Paris-based Nem Architectes has renovated a villa in Grasse, France, transforming it into a bright pink tourist destination named Domaine de la Rose for beauty company Lancôme.

The villa contains lounge and meeting spaces that can host perfume-making workshops, events and exhibitions, designed as a place where visitors can learn about the Lancôme brand and perfumery. Nem Architectes also added a perfume distillery and warehouse underground.

Surrounded by floral gardens used to make perfume, Domaine de la Rose is located on the Lancôme estate in Grasse, which is known as the world's perfume capital.

"The purpose of this design is to create a functional, practical, and sustainable building that can be both beautiful, contemporary and exemplary while showcasing the brand's luxurious and exceptional heritage and artistry," Nem Architectes told Dezeen.

The studio removed all buildings on the estate except for Domaine de la Rose, which was painted striking pink and reroofed with locally-made pink glazed canal tiles.

The villa is comprised of a pair of two-storey wings connected by a single-storey lobby. The upper levels of both wings open onto the roof of the lobby below, creating a terrace with views of the surrounding hills.

A path cuts through the centre of the building. One side features a circular tunnel entrance to the lobby, while the other entrance is sheltered by the terrace above, propped up by a column that appears like a stack of rocks.

Nem Architectes described its overhaul of the villa as a monolith, with a vibrant pink interior and exterior that stands out against the lush green landscape.

"It is a bold and striking sight, and it gives a tangible and unique form to the Lancôme brand," said Nem Architectes.

"The estate can also be seen as a living and sensorial experience for the visitors and guests," it continued. "Their visual, olfactive and acoustic senses are stimulated throughout the house and the garden, as they would be when using a Lancôme perfume."

Nem Architectes chose to renovate the existing building rather than build a new one for sustainability reasons.

The studio added lavender and rice straw in timber frames to the exterior, which was closed off with rigid wood fibre insulation boards to improve insulation.

"It was decided early on that the building should be rehabilitated as opposed to completely levelled and replaced with a new one," said Nem Architectes.

"This decision is in compliance with Nem Architectes and Lancôme's concern for sustainability, as it saves resources and energy while paying homage to the local architectural heritage."

Nem Architectes was founded in 2008 by Lucie Niney and Thibault Marca.

Other pink buildings that have been featured on Dezeen include a cultural institution in Lima that was renovated to have pink walls and an apartment renovation in Mexico with arched openings.

The photography is by Cyrille Weiner unless stated.

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This week on Dezeen, the Royal Institute of British Architects named Ghanaian-Scottish architect and educator Lesley Lokko the recipient of this year's Royal Gold Medal.

Lokko is the first African woman to receive the prestigious award and, following in the footsteps of architects Zaha Hadid and Yasmeen Lari, became the third woman to win in her own right since the Royal Gold Medal was established in 1848.

In a video produced by the Royal Institute of British Architects, she reflected on her career in architecture and stated, "I very much hope that this medal demonstrates that it's worth it to think differently".

This week we also published a roundup of the 10 regions that will make up the Neom mega-development in northwest Saudi Arabia.

The best-known and largest Neom development is The Line (pictured above), which is set to be a city made up of two 500-metre-tall skyscrapers stretching 170 kilometres long.

The Trends in Evolution & Ecology journal named the controversial project one of this year's 15 most pressing global conservation issues, claiming it to be a substantial risk to migratory species.

Elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, architecture studio Populous unveiled its design for a stadium with seating on three sides and a retractable screen on the other.

Named the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium, after the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, it will form part of an entertainment district in Qiddiya and is a proposed venue for the 2034 World Cup.

In other architecture news, photographer Rasmus Hjortshøj captured the spiky exterior of the BIG-designed Kaktus Towers as they near completion in Copenhagen.

We also rounded up eight upcoming skyscrapers in the United States that are in various stages of development, including what is set to be the first supertall skyscraper in Miami and an "all-electric" skyscraper in Manhattan.

Meanwhile in London, activist collective BP or not BP? took to Instagram to urge architects not to work on the recently-announced redevelopment masterplan for the British Museum due to funding from oil company BP.

The collective stated that by accepting a £50 million donation, the British Museum is "allowing BP to continue its extraction and harm Global South communities across the world who face the worst impacts of the climate crisis".

In design news, former Ferrari-designer Lowie Vermeersch spoke with Dezeen about his newly created micro vehicle project, Komma, which aims to push traditional vehicles off the road.

Hoping to shape 21st-century urban design by reducing the amount of space needed for vehicles, the Komma car is an electric two-seater vehicle that features car-like seats placed in front of one another for a narrow width.

Projects that turned readers' heads this week included a garden pavilion in London that weaves around a Lebanese cedar tree, a home in Sydney topped with a roof garden and a bamboo-clad house in the Netherlands.

Our latest lookbooks featured kitchens with floor-to-ceiling cabinets that help keep interiors clutter-free and homes with sheds and outbuildings.

This week on Dezeen

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Architecture studio Populous has revealed its design for the Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium in Qiddiya, Saudi Arabia, which is a proposed 2034 World Cup venue.

Named after Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the stadium in the Qiddiya entertainment district will have a retractable roof and pitch.

One side of the stadium will be a large, retractable LED wall, which will be used to broadcast live events, films and laser shows. When retracted, it will reveal an opening that allows the pitch's three-sided seating to overlook the 200-metre-high Tuwaiq cliff that the stadium is perched upon.

"It is set to be the world's first fully integrated venue with a combined retractable roof, pitch and LED wall – an architectural innovation offering unparalleled versatility and allowing the space to transform into different event modes in a matter of hours," said Populous.

Digital screens will cover the exterior of the geometric venue, which appears to rise out of the cliffside in a series of staggered blocks.

Surrounding the stadium will be towers of sports and entertainment spaces connected by an internal street, also covered by LED screens, that will direct visitors to openings with cliff-edge views.

"The stadium exterior is formed by a collection of modular cubes that act as an extension of the Tuwaiq cliff, framed by portals that glimpse into the future of the city," said Populous senior principal Rhys Courtney.

"The cubes and portals spill down the cliff to create a massive digital canvas that interacts with users at different scales – from street-level vistas to the three-sided seating bowl experience, to citywide views – transcending the stadium typology."

The stadium forms part of Saudi Arabia's bid to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, with Populous designing the 45,000-seat stadium to FIFA requirements.

It will become the home ground of Saudi Arabis's pro league football clubs Al-Hilal and Al-Nassr, but the stadium is set to host a range of events in sports, entertainment and culture, including boxing, esports, concerts and theatre performances.

"The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium represents a quantum leap in stadium design and a new generation of digitally-enabled innovation," said Populous managing director Chris Lee.

"The level of embedded technology will enable both incredible gaming and entertainment experiences and a new way for fans to watch and enjoy football itself."

The Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Stadium will be the focal point of a wider entertainment and esports district for Qiddiya designed by Populous, which is also set to include a neon-lit esports arena.

With construction underway to the west of Riyadh, Qiddiya is one of 14  "giga-projects" planned to boost tourism in Saudi Arabia and is 100 per cent owned by the Public Investment Fund.

As well as the Populous-designed stadium and esports area, the entertainment megaproject will contain concert halls, a race track, a Jack Nicklaus-branded golf course and a Six Flags theme park with the world's longest, tallest and fastest rollercoaster.

Populous designed the stadium to be well integrated into Qiddiya city and connected to other venues in the gaming and esports district through park-and-ride facilities and drop-off zones. Hotel, shopping and dining areas will be built close by.

Low-energy, climate-controlled facilities will ensure comfortable temperatures year-round, including a lake built under the stadium that reuses captured rainwater to pre-cool the air conditioning system.

Other designs by Populous include the redevelopment of Manchester City's Etihad Stadium to add a hotel and museum and the Geodis Park stadium in Nashville, which the studio claims is the US's largest purpose-built soccer stadium.

The images and video are courtesy of Populous.

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Pieces by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Charles and Ray Eames are included in this roundup of modernist furniture designed by architects working in the 20th century.

Many of the architects whose work is featured below turned their hand to furniture design after training in architecture.

For some, it was a career change, while others treated it as an addition to their architecture work, opting to design some of the furnishings for the homes they were building.

After making an impact on 20th-century design, some of the furniture pieces are still in production and recognisable today, while others have influenced contemporary designers and manufacturers to reinterpret them for modern-day customers.

Read on for 12 furniture designs by 20th-century architects:

E1027 side table by Eileen Gray (1927)

Designed by Irish architect Eileen Gray as a multifunctional table that could be used in living spaces and by the bedside, E1027 comprises two circular metal tubes held together by a metal stand.

The table was created for the modernist E-1027 villa on the south coast of France, which was completed in 1929 as Gray's first major architecture project.

LC4 Chaise Lounge by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand (1928)

French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier worked with his cousin and fellow architect Pierre Jeanneret and Perriand on multiple recognisable furniture designs.

Pictured above in a home in Wyoming is the LC4 Chaise Lounge, which was designed by the trio to follow the natural contours of the human body.

Cesca Chair by Marcel Breuer (1928)

Hungarian-American architect Marcel Breuer designed the cantilevered Cesca Chair in 1928 with a tubular steel frame and a rattan seat and backrest.

GRT Architects furnished a Manhattan restaurant and cocktail bar with upholstered versions of the Cesca Chair, which furniture brand Knoll has produced since 1968.

Barcelona Chair by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich (1929)

Designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1929 with his long-term partner and fellow architect Lilly Reich, the Barcelona Chair is considered an iconic piece of furniture from the modernist movement.

Pictured above is the chair with its matching stool at the Mass is More installation at the Barcelona Pavilion, a home also designed by Mies van der Rohe.

Find out more about Barcelona Chair ›

Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto (1933)

Stool 60 was created by Finnish architect and designer Alvar Aalto in 1933 with a simple, flat-packed design made up of a circular seat and three legs.

Architect Daisuke Motogi took the iconic stool and reinterpreted it into one hundred different iterations for the Hackability of the Stool exhibition (pictured above), including designs where the stool became a chess board, loo roll holder, drying rack and vinyl record player.

Find out more about Hackability of the Stool ›

Racine Collection by Frank Lloyd Wright and Steelcase (1939)

American company Steelcase used archival designs by architect Wright to create the Racine Collection of furniture, which includes desks and office chairs.

Steelcase looked to furniture designed by Wright for his SC Johnson Administration building, completed in 1939 and located in the town of Racine, Wisconsin.

As part of Dezeen's review of 2023, our readers named the Racine Collection the best furniture design of the year.

Find out more about the Racine Collection ›

Ball Chair by Lina Bo Bardi (1951)

Defined by its encompassing semi-spherical seat that can be rotated to different angles, the Ball Chair by Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi is supported by a metal ring on four legs.

Designed by Bo Bardi in 1951, the chair was relaunched by Italian design brand Arper in 2014 in a range of upholstery options, including black leather and various colourful fabrics.

Find out more about Ball Chair ›

Florence Knoll Sofa by Florence Knoll Bassett (1954)

Florence Knoll Bassett – who trained as an architect before founding the furniture brand Knoll Associates with her husband Hans Knoll – designed multiple pieces of furniture for her brand.

Knoll, who died in 2019, described her designs as the "bread and butter" of the brand, including the Florence Knoll Sofa pictured above. The pieces were sold alongside sculptural designs by other modernist designers.

Eames Lounge Chair by Charles and Ray Eames (1956)

American husband and wife duo Charles and Ray Eames designed a lounge chair with an accompanying ottoman in 1956 made from moulded plywood, a production method the Eameses had been pioneering since the early 1940s.

Pictured above is the Eames Lounge Chair and ottoman in a Los Angeles apartment that architecture and design studio OWIU Studio updated with beige-toned furniture and materials.

Find out more about Eames Lounge Chair ›

Egg chair by Arne Jacobsen (1958)

Created by Danish architect Arne Jacobsen in 1958 for the interior of the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, the Egg chair is made by glueing leather or textile onto polyurethane foam, which is then moulded over a metal or fibreglass structural frame.

In a statement to Dezeen, design studio Pearson Lloyd founders Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd claimed the concave chair would not be designed today as the amount of glue needed in its production makes it too difficult to recycle.

Wiggle Chair by Frank Gehry (1972)

Utilising the materials he typically used to make architectural models, architect Frank Gehry combined 60 layers of corrugated cardboard to create the sculptural Wiggle Chair in 1972.

Dutch interior design practice DAB Studio added the rounded chair to the transformation of a kitchen in a family home in the Netherlands to balance the space's rectangular forms.

Find out more about Wiggle Chair ›

Ventaglio table by Charlotte Perriand (1972)

After working on furniture with Le Corbusier between 1927 and 1937, Perriand pursued a solo career. Her designs were heavily influenced by nature and her time spent in Japan during the second world war.

In 1972 she designed the Ventaglio oak table with a geometric tabletop, which is currently manufactured by Italian furniture brand Cassina.

Find out more about Ventaglio ›

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Architecture studio 10 Design has unveiled its design for Huafa Snow World in Shenzhen, which will include an indoor ski resort that the studio claims will be "the largest of its kind in the world".

Slated to open in 2025, the development will include a hotel, shopping mall, office space, and an indoor ski slope with an undulating shape that rises over the other functions.

"Anchored by an 80,000 square-meter indoor ski resort, the largest of its kind in the world, Huafa Snow World boasts a rich mix of retail, entertainment, commercial, hospitality, civic and cultural components, creating a vibrant destination," said 10 Design.

According to the studio, the development will have an "urban green axis" stretching the site from north to south, providing public space with a connection to nature.

Located in the city's growing technology hub, Qianhai Bay, 10 Design wants the development to be a place where people and businesses can connect.

The site will be divided into three main clusters – an entertainment area on the western side, a culture and civic area that is integrated with the green axis, and a retail area designed to connect with the neighbouring buildings.

"Situated in a key location, conveniently linked to the airport and an intercity transportation hub, the new development provides locals with a place to gather while easily attracting and connecting discerning business and leisure travellers from across the globe," 10 Design said.

"Our vision for the project is to deliver a fully immersive experience, servicing not only tourists but also the local residents."

"The planning and design for this cultural epicentre reimagines retail development as a multi-faceted community experience, inviting discovery and encouraging guests to explore," the studio continued.

Huafa Snow World will include the Huafa Snow Centre, which will overlook the nearby riverfront and combine ski facilities with retail spaces and a hotel.

10 Design designed the snow centre as a series of interconnected boxes, aiming to encourage a sense of exploration between the different functions.

Rising over the boxy forms will be an undulating structure containing an 83-metre-tall and 441-metre-long ski slope, which will be topped with solar panels to offset the energy required for the ski centre and commercial buildings, according to the studio.

A hotel connected to the snow centre will contain a ballroom with panoramic views of the ski slope.

To create a snowy theme in the design, ceramic boards and aluminium panels will be added to the facades, intending to mimic glaciers and ice crystals.

10 Design claims the environmental impact of Huafa Snow World will be minimised with rainwater harvesting that will irrigate the landscape, and a wetland reserve designed to prevent urban waterlogging.

"Seamlessly blending innovative design, cutting-edge technology, and sensation-rich experiences, Huafa Snow World is slated to become the leading attraction in the region, supporting growth and celebrating nature," said the studio.

Founded in 2010, 10 Design is an architecture and masterplanning studio with offices in Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Dubai, Miami, London, Shenzhen, Singapore, and San Francisco.

The studio recently revealed its second design for Saudi mega-development Neom, the Norlana yachting town in the Gulf of Aqaba, which followed a luxury resort with two jagged skyscrapers unveiled in November last year.

The images are by 10 Design.

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Portuguese studio OODA has revealed a skyscraper made up of 13 staggered cube volumes as its design for the Hora Vertikale residential development in Tirana.

Scheduled to break ground in spring 2024, the 140-metre-tall building will include apartments stacked over a park with public amenities.

Located in the Albanian capital, OODA wants the building to engage the local community and described it as "a unique vertical village set amidst a large green city".

The studio designed 13 cubes, in seven variations, for the building that each measure 22.5 metres by 22.5 metres and seven stories tall – the typical height of buildings in Tirana, according to the studio.

Three rows of three cubes will form the base of the building, with some set apart and slightly rotated to form narrow gaps. Two side-by-side cubes will sit on top, followed by two singular  to form a building that is six cubes tall.

Some cubes will have gridded facades with regular window openings, while others will have protruding blocks and rounded elements.

The uppermost cube will feature angular balconies supported by columns punctuating the perimeter.

"Each cube embodies a unique concept related to art and is also inspired by the local vernacular," said OODA.

OODA claims the building will be made from materials locally sourced from Albania, intending to reduce its carbon footprint and support local businesses.

"The result is a building that leaves a lasting impact on both city visitors and those who live there," said the studio.

The building was designed to have a striking impression on the landscape, with a staggered blocky exterior that has a distinct appearance from all angles.

"From a distance, the building presents distinct elevations and perceptions from different views around the city," said OODA.

"Up close, the concept's playful interplay reveals its secrets, and the compositions step back from the main road towards the park at the rear, creating the most adequate transition in terms of scale."

Hora Vertikale is the latest high-profile skyscraper with a distinctive design set to be built in Tirana, following Chybik + Kristof's design for a cascading tower made from red concrete.

MVRDV has also revealed plans for a skyscraper in the city, which will have a silhouette modelled on the bust of the prominent Albanian historical figure Gjergj Kastrioti.

