ATAMA   Belgium   This industrial-like building, built in 1940 and formerly a fire station, has been transformed into a meeting point for the community. At the base of the tower, now home for a climbing club, the central plaza forms a market hall space that opens up t

TAO | Trace Architecture Office   China   In 2021, the company Librairie Avant-Garde commissioned the Beijing-based firm TAO | Trace Architecture Office to build a series of bookstores, including that of the Academia Chongzheng in Weishan and the recently completed one in Yangpo. Atop the Ga

TAO | Trace Architecture Office   China   The Beijing firm TAO | Trace Architecture Office has renovated the historic Weishan Chongzheng Academy, founded over 500 years ago, transforming the building into a bookstore for Librairie Avant-Garde, with reading rooms, a small theater, exhibition

Foster + Partners   Malaysia   Apple The Exchange TRX, the first Apple retail location in Malaysia, has opened in the capital. Crowned with a dome, the store rises three levels with a viewing deck above, connected to a park. From the base to the top, the 26.5 x 26.5-meter roof tra

Arquitectura-G   France   The store is located on Rue Saint-Honoré, on the lower floors of a corner building, with the typical artisan house-workshop structure with a first floor of reasonable height and a loft with a height of 2,05 meters, where the family lived. Both floors

Arquitectura-G   Japan   The first floor of a glass-enclosed building, on a main street in the commercial area of Nagoya, harbors the retail store of the Swedish fashion brand Acne Studios. The commission from the new creative direction of the company asked, on one hand, to

Álvaro Siza   Portugal   In establishing its foundation, Porto’s most famous bookshop makes one of the country’s earliest constructions coexist with a sculptural pavilion that echoes its volumes on a contemporary note. The premises were reconstructed in the 20th century unde

TAKK   France   Plato imagined the cave as an allegory of a sensual world that is just appearance, and this feigned background seems to materialize in the dazzling mise-en-scène that during this fashion season dresses the storefronts of the Parisian house of luxury

Foster + Partners   China   This recently opened Apple store is in the heart of Shanghai’s Jing’an District. Generating a public space for encounters, a new circular plaza connects different walkways through several curving levels featuring vegetation and tiered seating from wh

TEST Guillermo Santomà   Spain   From tapestry to wall. In essence, this was the Copernican turn Semper took with his principle of cladding, whereby structure gave up its protagonism in architecture in favor of Bekleidung: though humans learned to use durable materials, he held that

Arquitectura-G   Netherlands   Leaving aside the by now mythical incident of employees in the area running into Tilted Arc, claiming the installation was an eyesore that blocked their way to work, and succeeding in getting it removed, it is unanimously considered a powerful experi

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The warehouse of an old cotton textile factory outside the Chinese capital has been refurbished to harbor the main office and the retail concept store of a historical pastry brand. In allusion to their baking-industry uses, the brick buildings were t

Estudio Além   Portugal   Portugal was born in Guimarães. At least that is what the – modern – inscription on one of its walls says, in allusion to the fact that the first independent Portuguese king, Afonso Henriques, established his court in this town, after defeating the a

Dellekamp Schleich   Mexico   In the courtyard of a large old house in the Polanco neighborhood rises a slender mixed-use building that is considered the first ever to incorporate a high-rise timber structure. The framework of the upper levels rests on the party wall and a single

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   United States   The flagship store of Tiffany & Co., the luxury jewelry and specialty design house, has reopened on Fifth Avenue in New York City, after completion of its first holistic renovation since opening in 1940. Shohei Shigematsu of OMA did the revamp an

Barozzi Veiga   Spain   At Consell de Cent 349, in the Eixample, the first Barcelona store of the Australian cosmetic firm Aesop, founded in Melbourne in 1987, has opened. The firm of the Italian Fabricio Barozzi and the Galician Alberto Veiga did the interiors. A large hig

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   France   As Loos would say, you can’t build a house with carpets alone. He was talking about the architect’s task having to start out with a skeleton for the enclosure, a conviction which a very young fashion house has now playfully set out to refute in one o

Renesa Architecture   India   There is no doubt that we live surrounded by what Debord acidly called the marchandise vedette, articles that compete to be displayed in the most irresistible way possible, appealing to our senses and our wallets. In architecture, this dictate of pub

estudiHac   Spain   The Valencia-based studio has a space in which to display the broad range of creative possibilities that this brand specialized in claddings offers, presented through the superposition of materials, plans, textures, and colors...

P-M-A-A    Spain   The new circular skylight is a unique addition that transforms an old and dark space into an atmosphere filled with natural light. Concentrating the program at the corners generates an open-plan space of squared proportions and symmetrical in section

Evvo Retail   Spain   ‘Layers’ of industrial materials – aluminum and concrete – are added to the space that preserves the original walls, in contrast with the elegant and theatrical textures in an atmosphere of pastel colors that uses the curve as a sculptural element...

querkraft   Austria   With facades resembling a set of shelves bearing plants, IKEA Wien Westbahnhof opens its doors in the Austrian capital. A work of the local firm Querkraft, the 26,200-square-meter building rises seven floors, and on top is the Jo&Joe Hostel – tak

Happenstance Collective [HaCo] Javier Villar Ruiz   Japan   This shop for UPI, a company that specializes in equipment and paraphernalia for mountaineering, hiking, and camping, is a work of Javier Villar Ruiz and Tomoki Yamasaki of Happenstance Collective [HaCo]. Blurring the limits between interior and exte

Amidst the tide of challenges faced by the fashion industry under pandemic restrictions, OMA’s laboratory of ideas (AMO) took on the complex task of rethinking Bershka’s retail strategy. The first contact took place with the Bershka Flagship Milano,

Andrés Trapiello   Stores in 50 Spanish provinces are used to paint a graphic and literary portrait of an urban landscape of traditional charm that deserves to be saved from oblivion.

This photographic and literary journey through shops of the fifty Spanish provinces recovers the languages of popular architecture in the signs and facades of old establishments, and travels along the country’s sidewalks in search of ‘the common beau

Foster + Partners   Apple Aventura embodies Miami’s spirit of openness and generosity, bringing people together under an undulating vaulted roof that is reminiscent of the city’s nautical and architectural roots. The materiality and flowing spaces are inspired by the re

Using architecture as an emblem, sometimes as a technological lure, is nothing new. Suffice it to remember the recurring association of avant-garde buildings with automobiles, a link forged in times of Le Corbusier and continuing to this day. But aft

Joan Ockman   El consumo somos nosotros. Eso sostiene la Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, un libro de 800 páginas recién publicado por Taschen. Se trata del resultado de una serie de seminarios de investigación conocidos como Project on the City e impartid