Tag: institutional-architecture | ArchDaily

Frida Escobedo to Design Qatar’s New Ministry Building with Adaptive Reuse of a Modernist Landmark in Doha

Antonia Piñeiro — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 05:30:00 +0000

The State of Qatar announced on December 4, 2025, the selection of Frida Escobedo Studio, with Buro Happold engineers and Studio Zewde landscape designers, to design the new headquarters for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Intended to establish a more visible civic presence for the Qatari diplomatic service and provide public access to the Ministry complex, the project is planned for a prominent site along Doha's waterfront, transforming a significant section of the city's Corniche. Situated beside Doha Bay, the 70,000-square-meter (750,000-square-foot) project is conceived as a combination of new construction and the adaptive reuse of the historic modernist General Post Office currently on the site.

Creating Safe Spaces for Learning: Explore Solis Colomer Arquitectos' Educational Projects in Latin America

Moises Carrasco — Sat, 05 Jul 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Founded in 2002, Solis Colomer Arquitectos has established a strong reputation over the past two decades, designing and constructing projects with both social and commercial impact across Latin America. With over 200 completed works, the firm specializes in institutional architecture with social impact and user-centered commercial architecture. Its mission is clear: to use architecture as a tool to dignify the human experience, especially for those in greatest need.

Courtyardism: A Vision for a More Balanced Urban Future in the Greater Bay Area by Wang Weijen Architecture

Jonathan Yeung — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Situated in one of the fastest-developing regions over the past decade—the southern part of China, including Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area—urban growth has been driven by an overwhelming wave of commercial ambition. Projects here are often designed for maximum density, height, and efficiency, resulting in developments of enormous scale that can easily span several acres. Prioritizing transit-oriented development, these complexes frequently take the form of sprawling malls built directly above major transportation hubs. Designed to disorient and prolong foot traffic to encourage economic activities, these mega-structures have become commonplace in cities like Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

Brutalism and Bureaucracy: An Architectural Language of Authority in the Postwar United States

Olivia Poston — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 05:00:00 +0000

Brutalist architecture in the United States is a monument to collective postwar optimism and reassurance that the city and federal governments are in authority. Conceived as an embodiment of strength and efficiency, Brutalist structures were quickly adopted for the architectural language of civic and governmental institutions in the mid-to-late twentieth century in the United States. Towering monoliths of raw concrete rose across the nation, projecting an image of institutional permanence while simultaneously provoking debate over their social and psychological impact.

Architect and Educator Deborah Berke Receives the 2025 AIA Gold Medal

Maria-Cristina Florian — Tue, 17 Dec 2024 06:30:00 +0000

Influential figure Deborah Berke, FAIA, LEED AP, has been announced as the recipient of the 2025 AIA Gold Medal, in recognition of her four-decade career integrating design prowess, and academic leadership demonstrating social and environmental responsibility. Her work, encompassing residential, institutional, and adaptive reuse projects, demonstrates a commitment to sustainability and community engagement. Founding Deborah Berke Partners (now TenBerke) in 1982 and serving as the first female dean of the Yale School of Architecture, she has held various leadership positions within the architectural profession and contributed to discussions on design ethics, sustainability, and education.

Crafting Spatial Experiences: Service Design in Architecture

Ankitha Gattupalli — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 07:30:00 +0000

Architecture has the power to emotionally engage with its occupants. Tactfully crafted spatial moments extend architecture into experience design - a growing need in the experience economy. Through sensorial and intellectual stimulation, spaces can deeply connect with their occupants to result in memorable instances. The orchestration of an experience requires not only an understanding of spatial principles but also how the service of the space is designed.

The Important Role Libraries Play in Building a Creative and Innovative Society

Jullia Joson — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 06:30:00 +0000

As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in society. Foundational in creating opportunities for learning, as well as supporting literacy and education, the resources and services each library offers all work towards helping to shape new ideas that are central to building a creative and innovative society.

EVOA - Environmental Interpretation Center / Maisr Arquitetos

Javier Gaete — Sun, 13 Oct 2019 16:00:00 +0000

The building proposal aims to respect the programmatic requirements, developing a museum area, especially an interpretation area related to the observation of birds in their natural habitat, in parallel providing support for research and leisure.

Administration Extension / CRYSTALZOO

Daniel Sánchez — Sun, 19 May 2019 15:00:00 +0000

The program for the development of an administrative extension building can be understood as a tourist infrastructure with a socio-cultural character.

