscaped public space. The facility is thus ideally integrated into the pedestrian network, at the crossroads of the two main routes that connect the Paris-Seine University sector and the Val d’Oise prefecture.

World Architecture Day: Designing for the Future of the Human Habitat

ArchDaily Team — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 06:30:00 +0000

World Architecture Day, celebrated on the first Monday of every October, was set up by the Union International des Architects (UIA) back in 2005 to “remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat”, coinciding with UN-Habitat's World Habitat Day.

"Olympe de Gouges" Group of Schools / Dominique Coulon & associés

Paula Pintos — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 01:00:00 +0000

The school group consists of fourteen classes, located on the edge of fields north of the village of Gidy, not far from Orleans. It meets the need to create places in nursery and primary education that has resulted from an increase in the local population. This large building does not fall within the standards for urban architecture. Its village atmosphere is achieved by applying volumetric arrangements that make the building appear smaller than it is.

Recycling Tiles: 15 Examples of Repurposed Tiles in Walls, Facades, Flooring, and Furniture

Belén Maiztegui — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 07:35:00 +0000

Whether you're looking for an upgrade or to replace broken pieces for floors or walls, tiles are always an effective and readily available option for any project that you have in mind. With their relatively low production cost, tiles are rarely reused or recycled and, if they are, it's usually for their original function.

A Guide to Design for Disassembly

Andreea Cutieru — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 07:35:00 +0000

The concept of Design for Disassembly (DfD for short) gained increasing traction in recent years, as it addresses the growing concern around the high consumption of resources and low recycling rate within the construction industry. The following article details on the method and features guidelines for a design process that facilitates the dismantlement of future buildings, with the scope of providing a better understanding of this principle within the broader framework of the current practice and circular economy.

Amateur Architecture Studio’s Works on Contemporary Chinese Architecture with Recycled Materials

Scarlett Miao — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 04:00:00 +0000

Over the past two centuries, cities in China have multiplied and expanded on a large scale, under accelerated urbanization. Mass demolition of the old city fabric, occurring everywhere, is leaving industrial debris and fragmented cultural artifacts buried forever, under shiny new skyscrapers. As old Chinese cities are collapsing and new urban centers are outspreading, a part of the city was lost, the old demolished landscape. Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, the first Chinese citizens to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, responded to this past-present relation by working with recycled materials and traditional know-how. In the following, we explore some of this couple's renowned works such as Ningbo History Museum, Ningbo (2008), Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2004), and Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum (2005), to examine his humanistic approach to the city.

Social Impact: Architecture Building Space for Empathy

Eric Baldwin — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 07:35:00 +0000

Architecture shapes how we live and come together. Amidst a pandemic and protests around the world, architects and designers are speaking out to condemn injustice and build space for empathy and understanding. In listening, they are looking to how we live together, and in turn, how we can create a more equitable and just world.

Wooden Nursery / Djuric Tardio Architectes

Paula Pintos — Fri, 13 Mar 2020 02:00:00 +0000

Program. The project concept grew out of a phase of research and development by the office. The request for proposals issued by the municipal government of Paris was an opportunity to implement this system to build a 48-cradle nursery. Modular and nomadic, the building fulfills the requirements for rehousing Parisian children deprived of their usual child care establishments undergoing works. Thus, the building is designed to be disassembled, moved and reassembled. Inaugurated in the 6th arrondissement where it will remain for 2 years, thereafter the nursery will be relocated to the 13th arrondissement, in keeping with the specifications brief.

Timber Trends: 7 To Watch for 2020

José Tomás Franco — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 05:30:00 +0000

The history of timber construction stretches back as far as the Neolithic period, or potentially even earlier, when humans first began using wood to build shelters from the elements. The appearance of the first polished stone tools, such as knives and axes, then made wood handling more efficient and precise, increasing the thickness of wood sections and their resistance. Over the decades, the rustic appearance of these early constructions became increasingly orthogonal and clean, as a result of standardization, mass production, and the emergence of new styles and aesthetics.

Innovative Uses of Water in Architecture

Lilly Cao — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 04:00:00 +0000

From playful indoor pools to tranquil exterior fountains to soaring waterfalls and grand lakes of enormous proportions, architecture throughout the centuries has engaged with water in endlessly innovative ways. Sometimes serving aesthetic purposes, but just as often acting as centers of activity or promoting sustainability, water features can take countless different forms and serve multiple different purposes. Below, we synthesize a series of water features espoused by innovative contemporary architectural projects, ranging from single-family residential homes to vast commercial complexes.

Student Housing / Atelier Villemard Associés

Andreas Luco — Thu, 28 Nov 2019 10:00:00 +0000

The sun rises on the East! In Marne-la-Vallée, one of the five new towns imagined around Paris by the master plan of 1965, Cité Descartes is an international cluster for research and development. The campus brings together more than 50 research laboratories and 18 grandes écoles.

Musee du Quai Branly / Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Martita Vial della Maggiora — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 10:00:00 +0000

This is a museum built around a specific collection, where everything is designed to evoke an emotional response to the primary object, to protect it from light, but also to capture that rare ray of light indispensable to make it vibrate and awaken its spirituality. In a place inhabited by symbols of forests and rivers, by obsessions of death and oblivion, it is an asylum for censored and cast off works from Australia and the Americas. It is a loaded place haunted with dialogues between the ancestral spirits of men, who, in discovering their human condition, invented gods and beliefs. It is a place that is unique and strange, poetic and unsettling.

Interdepartemental Management and Administration Center / Ateliers 2/3/4/

Daniel Tapia — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 08:00:00 +0000

A functional and environmental challenge
This extension of an existing public building is part of a mostly residential neighborhood. Therefore, despite its 4.840 m² extension and 150 parking spaces, it needed to find its place into a neighborhood without jostling it. The building is conceived almost entirely on stilts, exploiting the height difference of about 3 m between the street and the embankment of the railways and it’s limited in height to 9m by the Local Urbanism Plan. It shelters a quality parking lot and it literally "comes alongside" the rue Molière.

BLOX / OMA / Ellen Van Loon

Diego Hernández — Mon, 07 May 2018 10:13:00 +0000

The BLOX project, home of the Danish Architecture Center (DAC), contains exhibition spaces, offices and co-working spaces, a café, a bookstore, a fitness centre, a restaurant, twenty-two apartments and an underground automated public carpark, but it is not the acrobatic mixing of uses that defines this project; its ultimate achievement is in ‘discovering’ its own site.

MI-mAbs / Mira

Valentina Villa — Sun, 21 May 2017 02:00:00 +0000

The project is located at Marseille Campus Luminy, in the National Park area, and includes the rehabilitation of a building in the late 60s, the creation of an extension, and its landscaping.

Town Entrance in Chatenay Malabry / Ateliers 2/3/4/

Rayen Sagredo — Fri, 19 May 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Strategically located at the entrance of a new neighbourhood, the square provides a clear view of the crossroads whilst announcing the future development of the Faculty of Pharmacy.