Design

Design

Across this week's broader architecture news landscape, a central theme emerges around the advancement of civic architecture conceived as open, publicly engaged infrastructure, with cultural and institutional projects increasingly designed to strengthen their relationship with the city and everyday urban life. At the same time, renewed global attention turns toward Africa, where large-scale transport infrastructure and the conservation of modernist landmarks reflect interests in the region and the reassessment of the continent's architectural heritage.

Hemant Patil Photography + 30 Architects: PMA madhushala Area of this architecture project Area: 185 m Completion year of this architecture project Year: 2024 Photographs:Hemant Patil Photography Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Godrej, Hybec Lights, Jaquar, Saint Gobain Glass Design Team: Rohan Panvel, Divya Jyoti, Prasanna Morey Madhushod Illustration: Kundan Bhadrecha, Divya Jyoti Site Supervision & Construction: Ajit Wadekar & Krishnamurty Panchal More SpecsLess Specs

What makes this canopy special isn't just that it uses 3D printing technology, though that's certainly impressive. It's the way the designers thought about the entire system. Rather than simply throwing a roof over the tombs and calling it a day, they created what's essentially a climate-control system disguised as architecture. The canopy features a double-layer envelope that does way more than keep rain off ancient stone. Built into this roof are ventilation and air extraction components that actively regulate temperature and humidity.

The design of the mini cauldron displays sculpted blades formed in the shape of a bigger torch. The opening on the sides allows for ventilation and a peek at the flames, and the CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati team says that the arrangement relies on the Venturi effect, drawing in more air to keep the combustion going. The team adds that the system can operate for up to negative 20 degrees Celsius and other extreme conditions.

The Dalmia-Gopichand Badminton Academy, or The Shuttle, is a testament to the potential of architecture to create opportunities for sports in the built environment. This, in turn, fosters the spirit of sportsmanship and community, thereby demonstrating how architecture can amplify the cultural and economic significance of sports. This project is imagined to exemplify the role of architecture in shaping a city's identity and aspirations.

Massaranduba, the small agricultural town in the south of Brazil that Pedro grew up in is far from sci-fi, but this graphic designer's imagination takes him some place else. From posters, illustration, magazine layouts and typefaces (such as pieces that focus on sci-fi author Ursula K. Le Guin 's fictional Kesh alphabet), Pedro works digitally with a focus on textures and grit, using dithers and fractals to build upon visual world's textures. His projects are "mood-centred", which begin by assembling references from all over to refine feelings that are conjured up by consuming films, fashion, music and other visual forms.

Awarded on behalf of His Majesty the King, the Royal Gold Medal is among the significant international distinctions in architecture, recognizing a sustained contribution to the advancement of the discipline through built work, education, and critical discourse. In announcing the award, RIBA noted McLaughlin's long-standing influence across architectural practice and pedagogy, citing a career that spans more than three decades and reflects a consistent engagement with the cultural, environmental, and social dimensions of architecture.

In contemporary interiors shaped by speed, productivity, and constant stimulation, seating has largely become passive. It is designed to hold the body while the mind drifts elsewhere. OSOLO challenges this condition. It is not a chair in the conventional sense, but a mindful seating platform, a ritual object that reconsiders how we sit, gather, and occupy space. OSOLO emerges at the meeting point of two ancient cultures: Japanese stillness and Turkish hospitality.

Arco is a headphone stand designed to feel like a finished object, whether or not there is a pair of headphones resting on it. Carved from a single block of wood or stone, it has a smooth arc that gives the headband a gentle resting point and a solid base that reads more like a small piece of furniture than an accessory. When empty, it still looks complete, adding subtle presence to a shelf or desk.

Most storage furniture sits where you put it, fixed shelves and cabinets that do their job but rarely respond to how space changes during a day. Trolleys help with mobility, but they often feel generic, more utility than character. Harbor 051 is a storage trolley that borrows its logic from a place built entirely around movement and stacking, Busan Port, where containers shift and cranes swing in a constant choreography.

There's something about the ubiquity of a dumpling - made with love in many cultures, working to package a number of traditional fillings within its folds, starch and sustenance conspiring to form the building blocks of food culture. MOMOS by José A. Gandía-Blasco for GAN translates the warmth and comfort found in dumplings to dimensional textile furnishings, adorning an array of pieces including a pillow, pouf, and rug.

A lightweight, 3D printed and textile roof protects the Tombs of Postumio and Tres Puertas at the Archaeological Complex of Carmona in Seville, rethinking how contemporary architecture can engage with heritage conservation. The project by Juan Carlos Gómez de Cózar and Manuel Ordóñez Martín introduces a single canopy that covers both Roman tombs while operating as an environmental machine designed to stabilize their long-term preservation.

