Somewhere along the Huadi River in Foshan, China, a cluster of old grain storage warehouses has been turned into one of the most quietly poetic pieces of architecture I’ve seen all year. The Yongping Warehouse Renovation, completed in 2025 by Guangzhou-based Atelier cnS, is exactly the kind of project that makes you stop scrolling and actually look.

The site sits in Dali Town, Nanhai District, a former industrial pocket of the Pearl River Delta that’s been gradually shedding its factory-town skin in favor of something more livable and publicly accessible. These particular warehouses, lined up along the riverfront, were derelict grain storage buildings with no obvious future. Not exactly glamorous source material. But Atelier cnS didn’t flinch, and the result is a project that earns its attention without asking for it loudly.

Designer: Atelier cnS

Because the site has a narrow footprint, the architects pushed the public space upward, placing a landscaped rooftop park above the commercial interiors below. Vertical programming isn’t a new idea, but what makes Yongping feel different is how thoughtfully the transition between levels was handled. The gaps between warehouse blocks weren’t sealed or filled in. Instead, they were preserved and widened into passageways, so as you move through the building, you catch glimpses of the river framed by walls before the whole view opens up at the top. It’s a slow reveal, and it’s deliberate.

And then there are the canopies. A series of translucent, domed structures built from hexagonal frames cluster across the roofline like a quiet gathering of clouds. Atelier cnS actually named the project “A Wisp of Cloud” over Huadi River, and the photos earn that name completely. The domes are light-diffusing, casting shade without blocking river views. They create zones for sitting, moving, and play without ever feeling like they’re closing the space in. They look like they arrived gently, rather than being imposed on the building below them.

The rooftop itself is shaped into slopes, steps, and play surfaces that echo the original pitched forms of the warehouse roofs. It’s one of those details that most visitors probably won’t consciously register, but it’s exactly the kind of architectural memory that makes a renovation feel grounded rather than gratuitous. The old buildings aren’t being pretended out of existence. The new design is in active conversation with what was there before.

I’m genuinely drawn to this project because it gets the balance right in a way that many adaptive reuse projects don’t quite manage. Too often, the renovations that attract the most attention are the ones where the new design overwhelms the original structure, turning the old building into nothing more than a convenient shell. Yongping avoids that trap. The warehouses are still very much present. Their bones dictate the rhythm, the circulation, and some of the visual language of the final result. You can feel the history of the place without having to read about it first.

Atelier cnS has been developing this kind of thinking for years. The studio’s earlier work on elevated public circulation, including a “roof-hopping” design approach explored in their White House Guesthouse project, signals a long-running interest in finding new life in existing structures. Yongping feels like a maturation of that sensibility. More refined, more integrated, and more tuned in to the texture of a neighborhood mid-transition.

The project spans 4,311 square meters, and it’s worth noting what it does beyond the architecture itself. Turning a commercial renovation into a publicly accessible rooftop park, in a district shifting away from its industrial past, is a real act of generosity. A park on a roof could easily read as a private amenity. Here, it reads like a gift to the neighborhood, a place to walk, rest, and look out at the river without needing a reason to be there.

Architecture doesn’t always need to announce itself to be worth paying attention to. The Yongping Warehouse Renovation is understated, purposeful, and lit from above by a cluster of translucent domes that look, from a distance, exactly like a wisp of cloud over the river.

The post Foshan’s Forgotten Warehouses Got a Rooftop Park Under Floating Domes first appeared on Yanko Design.

NTT Research launches Scale Academy to turn AI and security research into real products, debuting SaltGrain, a zero-trust data security platform.

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If you’ve ever stood on a beach and watched the tide pull back, you know that moment right before the water retreats completely, when it leaves those delicate horizontal lines etched across wet sand. That’s what the facade of Villa Nouvelle Vague looks like. Not metaphorically. Literally. Belgian architect Magalie Munters designed the concrete surface of this seaside villa in Oostduinkerke with a horizontal grain that mirrors the striations the North Sea leaves behind at low tide. The reference isn’t decorative, it’s structural. And that distinction matters.

The villa sits on a corner plot at the edge of a protected dune reserve in Oostduinkerke, a small coastal town already known for a few wonderfully eccentric things: a ship-shaped restaurant and fishermen who harvest shrimp on horseback. Into this landscape, Munters has introduced something that manages to be arresting without being loud. The form is sculptural and unmistakably modern, but it doesn’t shout. It settles.

Designer: Magalie Munters

The name “Nouvelle Vague” borrows from the French New Wave film movement, and the reference is apt in ways that go beyond the obvious nod to style. The French New Wave was defined by breaking conventional rules while remaining deeply committed to craft. Munters is working in a similar register. For years, her Ghent-based boutique studio has been developing residential architecture with organic geometries, pushing against the idea that construction methods should set the ceiling on what architecture can achieve. “Through that ongoing research, I developed a way of building in which construction and technology no longer act as a limitation to the architecture,” she explains. Villa Nouvelle Vague is where that research cashes out.

The concrete form is completely curved across the entire volume, not just as a surface treatment but as a governing logic, carried through every detail: the absent roof edges, the curved garage opening, even the way the house integrates into the ground. The bedrooms are half-buried in the dunes, which is both a functional and a conceptual move. The house doesn’t sit on the landscape. It’s anchored into it. Above those buried rooms, the living spaces rise toward the horizon, pulling in light and opening out to views of the dunes in a way that feels earned rather than forced.

