When we saw this home - with its east-west exposures and windows that could be seen on both sides - we were immediately sold. It was the third house we looked at, and we were so lucky the owner accepted our offer. It was a very competitive moment for home sales in the neighborhood, and the fact we were able to make it happen felt like a dream.
Cleveland explains, 'I just wasn't into the idea of constantly seeing my bed from the couch. I spent almost two months hunting online for a room divider that wouldn't block too much natural light or make the space feel cramped. Eventually, I realized I'd have to make one myself.'
When you design your home with intentionality, you are essentially 'hard-coding' healthy behaviors into your daily rhythm. Health outcomes are the result of thousands of micro-decisions—so in his own home, he prioritized spaces like the kitchen, whose open layout makes cooking a pleasure, and the gym, centrally located.
For many years, bamboo has been mostly known as the favourite food of giant pandas, but a group of engineers say it's time we took it seriously as a building material, too. This week the Institution of Structural Engineers called for architects to be bamboo-ready as they published a manual for designing permanent buildings made of the material, in an effort to encourage low-carbon construction and position bamboo as a proper alternative to steel and concrete.
Even long after the tell-tale odor of new paint has vanished, traditional paint can off-gas for months, releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have been linked to organ and nervous system damage, cancer, and infertility.
What began as a modest brief for a young and growing family soon evolved into a considered renovation that reimagines an existing Barwon Heads home. The original house had endured several unsympathetic alterations over the years, leaving it disjointed and built to a poor standard.
It's likely that you've encountered recycled glass countertops without realizing it. They're far from the hippie-style broken-glass mosaic art of yesteryear, instead presenting as sleek, highly polished, professional slabs with intriguing bits of confetti-style color trapped inside. That's the recovered glass bits set into a binding material such as resin, cement, or concrete, and then smoothly polished so that the composite surface feels like stone.
Thermal modification is not a new invention, but its relevance has increased as expectations around performance, sustainability, and predictability have tightened. Developers, architects, and contractors are no longer just asking whether timber looks good or performs well initially. They want to know how it behaves after ten, twenty, or thirty years, and how much risk it introduces into a project once the scaffolding is gone.
Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen + 19 Category: Barn, Houses, Adaptive Reuse More SpecsLess Specs Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen Text description provided by the architects. Set close to a small harbour, Lakeshore Barn House is shaped by restraint and clarity, drawing from the familiar silhouette of rural barns to sit naturally within the small lakeside village. The simple cross- shaped layout establishes a central axis that opens uninterrupted views through the house in both directions, strengthening the connection between landscape and interior.
Furniture made from mycelium or algae can decompose in five years, sure, but a well-made antique armoire outlives empires because no one throws it away. Columns takes that logic seriously. Handcrafted in solid oak, natural leather, and horsehair, the pieces are built to last a thousand years, which sounds like marketing hyperbole until you look at the joinery, the hand stitching, and the material choices. This is furniture designed to be inherited, repaired, and remembered.