With offices based in Porto and Lisbon, OODA was established in 2010 and is led by partners Diogo Brito, Francisco Lencastre, João Jesus, Julião Pinto Leite and Rodrigo Vilas-Boas.

The studio has previously renovated a ceramic-tiled building in Porto into 14 apartments and collaborated with Kengo Kuma to convert a slaughterhouse into a cultural centre.

The images are by Plomp.

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French architecture practice TVK has completed a neighbourhood in Paris made up of limestone buildings surrounding a garden and designed as a sustainable development that aims to increase biodiversity.

Located on a triangular site in Paris's 19th arrondissement, the project is "the capital's first zero-carbon district", according to TVK.

Named Îlot Fertile, which translates to "fertile island" in French, it contains apartments, a youth hostel, student residences, a hotel, offices, restaurants, shops and sports facilities.

The four buildings that make up the neighbourhood range in height from seven to nine storeys tall, each with ground-floor levels made from low-carbon concrete and designed to achieve large, unobstructed interior spaces.

The upper levels were made from load-bearing limestone sourced mainly from the local Ile-de-France region, aiming to reduce the carbon cost of transportation.

TVK claims the 35,200-square-metre development is the largest load-bearing stone building site since Georges-Eugène Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the mid-19th century.

"Each material is used in the right place and the right quantity," TVK founders Pierre Alain Trévelo and Antoine Viger Kohler told Dezeen.

"We chose to use mainly limestone from the Paris region – it's the same one used to build the Haussmann buildings."

Public spaces, including restaurants and shops, are located on the ground floors of the buildings and open onto the central garden.

Hotel accommodations and apartments are on the upper levels, and a raised outdoor level provides additional garden spaces with an orchard, vegetable patches, insect hotels and nest boxes.

Office spaces are located in a building that sits parallel to a railway line and, aiming to work with the site's existing topology and move as little earth as possible, TVK designed a sunken sports centre in a large hole on the site to create an interior with high ceilings.

"The biggest challenge of the project was to bring together more than a dozen programmes and turn them into a fully-fledged part of the city," said Trévelo and Kohler.

"The shape of each building is linked to the very specific geometry of the site shaped by the railway infrastructure," they continued. "This brings diversity to a building complex of this scale."

TVK designed Îlot Fertile to have a minimal carbon footprint in its construction and operation. It topped the buildings with photovoltaic panels and green roofs to produce energy while also aiming to increase biodiversity.

"Its proximity to public transport means that Îlot Fertile does not require any car parking, and we used a bioclimatic design to keep energy requirements to a minimum for heating, cooling and lighting," said Trévelo and Kohler.

"For the small amount of energy that will be consumed, the project plans to compensate for it by producing green energy via bio-solar roofs."

"Driven by the City of Paris' ambition for ecological transition, zero-carbon is a long-term objective for the life of the entire operation," added Trévelo and Kohler.

Elsewhere in Paris, Christ & Gantenbein completed a 124-metre-long steel-clad housing block, and RSHP unveiled its design for a "post-carbon" neighbourhood that will be located in the La Défense business district.

The photography is by Julien Hourcade.

Project credits:

Architect: TVK
Client: Linkcity
Landscape design: OLM
Building and civil engineering: Berim
Engineering: Carbone 4 and Amoes

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Italian studio Robocoop has created a temporary facade to blend into its historic surroundings and hide ongoing construction on a palace courtyard restoration in Rome.

Robocoop designed a facade of arches, columns and sculpture and printed it onto a PVC plastic banner, stretching it across scaffolding measuring ten metres tall and 11 metres wide.

It was created for the Special Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Rome, which commissioned Robocoop to create artwork to hide the construction site caused by the restoration of courtyard facades at Palazzo Mattei di Giove.

Studio founders Lorenzo Zandri and Luca Pozzati described the project, named BassoRilievo, as "a deliberate intention to construct an illusionary infill facade".

Originally designed by Italian architect Carlo Maderno in 1598, the palace courtyard was built as an open-air lapidarium to display ancient Roman reliefs and sculptures.

Robocoop's temporary facade took elements of the palace walls, as well as cues from the Santa Susanna church in Rome and contemporary architects, including Carlo Scarpa, Luigi Moretti, and Amin Taha, to create a fragmented yet familiar appearance.

"Some of the elements of this fictional facade are homages to these architects, reinterpreting the idea of collage using some of these archetypal forms from iconic projects," Zandri and Pozzati told Dezeen.

Zandri and Pozzati described the facade as an illusionary installation made with architectural precision, aiming to create a printed sheet of plastic that appears like solid architecture.

"Our recent project at Palazzo Mattei di Giove blends installation art with ephemeral architecture," they said.

"We use detailed measurements and proportional design, creating the illusion of a tangible structure with large prints on plastic," Zandri and Pozzati continued.

"This challenges perceptions, inviting contemplation and connection between the artwork and the surrounding context."

Both with backgrounds in architecture, Zandri and Pozzati founded Robocoop in 2012 as an experimental design studio primarily working in urban art. The duo is based between Rome and London.

Elsewhere in Rome, Milan-based designer Patricia Urquiola converted a palazzo into a hotel and spa, and architecture studio Buero Wagner installed an adaptable black timber pavilion in the grounds of Villa Massimo.

The photography is by Robocoop.

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Australian architecture studio Fraser & Partners has revealed its design for a nearly 190-metre-tall residential tower named C6 in Perth, Australia, describing it as a "new benchmark in height for mass timber".

Fraser & Partners says C6, which will be 189.1 metres tall, will become the world's tallest hybrid timber housing once it is completed, towering over plans for SHoP Architects' 180-metre-tall hybrid timber tower in Sydney and Schmidt Hammer Lassen's design for a 100-metre-tall housing block in Switzerland.

It will also surpass the 86.6-metre-tall mass-timber building Ascent in Wisconsin, which was certified as the tallest mass-timber building last year.

Fraser & Partners designed C6 to be made from 42 per cent mass timber, including cross-laminated timber floors and glued laminated timber beams, aiming to facilitate the need for more housing with a minimal impact on the environment.

The rest of the building's structure will comprise a concrete core and columns and a steel diagrid.

C6's hybrid structure was carefully designed to make the best use of each material, allowing the design to reach record-breaking heights, according to Fraser & Partners director Reade Dixon.

"To get to 189.1 metres we relied on the hybrid structure model, using concrete where it was the most efficient and required for gravity loads and lateral stability at this height – in the core and the columns – and using timber where it was more efficient than using concrete, the horizontal structure being the floors and beams," Dixon told Dezeen.

"At this height, typical superstructure design was used, such as concrete outrigger walls at three different locations in the tower to deal with lateral loading and reduce core and column sizes," he added. "A steel diagrid was also used to further assist with bracing requirements."

"All these elements combined together to allow this new benchmark in height for mass timber."

According to Fraser & Partners, C6 will be carbon-neutral upon its completion and will fully operate on renewable energy.

"With the help of Australian advisory firm Slattery's Carbon Accounting team, C6's timber structure was calculated to sequester 10,500 tonnes of carbon compared to a typical concrete building of the same scale," Dixon explained.

"At this early stage, we are expecting the structure to be carbon neutral on completion based on the calculations provided by Slattery."

C6 will contain 237 apartments ranging in size from one to four bedrooms, and the mass-timber structure will be exposed in the interior.

The residential tower will sit atop a podium with public space planted with native flora, aiming to provide a place for community engagement and facilitate the rehabilitation of the endangered black cockatoo bird and other local species.

Dixon hopes C6 will encourage architects and developers around the world to build more tall buildings in mass timber.

"We hope that a project like C6 will help give further confidence to the market on how this construction methodology can help reduce the built industries carbon footprint and head towards a carbon-positive future," said Dixon.

"There will always be a place for concrete in tower designs, however, we feel timber is currently heavily underutilised in the tower construction market, and projects like this will help kickstart the further growth of these industries in Australia and around the world."

Recently completed buildings made from mass timber include an office building in Mexico that architecture studio Dellekamp Schleich says is the country's largest mass-timber structure and a six-storey business school in Singapore by Toyo Ito, which claims to be the largest wooden building in Asia.

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Architecture studio Snøhetta has revealed its design for an opera house in the historic town of Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, informed by traditional Najdi architecture.

Located on the outskirts of Riyadh, the Royal Diriyah Opera House will accommodate 3,500 visitors and contain a 2,000-seat opera theatre, two 450-seat multipurpose theatres and a 450-seat covered rooftop amphitheatre.

The project, which is expected to be completed in 2028, aims to provide a leading stage for future generations of performers.

It will form part of a wider masterplan to redevelop Diriyah, an ancient town known for its vernacular Najdi architecture of mud-brick structures placed close together to create shade.

Informed by Najdi architecture and the nearby riverbeds of the Wadi Hanifah valley, Snøhetta's design will comprise a cluster of buildings with textured facades, built from palm, stone and earth.

​"This project aims to connect the area's rich history with contemporary culture, highlighting the importance and integrity of arts when building future communities," said studio co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen.

"The concept is built on the idea of earth from the riverbeds, which crack when exposed to the hot sun, is moulded by wind and rain, and then finds a new shape as separate forms," added Snøhetta.

"This idea formed the cluster of buildings, which appears to be rising from the ground with open passages throughout."

The Royal Diriyah Opera House will also include a cafe, retail space, public gardens and shaded outdoor spaces.

"Seamlessly integrating these public spaces enriches both the cultural and recreational experiences and enhances the intrinsic value of the location," said Snøhetta.

Other cultural projects by the studio include an elliptical planetarium in France and a mass-timber museum extension with an oculus in the US.

The images are by Binyan.

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Italian studio Mario Cucinella Architects has unveiled its design for a hospital and health park in Cremona, Italy, which appears to rise out of the ground in concentric rings.

The hospital will have a radial semicircular layout that rises to seven storeys and staggers to create roof terraces.

A semicircular colonnade will stand opposite the hospital to enclose a circular public park with a lake at the centre.

According to Mario Cucinella Architects, the Cremona hospital will be "a new model for healthcare architecture" that is well connected to the city.

It will include diagnostic and treatment services as well as leisure spaces that encourage social interaction to improve the care and wellbeing of patients.

The hospital will be located between Cremona's urban expansion and the Park of the River Po and Morbasco, creating a connecting point between the city and areas of nature.

The semicircular design of the hospital is intended as a "core" from which future hospital expansions can be built.

Mario Cucinella Architects also designed terraces spanning the nearby river with embankments and elevated pedestrian paths to provide a connection to the natural landscape.

"We were required to design spaces that are not only for patient care but are also for all the other people who spend every day in a hospital for whom it is a workplace," said studio founder Mario Cucinella.

"We were also required to plan in advance for buildings that will be able to transform and adapt to changing conditions, not only in response to health emergencies such as those we have recently experienced, but also to continuous developments in the medical field that bring about innovations, including in how hospitals are organised."

The studio described the hospital as a "city within a city". It will have seven floors above ground and two basement levels. Medical departments will be arranged with the aim of creating a collaborative hospital that fulfils patients' needs efficiently.

"Each patient will experience different hospital environments depending on the care pathway they take and on the intensity of treatment they require – the different departments are no longer separate 'cells' isolated one from another but are organised instead as different groups of professionals working on that particular patient," explained Mario Cucinella Architects.

"This results in a system where the whole hospital collaborates as a single department in caring for the patient, rather than as a sum of separated departments."

As part of the wider masterplan, the healthcare park will feature a forest surrounding the hospital with green paths passing through the building that connect patients with therapeutic activities, including meditation spaces, forest bathing, a community food forest and outdoor reading spaces.

The landscape will contain two "rings". The Vitality Ring will be a pedestrian route with sports and social spaces open to the public, while the Rural Ring will host events and activities surrounded by meadows and a lake at the centre.

"As a new piece of landscape for the city of Cremona, the healthcare park gives the community a new reference point that is animated by spaces for socialising as well as by quieter, more introspective places for care of the person and for general physical and mental well-being, in a setting of naturalness and urban biodiversity," said Mario Cucinella Architects.

Mario Cucinella Architects intends to mitigate the urban heat island effect and reduce the area's average temperature by around four degrees Celcius by adding natural elements to the landscape, such as vegetation and water features.

The studio also plans to minimise the environmental impact by implementing passive design strategies, including optimised orientation, wind permeability and natural daylight.

Other projects by Mario Cucinella Architects include a hospital in Milan wrapped in ceramic fins that can break down smog particles and a monolithic church on a hilltop in southern Italy.

The post Mario Cucinella Architects reveals semicircular hospital rising out of the ground in Cremona appeared first on Dezeen.

Australian studio ARM Architecture has completed the renovation of the Geelong Arts Centre in Victoria, Australia, adding a theatrical draping facade to its exterior.

The building, which is the largest regional arts centre in the country, contains two theatres connected by large public foyers.

Geelong Arts Centre was originally constructed in 1981 in the brutalist style. ARM Architecture has updated its exterior with a sculptural curtain-like facade made from glass-reinforced concrete, alongside flat precast concrete panels.

The 2,900-square-metre centre has a campus-like layout designed to be a welcoming and inviting space for theatre-goers and other visitors.

A 250-seat theatre named Open House has been created as an extension of the public space, opening onto a forecourt and the street through operable glazed doors. Blue scaffolding along the sides of the seating area that can be used as performance space.

"The intent of the project was to provide a series of flexible spaces that could be used by professionals and amateurs alike," ARM Architecture principal Jeremy Stewart told Dezeen.

"In the case of the Open House, this meant challenging the notion of the conventional 'black box' theatre," added Stewart.

"Rather than an opaque, highly technical and intimidating space, the Open House was designed to be unpretentious, open and welcoming – an extension of the public realm that would overcome 'threshold anxiety'."

ARM Architecture worked with the Wadawurrung community – First Nations Australians local to Geelong and surrounding areas – to showcase indigenous stories and artwork by four artists throughout the centre.

"Rather than artworks being produced in isolation and placed in the building, this project is remarkable in that it was a genuine collaboration and co-design with First Nations people," said Stewart.

"A narrative was developed with the Wadawurrung that led to the building interpreted as 'layers of Wadawurrung Country'."

The second theatre in the centre is named Story House, which seats 550 visitors and is covered in wooden wall panels with perforated patterns, designed by artist Tarryn Love.

Artwork by Wadawurrung artist Kait James is displayed on the west facade of the centre. In her work, the artist references Aboriginal souvenir tea towels from the 1970s and 80s that depict stereotypes of her culture and aims to create a new narrative. James's tea towel designs are printed on 193 metal panels.

Musical artist Mick Ryan created a soundscape to be played in the foyer that mimics the sound of Moonah tree forests, which have cultural significance to the Wadawurrung people, while artist Gerard Black designed a mural for the dining space of an eel on a rippled timber background.

ARM Architecture previously designed a sports centre in Western Australia with a pixellated black and blue exterior and in 2016, the studio won the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal.

The photography is by John Gollings.

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We continue our review of 2023 with a roundup of this year's top architecture and design books, including a survey of 60 years of Barbie Dreamhouses and a volume documenting tidal pools around the world.

Also featured in the roundup is a series of books on kerbside dining shelters made popular during the coronavirus pandemic and two books on brutalism, one focusing on architecture in Paris and the other in Italy.

Here are Dezeen's top 10 books of 2023:

Barbie Dreamhouse by Mattel and Pin-Up

To mark the 60th anniversary of Barbie's Dreamhouse, Toymaker Mattel and architecture magazine Pin-Up released a book illustrating the evolution of the dollhouse and its furnishings from 1962 to 2021.

It features photographs by fashion photographer Evelyn Pustka, architectural drawings, and quotes and essays from designers, critics and historians examining how Dreamhouses throughout the decades echoed the styles and domestic ideals of the time.

Find out more about Barbie Dreamhouse ›

Brutalist Paris by Robin Wilson

Barlett School of Architecture professor Robin Wilson documented over 50 brutalist buildings completed in Paris from the 1950s to the 1980s in his book Brutalist Paris.

Spotlighting celebrated brutalist structures as well as those that have been abandoned and demolished, the book explores the social, political and cultural contexts of the buildings in seven essays, with photography by Nigel Green.

Find out more about Brutalist Paris ›

Sea Pools: 66 saltwater sanctuaries from around the world by Chris Romer-Lee

Tidal pools – seawater pools filled by high tides – from around the world are captured in this book by architect Chris Romer-Lee.

Romer-Lee created the book with the aim of showcasing the "often overlooked coastal infrastructure", from a tidal pool in Portugal commissioned during the authoritarian Estado Novo regime (pictured above) to a pool in South Africa that had a dangerous impact on the topography of the coast due to its enormous size.

Find out more about Sea Pools ›

How We Ate by John Tymkiw

Noticing a trend in kerbside dining shelters springing up on New York City streets during the coronavirus pandemic, freelance creative director John Tymkiw spent three years photographing the makeshift structures and compiled them into a series of books titled How We Ate.

Tymkiw described the shelters as an important new form of architectural expression, which responded to a commercial necessity for increased outdoor seating when Covid-19 limited the capacity of indoor gatherings.

Find out more about How We Ate ›

US Embassies of the Cold War: The Architecture of Democracy, Diplomacy and Defense by David B Peterson

David B Peterson collated mid-century embassies designed for the United States in this book, including a structure in Athens with a cantilevered roof by Walter Gropius and a triangular building in Oslo by Eero Saarinen.

