Houses having only one stair going from the hallway to the upper floors seem like a hangover from houses such this one where, upon entering, guests were immediately ushered upstairs to the drawing room. Even before neo-Palladianism, having the staircase in front of the front door was probably an affectation owing something to the European […]
Villa Rotonda and Haus am Horn don’t look very similar on the outside and even less similar on the inside, but both are biaxially symmetrical and both have a large, top-lit space of increased height where those axes intersect. Here’s those two central spaces. On the right is that Haus am Horn study niche (nische) […]
According to a story making the rounds a couple of years ago, if you asked AI to identify what the image below is an image of, the answer would be “apple” whereas any child of reading age could tell you it’s an orange with the word APPLE written on it. The glitch has probably been […]
First of all many thanks to John Hill who alerted me to Brooklyn-based practice SO-IL and three of their projects. One of them you can see here. https://archidose.substack.com/p/architecture-books-week-22025 The next day I came across another article here, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/28/so-il-tankhouse-housing-new-york-big-apple, announcing the same book (which I’ve ordered) and another link to another project underway. SO-IL seem hot […]
This post is a reworking of a post of almost exactly one year ago, in an attempt to find a better way of approaching the subject. It’s mostly the preamble that’s different as the manifestations remain much the same although some of my examples are more extreme. This is because an architecture of sharing isn’t […]
If you’ve heard about handshake apartments, they’ll probably be in Shenzhen, China, and in buildings built so close that occupants in neighboring buildings can shake hands from their windows. You can get the idea from these images. They’re intense, but it’s what happens if you want to solve density, access, daylighting and ventilation without recourse […]
Architects spend much time organizing living spaces into fairly compact volumes that don’t require constructing unreasonable amounts of space that can’t be used for anything other than accessing those spaces with definite purposes. It’s possible to design houses or apartments that don’t have any circulation space as such, but if one has to travel through […]
Another problem with today’s architecture is the lack of an integrative approach towards designing buildings. What’s happening is that parts of a building component are designed without taking into account any other parts it may affect, thereby possibly affecting those parts in a negative way. I especially sensed this during my education at architecture school, […]
Previous posts: Part I, Part II Back to STACEY and, this time, with DAYLIGHTING & VIEWS. Daylighting is a very important yet neglected aspect of buildings. In addition to its benefits for energy-saving, it has huge psychological and productivity benefits for a building’s occupants as well. As for productivity, studies have shown that daylight can have […]
No. It isn’t the very fancy and expensive decorations or the Court of The Lions, and it certainly isn’t the spiritual feeling that one is supposed to feel when looking at such an enormous built object. Those are not the things that amaze me so much about Al Hambra Palace in Granada, Spain. What does […]
Previous post: Part I I thought now might be a good time to bring some technical stuff again to this blog, and thus, the second part of STACEY 1.0; Energy & Carbon. LEED gives a lot of attention and weight to credits related to “Energy & Atmosphere”. The reason behind that is its large contribution […]
