Located in Eastern Ghana, Barnwood is a residential project by Symbolic Spaces. The development consists of clay-pigmented, monolithic villas emerging from the red earth landscape characteristic of the area. The studio has explored climate-responsive strategies for this region. This construction tries to promote economic efficiency, while using color and surface texture as integral components. The … Read more
An 18-day outdoor annual cultural event that combines film, music, folk traditions, and contemporary art takes place in Guangdong Province, China. For this event a temporary coastal space was created capable of accommodating multiple programs, including a theater, stage, exhibition area, and public garden. The design team utilized a long-standing local construction method based on … Read more
The Canelo Project, a family ranch in Sonoita, Arizona, uses the most basic of resources, dirt and straw, to build houses. Bill and Athena Steen, the husband and wife team that founded the project in 1989, use strawbales as the building blocks for their homes. They stitch together the bales, and plaster them with a … Read more
This striking Wishing Well house, located on the coastline of the small island of Jersey, UK, has walls made of stones and rammed-earth. ‘Many of our projects explore materials that respond directly to their site context,’ say the architects. ‘In this instance, the coastal setting inspired the exploration of local granite, sand and earth as … Read more
The ancient Arabian city of AlUla had been uninhabited since the 1980s, abandoned when a new town center was established nearby. Here, hundreds of mud-brick houses, huddled around a tenth-century fortress. The old town is now being restored as a cultural district. A void, formed from the remnants of two former houses, was known locally … Read more
At 76, Graham Liney is the quintessential jack-of-trades. He has bred potatoes, run restaurants, travelled the world, worked in television, and built his own house in Australia. He came to Australia in 1969 as an art student from England, and three years later he stumbled across Willow Vale Mill, a 1830s flour mill in New … Read more