According to Peterson, the purpose-built United States embassies of the Cold War period were designed to be a clear break from neoclassical architecture, which had come to be associated with fascism after world war two.

Find out more about US Embassies of the Cold War ›

Ultimate Collector Motorcycles by Charlotte and Peter Fiell

This double-volume anthology spotlights 100 of the most collectable and valuable motorcycles of all time, including ones that broke world records and won prestigious races.

Written by Charlotte and Peter Fiell and published by Taschen, Ultimate Collector Motorcycles provides detailed descriptions of the technical design and history of each bike.

Find out more about Ultimate Collector Motorcycles ›

Living on the Edge by Agata Toromanoff

Design historian Agata Toromanoff's book Living on the Edge celebrates houses perched on the edges of clifftops, many of them exhibiting innovative solutions to building on challenging landscapes.

For Toromanoff, the remote locations and vulnerability to harsh weather conditions are what make clifftop architecture interesting, whether it's a Chilean home with a vaulted roof designed to withstand strong winds (pictured above) or a mirror-clad extension in Canada placed on a steel frame that is anchored into the bedrock.

Find out more about Living on the Edge ›

Brutalist Italy by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego

The second book showcasing brutalist architecture in this roundup is Brutalist Italy by photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego.

It features "visually striking and sometimes surprising" examples of brutalism in Italy, including a Star Wars-like cemetery extension, a viaduct supported by twisting arches and a monolithic cheese-shaped temple.

Find out more about Brutalist Italy ›

100 20th-Century Shops by Twentieth Century Society

Architecturally significant UK stores, from retail parks to post-war shopping centres, are captured in this book by the Twentieth Century Society.

It documents the architectural heritage and evolution of retail in Britain throughout the 20th century, which saw a significant change in consumer culture and attitudes around high street shopping.

Find out more about 100 20th-Century Shops ›

Black Country Type by Tom Hicks

Also celebrating architecture in the UK is Black Country Type by artist Tom Hicks, which chronicles post-industrial buildings in the West Midlands.

The book includes factories, warehouses, shop fronts and underpasses that are unified by bright colours, sharp graphic lines and the use of typography.

Find out more about Black Country Type ›

2023 review

This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.

The post Dezeen's top 10 architecture and design books of 2023 appeared first on Dezeen.

A web of glass and carbon fibres envelops Texoversum, a university building for textiles that architecture studios Allmannwappner and Menges Scheffler Architekten have created in Germany.

Located in the city of Reutlingen, Texoversum forms part of the Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences campus expansion and contains offices, workshops, a university store, collaboration areas and a CNC robot workspace.

Its woven facade design is informed by textile construction and was developed by Allmannwappner and Menges Scheffler Architekten with engineering practice Jan Knippers Ingenieure.

"The fibre facade is an integral part of both the architectural expression of the building as a textile research and innovation centre and the environmental engineering and related indoor comfort strategy of the project," Menges Scheffler Architekten partner Achim Menges told Dezeen.

Texoversum's facade is composed of triangular panels measuring approximately four metres in width and 1.5 metres in height, each made by a robotic winding process developed at the University of Stuttgart.

There are five types of panels, each sharing the same triangular outer shape but varying slightly to create corner pieces and different-sized openings in the centre.

Manufactured by FibR GmbH, the web-like panels are made from white glass fibres overlayed with black carbon fibres that add structural support.

As the production is bespoke, no production waste or material off-cuts were produced, according to Menges.

"Fibrous filaments are freely placed between two rotating winding scaffolds by a robot," explained Menges. "During manufacturing, a lattice of white glass fibres is generated, onto which the black carbon fibres are placed where they are structurally needed."

"In this process, the predefined shape of the building component emerges only from the interaction of the filaments, eliminating the need for any mould or core," continued Menges.

He said this process results in a "bespoke form" and a "highly distinct architectural appearance" for each component.

Texoversum's facade tiles, which are self-supporting, have a staggered arrangement. This creates a multi-layered effect that shades the internal spaces while also providing openings with views out of the building.

"The fibre facade constitutes the external sun protection of the building, which has to fulfil stringent shading requirements in compliance with the German building code," said Menges.

"The white glass fibres serve as a formwork for the black carbon fibres, which provide the necessary structural capacity," added structural engineer Jan Kippers.

"It is a pure fibre structure that spans from floor to floor and allows cantilevers of around four metres at the upper edge without a steel frame or similar."

Inside, Texoversum has a split-level design. A central atrium separates the building into two halves, with each side separated in height by a half-floor level.

It has an industrial internal appearance with an exposed concrete structure and ceiling ductwork and an open-plan layout to encourage collaborative working.

The robotic winding process used for the facade has previously been used in designs for pavilions including the Elytra Filament Pavilion at London's V&A museum and the BUGA Wood Pavilion at the Bundesgartenschau horticultural show in Germany.

According to Menges, Texoversum was the first time the robotic manufacturing process was implemented in the design of a permanent building.

"While we had successfully built several temporary structures before, Texoversum constitutes the first permanent building using this design and manufacturing approach," he said.

"As Texoversum is a permanent building, we had to meet the full requirements of German building authorities," added Kippers.

"For this, extensive tests had to be carried out to prove the long-term creep behaviour, weather resistance, fire resistance and others."

Other buildings with facades made by robots include an art gallery in Shanghai's West Bund district by Archi-Union Architects and a winery in France's Rhône Valley by Carl Fredrik Svenstedt Architect.

The photography is by Brigida González.

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From a non-denominational temple to Europe's tallest modular residential tower, we select 10 of this year's most notable architecture projects in the UK as part of our 2023 review.

This year's roundup of the most popular and interesting projects UK architecture featured on Dezeen also features award-winning homes, including a remote house in Ayrshire named Scotland's best new building and a London home with a bamboo-planted facade that was awarded RIBA's House of the Year.

Read on for Dezeen's top 10 UK architecture projects of 2023:

White Eagle Lodge, Hampshire, by James Gorst Architects

Cloistered walkways connect timber-framed pavilions at this temple complex in rural Hampshire, which British studio James Gorst Architects designed for non-denominational multi-faith spiritual organisation White Eagle Lodge.

The complex comprises a rotunda temple, library, prayer chapels and meeting space arranged around a courtyard garden, aiming to provide peaceful, contemplative spaces that have a spiritual connection to the surrounding landscape.

Find out more about White Eagle Lodge ›

Cuddymoss, Ayrshire, by Ann Nisbet Studio

Architecture practice Ann Nisbet Studio won this year's RIAS Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award for Cuddymoss, a timber-framed home set within a stone ruin in Ayrshire.

Aiming to retain the ruin, the studio designed a gabled structure within the stone walls and added a glass corridor leading to a timber-clad extension.

Find out more about Cuddymoss ›

The Arches, London, by The DHaus Company

Architecture studio The DHaus Company created a row of six partially sunken townhouses in north London named The Arches, characterised by monumental arched windows framed by brick cladding.

Located in a conservation area, the design of the three-level terrace references Georgian-era housing and a row of Victorian railway arches in the surrounding area.

Find out more about The Arches ›

Brick pool house, Kent, by Knox Bhavan

Designed to merge into the garden landscape of a home in Kent, architecture studio Knox Bhavan concealed this brick pool house under a grassy mound that doubles as an elevated path.

The red brick walls of the pool house slope up from the ground and form a short colonnade sheltering a seating area. Inside the structure is a skylit shower, storage space and plant room.

Find out more about this brick pool house ›

College Road, London, by HTA Design

College Road is a 163-metre-tall apartment building with a pleated ceramic facade designed by British architecture studio HTA Design, which claims the building is Europe's tallest modular residential tower.

It is made up of two adjoining 50 and 35-storey towers constructed from 1,725 volumetric modular units, with 120 affordable homes in the shorter tower and 817 rental apartments in the taller one.

Find out more about College Road ›

Autobarn, Somerset, by Bindloss Dawes

Architecture studio Bindloss Dawes added a barn-style structure to a Georgian estate in Somerset to create a workshop and five-bay garage for a collection of classic Porsches.

Named Autobarn, the structure has an L-shaped plan with a pale-green steel frame wrapped in timber lattice cladding.

Find out more about Autobarn ›

Green House, London, by Hayhurst and Co

Bamboo planting sits behind a polycarbonate screen facade at Green House, designed by architecture studio Hayhurst and Co to reference the greenhouses that formerly occupied the site.

The London home, which was named this year's RIBA House of the Year, has a cross-laminated timber structure and a central atrium that naturally cools the interior and lets light in.

Find out more about Green House ›

Simon Square apartments, Edinburgh, by Fraser/Livingstone

Replacing an old builder's yard, Scottish studio Fraser/Livingstone added this mass-timber tenement-style housing development of six apartments to a historic site in Edinburgh.

Closely boarded by 19th-century stone tenements, the studio gave the housing an angular form to maintain privacy and let natural light into the apartments.

Find out more about the Simon Square apartments ›

Black & White Building, London, by Waugh Thistleton Architects

Another mass-timber project in this roundup is the Black & White Building, an office building in Shoreditch built from a combination of beech, pine and spruce timber with a slatted tulipwood facade.

Designed by local studio Waugh Thistleton Architects, the building was made of prefabricated components slotted together, which can be disassembled and reused at the end of its building life.

Find out more about Black & White Building ›

Aviva Studios, Manchester, by OMA

Dutch studio OMA's first major public building in the UK, Aviva Studios was constructed as a flexible events space for legendary Manchester arts and music company Factory International.

OMA claimed the project is the UK's "largest investment in a national cultural project since the opening of Tate Modern in 2000". It is distinguished by a faceted corrugated metal facade, chosen to reference the site's industrial history.

Find out more about Aviva Studios ›

2023 review

This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.

The post Dezeen's top 10 UK architecture projects of 2023 appeared first on Dezeen.

US architecture studio DLA+ has unveiled its design for a multi-purpose sports- and entertainment building in Incheon, South Korea, containing the Cheongna SSG baseball stadium and a shopping centre.

Working with retail franchise Shinsegae Group, DLA+ claims the project will be "the world's first baseball stadium with an integrated shopping mall and the first privately funded professional sporting venue in South Korea".

Set to be completed in 2028, the covered stadium will be home to South Korean professional baseball team SSG Landers and will have seating for 21,000 spectators.

Connected to the stadium will be the Starfield shopping mall, designed by engineering firm Arcadis. In addition to baseball games, the venue will host other sporting events, concerts and a range of private and community activities.

By combining the stadium with a mall, DLA+ hopes more visitors will be encouraged to visit the building year-round.

"Both programs benefit each other," studio principal Sunghoon Jung told Dezeen. "The stadium will have a longer exposure before and after the game and on non-game days, and the mall will draw more customers on game days."

The project will also include a hotel with guest rooms and an infinity pool overlooking the stadium's baseball field.

"The infinity pool is designed with two concepts in mind, seeing and being seen," said Jung.

"Guests in the infinity pool area can watch the game while enjoying their time in the pool. Their activity is a great scene as a backdrop for the fans watching the game."

The DLA+ principal explained that most sporting venues in South Korea are government-owned. As the country's first privately-funded stadium, Jung claimed that DLA+'s design will be centred around the fans' experience.

"Government-owned and funded stadium projects in Korea are very difficult for the sports design expertise to engage in in the early project planning process – it usually lacks a vision and strategies," he said.

"Our project, the first privately funded Korean stadium, went through a heavy visioning and planning process that became a foundation and guiding principle for the design," added Jung.

"This baseball stadium is being built from the ground up with fan experience and revenue generation in mind – we believe that its success will have a positive impact on the future of the Korean sports and entertainment industry."

Other stadium designs that have recently been featured on Dezeen include Populous's plans to expand Manchester City's Etihad Stadium by adding a museum and hotel and the renovation of the National Football League stadium in Jacksonville, which will feature reflective cladding wrapping the stadium's exterior.

The images are by Arcadis.

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Informed by the greenhouses that once occupied the site, local architecture studio Hayhurst and Co added bamboo planting behind polycarbonate screens to the facade of a family home in London.

Named Green House, Hayhurst and Co created the home as an example of low-cost, low-energy housing, with a cross-laminated timber (CLT) structure and repurposed materials used for cladding and flooring.

"The design for Green House draws on the natural history and verdant character of the site, providing a contemporary and low-energy reimagining of a domestic-scale greenhouse – a family home that blurs the boundaries between inside and outside spaces and creates a bold re-greening of a once unloved site," studio director Jonathan Nicholls told Dezeen.

"Green House provides a prototype for an affordable and sustainable family home that could be replicated on other constrained urban sites or on a larger scale as terrace dwellings."

Located between two brick houses built in the 2000s, Green House was built on an unused site in Tottenham's Clyde Circus conservation area that formerly accommodated orchards, greenhouses and market gardens.

According to Hayhurst and Co, the home is fossil fuel-free, with an air-source heat pump providing its heating and solar panels on the roof generating electricity.

An atrium at the centre of the home lets natural light into the interior and naturally cools the house by stack ventilation.

The home's south-facing front elevation is clad in polycarbonate screens with bamboo planted behind, referencing the greenhouses that once stood on the site and filtering natural light into the home.

"The plants and screens softly filter the daylight whilst maintaining privacy and provide solar shading on hot summer days," said Nicholls.

Repurposed agricultural roofing sheets clad the rear elevation, which backs onto a garden. Hayhurst and Co also used reclaimed concrete breeze blocks for outdoor paving and recycled cork rubber on the internal floors to keep within a budget of £550,000.

Communal spaces on the ground floor are open-plan, with the living room at the front of the home, the dining room under the central atrium, and the kitchen at the rear opening onto the back garden.

"The rooms in the house are arranged so that all spaces have views out to greenery," said Nicholls. "Long views are created through the house, from the north to south garden and through the planted facade."

An acoustic curtain wrapping the atrium can be drawn to separate the dining area from the kitchen and living room on either side.

A CLT structure was chosen for its negative carbon footprint and left exposed to add warmth and texture to the interior, while the home's simple cuboid form was designed for cost and energy efficiency.

"The material palette of the house was kept to a minimum, with a carbon-sequestering CLT superstructure and all primary structures exposed throughout, avoiding any additional carbon-heavy and costly plasterboard linings or paint finishes," said Nicholls.

"The rational block form of the house was chosen for its material and constructional efficiencies, as well as for providing the most efficient form factor possible to minimise heat loss, energy use, and costs."

Other projects completed by Hayhurst and Co include a London flat extension clad in charred timber and a primary school with landscaped play spaces enclosed by a white aluminium mesh screen.

The photography is by Kilian O'Sullivan.

Project credits:

Client: Tom Van Schelven
Architect: Hayhurst and Co
Structures: Iain Wright Associates
M&E energy consultants: Mesh Energy
CLT contractor: Eurban
Contractor: Rebuild London

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Danish architecture studio BIG has unveiled the design for a luxury residential building with cascading terraces named Park Rise, which will form part of the Ellinikon city masterplan near Athens.

Designed as the centrepiece of Ellinikon's Little Athens neighbourhood, Park Rise will contain 88 apartments stacked in a staggered arrangement of two gently curving wings, the tallest of which will rise to 50 metres.

The Ellinikon masterplan is being developed to transform the grounds of Athen's old airport into a 15-minute city made up of neighbourhoods arranged around a 200-hectare coastal park.

BIG designed Park Rise for developer Lamda Development, which claims the wider Ellinikon development is "Europe's largest urban regeneration project".

The geometric residential building will be separated into five cores – two will rise to five storeys, two will reach eight storeys and one will stand at 12 storeys.

Apartments will range in size from one-bed to five-bedroom, each of which will have minimalist interiors with views of the nearby Aegean Sea, surrounding park or mountains of Attica.

Informed by classic Greek columns, the exterior will be clad in off-white glass-reinforced concrete with a fluted surface pattern.

Oak flooring will line the interior floors, while kitchens will feature veined porcelain surfaces and bathrooms covered in stone or ceramic tile.

Additional amenities at Park Rise will include fitness facilities, an indoor swimming pool and a private garden, and penthouse apartments will also have their own private swimming pools.

As part of the Little Athens neighbourhood, Park Rise was designed to provide modern apartments that embrace "the open spirit of Athenian living".

Located by the northwestern coastline of Ellinikon, the housing will be within walking distance of the beach and pathways will connect the building to shops, offices, restaurants and wellness facilities within 15 minutes.

Alongside BIG's Park Rise, a 200-metre-tall plant-covered skyscraper designed by UK studio Foster + Partners is also planned to form part of the Ellinikon masterplan.

Recently completed projects by BIG include a 3D-printed house in Texas and the studio's first supertall skyscraper, a commercial tower in New York City wrapped with spiralling stepped terraces.

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Architecture practice Heatherwick Studio has completed the Azabudai Hills development in Tokyo, which is defined by curving roofs topped with greenery.

Aiming to create a city district that provides access to nature and a diversity of spaces, Heatherwick Studio designed Azabudai Hills to contain residential buildings, retail and restaurant spaces, a school, two temples, art galleries, offices and 24,000 square metres of public green space.

The 81,000-square-metre-development was informed by timber pergola structures with a gridded roof structure that extends like hilltops to create curving forms extending to ground level.

Heatherwick Studio added trees, flowers and meandering routes between the building and on the sloping roofs, aiming to create spaces that invite exploration and encourage social gatherings.