The way you move through the house is where Munters’ admiration for Le Corbusier becomes most legible. She’s spoken about his influence, specifically in “the rooftop solarium, in the way spaces expand and contract, and in the vertical shafts that structure movement through the house.” You enter through a vertical shaft that climbs toward the roof before expanding into the main living space. The compression-then-release is theatrical in the best sense. The house is working on your nervous system before you’ve even sat down.

I keep coming back to that word: deliberate. Munters uses it herself: “What might appear as a free form is in fact the result of a very deliberate construction logic.” That’s the tension the villa lives in, and frankly, it’s what makes it interesting. Nothing here is freehand improvisation. The curves look fluid because the logic behind them is airtight. The concrete looks like it grew from the dunes because the architect studied the dunes before she touched a drawing. That’s different from a building that mimics nature for aesthetic points. It’s rarer, and harder.

Belgian architecture doesn’t always get the international visibility it deserves, and Magalie Munters is one of those names worth paying attention to even if residential architecture isn’t usually your thing. Villa Nouvelle Vague is the kind of project that earns its name. It has the confidence of something that knows exactly what it is, and the intelligence not to over-explain itself. Just like the best films of the movement it references.

The post Belgium’s Most Striking Concrete Villa Was Designed by the Dunes first appeared on Yanko Design.

There’s a version of small living that doesn’t ask you to compromise. The Espresso, built by Ohio-based Modern Tiny Living on their popular Mohican platform, makes that case in just 20 feet. Bold and daring, the Espresso is a tiny house on wheels defined by deep blacks, warm wood accents, and a design sensibility that punches well above its square footage.

At its core, the Espresso is a study in restraint done right. The main floor clocks in at 160 square feet, with a 70-square-foot queen bedroom loft above, complete with custom built-ins and shelving. It’s a tight footprint by any measure, but the way the space is organized keeps it from ever feeling like it. The living room anchors one end of the home with a pull-out bench, built-in shelving, and a drop-down dining table that doubles as a desk, making it equally suited to a quiet morning or a dinner for two.

Designer: Modern Tiny Living

The kitchen is where the Espresso’s aesthetic really comes into focus. An undermount black granite sink pairs with a pull-down matte black faucet, solid wood countertops, a 9.9 cubic foot refrigerator, a two-burner propane cooktop, and a microwave, all working within a palette that feels deliberate rather than default. The matte black hardware package runs throughout the home, tying each room back to the same considered thread. Across from the kitchen, an open closet leads into the bathroom, which keeps things equally functional with a fiberglass insert shower, a flush toilet, and open shelving.

On the outside, the Espresso sits on a double-axle trailer and is finished in engineered wood with a steel roof, keeping maintenance low and durability high. A small exterior storage box handles propane bottles and similar items, quietly solving the off-grid practicalities without interrupting the clean lines of the exterior. The home weighs approximately 9,000 pounds, and its closed-cell spray foam insulation — three inches in the walls and ceilings, four in the floors — means it’s built to handle varied climates without compromise.

What makes the Espresso work isn’t any single feature. It’s the way everything adds up: the convertible furniture, the considered storage, the finish quality that makes the space feel lived-in rather than merely occupied. Modern Tiny Living designed it to deliver all the comforts of modern living in a compact, move-in-ready package, and the result is a tiny home that earns its name in more ways than one. Rich, concentrated, and hard to forget.

The post Inside the Espresso: Modern Tiny Living’s 20-Foot Tiny House on Wheels That Proves Small Can Be Bold first appeared on Yanko Design.

What does a home look like when you throw out the floor plan entirely? For Amsterdam-based firm Studioninedots, the answer is a tower of playfully stacked boxes, each one dedicated to a single moment in life, that rises above one of the Dutch capital’s newest neighborhoods. Completed in 2025, Light House sits on Centrumeiland, a newly developed artificial island district defined by its self-build culture and strong sustainability ambitions.

The project began with a simple brief from a couple with two children who wanted a home that would genuinely bring them together. Rather than anchoring daily life to the ground floor the way most houses do, Studioninedots dedicated each of the family’s key activities — eating, gathering, cooking, relaxing — to its own distinct volume, then arranged those volumes vertically into a single, tightly considered composition. The result is a 257-square-meter residence that feels less like a stacked building and more like a small vertical neighborhood.

Designer: Studioninedots

Movement through the home unfolds through a sequence of open passages and compressed zones, where shifts in scale produce entirely different spatial moods. Smaller, enclosed areas carve out space for focused, quieter activities, while larger voids open up visual connections across levels, dissolving any conventional sense of what is above and what is below. Hovering above the kitchen is a sheltered, secluded volume ideal for yoga or film watching, while the journey through the house culminates at the top in what the architects describe as a “holiday home” within the city. Flanked by arched ceiling-height glass openings, this 14-metre-high gathering room commands panoramic views across the IJmeer lake.

The facade does a lot of the design’s heavy lifting. A wall of square glass blocks wraps the front of the building, filtering natural light into the interior while abstracting the life inside, offering privacy without sacrificing the warmth of daylight. At night, the facade glows from within, giving the house an almost lantern-like presence on the street.

Sustainability is baked into the structure itself. Light House is built as a lightweight system using prefabricated timber components inside a steel frame, a circular and modular method that allows for flexibility, long-term adaptability, and ease of disassembly. The layout is not fixed either, as children grow and priorities shift, the home can be reconfigured to meet whatever the family needs next. Light House is a rare thing: a home that feels entirely personal yet completely considered, one where architecture quietly gets out of the way and lets life fill the space.

