Several factors influence the architecture of contemporary stores, including the evolution of retail, changes in consumer expectations, and the rise of e-commerce. Creating the physical space of a brand is an opportunity to offer an experience that conveys the values and image that the brand wishes to be associated with.
Housing is one of the primary aspects of the architecture profession. There are many ways to explore it, from a subordinate program such as a religious cloister to the splendor of a single-family home. Luis Fernández-Galiano is torn between the "waste" of a low-density area in this type of housing and its seductive formal charm. He reminds us that high-density collective housing, such as apartments, makes more sense in an urban context.
To think about how we inhabit is to think about architecture. If the primal need for shelter gave rise to the discipline, today, housing remains one of architects' most significant concerns. Providing comfort, seeking innovative materials, respecting memory, transforming culture - multiple layers intersect in a residence's design. Therefore, imagining the synthesis of the contemporary home is a great challenge. In search of new perspectives, we collaborated with Ulises Design Studio to understand how Artificial Intelligence (AI) perceives the contemporary home in the context of 15 different countries. Among data that touches on facts of reality and fiction, the pictures that emerge can bring inspiration and important reflections on spatial practice and the creation of its images.
Throughout history, the functional essence of bathrooms has remained unchanged due to their design being shaped by biological parameters. Initially, the function of bathrooms was solely related to hygiene and waste management, resulting in the conception of bathrooms as unhealthy and merely utilitarian spaces. This led to their separation from the rest of the spaces designated for coexistence.
However, the implementation of water supply systems and general drainage networks has vindicated the role of bathrooms in living spaces. They have acquired a primordial role in design proposals for interior design and reflect the user's personality through the combination of colors, coverings, accessories and decorative elements. In the evolution of bathroom design, proposals that stand out for their formal cleanliness, multiple nuances, subtle coexistence of elements, and customization possibilities have emerged. Brands like antoniolupi have developed bathroom furnishings that integrate these proposals and take the limits of design much further by collaborating with renowned architects and designers like Paolo Ulian, Brian Sironi, Luca Galofaro, and Mario Ferrarini, just to mention a few. Continuing with this series of collaborations, Carlo Colombo was in charge of developing Borderline.
Art Deco is an artistic and design style that emerged in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reaching its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. Although it's difficult to identify a single origin for Art Deco, it's believed that the style developed as a reaction against the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, which emphasized craftsmanship and naturalistic ornamentation. The style quickly spread throughout the world and had a major influence on architecture, interior design, fashion, and visual arts during the first half of the 20th century.
One of the most common decorative objects in projects, mirrors have existed since the Badarian civilization, around 4,000 BC. With several transformations in its material and manufacture, the mirror is a decorative object and can also serve as a design strategy.
Guest rooms, BBQ areas, party areas, and even libraries – a backhouse can have many uses. Common in many townhouses, this is a unique part of a residence that presents a certain freedom regarding the main program, which can be explored both with diverse uses and through the constructive solutions employed.
Light is part of various disciplines, shaping the world as we know it. In physics, it serves as a measure of speed and makes vision, and the recording of images by the eye and camera lens possible. Throughout art history, the representation of light - or its absence - has guided secular movements in various manifestations with equally different techniques and supports. This means that light - and its derivative shadow - can create environments, atmospheres and sensations, which can be perceived in objects and spaces. Light is also a part of architecture.
The first image that comes to mind when we think of an office is a place with a table and chair. But it was not always the case. In the Middle Ages, monasteries were the main places for study and knowledge, with private rooms designed to help monks concentrate when researching. However, records state that such spaces were uncomfortable since scholars remained standing most of the time.
The traditional architecture of the past can sometimes seem a long way from the modern, open-plan environments we enjoy today. But while some seemingly bygone upper-class room typologies like parlors, drawing rooms, and smoking rooms still exist by other names – dens, snugs, and man caves, to name a few – other architectural intricacies are more rarely replicated.
Back staircases, sculleries, and drying rooms, for example, were at one stage imperative for properties of a certain size and status to function. But just like a woolen jumper accidentally washed on the wrong setting, technology has reduced the size of laundry workspaces over the past century. Small homes like Under the Barao’s Sky Apartment in Sao Paolo, Brazil, for example, are now able to replace separate laundry rooms and pantries with all-in-one kitchen-diners that integrated small washing/drying appliances into an open kitchen layout, leaving more room for living.
