#wood

#wood

Rather than representing a simple return to the past, this renewed interest reflects a broader reconsideration of how architecture engages with materials, local resources, and environmental conditions.

What began as a modest brief for a young and growing family soon evolved into a considered renovation that reimagines an existing Barwon Heads home. The original house had endured several unsympathetic alterations over the years, leaving it disjointed and built to a poor standard.

This corn-based construction material was made by Manufactura, a Mexican sustainable materials company, and it imagines a second life for waste from the most widely produced grain in the world. The project started as an invitation by chef Jorge Armando, the founder of catering brand Taco Kween Berlin, to find ways he could reintegrate waste generated by his taqueria into architecture. A team led by designer Dinorah Schulte created corncretl during a residency last year in Massa Lombarda, Italy.

Most coat hangers exist somewhere between purely functional and aggressively boring. They're the things we grab without thinking, the wire creatures that multiply mysteriously in closets, or the bulky wooden ones that restaurants seem to breed. But every so often, a design comes along that makes you stop and reconsider something as mundane as a place to hang your jacket.

Thermal modification is not a new invention, but its relevance has increased as expectations around performance, sustainability, and predictability have tightened. Developers, architects, and contractors are no longer just asking whether timber looks good or performs well initially. They want to know how it behaves after ten, twenty, or thirty years, and how much risk it introduces into a project once the scaffolding is gone.

A new office building that gathers several government agencies under one roof in the centre of Odense is a pioneer project in large scale timber construction and the largest timber office building in Denmark.

One of the earliest large-scale examples of composite materials can be found in the Great Wall of China, where stone, clay bricks, and organic fibers such as reeds and willow branches were blended to create a resilient and lasting structure. These early techniques reveal a timeless intuition: distinct materials, when combined thoughtfully, produce properties unattainable by any single element.

Timber cladding has become a defining feature of contemporary construction across the UK. Once associated mainly with rural housing and architectural one-offs, it is now widely used across residential developments, commercial buildings, education projects, and urban regeneration schemes. Its appeal is often described in visual terms, but appearance alone does not explain its continued growth. Timber offers flexibility in design, a lower embodied carbon profile than many alternatives, and the ability to integrate effectively within modern wall systems when specified correctly.

It's likely that you've encountered recycled glass countertops without realizing it. They're far from the hippie-style broken-glass mosaic art of yesteryear, instead presenting as sleek, highly polished, professional slabs with intriguing bits of confetti-style color trapped inside. That's the recovered glass bits set into a binding material such as resin, cement, or concrete, and then smoothly polished so that the composite surface feels like stone.

From the large industrial roofs and galleries of the 19th century to the contemporary atriums of museums and public buildings, glass has been a recurring material in shaping large and monumental interior spaces. More than a technological or engineering solution, these horizontal glazed planes introduce a distinct luminous quality: light that comes from above. Unlike lateral daylight entering through façades, zenithal light is more evenly distributed, reduces harsh shadows, and lends spaces a sense of continuity and openness that is difficult to achieve otherwise.

This research-based design project by Laura Oliveira investigates discarded as a potential raw material for sustainable design applications. Human hair is produced continuously and in large quantities through everyday grooming practices, yet it is almost always treated as waste once separated from the body and typically disposed of in landfills. Despite its material properties, strength, flexibility, and durability as a keratin-based protein fiber, its remains uncommon within design and research contexts.

Architecture Office founder Alexander Mackison and glass artist Juli Bolaños-Durman had something of a creative meet-cute. The two became acquainted while running a lecture series at Custom Lane, a collaborative center for designers and makers in Edinburgh, where they both have studios. They remained friendly, so Alexander eventually learned of Juli's plans to renovate an apartment nearby. "Just through casual conversations, I became integrated into the project," he remembers.