January/February 2023

AZURE

An Indispensable Resource for Architects, Designers and the Design-Savvy Public

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Azure
Editor Elizabeth Pagliacolo Art Director Cristian Ordóñez Deputy Editor Kendra Jackson Senior Editors Eric Mutrie, Stefan Novakovic Assistant Editor Sydney Shilling Associate Art Director Kari Silver Digital Designer Conner Palomba Production/Design
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Home Fronts
In preparing this edition of Azure, the first of the year and the latest of our popular annual houses issues, we endeavoured to present a diversity of typologies. The architect-designed single-family home has long been a realm of experimentation — an
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Art Royalty
When Simone Elizabeth Saunders embarks on a tapestry, she begins by collaging images, by hand or digitally, from the “beautiful milieu of hairstyles, gestures, gazes and poses” she finds in magazines or online. To render them in the vivid colours and
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Fresh Toppings
When a fire ravaged Restaurant Piatti on Montreal’s North Shore in late 2020, destroying the roof and interior, the owners reframed the calamity as an opportunity. After all, the institution that had called the century-old building home since 2008 wa
AZURE2 min readArchitecture
Tunnel Vision
The pandemic changed the types of projects that lead a city’s tourism brochure: Starchitect-designed museums are out and dynamic green spaces are in. “Access to fresh air, open sky and nature is now our priority,” says Richard Kennedy, senior princip
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Reality Check
Despite starting construction in 1390, the Basilica di San Petronio at the heart of Bologna, Italy, remains incomplete, its facade only half-covered in marble. This landmark gains new symbolic meaning each September when the Emilia-Romagna region’s c
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Chat Room
British talk shows had a particularly loose spirit in the 1990s. “People were just smoking away, having a kind of gaudy, drunken chat on the sofa,” says Alex Holloway, creative director of London design firm Holloway Li. Hoping to capture this playfu
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The Sound of Music
At a symphony performance, the most integral instrument is perhaps the concert hall itself. Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall is a case in point. Originally designed by Max Abramovitz, the New York Philharmonic’s headquarters had been notorious for
AZURE2 min readArchitecture
Face Value
From the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel to the Grande Arche de la Défense, the Historical Axis in Paris is a walkable 10-kilometre stretch of architectural and cultural significance. So in order for a new building to make any sort of imp
AZURE2 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
Stretch Of The Imagination
From initial sketch to final rendering, realistic models of architectural concepts traditionally take days (if not weeks) to produce. The fantastical facades pictured here — structures sheathed in swaths of multicoloured fabric, glazing encased in An
AZURE2 min readArchitecture
Uniform Appeal
Just a short trek from Todos Santos in Baja California Sur, Mexico, is a mini compound offering a unique escape from the bustle of the up-and-coming tourist town. Surrounded by a desert landscape dotted with low-lying scrub and cacti, Casa Santos res
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Forward Thinkers
Material Cultures has an admirable goal: to steer the architecture industry “towards a post-carbon built environment.” Working with all levels of the A & D community, the U.K.-based not-for-profit, which was co-founded in 2019 by architects Summer Is
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Outer Strength
With an expansive portfolio of patterns and colourways, Tekstur (an EcoSupply brand) protective panelling makes an immediate visual and textural statement. A composite made by applying heat and pressure to resin-saturated kraft or decorative papers (
AZURE1 min readArchitecture
Points of View
Suitable for homes and high-rises, this system has a tilt-in panel design that can be safely installed from the inside. The kit of parts features an adaptable PVC thermal break (glue or cap) that accommodates different panel materials and thickness a
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Shroud Of secrecy
In modern times, the house has been the go-to typology for architectural experimentation, whether framed by mid-century modernists as “case studies” or by late- or postmodern architects as “House (insert digit or letter here).” 5468796 Architecture’s
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A Light Touch
As part of a larger regional project intended to bring back life, heritage and tourism to the depopulated area around the Aragón River in Northeastern Spain, Zaragoza-based Sebastián Arquitectos has restored a small stone chapel outside the hamlet of
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Let’s Stay together
A renovated 18th-century building is now the beating heart of a co-housing project in Leuven, Belgium. Distinct from the development’s cork-clad apartment blocks, the pitched-roof structure once housed a café called “De Sijs,” which became the new pr
AZURE3 min readArchitecture
Fitting Right In
Prefab has emerged as a popular solution for building in laneways. But Jeff and Suzanne Wilkinson had set their sights on a tailor-made home. After all, they’re not your typical clients: Suzanne, an interior designer, is a principal at Toronto firm F
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Modern Rural
Remnants of an old farm road, low stone fences punctuating the landscape, striking views and a client with a penchant for the works of British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy: What more could Wei-Han Vivian Lee and James Macgillivray, founding principals o
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Here Comes the Neighbourhood
Too often, a new development can come across as generic and sterile. It rarely acknowledges the history and context of a place, or does so in ham-fisted, superficial ways that lack substance. Keybridge, a hybrid housing project in South East London b
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Postcards From Suburbia
The street is packed. It’s a glorious Saturday, and I’m lost in the festival crowd, basking in the sun-drenched splendour of a summer afternoon. The faces and families number in the thousands — the mosaic of races and ethnicities that define a multic
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Royal Welcome
When Pina Petricone, co-founder of Toronto design firm Giannone Petricone Associates, first visited the then-shuttered Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario, back in 2013, she was intrigued by the strange green carpeting in one of the rooms. Upon closer ins
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Interior Finishes
Influenced by classic board games, Italian palazzo marble flooring and Vans sneakers, Eskayel founder and creative director Shanan Campanaro’s hand-painted and digitally printed pattern pairs bright colours with a more fluid rendition of the grid-lik
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No Place Like Home
David Baker Architects, a firm with offices in San Francisco, Oakland and Birmingham, has earned a reputation for its thoughtful, community-focused housing projects, “whether luxury, affordable or somewhere in between.” This guide breaks the studio’s
AZURE2 min readArchitecture
Flooring
This past fall, Bolon expanded its popular woven vinyl Botanic collection with eight new colours, including earthy tones like Honey, Chestnut and Canyon, as well as Rain (a subtle purple) and Vintage (a dark blue). The designs are offered in rolls, 5
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The Search for Life
This past fall, in the absence of sunlight, new life forms were thriving in what used to be an underground car park in Central London. To walk through Primordial, an installation on view in the basement level of local gallery 180 The Strand, was not

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