Magazine

Big Marsh Park is a nearly 300-acre natural and recreational space on Chicago's Southeast Side, on land that was once an active industrial property. While industry has given way to hiking trails, BMX courses, and picnic grounds, the Ford Calumet Environmental Center — an architectural anchor... Valerio Dewalt Train

Duke University's new Karsh Alumni and Visitors Center sits at the entrance to the school and consists of four buildings: an event building, a meeting pavilion, an office building, and the historic Forlines House. The assemblage surrounds a lawn that serves as an outdoor even space.... Centerbrook Architects & Planners

Jishou city is the regional capital of the autonomous prefecture of the Tujia and Miao ethnic minorities. It is located within in the Western Hunan province, and has a population of over 300,000 people. Huang Yongyu, a famous artist belonging to the Tujia minority led an initiative for a... Eduard Kögel

Much of Lone Tree, Colorado, just south of Denver, is bisected by the wide, six-lane Lincoln Avenue, an east-west thorougfare that carries around 80,000 cars every day. To knit walking trails and developments on both sides of Lincoln, the City of Lone Tree built a pedestrian bridge designed by... Fentress Architects

The White Oak Music Hall (WOMH) is a three-stage music complex that sits on seven acres just north of downtown Houston. In addition to the Main Hall and Small Room in the Main Venue, the complex includes The Lawn for outdoor performances and a bar in the repurposed Raven Tower. SCHAUM/SHIEH... SCHAUM/SHIEH

Central City Concern’s Letty Owings Center treats mothers for drug addiction and alcoholism, while also teaching them essential parenting skills. Laura's Place serves women who have "graduated" from Letty Owings, giving them a place to translate those skills to everyday... Architecture Building Culture

From the street, One North is a daring mixed-use project that attracts a fair amount of attention through its wood-clad elevations that curve into projecting glazed portals. On the inside, the buildings create a courtyard, a public space for residents of Portland, while behind the facades are... Holst Architecture

Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences' new Science Education & Research Facility has a very "LA" site: one side fronts a busy street and another backs up against a six-lane highway. This condition led Frederick Fisher and Partners to turn inward, creating a courtyard... Frederick Fisher & Partners

Harumi is an artificial island built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay that saw the development of office and residential towers starting in the 1990s. That development will no doubt continue as the island is the site of the Olypmic Village for the 2020 Olympic Games. The announcement of...

In recent decades cities in China have grown at a tremendous speed. On their peripheries new real estate developments have produced huge housing complexes with uniform appearances. Many of these developments are a kind of speculative investment and as a result millions of the apartments are...

Designed for an engineer and an artist, the Topo House is an apt name, given the way it peels up gently from the Wisconsin landscape, melding itself with the site's topography. Johnsen Schmaling Architects' low-slung design can also be seen as a response to the state's cold...

Single-family homes in the United States tend to be one- or two-story buildings that sprawl across the land. Another tactic is taken in the aptly named Tower House designed for a steep and narrow Portland lot by architect Benjamin Waechter. Building up four floors allows for economical...

Site often determines a building's form, be it orientation, size, views, or materiality, among numerous characteristics. This cabin on the edge of Flathead Lake in western Montana finds inspiration in its site accordingly, also going so far as to echo the slope of the land in the green...

The small market town of Baumgartenberg in the Machland in Upper Austria is a fine example of maximum ambivalence: due to the economic price of land and the good transport connections to the conurbation around Linz a number of industries and businesses of considerable size have settled here, the...

Rhode Island, tucked between Connecticut and Massachusetts on the Atlantic Ocean, is easily the smallest state in the United States, with only 1,000 square miles of land. Its proximity to New York City makes it a desirable location for weekend houses, such as the Watch Hill House for a family...

Geo Metria was designed by Mount Fuji Architects Studio, a Tokyo-based “creator’s collective” committed to developing quality living environments through architectural and other design work. The residence sits on a hillside where the plains of Odawara meet the mountains of...

