The boxy and containery appearance of residential buildings currently attracting accolades and attention is starting to get boring. However, simplicity, clarity and openness are qualities that continue to appeal.

While this is yet another house of stacked boxes, we cannot help but admire the vacation residence clinging dramatically to the sloping hill up in the trees [...]

The biggest campus in California named Casa study by Michael Duncan who has a master plan. The tallest structure on campus, bridges the wings of the library and the student union, and the thermos, a 2-million-gallon tank, stores chilled water for cooling campus buildings. University of California become a symbolic academic heart. This Sustainable architecture [...]

In Egypt, the four corners of the rising and setting sun at summer and winter solstices marked the square mat of flat earth. In the Renaissance, the mechanics and proportions of the human body were translated into mathematical systems, currently, knowledge of nature has evolved from the scale of the mechanical to the intricacies of the molecular, to subtle and complex mapping that has changed our under-standing of the nature of nature. It is this contemporary conception of order that this gateway parking structure expresses.Translucent channel glass arranged in DNA-derived patterns with open voids enclose the facades and provides ventilation for the parking, also conferring on the building a distinctive and memorable image. The glass has a stippled surface that radiates light,forming a shimmering veil around the concrete structure. At night, the channel glass is illuminated from within. On the south facade are photovoltaic panels arranged in the same patterns.

I simply love the inability of design professionals (are they?) to realise that architectural photographs are NOT about the way people LIVE. Often these are to support the actual concept, first as an abstract model and then as a built result. They give the architect an opportunity to communicate the actual spatial intentions using the photographic media as a follow up to the initial sketches. These photographs are mostly taken before any occupants move in. And the Japanese do this beautifully – they keep the spaces empty or very sparsely furnished so that the architecture is kept visible rather than being concealed behind mountains of design objects and general clutter absorbing all the attention.

With one window facing Fifth Avenue and the remainder of the space oriented north to buildings across the street, the apartment is divided into two defined zones, living and service, that are connected by a link that could not be enlarged.