According to the studio, Japanese developer Mori Building Company shared its desire to create publicly accessible green space.

"[Azabudai Hills] is now one of Tokyo's greenest urban areas and continues Mori Building Company's commitment to creating garden cities where the landscape simultaneously supports nature and people," said Heatherwick Studio.

Azabudai Hills is situated on a Y-shaped site that the studio divided into three irregularly shaped sections, each designed to have their own distinct character.

The eastern section is dominated by retail space, while the southern section acts as a business district and a residential neighbourhood is located to the west.

A 700-metre covered walkway spans between two metro stations located at either end of the site, providing a sheltered route for commuters.

"We were inspired to create a district that connects with people's emotions in a different way," said Heatherwick Studio founder Thomas Heatherwick.

"By combining cultural and social facilities with an extraordinary three-dimensional explorable landscape, it's been possible to offer visitors and the local community somewhere to connect with each other and enjoy open green public spaces," he added.

"This is a joyful and unique public place for Tokyo, designed to be cherished for many years."

As well as spans of public green space, the district includes an outdoor events space named The Cloud, which is sheltered by an ornately curling canopy.

Heatherwick Studio designed a 15,000-square-metre building for The British School of Tokyo as part of the development, with outdoor learning and play spaces spread across its eight levels.

The development replaces more than 200 structures that were originally on the site, many of them post-war buildings that were in bad condition, according to Heatherwick Studio.

Mori Building Company worked with local residents and businesses when regenerating the site, and claims that over 90 per cent of the original tenants plan to return to the new district.

Designs for upcoming projects from Heatherwick Studio that have been unveiled this year include an exhibition centre in Shanghai wrapped in curved balconies and a stacked cylindrical tower in Utrecht topped with planted terraces.

The photography is by Raquel Diniz.

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London gallery Themes & Variations has opened an exhibition of furniture, lighting and sculpture by designer Tom Dixon that spans his over 40-year career, which he says is "like having a visual psychotherapy session".

The Tom Dixon: Metalhead exhibition features 52 pieces, including the designer's 1986 welded metal chairs that were exhibited at Themes & Variations in 1987 in the early stages of his design career.

"Having a retrospective exhibition dating back to the 1980s feels kind of like having a visual psychotherapy session," Dixon told Dezeen.

"Everything is out and aired, and nothing is hidden. One bonus is that it frees me to let go and move on."

Alongside the welded metal chairs in the exhibition are some of Dixon's other notable archival designs, including the cantilevered 1987 Rafia chair, the sculptural wire frame Pylon chair from 1991 and the 2007 Extruded chair made from free-formed extruded plastic.

More recent works on display include the curved tubular Hydro chair and a series of mask-like sculptures and chairs evocative of Dixon's early work, which were made during the 2021 coronavirus lockdown when Dixon was experimenting with welded salvage metal.

To Dixon, each piece in the exhibition holds significance to him, whether for sentimental reasons, for signifying a change in material use or for what they represent in his career.

"Some works are more emotional, some have greater historical weight, some were born of more interesting production processes," he said.

Tom Dixon: Metalhead marks Themes & Variations' final exhibition in its Notting Hill location. Since opening in 1984, the gallery has specialised in exhibiting post-war and contemporary design and aimed to spotlight up-and-coming designers, including Dixon.

"Dixon has lived many design lives," Themes & Variations stated. "Beginning in 1983 as an untrained designer welding chairs from metal scavenged in scrap yards, his emergence as a singular talent in a select group of dynamic subversives saw him ascend to the helm of British design."

"Whether employing ancient handmaking traditions or high-tech processes, there is an essential attitude concurrent across Dixon's extensive catalogue – one that, despite his indelible contribution to industrial design, has retained the renegade spirit of his early metal works," the gallery added.

"The works presented contemplate Dixon through the lens of the designer as a restless and industrious maker in perpetual exploration of the potential of materials and techniques."

Dixon worked as creative director of furniture companies Habitat and later Artek before founding his eponymous brand Tom Dixon in 2002.

Last year, the brand celebrated its 20th anniversary with an exhibition of its designs at Milan design week and in 2021, amid coronavirus restrictions, Dixon launched a range of accessories at Stockholm Design Week via a hologram of himself.

The photography is courtesy of Themes & Variations unless stated.

Tom Dixon: Metalhead is on display at Themes & Variations in London, UK, from 22 November 2023 to 13 January 2024. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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French architecture studio Atelier 9.81 has designed a tower of staggered concrete blocks for a harbour master's office and lookout building on the Calais coastline.

Forming part of the Calais Port 2015 expansion plan, the 38-metre-tall tower comprises four stacked white-concrete boxes with decorative surfaces.

The blocks are designed by Atelier 9.81 to resemble balancing pebbles and visually separate the functions of spaces inside.

Situated at the junction between the existing port and its planned extension, the building is intended as a distinctive entry point to Calais that is visible from the sea, surrounding beaches and the nearby city.

"We have opted for a visual fragmentation of the program," Atelier 9.81 associate architect Cédric Michel told Dezeen.

"Like pebbles balanced on top of each other, this work is erected by accumulation, by stratification of stories contained in simple geometric shapes."

The harbour master's office is built in white concrete to withstand harsh coastal weather and cement the image of a cairn – a man-made pile of stones.

"From this idea of ​​the cairn, it seemed important to us to use only one material," explained Michel. "Also, with the extreme climatic conditions of the coast, the question of sustainability played a role in our choice."

The base of the building is a square four-storey volume that was cast in situ. It contains offices, meeting rooms, a control station for locks and movable bridges, and a roof terrace.

Prefabricated concrete was used to construct the rest of the tower, including the central structural core.

The middle two volumes in the tower act as a structural void, clad in the precast concrete panels.

These panels feature light bas-relief, including crossing lines and a sandblasted geometric pattern depicting the Strait of Dover, or the Pas de Calais in French, which is the narrow water passage separating England and France.

Concrete cladding stamped with circular patterns wraps the volume at the top of the building, which contains the facilities and equipment for monitoring and managing the port.

This two-level volume has breakout space and living quarters on the lower section, and a glazed lookout with an outdoor panoramic terrace on the upper level.

Other concrete buildings with boxy silhouettes featured on Dezeen include a power station control centre in Austria and an apartment block in Tokyo that staggers to create a series of terraces.

The photography is by Nicolas da Silva Lucas.

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Surfacing brand Armourcoat has launched a range of textured, biodegradable wall plaster surfaces that combine the natural appearance of clay with enhanced durability.

The brand created Clime, which has been shortlisted in the sustainable design building product category in this year's Dezeen Awards, to offer a sustainable wall covering choice for interiors.

"Clime was designed to create an elegant natural plaster surface with low embodied carbon and a long-lasting, durable finish," said Armourcoat.

"It has been thoughtfully formulated to minimise the impact on the environment and offer a truly ecological decorative alternative to paint or other wall coverings."

Armourcoat created Clime by combining unfired clay and limestone with hydraulic lime to make it more head-wearing and suitable for busy domestic and commercial interiors.

According to the brand, the material is biodegradable, recyclable, cement-free and VOC-free, which is why it achieved Eurofins Indoor Air Comfort (IAC) Gold status.

"There has been a lot of interest focused on clay plasters as a sustainable option for wall finishes, however after extensive research and evaluation, we concluded that despite the wonderful qualities of clay, clay-only plasters are unfortunately extremely fragile and soften almost immediately when exposed to water," said Armourcoat.

"By developing a natural binder made from roughly equal amounts of clay and hydraulic lime, we believe we have achieved the optimum balance – naturally sustainable, low in embodied carbon and retaining the raw aesthetic of clay-only plasters while being resilient enough to be used as a wall finish with true longevity."

Available in two finishes, Clime Honed has a subtly textured surface, while Clime Course has a rougher texture designed to have a dramatic appearance, achieved by adding recycled crushed marble.

The surfacing is prepared by blending natural materials into a powder form at Armourcoat's factory in the UK and then mixed with water on-site to produce the plaster.

Aiming to create a wall covering that looks appealing and contributes to healthy indoor environments, Armourcoat claims the plaster has a natural breathable finish that absorbs toxins from the air, helps regulate internal humidity and is resistant to mould and mildew.

It comes in 15 natural hues and custom textured finishes such as banding, layering and pearlescent washes.

"Clime plasters create healthy interiors with beautiful finishes in tune with nature and engaging traditional decorative skills, absorbing toxins and reducing asthma and other respiratory diseases," said Armourcoat.

"It is beautifully aesthetic, bringing the outside in through its earthy natural pigments and textures."

Other projects shortlisted in the Dezeen Awards sustainable design building product category include organically shaped modules that create permeable barriers on the coastline to limit erosion and colourful surface tiles made from paper waste.

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This week on Dezeen, Saudi Arabian mega-project Neom revealed its sixth region, Epicon, which will feature a pair of jagged skyscrapers on the Gulf of Aqaba.

Designed by architecture studio 10Design, the project will be distinguished by two steel-clad towers measuring 225 and 275 metres tall. They will be connected by horizontal levels set to contain an outdoor pool and other spaces.

Accommodating 41 hotel and luxury residences, the skyscrapers will be joined by the Epicon resort to form a luxury tourist destination.

In other architecture news, a concrete pavilion with a reflecting pool designed by architect Tadao Ando was unveiled as this year's MPavilion in Melbourne, Australia.

Created as a place to reflect on the surrounding gardens, the centre of the pavilion features a large concrete column topped by a 4.4-metre aluminium disk.

We looked closer at two architecture festivals this week. In the USA, the Chicago Architecture Biennial returned for its fifth edition with installations and pavilions that centred on themes of collaboration and community building.

In the United Arab Emirates, the Sharjah Architecture Triennial focused on reuse and adaptability and featured twelve "very obviously architectural" installations.

In design news, a hands-free intravenous device designed for disaster zones won this year's James Dyson Awards International prize.

Named Golden Capsule, Hongik University students developed the device to function from elastic forces and air pressure instead of relying on gravity and electricity, like existing IV packs.

Journalist Mona Chalabi spoke with Dezeen in this interview about her hand-drawn infographics that accurately depict statistics, often relating to social injustices, and the limitations of illustrating skewed data.

Chalabi, who won this year's Pulitzer Prize for illustrated reporting, explained that while she knows her illustrations won't save the world, she hopes the combination of digital accuracy and hand drawing makes the statistics more tangible.

Popular projects this week included a home in Amsterdam with a hexagonal footprint and Alzheimer's Village, a care home in France designed for dementia patients.

Our latest lookbooks featured cosy living rooms with industrial material palettes and kitchens with well-placed glazing that fills the interior with sunlight.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

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Cities should plant more trees to help prevent tens of thousands of annual deaths from extreme heat, Arup specialist Dima Zogheib tells Dezeen as part of our Designing for Disaster series.

Worsening heatwaves are emerging as the number-one climate-related killer, with an estimated 62,862 deaths associated with extreme heat across Europe in 2022, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.

Building consultancy Arup produced the Urban Heat Snapshot in August this year, demonstrating how city temperatures can vary dramatically between neighbourhoods and identifying where hotspots arise in the built environment.

Based on analysis of heat data in six major cities, it found that areas with large amounts of green space had significantly lower temperatures than those without – and therefore that increasing urban planting is one of the key ways to reduce heat-related deaths.

"Some of the very impactful actions are very simple such as tree planting, which has been demonstrated to reduce air temperature significantly and also reduce heat-induced mortality," said Arup nature positive design lead Zogheib, who helped lead on the research.

According to the European Commission, increasing tree coverage in European cities by 30 per could have prevented an estimated 2,644 heat-related deaths in 2022.

Zogheib explained that various open spaces in the built environment can be utilised to increase planting and cooling strategies, including roads and rooftops.

"More than 50 per cent of cities is actually open space if you include all the roads, streets and roofs, so these spaces have to play a role, whether it's in cooling cities, inviting biodiversity, or in supporting other resilience challenges," she told Dezeen.

"There are other actions that cities can take, like creating more permeable paving to cool spaces, provision of water fountains and drinking water fountains to keep people cool, and retrofitting buildings by putting in green roofs."

One of the ways to cool the built environment advocated by Arup is retrofitting roofs in London to curb the Urban Heat Island effect, the phenomenon where urbanised areas experience significantly higher temperatures than their rural surroundings.

Working with the Greater London Authority (GLA), the firm published a proposal in June to add reflective and photovoltaic roofs to existing buildings to reduce energy use and lower temperatures in and around buildings, ultimately aiming to improve the health and wellbeing of Londoners.

Research for the GLA proposal and the Urban Heat Snapshot was sourced from Arup's UHeat digital tool, which uses satellite imagery and open-source climate data to map air temperatures.

Air temperature was measured rather than surface temperature because it is closer to the temperature we feel, according to Zogheib.

The snapshot found that in the six city case studies, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mumbai and New York City, temperatures can vary by up to eight degrees Celsius from neighbourhood to neighbourhood.

For each city, a 150 square-kilometre focus area was selected and data was collected for the hottest day in each city in 2022. The focus area was divided into 60,000 square-metre hexagonal blocks to map the differences in air temperatures for both day and night.

As well as temperatures, the UHeat tool modelled building heights, surface reflection, impervious surfaces, and green and blue infrastructure to build a picture of the impact of the built environment on urban heat.

By mapping where hotspots are in cities, Arup aimed to reveal where people can go for cool retreats and also areas where cooling interventions would be most beneficial.

Zogheib argued that as city temperatures rise, it will become increasingly important for everyone to have access to cool refuge.

"The aim of the tool was to raise awareness about the challenge of urban heat," she said. "It's also a call to action to designers, planners, local authorities and municipalities to really take action."

"Yes, this is a design issue, but also this is an equity issue," she stressed. "People who are the most vulnerable are hit by urban heat the most."

Urban heat is becoming an increasing problem as a result of climate change. The number of cities reaching temperatures of 35 degrees Celsius and above is expected to almost triple by 2050.

"We need to curb climate change – all of the climate impacts we are experiencing is because we haven't reduced emissions as much as we should have," said Zogheib. "We need to help cities adapt and we need to help people adapt to this changing climate."

She highlighted that increasing green space in cities is known to have other benefits as well as reducing air temperatures, such as increasing biodiversity and improving the wellbeing of residents.

"I think the opportunity is not just to use heat as an entry point, but to address multiple challenges and deliver co-benefits," said Zogheib.

"For example, if you introduce nature to cities in the form of trees, green roofs and permeable surfaces, this is an opportunity to cool temperatures but also have cities and buildings giving back to the urban environment."

Arup biodiversity and nature specialist Neil Harwood, who also contributed to the Urban Heat Snapshot, argued that built-environment organisations have a leadership role to play in tackling urban heat.

"We can collectively be a real driving force for positive action in this space, not only in our own projects but in influencing the customer base on how they think about some of these issues and deal with it in their day-to-day lives," he told Dezeen.

By looking at a range of cities with different climates in the snapshot, the Arup specialists hoped it would reveal different ways the built environment can adapt to concentrated areas of heat.

"The six cities are very different geographically, climatically and also very different in terms of urban form," said Zogheib. "We wanted to get a diversity of results."

As well as mapping the number of hotspots in cities, the tool can also be used to record changing temperatures after a cooling initiative has been implemented, such as how heat around a street changes after it is lined with trees.

"The failures that have occurred in recent decades in our attempts to deal with these crises have shown us that we need as many tools in our arsenal as possible in order to convince and persuade decision-makers of the benefits of action and change," said Harwood.

"We're seeing a real shift at the moment in terms of evidence-based decision-making. We're hopeful that these tools can be part of the broader suite of efforts to really underpin our decision-making with the right sets of information," he added.

The images are courtesy of Arup unless otherwise stated.

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

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Continuing our Designing for Disaster series, we spotlight Climate Safe Rooms, an initiative that insulates one room in a home as a cost-effective way of preparing low-income homes in Australia for extreme heat.

The project was created by Tim Adams for Victoria-based not-for-profit community group Geelong Sustainability, which so far has implemented a Climate Safe Room in 16 vulnerable homes.

Rather than retrofitting the whole home, which can be costly, the project focuses on making a single room a comfortable refuge to retreat to in extremely hot and cold temperatures.

"The idea of climate safe rooms was to say, okay, the whole house is difficult and expensive to deal with, let's make sure that there's a part of the house that can be made to be habitable comfortably, both in winter and summer," Adams told Dezeen.

Heat kills more people in Australia than any other natural hazard, with older people, children and those with medical conditions most at risk.

Extreme heatwaves in Victoria in 2009 and 2014 caused an estimated 541 deaths combined. Such events are expected to become more common as a result of climate change.

The Climate Safe Rooms project was funded by the Victorian government, which identified low-income and vulnerable households to receive the retrofit.

The chosen room, most commonly the living or dining room, is enveloped with insulation, with blinds and curtains added to windows, cracks and unnecessary vents sealed and recessed light fittings in ceilings that can cause roof leakages removed.

Reverse-cycle electric air-conditioning systems are added for heating and cooling the room, and photovoltaic panels, enough to generate at least the energy needed for the air conditioning, are added to the home's roof.

"We had to be very careful that we made sure that people weren't going to suffer an operational cost," explained Adams.

The initiative aims to combat poorly built housing across Victoria, most of which was constructed in the 1970s without consideration of energy efficiency, according to Adams.

Victoria building stock "performs very poorly"

"Building standards are now better, and we're building to a high standard, but we've got a massive amount of existing building stock that performs very poorly," he explained.