There is a yearning for things that have emotion behind them and a story behind them, and sort of that little bit of whimsy and discovery that you find with vintage pieces,

Well known for its unique texture and unpredictable nature, this Texas-born and Toronto-based illustrator somehow gets a leash on it, creating semi-airbrushed, dreamy and playful scenes between eccentric characters and luminous colours. Dense with subjects and textures, Rylee's compositions explode with action and motion - like in The Cartoon Saloon, anthropomorphic animal cowboys drink, play cards and draw their pistols in a beautiful gradient that captures a moment where the dusty saloon is lit up by the firing of a revolver.

Architecture and interior design practice Templeton Ford has completed Clay Rise, a three-bedroom home in the bucolic village of West Hoathly, West Sussex.

Perched on a secluded mountainside in Bahía Ballena, Costa Rica, Ojo de Nila is a private residence by Studio Saxe, led by Benjamin Saxe, that explores what it means to live fully outdoors in a tropical climate. Designed for a Swiss couple seeking a deeper relationship with their surroundings, the 300-square-meter home opens toward the Pacific Ocean, relying on natural ventilation.

Inverted House by TIMM Architecture is a single-family located in Okrokana, a hillside district of Tbilisi, . The project responds to the fence-dominated suburban fabric characteristic of the area, where narrow streets, compact plots, and tall perimeter walls limit visual connection, daylight access, and spatial continuity. Rather than positioning the house behind a boundary wall, the design integrates enclosure into the architecture itself, using the building as a continuous perimeter that defines and protects the site.

This mobile dwelling isn't your typical tiny home with cutesy charm and rustic wood siding. Instead, it channels the intimidating presence of one of cinema's most notorious villains, transforming that dark energy into a sophisticated living space that commands attention wherever it travels. The inspiration is obvious from the name alone, yet the design team showed restraint by avoiding kitsch Star Wars memorabilia, focusing instead on capturing the essence of power and sleekness associated with the iconic character.

We examine the online debate ignited by Pantone's Colour of the Year, Cloud Dancer. This episode dives into the discussion prompted by Pantone, unpacking the uneasy relationship between colour and fascism. From hardline efforts to regulate colour in public life to the ways vibrancy and maximalism reassert themselves, we explore how colour becomes a quiet form of resistance across art, fashion, film, and design.

Set on the edge of the Blaricum heathland, the Tafelberg office is conceived as a place where work takes place within the landscape rather than apart from it.

Life doesn't pause for grief or fear. You might be going through something devastating but you're still packing lunches, still driving your kids to baseball practice, still showing up to work. One minute I find myself prepping for a whole home presentation and the next minute I'm checking the news, hoping and praying that no one has been killed on the streets today.

Lacum Respira is a lakeside pavilion by .ket bureau on the shore of Lake St. Moritz in Switzerland. Set at the water's edge, the timber structure addresses a landscape shaped by seasonal rituals and a long tradition of outdoor life, where the lake acts as both foreground and horizon. The calm setting is defined by open air and backdropped by dramatic mountains. Any architectural move here carries weight.

Sometimes the best designs come from asking a simple question nobody bothered to ask before. For designer Kathleen Reilly, that question was: why does a knife always have to lie flat on the table? The answer came in the form of Oku, a table knife that literally hangs around the edges of your plates and boards thanks to a unique folded handle that defies centuries of Western tableware convention.

The new lookout point at Point Vue le Jambon in Vresse-sur-Semois is conceived as a discreet and respectful gesture within an exceptional landscape. Rather than asserting itself as an object, the project carefully embeds architecture into the terrain, allowing the site's natural qualities to remain central to the experience.

This article won't start out well, because I'm sort of at rock bottom in my career and it seems that I'm projecting my frustrations of the industry out in the open. But I promise you, my rants are merely neutral observations and opinions. I love talking to people, and over the last 2 months of unemployment (I am now employed), I called upon designer friends all in Asia and Europe to get their opinion on the current state of Design leadership and how it has impacted our careers.

If there was only one interior design style setting the tone in 2026, it would be Japandi. Apartment Therapy's State of Home Design survey identified Japandi style as one of the year's top design aesthetics, according to insights from 140 designers - and it's easy to see why. As more people strive to create spaces that feel calming, intentional, and grounded in nature, Japandi's blend of Japanese restraint and Scandinavian warmth feels especially timely.