A Brutalist Landmark and Skateboarding Mecca in London Is Restored
The Southbank Centre's famous Undercroft was a global destination for skateboarders, though it was threatened by closure and decay.
Author: George Kafka
How Humanity Mapped the Moon Over 300 Years
As countries and corporations get ready for a second space race, London's Map House has mounted a timely show on how humans have represented our closest celestial neighbor.
A New Restaurant in the U.K. Experiments with Cross-Laminated Timber
The Wildernesse Restaurant, designed by Morris + Company, plays with wood construction and typological precedents, all despite a small budget.
A 3D-Printed Installation, Made With Sustainable Bioplastics, Debuts at Milan Design Week
Fashion brand COS commissioned the 3.2-ton structure, which was designed by London-based architect Arthur Mamou-Mani.
In the Heart of a Hospital Campus, a Ruin-Turned-Gathering Place Helps Patients Heal
Ghent-based Architecten dVVT only made light interventions to create a new multi-use common area within this early 20th century structure in the Belgian town of Melle.
The Architectural Folly Attempts a Return at a Brussels Exhibition
Miscellaneous Follies at the KANAL - Centre Pompidou argues that in today's post-truth world, the spiritual, sensual, and ambiguous folly has acquired a new resonance.
Six Years in the Making, Berlin's IBeB Cooperative Housing Development Creates a Tight-Knit Community of Residents
Recently shortlisted for the 2019 EU Mies Award, the 66-unit project's lengthy customization process and ample common spaces created a community from the ground-up.
With a New Design Museum Exhibition, David Adjaye Focuses on Monuments and Memorialization
While it offers some engaging installations and artifacts, David Adjaye: Making Memory struggles to broaden its scope beyond Adjaye's work and interrogate memorialization in today's culture.
Helsinki’s Poetic New Central Library Is a Public Space for the Digital Age
The new library, dubbed Oodi and designed by ALA Architects, provides democratic and state-of-the-art facilities for learning, making, playing, and reading.
In His Latest Residential Building, OMA's Reinier de Graaf Doesn't Practice What He Preaches
OMA's Norra Tornen in Stockholm, whose showy launch purposely coincided with that of a nearby residential project by BIG, is a pedagogical embarrassment, our critic writes.
After a Devastating Blaze, London's Battersea Arts Centre Makes a Dramatic Comeback
London-based firm Haworth Tompkins has given the 19th century performing arts hall a sensitive, yet triumphant, new lease on life after a 2015 fire.
This Kaleidoscopic Exhibition Explores How Augmented Reality Will Alter Buildings, IRL and via URL
Shown at Stockholm's ArkDes this fall and now available online, Value in the Virtual explores how our everyday experiences of the built environment will be changed through virtual and augmented reality.
Architect Peter Barber Is Reinventing London's Housing
Barber, the subject of a recent exhibition at the London Design Museum, is creating practical and fantastical solutions for the city's housing crisis.
When Architecture Became Healthy: Examining More than 100 Years of Design and Wellness
A new show, on view at London’s healthcare-focused gallery, the Wellcome Collection, chronicles the history of the built environment and our wellbeing.
How a DIY Floating University in Berlin Could Be an Unorthodox Prototype for Design Education
The temporary pirate shiplike school, spearheaded by local firm Raumlabor, provided a delightful hodgepodge of serious academia and public programming.
AHMM Transforms the University of Amsterdam With a Dramatic Canal-Framing Feat of Engineering
The British firm totally revamped an re-skinned two massive Modernist buildings, creating a new welcoming pedestrian environment in the process.
Can London’s Revamped Royal Opera House Become a Public Amenity?
The famed cultural institution, opening to the public today after a six-year renovation by Stanton Williams, is betting big on audience engagement.
6a Architects Converts a Dilapidated Victorian Fire Station Into an Art Gallery
The local firm has created a charming, yet sensitively-designed new annex for the South London Gallery in the city's Peckham neighborhood.
Psychoanalyzing the 8 Best Pavilions of the London Design Biennale
To evaluate this year’s international design festival, themed “Emotional States,” we used the lens of psychologist Robert Plutchik’s classic “wheel of emotions.”
A Modernist Shopping Mall Is Reborn as an Exuberant Museum in Helsinki
The new bubble-like home for the Amos Rex art museum features futuristic subterranean galleries designed by local firm JKMM Architects.
