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26 Articles

2 min.

The Social Contract

What do we owe each other as members of a community? What do we owe ourselves as individuals? What do we owe those we care for? “Brick and Roses” (page 64), the title of our cover story, recalls the time-honoured adage “bread and roses” and its twin appeal to have our basic needs met while also gaining some access to that often neglected essential: beauty. The article is about intentional communities, inspiring places enabled by co-operatives, community land trusts and other frameworks that allow a group of people to come together, organize and shape their own ways of collective living. Another saying, “many hands make light work,” springs to mind. Via strength in numbers, people can purchase land or building stock and design it in a collaborative process. What’s typically…

2 min.

Perfectly Crafted

It started with the forging of a nail 341 years ago. Founded as a humble metalworking practice in Germany’s Black Forest, the storied Gaggenau brand gradually evolved into a global design leader in luxury home appliances. From ranges and dishwashers to refrigerators, ventilation hoods and coffee machines, its portfolio of refined, meticulously crafted and technologically sophisticated products is a mainstay for top designers and home builders across North America. Case in point? For Toronto’s Barroso Custom Homes, Gaggenau appliances elegantly highlight the heart of their award-winning bespoke interiors. A member of Gaggenau’s Club 1683 — which offers valued trade partners personal guidance and support, as well as continuing education and expert training — Barroso Custom Homes has over 20 years of experience creating extraordinary living spaces. In a stunning residence in…

1 min.

First Foremost

Fjord Your Consideration The Hardangerfjord — one of the longest fjords in the world — may be the main attraction along Norway’s Highway 13, but the new rest stop that looks out to this captivating inlet is a wonder in its own right. Designed by Oslo firm Code Arkitektur, it’s part of the Norwegian Scenic Routes, an initiative that commissions cultural pavilions that knit together the country’s most picturesque landscapes. Complementing rather than competing with its surrounding view, the metal-clad concrete structure establishes its own mountain range in miniature with a 50-metre-long roofline defined by a series of sharp peaks. A wide walkway, complete with benches and picnic tables, passes below this angular canopy en route to a cavelike washroom facility. The project’s reflective casing proves especially enchanting come nighttime, when…

3 min.

A Night on the Town

_DOP _Porto, Portugal _Atelier Sérgio Rebelo 1. THE BRIEF Portuguese chef Rui Paula didn’t fully appreciate the value of design until his third restaurant, Boa Nova Tea House, was awarded a second Michelin Star in 2019. The space is built into the rocks overlooking the ocean in Porto, and Paula had gradually begun to observe how the coastal landscape shaped the direction of his cooking and menu. When it came time to renovate his second restaurant, DOP (first opened in 2010 in Porto proper), Paula commissioned Atelier Sérgio Rebelo (ASR) — a local architecture and design studio that specializes in cutting-edge hospitality projects — to craft a similarly inspirational backdrop. While DOP’s original interiors had skewed minimalist and neutral, the goal for the reimagining was a lively, urbane gastropub that evolves as…

2 min.

Under the Bridge

_Darwin Bridges _Montreal, Quebec _Provencher Roy Linked to Montreal via the Champlain Bridge, which opened in 1962, Nuns’ Island is a time capsule of mid-century development. The area even boasts a trio of apartment buildings designed by none other than Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Just a short drive away from one of these towers, Provencher Roy recently completed a retrofit of two of Nuns’ Island’s smaller bridges that addresses another, less praiseworthy remnant of that era: its auto-centric urban planning. Leveraging innovative materials and novel forms, the firm’s reimagined Darwin Bridges successfully shift the dynamic between pedestrian and car. As the original bridges (which were constructed in the 1960s) approached the end of their material lifespans, a rebuild posed an opportunity for a larger rethink. “The project came with a clear…

3 min.

From the Beach to the Streets

There’s gilding the lily, and then there’s wrapping a promenade of palm trees — a pretty flamboyant form of greenery to begin with — in twinkle lights, as Ocean Drive does each December. All that to say, Miami is a city that recognizes the value of a little extra flash. Art Basel Miami Beach is well-established as a must-visit for collectors of bold canvases, while Design Miami commands its own following as a design fair dedicated to edgy, limited-edition furnishings — many by exciting industry luminaries such as Nifemi Marcus-Bello and Sabine Marcelis. The 2023 edition was no exception: It was filled with interesting material experiments like Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn’s chaise longue clad in an armadillo-like shell of wooden shingles. Design Miami’s creative energy has gradually spilled over to…

3 min.

