Combining balletic gracefulness with bracing originality, the Leeza SOHO in the Fengtai business district of Beijing comprises two “halves of a tower” (both with grade-A office space) within a single shell. The exterior bulges and narrows thanks to custom-designed stepped windows that vary in size and shape, while inside the two tower halves appear to […]

Tradition and innovation collide at the MOMA Lotus Resort, a 2,850-square-metre retreat with meditation spaces, meeting halls and tea rooms, located near Mount Jiuhua, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in China’s Anhui Province. Lacime Architects committed, for the most part, to using clean lines, as evidenced by the grey brick walls, the simple wooden soffits and […]

With an undulating roofline that appears as if it’s sculpted from clay, the Ayla Golf Academy and Clubhouse in Aqaba, a coastal city in Jordan, is a feat of sophisticated engineering executed by artisanal means. After teaching local workers shotcrete pouring techniques, the firm and its on-site team then cast the curvaceous structure, which is […]

Your typical penitentiary is a grim, fortified edifice far removed from community and culture. Not so the Minimum-Security Prison of Nanterre, a suburb of Paris. Located in a mixed-use neighbourhood, the 4,350-square-metre building is surprisingly congenial. It’s clad in perforated weathering steel, and the interior palette consists of lacquered aluminum and fine mineral plaster — […]

A quartet of seven-metre-tall huts, BAAQ’s Casa Naila sits atop a concrete plinth on a 250-square-metre beach property in Oaxaca. Each box is distinctively wrapped, partially by concrete walls and partially by slatted palm wood enclosures supported by wooden framing. This vernacular building technique, which allows cross ventilation and natural light to filter through, is […]

Like a painting by Agnes Martin, Casa Cosmos by S-AR is a grid formation imposed on a varied landscape — a scrubby plot in Oaxaca, Mexico, near the Pacific Coast. At the heart of this 100-square-metre dwelling, a concrete cube divided into quadrants contains a living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. Surrounding this inner core […]

The Double Header House in British Columbia’s capital is unlike any other duplex you’ve seen. Architect D’Arcy Jones was commissioned to build two connected units for a multi-generational family, but neither of the obvious approaches was satisfactory: A stacked arrangement would mean that only one unit could have access to the ground, whereas a side-by-side […]

The Boulder House is a deft response to a seemingly impossible brief: to create a home for an actor couple in Seoul’s trendy Gangnam neighbourhood that gives the clients maximum privacy. For inspiration, architect Junsang You looked not to the modular towers or manicured residences of the surrounding streetscape but rather to a more ancient […]

Redfern Warehouse The past lives of the Redfern Warehouse, in Sydney, Australia, built at the beginning of the 20th century, are many: It has served as a gas-meter factory, a Vegemite producer and an art gallery. Then, local architect Ian Moore was commissioned to adapt it for a  family of four. He retrofitted the bottom […]

Architecture and interior design come together as a harmonious whole at this residence in Toronto. By offsetting the upper volume of the home at its apex and slicing the roof with a wraparound skylight, Akb has not only created a unique building that stands out from — yet is respectful of — its context; it […]