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Casa Eme by Gon Architects Bridges Simplicity and Spark
Memory is powerful––a place and time long ago can surface unexpectedly, stirring something immediate no matter where you are. Refreshing and bright, Casa EME begins with exactly that kind of recognition: a fleeting familiarity tied to another life, another moment. For Manuel––a design and cooking enthusiast––the apartment evoked the spirit of Madrid de los Austrias, its layered history embedded in the surrounding fabric. Set within a corner building overlooking Plaza Mayor and its constellation of landmarks, the home opens outward almost theatrically, its five large windows framing the city like a living backdrop. A quiet return to humanism, the project reveals how careful delineation, rather than excess, can create more with less.
At first glance, the space reads as a series of chromatic fields: full-height bursts of red, blue, and yellow that infuse the apartment with both clarity and personality. Scarlet doors swing open in a butterfly-like gesture, extending the interior toward the street and reinforcing the home’s connection to Madrid’s historic identity. Here, gon architects channel a distinctly Bauhaus-adjacent sensibility, painting with a wide brush, using color as a spatial device. Rooms are not enclosed so much as defined, their boundaries articulated through hue, texture, and rhythm rather than walls alone.
Spaces, after all, are meant to work with us by supporting the cadence of daily life. Whether we want to cook, host, rest, or simply drift, the home should accommodate those shifts intuitively. Casa EME embraces this philosophy through a reorganization of the original plan, once fragmented and illogical, into something far more fluid and legible. The intervention resists demolition in favor of recalibration: a sliding of programs across the existing footprint until a new domestic order emerges. Starkly angular yet ambitiously unpretentious, the apartment allows each element to operate quietly, with no single gesture demanding attention over another.
At the center, the kitchen now occupies its rightful place as the social heart of the home. It’s a space for gathering as much as for cooking, where Manuel’s meals become part of the architecture itself. And it’s framed by soft, integrated cabinetry anchored by the preserved wooden flooring, which runs continuously throughout the apartment like a material memory. This decision––to retain the original IPE wood floor in its entirety––grounds the project in time, allowing the marks of use and age to remain visible, imperfect, and alive.
Moments of contrast sharpen the experience. A vivid yellow corridor compresses the entry sequence, transforming a once narrow and unresolved threshold into a deliberate hinge between public and private space. Nearby, a blue-clad volume – its textured surface subtly improving acoustics – anchors the living area while acting as both object and divider. These gestures operate almost as spatial binaries: compressed and open, warm and cool, saturated and neutral.
There is great clarity to transitions where shifts in color and material signal movement through the home. Yet the effect is anything but rigid. Dark wood floors soften the palette, grounding the more saturated interventions in a sense of continuity and warmth. The result is a careful balance between precision and ease, where design feels considered but never overdetermined.
Some of the most compelling details are the quietest. Tile from the bathroom extends outward into adjacent spaces, deliberately crossing its expected boundary as a visible trace of what once was. Rather than conceal the apartment’s past, the architects allow it to remain legible – a subtle rupture in the otherwise continuous floor that marks time as much as it does space. In the bedroom, this ceramic footprint reappears alongside green-toned surfaces that evoke an almost exterior landscape, softening the transition between rest and ritual.
Storage, too, dissolves into the architecture. Long, unbroken white walls conceal closets and even the entrance to the bathroom, maintaining a sense of visual calm while accommodating the practicalities of daily life. Elsewhere, furnishings float freely within the plan – a table, a sofa, shelving – forming a loose constellation rather than a fixed hierarchy.
The foyer, like the rest of Casa EME, resists conventional definitions of boundary. Angled geometries and shifting planes guide movement rather than dictate it, allowing the apartment to unfold as a sequence of experiences rather than a series of rooms. Transitions occur without doors, mediated instead by changes in color, texture, and light––a choreography of thresholds that engages sight, touch, and perception.
With a touch of roguery and a confident use of color, each element stands distinctly on its own while contributing to a larger harmony.
To learn more about Casa EME and other projects by the studio, visit gonarchitects.com.
Photography courtesy of gon architects.
