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While pyramidal geometry appears in monumental historical structures, its contemporary application remains limited. The primary constraint is the sloping envelope, which contracts the building's floor area as it ascends and reduces usable interior volume compared to orthogonal or cylindrical forms. However, from a structural standpoint, the geometry offers lateral stability against wind and seismic loads due to its broad base, central mass distribution, and self-bracing triangular faces. Nonetheless, applying this shape at a residential scale introduces several layout constraints. These slanted walls limit vertical wall surfaces, which complicates the placement of standard windows, doors, and floor partitions. At the same time, the low clearance along the perimeter also creates unusable floor area at the edges of the room.

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Founded in 2020 by Masato Igarashi, IGArchitects is an architectural practice based in Tokyo and Saitama, Japan. The studio, one of the winners of the ArchDaily 2025 Next Practices Awards, explores enduring architecture through a careful yet assertive treatment of structure, scale, and materiality. Prior to establishing his own practice, Igarashi worked at the large-scale firm Shimizu Sekkei as well as the Suppose Design Office, gaining experience across projects ranging from major developments to smaller, concept-driven works. This breadth of experience continues to inform IGArchitects' current focus on residential and commercial architecture across Japan.

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Many ancient Egyptian, Greek and Islamic religious buildings share a common feature known as hypostyle. Defined as rows of columns that support a roof, this solution has developed in different cultures in different periods of time, which can explain the variety of materials, shapes, sizes and distances between the columns that can be found around the world. Famous examples of the use of this concept are Great Hypostyle Hall (c. 1290–1224 BC), part of the Karnak Temple Complex and one of the most visited monuments of Ancient Egypt, and the Wooden Hypostyle Mosques of Medieval Anatolia (c. 13th and mid-14th centuries), World Heritage Site located in present-day Turkey.

In contemporary architecture, it is possible to see different kinds of examples of how this concept is revived. While some projects use the concept to refer to vernacular architectures that correspond to the same program and use as the proposed building, as is the case with some mosques, others rely on the abstraction of the term through an interpretation that highlights the pillars and their organization in the proposition of the space. In all of them, however, it is clear that the relationship between the hypostyle inspiration and modular architecture is very close, practically intrinsic.

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As 2022 winds down, ArchDaily brings together the highlights of architecture in a series of retrospectives. As part of this effort, the Projects Team turns to one of the most popular categories among readers—residential architecture—with the objective of gathering the houses that represent the best of a vast world of architectural production according to our worldwide audience.

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Widely recognized as being responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions, concrete should be a blacklisted material, relegated to the shameful annals of architectural history. Rapid global urbanization, however, will ensure its unequaled production simplicity and structural strength help retain concrete’s firm grip on the construction industry.

If you can’t beat it, improve it: is the industry’s mantra on innovation, currently developing various alternatives to concrete or its constituent parts and admixtures. So with a concrete set for the environmental green list, the concrete revolution –using the material as an aesthetic exterior facade, interior decoration and fittings, or even in furniture and lighting, as well as a structural framework– is free to continue.