Within various - if not all - architectural programs, there is a function that is an essential and common requirement: the bathroom. A residence, office, commercial space, theater, museum, religious space, park, or school can only be designed with it. In some countries, public toilets are part of urban infrastructure like public transport or waste collection. A fundamental human right, although denied to a considerable portion of the global population, the toilet follows a historical evolution. Modernity brought with it the separation between public and private, and the room became increasingly reserved in Western society.
Exposed pipes highlighted in architecture are not a novelty. Classics like Centre Pompidou and Sesc Pompeia already adopted infrastructure elements as objects that helped compose the building's aesthetics. Solutions inspired by the industrial architecture of the 50s, urging to remodel industrial sheds for other uses, made their facilities apparent to make the work more cost-effective and less complex. After a few decades, we find this idea at different scales.
Hidden in plain sight, ceilings are often the final surface interior designers and architects think about, but the expansive plane of unobstructed plaster or concrete offers mar more creative freedom than we realize. Modern design rules demand that the ceiling is kept clean. Not with a telescopic mop attachment, but by stripping off the popcorn spray, wood-chip wallpaper, or plaster patterning that haunt my own memories of ceilings-past.
While many clients greet this contemporary need for clean lines with acquiescence, choosing smooth, skimmed plaster finishes with unobtrusive yet forgetful recessed spots, other bolder clients recognize the ceiling’s potential for the creative outlet it is.
Glass is one of the most important discoveries of mankind. Originally used as a cutting tool, it has been around for about 75,000 years. The first records of glass making, however, date back to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian. Since then, the mastery of the manufacturing technique has been developing in different civilizations and nations until the Industrial Revolution popularized the material and allowed its production on a large scale. In architecture, glass was first used as a sealing element around 100 AD.
As trivial as the act of flipping a switch and lighting up a room may seem, we've had to come a long way to have safe and reliable light sources. It is estimated that the first lamps were invented 70,000 years ago, consisting of hollowed out stones or shells filled with an absorbent material soaked with animal fat that could be ignited. The Egyptians, on the other hand, used decorated ceramic vessels filled with oil, which provided a constant flame. Candles were popularized during the Middle Ages, made of tallow (animal fat) or beeswax, and could be burned in simple candlesticks and chandeliers. It was in the late 19th century that Thomas Edison and his team invented an incandescent light bulb that could be mass manufactured and was economically viable, soon becoming the dominant form of lighting for much of the 20th century. Although it was a revolutionary invention at the time, we are now aware that these lightbulbs are not very efficient, and they were eventually replaced by fluorescent and, more recently, LED bulbs. But if we have already advanced so much in such a short time, what can we expect for the future of lighting, and more specifically, how will our interiors be lit in a few years or decades?
Research by the Science Museum Group based on objects from different periods of UK history shows how their colors have transformed over time, leaving vibrant tones behind and becoming grayer every day.
Cat Sleeman examined more than seven thousand photographs of everyday objects from the Science Museum Group Collection in research funded by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Center (PEC). From cameras to lamps and other household objects, they were organized into 21 different categories according to their use. The analysis was carried out based on counting pixels of different colors and also addressed the shape of the objects.
Over the last few years, we have explored different ways of taking advantage of small spaces in residential architecture. From efficient furniture to kitchens with transformable systems to adapting essential household appliances, architects have begun looking for effective ways of optimizing scarce floor space or making spaces more flexible in multifunctional and mixed-use typologies.
The bed, as an indispensable element, is an essential consideration in these experiments. Its functions can be fulfilled without completely losing the valuable space it occupies, and the bedroom experience can be enriched with careful thought. How can we reinvent and take advantage of the opportunities of the traditional bed?
Lighting is often a numbers game — too much, and interiors lose their edge (literally), too little, and the dim atmosphere can make a space seem bland. Its importance in interior design cannot be overstated: done right, it not only accentuates a space's architectural features but also makes inhabitants feel at ease. As Carmelo Zappulla of Lighting Studio External Reference explains in a recent interview with Architonic, light is a crucial tool to add an emotional element and "animate a space." It follows that a lighting concept gone wrong can have catastrophic consequences for an otherwise perfectly designed room.
