Layering Courtyard in Beijing, China by ARCHSTUDIO.Pierced with sunlight and armoured with bamboo and natural timber, Layering Courtyard by ARCHSTUDIO is the modern reinvention of a traditional industrial building and quadrangle near Beijing’s historic Qianmen gate. In the first half...
Alvaro Siza Vieira’s New Church of Saint-Jacques de la Lande in Rennes, France.Pritzker Prize-winning Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza Vieira has designed a beautiful, light-filled church for Rennes’ outer suburbs. Alvaro Siza Vieira's Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande will be the first church built in Brittany, France...
110 Rooms: MAIO Architects’ Jaw-Dropping Apartment Building in Barcelona.Some projects just make you sit up straight in your chair, stop whatever else you were trying to do at the time, and pay close attention. This is exactly what happened when I first came across this residential building in Barcelona...
#YellowtraceTravels: Katamama Bali.The 1.5 million special Indonesian bricks that make up Katamama all seem to converge at the entrance. The arrival feels as though it was designed to literally pull you into a mini textural vortex. But of course, these are no ordinary...
Marble-Made Tent in the Galaxy: Romola Restaurant in Madrid by Andres Jaque.Bursting from the former garage space of a 40s-era Luis Gutiérrez Soto building in Madrird, Romola Restaurant immediately reminds me of the jade powder room in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. Its futurist...
Do-C Ebisu Tokyo Capsule Hotel Renovation by Schemata Architects.Would you tuck into a 2x1m fiberglass box for a night’s sleep? Capsule hotels—where rows of single-bed-sized rooms are stacked on top of one another, were born out of Osaka in the late 1970s, and are a part of a sort of bare...
Stage of Forest: Ski Pavilion at Songhua Lake Resort of Jilin, China by META-Project.Designed by Beijing-based META-Project, this mountainside structure looks like a villain’s secluded lair in a James Bond film. Its purpose in reality, however, is a lot less foreboding. Peering over the icy Songhua Lake from a...
Sky Club House by DOMANI is the Fanciest Gym Ever.Gyms, fitness clubs, and yoga studios were once architectural wastelands. Now though, so many are being created with design as a defining element. A fresh example of the new-age luxury, supremely stylish health centre is the new Sky Club...
Duplex Tibbaut in Barcelona, Spain by Raúl Sánchez.Maybe the most striking element of Raúl Sánchez’s Duplex Tibbaut in downtown Barcelona is its bold spatial definition—a trick the Spanish architect seems to enjoy. Using geometry and a helping of buttery gold and charcoal black...
