The Dar es Salaam International Academy is a renowned educational institute in Dar es Salaam. As an extension to their international programme, the DIA secondary school campus offers higher education. The extension comprises of six contemporary clusters with multiple exterior spaces that are designed to influence interconnectivity between learning, creativity and exploration.
The Media Architecture Biennale Awards recognize the world’s best projects at the intersection of architecture, urban design and planning, media and interaction design, and urban media art.
In 2021, we were commissioned to design a small house located in Matanzas, a coastal town in Chile known for its excellent conditions for water sports. The client requested a 70 m2 house with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, designed for a young audience, that had to be cost-effective to build and preferably developed on two levels to have sea views.
Located on Guaxuma Beach, just 20 minutes from the urban center of Maceió, the project is situated in a sparsely populated residential area, characterized by a hot and humid tropical climate, where the land still preserves the native coastal vegetation. Near the land, with an extension of 500m, there is a minimally urbanized waterfront with some beach bars.
“Title 24” (California’s Building Energy Efficiency Standards) inspired the design of the net-zero homes. We see the state’s recently implemented code as an opportunity to reinvent the Southern California single-family dwelling.
Construction on the MVRDV-designed Shenzhen Women & Children’s Centre is complete, transforming an old mixed-use tower into a vibrant and colorful skyscraper hosting a hotel and a wide range of facilities for the welfare of women and children: a library, an auditorium, a children’s theatre and “discovery hall”, as well as therapy rooms and offices for staff. With its colorful façade, the building is a refreshing presence in Shenzhen’s Futian district; more importantly, at 100 meters tall, the building sets an important precedent for repurposing buildings in a city that is soon to see a “great wave of adaptive reuse”.
As the summer days come to an end, the focus naturally shifts to the realm of academia, a space full of curiosity, energy, and ingenuity. For architects, educational spaces are an opportunity for exploration, as they gather eager students together with professors and experts in their respective fields. The environment of educational facilities thus becomes a canvas for the cultivation of creativity, curiosity, and growth. From the playfulness of kindergartens and preschools to the halls of faculties that shape the scholars of tomorrow, the architecture of educational spaces must balance structure and flexibility to respond to the needs of students, teacher, and their larger communities.
Zeller & Moye announces Mirage, a public sculpture created by the architecture firm Zeller & Moye and artist Katie Paterson. Located in the olive grove adjacent to the Apple Park Visitor Center, Mirage (2023) features over four hundred glass columns intertwined among the olive trees. The pillars, made of pure molten glass, are crafted with sand collected from deserts around the world. Mirage has been cast into individual glass cylinders, each measuring 1.80 meters in height, by expert glassblowers with the assistance of specialized material scientists.
When an architect pours their heart and soul into a project, the last thing they want to deal with is an unhappy client, and, consequently, possible litigation.
Two Trees Management announced the official reopening of The Refinery at Domino Sugar, one of Brooklyn’s most iconic buildings transformed into a modern workspace. The design of the adaptive reuse project, led by Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU) began in 2017 with the purpose of reimagining the monument to become a point of connection between the existing neighborhood and the recaptured waterfront. The building now features 15 stories of office space, approximately 460,000 square feet, complete with retail spaces, communal workspaces, a private club, and event spaces.