The post Studioninedots’ Light House Is a Vertical Amsterdam Home Built From Playfully Stacked Boxes first appeared on Yanko Design.

NoVoice malware was found in 50 Android apps on Google Play, with 2.3 million downloads, by bypassing detection and targeting outdated devices.

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Most hotels ask you to check in. Genji Kyoto asks you to pay attention. Nestled along the Kamo River in Kyoto, Japan, this 19-room boutique hotel is the kind of place that architects talk about in hushed, reverent tones. And for good reason. It was designed by Geoffrey P. Moussas of Design 1st, a New York-born, MIT-trained architect who has called Kyoto home since 1994. That detail matters more than it might seem.

Moussas didn’t fly in with a mood board and a deadline. He has spent over three decades restoring and redesigning more than 40 traditional Japanese structures: machiya townhouses, tearooms, kura storehouses, and even a 400-year-old Buddhist temple. His work has been featured in the Financial Times, CNN, and NHK, and exhibited at Kiyomizu Temple and Nijo Castle. When someone like that builds a hotel, you’re not just booking a room. You’re stepping into a lifetime of accumulated understanding.

Designer: Geoffrey P. Moussas of Design 1st

The concept behind Genji Kyoto traces back to an 11th-century Japanese novel, The Tale of Genji, widely considered one of the world’s first novels. When the design team discovered that the hotel’s site was historically tied to the story’s actual locations in Kyoto, the whole project shifted. The design moved away from a simple machiya prototype and toward the aesthetic world of the Heian period, over a thousand years ago. But Moussas wasn’t interested in imitation. His approach was to distill the spirit of Heian architecture, specifically the Shinden Zukuri style, characterized by pavilions woven through interconnected gardens, rather than recreate its surface. That distinction is everything. It’s the difference between a themed restaurant and a genuinely good one.

The guiding philosophy here is a Japanese concept called Teioku Ichinyo, which translates roughly to “building and garden are one.” Every spatial decision at Genji Kyoto flows from this idea. Gardens aren’t decorative; they’re structural. They guide movement, frame views, and carry what the Japanese call ki, the life force that animates a space. Even the small tsubo pocket gardens tucked around the guest rooms, a tradition dating back to Heian palace residences, do serious work, turning what could be a blank interior wall into a living, breathing view.

The materials are just as considered. Cedar-imprinted concrete shows up throughout the hotel, hard surfaces pressed with the warmth of wood grain, creating a tension that reads as both ancient and completely new. Large-scale washi paper panels function as architectural elements, not just decoration. Guest rooms have solid cherry wood floors, tatami mats made from natural rush, and furniture entirely handmade by Kyoto craftsmen. Jun Tomita, who handled interior design alongside Moussas, drew motifs directly from The Tale of Genji for every custom piece. And then there’s the detail I keep coming back to: during construction, a heritage water basin and a small shrine were discovered on-site. Rather than remove them, the team built the garden around them. That kind of decision tells you everything about where the priorities were.

There are 19 rooms in total, each one different. River views, city views, garden views. No two stays are the same, and that’s by design. Each room also features an original painting by a Kyoto artist, with every piece drawing on a different theme from The Tale of Genji, so even the art tells a chapter of the same story. Moussas has said he wanted guests to have a different experience every time they return, and the hotel is built to make that true. The rooftop garden and bar take it further still, offering panoramic views that make the hotel feel like it belongs to the entire city, not just its footprint.

Genji Kyoto’s real achievement isn’t any single detail. It’s the commitment to depth over spectacle. A lot of contemporary design is about the first impression, the photograph, the wow moment. This hotel asks for more time than that. It reveals itself in layers, the way a good book does. You have to slow down. You have to look twice. That’s a rare ask in hospitality. And it’s a rarer thing to pull off.

The post Genji Kyoto Is a Hotel You Read Like a 1,000-Year-Old Book first appeared on Yanko Design.

Most public art earns its place on a pedestal and stays there. It asks you to look, maybe photograph it, and walk away. The relationship between viewer and work rarely extends beyond that brief transaction. That’s been the convention for a long time, but there’s a growing push for installations that don’t just occupy public space but actually do something within it.

Michael Jantzen has been exploring that tension for years. His Moving Furniture series applies a simple idea to ordinary chairs and tables: take each object’s form and repeat it in progressive intervals as if capturing it mid-movement, then connect those moments into a single piece. The result is something you can still sit in or set a drink on, even if it no longer looks quite built for that.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

Monumental Moving Furniture takes that same concept into architectural territory. Built from painted steel, the series consists of abstracted chair and table forms, each generated by moving the original object through space and time and locking its path into a chain of connected segments. At this scale, what started as a reference to everyday objects feels closer to a building than a piece of furniture.

The method behind each piece is consistent. A chair or table is set in motion through space and time, with each interval frozen and joined to the next. Some pieces move only part of the original form; others shift the whole thing. The result is a structure that stops belonging to any single discipline and starts reading as furniture, sculpture, and architecture at once.

Despite being too large to sit in, these sculptures aren’t purely decorative. Each is large enough to walk under and through, giving it a practical function as a pavilion and shelter. That’s not something most public art can claim. Instead of asking people to observe from a polite distance, these structures pull you in, turning a passive encounter into something more physical and immediate.

The series covers both chair forms and table forms, each treated with the same sequential abstraction. Individual pieces have also been grouped into configurations that suggest more complex structures, as if each were a building block for something larger. Painted in vivid, solid colors like white, orange, and yellow, each structure commands attention from a distance and rewards a closer look once you’re standing beneath it.

