Sustainable architecture
An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about sustainable architecture
Project • By The Room Architecture and Design • Masterplans
Harvest Communities
Conventional residential subdivisions across Southeast Asia frequently prioritize mass earthmoving, clearing natural hydrology and productive soil to install rigid asphalt grids and high-density concrete housing. Harvest Communities presents an alternative masterplan model designed by The Room Architecture and Design, structuring residential expansion around preserved farmland, productive agricultural parcels, and natural contours. The plan prioritizes long-term operational efficiency and resource conservation by integrating living environments into an active agricultural landscape rather than displacing it. Built interventions sit lightly on the terrain, ensuring that natural water channels, soil microbiomes, and agricultural yields remain... More
Project • By Studio JVW • Hotels
Okavango Residences
Okavango Residences explores how the qualities of domestic architecture can inform a contemporary model for safari hospitality. Rather than organising accommodation as a collection of guest suites connected by communal facilities, the project reimagines the traditional safari lodge as a series of private residences, bringing the intimacy, permanence and familiarity of home into an immersive wilderness setting.
Situated along the banks of the Okavango River, the architecture responds to the contrasting conditions of the site. Dense riverine woodland creates a sense of concealment on arrival, before the landscape gradually opens towards the river and expansive floodplains beyond. The residence is conceived around this transition, with a sequ... More
Project • By Urban Soul Project • Offices
The Glade Office Campus
The Glade Office Campus is an unrealised competition-winning design for an 18,000-square-metre workplace development in Marousi, Athens. Developed by Urban Soul Project in collaboration with UNS for Prodea Investments, the project was selected as the winning proposal in the architectural competition. The design was not subsequently taken forward to construction and is presented here as an unbuilt architectural concept.
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The project explored a workplace model in which architecture and landscape were conceived as a continuous environment. Its design was organised around three related ideas: Forest, Glade and Foliage.
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The Forest formed a planted perimeter around the campus, creating a transition from the... More
Project • By KOGISARCHITECTURE • Residential Landscape
Brick Roof Residence
Set in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, the Brick Roof Residence by KOGISARCHITECTURE is an innovative residential project designed to achieve thermal comfort without relying on artificial air conditioning.
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Reinterpreting the traditional Madras terrace, the design features an experimental sloped roof crafted from salvaged country fire bricks, mud mortar, and breathable oxide finishes. In synergy with a high-level air tunnel and a central linear light court, the structure generates a continuous stack effect to push hot air out and draw cool breezes in.
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
Nithiyan
With honest local materials, passive thermodynamics, and open spatial planni... More
Project • By Architects’ Studio • Shopping Centres
Cascavelle Shopping Mall
Located on the west coast of Mauritius, the extension of Cascavelle Shopping Mall rethinks the conventional retail model as an open, vibrant destination shaped by architecture, landscape and community. Conceived as more than a place for commerce, the project creates an environment where people can gather, explore, dine and spend time throughout the day and into the evening.
Architects Studio Ltd
Architects Studio Ltd
Architects Studio Ltd
Architects Studio Ltd
Drawing inspiration from the scale and atmosphere of a tropical village, the masterplan is organised as a network of shaded pedestrian streets, generous verandahs, landscaped plazas and open-air terraces. Retail, dining, leisure and public spaces are woven togethe... More
Project • By The Room Architecture and Design • Offices
Food and Agriculture Organization
The Food and Agriculture Organization office in Phnom Penh is a contemporary extension to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries compound. Carefully planned to sit within its context rather than stand apart from it, the two-story concrete structure responds to the familiar gabled rooflines of the surrounding government buildings through a double-sided gabled roof and a continuous shaded walkway.
Bruce Vincentiis
The building is organized around a simple concrete volume where the shaded perimeter walkway forms a protective layer between the exterior compound and the interior workspaces. This walkway supports light, views, and cross-ventilation along the facades. Enclosed offices, meeting rooms, and support spaces are grou... More
Project • By Sandro Gravili • Private Houses
Cube House System for Nomura Koumuten
Cube House System is a compact modular housing proposal developed for the competition promoted by Nomura Koumuten in Japan. The project explores a simple and flexible residential model, designed around the idea of a small but generous home for contemporary living.
Sandro Gravili
The house is organized as a clear timber frame volume, using a construction system connected to Nomura Koumuten’s wooden building technology. Its compact footprint is balanced by a double-height living room, which becomes the central space of the house and brings natural light deep into the interior.