Amangiri Unveils Its First Six-Bedroom Villa in Utah’s Canyon Country
Branded residences have become the luxury hotel industry’s favorite revenue strategy. Most of these projects share a familiar formula—take a glass tower in a growing luxury market, attach a name that travelers recognize, furnish it to a standard that photographs well, and charge a 30% premium for the badge. The result, in most cases, is real estate dressed in hospitality clothing—a product that borrows a brand’s reputation without absorbing its design philosophy.
Aman operates on a different frequency. When the brand sold a penthouse at its Aman Residences Tokyo—the unit reportedly closed at approximately 30 billion yen, around $225 million—the price reflected something more complex than square footage at the top of Japan’s tallest residential tower. The 16,000-square-foot residence achieved 44 million yen per tsubo, far surpassing previous records for high-end properties in Tokyo. That figure made it the most expensive apartment transaction in Japanese history, and it did so because Aman has spent decades building a design language so specific to place that its residences function as extensions of a spatial philosophy rather than merchandise.
Amangiri’s new Six-Bedroom Villa, designed by Marwan Al-Sayed of MASASTUDIO, extends that same conviction into the Utah desert. The first of 12 private residences planned for the resort’s Canyon Country site, the villa unfolds over approximately 12,000 square feet across nine acres. Conceived as a fully serviced private compound rather than a singular dwelling, the residence accommodates up to 18 guests across six suites, supported by dedicated staff quarters that allow hospitality to operate in congruence.
Al-Sayed was one of three architects—alongside Rick Joy and Wendell Burnette—who conceived the original Amangiri resort in 2009, and his return to this landscape carries a continuity that most branded residence projects cannot claim. The original resort was designed as a contemporary interpretation of the region’s Indigenous architectural traditions, sited against a low entrada sandstone formation. That same logic persists here: low-lying volumes emerge from the terrain with a kind of geological inevitability, less placed than revealed.
Oculus skylights positioned throughout the residence draw the desert sky inward, replicating the narrow apertures through which canyon light travels. Glass planes frame the surrounding rock formations and capture the shifting light across the day, but the oculi give the interior an intimacy that floor-to-ceiling glazing alone cannot. Materials—stone, concrete, and wood—are rendered in a tonal palette that mirrors the desert itself, allowing light to do the expressive work rather than surface treatment.
Nine acres of Southern Utah wilderness give the villa sufficient land to dissolve the boundary between built and natural. A 118-foot swimming pool stretches along the horizon line, while a series of outdoor dining courts, fire features, and shaded lounges extend daily life into the open air. Walled gardens and sheltered terraces create a calibrated sequence of exposure and refuge, allowing the building’s open-plan volumes to feel continuous with the landscape beyond.
Inside, the program reflects a hybrid between private residence and resort infrastructure. In addition to the six guest suites, the villa includes expansive living and dining areas, a private spa, fitness room, and multiple wellness-focused spaces that echo Amangiri’s broader ethos of retreat and restoration. A full-service kitchen supports private chefs, while discreet back-of-house circulation ensures that service remains present but unseen—a choreography that distinguishes hospitality at Aman from conventional luxury living.
What emerges is a system that collapses architecture, service, and landscape into a singular experience. Where many branded residences rely on recognition, Aman relies on recognition of place. The Six-Bedroom Villa calibrates itself to the land, allowing scale, light, and material to register the vastness of Canyon Country without spectacle.
View more information on this and other properties by the lifestyle brand, visit aman.com.
Photography courtesy of Aman.
Villa in Recco / Gosplan + Giordano Hadamik Architects + caarpa + studio.skey
- architects: Giordano Hadamik Architects
- architects: Gosplan
- architects: caarpa
- architects: studio.skey
- Location: Recco, Italy
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Anna Positano, Gaia Cambiaggi | Studio Campo
- Area: 750.0 m2
Elevating Earth: Reviving and Advancing an Indigenous Building Material
Twenty meters tall and four thousand years old, the Western Deffufa towers over the adjacent date orchards and ancient city remains in the desert. It is a former religious and administrative building near the modern-day Sudanese town of Kerma. Its significance is not only in its age and size, but also in that it is one of the oldest mud brick buildings in the world. And as the nearby mud brick houses also attest, earth is a material of continuous use from ancient times to the present. Yet, conversations around contemporary building systems have largely ignored this essential material. Some architects on the continent of Africa, however, are changing that.