Adams was motivated to create the Climate Safe Rooms project by the increasing extreme weather conditions in Australia, which is experiencing both extremely hot and cold temperatures that put people's lives at risk.

"Australia is a country of extreme weather conditions from time to time, but what clearly is happening is they are occurring more frequently," said Adams.

"The importance of building climate-resilient homes is gaining recognition, but very slowly."

Geelong Sustainability worked with local retrofit company Ecomaster to carry out the retrofits on the rooms, and Australian government organisation CSIRO provided equipment to monitor changes in the occupation of the homes.

Data was collected over an 18-month period, recording energy use, thermal comfort and health and wellbeing.

"The candidate survey information shows that people benefited not only improved physical health but also their mental health because they're less worried about potential suffering caused by extreme weather events," said Adams.

A report published by Geelong Sustainability claimed that residents in homes with a Climate Safe Room felt 33 per cent more comfortable during winter and 100 per cent more comfortable in the hotter months.

It also stated that energy bills were reduced by up to 45 per cent in the summer.

Adams hopes that the positive data results means the Climate Safe Rooms project will be replicated in other homes.

"The task to bring existing buildings up to a better standard is enormous," said Adams. "We're very confident now that we've shown the benefits of the programme and a good reason why other people should pick it up and do something similar."

The photo is by Tom Rumble via Unsplash.

Designing for Disaster

This article is part of Dezeen's Designing for Disaster series, which explores the ways that design can help prevent, mitigate and recover from natural hazards as climate change makes extreme weather events increasingly common.

The post Climate Safe Rooms retrofits Australian homes to protect vulnerable residents in extreme temperatures appeared first on Dezeen.

Architecture studio WOHA has created a "garden hotel" in Singapore with planted and pool terraces cut into the building's rectangular form.

WOHA described Pan Pacific Orchard as a "distinctive garden hotel and green icon" aiming to celebrate nature and offer verdant views on all floor levels.

Each terrace has a different theme – beach, garden and cloud – and is wrapped on two sides by guest rooms in six-storey blocks.

"Instead of one monolithic tower, we have three stacks of boutique-scale hotels that come together within one building, separated by sky terraces," WOHA director Hong Wei told Dezeen.

"This helps to bring amenities up in the sky and also frees up the ground space as a garden, which creates a better sense of arrival for guests," Wei added.

Columns covered in planting support the open corners of the terraces, aiming to add nature and biodiversity to the city.

"Green columns anchor each terrace and visually connect the four strata," said WOHA. "Together with the landscaping on the terraces, the building replaces 200 per cent of its site area with greenery."

The terraces were designed to provide passive cooling in the humid city climate, with sheltered outdoor spaces that cross-ventilate the interiors.

Mirror roofs above the terraces were designed to reflect the verdant outdoor spaces to make them viewable from the street while adding a cooling effect, according to WOHA.

"The open-air, cross-ventilated yet sheltered spaces were designed specifically for Singapore's equatorial climate, where warm, humid air, low wind speeds and frequent, yet unpredictable, heavy rainfall make fully outdoor events a challenge," said the studio.

"The huge volumes function as giant sunshades to the terrace and rooms, while the reflective ceilings act as thermal mirrors, providing radiant cooling by doubling the surface area of gardens and water."

Plaza steps outside the hotel entrance lead down to a public outdoor space decorated with water features and trees, intending to be a retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city above.

The first of the sky terraces is located on the fifth floor. Named Beach Terrace, it features a curving lagoon and sandy beach.

Above Beach Terrace on the 11th floor is Garden Terrace, which has a bar, lounge space, manicured gardens, a lawn and "reflection pools".

The highest of the terraces is Cloud Terrace on the 18th floor, which is used as an events plaza. It is surrounded by a 400-seat ballroom and sheltered by a canopy topped with photovoltaic panels.

"The Cloud Terrace is designed as an urban destination with a ballroom, a function room and an event space up in the sky, set between silver-hued plantings, reflective pools and a perforated mirror ceiling," said WOHA.

The hotel rooms were given different interior finishes to reflect the theme of the terrace they overlook – for example, timber panelling with sandy and pastel colours were used for the rooms by the Beach Terrace.

Rooms overlooking the Garden Terrace feature marble surfaces and green hues, while those by the Cloud Terrace have silvery-white colour palettes.

Other buildings designed by WOHA include the plant-filled Singapore Pavilion shown at Dubai Expo 2020 and a mixed-use building with a stepped terrace covered in planting.

The photography is by Darren Soh.

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Architecture studio WXCA has unveiled plans to rebuild Saxon Palace in Warsaw and replicate its facade from 1939, before the building was destroyed during world war two.

Occupying the same site as the original building, the reconstructed complex will house the Polish senate and serve as the headquarters of several cultural institutions.

Saxon Palace was a prominent building located on Saxon Axis – an 18th-century development that also includes Saxon Garden and Piłsudski Square. Dating back to 1666, it was a "symbol of Warsaw", WXCA said, but was destroyed by the Nazis in 1944.

WXCA will rebuild its neoclassical-style facades as they looked following a remodel in 1842, while the building's internal layout will be altered to include courtyards and public spaces.

"For our team, the plan of the reconstruction of the Saxon Palace was conceived as an opportunity to create a new social and urban value," WXCA founder Szczepan Wroński told Dezeen.

Alongside Saxon Palace, the project will also involve the reconstruction of other buildings on Saxon Axis, including the rococo-style Brühl Palace and three townhouses.

WXCA's design was the winning entry in a competition organised by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage with the Association of Polish Architects.

"The whole complex in the form we proposed in the competition is connected to the city and opens up to the residents thanks to the system of internal courtyards – new urban interiors stepping out into the urban space," added Wroński.

"Our proposal is to recreate an urban frame for the square and to complement the Saxon Axis through reconstruction, as well as creating a functional and resident-friendly part of Warsaw that could be an urban background for both everyday activities and top-ranking state events," Wroński continued.

Internal spaces in Saxon Palace will be built with reinforced concrete, designed to be more suited to contemporary needs and connected with the new courtyards. Some of the original building's bricks will be reused for internal finishes.

"The layout of the interiors of the palace will be adapted to modern-day utility functions," said WXCA architect Małgorzata Dembowska.

"Its architecture for inner courtyards is a contemporary interpretation of the pre-war character of the facades and structure of the building," she told Dezeen.

WXCA used archival photos and drawings of the building from 1939 to recreate the design of the palace facade.

"The architectural form of the Saxon Palace as it stood in 1939 is, in fact, the best documented one," said Dembowska.

"We designed the replication of the original palace based on archival photographs and illustrations and architectural analysis provided by the competition organisers," added Dembowska.

The studio has previously designed a pink concrete extension for the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw and a museum in Palmiry punctured by bullet-sized holes, each one representing a Polish civilian murdered on the site during the holocaust.

The images are courtesy of WXCA.

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Showcased at Dutch Design Week, HBMS is a flat-pack shelving unit created by Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Pierre Salaün that is folded into its 3D form from a single metal sheet.

HBMS, which stands for Hand Bent Metal Shelf, can be assembled without the need for fasteners or adhesives.

The shelving unit is laser-cut from one sheet of industrial-format 1.5 millimetre-thick stainless steel, measuring 2.5 by 1.25 metres.

It is then hand-folded into its three-dimensional form, with elements nested inside one another for structural support.

The design can be adjusted to create different sizes of shelving from different sizes of metal sheets. A tall version made from standard industrial-format sheet is 300 millimetres deep, 605 millimetres wide and 2,440 millimetres tall.

"Thanks to its unique locking system, the shelf needs no other securing connector than the sheet itself," Salaün told Dezeen. "There is no hardware needed, meaning no welds or bolding system – one material, one piece, one system."

The furniture makes use of the entire sheet of metal, meaning there is no scrap metal left behind in its construction.

"When starting the HBMS project, I got inspired by the life cycle of stainless steel," said Salaün. "I visited some laser cutting factories and was intrigued by the skeleton of the laser cut – the piece that is left once the 'useful' parts have been extracted."

"From that point, I thought that instead of upcycling the leftovers, I could think of a design that would optimise the initial standard stainless steel sheet," Salaün explained.

HBMS was presented at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven's central Heuvel shopping centre as part of the DAE Graduation Show.

Other graduate projects exhibited during the festival include marbled furniture made from second-hand books by Willem Zwiers and Henry K Wein's design for a portable treehouse.

The photography is by Pierre Salaün unless stated.

HBMS was on display as part of Dutch Design Week 2023 from 21 to 29 October. See Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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This week on Dezeen, we reported that BIG completed its first supertall skyscraper, a 66-storey commercial high-rise wrapped with a series of stepped terraces.

Located along New York's High Line, The Spiral reaches 314 metres-high and its footprint reduces towards the top as the ascending terraces cut into the building.

Studio founder Bjarke Ingels described the building as combining "the classic ziggurat silhouette of the premodern skyscraper with the slender proportions and efficient layouts of the modern high-rise."

Also in architecture news, the Pyramid of Tirana in Albania reopened as a cultural hub with a stepped roof and colourful boxes designed by Dutch architecture studio MVRDV and local studio IRI Architecture.

Originally built in the 1980s as a pyramid-shaped museum dedicated to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha, the building's form was retained with sections of the sloping concrete roof kept as a slide.

Dutch Design Week was in full swing this week, with events and exhibitions taking place across Eindhoven including a pop-up shop where customers exchanged urine for soap in a bid to encourage more ethical consumption.

Elsewhere at the festival, design student Willem Zwiers showcased marbled furniture made from salvaged second-hand books and designer Emy Bensdorp exhibited her proposal to clean PFAS "forever chemicals" by firing contaminated soil into bricks.

In other design news, product design engineer Jasper Mallinson aimed to bridge the gap between man-made and robotic construction with a lightweight, wearable CNC machine named Mecha-morphis.

Mallinson hopes that in the future, the device will be used on worksites to help realise parametric designs with "superhuman precision".

Also this week, American architecture critic Aaron Betsky wrote about his views on the lack of exciting architecture projects built in the Netherlands in recent years.

To Betsky, Dutch architecture has lost the sparkle it once had, comparing OMA's 1987 Netherlands Dance Theater with the "box festooned with fluted columns" that replaced it (pictured above).

Popular projects this week included a home in British Columbia with fluted pillars made by pouring concrete into fabric formwork and a Mexican seaside resort with wooden guesthouses raised on stilts.

Our latest lookbooks featured dining rooms with built-in seating and bathrooms where subway tiles lined the walls and surfaces.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

The post This week BIG completed The Spiral supertall skyscraper in New York appeared first on Dezeen.

The United Nations has reported that at least 42 per cent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

In a release earlier this week, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that 164,756 housing units in the region had been damaged.

The homes have been damaged by Israeli military action focused on Gaza following a major assault on Israel on 7 October by Hamas militants.

In the weeks following the attack by Hamas, which governs Gaza and is designated as a terrorist organisation by many Western governments, the Israeli military has struck over 7,000 targets in Gaza.

Over 15,000 housing units reportedly destroyed

According to the UN OCHA report, which quoted figures from the Gaza Ministry of Public Works, 15,100 housing units in Gaza had been destroyed, 10,656 were rendered uninhabitable, and 139,000 units had suffered minor to moderate damage.

It also stated that the damage of the Israeli strikes has resulted in the destruction of whole neighbourhoods, including Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia in the north, Shuja'iyeh and around the Shati' Refugee Camp in Gaza City, and Abbassan Kabeera in the south.

Before and after aerial images have been released by space technology company Maxar depicting the scale of the destruction in cities across the Gaza Strip.

World's third-oldest church struck

Along with homes, numerous other structures have been damaged including a church that is reportedly the third oldest in the world.

A strike on 19 October in Gaza City hit the historic Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, reportedly killing 18 of the approximately 100 Christian and Muslim Palestinians taking shelter in the building.

On its website, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed its "strongest condemnation" of the attack on the church as well as other churches, schools and social institutions.

"The Patriarchate emphasises that targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli airstrikes on residential areas over the past thirteen days," it said.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has led to widespread destruction and loss of life. At least 1,400 people were reportedly killed in the attack by Hamas militants that began on 7 October. According to the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry, nearly 5,800 people have been killed in Gaza in the weeks that followed.

Comments have been turned off on this story due to the sensitive nature of the subject matter.

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Chinese studio Neri&Hu has designed the Sanya Wellness Retreat hotel on the Chinese island of Hainan, with public spaces arranged around a central water courtyard.

Located in Haitang Bay, Neri&Hu designed two L-shaped buildings with wood-clad upper levels containing 343 guest rooms perched on top of a masonry base, where the lobby, reception, dining hall and event spaces are located.

Hainan's culture and natural characteristics informed the design of the retreat, including the hotel's masonry lower walls, which were made from handmade clay bricks by local craftspeople.

Bamboo and woven rattan feature throughout the interiors, as well as fabric and rugs informed by the indigenous Li group.

"At every given opportunity the design tries to embody the genius loci of Hainan, to blend elements from the island's collective memory, culture and natural features," said Neri&Hu.

The hotel lobby was designed as a relaxing garden space that benefits from cool breezes from the courtyard and views of the South China Sea.

"The lobby becomes a garden landscape with a floating lantern hovering above that allows a gentle light to filter in, and with the soft breeze that flows through, guests are immediately transported to a relaxed state of mind for appreciating the slow pace of island life," said Neri&Hu.

"At the same time, the ceilings here are lowered and suppressed in order to simultaneously frame views outward to the azure seas beyond."

Each guest room was designed as an individual wooden hut connected by corridors intended to encourage conversation between hotel guests.

"The corridor between the bedroom units becomes an urban streetscape, an alley where people can traverse and enjoy chance encounters, as such are the delights of being a traveller," said Neri&Hu.

Guest room balconies overlooking the nearby sea feature angled dark wood walls that contrast with the white floor slab structure, creating a rhythmic facade.

"The alternating rhythm between solid and void, the angled walls and textured material expression, all contribute to a dynamic facade that is constantly playing with light and shadow," said Neri&Hu.

Architects Lyndon Neri and Rosanna Hu founded Neri&Hu in 2004 in Shanghai.

Other projects completed by the studio that have been featured on Dezeen include the Qujiang Museum of Fine Arts extension in Xi'an and a teahouse in Fuzhou wrapped in copper cladding.

The photography is by Chen Hao and the video is by Jeremiah Neri Studio.

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A jewel-toned red and blue shower room and a pink bathroom in a hotel designed for musician Pharrell Williams feature in this lookbook, which roundsup bathrooms lined with metro and subway tiles.

Dating back to the early 1900s when they were used in New York's first subway station, the rectangular subway tile has become an interior design staple across residential and commercial settings.

Traditionally measuring three-by-six inches, the tile has evolved into different size variations that still draw to mind its early twentieth-century station origins.

As they have grown in popularity as an affordable way to decorate interiors, people have become creative with different ways of laying the rectangular tiles, breaking away from the typical brick layout and orienting them vertically or stacked horizontally.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring interiors with chequerboard flooring, brightly coloured showers and autumnal bedrooms.

Minimal Fantasy, Spain, by Patricia Bustos Studio

Spanish interior design firm Praticia Bustos Studio overhauled the interior of the Minimal Fantasy rental apartment in Madrid with 12 shades of pink.

Vertically laid pink subway tiles provide the backdrop to the main bathroom, which was finished with pink sanitaryware, an arched mirror and a pink holographic shower curtain.

Find out more about Minimal Fantasy ›

The Hoxton Southwark, UK, by Ennismore

Hotelier Ennismore was informed by the industrial history of Southwark when designing the interiors of its hotel in the London borough.

The bathrooms feature green subway tiles laid in a brick format on the walls, complemented by brass accents in the lighting and tapware that add to the industrial feel.

Find out more about The Hoxton Southward ›

Pink House, Ireland, by Courtney McDonnell Studio

While this home is named Pink House for its light, rosy-hued rear extension, the shower room has a darker, moodier interior achieved by jewel-toned shades of red and blue.

Architect Luis Barragán split the shower room into two halves, creating a curved navy-tiled shower alcove on one side and a nook on the other side covered in elongated ruby-red subway tiles.

Find out more about Pink House ›

Apartment A, Belgium, by Atelier Dialect

White subway tiles were boarded by a row of black tiles running along the base of the walls in this bathroom, which is located in the open-plan bedroom of an Antwerp apartment.

Designed by Belgian studio Atelier Dialect, the tiled walls provide a graphic backdrop for a mirrored-steel, rectangular bathtub and sanded stainless steel basin.

Find out more about Apartment A ›

Edinburgh townhouse, UK, by Luke and Joanne McClelland

For their own apartment in Edinburgh, architects Luke and Joanne McClelland refreshed two adjoining Georgian townhouses with light-filled living spaces and updated bathrooms.

Dark green subway tiles were added to the side of the bathtub and wall splashback, complemented by a restored 1960s dark wood sideboard by Danish designer Ib Kofod Larsen used as the sink vanity.

Find out more about the Edinburgh townhouse ›

Santa Monica Proper, USA, by Kelly Wearstler

For this hotel in Santa Monica, interior designer Kelly Wearstler applied her signature laid-back Californian style with a choice of materials and colours that reference the nearby beach.

Sandy-coloured metro tiles laid in a brick pattern complement the warm-toned wood flooring in the bathroom, which was intended to bring to mind beach decking.

