Iceland’s KEF International Airport is imagined as an architectural rendering of a fjord — a stream with angular cliffs on either side. Embedded into the landscape, the central building (the “stream,” if you will) takes its inspiration from the traditional Icelandic turf house. This wending, low-slung volume, made of concrete and steel and capped with […]

Merging ancient Middle Eastern building methods with modern technology, the Kooshk Research Pavilion began with 163 metric tonnes of sandbags arranged in a series of mounds. Workers then layered concrete on top of this undulating topography. When the sandbags were finally removed, what remained was a suite of nine interconnected domes, each between two and […]

The beloved tale of the three little pigs is basically a parable about architecture — and the importance of material considerations within the profession. The pigs seek to build homes that will protect them from a marauding wolf, the first two using precarious straw and wood, the third erecting an indestructible brick hut. For the […]

For Presence, at the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, artist Daan Roosegaarde transformed a gallery into an immersive, digitally mediated universe where visitors interact with their environment in unique — and often unpredictable — ways. In one room, they roll tiny luminous bulbs, which leave a trail of light on the ground. In another, they […]

Conventional agriculture is depleting global resources at an alarming rate. The industry uses half of the world’s habitable land and a third of its fresh water. To find a solution, Simon David, founding principal of the New York firm OSD Outside, looked to an unlikely inspiration: the big-box store. Because they are high-volume, high-concentration units, […]

In its initial incarnation, the design for the Bellechasse Transport Centre in Montreal centred on a 20-metre high edifice. But then Lemay had an idea: Why not dig down instead of building up? In the new version — an 87,000-square metre transport hub, home to a fleet of electric and hybrid buses — all the […]

From a distance, Off Plaza might look like a particularly elegant exemplar of your typical Montreal “plex” — a boxy duplex or triplex. But a closer look reveals that there’s more going on. The bottom level of the plaza is a commercial property made with steel beams and columns and bisected into two units. On […]

The library gets a jolt of energy in this brilliant project by ALA Architects, the winner in Architecture: Buildings Over 1,000 Square Metres.

Protecting the sand dunes of coastal China, this art museum by OPEN Architecture in the winner in Architecture: Buildings Under 1,000 Square Metres.

Nestled into its urban context, this Notting Hill home by Gianni Botsford is the winner in Architecture: Single-Family Houses.