Qing Shui Meditation Retreat Center / RESP Studio
A Picture Worth a Thousand Pixels: Turning Disneyland Paris into a Canvas
In highly-curated environments such as Disneyland Paris, architecture operates under a different set of expectations. Buildings are not only required to perform, they must also communicate, often instantly. Within this context, the facade becomes a visual marker that can serve as a threshold, mediating light, air, and perception. One strategy that has gained traction in this setting is the use of semi-opaque envelope systems. Neither fully transparent nor entirely enclosed, these facade systems introduce depth and variability.
Unlike conventional cladding, opaque threshold systems perform as filters. They temper solar exposure, enable natural ventilation, and provide privacy without severing visual continuity. These features are valuable in urban and commercial contexts, where buildings balance environmental responsiveness with experiential impact. Such systems also become carriers of narrative, embedding cultural references, patterns, or imagery into the architectural skin.
Kengo Kuma and Associates Wins Competition to Design New Wing for London's National Gallery
London's National Gallery has announced Kengo Kuma & Associates, in collaboration with BDP and MICA, as the winners of the international competition to design a new wing for the institution. Launched in September 2025, the competition attracted 65 submissions from international practices, from which six teams were shortlisted to develop proposals. The selection marks a key milestone in the institution's long-term development strategy, Project Domani, positioning the new addition as a central component in the reconfiguration of its architectural and curatorial framework. Conceived as the most significant transformation of the museum since its establishment in 1824, the project aims to expand both spatial capacity and curatorial scope, enabling the presentation of a continuous narrative of Western painting within a single setting.
Villa EF / depaolidefranceschibaldan architetti
- architects: depaolidefranceschibaldan architetti
- Location: Bardolino, Italy
- Project Year: 2024
- Photographs: Marco Cappelletti
- Area: 350.0 m2
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater Restoration and Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026: This Week’s Review
This week marked World Health Day, observed annually on April 7 by the World Health Organization. This year's edition issued the call to "Stand with science," inviting renewed engagement with scientific knowledge as a foundation for collective action across disciplines. In architecture and urban design, this imperative resonates through projects that translate research into spatial strategies: from the deployment of digital twins to inform urban planning and decision-making, to rewilding initiatives that integrate biodiversity as a tool to mitigate climate change, and materially informed practices that engage resource-conscious construction. Within this broader framework, recent works also foreground architecture's social agency at multiple scales, including a landscape-driven cancer support center in Kent that aligns wellbeing with environmental sensitivity, an urban installation in Brescia operating as a civic awareness device around life in prison and pathways to reintegration, and the transformation of a street in Mantua into a pedestrian-oriented, biodiversity-rich public space.
Arquivo: Deconstruction and Material Reuse for a Circular Architecture
The construction industry today faces an unavoidable paradox: the urgent need for sustainable solutions for the future of cities collides with the exhaustion of the term "sustainability" itself, often reduced to a hollow commercial label. In this scenario, Arquivo – one of the winners of ArchDaily's 2025 Next Practices Award – emerges as a facilitator and mediator between different stakeholders in the construction field through disassembly – or rather, de-construction – and the reuse of building elements. Etymologically, if "construction" derives from the Latin construere (to heap up, assemble), the prefix "de-" imposes a conceptual inversion: it is not about destroying, but about disassembling with intelligence to understand the logic of the parts.
While conventional demolition practices generate a vast volume of waste and energy consumption, Arquivo proposes reuse as a viable alternative for the circular economy. The company operates in the gap between disposal and new construction, guided by a clear premise: "Reuse is only fully realized when the material gains a new life."
Carrickalinga Shed / Architects Ink
- architects: Architects Ink
- Location: Carrickalinga, Australia
- Project Year: 2021
- Photographs: Thurston Empson
- Area: 320.0 m2
Philo Science Center at Institut Le Rosey / Bernard Tschumi Architects
- architects: Bernard Tschumi Architects
- Location: Rolle, Switzerland
- Project Year: 2025
- Photographs: Iwan Baan
- Area: 16222.0 m2
Chaka Salt Lake Tourist Railway Station / THAD SUP Atelier
- architects: THAD SUP Atelier
- Location: Wulan County, Haixi Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China
- Project Year: 2024
- Photographs: Yingnan Chu
- Area: 3997.0 m2
Two Gabled Volumes, One Landscape / BRBB Architects
Reused Shipping Containers Form A Flexible Workplace in Spain
An agricultural business has different requirements than a typical corporation centered in an urban setting. This can present a unique set of challenges to designers when they envision an alignment of operations and staff in headquarters that support a range of functions.