Public spaces deserve more than objects to look at. They deserve things to experience. Monumental Moving Furniture earns its place on both counts, offering structures large enough to shelter visitors while giving them something genuinely puzzling to engage with. These forms don’t demand reverence. They invite curiosity, exploration, and the kind of slow, circling attention that good public space has always been designed to encourage.

The post These Steel Chairs Are Too Big to Sit In: Walk Through Them Instead first appeared on Yanko Design.

The tiny house world has long wrestled with one unavoidable tension — the desire for light, openness, and space against the hard constraints of a compact footprint. Escape’s Shoreline Glass House doesn’t just address that tension; it dissolves it entirely. This recently completed park model is one of the most spatially generous and light-saturated tiny homes to come out of the category in recent memory, and it earns that distinction without resorting to multi-level gymnastics or lofted sleeping quarters.

What immediately sets the Shoreline Glass House apart is its commitment to single-floor living. It has a length of 47 ft (14.3 m) and an increased width of 12 ft (3.6 m), which makes for a much larger interior than is typical for the format, comparable in fact to a small apartment. That extra width is the key differentiator. Where most tiny homes feel like corridors with furniture squeezed in, the Shoreline opens up laterally, giving rooms a genuine sense of proportion that doesn’t demand you constantly recalibrate your spatial expectations.

Designer: Escape

The name earns its keep on the exterior, too. The Shoreline Glass House features a light-filled interior thanks to 30 ft (9 m) of glazing running along one wall, flooding every corner of the home with natural light throughout the day. It’s a design move that blurs the line between inside and out, making the home feel anchored to its surroundings rather than sealed off from them. Entry is through a large enclosed porch, a smart buffer zone that expands the functional living area while adding that coveted semi-outdoor layer that tiny home dwellers often sacrifice first.

Inside, the layout is open-plan, with the living and kitchen area flowing seamlessly from one end to the other. The bathroom includes a large glass-enclosed shower with a width of 5 ft (1.5 m), a specification that sounds modest until you realize most tiny house showers are barely wide enough to raise both arms. A walk-in closet rounds out the domestic comforts, alongside an oversized sofa that signals Escape’s intent clearly: this is a home designed for staying in, not just passing through.

As a non-towable park model, the Shoreline Glass House isn’t chasing the nomadic lifestyle that defines much of the tiny house market. It’s built for permanence, or at least long-term settlement, and the design reflects that. Every decision, from the floor-to-ceiling glazing to the full-width bathroom, prioritizes livability over portability. The result is a tiny house that finally makes the case that going small doesn’t have to mean giving anything up.

The post This Tiny House Has 30 Feet of Glass and Feels Nothing Like a Tiny House first appeared on Yanko Design.

Deep in the spruce forests of Jevany, a municipality of barely 800 people in the Czech Republic’s Central Bohemian Region, a flash of cherry red cuts through the trees. This is Villa Jevany, a new residence by local studio Architektura, and it has absolutely no interest in blending in. Where most forest homes default to timber, stone, and muted tones, Architektura went the other way entirely, dressing the structure in saturated red steel and calling it exactly what it is: a deliberate, uncompromising act of contrast.

The site itself set the terms. The plot spans a generous 3,027 square meters on a steep southern slope, inhabited by deer, birds, and mature trees that tower up to ten meters above the building level. Architektura responded by carving the villa into the hillside rather than placing it on top, creating a structure the studio describes as an “organism” embedded in the earth. The red steel skeleton, visible in the sawtooth carport roof from the moment of arrival, signals that this is industrial thinking applied to domestic life, and it doesn’t apologize for it.

Designer: Architektura

The colour choice is rooted in theory as much as instinct. Architektura used green and red as complementary colors, a logic borrowed from the colour wheel and, more pointedly, from abstract art. The irregularly divided glazing across the façade draws a quiet reference to Mondrian, the rhythmic geometry of the windows creating a visual tension against the organic verticality of the trees behind them. From the road, the house reads almost like a painting hung in the forest. From the inside, the forest becomes the painting.

Internally, the layout unfolds across five distinct levels. The entrance opens into a hall with a 3.5-meter ceiling height, where a curved wall guides visitors into the main living space, or what the architects call the “day zone.” Here, industrial red steel windows frame the surrounding green; white walls meet black details; reddish stone counters anchor the kitchen alongside a floating steel fireplace. It’s a space of deliberate contrasts, domestic in function and raw in feeling.

The private quarters, reached through a long corridor lined with minimalist white cabinetry, are stripped of excess. The parents’ suite and children’s rooms are quiet and restrained, a counterpoint to the drama of the exterior. Terraces and balconies extend the living area into the canopy itself, turning the house into what Architektura intended all along: not just a place to live, but a place to look.

The post This Red House Buried in a Czech Forest Is the Opposite of Every Forest Home You’ve Ever Seen first appeared on Yanko Design.

In 1914, Ludwig Wittgenstein did something that, depending on your perspective, was either the most logical or the most eccentric thing a Cambridge-trained philosopher could do. He left England behind and built a tiny wooden cabin on the steep shoreline of Lake Eidsvatnet in Skjolden, Norway. The only way to reach it was by boat, or by walking across ice in winter. His mentor Bertrand Russell reportedly told him it would be lonely. Wittgenstein replied that he “prostituted his mind talking to intelligent people.” The anecdote is funny, but the philosophy behind it was completely serious.