Sandro Gravili
The internal layout is based on traditional Japanese tatami proportions, used as a modular reference for the organization of the rooms.... More
Project • By tomato print • Residential Landscape
Rantak, Gallery of Art
There is a particular kind of silence in Leh that does not feel like absence. It feels more like presence, the quiet of centuries crossing the Indus valley, carried through the wind, and the slow warmth that cold air brings every winter, like a pact the land has made with itself.
To build anything here is to enter into a negotiation with that silence. To build well is to let the wind pass through smoothly.
Leh lives in the point between two worlds. The old town carries memory in its earthen walls and monastery-topped ridges. The new town stretches outward with the restless energy of a place still figuring out what it wants to be. Between these two, not quite belonging to either, but slowly mediating, a building has been allowed to settle... More
Project • By Laboratory Sustaining Design / LSD Architects • Private Houses
Casa Vista Encantada
Located in the mountains of Mar Vista, Guanacaste, Casa Vista Encantada is a residential project composed of a main house and a guest house, organized as a direct response to the site’s elongated topography.
The project adopts a linear configuration that follows the natural contours of the terrain, allowing each space to establish a specific relationship with the surrounding landscape. This spatial strategy generates a sequence of views and transitions, reinforcing the connection between interior and exterior environments.
Fernando Alda
Fernando Alda
A central component of the project is its roof system, designed as an integrated environmental strategy. The sloped roofs enable controlled rainwater collection, which is comb... More
Project • By STARK • Private Houses
Passive House Forest Retreat
Nestled within a mature forest in British Columbia's Coast Mountains, the Passive House Forest Retreat is a private residence designed to exist in dialogue with its landscape. Sited on a sloped lot surrounded by old-growth canopy, the home was conceived as both an act of environmental responsibility and architectural restraint.
Ema Peter Photography
Ema Peter Photography
The massing is organized around a gently cantilevered volume that reaches toward the mountain views, carving out a sheltered communal space below, a place to gather, rest, and inhabit the threshold between interior and forest. The treehouse-like form reads as crisp and contemporary, while dark cladding and the glazing orientation ground it firmly in its setting.... More
Project • By Zwarthout l Shou Sugi Ban • Apartments
Mooijburg Amsterdam
Sustainable CLT apartments by Mooijburg Amsterdam designed by Natrufied Architecture. We are extremely happy that our fire class B product Yoroi is being used for the facade cladding!
Marcel van den Burg
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Project • By Zwarthout l Shou Sugi Ban • Highways
Groene Boog
We proudly present a new Yoroi project of public buildings designed by Quist Wintermans Architekten: De Groene Boog! Our assembly team mounts the entire façade of the service buildings with our charred bamboo ‘’Yoroi‘’ including fire class B-s1-d0.
Kees de Vries
Kees de Vries
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Project • By Zwarthout l Shou Sugi Ban • Private Houses
Biobased home by ORGA architects
Nestled in the Stameren forest near Maarn, this residence stands out for its natural and effortless connection to the surrounding landscape. Positioned at the transition between forest and heathland, each side of the house establishes a unique relationship with nature. The forest side feels intimate and sheltered, while the heathland side offers expansive views, abundant daylight, and a strong sense of openness.
The design of ORGA architects makes use of natural, biobased materials, including the charred Douglas fir façade cladding “Naoshima”. Large glazed surfaces and carefully framed sightlines ensure a continuous connection with the outdoors, allowing the boundary between interior and landscape to gently fade.
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Project • By Studio Eigen • Housing
Ville Thalia
In the landscape of the Euganean Hills, in Abano Terme, the Ville Thalia project reorganizes a plot through the composition of two distinct building bodies: a single-family residence and a two-family building. The intervention chooses a contemporary architectural language, based on the clarity of volumes and the control of proportions, distancing itself from traditional forms to assert its own geometric identity.
The genesis of the project starts from an essential and linear floor plan. To prevent this simplicity from translating into visual staticity, the design of the first-floor elevations introduces a decisive three-dimensional variation. The main envelope, characterized by sand-colored plaster, is interrupted and rhythmed by the inser... More
Project • By Studio Eigen • Private Houses
Villa Victoria
In the province of Padua, the Villa Victoria project stands out for a precise stylistic choice that moves away from conventional white standards to explore the richness of dark and enveloping tones. The intervention works on the density of the space, where light serves to enhance the tactile and chromatic quality of the surfaces.
The generating element of the internal composition is the chestnut oak floor. This continuous, brown surface acts as a noble base upon which the living area volumes are set, through contrast or assonance. The kitchen is resolved architecturally through columns in liquid bronze metal, whose luminous vibration serves as a backdrop for the central island: a stone monolith with warm veins, a material that reappears pu... More