Offsite construction has delivered measurable environmental gains, with a peer-reviewed study showing an average reduction of 78.8% in construction waste compared to conventional methods. Under controlled factory conditions, reductions can reach up to 90%, highlighting significant improvements in sustainability.
Our first step was coming up with a floor plan based on our clients' lifestyle. We saw that we could create a guest room/den in the front and a generous primary suite and nursery in the back, with two full bathrooms in the middle within the same footprint where there had been one large central bath.
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.
Designed by noted residential architect Roland E. Coate, the home was built in 1926 for Annie Wilson, daughter of pioneering Southern California businessman and politician Benjamin Wilson, for whom Mt. Wilson is named. The gently sloping 1-acre-plus property was once part of the vast holdings of George S. Patton, father of the famed U.S. general.
Gropius, who from 1919 to 1928 directed the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, designed the house in 1921-22 for lawyer Fritz Otte. The property is considered a dramatic evolution of Gropius's earlier seminal Haus Sommerfeld, which was also located in Berlin, but destroyed in World War II. The Bauhaus founder embraced a forward-looking approach with an unadorned, sharp-edged structure that rejected the heaviness of 19th-century historicism.
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.
Rural construction is mostly spontaneous, giving rise to a rich diversity of built forms. Within this organic complexity, our strategy is not to assert ourselves through contrast, but to inhabit the context with quiet modesty.
Ba-rro: "Our starting point is always the context and what already exists." We are interested in recognizing the value of things simply because they are there, without assuming that everything must be preserved as a matter of principle. The question isn't what can be kept, but what deserves to be kept in each specific project. The decision to preserve, reveal, or remove doesn't stem from universal values or a nostalgic impulse, but from a situated interpretation:
Heritage sites constitute complex spatial archives in which architecture, history, and collective memory converge. They encompass a wide spectrum of contexts-from archaeological remains, ancient and historic townscapes, UNESCO-listed landscapes, to early modern civic structures and industrial infrastructures. Yet these environments confront challenges: climate change, urban transformation, disaster, shifting social needs, and the gradual erosion of material fabric. Revitalization and restoration projects respond to these conditions by positioning architectural and spatial practice as an active mediator between preservation and the contemporary topologies.