When Impepinable Studio was tapped to design a hub for seed processing company Agrosemillas, the team embraced certain constraints and looked to the landscape and elements of manufacturing for inspiration. “The site sits in an industrial environment, so rather than introducing a foreign language, we wanted to work with what was already there—materials, scale, and atmosphere,” says Gabriela Barrera, co-founder of Impepinable Studio.
Located in El Peral, Spain, the complex includes more than 48,000-square feet of new production and storage facilities, built with the help of local craftsmen who were responsible for metalwork, carpentry, and plumbing, which shaped the zones that were made to withstand the dust-heavy surroundings.
Four reused shipping containers rest on a concrete plinth shared with the adjacent warehouses. Skylights bring soft glow into the interior, while the north-facing orientation of the open planes ensures a steady flow of illumination. The green and yellow brand colors of Agrosemillas pop against the gray facade punctuated by circular portals. These windows are protected by manually-operated shutters that act almost like basic levers, which create an open or closed feel as required.
Three bands organize the plan in a grid style. The first is dedicated to open workspaces, another to service areas, and the third section holds meeting rooms and laboratory facilities. Entrances are separated according to logistical flows to maximize efficiency. Oak cladding and furniture offer a warm complement to steel frames. Roof surfaces incorporate strips for experimental crops, which physically link research, fabrication, and architecture within a single framework.
This busy center houses its own infrastructure that transcends typology. “It was less about designing an office and more about rethinking what a workplace in this context could be. That mindset gave us the freedom to explore a playful approach,” Barrera notes. “The project is spatially rich while remaining extremely simple and ordered.”
To see this and other works by the firm, visit impepinable.studio.
Photography courtesy of DEL RIO BANI.
House SI / Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos
- architects: Iragüen Viñuela Arquitectos
- Location: Algarrobo, Chile
- Project Year: 2023
- Photographs: Pablo Casals Aguirre
- Area: 187.0 m2
The New Laundry Chair by Simone Giertz Cleans Up Nicely
Since the dawn of the loom, all of humanity has experienced it. We’ve tried our best throughout the millennia, but there are some things that remain constant––that pile of clothing neither fully dirty nor completely clean. It exists in a liminal state somewhere between. Simone Giertz––designer, inventor and many other things––presents the Laundry Chair, an answer to an age-old problem. With a rotating secondary arm that is perfect for laying clothes that are worn, but not ready for the laundry basket, this chair turns what was once an eyesore into a beautiful and functional solution.
Upholstered in a smart, olive, low-pile cord, this chair is meant to stand alone, even without the laundry. Solutions must be equitable, beautiful, and do exactly what’s expected to be truly successful––and Giertz has done it again. The design is not meant to change human behavior, but to work within the parameters of how we already exist. In the case of laundry––a task that costs time, energy, and money––the unassuming chair alleviates the mental anguish of managing piles while better maintaining garments in the interim.
Various fashion cultures include slips or other undergarments to keep outer clothes clean, reducing the necessity of washing, as it still is an incredibly laborious task to complete by hand. Frequent washing is also not recommended for most fibers, much less purely natural ones. Denim purists seem to be the loudest in this regard. Either way, the smartest approach to doing less laundry is to create less in the first place, and the Laundry Chair makes that process easy. All your textiles can be lined up for visual and olfactory inspection.
“As a perfectionist… I think there’s something that I have to practice a lot, which is standing proud next to things that are imperfect, and loving them anyway,” shares Giertz. “I think it’s really about trying to focus on volume. It’s not volume in the sense that you make a bunch of content, or try out a bunch of things, but the worst position to be in is being stuck. Sharing something that’s half finished might be a great way of getting unstuck, or just keeping some sort of movement and pushing it forward”.
