More than meets the eyes

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Retail developments in Chinese cities now contain much more than just retail, and are designed to be ‘all-in-one’ destinations; the new Shanghai Jiuguang Center is no exception. Roseanne Field reports The Shanghai Jiuguang Center, located in the... View Article

Selling biophilic benefits

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Shopping malls are a key social destination in China, and with this in mind Lead8 sought to provide a landscape-rich interior to enhance the experience of a new mixed-use scheme in Chongqing, in the form of a... View Article

Green connections

A reuse proposal to create a new transport hub in Vilnius was used by ZHA as an opportunity to provide a new connectivity across the city for its inhabitants, as well as improve rail infrastructure and sustainability The design for... View Article

Rooted in users’ experience

Grimshaw is leading a team to deliver a highly-integrated transport hub at Shenzhen airport, in a structure and circulation strategy inspired by mangrove trees In April 2021, a design consortium led by Grimshaw, and including Mott MacDonald, China Aviation Planning... View Article

Positive mental attitude

LISTEN HERE 🔊 The multi-award winning Springfield Meadows is a collection of 25 ‘carbon positive’ homes in Oxfordshire, designed by Greencore Construction to be the UK’s ‘most sustainable development.’ MD Ian Pritchett tells Jack Wooler how the project was a... View Article

Balancing act

Creating a major new performance space to help revitalise a deprived part of south east London meant a delicate balancing act for Bennetts Associates in its adaptive reuse of five historic listed buildings, with close community involvement. Roseanne Field reports... View Article

Environmental health

LISTEN HERE 🔊 A mental health building by Medical Architecture in north London took a simple, ‘first-principles’ design approach to providing access to external space and daylit interiors, as well as greater independence and wellness for users. James Parker reports... View Article

Passivhaus goes large

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Agar Grove is set to become the UK’s largest Passivhaus scheme, with its housing tenants already seeing the benefits from the first completed phase. James Woodward, architect at Hawkins\Brown, tells Roseanne Field why the practice decided to... View Article

Opening a new volume in NYC

LISTEN HERE 🔊 A renovation project on 5th Avenue opens up a public library facility and resolves the functional anomalies of a former department store to provide high quality spaces for all users. James Parker reports on a fruitful collaboration... View Article

Singapore’s central park

A major mixed-use skyscraper with a difference is approaching completion in Singapore’s central business district – the facades of this richly diverse ‘vertical city’ by Bjarke Ingels Group opens up to reveal generous and highly usable green spaces. James Parker... View Article

Renewed sense of purpose

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Arup believes that its redevelopment of the workplace it designed in the 1990s in West London, including a refurbished facade, will save 40,000 tonnes of carbon compared with a new build approach. ADF’s Tom Boddy reports Situated... View Article

Hidden in plain sight

LISTEN HERE 🔊 A new private residence overlooking a valley in the Czech Republic offers a seamless blend of expansive sight lines and privacy, but also a design that subtly disguises itself in its hilly site. Jack Wooler spoke to... View Article

A revealing take on later life

A project in north London offers highly individualised, non-institutional retirement village design both inside and out, producing a carefully detailed brick-clad form on a challenging site. Jack Wooler reports Belle Vue is a high-end retirement community in Hampstead, London which... View Article

Exercising soft power

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Designing a power station on the Italian island of Capri, famous as a luxury holiday destination, required a sensitive approach to sit a sustainable new plant gently in its setting. Enrico Frigerio speaks to Roseanne Field Capri,... View Article

Light relief

LISTEN HERE 🔊 Heatherwick Studio’s first completed healthcare scheme is a new Maggie’s Centre that turns an unloved patch of city centre hospital estate into a landscape-festooned, lightweight timber refuge for cancer patients. James Parker reports. Heatherwick Studio’s first completed... View Article

Light reading

James Parker reports on how a Parisian firm of architects created a highly transparent, modern multimedia library flooded with light, that feels at home in historic Bayeux The new ‘media library’ or ‘mediatheque’ serving the 30,000 citizens of Bayeux. Normandy,... View Article

A copper partner for corten

Phase 2 of a major residential development in Bristol is an industrially inspired block of apartments faced in copper, designed to complement a former tobacco company HQ. James Parker reports Ferguson Mann Architects (FMA) were appointed to design Urban Splash’s... View Article

A vertical learning trajectory

Roseanne Field speaks to Bell Phillips Architects about their first education project – a new building for a fast-growing Kent grammar school which needed to provide a considered aesthetic result to harmonise with the historic buildings surrounding it The Skinners’... View Article

Physical connections

LISTEN HERE 🔊 A new sports and swimming pool addition at King’s College School in south west London was designed around visual connections between old and new, and marked the culmination of the school’s masterplan. Roseanne Field reports Designing a... View Article

Driving green collaboration

LISTEN HERE 🔊 A cutting-edge facility designed to keep future vehicle innovation firmly on the map, with the emphasis on sustainability, has completed at the University of Warwick. Roddy Langmuir from Cullinan Studio tells Jack Wooler how it combines collaboration... View Article