AAP Image/Lukas Coch
Pubs like the John Curtin Hotel are more than just buildings – the loss of the hotel would also be a loss of our living cultural memory.
State Library NSW
Between the first and second world wars, Australia’s high-end architecture was strongly influenced by exotic scenery from Hollywood’s rapidly accelerating movie industry.
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Naturalistic thinking has long helped humanity grapple with complex urban predicaments. What role can it play today?
Spaces built collaboratively, close to nature.
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What we can learn from squatters, climate protestors and desert hippies.
Ryoji Iwata/Unsplash
There is a reason your body draws you back to the same place again and again. It’s not simply habit, it is also the ways a place makes our body feel.
Technological advances have made many buildings less environmentally friendly.
Micuradu/Flickr
Lessons from ancient architecture can help us design buildings that provide comfort and convenience without costing the earth.
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For a long time the roof has been an afterthought in urban design, but the future is definitely looking up.
GettyImages
If you’re stuck in mall traffic this holiday season, spare a thought for Victor Gruen, whose grand urban vision turned into today’s suburban reality.
A dairy barn in Waitsfield, Vermont, built circa 1890.
Thomas Visser
Barns are practical buildings, designed to safeguard farm animals and equipment. Why are so many of them painted to stand out from the landscape?
Builders construct experimental vaults of brick and cement blocks in Santiago de Cuba in December 1960.
Centro de Documentación, Empresa RESTAURA, Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana
After Fidel Castro took power, government plans to build new housing, schools and factories were hindered by sanctions and supply chain issues, forcing architects to come up with creative solutions.
The greenest buildings are those that exist already.
Danist Soh on Unsplash
One-tenth of global emissions result from the production and supply of building materials – and the construction process itself.
Beijing’s Forbidden City under a light dusting of snow.
Ola Lundqvist/Shutterstock
Roof slopes in traditional Chinese architecture reflect snowfall patterns over a millennium.
Mosul, a major city in northern Iraq, in the 19th century
The Print Collector via Getty Images
Day 4 of our Understanding Islam series. Knowing the historical contributions of Islam and its influence on other faiths can help counter many assumptions about the religion today.
Underneath/Uncovered - Rebecca Mansell
Australia’s love and rediscovery of terrazzo floors form the foundation for a new exhibition.
Lunatictm/Shutterstock
Structures are built to withstand a normal range of conditions. But what’s ‘normal’ is changing rapidly.
Cookie-cutter urban designs don’t do justice to cities’ natural biodiversity.
Michael Gaida/Pixabay
Generic urban landscape design is damaging for people and nature: an ecomimicry approach instead encourages nature to flourish even in cities.
Screen Shot at am.
We can do better than building a village of glorified dongas. Smart quarantine can be much higher-tech, and more adaptable for future uses once the pandemic is over.
Painting buildings white is a centuries-old method of staving off heat in countries like Greece.
SophiaPapageorge/Pixabay
New barium sulphate-based paint could help reduce effects of climate change.
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At the beginning of 2020, author John Willsteed had plans to revisit Barcelona’s towering Gaudí cathedral. He’s still planning and dreaming of its scale and detail.
Somerset House is an example of enlightenment architecture, which precluded greenery which was believed to obscure its strong lines and go against ‘reason’.
Ed Reeve
All symmetrical lines and strict proportions, Enlightenment architecture believed that nature got in the way of reason.