Interior Design

Cemeteries are sites containing the quiet presence of memories and the constancy of cultural rituals; this combination poignantly defines a sense of bodily transference through atmospheric quietude. The Ankaran Cemetery embodies these qualities—their significance and their constancy. Furthermore, the architecture of the cemetery is conceived as a liminal transition space between the verticality of the adjacent forest and the limitlessness of the Adriatic horizon to the southwest. The space of the cemetery is defined by these contrasting relationships and transitions between open and closed, light and dark – between the here and the hereafter.

Rotterdam-based firm MVRDV has announced a new milestone in the development of its Tour & Taxis Towers, a mixed-use project in Brussels, Belgium. The design was commissioned by real estate investor and developer Nextensa in 2021, within the framework of a site-specific land use masterplan also designed by MVRDV. The two-tower project combines offices, housing, and public amenities across 58,000 m², forming a landmark in the neighbourhood and reaching 126 metres at its highest point. Recently granted construction permission, the project is designed to reduce embodied carbon through the use of a hybrid structure and lightweight façade elements, aiming to minimize the use of concrete in both the structure and foundations. From the early stages, the firm has employed its CarbonSpace software to guide these decisions.

There is an ancestral gesture in shaping earth. Long before architecture was established as a discipline, clay was already being molded by hand and transformed by fire, turning raw matter into domestic utensils and cultural objects. Within the history of this craft, ceramic factories mark the transition from manual knowledge to serial production, expanding its scale without entirely severing its material origins. Scattered across different territories, these structures record the relationship between technique, landscape, and time. Over the decades, however, many of them lost their original function, replaced by more technological processes or absorbed by the urban development around them, entering an intermediate state between permanence and obsolescence.

On the banks of the Sanya Haitang River, where tides ebb and flow, the climate is warm, and islands, coconut groves, and dense mangroves unfold in layers. Here, on the wetlands of Haitang Bay, we have woven an organic waterfront village. The Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji believed that “fudo (wind and earth) is a comprehensive term for climate, geology, soil, sightlines, and landscape.” Thus, we respond to the fudo with a continuous village and an undulating roof. The silver rooftop interpenetrates with the lush greenery, intertwining the calm of metal with the abundance of the tropics. The architecture maintains a humble empathy with nature, while the vast shadows it casts care for and shelter the people and life along the water’s edge.

On the banks of the Sanya Haitang River, where tides ebb and flow, the climate is warm, and islands, coconut groves, and dense mangroves unfold in layers. Here, on the wetlands of Haitang Bay, we have woven an organic waterfront village. The Japanese philosopher Tetsurō Watsuji believed that “fudo (wind and earth) is a comprehensive term for climate, geology, soil, sightlines, and landscape.” Thus, we respond to the fudo with a continuous village and an undulating roof. The silver rooftop interpenetrates with the lush greenery, intertwining the calm of metal with the abundance of the tropics. The architecture maintains a humble empathy with nature, while the vast shadows it casts care for and shelter the people and life along the water’s edge.

Ramsden is a home for a young family assembled from fragments of memory. The design was heavily influenced by The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, a reflective travelogue with no conventional plot, yet densely layered with personal and international histories. The work reveals the complexity and disorder inherent in individual relationships to history, culture, and the past.

Ramsden is a home for a young family assembled from fragments of memory. The design was heavily influenced by The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, a reflective travelogue with no conventional plot, yet densely layered with personal and international histories. The work reveals the complexity and disorder inherent in individual relationships to history, culture, and the past.

Ramsden is a home for a young family assembled from fragments of memory. The design was heavily influenced by The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, a reflective travelogue with no conventional plot, yet densely layered with personal and international histories. The work reveals the complexity and disorder inherent in individual relationships to history, culture, and the past.