5 Things We Learned from Marjan van Aubel

Usually, when a designer is known for a signature material, it’s something tangible like wood or steel. But in the case of Marjan van Aubel, it’s sunlight. In 2021, the Amsterdam creative harnessed solar energy to power Sunne, a pendant that absorbs light by day and emits it by night. Building on subsequent sun-themed installations mounted during events like Dutch Design Week, van Aubel unveiled her latest solar-powered spectacle this past December in Miami. Working with Lexus and the experiential designers at Random Studio, she presented 8 Minutes and 20 Seconds — named for the time it takes light from the sun to reach Earth — in the sculpture garden of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Graphics printed on transparent plastic sheets recreated the silhouette of the Lexus LF-ZC,…

2 min.

Sea Change

Coral reefs occupy only a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, yet they are home to a quarter of all marine species. While they’re delicate and increasingly at risk due to climate change, could they also provide inspiration for how we build our own habitats on land? For the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) designed a spiral-shaped pavilion that introduced an entirely new construction material: the Bio-Block. Developed by Colorado firm Prometheus Materials, the concrete block alternative harnesses microalgae, one of the many life forms that coral reefs support. To produce Bio-Block, microalgae is grown in factory conditions with artificial sunlight and seawater — plus CO2 from ambient air — to support photosynthesis. Organic additives are mixed in to stimulate biomineralization, replicating the growth…

3 min.

Outdoor Overture

_Opera Park _Copenhagen, Denmark In the grand opera tradition, the drama is typically spread over four or five acts. Between them, the scenery changes and the stage is reinvented while patrons stretch their legs, have a drink and soak up the ambiance. When intermission rings, there are few more scintillating venues than the Copenhagen Opera House, home to the Royal Danish Opera, which meets the bustling city’s harbour with a delicate glass lantern of a lobby perched below a sleek knife-edge canopy. Immediately to the south, meanwhile, an inviting new public park extends the stage with a civic narrative that plays out across six striking gardens. Designed by local architectural firm Cobe, the 21,500-square-metre Opera Park unfolds in a sequence of sinuous walking paths, framed by an eclectic (and impressively biodiverse) array…

2 min.

Major Flex

_Subscription-Based Furniture _Fresh Textiles _The Perfect Lounge Chair When designing a new HQ for Melbourne-based creative agency Today Design, architects Ben Edwards and Nancy Beka of Studio Edwards set a challenge for themselves. They wanted to shape a conceptually innovative space that would elevate the office experience — while producing as little waste as possible. “Today Design were looking for a workplace that didn’t feel sterile,” says Beka. “Rather, one that fosters creativity, feels like a studio and holds sustainability as a core value.” Luckily, they were already in the right place. The setting, a 12-storey tower in the hip Collingwood neighbourhood, is home to a host of B-Corp businesses, meaning that the surrounding community already had an eye toward social impact. Studio Edwards’ brief included incorporating a reception area, gallery, library,…

2 min.

Day to Night

There’s no house style at Holloway Li, the interior architecture studio founded by Alex Holloway and Na Li. Rather, the London practice imbues its blockbuster projects with “set-piece moments.” Much as in theatre design, these architectural components and furnishings make all the difference in driving home a clear, holistic concept. It comes as no surprise, then, that when outfitting British entertainment company Broadwick Live’s massive London HQ, Holloway Li introduced a refined, monolithic aesthetic not dissimilar to the one found at the electronic music and arts promoter’s popular post-industrial clubs, including Printworks and the newly opened Drumsheds in the former Ikea Tottenham. The most emblematic set-piece objects in the HQ: the sinuous central staircase, sculpted microcement reception desk and custom edition of the popular T4 chair that populates the reception area.…

“Furniture waste is a significant issue that will only worsen as new modes of working drive shorter-term demands for office equipment,” says Tony Elkington, founder of London-based, sustainably focused industrial design firm Studio Elk. Having observed overconsumption of home office furniture in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, his team ruminated on how to prevent more desks and chairs from entering U.K. landfills. Its solution, still in the concept phase, is a subscriptionbased system that essentially leases out furniture, recovers pieces or parts when they’re damaged or no longer in use, and redistributes or recycles them. Both the concept and the Studio Elk–designed furniture line intended for use with this program are called Koru. The system comprises desks, accessories and chairs that are minimal yet handsome enough to suit both business-and home-office…

