Architecture is always transformation. Preferably for the better. But not always.

Ancestral, vernacular, and minimalist. For many, these three words have come to define the architecture of Japan, a country that has served as a source of cultural and technological inspiration to countless cultures.

Casamia Community house is located in Cam Thanh, Hoi An city. Inspired by the image of nipa palms from Cam Thanh, the building is erected from bamboo- a material familiar to Vietnamese culture. It is located at the end of a river and gets a lot of wind. Although the building is covered by a lot of greenery, natural sunlight can still get in.

The first Shikinen Sengu was held in the year 690, in the city of Ise, Mie Prefecture, Japan. It consists of a set of ceremonies lasting up to 8 years, beginning with the ritual of cutting down trees for the construction of the new Ise Shrine and concluding with the moving of the sacred mirror (a symbol of Amaterasu-Omikami) to the new shrine by Jingu priests. Every 20 years, a new divine palace with exactly the same dimensions as the current one is built on a lot adjacent to the main sanctuary. Shikinen Sengu is linked to the Shinto belief in the periodic death and renewal of the universe, while being a way of passing on the ancient wood construction techniques from generation to generation.

Designed by Foster + Partners, Alif-The Mobility Pavilion at the Expo 2020 Dubai blurs the boundaries between the physical and digital world, and invites visitors to meet the historical icons of mobility, whose innovations helped pave the way for our modern-day technology. The pavilion features the world’s largest passenger lift, which will be able to transport 160+ people at a time, and a semi-underground-semi-open-air 330-meter track which allows visitors to see cutting-edge mobility devices in action.

Getting Up. The beginning of a design can be based on a mood. I envied the tranquility and pleasantness of this city, which is scarce in Shanghai. Suddenly, I decided there should be a cloud, calmly and slowly rising over the river. Clouds have a sophisticated and pure beauty. Rather than perform cosmetic surgery on a collage of cluttered commercial territorial façades, I decided to wrap them in a continuous white perforated aluminum panel wall. The continuous white creates a complex and pure interface on the riverside (by controlling the perforation rate, the façade creates a cloud of layers) hiding the bookstore. The aluminum wall is the façade, or it can be stripped away to become a courtyard enclosure or both. The continuous white aluminum wall is used as an addition to create a serene and pleasant visual subtraction. A cloud rises over the riverside, and the readers of the bookstore are in the cloud. 

This month, UNESCO has announced a series of decisions concerning important heritage sites, giving rise to conversations around preservation and urban development. Last week, the World Heritage Committee decided to strip Liverpool of its heritage status, as the new developments are considered detrimental to the waterfront's integrity. These projects placed the city on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2012, a designation which Venice managed to avoid earlier this week, due in great part to the recent ban on cruise ships.

Historically, industrialization means a process of economic change that transforms an agrarian society, with mostly handicraft techniques, into an industrial society to increase productivity and economic growth. This mechanization and mass production leads to deep social transformations, but the most significant consequence is an enormous change in the urban landscape.

Technology has begun to radically transform operations in the AEC industries. For Robert Yuen, CEO and Co-Founder of Monograph, he's developed a cloud-based project management application that's tailored to address these changes. Trained as an architect and establishing himself as an entrepreneur, Robert utilizes his background to reimagine what the futures holds for managing design and construction.

Our vision of Africa has recently undergone a slow but steady development, from a neglected continent to the new frontier of an evolving world. The challenge of this new project of Emergency NGO is to combine the practical requirements of a pediatric surgery hospital in Africa with the desire to create a model piece of architecture: rational, tangible, modern, beautiful, but firmly linked to tradition. It is more than a mere hospital: the first architectural work in Africa designed by RPBW is a sign of extreme symbolic importance for the promotion of health care and culture in Uganda and in entire Africa.