Architecture: Buildings Over 1,000 SqM
Project: Shanshui Firewood Garden Location: Sichuan, China Firm: MIX Architecture, China Team: Suning Zhou with Ke Yang, Qian Shi, Ziye Wu, Tao Tang and Libin Lin Photos: Arch-Exist
Earth, water, light and air: Shanshui Firewood Garden brings it all together beautifully in a 1,100-square-metre tearoom in Sichuan. The building comprises four rectangular huts, which pinwheel around a central pond. The exterior cladding — red sandstone in a brick-weave pattern — evokes local vernacular design, and the interior amenities, like the café and reading room, offer framed views onto a nearby bamboo forest. The central pond is surrounded by what the architects call “hollow walls”: rows upon rows of mottled firewood, suspended from the eaves by cables, which sway in the breeze and cast shadows onto the still water.
Architecture: Buildings Over 1,000 SqM
Project: Houston Endowment Headquarters Location: Houston, U.S. Firm: Kevin Daly Architects, U.S. Team: Kevin Daly with Luke Smith, Gretchen Stoecker, Phineas Taylor-Webb, Ryan Conroy and Casey Worrell (Kevin Daly Architects); Wonne Ickx and Nicolás Fueyo (Productora) Photos: Iwan Baan
In Houston, Texas, you’ll find countless trees interspersed with buildings — a phenomenon that Rice University professor Lars Lerup calls “the zoohemic canopy.” With the Houston Endowment Headquarters, a suite of offices for one of the state’s largest private foundations, architect Kevin Daly sought to honour this distinctive geographic feature. The complex is sustainably built atop a hybrid steel–CLT frame; it’s energy-neutral thanks to geothermal wells and a solar array that harnesses natural light. The best feature is the louvred canopy suspended above the building, which filters sun, much like trees in a dappled forest.
Architecture: Buildings Under 1,000 SqM
Project: The Water Drop Library Location: Huizhou City, China Firm: 3andwich Design, China Team: Wei He with Long Chen, Ziyi Wang and Xiangting Meng Photos: Jin Weiqi
Overlooking a coastal escarpment in Huizhou City, China, the Water Drop Library is a study in experiential design. Patrons access the building via a long passageway, which emerges into a circular pod like a droplet rendered in concrete, glass and steel. Beijing’s 3andwich Design set an outdoor pool atop this structure and laid out the interiors via a series of concentric circles: There’s an inner sanctum or antechamber, which gives way to a sunlit outer ring. Here, visitors can browse the stacks before undergoing yet another experiential transformation — the one that happens when you lose yourself in a good book.
Architecture: Buildings Under 1,000 SqM
Project: SFU Stadium at Terry Fox Field Location: Burnaby, Canada Firm: Perkins&Will, Canada Team: Max Richter, Jana Foit, Adrian Watson, Phil Fenech and Tarisha Dolyniuk with Abubakr Bajaman, Anna Beznogova, Tiffany Cheung, Paul Cowcher, Nic Dubois-Robitaille, Bojana Jerinic, Horace Lai, Sarita Mann, Laurence Renard, Gavin Schaefer, Soren Schou, Elsa Snyder and Kim Stanley Photos: Andrew Latreille
The new 2,100-seat Simon Fraser University Stadium sits alongside the Lorne Davies Complex, a modernist athletics facility from 1965. With its stadium, Perkins&Will sought to complement the adjacent building without overpowering it; somehow, the new structure had to be monumental but subtle too. The architects tucked the locker rooms underneath the risers and installed a modest press box, discreetly, behind the top row of seats. The stadium’s most distinctive feature is the impossibly thin canopy roof, which cantilevers over the seating area with dramatic — one might even say athletic — dexterity.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Architecture: Buildings Under 1,000 SqM
Project: Bache Community Centre Location: Suzhou, China Firm: Dedang Design, China Team: Junfeng Wang and Zheng Gu with Wenliang Sun, Yuqiong Yang, Zhangjin Liu, Ruonan Fan and Liang Li Photos: Arch-Exist
The Wujiang District of Suzhou, in Jiangsu Province, China, dates back to 909 A.D. To transcend its cramped locale — a maze of waterways and narrow streets — Dedang Design rose above it. Bache Community Centre is a steel-frame structure that floats atop a sunken courtyard. The interior space comprises play areas, galleries and a reading nook, all bathed in natural light and surrounded by twisty stairways that access a rooftop terrace. A gingko tree in the courtyard grows upward through a central glassed-in atrium, symbolically connecting the building’s three levels.
Architecture: Houses
Project: BD House Location: São Paulo, Brazil Firm: Studio Arthur Casas, Brazil Team: Arthur Casas, Regiane Khristian, Eduardo Mikowski and Biz Braga with Fernanda Altemari, Gabriel Leitão, Rafael Palombo, Camilla Dall’Oca and Pedro Brito Photos: Fernando Guerra
The BD House articulates a clear separation between the built environment and nature — except when it doesn’t. The two upper levels, with bedrooms and recreation areas, are