For many people, a dreary doctor’s office waiting room is no source for creative inspiration. But that’s exactly where Winnipeg designer Nicole Marion was when a single element on an otherwise unremarkable chair caught her attention. “It was a little boring, overall, but it did have a nice curved detail,” says Marion of the 1970s tubular chair in question. “I wanted to see if I could emphasize that curve by using a much larger tube diameter.” This was back in 2018, when Marion had recently founded her own studio and was looking to design something for herself — no client brief, no project specifications. Wellversed in residential product design (after earning her master’s degree in architecture from the University of Manitoba, Marion designed furniture and accessories for such renowned Canadian brands…

12 min.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

On a press tour of Appleby Blue, a new social housing scheme (or almshouse) for older people in South London, U.K., many of us journalists ask when we can move in. And we’re only half-joking. There’s a roof terrace replete with seating nooks; generous use of warm timber and brick; a sun-filled central courtyard with gingko trees and a serene water feature; and a glazed, terracotta-tiled walkway on each floor that features seating, plants and windows that open to let in sun and fresh air. In fact, apart from the walk-in showers, wheelchair access and alarm service — all designed to ensure it can safely cater to residents’ changing physical and cognitive needs — Appleby Blue is not only the opposite of an institutional building but also a genuinely intimate…

9 min.

GATHERING PLACE

MÉTIS CROSSING IS A CULTURAL SPACE, A SAVVY PIECE OF REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND A BEAUTIFUL ARCHITECTURAL INTERVENTION IN THE LAND. Its assemblage of wood buildings, old and new, stretches along a bend in the North Saskatchewan River. As you approach the complex in Smoky Lake, Alberta, a campground of contemporary trappers cabins gives way to a collection of 19th-century farm buildings, repurposed now as interpretive spaces. Just a little further downstream is the Gathering Centre, the complex’s main structure. Its sloping roofline stretches toward the river, seeming almost to encompass it. Via a covered walkway, the centre connects to the two-storey Lodge, which twists slightly away from the water in a gentle jumble of posts and lattices, providing an overlook to a veteran’s memorial. Another 150 metres down, a field of…

17 min.

BRICK AND ROSES

What makes a great home? For architects French 2D, the process is rooted in dialogue — and lots of it. After all, the answer varies depending on who you ask, which leaves designers with the task of translating the client’s needs and aspirations into a bespoke environment, all while balancing climate, site context, building code and budget. It’s a challenge familiar to architects the world over; beauty emerges through careful listening, as well as attention to detail and sensitivity to local culture. But Anda and Jenny French weren’t designing a luxurious single-family home; the Boston-based sisters were bringing their thoughtful, collaborative ethos to a striking three-storey residential complex for an intentional community of 30 households. Recently completed, their collective ownership project in Malden, Massachusetts, integrates playfulness, personality and an elegant dose…

11 min.

An Architecture That Charts the Migrant Experience

“I use architecture to reveal stories that may not be visible at first,” says Sumayya Vally. She is Zooming with me from the London office of her research-based multidisciplinary practice, Counterspace (the firm also has a location in Johannesburg). The stories she is interested in — the lives of migrants throughout history, how community networks operate and the geological makeup of their lands — are close to her heart and her work. Counterspace’s first project, exhibited at the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015, was an analysis of Johannesburg’s abandoned mine; an extension of her thesis, it explored the highly polluted landscape as a visceral reminder of how waste, toxicity and radiation have become a quiet, sinister backdrop to our everyday world. The firm’s highest-profile project to date — a…

15 min.

THE JURY IS OUT

The crit has remained a fixture of architectural education since it originated at the École des Beaux-Arts. Is the practice still relevant today? SYDNEY SHILLING explores emerging pedagogies that approach the crit through a critical lens. As an architecture student, I watched the sun rise more times than I could count. It wasn’t that I was pulling the all-nighters that have become practically synonymous with architecture school. On crit days, anticipation hung in the air like a dense fog; there was too much adrenaline for sleep. As I walked to the architecture building, the biting chill of the morning air would force me awake. Fuelled only by a coffee and muffin from the café downstairs, I’d make my way to the studio, where students weaved frantically between the rows of desks, putting…

4 min.

