Archinect - Features

Architecture’s 'State of the Union': Reflections on the 2022 World Architecture Festival

2023-01-05T06:00:00-05:00

From November 30th through December 2nd, 2022, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) held its first physical event in three years. The annual festival, adapting to an online format during the COVID-19 pandemic, is regarded as one of the most critical events in the global architectural calendar, from identifying award-winning projects from over 700 candidates around the world to facilitating debates, discussions, and critiques on the built environment, and the forces entwined within it. Below, Archinect’s Niall Patrick Walsh reflects back on his visit to the 2022 edition of the festival, held in Lisbon, Portugal.

Summary, a Small Portuguese Firm, Finds Their Speciality in Standard and Low-Cost Building

2017-10-23T09:27:00-04:00

Summary is a young architectural studio based in the Science and Technology Park of University of Porto, Portugal, founded by Samuel Gonçalves. Recent winners of the esteemed Red Dot Award in the "habitat" category, the firm has become known for projects such as the 'gomos house' and their installation for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, that focus on prefabrication and simplifying solutions to the building process.

In the following Small Studio Snapshot, we talk with the studio about their founding, the specialization driving their projects, and their unique graphic design.

dIONISO LAB's new home puts the outside at the center

2017-02-26T10:20:00-05:00

Located in a suburban area of Póvoa de Varzim, a coastal town in Portugal known unsurprisingly for its fish and beach resorts, sits a stark white home. Inserted into a gridded plot and enclosed by fragmented gardens and paved areas, House L27, stands apart from its neighbors. Designed by José Cadilhe of dIONISO LAB, the home plays with the standard geometry of the surrounding construction by offering a more fluid alternative in which the exterior becomes the central, organizing space.

Uniting the peripheral and the central at the 2016 Venice Biennale

2016-06-18T10:13:00-04:00

How architects are educated, and the role they play in society, are key questions of today. As an architecture teacher, I ask my students how they see their role; are they makers, choreographers, gardeners, enablers, artists? This year’s Venice Biennale asks, and tries to answer, the same question. There are many different answers.

Showcase: Óbidos Technological Park Main Building by Jorge Mealha

2015-01-03T09:00:00-05:00

How does one create a main piazza in the absence of a surrounding urban fabric that typically encloses a Piazza? The design team around architect Jorge Mealha drew from its traditional Portuguese typologies and conceived the Óbidos Technological Park Main Building in the countryside north of Lisbon as contemporary interpretation of a Terreiro.

While just recently completed, the project has already garnered a respectable nomination for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award 2015.

ShowCase: White Wolf Hotel by AND-RÉ

2014-03-22T15:37:00-04:00

The White Wolf Hotel sits low to the ground in the verdant landscape of Penafiel, Portugal, calmly set by forest and stream. AND-RÉ's neutral white hotel is no-frills in and out, its simple geometry free of distracting stimuli for visitors to enjoy a complete mental and physical respite. The hotel shares its namesake with a local wolf species, and while it bares little biomimetic relation, appears similarly at home in the landscape.

ShowCase: Pocinho Rowing High Performance Center by Alvaro Andrade

2014-01-21T10:00:00-05:00

ShowCase is an on-going feature series on Archinect, presenting exciting new work from designers representing all creative fields and all geographies.