Viewpoints are structures designed for observing the landscape from elevated positions. They act as devices that organize the gaze and establish a direct relationship between the body and the territory.
When you design your home with intentionality, you are essentially 'hard-coding' healthy behaviors into your daily rhythm. Health outcomes are the result of thousands of micro-decisions—so in his own home, he prioritized spaces like the kitchen, whose open layout makes cooking a pleasure, and the gym, centrally located.
The style is characterized by raw, exposed concrete and bold geometric forms. You've certainly seen it before in many cultural and civic buildings built between the 1950s and '70s. With countless examples spanning countries and continents, the look has both historical significance and remains popular-particularly in residential design-today.
The Architect Elevator is a metaphor-in reality, the company leadership may be sitting on the same building floor as you; my car metaphors could fill an entire book; and " Architecture is Selling Options " has become the anchor of many architecture keynotes. So, at least my world of architecture is full of metaphors.
The dream project for me isn't a skyline object or spectacle, it's a long-life system -a project whose structure is reused, materials are upgraded and recycled rather than replaced, and performance improves over time. Where sustainable strategies aren't hidden in basements, or rooftops, but become part of the architectural experience. A dream project would be an urban district reimagined, edited with a scalpel (rather than a sledgehammer) with its declining building stock given a new life through subtle upgrades, modest interventions, and attention to craft and building performance.
Having explored adaptability at the city scale, we are now zooming in on the building itself-and, crucially, on practice. How can architects, developers, and consultants embed adaptability as a measurable, mainstream outcome? This question will be on the agenda at the Adaptable Building Conference (ABC) on January 22 at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, where architects, engineers, policymakers, and industry leaders will explore the potential of adaptable buildings-and how to deliver them at scale.
Decades of research in environmental psychology and building science reveal that indoor conditions can profoundly affect human health and behavior. Lighting influences circadian rhythms and sleep patterns. Air quality impacts cognitive performance and respiratory health. Temperature and acoustics shape comfort and concentration.
A Gothic cathedral can take centuries to complete. A world exposition pavilion may stand for six months. A ritual structure in Kolkata rises and vanishes within five days. Yet each draws pilgrimage, shapes collective memory, and reorganizes urban life. If heritage has long been defined by what endures, architecture repeatedly shows that cultural authority can also belong to what gathers people.
Every architectural project is the result of deliberate choices. Beyond form and function, buildings embody technical, political, and cultural decisions that shape their relationship with both their surroundings and the people who inhabit them. ArchDaily's AD Narratives series explores these processes by bringing together accounts that trace projects from initial conception to built realization. In parallel, the AD Classics series turns to works of historical significance, presenting not only the stories behind these buildings but also technical drawings