AD Classics: Salk Institute / Louis Kahn

Luke Fiederer — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 16:30:00 +0000

This article was originally published on August 27, 2017. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

In 1959, Jonas Salk, the man who had discovered the vaccine for polio, approached Louis I. Kahn with a project. The city of San Diego, California had gifted him with a picturesque site in La Jolla along the Pacific coast, where Salk intended to found and build a biological research center. Salk, whose vaccine had already had a profound impact on the prevention of the disease, was adamant that the design for this new facility should explore the implications of the sciences for humanity. He also had a broader, if no less profound, directive for his chosen architect: to “create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso.” The result was the Salk Institute, a facility lauded for both its functionality and its striking aesthetics – and the manner in which each supports the other.[1,2]

Chaoyang Future School / Crossboundaries

罗靖琳 - Jinglin Luo — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 22:00:00 +0000

Chaoyang Future School, in Beijing, is the latest iteration of Peking University’s pedagogic model for China’s future creators, in their continued exploration with Crossboundaries to manifest places and spaces that embody their collective vision.

These Images of Abandoned Insane Asylums Show Architecture That Was Designed to Heal

Isabella Baranyk — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 09:30:00 +0000

With cracked paint, overgrown vines, rust, and decay, abandoned buildings have carved out a photographic genre that plays to our complex fascination with the perverse remnants of our past. While intellectual interest in ruins has been recorded for centuries, the popularity and controversy of contemporary "ruin porn" can be traced back to somewhere around 2009, when photographer James Griffioen’s feral houses series sparked a conversation about the potential harm in the aesthetic appropriation of urban collapse.

TheeAe Unveils a Triangular Proposal for Australia’s Ryde Civic Center

Inez Vilar — Sat, 11 Jun 2016 08:00:00 +0000

TheeAe has revealed their competition entry for a new civic center in Ryde, Australia. As its name indicates, ‘Trianglemnant’ builds upon the unique triangular site area, and consists of a series of overlapping trilateral forms that shape the building and surrounding public spaces.

Head Office of AGC Glass Europe / SAMYN and PARTNERS

Karen Valenzuela — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 09:00:27 +0000

Landscape approach

AECOM's Basketball Training Facility Encases a Diverse Range of Program in LA

Patrick Kunkel — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 14:00:50 +0000

AECOM has designed a $42,000,000 campus and training facility for a professional basketball organization in West Los Angeles. The building contains a basketball arena, corporate headquarters, a hall of fame, and gardens, among other programs. Despite the building’s varied uses, AECOM was determined to make it “basketball centric.”

Sparkasse Bank / Dietger Wissounig Architekten

Cristian Aguilar — Sat, 13 Jun 2015 05:00:36 +0000

From the early stages of the competition for this bank building, there was a clear focus on contemporary architecture and sustainable building methods which could be completed in a short period of time, with a crucial aspect on the mixed usage of key spaces. The bank’s objective was to create a customer and employee-friendly, relaxed atmosphere not only through the building itself, but also by integrating a bakery with a café into the bank.

Zonic Vision Office / Stu/D/O Architects

Cristian Aguilar — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 20:00:39 +0000

With the attempt to reveal the agenda of the building through its skin, Stu/D/O Architects treated the Zonic Vision Office incommensurate to its intelligible names, Zonic and Vision; by transforming this Sound System and GPS provider company to become tangible. In term of Zonic, it gave a clarified definition of audible wave having a speed approaching in the air, meanwhile interpreting the meaning of Vision as the faculty of sight. Architecture, finally, was delivered by conformingsound to vision using the concept of the Equalizer. To reach people perception, Stu/D/O Architects turned this dynamic electronic signal of sound frequency components into architecture by using various intensity of the glazing façade.

Layerscape / Kiến Trúc O

Cristian Aguilar — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 18:00:41 +0000

The point to create architecture is to provide a habitable space for one to dwell within nature. The boundaries between man-made environment and nature must be in a coherent symbiosis. One must embrace the other and vice versa. The core principle of this project is to provide multiple transitional layers from inside out and outside in to achieve a soft and light spatial transparency. This spatial emergence is cultivated by deep understanding of local architecture, skillful composition of geometrical planes to create functional spaces with view and access in related to indoor and outdoor gardens. Thus, the boundaries exist in a dimension drawn by a blur line between inside, outside, man-made and nature.