When examining photos of Japanese houses, one frequently notices a recurring space with tatami mats, often slightly elevated and integrated into the public areas of the home. This is the washitsu, or Japanese-style room: a traditional, multipurpose space still commonly found in modern residential architecture. Used for activities ranging from reading and sleeping to hosting a family altar, its versatility is central to its continued relevance. This article explores the Washitsu's layout and meaning, beginning with its historical origins to better understand its role and interpretation in contemporary Japanese homes.
As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly embedded in society, it's essential to pause and reflect on the foundations that sustain it—and the dimensions to which it extends. At the heart of AI's learning are datasets, whose structure and content shape how these systems interpret and respond to the world. This reliance creates a deep interdependence—one that not only informs AI's capabilities but also defines its potential blind spots. In light of this, we must ask: What forms of understanding might this process exclude, especially those not easily captured in digital form?
https://www.archdaily.com/1030019/vernacular-building-and-ai-can-data-alone-bridge-the-gapEnrique Tovar
The 2025 Pritzker Prize has been awarded this year to Chinese Architect Liu Jiakun. Born in Chengdu in 1956, he grew up in the densifying city, before attending and graduating from the Chongqing Architecture and Engineering College (Chongqing University) in 1982 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Architecture, and becoming one of the first college graduates to be tasked with rebuilding the country during the Chinese transition period. However, it wasn't until many years later that the architect understood that "the built environment could be used as a medium for personal expression". It was then that his endeavors and career took off, with Liu Jiakun starting his practice in 1999, and participating in more collaborative works across China and Europe. Based on his experiences, his works are anchored in his understanding of reality and a respect towards China's multi-traditional history and internal diversity; all while achieving a seamless balance between architecture and nature, tradition and modernity.
These concepts do not obstruct his consciousness of human needs and the importance of community spaces. Through his projects, Liu Jiakun proves that spaces can affect human behavior and become positively evocative. A public space such as those he's created can be conducive to a benevolent atmosphere that provides rest and collaboration. "such as my pursuit of narrative and poetry in design." The comprehensiveness of Liu Jiakun's works makes it easy not to be constrained by stylistic or aesthetic limitations or requirements. He just follows what the site, natural landscape, pre-existing urban frame, and citizen needs might require. The physical result is a mix of all of these with the predominant vernacular traditions.
Over the last eight years, I have interviewed Beijing-based architect and educator Zhu Pei several times. His persistent quest to combine traditional planning and construction principles with innovative formal and spatial sensibilities intrigues me. His latest projects, including Zijing International Conference Camp (2022) and Jingdezhen Imperial Kiln Museum (2020), are widely published and represent his most mature works. Yet, he is convinced that his best building is in the making. "This is going to be amazing! I feel so excited!" the architect told me, referring to his now under-construction Majiayao Ruins Museum and Observatory in Gansu province in Northwestern China. "I hate column-beam solutions. I want column-free spaces for the public building," he continued. Our conversation took place earlier this year on a video call, complete with dozens of relevant illustrations.
Muraba and RCR Arquitectes, recipients of the 2017 Pritzker Prize, have collaborated on Muraba Veil, a modern architectural project in Dubai that aims to incorporate traditional elements alongside contemporary innovation. This 380-meter-high tower is the latest result of a decade-long partnership between Muraba, a Dubai-based developer, and RCR Arquitectes, a Spanish architectural firm. The project introduces a skyscraper designed to engage with the local environment and culture, seeking to combine modern architectural techniques with regional heritage.
Reflecting on the past is often viewed as nostalgia or, from a more critical standpoint, as a sign of regression. However, looking back can offer valuable insights into a society that sometimes appears overly focused—if not obsessed—with the future and technology. In architecture, this reflection allows us to reconnect with our roots and appreciate the knowledge accumulated over generations. It invites us to explore how our ancestors designed durable structures adapted to their environment. Refined through centuries of observation, experimentation, and likely even errors, these systems demonstrate a profound understanding of local materials and building techniques.
https://www.archdaily.com/1020943/heritage-in-mud-stone-and-reeds-rediscovering-ancestral-construction-techniquesEnrique Tovar
The Climat de France is a French colonial social housing project in Algeria designed by Fernand Pouillon and currently renamed Oued Koriche. Located approximately 8km west of the country’s capital, Algiers, it was built from 1954 to 1957, right in the middle of the Algerian War of Independence. The project has several buildings with different scales. Its most prominent structure is a large rectangular building that houses 3000 dwellings, along with a spacious interior square similar to a Roman forum and exterior windows inspired by the mosaics found in Islamic architecture.
This social housing scheme has a complex history, involving the integration of Algerians into the French lifestyle, the use of modern architecture to challenge traditional Muslim ways of living, and the transformation of its collective square into a site of protest and rebellion.
By imagining an alternative reality and rediscovering his cultural background, architect Jae Kyung Kim of JK-AR established his identity as an architect when creating his practice, selected as one of ArchDaily’s New Practices 2023. After studying and working in South Korea and the US, he’d noticed an absence of traditional Asian architecture, which had peaked his interest. He began to thoroughly look at a possibility where the traditional timber buildings of East Asia had still been relevant and continued to evolve.
