Month: March 2023

Popping down to a high-street bank branch to pay in a cheque, get out some cash or even open an account are to-do list tasks of the past. With almost all financial services now available online and digital transactions taking more of the market share (up from 28% to 41% from 2019 to 2022), more and more retail branches are shutting up shop.

Natural light is one of the most critical elements in architecture. Although unbuilt and difficult to control, it plays a crucial part in defining how space is perceived in terms of scale, textures, materiality, and overall atmosphere. Natural light also impacts the emotions people feel in a space, whether lack of light makes us feel fear and anxiety or ample light makes us feel safe and ethereal. As much as light impacts architecture, architecture also impacts light. Through framing vistas, creating 3D massings that cast sculptural shadows, and carving voids from solids that create unique light projections, many architects have mastered design techniques that utilize light in a way that seamlessly integrates it within a building- and perhaps one of the best to do this was the Venetian architect, Carlo Scarpa.

Perched on a prominent clifftop bordering Bermagui’s famed Blue Pools, Bermagui Beach House is a sensitive reimagining of a treasured holiday home. Beloved by the family for decades, the existing weatherboard shack was relocated down the road to make way for the next chapter. We designed a new home drawing on the clients’ long-held connection to the place while refining the informal character of the classic Australian beach house.

Ascension Paysagère, designed by Dutch office MVRDV, is a mixed-use development that combines residential, commercial, and community spaces in the French city of Rennes. It stands out from its surroundings through a series of stepped terraces inspired by geological formations such as gorges and mountain ranges, with terraces designed to provide a variety of living and communal spaces, as well as tree-lined gardens and public squares. To amplify the effects desired by the designers, the chosen ceramic tile resembles the rock colors of the region, and changes its appearance with every change in climate, reflecting the environment and the light.

Fishtank is not your typical cafe location. Tucked inside an arena in Nanjing, the site was previously a storage room. It sits between two overhanging bridges, faces a four-lane ring road, and looks across an under-podium parking zone. The facade was essentially the arena’s exterior, painted cold grey, with black recess lines and punctures for service vents. When Office AIO was commissioned to design this undistinguished site, it took it as an opportunity to elevate the coffee shop from a neighborhood cafe to a recognized brand. The design team exploits the cloistered and tame site, conceiving an undisturbed world. A world much like a fish tank, contained by a “non-existent” facade but relishing its own sphere of habitat.

Mix restaurant is our new project located in Lam Dong, Vietnam. With an area of 958 square meters, the restaurant is divided into 5 main areas:

the practice arranged the villas amphitheatrically, as if emerging from the landscape.
The post A&M architects visualizes three linear villas semi-buried in the greek island of karpathos appeared first on designboom | architecture & design mag…

In terms of urban design, the Project is selected on Wuzhen Avenue, which connects the center of Tongxiang City and Wuzhen Town, to strengthen the cultural, sports, and tourism characteristics of this urban axis. The starting point of the design is to fully integrate the building volume of the fitness center and the sports park where it is located into a whole. With the fitness center as the anchor point, it creates more public and open Spaces for communication, forming a new cultural and sports center with the integration of sports, culture, nature, and the city, becoming a city living room that citizens enjoy and promote a future-oriented healthy life style.

Architecture studio Edmonds International has created a hotel near Playa del Carmen in Mexico that comprises a series of interlocking circular forms embedded in a mangrove forest. Made up of a series of pavilions, the hotel is sited near the Sian Ka’an Reserve on the Yucatán coast near the vacation towns of Playa del Carmen

The post Constellations and mangroves inform design of St. Regis Resort Kanai appeared first on Dezeen.