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Shou Sugi Ban is a traditional Japanese technique for wood preservation that involves charring the surface of timber to create a protective layer. While its origins are rooted in practical durability, the method has been widely adapted into the modern built environment and shapes a unique and distinctive aesthetic. It is a material of contradiction: it remains bold in its visual language due to its dark tones, yet it simultaneously borrows from and complements its natural surroundings, allowing houses to settle quietly into their sites.

The charred finish among the 22 residences featured here across Canada and the United States serves as a common thread for navigating extreme climates. From humid lakefronts to dense forests, the carbonized skin acts as a resilient shield against diverse conditions. Beyond mere protection, these houses demonstrate how the material's texture changes with exposure to light, transforming from a flat matte in the shade to a silver-flecked, shimmering surface in direct sun. These projects also showcase the technique's ability to define architectural volumes, using the dark cladding to create sharp, monolithic silhouettes or to highlight the voids in a building's mass, such as recessed entryways and sheltered terraces.

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A long table can sit almost anywhere and still do the same work. It can stretch beneath a market canopy, run along a school dining hall, or occupy the center of a shared living room, and it immediately changes the room's temperature.

That is why the long table is less an object than a spatial instrument. It does not guarantee a connection, and it rarely looks "inclusive" by default. Instead, it sets conditions: a shared edge, a common rhythm of arrival, a field of mutual visibility, or a rule that turns eating into a scene with others. Food studies describe this practice as commensality, the act of eating together and the social order it can create, reinforce, or contest. But what matters here is not a specific dimension or the table's function, but the way a long surface holds difference, conversation, and silence; intimacy and distance; the decision to join and the right to hesitate.

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In recent years, food has taken on a renewed role within architecture, not simply as a program or typology, but as a shared spatial practice. Beyond restaurants or dining design, communal eating spaces are increasingly understood as environments where presence, ritual, and time intersect, allowing people to gather, stay, and coexist. In these settings, eating does not just happen within space; it actively shapes it, temporarily transforming ordinary, borrowed, or improvised environments into places of exchange.

This shift is visible across a wide range of built projects, installations, and community spaces that use shared meals as a way of bringing people together. Initiatives such as Fondo Supper Club frame dining as a social platform, using food to connect artists, designers, and local communities through conversation and collaboration. Similarly, sit.feast, presented during Milan Design Week 2024, approached the table as a spatial installation, one where sitting and eating together became the primary means of collectively producing space.

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Montreal, the second largest city in Canada is home to a wide array of heritage residential architecture, most of it dating to the 19th and early 20th-century. These are particularly abundant in some of its central neighborhoods like the Plateau Mont-Royal. Interestingly, their preservation is not accidental; it is the result of decades of advocacy by influential figures who recognized the value of the city's built environment, such as Phyllis Lambert and Blanche Lemco Van Ginkel. Efforts like theirs were instrumental in landmark preservation battles that helped to ensure current municipal support. Today, the city has implemented a set of comprehensive heritage protection laws designed to safeguard the integrity of the city's historic neighborhoods.

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City Science, a rapidly expanding profession, is the scientific study and engineering of urban systems. It uses advanced technologies, big data, and complex systems physics to tackle challenges such as decarbonization, mobility, and livability. At its core, city science is about data-driven solutions. It employs statistics, modeling, and artificial intelligence to reveal the hidden dynamics of cities, from energy use to human movement. It employs strategies that reduce carbon emissions, enhance efficiency, and foster urban environments that are more sustainable and resilient.

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The main role of architecture is to create structures that protect us from the environment and create spaces that are safe and comfortable for all types of needs and activities. By providing shelter, architecture also shapes the way people interact with their surroundings. Building technologies of the past rarely managed, however, to create a complete separation between us and the outside world.

While impermeability was a desired outcome, the porous building materials available always allowed some water, wind, or outside particles to leak into the interior spaces. In contrast, modern technologies now allow for almost completely impermeable building envelopes, allowing for complete separation between indoors and outdoors, thus relying on engineered systems to regulate temperature, airflow, or humidity. This article explores the differences between these two contrasting approaches, exploring how building facades are equipped to regulate indoor comfort and its environmental impact.

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Design disciplines, like user experience (UX) design, have evolved to excel at devising experiences that make digital interfaces navigable. They accomplish this through a deep understanding of user needs and by mapping user journeys with meticulous attention to detail. The city represents a physical interface experienced by multiple users - residents, tourists, people of various ages and genders each experiencing it uniquely. In a time where digital interfaces are crafted for frictionless user experiences, why do many cities remain challenging to navigate?

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Bathrooms play a significant role in our daily lives, serving multiple functions beyond basic hygiene. Research highlights their importance as relaxation, introspection, and personal wellness spaces. A bathroom's design and comfort can profoundly influence how we begin and end our day, framing our routines with a sense of ease or disruption. When traveling, hotel bathrooms often leave a lasting impression, as a well-designed and thoughtfully executed bathroom can significantly elevate the overall experience of a stay.

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In Canada, the tradition of owning a secondary home in the countryside is a deeply rooted aspect of the national culture. In Ontario and parts of the Maritimes, these nature-surrounded secondary homes are often called "cottages". In British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the term "cabin" is more common, while in Quebec, they are known as "chalets." Regardless of what they are called, these rural retreats offer Canadians an escape from urban life, a place to gather with friends and family, reconnect with nature and enjoy outdoor activities throughout the year.

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Today's population lives in large, vibrant, and sometimes chaotic cities. That’s why the most popular options involve escaping to natural settings such as remote forests, tropical jungles, or pristine beaches when choosing places to take a break from daily responsibilities and routines. For those seeking to disconnect completely from city life while staying closely connected to nature, small-scale hotels, cabins, and lodges are excellent options. Whether it’s a private vacation home or a cabin hotel, these accommodations are designed to make their natural surroundings their most important asset, allowing the buildings to blend seamlessly into the landscape.

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