Magazine

Designed by the Tokyo-based firm KMDW, the Veneer House is a self-build plywood house. KMDW designed and built the first Veneer House to serve as a community center for Minamisanriku, in Miyagi Prefecture, after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami devastated the town. The firm has since built similar...

In 2013 the Saint Louis Art Museum opened its East Building addition designed by London's David Chipperfield Architects. Recently eMagazine Editor in Chief John Hill visited the building, filing this report.

"Tapioca Space" is how SsD (Single Speed Design - the firm of Jinhee Park and John Hong) creatively describe the in-between spaces of this Micro-Housing project they realized in Seoul, Korea. In addition to these small spaces that create the potential for shared connections...

On 1 May 2015 the Pulitzer Arts Foundation opened with an expanded building and a new name. Previously known as the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, the institution that calls itself "a sanctuary for the ever-evolving experience of art" opened in 2001 in a building...

A thin undulating roof caps the Visitor Center that Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed for Vanke and its Pearl Hill Preserve development in Qingdao, China. The form mimics the surrounding natural landscape, while the roof and its supports serve as a contemporary interpretation of...

In a list of building types that are the least regarded architecturally, surely gas stations are present if not right at the top. Design seems to be set aside in favor of economy and signage, but the redesign of Rompetrol's Litro stations by Eight Inc. admirably combines formal minimalism...

On top of running her eponymous New York architecture studio, Toshiko Mori is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where she formerly served as chair. Following a conversation with a friend at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation she gave her GSD students a project for a...

What started as an effort to provide bicycles for some children in Zambia turned into something more substantial: a school, a health clinic, teacher housing, and landscaping on 100 acres in Chipakata Village. Designed by a trio of New York architects – Susan Rodriguez, Frank Lupo,...

Vector Architects from Beijing have designed a new library situated right on the beach on the north Chinese coast. The solid concrete block looks surreal in its natural environment. The site at Nandaihe is south of the established resort of Beidaihe, where in colonial times foreigners established...

REX's design of a building for two companies – Vakko and Power Media – in Istanbul is built upon two projects: one, an old design by the Brooklyn-based architects, and two, the physical concrete frame of an unfinished hotel on the site. The architects explain the complex yet...

Architect Kazuhiko Kishimoto of the Kanagawa-based firm acaa designed this wood-framed ranch-style home in the snowy city of Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture. In order to adapt the home to the region’s harsh winter climate, Kishimoto says he took particular care in designing the structure and...

"Cultural design collaboration" is not seen typically in a list of an architect's consultants, but it makes perfect sense here, given the client's mandate that the new terminal at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport embodies "the heritage of India and the...

Opening fifteen minutes early might not seem like much when it comes to a building, but when considered as a piece of an Expo – an event that often sees pavilions being worked on after the gates open – it is quite an undertaking. But it is only one among many for the USA Pavilion...

Designed by Tokyo-based Love Architecture, House in Yagumo combines a rich sense of nature with Tokyo’s big-city setting. Architect Yukio Asari incorporates natural elements like light, shadow, and breezes into his designs and utilizes organic building materials, rooting his work in...

In 2009 Steven Holl Architects won a two-stage competition for a building to house the Glasgow School of Art's design department. Located across the street from Charles Rennie Mackintosh's 1909 Arts and Crafts landmark, Holl responded through contrast – glass instead of stone...

The glass box is the default form for office buildings in the 21st century, meaning that detailing and articulation – glass surfaces, spandrels, and mullions – are the most important means of expression. But what if a glass box is malleable? Handel Architects' design for...

Often the best buildings aren't the most flashy or iconic; they are the ones that fit into a city so well they seem to be forever a part of it. This isn't to say that Mecanoo's design for the offices of the Boston Public Schools Division doesn't have contemporary flourishes...

The flowing, perforated facade is the first thing that attracts attention in this expansion to the Central World Shopping Center in Bangkok. But a glance beyond the facade reveals flowing internal spaces – indoor and outdoor – that give cohesion to the project and some legitimacy...

