Bamboo is one of the fastest-growing plants on Earth with reported growth rates of 100 cm in 24 hours. This eco-friendly material has the same technical performance as timber, concrete and steel constructions, but has a much lower carbon footprint. It is one of the most versatile and flexible materials and has regenerative properties. Get [...]

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Gotta love a city that surprises you. Taking its typical elements and reconstructing them in new, fun and socially aware ways has been the weapon of choice of many urban interventionists who managed to inject a dose of playfulness and provocation in the urban scenery.  Some of them have done a great job in making [...]

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It is not quite the holiday season for some of these locations, however it is always good to plan ahead especially when it comes to places with a considerable fame of their own or retreats you want to build for yourself! Today’s selection of vacation spots is provocative in that they push us to think [...]

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Adaptive re-use is cool for so many reasons: it is sustainable, it creates original and surprising architecture and it echoes a concept that can be semi-academically described as continuity in time. Even not mentioning the manageability and modular organisation advantages of building with shipping containers, Cargotecture still sounds like a remarkably ethical and smart idea in [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  Do you think brick is trivial and a thing of the past? Think twice! It is true up until a century ago brick was predominantly associated with the vernacular architecture of England’s industrial north. With [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  A great example of progressive government policy: In 2005 Norway launched The National Tourist Routes: a vast 15-year campaign re-evaluating the concept of tourism by transforming it into a culturally active product. To achieve that [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  They might appear ordinary and overly ascetic on the outside but inside they host unimaginable realms created to meet the exact expectations of their owners. Transparent floors, slides, transforming rooms, and hidden gardens all come [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  In the last couple of decades cardboard has been rediscovered as an architectural material for being light yet load-resistant, recyclable, nature-friendly and warm, just like wood, from which it is derived. Treatment with different chemical [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  Not so long ago ornament in architecture was a crime – just like tattooed people were potential murderers. Is ornament making a comeback? From the psychedelic Arab World Institute of Jean Nouvel to the fashion [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  It happens so everybody needs to visit them once in a while. For many of us in Europe and the US there is nothing public about the programme they accommodate so these inescapably important amenities [...]

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This is a guest post from Antonina of OpenBuildings - a community-driven and openly editable encyclopaedia of buildings from around the world.  Check out what it looks like graphically when architects are having fun at work and see if you can sense the same witty enjoyment in their architectural work by visiting their profiles. In architecture, just [...]

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