Find out more about Santa Monica Proper ›

Apartment in Born, Spain, by Colombo and Serboli Architecture

Local studio Colombo and Serboli Architecture made space for this pink bathroom when renovating Apartment in Born, which is set within a 13th-century building in Barcelona.

Square-shaped light pink tiles with pink grout cover the floor, while vertical subway tiles in a slightly darker shade cover the walls and shower area.

Find out more about Apartment in Born ›

Goodtime Hotel, USA, by Ken Fulk

Another pink-toned interior, this bathroom at the Goodtime Hotel in Miami Beach was created by American designer Ken Fulk for musician Williams.

Differentiation in tile shape and orientation creates subtle visual variation in the pastel-hued bathroom. White square tiles were applied to the floor, while vertical pink subway tiles along the top and bottom of the walls border tiles laid in a brick pattern.

Find out more about Goodtime Hotel ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring interiors with chequerboard flooring, brightly coloured showers and autumnal bedrooms.

The post Eight eye-catching bathrooms with striking subway-tiled surfaces appeared first on Dezeen.

This week on Dezeen, the John Morden Centre in London by UK studio Mae Architects was revealed as the winner of the 2023 Stirling Prize.

The building is a daycare centre for a retirement community with a cross-laminated timber structure and red brick facade, which the Stirling Prize jury described as "a place of joy and inspiration".

However, not overly enthused by the six shortlisted Stirling projects, architecture critic Catherine Slessor wrote an opinion piece on what the "dutifully dull" selection says about the architecture prize.

Also in architecture news, the Saudi development of Neom unveiled its latest region that consists of a trio of "luxury high-end boutique hotels".

Designed by three different architects, the hotel trio includes a stepped hotel climbing up the cliffside, a mirror-clad hotel, and a geometric hotel designed to appear like formations rising from the rocky landscape.

In other architecture news, we reported that Zaha Hadid Architect's King Abdullah Financial District Metro Station neared completion in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The station forms part of the King Abdullah Financial District, which along with Neom, are two of the 14 giga projects currently being developed in the country.

This week we also created a simply guide to 15 minute cities – an urbanism theory that has gained wide attention this year.

We explained what they are, who invented the concept and why they have become so controversial.

This week was also 100th anniversary of Disney. To mark the occasion we rounded up 12 of the most interesting buildings – from fairytale castles to postmodern hotels – created by the corporation.

We also looked at the giant novelty structures at Disney's Pop Century Resort hotel, which was photographed by Arnau Rovira Vidal.

Popular projects this week included a home in the Hamptons turned into a "villain's hideout", a "dreamy" treetop resort in Bali and a one-legged "treehouse" in Estonian pine forest.

This week's lookbooks highlighted bold showers that add a pop of colour to the bathroom and interiors where chequerboard flooring adds a sense of nostalgia.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

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Dutch studio OMA has completed its first major public building in the UK, Aviva Studios, designed to provide flexible event space for Manchester-based arts and music company Factory International.

Located along Manchester's River Irwell, OMA claims the 13,350-square-metre project is "the UK's largest investment in a national cultural project since the opening of Tate Modern in 2000".

Led by OMA partner Ellen van Loon, the studio designed a faceted corrugated metal theatre building adjoining a rectangular concrete-clad structure.

The cladding materials were chosen to reference the site's industrial history and contrast the surrounding red-brick warehouses, flats, offices and television studios.

The larger concrete-clad building contains an event space named the Warehouse, which has a 2,565-square-metre industrial interior designed for a range of functions, such as concerts and exhibitions.

With a capacity of up to 5,000 people standing, the Warehouse can be divided into two separate spaces by moving 21-metre-tall acoustic wall panels along a track.

Next to the Warehouse, in the faceted adjoining building, is the Hall – a 1,603-seat auditorium with a flexible stage designed for various performances, including ballet, theatre and music.

Steel shutters provide sound separation between the Warehouse and the Hall, which can be opened to create one large L-shaped event space through an 11-metre-high arched opening.

"The Warehouse and the Hall can work in tandem – the proscenium opens fully into the Warehouse and allows the stage to run deeper into the building," said Van Loon. "It is a space that can create multiple opportunities and endless configurations and environments."

"It is a new type of performance space, a unique crossover between a fixed theatre and flexible warehouse," she continued.

The theatre and warehouse were built next to existing arches that once held up a historic viaduct, which is where the Aviva Studios foyer was placed.

The public foyer and outdoor spaces stretching along the River Irwell will host year-round public activities, including pop-up food stalls, live music, workshops and markets.

Aviva Studios aims to transform the site into a creative and cultural hub as part of Manchester's St John's Quarter redevelopment, led by Manchester City Council with backing from the government and Arts Council England.

The venue opened yesterday with a dance production titled Free Your Mind, a reimagination of the sci-fi film The Matrix directed by Danny Boyle with set design by Es Devlin.

Other cultural buildings completed by OMA include a glass art museum extension in New York and the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, which has a distinctive shape made up of rectangular and spherical volumes protruding from a central cube.

The photography is by Marco Cappelletti unless stated.

Project credits:

Architect: OMA
Technical architects: Ryder Architecture
Construction partners: Laing O'Rourke
Structure and civil engineer: Buro Happold
Services engineer: Buro Happold, BDP
Acoustic engineer: Level Acoustics
Fire engineer: WSP
Theatre consultants: Charcoalblue
Landscape design: Planit.IE

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British fashion designer Craig Green has designed 11 limited edition wooden "tools" that resemble sex toys for London's Dover Street Market store.

With ribbed, bulbous shapes that narrow to a rounded point at one end, the uses for the phallic objects are up to interpretation.

Green described them as "ergonomically shaped tools or objects that are both multi-functional and, at the same time, multi-un-functional."

"The function and purpose are to be determined by the user," he told Dezeen. "A tool is an interesting term, as almost anything can become a tool depending on the circumstance."

Green titled the objects "jumbo wooden tools" in an Instagram post. They launched exclusively at the Dover Street Market shop in London on 12 October as part of the Frieze London art fair.

The designs are made from ash wood and feature a ring looped around its centre and another attached to the top end.

Some online sources have suggested they be used as a decorative bedside piece, an oversized keyring or a wearable accessory.

Green created 11 versions of the design in various colour combinations. The grain of the wood is visible on each design, as well as a Craig Green logotype engraving.

"Colour is an important part of our work as the pieces were limited editions, and the colour usage was individual to each tool," said Green.

"We approached the colour choice and application in an unplanned and instinctual way."

Green founded his London-based menswear fashion label in 2012 and showed his first catwalk collection in 2013.

Fashion projects created by the designer featured on Dezeen include an oversized puffer suit for Moncler that can be rolled up like a sleeping bag and an experimental shoe collection designed for Adidas.

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British architecture studio HTA Design has completed a 163-metre-tall apartment building in Croydon, UK, that it claims is "Europe's tallest residential tower to be completed using volumetric construction methods".

Named College Road, the building is made up of two adjoining 50 and 35-storey towers wrapped in a pleated ceramic facade.

It sits across the street from 10 Degrees, a 135-metre-tall building also designed by HTA Design that previously claimed the title of tallest modular housing scheme.

HTA Design worked with developer Tide to complete the project and it was built from 1,725 volumetric modular units that were placed around a concrete core and above a concrete foundation.

HTA Design aimed to create a building that utilised modular construction, but has an appearance that was built on Croydon's architectural heritage.

"The main concept for College Road is to take Croydon’s iconic mid-century modern heritage and reinvent it for 21st-century city living, using world leading volumetric technology and new housing typologies to address London’s housing shortage," HTA Design partner Simon Toplis told Dezeen.

The shorter tower contains 120 affordable homes, while the taller one has 817 rental apartments and amenity spaces, including a podcast studio, spa with a sauna and steam room, gym, coworking space and a sky garden on the rooftop.

HTA collaborated with Tigg + Coll Architects on the interior design of College Road's studio and one-bedroom apartments.

"College Road is the product of extensive research into successful models for high-density shared living and was the first project to be approved under the Greater London Authority's co-living asset class policy," said HTA Design managing director Simon Bayliss.

"Every aspect of the development was designed to offer residents the most liveable private space, while also having the free enjoyment of truly fantastic communal facilities."

The building's geometric facade was informed by developments built across south London in the 1950s and 60s, particularly the faceted exterior of the brutalist NLA Tower by Richard Seifert.

"Mid-century modernist-style repetition creates a striking new geometric landmark, with the building's appearance evolving subtly with height thanks to a varying configuration of ceramic tiles at the base, middle, and top of the tower," said HTA Design.

Aiming to create a visually appealing streetscape linking existing pedestrian paths, a series of seven-metre-tall columns at the base of the building were covered in 14,000 glazed porcelain tiles, created by designer Adam Nathaniel Furman.

The tiles have three-dimensional chevron and diamond shapes and create a gradient fading from blue at the bottom of the columns to white at the top.

"The building connects East Croydon to the new cultural quarter through a colonnade enlivened by crafted public art, an integral part of the building's striking architecture," said Bayliss.

Other co-living projects published on Dezeen include a collective housing complex in London arranged around a courtyard and an apartment block in Amsterdam with planted balconies.

The photography is by Simon Toplis unless stated.

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An urn made from soy wax, jewellery used to eat food and a sculptural chair made from bacteria and recycled bricks were among 15 product designs shown at Designblok's Diploma Selection exhibition.

The exhibition displayed projects from the Diploma Selection competition, which aims to recognise the best design talent from European universities.

Dutch designer Esmée Willemsen won first prize for her project Agency for Unseen Sights, a series of metal structures designed to guide people to view particular sights.

With forms that bring to mind playgrounds and street furniture, the pieces aim to turn any space into an attraction.

German designer Janek Beau came in second place for his soy wax urn titled Designed to Die, which was designed to be a ceremonial part of a funeral service. It comprises two parts, with the inner part holding the ashes of a deceased person.

Decorated with flowers, the intention behind the design is to place it over a grave so the wax of the outer part melts, making the part holding the ashes drop into the ground.

"I wanted to design an urn that would be more enjoyable for the bereaved and more joyful for the deceased person," Beau told Dezeen.

"I designed the dropping of the urn because I wanted the urn to be able to end the ritual of the funeral itself, giving a final sign of life before saying goodbye."

Design duo Julia Huhnholz and Friedrich Gerlach created a chair made from biomaterials titled The Essence of Biocement, which won third prize in the Diploma Selection competition and has also been longlisted in this year's Dezeen Awards material innovation category.

The biocement material was created using bacteria to bind recycled bricks with calcium carbonate. The material was then set in a 3D-printed mould to form three tubular elements, which were combined into a sculptural seat without the need for firing.

Other finalist projects included German designer Lilli Malou Weinhold's collection of silver jewellery titled Dig In, which includes rings with tongs and shell dishes designed to eat food with.

"I've noticed cutlery's declining importance among young people today, unlike my grandparents who had silverware for special occasions that they received for their wedding," Weinhold told Dezeen.

"I've wondered how cutlery can evolve to match our changing dining habits and empower users to choose how and with what tools they want to eat."

Also presenting a dining-related project was Belgian designer Arnaud Tantet, whose project Brio included a plastic knife and vase designed to be eaten and decomposed by insects.

Utilising reused materials, Czech designer Matěj Neubert showcased a collapsible snow glider named Skidder made from old ski parts, while Erika Remencová displayed a series of uniquely shaped eyewear made from surplus retail materials.

Furniture in the showcase included a wooden stool and bench by Cristina Rodríguez Solé and irregularly shaped furniture by Zuzanna Spaltabaka crafted with traditional artisan techniques.

Among the other finalist projects were porcelain containers by Lea Mader, a textile wall sculpture by Adam Pisca, woven lighting by Anastasia Mazur, a container that sorts cooking oils by Petra Rudolfová and textile objects that mimic woven baskets by Františka Benčaťová.

Czech designer Anna Jožová exhibited a porcelain and glass sculpture informed by the sedimentation of shells, which was also displayed as part of Designblok's Made by Fire exhibition.

Elsewhere at the Prague design festival, a trio of Czech designers presented their modular home project, Cake Houses, which aims to provide an affordable way to design bespoke houses.

The Diploma Selection was on show at Designblok from 4 to 8 October at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. See our London Design Festival 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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Presented at this year's Designblok festival in Prague, Cake Houses is a modular home concept that allows clients to design bespoke homes via an online configurator.

Founded by Matyáš Švejdík, Pavel Špringl and Šimon Marek, the team behind the Cake Houses project describes it as an "architectural recipe for modular wooden houses".

The project was conceptualised as a pitched-roof house that can be adapted to suit different needs. It aims to be an alternate option to "catalogue projects" that feature standard designs that are quick to build but lack the tailor-made aspect.

Cake Houses was presented at Designblok with an interactive model display that visitors could play with, rearranging physical room modules to create different home layouts on a digital screen.

"The main idea of Cake Houses stands on the belief that if you come up with good basic space and construction principles, you can then plot variable and individual designs fast and reliably because of the standardisation," Švejdík told Dezeen.

When adapting the design, the house maintains the same overall shape but becomes longer or shorter with different internal layouts to suit the client's needs.

According to the Cake Houses team, hundreds of different layouts and internal and external finishes can be achieved using the online configurator. The design is then translated into a wooden construction made from prefabricated parts.

To date, one Cake Houses project has been completed. It features the pitched roof and timber cladding typical of each Cake Houses design, which aims to be an affordable way to create bespoke homes in the Czech Republic.

"The mainstream look and overall design quality of family houses in the Czech Republic is mostly poor – the reason being the fact that these houses are catalogue projects usually without identity and deeper creative thought," Švejdík said.

"But for most people, this way of building their home is easier, cheaper and more certain than working with an architect on multiple levels," he added. "We decided to design a project that brings the advantages of good architecture and standardisation together."

"We then came up with the basic principles of the construction and used our programming knowledge to create a system of assembling parts, and now we are able to create various configurations suitable for different people, families or budgets."

Some design considerations are maintained throughout all the different configurations, such as avoiding long dark corridors and including large windows that connect the internal spaces to the garden.

The first Cake Houses project was completed this year in Okrouhlá u Nového Boru, Czech Republic.

According to Švejdík, this "prototype" was made by preparing the timber building material on site. In the future, prefabricated elements will be used to reduce cost and construction time.

"One thing we will do differently in the next house is we will develop all the construction with a manufacturing company from the beginning, so the costs and overall effectiveness will be on a higher level," Švejdík said.

"But on the other hand, we think it turned out quite well and the house turned out as we imagined it – at some points even better."

The Cake Houses project was created with Czech residents in mind, but Švejdík explained that more typologies and types of houses can be created in the future to suit different environments.

"We decided to design the first type of Cake House in a traditional way for the Czech environment but with modern aesthetics, which was meaningful for us because such a house can fit into multiple Czech contexts," he said.

"We would certainly like to design more types of family houses or different typologies that can also be customisable. We can imagine wide possibilities, from tiny houses to row houses and even skyscrapers, or maybe even variable space constructions or refugee camps."

Cake Houses was awarded the Grand Prix prize in the Designblok Awards. Elsewhere at the design festival, the Made by Fire exhibition displayed glass, ceramics and porcelain objects by 40 Czech designers.

Other Czech homes that share a similar pitched roof form include a larch-clad home overlooking a lake and a home informed by traditional rural Czech buildings located in a nature reserve.

The photography is by Alex Shoots unless stated.

Cake Houses was on show at Designblok from 4 to 8 October at the Trade Fair Palace, National Gallery Prague. See our London Design Festival 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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Architecture studio WilkinsonEyre has unveiled designs to turn London's Kingsway Exchange Tunnels into an experience centre, revealing their wartime history as a secret government communications exchange.

Located 40 metres below the street of High Holborn in central London, the passageways were built in the 1940s to provide shelter from the Blitz during world war two.

The tunnels at one point housed the Special Operations Executive, a secret world war two organisation that was an offshoot of foreign intelligence service MI6. During the Cold War, they served as an international telephone exchange.

The Kingsway Exchange Tunnels are no longer subject to the Government's Official Secrets Act and would be restored by WilkinsonEyre, which plans to turn the subterranean space into a cultural experience that will be open to the public.

The restoration would preserve the 8,000 square metres of passageways, which have a combined length of one mile and a diameter measuring 7.6 metres. They are said to have inspired the fictional research division Q Branch in Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.

Wilkinson Eyre's plans, which are subject to planning approval, would include preserving the special operations communication equipment inside the tunnels and adding digital screens, interactive sculptures, speakers and scent-emitting technology to create an immersive experience.

The attraction would reveal the history of the tunnels and provide space to host cultural events in the fields of science, art and entertainment.

When operational as a communications exchange, the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels contained a bar, recreational room and restaurant with mock windows.

It was fully decommissioned in the late 1980s, as advances in technology meant the tunnel's telephone centre became obsolete.

"WilkinsonEyre is delighted to bring our experience designing visitor destinations to this unrivalled location in the heart of London, but unknown to most," said WilkinsonEyre director Paul Baker.

"These secret spaces present the opportunity to tell extraordinary stories that helped shape the 20th century, alongside awe-inspiring digital immersive experiences."

The tunnels have a number of street-level entrances. WilkinsonEyre plans to locate the main entrance to the attraction on a narrow side street at 39-40 Furnival Street, where the studio would "enhance the character of the existing facade".