What Wittgenstein found in that remote hut was the particular kind of quiet that forces real confrontation with your own thoughts. He was productive there in ways he couldn’t replicate anywhere else, later writing to a colleague that he “couldn’t imagine working anywhere as he did there,” and that the place had “a quiet seriousness” he found nowhere else. Some of his foundational thinking for Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus took shape in that small space, part of it on a boat his friend David Pinsent sailed across the Sognefjord. A philosopher doing his deepest work on open water, surrounded by mountains. That image stays with you.

Designer: Dionisio González

Spanish artist Dionisio González clearly felt it too. His series, Wittgenstein’s Cabin, takes that founding image as both premise and provocation. González works across photography, digital manipulation, and what you might call architectural fiction, and his practice has long focused on reimagining how people live in extreme or overlooked conditions. For this project, he envisioned a cluster of amphibious dwellings set directly on the Norwegian fjords, floating on artificial islands against the same vast and indifferent landscape that Wittgenstein once sought out. They are not proposals for construction. They are something closer to visual arguments.

The structures themselves are striking. Made primarily of weathered metal, they feel industrial and oddly organic at the same time. Each one has its own distinct form, but they share a visual family resemblance, like siblings built from the same strange blueprint. They sit on the water in ways that feel simultaneously precarious and deliberate. González has spoken about being drawn to “the confrontation, the frontality” of Wittgenstein’s original cabin with the fjord. For Wittgenstein, the water wasn’t backdrop. It was the actual condition of his solitude. González takes that thought and makes it architectural.

The project keeps pulling me back to one of the more persistent tensions in design conversation: the relationship between isolation and creative thought. The idea that you need to escape in order to think clearly is ancient, but it feels newly charged when genuine silence has become a luxury most people can’t really access. González frames philosophy itself as an “amphibian endeavour,” something that lives between the stable and the fluid, the settled and the speculative. His floating cabins give that metaphor a shape and a weight. They’re not quite houses. They’re more like habitable hypotheses.

None of these structures are intended to be built, and I think that’s precisely where their power lies. Architectural fiction as a practice asks you to sit with ideas rather than just objects. It creates room to think seriously about how we want to inhabit the world, even when the answer falls outside what’s commercially or technically possible. González’s designs carry a visual seriousness that separates them from pure fantasy, a quality that makes them feel genuinely worth spending time with.

Wittgenstein wanted to disappear from the world in order to think more clearly inside it. González takes that same instinct and places it on open water, wrapped in oxidized metal, asking what solitude actually looks like when landscape isn’t just a setting but a condition of being. The answer he offers is beautiful and strange, which feels entirely fitting for a project named after one of the twentieth century’s most beautiful and strange minds.

The post The Philosopher Wanted Silence. The Artist Built on Water. first appeared on Yanko Design.

The architectural world is shifting toward materials that feel grounded, honest, and deeply connected to the earth. Instead of relying on high-energy industrial products, designers and homeowners are embracing approaches that honor the planet’s natural tectonics. In this movement toward true sustainability, rammed earth has re-emerged as a powerful, modern choice for those seeking beauty, integrity, and a low-carbon footprint.

Its tactile layers and sculptural warmth create spaces that feel rooted, calm, and inherently biophilic. Rammed earth offers durability, thermal comfort, and long-term value, transforming simple structures into timeless experiences and reflecting the five pillars driving its revival.

1. Low-Carbon Construction

Rammed earth stands out as a low-carbon building method because its main ingredient, subsoil, is often sourced directly from the construction site or nearby. This drastically cuts transportation emissions. Unlike concrete or brick, rammed earth requires no firing, kilns, or intensive chemical processes. Its formation relies on simple mechanical compaction and moisture, keeping the embodied energy among the lowest of any mainstream wall system.

This approach makes each project inherently more responsible and materially honest. By using local resources and eliminating energy-heavy manufacturing, rammed earth aligns with global decarbonization goals. It has become a preferred choice among forward-thinking firms committed to sustainable, large-scale performance.

Arquipélago Arquitetos’ Piracaia Eco-Village in rural São Paulo exemplifies sustainable home design, using rammed earth construction to create affordable, eco-friendly residences. Located in the village of Piracaia, the development currently includes three homes ranging from a 538-square-foot studio to a 1,245-square-foot two-bedroom unit. Each home features rammed-earth walls formed from local soil, providing structural strength and natural insulation. A modular design allows the system to be easily replicated or scaled, offering flexibility and efficiency.

Large clerestory windows bring in natural light while preserving privacy, and the aluminium roofs are designed to harvest rainwater for everyday use. Wood panels and steel tie rods ensure stability and structural integrity. Initiated by a resident who sought a deeper connection to nature and community, the project stands as a model for sustainable rural living—embracing local resources, traditional techniques, and modern architectural thinking to shape a more conscious way of life.

2. Honors Raw Materiality

Rammed earth’s signature beauty lies in its dramatic, layered texture, which is an architectural reflection of geological time. Each compacted lift reveals natural striations shaped by the soil’s mineral makeup, giving every wall a distinct, site-specific identity. This visual honesty creates an immediate sense of grounding, making the material feel ancient and deeply contemporary.

In double-height spaces, these walls do more than define boundaries as they hold light, absorb warmth, and shift subtly throughout the day. The result is an atmosphere that feels calm, elemental, and immersive. The wall becomes an artwork in itself, guiding the mood, rhythm, and spatial flow of the entire home.