Designed by Akio Nakasa of naf architect & design, Arch Wall House makes use of the curved walls that are a common theme in much of the firm’s work. Here, an arch both separates and links two homes: a single-story residence for a woman living alone, and a two-story residence for a...

The use of hot springs for wellbeing and medical care is an age-old practise in China. The new Ruff Well Water Resort designed by Shanghai-based architects AIM is an outstanding example of how that practise is reflected in contemporary society, particularly in new facilities for the urban...

Parking garages are a necessary evil in cities, particularly in an auto-centric metropolis like Los Angeles. Yet while most garages are bland additions to cityscapes, they can also be canvases for creative expression, as in the case of this colorful structure designed by Behnisch Architekten...

In June 2013, Women for Women International opened the first-ever Women’s Opportunity Center in Kayonza, Rwanda, "to create economic opportunity and rebuild social infrastructure for women," according to the organization that began working in the country in 1997, three years...

The 2015 Building of the Week feature on American-Architects is focusing on U.S. architects building overseas, so it's not surprising to see the importance of collaboration coming to the fore. The Melbourne School of Design is a particularly good example of this, since it is the result...

Tokyo-based Komada Architects Office designed this two-story wood-frame residence in a new residential development in Chiba Prefecture. By including a narrow band of windows between the top of the walls and the roof on both the first and second stories, the architects gave the building a feeling...

Harumi is an artificial island built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay that saw the development of office and residential towers starting in the 1990s. That development will no doubt continue as the island is the site of the Olypmic Village for the 2020 Olympic Games. The announcement of...

Al Maryah Island (formerly known as Sowwah Island) is a 114-hectare mixed-use development that serves as Abu Dhabi's International Financial Center. A key portion of the development is the five-building Abu Dhabi Global Market Square designed by Chicago's Goettsch Partners. The...

Boston's MASS Design Group burst onto the architecture scene with the 2011 completion of the Butaro Hospital in Rwanda. Their design responded to the African context through a grouping of buildings perched upon a hilltop, while the interiors addressed disease and patient comfort through...

In recent decades cities in China have grown at a tremendous speed. On their peripheries new real estate developments have produced huge housing complexes with uniform appearances. Many of these developments are a kind of speculative investment and as a result millions of the apartments are...

In recent years, architectural practice has undergone deep transformations. In countries with a strong artisan tradition, as is the case of Spain, the old model of studying architecture that could lead to being in charge of projects of very different scales has been substituted by vast...

Architect Zoka Zola may be based in Chicago, but her roots go back to Croatia, specifically to Rijeka, the country's third largest city. So it's fitting that one of her most recent projects took the architect back to her city of birth to design affordable housing after a competition...

Designed by Hiroshima-based architecture firm Keisuke Kawaguchi +K2-DESIGN, Locomotive Hills is an adult day service center located partway up a gently sloping, forested hill. The shape of the building itself is patterned on a hill and is designed to continue the thread of green through the city....

Bernard Tschumi was born in Switzerland, where he studied architecture, and burst onto the architecture scene in the 1980s with his competition-winning design for a park in Paris, but he is associated with New York, where his practice is based. These days much of his work is back in Europe,...

A few years ago Architectural Record asked, "Is Vietnam the new frontier for architects?" The article referenced projects by large corporate offices underway at the time, but it also mentioned a couple buildings designed by Carlos Zapata Studio; its 2010 Bitexco Financial...

University Town is a new campus for the National University of Singapore that recently opened near its Kent Ridge Campus. The large expansion consists of a number of components, including the university's Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise (CREATE), which...

The spatial and administrative separation of Paris from its suburbs is one of the permanent problems that plagues the metropolis. An intelligent project that combines transport and leisure functions contributes to overcoming the barriers created by the ring motorway.

Santa Monica, California's Brooks + Scarpa headed south of the border to carry out an industrial building with the firm's signature emphasis on sustainability and bold design. Most striking are the perforated skin and jagged roofline, which filter light and views, bring in plenty of...