Factory Made Modern

In English, “La Casa de los Cinco Picos” translates as “the House of the Five Peaks,” a reference to the prominently pitched, shed-like gables that largely define the appearance of this family getaway in the rocky foothills of the Guadarrama Mountains north of Madrid, Spain. According to the architects, Clara Ulargui Aparicio and Luis Aguilar Benavides of Positivelivings, the points themselves also reference several key elements that informed their design. The most obvious is the home’s jagged, mountainous setting. Another, perhaps subtler, homage is to the traditional forms of Spanish industrial architecture: straightforward buildings with sawtooth rooflines providing light and ventilation to the workspace within. Both seem wholly appropriate, because the house was essentially built in a factory and delivered to the mountainous site. A publisher of magazines about construction and…

4 min.

Outdoor Furniture

Lounge 1 Sway and Petalo Part of the multi-piece 2024 Outdoor collection, the Sway system by Yabu Pushelberg consists of 11 modules (sofa and coffee table shown) with a succinct material palette: teak, aluminum and polypropylene rope. Vincent Van Duysen’s Petalo armchair, meanwhile, encircles the sitter within its tall polypropylene rope backrest. Materials Teak, aluminum, polypropylene, polyurethane foam Dimensions Multiple Manufacturer Molteni&C, molteni.it 2 Milos French designer Jean-Marie Massaud conceived Milos as an assortment of soft rocks shaped by waves and wind. The series includes lounge chairs, sofas, daybeds, sun loungers and coffee tables. Materials Iroko wood, polyurethane, polyethylene, aluminum Dimensions Multiple (75 H × 91 W × 77 D shown) Manufacturer Vondom, vondom.com 3 Nexo The square-shaped modules of the Nexo series by Valencia-based Yonoh Creative Studio can be configured without arms, with two arms or a right or left arm,…

2 min.

Acoustic Solutions

Walls 1 Palace Featuring precision-cut linework, the latest acoustic wall tiles from Woven Image deliver a muted interpretation of art deco motifs. Part of the manufacturer’s EchoPanel range, the low-VOC product boasts a slew of environmental certifications, including Declare and Red List Free labels. wovenimage.com 2 Archisonic Cotton Impact Acoustic evokes the professorial dignity of a corduroy blazer with this ridged pattern offered in 24 colours, from earthy greens to the pink Rose shown. Made from 100 per cent circular cotton, the panels can also be recycled through the manufacturer’s take-back program. impactacoustic.com 3 Groove With a curved geometric pattern, Turf’s mind-expanding wallscape promises to delight graphic designers and acid rock fans alike. Produced in 60 per cent pre-consumer recycled PET felt, the 18-millimetrethick panels have an acoustical rating of NRC 0.55. 4 Fracture Two-Tone Two different layers…

2 min.

Collective Consciousness

DOCUMENTARY Charlotte’s Castle Charlotte Mickie has lived in apartment 7 of Toronto’s Spadina Gardens since 1993. Located in the Annex neighbourhood, the 16-unit mid-rise, completed in 1904 by esteemed architect Arthur R. Dennison, boasts a rich history. Set in the wake of the building’s sale to Amsterdambased development company ProWinko in April 2018, this documentary by director Jamie Kastner follows the tenants of Spadina Gardens as they band together to conserve its heritage under the looming threat of renoviction. The film raises important questions: What constitutes heritage? And what is at stake if we fail to preserve it? For the tenants association, it was about more than protecting the units’ spacious Edwardian layouts, pocket doors and decorative windows: It was about retaining the community they had cultivated over decades. BOOK Mission Neighbourhood — (Re)forming…

2 min.

Chain Reaction

Delicately suspended in the Chicago Cultural Center, a dainty filigree of chains filled the room, and sunlight poured in from the neoclassical building’s arched windows. It was impossible not to be enraptured by all this beauty — that is, until I reached down to pick up one of the little red books from the piles below. The literature revealed the unsavoury history of the apparatus on display in this installation designed by New York’s AD–WO (in partnership with Columbia University’s Buell Center) for CAB 5, the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Gunter’s chain, as it was once called, was used by surveyors to measure and subdivide land during the colonization of North America. The stacks of books represented the corner mounds used to demarcate the boundaries of each plot.…

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