Japanese architecture studio Lib Work has introduced the Lib Earth House Model B, a 1,076-square-foot home made primarily from 3D-printed soil. Located in Yamaga, Kumamoto Prefecture, and developed with Arup and WASP, this project represents a significant departure from traditional concrete construction. The single-story structure features gently curved walls and a ribbed exterior texture, showcasing the potential of combining ancient materials with advanced printing technology. Constructed from a mix of soil, sand, slaked lime, and natural fibres, the home cuts typical construction emissions by more than half while promoting durability and thermal performance.

Inside, the design balances minimalism and warmth, with natural light accentuating the earth walls’ varied textures. Embedded sensors monitor moisture and structural performance discreetly, improving long-term sustainability. The flat roof accommodates future solar or water systems, highlighting a practical integration of eco-friendly features.

3. Natural Temperature Control

Rammed earth excels in passive design because of its dense, high–high-thermal-mass composition. These walls act as natural thermal batteries, absorbing heat throughout the day and releasing it slowly at night. This steady modulation of indoor temperatures reduces sharp fluctuations and minimizes dependence on mechanical heating or cooling systems. For homeowners and designers, this means long-term savings and an impressive ROI on energy infrastructure.

Beyond performance, the material elevates the visual and spatial experience. Its ability to regulate climate naturally eliminates the need for excessive mechanical fixtures, creating cleaner lines and a more intentional aesthetic. Rammed earth becomes both structure and climate strategy in one.

The Rammed Earth House in Slovenia reimagines the early 20th-century farmhouse by combining ancient building methods with modern solar technology. Designed by architects Merve Nur Başer, Aslı Erdem, and Fatma Zeyneb Önsiper, the tiny home uses rammed earth, a sustainable technique dating back thousands of years – along with a concrete foundation and timber framework. Inspired by Slovenian architect Oton Jugovec’s floating roof, the house also features an extended green roof to protect the structure from erosion caused by Dobrava’s varied climate of rain, snow, and humidity.

Oriented to optimise passive heating and cooling, the Rammed Earth House is carefully positioned to capture winter sunlight and block summer heat. Strategically placed windows enhance natural ventilation throughout the year, while the roof supports solar panels, a rainwater harvesting system, and an integrated septic tank. The interior layout further improves efficiency, with fewer windows on the north side to minimize heat loss and more on the west to capture warmth when needed.

4. Built for Centuries

Modern rammed earth, lightly stabilized with cement, delivers exceptional compressive strength and long-term durability. Its dense composition makes it naturally fire-resistant, pest-resistant, and remarkably stable across changing climates. History reinforces this reliability with rammed-earth structures around the world having survived for centuries, proving the material’s endurance far beyond typical contemporary systems.

For homeowners, this resilience translates directly into value. The walls demand minimal upkeep and offer a long structural lifespan, financially sound over decades. Their inherent thickness also enhances acoustic comfort, reducing noise transfer and improving the quality of everyday living within the home.

Casa Covida is a modern reinterpretation of ancient building methods that merges traditional materials like mud, clay, and straw with advanced 3D-printing technology. Developed by Emerging Objects, the project showcases how earth-based architecture, used by nearly 30% of the global population, can be revived for contemporary living. Built in Colorado’s San Luis Valley using a SCARA robotic printer, the structure is made from an adobe blend and features three interconnected zones: a central space with a hearth, a sleeping area furnished with reclaimed beetle kill pine, and a bathing zone with a river-stone-embedded tub. An inflatable cactus-inspired roof adds weather protection and visual intrigue.

Designed for two people, Casa Covida acts as a prototype to explore how ancient techniques can coexist with digital fabrication. The 3D-printed walls, custom earthen cookware, and natural insulation demonstrate how sustainability and innovation can shape the future of housing.

5. Celebrates Nature-Rooted Architecture

Rammed earth grounds a home not just physically but culturally, drawing directly from the soil that defines its region. By using material sourced from the site itself, the architecture gains a deep sense of place and authenticity. This alignment with biophilic design principles creates a natural, instinctive connection between occupant and landscape, allowing the structure to feel both contextual and emotionally reassuring.

The experience is more than visual as it is tactile and psychological. The walls embody local history, climate, and geology, offering a timeless identity that outlasts design trends. In this way, rammed earth supports well-being while honoring the land it stands on.

Contrary to the belief that sustainability requires sacrificing comfort, Ulaman Eco-Retreat Resort in Bali demonstrates that ecological responsibility can coexist with luxury. Designed by Inspiral Architects, this carbon-neutral resort is constructed primarily from bamboo and rammed earth, locally sourced materials that significantly reduce environmental impact.

Situated in Kaba-Kaba village, the resort showcases the structural and aesthetic potential of sustainable materials. Rammed earth, used for the ground-level walls, offers a low-emission alternative to concrete, while the curvilinear bamboo roofing blends cultural authenticity with structural beauty. Powered by hydroelectric energy from a nearby river, the resort includes a cliffside yoga studio and a meandering pool designed to reflect natural surroundings.

Rammed earth’s resurgence is not a design fad but a meaningful answer to today’s calls for beauty, sustainability, and lasting value. By choosing this ancient yet future-ready material, homeowners invest in sustainable luxury that elevates both life and environment. Its layered, monolithic presence creates a sanctuary that endures quietly elegantly, deeply responsible, and profoundly connected to the earth it rises from.

The post 5 Rammed Earth Homes in 2026 That Make Concrete Walls Look Outdated first appeared on Yanko Design.

The first time I saw a photo of Klumpen, I thought someone had dropped a monolith into the Arctic tundra. A matte black pyramid, impossibly sharp against the snow, with a sliver of warm amber light cutting through its entrance. It looks like a prop from a science fiction film. But it is very much real, very much functional, and it is arriving very soon.