Not to be dramatic, but Simone Giertz may be one of the closest things to a modern-day Da Vinci that we’ve got going on. A problem-solver of novel, everyday frustrations, the smallest details are usually the ones that separate the good from great designs. Giertz turned her love of robots and engineering into a full-on obsession with invention, where common problems have the opportunity to become delightful solutions.
To learn more about the Laundry Chair by Simone Giertz, visit yetch.studio.
Photography by Yetch Studio.
An Argument for Interior Design with Neuroaesthetics in Mind
In interior design, stylistic fads come and go. More often than not, these trends reflect changing tastes and fleeting—dare we say vapid—cultural phenomena, but rarely anything else. With our homes, offices, and ever-fluid civic spaces forming the backdrop of our lives, shouldn’t these environments be conceived with more substantiated intention? Shouldn’t the right acoustic or lighting plan supersede the perceived “need” for gimmicky flex? And why can’t these essential considerations be delivered with visual appeal still in mind?
A new report from John Hopkins University’s International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab) re-assesses the serious functional value of aesthetics in not just supporting mental and physical health but also better facilitating individual creativity and interpersonal interaction; a condition in short supply these days.
Released earlier this year, the Intentional Space Roadmap is an in-depth, multivalent scientific yet accessibly written study that ultimately calls for the establishment of a more well-rounded interior design field coined Neuroarchitecture, one that incorporates the indispensable expertise of psychology. It unpacks how light, sound, texture, form, and natural shape (Biophilia) implicitly influence how we feel, think, heal, and connect with others.
“We are in, or move through, spaces every moment of our lives, and we now know that our environments have powerful effects on our physical and mental health,” said Susan Magsamen, Executive Director of the IAM Lab. “The importance and momentum of this work have never been more critical. From individual wellbeing to community impact, across every sector of society, the implications are profound. Intentional spaces represent a cost-effective, life-changing opportunity to improve health, resilience, innovation and quality of life at scale. This is not a dream or wishful thinking. There are organizations already putting these ideas into practice and leading the way and we are offering a roadmap and resources to accelerate this movement.”
The report isn’t merely a defense of this fresh proposition—one rooted in long-refined strategies—but also an actionable framework. Sections self-reflectively outline the research involved; the disciplinary obstacles still in place that stymie the adoption of this more versatile and actually holistic mindset; and recommendations to get past these limitations. Overall, it calls for a more cross-disciplinary and collaborative approach.
Some of the challenges identified include the lack of universal terminology, access to applied evidence, and regulatory incentive. Incomplete training and financial constraints—the speed at which we expect projects to be carried out to meet the bottom-line of increasingly hurried economic realities—are other more obvious hurdles. The onus is both on design practitioners and academic researchers, both of which tend to keep their intuitive and intellectual expertise siloed within their respective fields.
Some of the strategic “tools” outlined centers on dissolving these boundaries, making research and the values of neuroaesthetics more integral to design education for one. When it comes to the actual practice of interior design, an evidence-based strategy could more closely take into account the use of a specific space; its role is helping individuals focus; create memories; regulate emotions; ideate with little constraint or distraction; and have more pleasing—calming—sensory experiences.
Perhaps the most important aspect for our still capitalist society is to draw clear links between the economic value—efficiency and cost-effectiveness—of this methodology; the idea that spaces that are more holistically designed along this framework will help its inhabitants/users live and perform better.
To further evolution, and perhaps be more answerable to the environment, architecture and design need to harness the virtues of the scientific method.
To learn more about IAM Lab, visit artsandmindlab.
Photography courtesy of John Hopkins University.
Into the Light - Christus Church / Brückner & Brückner Architekten
- architects: Brückner & Brückner Architekten
- Location: Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, Germany
- Project Year: 2023
- Photographs: Constantin Meyer
- Photographs: mju-fotografie
- Photographs: EKD Scheermesser-Hendriks
- Photographs: Courtesy of Brückner & Brückner Architekten
- Area: 866.0 m2
Veil / Arid
- architects: Arid
- Location: Athina, Greece
- Project Year: 2023
- Photographs: Giorgos Sfakianakis
- Photographs: Yiorgos Kordakis
- Photographs: Vasilis Fotiou
- Area: 850.0 m2