The Nihondaira Hotel, a long-standing institution on Shizuoka’s scenic Nippondaira plateau, sits within  Nihondaira Park. Recently created by Shizuoka's municipal government, the park presents the Nippondaira plateau as an open-air museum of natural landscape art; as part of the...

The Midway Plaisance—a one-mile-long green space laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 1890s—splits the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus into the neo-Gothic spires and quadrangles to the north and the predominantly modern buildings to...

If one state embodies the merits of modern, single-family residential architecture it is California, the land of Eichlers, the Case Study Houses, and now Dwell magazine. The influence of the latter and the broader "tyranny of consumerism" can be found in the "fresh voice and...

As architects Osamu Nishida and Erika Nakagawa designed this residence in Kanagawa Prefecture, they conceived of the architectural plan as a map. The pair strewed elements of the residence across the lot, and by doing so created a unique home structured similarly to a village. The...

By digging into the terraced building site, architect Keisuke Maeda of UID created a living area that is protected from the elements yet strongly connected to the land. His “House on the Surface of the Earth” is not a pre-conceived structure simply set on the ground, but rather a...

The Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is not alone in having to deal with a lack of land, symptomatic of development in American cities and suburbs. Yet this condition is balanced by the growing trend of cremation and other above-ground burials, which has pointed the way for...

A wedding in China is an issue in which many aspects have to be considered. First one needs a lucky date, chosen by an expert, for the traditional family party. However, before the party takes place, the bride and groom need an official certificate issued by the Civil Affairs Department....

Architects as Mathias Klotz (2G 26, 2003), Smiljan Radic (2G 44, 2007) and Cecilia Puga (2G 53, 2010) testify to a strong renewal of Chilean architecture, which has its prolongation in the younger couple formed by Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen, established in the city of...

This residence commands a sweeping view of the ocean from its perch on the steep hills that lead down to Sagami Bay in Kanagawa Prefecture, central Japan. In order to minimize the home’s visual impact on the rich natural landscape surrounding it, the architects kept the structure low and...

The plot of land for this project is adjoined to a large lake in a small town a few hours from Mexico City. In order to maximise the relationship with its setting, a system of long, rectangular structural shapes were decided upon, with one side completely open looking towards the lake. The...

When what is called the “local character” of a town or village has to be defined by legislation, then something is seriously wrong. A living culture of building cannot be decreed by law. Daniel Fügenschuh has proven this once again in a subtle and innovative way.

The international airport and the new deep-water port of Shanghai are located in the district of Nanhui, which is part of Pudong New Area. This suburban area with its huge infrastructure is the perfect place for production of export goods. Many factories are scattered across the former...

Peters Park occupies a plot of land in Boston’s South End that was actually water before the city was built up in the 19th century. The park coincides with the Neck to the Shawmut Peninsula, a historic location without a trace of its watery past. Local residents formed the Neck Art...

Kunshan is a town in the Yangtze River Delta near Shanghai. Many of the old canals in the city are converted into six-lane streets. For local residents it is difficult to find an atmospheric spot which reflects the former close relationship between nature and the urban environment in the...

According the U.S. General Service Administration (GSA), “border station architecture is an emerging building type [that] did not exist until the early decades of the 20th century.” This century’s post-September 11th climate means more and more border stations are being...

The desert metropolis of Phoenix is known for its insatiable thirst for land and water, an unsustainable trend in need of reconsideration. While small, this project by local architects WEDDLE GILMORE black rock studio could have a big impact towards reorienting how residents think about the...

Friedhöfe sind keine alltägliche Bauaufgabe. Mit steigender Flächenknappheit wird diesem wichtigen Teil einer urbanen Kultur nun aber immer größere Aufmerksamkeit zuteil. Es gilt, kontemplative Stimmungen auf immer engerem Raum zu evozieren. Reinhard Drexel zeigt, dass...

The two projects presented here are part of Iniciativa Elemental, a Doing Tank associated with the Compañía de Petróleos de Chile (COPEC) and the Universidad Católica. We focus on designing and implementing lowcost urban public housing projects. As...