ATELIER XI has been selected for ArchDaily's 2023 New Practices and is one of the few firms still rooted in traditional architectural design. Founded in 2017, ATELIER XI began their practice in Shenzhen, one of the fastest-growing and urbanizing cities in China. Their work represents the current state of a generation of architects, with major projects in small-scale urban architecture, exhibition design, interior design, renovation, and rural architecture. While they may not become urban landmarks, they can still influence the lifestyle of the community through small-scale design.
The studio aspires to create spaces that bring unique poetry and profoundness to contemporary urban and rural environments: "We see architecture as an art of mediation between social, economic, and political interests. We strive to create meaningful places with minimal resources. We aim to convey emotions and memories through spatial poetry. We believe that each space, whether grand or tiny, offers a glimpse into the vastness of our world and serves as a testament to the glory of everyday life. By planting these quiet and resilient spaces one at a time, we envision architecture branching out and flourishing with life and narratives."
https://www.archdaily.com/1007149/how-to-challenge-the-design-brief-an-interview-with-atelier-xi韩双羽 - HAN Shuangyu
Courtesy of interplay+komy | Polish Pavilion Expo 2025
Interplay has just revealed the design for Poland’s Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Kansai. Commissioned by the Polish Investment and Trading Agency, the project is responding to the theme of the upcoming Expo, “Designing Future Society for Our Lives.” The Polish Pavilion was born from the studio’s fascination with spirals, specifically the shape’s use in different scales, from “protein molecules to the structure of galaxies.” Serving as a symbol of Polish ingenuity, the geometric-patterned pavilion aims to extend its influence beyond national boundaries.
African societies' cultures are intrinsically linked to color. From fabrics to clothing, products, sculptures, and architecture, various societies explore rich and vibrant colors that are vivid, expressive, and joyful. Through different shades, hues, contrasts, motifs, and ornamentations, colors are embraced as an unspoken language, a palette for storytelling, and a sense of cultural identity. Although the use of color in African societies may seem decorative on the surface, it is extremely symbolic, with a deep sense of history behind it. Traditional African architecture is a prime example. Ethnic societies have endowed their homes with color through ornaments and motifs, expressed it with religious and cultural patterns, employed it on facades to tell familial stories, and created labyrinths of communal architecture that not only celebrate color but explore its ethnic meaning.
In the south of Burkina Faso, sharing borders with the northern environs of Ghana is Tiébélé; a small village exhibiting fractal patterns of circular and rectangular buildings, housing one of the oldest ethnic groups in West Africa; the Kassena tribe. With vernacular houses dating back to the 15th century, the village’s buildings strike a distinctive character through its symbol-laden painted walls. It is an architecture of wall decoration where the community uses their building envelope as a canvas for geometric shapes and symbols of local folklore, expressing the culture’s history and unique heritage. This architecture is the product of a unique form of communal collaboration, where all men and women in the community are tasked with contributing to the construction and finishing of any new house. This practice serves as a transmission point for Kassena culture across generations.
"Indigenous technologies are not lost or forgotten, only hidden by the shadow of progress in the most remote places on Earth". In her book Lo-TEK: design by radical indigenism, Julia Watson proposes to revalue the techniques of construction, production, cultivation and extraction carried out by diverse remote populations who, generation after generation, have managed to keep alive ancestral cultural practices integrated with nature, with a low environmental cost and simple execution. While modern societies tried to conquer nature in the name of progress, these indigenous cultures worked in collaboration with nature, understanding ecosystems and species cycles to articulate their architecture into an integrated and symbiotically interconnected whole.
Chashitsu, which is the Japanese term for a teahouse or tea room is a construction specifically designed for holding the Tea Ceremony, a traditional Japanese ritual in which the host prepares and serves tea for guests. Teahouses are usually small, intimate wooden buildings, where every detail is intended to help withdraw the individual from the material disturbances of the world.
https://www.archdaily.com/962113/teahouses-reinterpretation-of-traditional-spacesClara Ott
Mar del Plata is Argentina's second-largest tourist hub, just behind the capital, Buenos Aires, and sees its population swell by nearly 300% in the summer months. To accommodate this influx of visitors, a large portion of the city's real estate is dedicated to hotels and short-term rentals and this had led to a colorful and varied architectural landscape.
To illustrate, as well as celebrate, this diverse and ever-changing architectural tradition, audiovisual media producer Obralinda initiated the Arqmardelplata project, a visual compilation of Mar del Plata's architecture that allows viewers to discover the wide range of styles found throughout the city—from the historic, to the sacred, to the residential, to the everyday, and to the anonymous.
Throughout history, sunshades--light-weight screens typically made of interwoven wooden reeds--have been the go-to method of sun protection and temperature control for dwellings across civilizations, especially those located in tropical and Mediterranean climates. While offering protection from the sun's heat and rays, sunshades also allow air to permeate, making them an effective and economical cooling system for interior spaces.
Argentina's Patagonia region is a vast swath of land that spans the provinces of Chubut, Neuquén, Río Negro, Santa Cruz, Tierra del Fuego, and even parts of La Pampa, Mendoza, and Buenos Aires. Although it is the largest region within the country, it is also the least populated and, therefore, markedly rural and isolated. This isolation forms the basis for Thibaud Poirier 's“Houses of Patagonia”, where he offers a visual registry of the houses found throughout the region in an attempt to capture the similarities that define the region's architectural style.
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