On InstagramSee every project featured on the ArchDaily Instagram account

MAD Architects, led by Ma Yansong, has completed the restoration and reconstruction of a 305 sqm traditional courtyard house that dates back to the Qing Dynasty. “Hutong Bubble 218” is a continuation of MAD’s exploration into urban renovations as a means of revitalizing the Chinese capital’s old neighborhoods that have been confronted with degradation and demolition as a result of rapid development. MAD’s renovation demonstrates how small-scale, artistic interventions can provide new spaces and programs for these adverse areas, creating a dialogue between the old and the new.

The project, called Chalet Blanc, was born from the idea of a young couple who decided to build a small sustainable chalet at the foot of the Cervino. The building is made with a prefabricated wooden structure and reinterprets the ancient chalet in a contemporary way. The volume of the house is characterised by the inverted “W” roof, which is a tribute to the skyline and the majesty of the peaks that crown the valley, and represents the attempt to initiate a direct dialogue with the wonder of the surrounding nature.

Skyler Dahan, an LA-based photographer, has captured Frank Lloyd Wright's Civic Center, in Marin County. Shot on Kodak Portra film with a Contax 645 medium format camera, the series of images highlight Frank Lloyd Wright's latest commission. Serving as a justice hall, the project was actually completed by Wright's protégé Aaron Green after the architect’s death.

The house is designed for young couples. After the outside activities, they demand a quiet and peaceful space. The Hut is located far away from the center, but is nestled in a developing area. The green spaces disappear due to urbanization, pose a question for us to bring the balance back.

Aldeburgh Music's new creative campus at Snape Maltings opened to the public on May 9th. The project, part of a phased development of grade 2 listed 19th century maltings buildings at the edge of the Suffolk marshes, brings a range of derelict granaries and kilns into use as rehearsal and occasional public performance spaces grouped around a communal foyer. The centrepiece of the project is a new build orchestral rehearsal room, the Britten Studio, designed to complement the nearby concert hall (by Arup Associates, completed in 1970). The rehearsal room incorporates retractable seating for 350, enabling it to be used as a public venue.  A second space, the Jerwood Kiln Studio, was converted from a derelict kiln and can also accommodate public performances when required.  The central foyer and technical get in was formed from an existing granary sandwiched between older structures, its eccentric timber roof adapted and a new concrete mezzanine installed.

Videos

On the Formosa island amongst the northern mountain ranges, where a lake vanished and the basin under revealed, a city was built and thrived. Situated at the most cosmopolitan district of Taipei city, Xinyi District, the project sits over twenty stories above the ground inside of a new residential tower, looking out to the prominent Taipei 101 building and distant mountain ranges, and beholding the intertwining skylines of the soft-edged landscape and the growing cityscape.

Located off the Charles Malek Avenue in an eastern district of Beirut, PH-13 crowns the building in which it is housed. Though it sits well above the bustle of the dense area in which it is situated, it does not seek to escape the urban fabric of its city, but rather embraces it.

Amore Pacific is a brand of cosmetics, products used in industrial quantities by oriental women to enhance their beauty, hide imperfections or to deepen the whiteness of their skin, a sign of nobility and beauty, like the gaja* whose white features, charm and musical sensibility turned her into an object of cult and desire.

Situated on Ticino's rocky peaks are the historic Medieval Castles of Bellinzona: Montebello, Sasso Corbaro, and Castelgrande. And while all three castles and their fortifications have become part of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, it is not only the ancient walls that leave visitors enchanted, but the gateways that leads to them.

Videos

Nikola-Lenivets is a small Russian village located in the Kaluga Region, not too far from Moscow, where artist Nikolay Polissky created one of the largest art parks in Europe. The area of 650 ha serves as an experimental ground for visual arts, architecture, music, and theatre. Having engaged the village community, Nikolay created a world-famous landmark with a steady flow of tourists that contributes to local employment. The park regularly hosts large-scale festivals, and Archstoyanie is, probably, the best known among them.

At the Quai aux Pierres de Taille, a former quay of the no longer existing harbour of Brussels, surrounded by old warehouses and next to the Royal Flemish Theatre, a 60’s office tower rises above its neighbours. The style and scale of the construction contrast with the local urban fabric, but thanks to its perpendicular implantation to the street the tower remains discreet and often unnoticed. The project profoundly transformed this building into a mixed-use complex comprising 130 units divided in a variety of dwellings ranging from compact smart studios to generous 3 bedrooms apartments. 

We had been developing many houses in sloped sites and the main issue in all of them was the connection with the land. That was what this client asked us to continue and emphasize for his project. They wanted a house connected with the ground and with the context but saving privacy, obviously privileging the sea views, but also the landscape of the hills behind. The challenge of the site was to work with the slope (20% average). Besides the connection with the ground, that is an architectonic issue, we must be able to solve technical problems such as the management of rain waters or the contention of the ground by proposing creative architectural solutions.