Secondary access and the exit point would be located around the corner on the main road at 31-33 High Holborn. The visitor experience would end here, in a light, double-height space that would contrast the solid brick exterior of the Furnival Street entrance.

"This is a fascinating and complex architectural challenge, which aligns with our enthusiasm for interesting visitor destinations and our experience bringing new life to old and unusual environments," said WilkinsonEyre.

"The historic significance of the site and its rugged industrial aesthetic will be celebrated in a similar manner to our work at Battersea Power Station, where the character of the building is complemented by high-quality new interventions and well-considered details," the studio added.

"WilkinsonEyre is excited that the proposals embrace both the historic narrative and unique atmosphere of the tunnels and the possibilities of new immersive installations with limitless scope for education and entertainment."

WilkinsonEyre aims to open the Kingsway Exchange Tunnels to the public in 2027.

The studio has previously completed the redevelopment of London's Battersea Power Station and a steel structure with perforated copper cladding for a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics centre at a school in Norfolk.

The images are by DBOX.

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In this lookbook, Dezeen has selected eight bedrooms that feature shades of green, yellow, orange, red and brown to create cosy environments with an autumnal feel.

As the northern hemisphere settles into the autumn season and the days get colder, this roundup showcases examples of how to create serene and restful bedrooms by using colours similar to the changing hues of leaves.

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring airy loft conversions, kitchen islands with waterfall countertops and art-filled living rooms.

La Casa de los Olivos, Spain, by Balzar Arquitectos

Spanish studio Balzar Arquitectos designed a copper-toned home in rural Valencia with an interior colour palette informed by the colours of the surrounding landscape.

Taking cues from the leaves of the surrounding olive trees, green cupboard doors feature in the bedrooms and kitchen, while terracotta-toned flooring throughout the home mimics the colour of the reddish soil.

Find out more about La Casa de los Olivos ›

Zero House, UK, by Ben Garrett and Rae Morris

Informed by the mid-century period this London home was built in, recording artists Ben Garrett and Rae Morris renovated Zero House with a warm-toned material palette.

Timber ceilings were stained a dark red hue, while the walls were stained a lighter yellow tone.

A rusty red carpet covers the floor in the main bedroom, complementing the orange velvet upholstery on the dark wood bed frame.

Find out more about Zero House ›

Somers House, Australia, by Kennedy Nolan

Australian studio Kennedy Nolan finished the interior of Somer House in Victoria with shades of dark down and pops of red, mirroring the dark timber cladding and red-hued render used on the exterior.

A range of textures in the tactile flooring, curtains and wood-lined walls create variation in this deep-brown bedroom, which is accented by red bedding.

Find out more about Somers House ›

Canal Saint-Martin apartment, France, by Rodolphe Parente

A palette of warm neutrals was chosen to enhance the classical heritage of this 19th-century Parisian apartment, which French interior designer Rodolphe Parente renovated in a contemporary style.

Caramel-coloured walls and a leafy green throw in the bedroom create a warm and inviting environment, which is juxtaposed by a vivid purple rug and lavender-hued bed sheets.

Find out more about the Canal Saint-Martin apartment ›

Colonia Condesa house, Mexico, by Chloé Mason Gray

Local interiors studio Chloé Mason Gray renovated a mid-20th century house in Mexico City, embracing the lack of natural light in the home by flooding the walls with deep shades of brown and green.

The bedroom has a moody atmosphere, with brown textured plasterwork walls accompanied by a leather headboard and green linen bedding and curtains.

Find out more about the Colonia Condesa house ›

Hygge Studio, Brazil, by Melina Romano

Named after the Danish word describing a sense of cosiness and contentment, Hygge Studio is a São Paulo apartment designed by Brazilian designer Melina Romano.

Creamy brick walls, terracotta flooring and warm-toned accents feature throughout the home, including in the oversized upholstered headboard in the bedroom.

Romano also added nature-inspired elements to the bedroom in keeping with the cosy, bucolic feel of the home, including branches speckled with lichen and insect-shaped wall art.

Find out more about Hygge Studio ›

Hybrid House, India, by Sketch Design Studio

Architecture firm Sketch Design Studio used vernacular building techniques from both north and south India to create the three-bedroom Hybrid House.

The house was made from pink-toned rammed-earth walls, which were partly covered with lime plaster in the interior, and terracotta floors feature a kolam inlay created using rice flour.

Find out more about Hybrid House ›

Casa Tres Árboles, Mexico, by Direccion

Varying shades of brown define the interior of Casa Tres Árboles, a holiday home in Valle de Bravo designed by Mexican studio Direccion to be a "monastic sanctuary".

Darker, cool-toned shades were used for the bedrooms to create a tranquil atmosphere and counterpoint to the warmer tones in the exposed timber ceiling beams.

Find out more about Casa Tres Árboles ›

This is the latest in our lookbooks series, which provides visual inspiration from Dezeen's archive. For more inspiration see previous lookbooks featuring airy loft conversions, kitchen islands with waterfall countertops and art-filled living rooms.

The post Eight restful bedrooms decorated in the colours of autumn leaves appeared first on Dezeen.

Dutch architecture studio MVRDV has added a colourful gridded facade to a skyscraper in Shenzhen, to create a hotel and centre dedicated to the welfare of women and children.

Aiming to set an example of adaptive reuse in the city, the Shenzhen Women and Children's Centre contains a library, auditorium, children's theatre, therapy rooms and staff offices.

Originally completed in 1994, MVRDV retained the majority of the original structure, which is made up of a 100-metre-tall tower surrounded by a 5,500-square-metre, six-storey structure on the corner of a crossroads.

The studio added a colourful gridded aluminium frame to the exterior, increasing the depth of the facade by one metre to help shade the internal spaces and reduce thermal heat gain.

The bright green, pink, yellow and orange facade fades to white towards the upper levels of the building, where a hotel with 201 rooms is located.

"Retaining and refurbishing a building is more sustainable than demolishing and building anew, particularly when a building is this young and contains as much concrete as this structure," MVRDV founding partner Jacob van Rijs told Dezeen.

"We also wanted to blaze a trail for the city of Shenzhen in repurposing buildings, particularly high-rises, as we believe this is just the beginning of a great wave of adaptive reuse."

The facade colours were used throughout the building to guide visitors and highlight passages to a courtyard.

MVRDV redesigned the main lobby to make it a colourful and inviting space that draws people into the retail spaces in the building, and a separate children's lobby was added to a side entrance, leading to the education and play spaces.

"The whole theme of the building is connected to children's well-being and to fresh, colourful, and fun design solutions," said Van Rijs.

MVRDV topped the building with a "tower crown" that covers a roof terrace, where visitors can enjoy 360-degree views of the surrounding city.

Originally used for car parking, the studio transformed the terrace into a public space with a food court.

An entrance to the metro station was moved from the pavement outside to inside the building, creating a larger public space in front of the centre with colourful circles decorating the paving.

Approximately 24,000 cubic metres of concrete was saved and reused from the original structure and small additions were made to simplify the floor plans.

According to MVRDV, the original structure was built during Shenzhen's first period of rapid growth and due to its rushed construction, it was later deemed not fit for purpose.

It was selected as one of 24 projects to revitalise by the National Development and Reform Commission, aiming to contribute to China's goal to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

"The rushed approach to its original design was immediately clear. Due to persistent fire safety concerns, the commercial units in the plinth were not opened until 2002, and the tower itself remained empty indefinitely," said MVRDV.

"With the changing needs of the building's users, it fell short of environmental requirements, and by 2019 it was clear that the building was no longer fit for purpose."

Dutch studio MVRDV was founded in Rotterdam in 1993 by Van Rijs, Winy Maas and Nathalie de Vries.

Other tall buildings completed by the studio include a pair of L-shaped skyscrapers in Nanjing and a housing tower in San Francisco designed to appear like a canyon.

The photography is by Xia Zhi.

Project credits:

Architect: MVRDV
Co-architect, landscape architect and MEP: SZAD
Facade Consultant: King Glass Engineering
Structural engineer: Yuanlizhu Engineering Consultants
Lighting Consultant: Brandston Partnership Inc.
Interior architect: Jiang and Associates

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British architecture studio Stanton Williams has designed a 35,000-square-metre academic building for the University College London, located in London's Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Named UCL East Marshgate, the concrete building has teaching and study space for 4,000 students and 700 staff and is roughly six times bigger than the university's next largest building – the UCL Student Centre.

Referencing the "solidity and permenance" of UCL's original Bloomsbury campus, Stanton Williams clad UCL East Marshgate in a range of textured concrete panels, including board-formed concrete on the lower level, and added accents of weathering steel.

The studio described the building's material palette as industrial, chosen to evoke the site's industrial history. Its boxy appearance was broken up with protruding and recessed elements with a weathering steel-clad terrace and lecture hall that jut out, and entrances cut into the concrete building.

"Lea Valley, before it was the Olympic Park, was very much about industry, making and infrastructure – that's where the palette comes from and the weathering steel adds a sense of warmth," Stanton Williams director Gavin Henderson told Dezeen.

"You have the basic simple form of the building and then other elements that are expressive and project beyond the facade and also cut in where the principal entrances are, so in a way, they capture the different routes as you approach the building from different directions."

The building sits across a canal from the One Pool Street student accommodation, designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, and more university buildings are planned to be built on the site in the future to form the 180,000-square-metre UCL East campus.

The opening of UCL East Marshgate marks the completion of the first stage of the campus masterplan, which once it is complete, will be the biggest expansion in the 200-year history of the university.

The building also forms part of the East Bank cultural quarter, which will include the UAL London College of Fashion, Sadler's Wells East theatre and bases for V&A East and BBC Music.

Aiming to promote cross-disciplinary learning, UCL East Marshgate was designed to be a flexible building that facilitates students from a range of subjects and can be adapted to changing university needs in the future.

It includes workshops, media studios, exhibition areas, design studios, lecture theatres, specialist laboratories and collaboration spaces.

"This is a very technical building," said Henderson. "It's hugely demanding in terms of what we are asking from services and structure."

"Loads are up to five times what you would have in office buildings, and that's what's driving the structural strategy behind the concrete frame, alongside the need to have a long-term flexible and adaptable building," he explained.

Stanton Williams arranged the eight-storey building around a central atrium with spaces divided into a series of "neighbourhoods", each with its own double-height communal area.

"It's a large building, so we broke it down in scale into clusters of floors," said Henderson.

"There are two to three floors so each of those we turned into a verticle neighbourhood, and each one has a double-height collaboration space to bring people together, like a village square."

The ground and first floor are accessible to the public with artwork displayed in the central atrium and a cafe on the ground floor intended to draw the public inside.

Community classrooms and lecture theatres on the first floor will be used for public workshops and classes.

The floor levels above are designated for university students and staff, with the central floor levels prescribed for research spaces and the top levels containing specialised laboratories.

As people travel up the building, the atrium gets wider and views out of the surrounding campus orient in different directions.

According to Stanton Williams, the atrium was designed to be passively heated and ventilated to maintain comfortable working temperatures.

Birch plywood lines the walls in the communal spaces, while the building's services and concrete structure were largely left exposed in the rest of the building.

"The structure is the architecture," said Henderson. "The long-term robust quality of the building and its material palette minimises refurbishment costs and all the carbon that goes into replacing and refurbishing finishes."

Continuing the theme of collaborative working, Stanton Williams designed each university floor level to have a mix of office space for staff with teaching and workspace for students.

"Where a lot of academic buildings separate workspace from the teaching space, here, the floors are deliberately mixed up so every floor has teaching space and workspace," said Henderson.

"The academics are close to the activity and the students but remain slightly separate," he added. "It was important to have a level of engagement while also not being constantly on demand."

UCL East Marshgate was given a BREEAM Excellent rating and according to Stanton Williams, the building's operational carbon will reach net zero by 2035 as part of the wider Olympic Park sustainability strategy and decarbonisation programme.

Other university buildings completed in the UK include a timber-clad teaching facility for York St John University and UCL's Corten steel-clad research laboratory designed to test urban environments.

The photography is by Hufton and Crow.

Project credits 

Architect: Stanton Williams
Interior architects: Stanton Williams and Sheppard Robson
Delivery architect: Sheppard Robson
Contractor: Mace
Landscape: Vogt Landscape
Structural design: AKT II
Engineering: Arup

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An East Hampton home with a sloping fibreglass roof and a corrugated metal-clad relocatable dwelling are among Dezeen's top five houses of the month for September 2023.

Also featured in the roundup is a black brick home in Seattle, a terrace of townhouses in a converted Oslo workshop and a farmhouse-informed structure in Melbourne.

This is the latest in our houses of the month series, where we showcase the five most popular residences featured on Dezeen in the past month from all around the world.

Read on to find out more about Dezeen readers' favourite houses this month:

Blue Dream, USA, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Photographed for the first time by Iwan Baan since its completion in 2017, Blue Dream is a home in East Hampton with a sculptural fibreglass roof designed by New York studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Sloping white forms continue in the interior, where walls, floors and ceilings merge into one another, and floor-to-ceiling windows give views of the nearby ocean.

Find out more about Blue Dream ›

Studio House, New Zealand, by William Samuels

Architect William Samuels placed two timber-framed barrel-vaulted modules side-by-side and clad them in corrugated metal to create the relocatable Studio House.

Designed as an alternative to standard houses, the 42-square-metre dwelling can be relocated using a trailer and additional modules can be added to expand the home in the future.

Find out more about Studio House ›

The Rambler, USA, by GO'C

Tucked into a wooded site northwest of Seattle, The Rambler home was designed by architecture studio GO'C to appear grounded in the landscape.

Placed on top of a concrete plinth, the single-storey house has an overhanging roof and black brick external walls that extend from the home to create semi-enclosed outdoor spaces.

Find out more about The Rambler ›

Sagene Wood Trade, Norway, by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter

Pastel shades of blue, green and pink define the three Sagene Wood Trade townhouses, located in a converted carpentry workshop in Oslo.

Architecture studio Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter transformed the workshop, which was partially demolished due to its derelict condition, by adding a steel structure and separating it into three homes with internal concrete walls.

Find out more about Sagene Wood Trade ›

Merricks Farmhouse, Australia, by Nielsen Jenkins

South African studio Michael Lumby Architecture worked with Brisbane practice Nielsen Jenkins to create this concrete-block home near Melbourne.

Informed by local farmhouses, the house has a low-slung roof with deep eaves that shelter a terrace and outdoor cooking area, and a circular pool draws upon agricultural water storage tanks.

Find out more about Merricks Farmhouse ›

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Design Miami's first event in Paris and the month-long Archtober festival in New York City are among the architecture and design events featured in Dezeen Events Guide this month.

Other events taking place in October include an exhibition on how design can help social and environmental peace, and design weeks in Eindhoven, Prague and Barcelona.

Archtober
1 to 31 October 2023, USA

The annual architecture and design event Archtober is returning to New York City for a month-long festival of tours, lectures, workshops, panels and exhibitions.

Founded in 2011 by the Center of Architecture, the festival aims to celebrate architecture and reveal a deeper understanding of our relationship with the built environment.

This year, Archtober has worked with over 100 partners, including museums, cultural organisations, advocacy groups and parks, to create a calendar of more than 1,500 events across New York City during October.

WRLDCITY
2 to 4 October 2023, USA

Also taking place in New York City is WRLDCITY, a three-day urban forum exploring topics of community-led design, climate change, the design of spaces for remote workers, and architecture's impact on racial and social justice.

The event includes round table discussions, workshops, networking opportunities and a series of talks taking place at the Times Center.

With a focus on innovations in urban design, real estate and technology, WRLDCITY aims to highlight ways our cities can adapt for the future.

Designblok
4 to 8 October 2023, Czech Republic

Returning for its 25th anniversary, this year's Prague design festival Designblok centres on a theme named Journey.

The five-day festival takes place at various locations around Prague, including the Trade Fair Palace, the Royal Garden of the Prague Castle and the Museum of Decorative Arts.

Reflecting on Czech design over the last 25 years, the event will include lectures, panel discussions, workshops and fashion shows.

Designing Peace
7 October to 4 February, USA

Designing Peace is an exhibition tackling how design can contribute to creating social, environmental and economic peace.

Taking place at San Francisco's Museum of Craft and Design, the exhibition showcases 30 proposals and finished designs from global designers, including objects, models, installations, maps, images and film.

Barcelona Design Week: Design for Human Future
16 to 28 October 2023, Spain

This year's Barcelona Design Week includes installations, exhibitions, showrooms, talks and workshops responding to the theme Design for Human Future.

In its 18th edition, the design week reflects on sustainable development goals that have been met up to now and what is still to be done to make design more sustainable.

Design Miami/Paris
18 to 22 October 2023, France

This October sees design fair Design Miami hosting its first event in Paris, where it will present work from 25 American and European galleries at L'hôtel de Maisons.

A preview day will take place on 17 October before the fair opens to the public on 18 October, where design objects, furniture, jewellery and lighting will be showcased, ranging from contemporary and mid-century styles to Italian and post-war.

Dutch Design Week
21 to 29 October 2023, the Netherlands

Taking place at various locations across eight districts in Eindhoven, Dutch Design Week returns with a programme of tours, exhibitions, networking events and talks.

This year's festival will present design works from over 2,600 designers from both the Netherlands and worldwide.

The event aims to focus on innovation, the future of design and emerging design talent.

