"Without Great Architecture We Are Nothing": Behind the Scenes with Edmund Sumner

At ArchDaily, we always aspire to provide our community with all the tools and knowledge to help imagine, design, and build better cities. In order to bring inspiration and present more about what goes on beyond a complete project, we are launching a new series titled “Behind the Scenes”, where we showcase the work of visionary photographers, artists, and curators, and ask some questions that allow them to share more of what they do with the world. In every episode, we will be sharing with you the answers, along with images and videos of their work. 

Kadokawa Culture Museum / Kengo Kuma & Associates + KAJIMA DESIGN

The Kadokawa Culture Museum is a futuristic cultural labyrinth that agitates various binary oppositions brought by modern times, such as cities and suburbs, high culture and low culture, in a three-dimensional and cross-sectional.The site, the Musashino Plateau, was created by the collision of four tectonic plates surrounding Japan.

Kangaroo House / vvv

On the west side of the Place Hermann-Dumont, a complex of 3 houses, now protected, reflects an architectural project from the beginning of the 20th century. One of the three houses is located on the fold where the square meets the street. The Brussels typology then adapts to the contingencies of a corner plot. Today, the project is the starting point for a new reflection on living spaces. The living space is intended to have a ‘variable geometry’, allowing flexibility between common and private spaces, making it possible for several inhabitants to live together - a ‘kangaroo’ dwelling.

Ibexmuseum St. Leonhard / Atelier Köberl + Daniela Kröss Architektin

In a narrow valley in the Austrian alps, it was decided to build a small museum to tell the story of the extermination and the process of reintroduction of the ibex in this region. The indoor exhibition is completed with an outdoor enclosure for seven ibexes.

New Special Exhibitions Gallery / Carmody Groarke

The gallery is located on the lower ground floor of the New Warehouse, a Grade II listed structure, dating back to the 1880s. In the coming years, the museum aims to create stronger site-wide orientation and access between the existing historic buildings and spaces and its network of Victorian railway viaducts. The Special Exhibitions Gallery project creates a new visitor route, which links the Lower Yard with the busiest levels of the museum above. It also opens-up public access as a gallery space to this part of the museum’s globally significant site for the first time.

Merino Wool Center / Demo Arquitectos

This project consists of the design and builds of the ‘merino wool center’ pavilion in Marchigue, Chile. It was initially commissioned by a community of artisan women, ‘agrupación de artesanas ruta de la Lana merino’ among a region that draws upon a long-standing tradition and culture of merino wool weaving and knitting.

Unterholz and Oberholz Installations / Christoph Hesse Architects

Unterholz Installation. This installation is located on the multigenerational square of Referinghausen. In the lower part, seating possibilities for the young and elderly have been cut out from two concrete cubes. During the manufacture, the villagers attached old windows, doors, and memorabilia to the concrete formwork in order to leave a permanent imprint for future generations.

Brick Cave / H&P Architects

The house is located in a suburban commune of Hanoi which has undergone a rapid process of urbanization. It is designed in a philosophy that it will help shape a place similar to the natural environment in an artificial manner. The proposed structure of the house resembles that of a Cave. The overall structure is made up of and enclosed by two layers of brick wall meeting one another at an intersection, with alternate ‘green’ arrangements of plants and vegetables. Bricks have long been a familiar local material and widely used in rural areas of Vietnam with a simple manual construction method.

Los Terrenos / Tatiana Bilbao

The site of Los Terrenos is nearby Casa Ventura is located in a residential zone adjacent to the southwest side of Monterrey, it’s a highland forested zone. The housing program is fragmented according to each component’s function and role within the site, but they are all enclosed in a perfect square in the general plan. Each volume located in the corners, surrounding an organic shaped pool.

The Almost Invisible School / ABLM arquitectos

In the metropolitan area of ​​the city of Salamanca, the municipality of Villares de la Reina stands out for its transformation during the last decades as it has one of the industrial estates of the city. The changes have partly disfigured the scale and transformed the material landscape conditions.

M Woods Entrance Revitalization / Vector Architects

M Woods Entrance Revitalization is an urban renewal project in Beijing 798 Art Zone. The site was an abandoned industrial warehouse originally and it was used as an art museum since two years ago. The museum operators expect to have a façade and entrance renovation in order to refine visiting experience, and to improve the recognition of the museum’s public image.

Bat Trang House / VTN Architects

The project is situated in a unique location of Bat Trang Town – a pottery village that has been around for more than 10 decades. The façade of the building represents the community’s unique culture of ceramic pottery making. While the exterior was inspired by the traditional beauty of the town, the interior ensured the convenience and comfort of today’s modern life. The spatial arrangement of the house was also based on the owner’s ideal home, where nature intertwines with other functions of the house.

Ovoid House / Greyscale Design Studio

Ovoid - the name comes from the egg shaped pillars that stretch across the front deck. This holiday home nestled in the greenest depth of "The Coffee brewing and Co." coffee estate, is a contemporary adaptation of the local architecture with pitched roofing. the design stemmed from the basic brief of, flowing with the land topography and creating the entire structure so that its within the foliage height.

House of Wisdom Library and Cultural Center / Foster + Partners

Located on the Sharjah International Airport Road, ten kilometres from the city centre, the two-storey building embodies a sense of clarity and lightness, with a large floating roof cantilevering on all sides of a transparent rectilinear volume. The 15-metre-wide overhang shades the façades throughout most of the day, while fixed aluminium screens with differing densities filter the low sun in the evenings. Movable bamboo screens at a low level are deployed by the building users, to provide privacy or to control glare. When not in use the bamboo screens are left open, preserving the visual connections with the landscaped gardens.

Monolocale Effe Apartment / Archiplanstudio

A small volume, which contains the bed, is located inside the unified interior space of the apartment and it defines its own hierarchy and path.

Xerolithi House / Sinas Architects

The main focus of the design was to create a house that blends in its natural environment. An environment comprised of steep dirt and gravel slopes, dressed with scattered wild thorny bushes, and beautiful large rock formations. Though the most important existing elements, were the short stone retaining walls, locally called xerolithies, created a long time ago for land cultivation purposes.

The Hill House Box Museum / Carmody Groarke

The Hill House is one of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s most significant works, one of Scotland's most acclaimed buildings, and a seminal part of early 20th century European architecture. Built in 1902 for the publisher Walter Blackie and his young family, it is sited in Helensburgh, 30km west of Glasgow, and commands panoramic views south over the River Clyde estuary.