There is a renewed interest in how food is produced and how its creation affects the well-being of both the land and the communities it supports. A similar shift is occurring in architecture, where material culture is emerging as the backbone of design innovation. LEVER Architecture exemplifies this movement with its pioneering "forest-to-frame" model, an approach that reimagines architecture not as an extractive process, but as a regenerative force with positive impacts that extend well beyond the boundaries of any individual building site.
Material intelligence refers to how materials perform, adapt, and interact with ecological and cultural systems. It considers how stone, steel, or timber respond to intertangled forces, how those materials are sourced and assembled, and how they persist after demolition. Designers are centering material intelligence in constructing our cities in a generation of environmental uncertainty and strained supply chains.
Origin myths,” “founding myths,” and “creation legends” provide a way for us to see into and imagine the distant past in metaphorical, poetic, and compelling ways. The oldest origin myths help us understand how a people or a place (such as the universe) were believed to have come into existence. Anthropologists describe these as creation myths or “cosmogonic” myths. They might explain how the world came to be. For example, Native North American peoples such as the Cherokee, Ojibwe, and Aztecs share an origin myth that land was first created on top of a great ocean. One of the most common Western origin myths is the creation of Adam and Eve. But founding stories exist for all kinds of social conditions, historical customs, and objects, as well as places—think of the myth of the brothers Romulus and Remus, suckled as babies by a wolf, who survive to found the city of Rome (after Romulus got rid of his brother).
There are extraordinary connections between the natural world and the capacity for creativity in human beings. In his book Last Child in the Woods, journalist and author Richard Louv observes: “Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses. Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in a creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion.” He concludes that in nature, “a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.” The architect Frank Harmon likewise wrote touchingly about the outdoors, woods, and water as perfect settings for cultivating a thirst for learning and discovery: “Children raised by creeks are never bored. Creek children don’t know about learning by rote, neither are they conditioned to working nine to five. Berries are their first discoveries, and birds’ nests, and watching the stars come out. Later they discover books. To creek children, learning is discovery, not instruction.”
https://www.archdaily.com/984628/an-architectural-journey-through-the-woodsMichael J. Crosbie & Suzanne Bott
Despite being the smallest rooms of houses, bathrooms have always been one of the most challenging and critical to design, which often left them fairly simplified. The past few years, however, saw these spaces undergo significant change; what was once only limited to functionality, ease of maintenance, and privacy, is now being given a strong character with pops of color, classic fixtures, and patterned surfaces. Similarly for public bathrooms, where "functionality" and "ease of maintenance" are now complimented with aesthetics, technology, and high quality finishing. In this interior focus, we explore the three main bathroom typologies used in residential projects, and look at how architects have employed them through 12 examples.
Cross-laminated timber (CLT) has been dubbed the concrete of the future. As a highly resilient form of engineered wood made by gluing layers of solid-sawn lumber together, CLT is reshaping how we understand architecture and design today. As a material with a high degree of flexibility, CLT has to undergo great deformations to break and collapse, unlike concrete. In turn, it's a material chosen for its warmth and natural properties.
Just as the colors of an abstract painting or photograph can produce a certain mood, so can the colors of a building or room profoundly influence how the people using it feel. Physiologically, study after study has shown that blue light slows the production of melatonin, keeping people more alert or awake even at night. Psychologically, people associate certain colors with certain feelings due to cultural symbols and lived experiences – for example, they might perceive the color red as menacing or frightening because of its connection to blood.
Altogether, the way a room is colored can have complex effects on how its users feel, while a façade can be perceived in dramatically different ways depending on how it is colored. Below, we summarize the emotional associations of every color, assessing their differing effects as each is used in architectural space.
https://www.archdaily.com/930266/how-color-affects-architectureLilly Cao
Residential architecture is one of the most popular categories among our readers. In 2021 we published more than 3,800 projects, featuring houses 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.
https://www.archdaily.com/973682/best-houses-of-2021Clara Ott
Kiribati has a population of around 110,000 people and its economy is centered on fishing and agriculture. Comprised of 33 islands in the Central Pacific, its highest point is only 81 meters above sea level, which makes it potentially the first country that could disappear completely due to global warming and the consequent rise in sea levels. The climate crisis has been a hotly debated topic in recent years and terms such as carbon footprint, greenhouse effect, atmospheric aerosols, and many others, are already staples in our vocabulary. Another widely spoken term is “net zero”, or net zero emission, used as a goal for buildings in different industries and countries. Basically, it means that the energy balance is zero.