About Dezeen Events Guide

Dezeen Events Guide is our guide to the best architecture and design events taking place across the world each year. The guide is updated weekly and includes virtual events, conferences, trade fairs, major exhibitions and design weeks.

Inclusion in the guide is free for basic listings, with events selected at Dezeen's discretion. Organisers can get standard, enhanced or featured listings for their events, including images, additional text and links, by paying a modest fee.

In addition, events can ensure inclusion by partnering with Dezeen. For more details on inclusion in Dezeen Events Guide and media partnerships with Dezeen, email eventsguide@dezeen.com.

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Social enterprise Goldfinger has launched its bespoke Tate Modern furniture collection made from fallen trees at London Design Festival.

Displayed at the Material Matters design fair, the furniture was originally designed in collaboration with architecture studio Holland Harvey and the Tate Modern as custom pieces for the gallery's Corner cafe.

It includes a dining table, bench and stool made from fallen ash trees, chosen by Goldfinger to make use of timber that would otherwise be destroyed while celebrating the beauty of native British wood.

"In collaborating with Holland Harvey and Tate Modern, I think we all saw the wide appeal of the sleek and bold design, the ash rescue story, as well as being able to own a piece of Tate Modern," Goldfinger associate Lisa Werner told Dezeen.

"This is Tate's first foray into furniture and celebrating their commitment to sustainably-minded partners at the outset is really impactful for the commercial market."

The furniture has chunky square legs with rounded corners, intending to reference the Tate Modern building and Trellick Tower, where the Goldfinger workshop is located.

Available in natural and black ash finishes, each piece of furniture features an engraving of the coordinates of where the tree used to make it once stood.

"We love to incorporate this storytelling of the tree's journey," said Werner.

"It is a Goldfinger signature detail to stamp the GPS coordinates of where the tree once stood into each piece, providing a sense of memory and honour for the tree's first life."

For the Tate Modern collection, ash wood was sourced from timber company Fallen and Felled, which rescues trees that have fallen due to disease, weather-related reasons or urban development.

According to Goldfinger, 5,000 trees in London are felled annually, most of which are chipped and burned. The studio aims to save the fallen trees from being destroyed by making them into furniture.

"This not only saves the tree from being chipped or burned for biofuel, it sequesters carbon and removes the need to cut down forests," said Werner.

"Over 90 per cent of Britain's hardwood is imported, we're on a mission to reverse that trend and promote the raw materials we have right on our doorstep."

"The UK is the second largest importer of wood behind China," added Leslie Feeney, Goldfinger head of impact and partnerships. "There is a lack of knowledge of the wood available to us in the UK."

Alongside Goldfinger's commitment to making furniture from fallen trees and reclaimed wood, which co-founder Marie Cudennec Carlisle spoke with Dezeen about in an interview, the studio is also a social enterprise that organises woodworking workshops and hosts free meals for the local community.

The Goldfinger Academy gives training and career opportunities to local residents and those who are out of education and employment, while the Future Makers programme offers students insight into the industry and portfolio development.

In 2015, Goldfinger launched the People's Kitchen initiative, which offers monthly free meals for the local North Kensington community.

Elsewhere at London Design Festival, designer Giles Nartey presented a large bench with a carved surface used as a game board and architect Daisuke Motogi reimagined Alvar Aalto's Stool 60 into one hundred different iterations.

The furniture is on show at Material Matters from 20 to 23 September 2023 as part of London Design Festival. See our London Design Festival 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

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Chinese studio Open Architecture has revealed its design for a space museum and experience centre in Yantai, China, which will appear like a mysterious black object in an oceanfront park.

Named Space Crystals, the building will have a glossy black exterior and a faceted stone-like shape that rises at one end to point towards the ocean.

Open Architecture describes the design as "an extraterrestrial-looking object landed mysteriously in the clearing of a seaside park".

Back-painted glass will cover half of the external facade, while photovoltaic glass will cover the south-facing facade to generate enough solar to power the building's lighting.

"The manufacturer has calculated that the total output power by the photovoltaic glass, around 2,520 square metres, is 77 kilowatts," Open Architecture founding partner Huang Wenjing told Dezeen.

"Under sunny conditions, this capacity is about enough for the general lighting requirement of the whole building."

Visitors will enter the building on the south side underneath the rising cantilever, arriving at a 20-metre-high atrium with faceted walls that mirror the appearance of the exterior.

The atrium will be used as an exhibition space displaying hanging objects and digital projections "dedicated to deciphering the mysteries of the universe".

"Light bounces around on the polygonal surfaces, rendering the otherwise monolithic white planes into countless shades of varying grey which subtly changes with the passing time and changing weather," said Open Architecture

A side entrance will provide access to a theatre and cafe when the museum is closed.

The studio designed a ramp encircling the atrium space that will lead to exhibition spaces above, intending to give visitors a sense of gradually exploring the building. The top of the spiral ramp will open onto an outdoor terrace with views of the nearby ocean.

Two polyhedral steel pipe shells will form the external and internal structures, which will be connected by the floor slabs.

With Space Crystals' unique shape, Open Architecture aimed to create a distinctive museum that invites the public inside to learn more about space and the universe.

"The main goal for the Space Crystals design was to create an attractive building – a semi-hidden surprise in the seaside park that arouses the public's interest and draws people in to explore the wonders of the universe through immersive exhibitions," said Huang.

"The city of Yantai is the hometown of the first female Chinese spacewalker – a fact that the locals are very proud of," she added.

"People, especially the older generations, have hoped that the younger generation will be inspired and encouraged to understand and explore the unknowns of the universe."

Planned to be completed in 2026, Space Crystals is part of Open Architecture's larger master plan for the seaside park. A second building set to be built on the site is Sea Square, a square-shaped library and community building on a dock.

"The two buildings form a dialogue in space and time, one pointing to the sky and the other to the sea, connecting current, past, and future," the studio said.

Other projects by Open Architecture include a 50-metre-tall viewing tower in Yantai that is nearing the end of construction and a rock-like open-air concert hall near the Great Wall of China.

The images are by Open Architecture.

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British architecture studio Haworth Tompkins has completed a three-storey industrial building in London named Industria, which the studio claims is the first multi-storey light-industrial scheme in the UK.

Industria is made up of two grey and yellow checkerboard-patterned wings with 26-metre-wide service decks in between. A 30-metre-diameter helical ramp provides vehicle access to each deck.

Designed for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the building contains 45 units that range in size from 20 to 450 square metres spread over the building's 11,400 square metres of floor space.

Haworth Tompkins designed the project for BeFirst, a regeneration company based in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, which is expecting to attract a range of businesses to the building, including workshops, film companies, food companies, small-scale manufacturers and companies needing warehouse storage.

While the interior spaces were designed to be minimal and efficient, Haworth Tompkins hopes the exterior adds a sense of delight and provides an enjoyable environment for the people working there.

Black metal cladding wraps the upper levels of Industria's perimeter, while precast concrete panels with a pebble texture cover the ground floor exterior.

The deck-facing facades were decorated in grey and yellow checkerboard corrugated cladding and green walls were added to the ends of the decks.

Each unit was designed to have simple and adaptable interiors with exposed services and steel structure. Walls separating the units can be removed to create larger combined spaces.

Most units are seven metres tall with large doors that allow vehicle entry, and occupants have the option of adding a mezzanine level inside.

The top floor of one wing was divided into two levels of four-metre-tall units, which are connected by internal corridors accessed by industrial goods elevators.

By building multiple storeys instead of a typical low-rise industrial development, Haworth Tompkins aimed to maximise land use and intensify industrial development in the area.

"This model is in the middle of an area surrounded by bits of industry that keep the city going, and that's the target market," studio director Graham Howarth told Dezeen.

"We haven't done bigger distributions before because, until recently, the land values and the pressures on cities haven't been big enough to make it viable, but it's heading that way."

"Everyone is watching the market to see where it goes, and everyone is watching this building," Howarth added. "The lack of space in the UK is going to force the issue at some point."

Haworth Tompkins added 2,000 square metres of photovoltaic panels to the roof, which according to the studio, will generate 297,198 kilowatt hours per year.

Industria was designed to have a 100-year lifespan and includes an employee welfare scheme that provides breakout space, bicycle parking, changing and shower facilities, and a cafe on the ground floor.

Branding company DNCO designed a graphic scheme for the scheme to makes it stand out.

The company designed the building's logo, wayfinding signage and the yellow and grey checkerboard design on the corrugated deck-facing elevations.

According to Haworth Tompkins associate director Hugo Braddick, Industria's multi-storey design pulled influences from Manchester's Victorian mills and factories.

"The Manchester mill buildings from 100 years ago were big multi-level brick warehouses – they knew how to build multi-level industrial," Braddick told Dezeen.

"Those buildings were so incredibly well made and robust that now we're using them for all sorts of things, like offices, housing, schools," Braddick added.

"Our conceptual vision for Industria was hopefully it will still be standing in 100 years time, but there's something different happening in it."

Haworth Tompkins plans to design more industrial buildings in the future, but its previous works largely consisted of theatre design, including refurbishing the 19th-century Hippodromen theatre in Malmö and restoring London's historic Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

The photography is by Fred Howarth.

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This week on Dezeen, we announced the longlisted architecture, interiors, design and sustainability projects for this year's Dezeen Awards.

Buildings by Santiago Calatrava (pictured above), Renzo Piano and MAD Architects were among the 235 longlisted architecture projects, while interiors projects in the running for an award include a home in Kyiv that celebrates Ukrainian craft and a store in London made from salvaged materials and biotextiles.

Snøhetta, Bocci and Samsung are in with a shot of winning in one of nine Dezeen Awards design categories, and this year's sustainability longlist features 93 projects across six different subcategories.

In architecture news, images from the Cityscape conference in Riyadh revealed a Zaha Hadid Architects-designed skyscraper that will form part of the Trojena ski resort at Neom in Saudi Arabia.

Standing atop a mountain across from the main ski area, the 330-metre-tall crystalline skyscraper will contain shops, restaurants, exhibition spaces and observation decks.

With London Design Festival returning to the city this weekend, Dezeen Events Guide editor Sophie Chapman rounded up 10 must-see installations and exhibitions during the week-long festival.

We also launched a live blog where the Dezeen team will reveal exclusive previews and report updates from London Design Festival as they happen.

Several major awards were announced this week, including Burkinabè architect Diébédo Francis Kéré being selected as this year's architecture laureate in the Praemium Imperiale awards, which celebrates creatives working in the fields of architecture, music, sculpture, painting and theatre or film.

Mexican architect Frida Escobedo was named the 2024 recipient of Le Prix Charlotte Perriand by the Créateurs Design Association & Awards in recognition of her contribution to "ushering in a new era of architecture".

In design news, Apple unveiled a lineup of new smartwatches that the company claims will be its first carbon-neutral products.

Apple announced it will reduce air transport and switch suppliers to renewable energy to manufacture the watches, which will be made from at least 30 per cent recycled or renewable materials.

Popular projects this week included a sculptural Hamptons house with a fibreglass roof and a coastal home in Dorset informed by rural barns.

Our latest lookbooks featured basement apartments that make the most of their subterranean environment and interiors that use lattice screens to divide spaces.

This week on Dezeen

This week on Dezeen is our regular roundup of the week's top news stories. Subscribe to our newsletters to be sure you don't miss anything.

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Architecture task force Create Streets is calling for Britain's multi-lane roads to be replaced with homes to aid the housing crisis and protect the country's green belt.

In a paper titled Moving Towards Growth: Why it's time to build on Britain's roadbelt, the organisation argued that building on existing roads could create narrower streets with wide pavements that better serve local communities.

"We could create proud boulevards"

Making a direct comparison to Britain's green belts, Create Streets coined the term "roadbelt" to describe the stretches of wide roads that can be utilised in the proposal.

"We could create proud boulevards lined with beautiful, sustainably located new homes on space currently given over to needlessly, indeed counter-productively, wide roads," said Create Streets in the paper.

"Forget green belt, this is Britain's roadbelt and it's time to build on it."

Written by the organisation's deputy director David Milner, the paper states that Britain needs "human-scaled streets" with housing and amenities to improve local life.

"I felt there was a real crossover in this initiative between our crippling housing crisis, UK cities' poor productivity compared to its European neighbours (outside London) and our collective race to net zero – all are time-sensitive to solving many of the country's ills," Milner told Dezeen.

"This policy and the broader point of how we could better invest in transport and cities strikes me as a real win-win."

According to the group, several projects that will demonstrate the potential of building housing on roadsare in early design stages in Rochdale, Bedford and Southend-on-Sea.

The paper argued that Britain continues to widen roads in an attempt to decrease travel time, but speed efficiency has plateaued since the turn of the 21st century.

Additionally, unnecessary road building is often prompted by the placement of new schools, shops and leisure facilities. Building these facilities at the centre of new developments will minimise the need for new roads and encourage people to walk or cycle, saving the developer and council money, according to Create Streets.

The paper emphasised that building new roads will continue to be necessary, but they should be narrower and lined with homes and amenities that serve communities – "not single-minded soulless distributors and expressways".

"There are still many hidden levers holding these kinds of development back"

Create Streets is currently aiming to develop its proposals at a project in St Mary's Gate, Rochdale, where the group has discussed the idea of transforming a turning lane on a five-lane motorway into a row of housing with the local council.

If it goes ahead, the project will add up to 400 new homes while keeping four lanes of traffic untouched.

The paper also highlighted a project in Bedford as another example of "building on Britain's roadbelt". Here a large roundabout would be reduced into a "more humane" T-junction with added commercial space and 105 homes. The project secured planning permission this July.

Milner recognised there are many roadblocks to infrastructure change being enacted, including concerns that reducing road lanes will impede traffic flow.

"There are still many hidden levers holding these kinds of development back, primarily around traffic modelling and the need to move towards a vision-led approach," he said.

"Many projects sink vast resources into this and are still held back by the primary concern being traffic flow."

"Whilst this should be part of the mix, it should not be the top of the pyramid," he added. "No one ever asks to see the model of how many more people would cross the road when you propose these schemes."

Create Streets was founded in 2012 by Nicholas Boys Smith, who also chairs the UK government's Office for Place advisory board.

The images courtesy of Create Streets.

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To celebrate 15 years of Gallery Fumi, the London gallery is hosting the Growth + Form exhibition of "functional art", featuring sculptural furniture and lighting with organic forms.

The Growth + Form exhibition includes new works by 16 of the 28 past Gallery Fumi artists and designers, responding to themes of transformation, regeneration and biological growth patterns.

It was designed by architectural designer Leendert De Vos and curated by design historian Libby Sellers, who invited former artists and designers back to showcase new pieces in a group display.

The exhibition title and theme were informed by the On Form and Growth book by Scottish biologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, which analyses the mathematical harmony of growing shapes in biology.

Responding to this biological starting point, furniture and lighting with organic shapes and natural materials can be seen throughout the exhibition.

Danish artist Stine Bidstrup created a sculptural chandelier titled Light Entanglements, made up of twisting clusters of hand-blown glass.

Different lengths of painted sticks were combined to create Marmaros Metamorphosis II, a circular decorative wall piece with a textured, tufted-like surface by sculptor Rowan Mersh.

"Revisiting the very beginning of his career when Mersh used cheap materials to experiment with techniques, in this work using lacquered coloured sticks, he creates forms with the details and skill level he currently attains when using precious materials," said Gallery Fumi.

As the gallery celebrates its 15th anniversary, Sellers likened its growth to the formation of crystals – the material traditionally associated with 15-year anniversaries.

"Grown from small particles into a solid form of geometric beauty, crystal is both a poetic metaphor for Gallery Fumi's own development over the last 15 years and an opportunity to explore the creative affinity between science, art, and the intricate nature of constructions," said Sellers.

"After all, is this not a definition of design? The meeting of knowledge, form-making, material exploration and beauty?" Sellers added.

"The works are vibrant and active – sprouting, swirling, twisting, turning – transferring material and form into objects of beauty."

Also on show was a wooden cabinet covered in hand-painted shingles by Berlin-based designer Lukas Wegwerth, who also created a crystal salt vase titled Crystallization 183.

"Crystallization 183 was identified by Sellers as most significant for the exhibition, as not only is the 15-year anniversary traditionally celebrated with crystal, but the process of growing the crystals is a poetic metaphor for Fumi's growth as a gallery," Gallery Fumi said.

Other pieces on display include a sculptural copper floor lamp with a stone base by London design studio JamesPlumb and a chair by British designer Max Lamb crafted from a single yew log.

"Tapping into the creative affinity between science and art, the pieces created for the show will display fluid organic forms, natural materials and geometric structures," said Gallery Fumi.

Other designers showing work include US sculptor Casey McCafferty, Italian designer Francesco Perini, design studio Glithero, Chinese material designer Jie Wu, German ceramic artist Johannes Nagel, Finnish artist Kustaa Saksi, British artist Leora Honeyman, Spanish artist Saelia Aparicio, British artist Sam Orlando Miller, design studio Study O Portable and furniture design studio Voukenas Petrides.

Gallery Fumi was founded in 2008 by Valerio Capo and Sam Pratt. It has previously showcased work including a Jesmonite lighting collection by British designer Lara Bohinc and a limited-edition bench by JamesPlumb made using medieval dying techniques.

The photography is courtesy of Gallery Fumi.

The Growth + Form exhibition is on display at the Gallery Fumi in London, UK, from 7 to 30 September 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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