Klumpen is the work of Himmelsfahrtskommando, a Swedish architectural duo that includes designer Hannah Mazetti, with a studio name that roughly translates to “suicide mission” in German. Whether that is a philosophical statement or a dark joke about building in the Nordic winter, I am genuinely not sure. What I do know is that the thing they have built is one of the more quietly radical design objects I have come across in years. It asks a deceptively simple question: what if you did not need permission to be somewhere?

Designer: Himmelsfahrtskommando

At just 7 square metres, Klumpen is technically a utility structure. But calling it that feels like calling the iPhone a phone. Inside this factory-built pyramid is a complete off-grid living infrastructure: a photovoltaic solar array running at 450 to 600 volts DC, a 7.5 kWh battery for storage, an air-to-water heat pump, a closed-loop greywater recycling system, satellite broadband, a shower, a lavatory, and a kitchen with two stoves, a sink, and a microwave. The pyramid shape, for the record, is not an aesthetic choice. The designers say it is simply the most efficient envelope for the specific stack of systems inside. Form follows function, very literally.

The prototype has already been tested through a real Arctic winter in northern Sweden, which tells you something important about how seriously they are taking this. It is one thing to announce a sleek off-grid concept on a design blog. It is another to actually freeze-test it in the dark of a Scandinavian January. The first production batch ships in September 2026, with a target retail price of $35,000.

That price will draw raised eyebrows, and fair enough. $35,000 is not nothing. But compare it to the cost of running utility lines to a remote plot of land, the legal labyrinth of planning permissions, the months of plumber schedules and contractor delays, and suddenly a plug-and-play pyramid starts to look like a reasonable proposition. You set it down on flat ground. You press ON. No permits. No plumbers. No waiting at the utility company. That is genuinely the promise.

I keep thinking about what that actually means for people. We have become so accustomed to depending on invisible infrastructures that we rarely stop to notice the stranglehold they have on where and how we can live. Want to build a simple structure on a piece of land you own? Prepare for months of negotiations with people who have never seen the land. Klumpen is not a protest against that system, exactly. It is something quieter. An elegant sidestep.

The designers frame this in terms of ownership and autonomy, drawing a line from ancient democracies, where property meant political voice, to a present where most people in the industrialised world either rent or carry mortgages on homes they will spend decades paying off. The argument is a little romantic, but it does not feel wrong. The degree to which we have outsourced control of our most basic needs, from electricity and water to warmth and connectivity, to external systems we cannot touch or meaningfully influence is worth taking seriously.

Is Klumpen going to solve the housing crisis? No. But the most interesting design objects rarely solve the biggest problems outright. What they do is shift the way people think about what is possible. A 7-square-metre pyramid that makes you genuinely independent of the grid, dropped in a meadow or on a hillside or beside a frozen lake in northern Sweden, does exactly that. It reframes a shed as a statement. The first batch launches in September. I would not be surprised if the waitlist fills fast.

The post A $35,000 Swedish Pyramid That Goes Anywhere, Needs Nothing first appeared on Yanko Design.

There is a moment, the architects at Snøhetta will tell you, when you step off the train at Qasr AlHokm and look up, and the entire city of Riyadh looks back at you. That is not a metaphor. It is exactly what happens beneath the station’s sweeping, mirror-polished stainless steel canopy, where a 360-degree reflection of the surrounding cityscape floats above commuters like a living panorama. It is disorienting in the best possible way, and entirely intentional.

Completed in 2025, the Qasr AlHokm Metro Station is one of four primary hubs within Riyadh’s expansive new metro network, a system now carrying up to 3.6 million passengers daily since it entered full operation in January 2025. The station sits in the heart of the historic Al Qiri district, adjacent to an Eid prayer field and a mosque, and within walking distance of the old palace grounds, a location that demanded both architectural sensitivity and civic ambition.

Designer: Snøhetta

Snøhetta, working in collaboration with One Works and Cremonesi Workshop (Crew), first won the competition brief in 2012. The central concept remained remarkably consistent from that early vision: a transit station designed as an open urban plaza, where the threshold between city and subway is dissolved rather than defined. The bowl-shaped canopy, its underside ground to a flawless mirror finish, acts as what the team describes as an urban periscope. From above ground, the city is reflected downward into the station. From below, the underground world is projected back out. “Likewise, if you’re coming from the city, you look up into the canopy, and it mirrors everything that happens below,” explained Snøhetta partner Robert Greenwood.

Sloped terrazzo floors draw visitors naturally under the canopy and into the station’s layered interior. There, a truncated cone-shaped atrium wall, its surface perforated by triangular openings drawn from the regional Najdi architectural tradition, encloses one of the station’s most unexpected gestures: a lush underground garden. In a city defined by heat and aridity, this green pocket offers genuine respite. Indigenous tree planting, natural ventilation, and photovoltaic panels complete a sustainability framework that goes well beyond a token gesture.

The building has not gone unrecognized. In November 2025, the Prix Versailles, presented under the patronage of UNESCO and the International Chamber of Commerce, named Qasr AlHokm one of the seven most beautiful train stations in the world, placing it alongside some of global architecture’s most celebrated transit spaces. What Snøhetta has built here is more than a station. It is a civic room, a place where infrastructure earns the right to be called architecture.

The post Snøhetta Built a Metro Station in Riyadh That Reflects the Entire City Back at You first appeared on Yanko Design.

Google is expanding Personal Intelligence in the US across Search, Gemini, and Chrome, bringing more tailored AI help across its consumer apps

The post Google Expands Personal Intelligence Across Gemini, Chrome in the US appeared first on TechRepublic.

At just 16 ft (4.9 m) long, the Genesis 16′ from Dragon Tiny Homes is one of the more compact tiny houses on the market. Despite its modest footprint, the layout accommodates a living area, a well-equipped kitchen, a full bathroom, and a lofted bedroom, making it a more complete package than its dimensions suggest.

The Genesis 16′ is part of Dragon Tiny Homes’ Genesis line, built on a double-axle trailer and finished in engineered wood siding. Its ground floor measures 136 sq ft (12.6 sq m), considerably smaller than most European tiny homes and a fraction of the size of larger North American models that can reach up to 52 ft (15.8 m). It’s not designed for family use, but its compact, towable build makes it a practical option for those seeking a mobile living solution.

Designer: Dragon Tiny Homes

Inside, the home is finished in shiplap with vinyl flooring. The living area sits just past the entrance and includes a sofa and a wall-mounted TV. The space is tight, as one would expect, and represents perhaps the most noticeable trade-off of living at this scale. There isn’t room for the kind of comfortable, sprawling seating most people are accustomed to at home.

The kitchen, however, is a highlight. Dragon Tiny Homes describes it as a significant upgrade over previous Genesis models, and the spec list backs that up: an oven, a double induction cooktop, a sink, a full-size fridge/freezer, and ample cabinetry. It won’t accommodate large-scale cooking, but it’s genuinely better equipped than kitchens found in many larger tiny homes.

The bathroom occupies the opposite end of the ground floor. It’s predictably small but efficiently arranged, with a walk-in shower, a vanity sink, and a flushing toilet. Access to the loft bedroom above is via a storage-integrated staircase, a practical design decision that makes good use of space that would otherwise go to waste. The loft itself has the low ceiling typical of tiny house bedrooms and fits a double bed alongside a storage unit that also serves as a privacy divider.

The Genesis 16′ is currently available for purchase at $38,995, a notably affordable price point in the current tiny home market. Dragon Tiny Homes offers delivery across the United States, and prospective buyers are advised to contact the company directly for delivery rates and availability. For those open to a smaller footprint, the Genesis 16′ demonstrates that a thoughtfully designed layout can go a long way in a very limited space.

The post At $39K, This 16-Foot Tiny Home Has No Business Fitting a Full Kitchen and Loft Inside first appeared on Yanko Design.

Le démarchage téléphonique, on n'en peut plus !! Y'a bien Bloctel qui devait régler le problème... sauf que notre téléphone continue de sonner 3 fois par jour avec des histoires de CPF ou de panneaux solaires. Pas ouf quoi... Du coup, un enquêteur en fraude connu du web a décidé de créer sa propre appli Android pour raccrocher automatiquement au nez de ces FDP de spammeurs.

WinCalls , c'est le nom de la bête. Vous l'installez sur votre smartphone, vous activez la protection, et tadaaa, l'appli détecte les coups de fil de démarchage et raccroche toute seule avant même que votre téléphone ait le temps de sonner. Y'a même pas de notif, c'est clean ! Le spammeur parle dans le vide et vous, vous continuez votre vie peinard.

Le truc cool, c'est le bonhomme derrière. Centho , c'est un enquêteur spécialisé dans la fraude, qui traque les arnaqueurs au quotidien parce que c'est littéralement son métier, du coup forcément, il sait comment les démarcheurs fonctionnent et comment leur couper le sifflet.

Bon, vous allez me dire qu'Android a déjà un filtre anti-spam intégré. C'est vrai. et sur les Pixel, il peut même bloquer les démarcheurs automatiquement mais sur la plupart des autres smartphones, il se contente juste de vous signaler l'appel et c'est ensuite à vous de décider si vous décrochez ou pas. Donc ça reste relou.

La différence avec WinCalls, c'est donc la méthode car l'appli se base en autre sur les préfixes de numéros réservés au démarchage par l'ARCEP (genre les 0162, 0163...) pour identifier les appels commerciaux et raccrocher directement. Tout se fait donc en local sur votre téléphone. Contrairement à d'autres applis qui aspirent votre carnet d'adresses pour alimenter leur base (coucou Truecaller), ici zéro données transmises à l'extérieur. C'est propre ! Merci Centho !

Après c'est Android uniquement donc les possesseurs d'iPhone devront se débrouiller autrement (le filtre intégré d'iOS fait à vrai dire un boulot correct, mais c'est pas le même niveau... Moi j'utilise Begone et l'appli Orange Téléphone sous iOS).

Ah et surtout c'est totalement gratuit. Le projet fonctionne uniquement grâce aux dons des utilisateurs qui en ont marre de se faire harceler et y'a même une communauté Discord pour remonter des faux positifs ou poser vos questions, bref c'est bien fichu.

Si la sécurité de votre téléphone Android vous préoccupe de manière plus globale, c'est un bon complément. Et pour ceux qui se demandent comment se débarrasser définitivement des appels indésirables, la combo c'est de s'inscrire sur Bloctel (ça filtre les démarcheurs légaux... les 3 qui restent) et d'utiliser WinCalls qui agit à un niveau différent en bloquant via les préfixes ARCEP. Les deux se complètent plutôt bien.

C'est gratuit et c'est par là . Merci à Gotcha57 pour l'info !

On archive nos photos avec Immich , nos documents avec Readur , nos mots de passe avec Vaultwarden ... mais nos emails ? Ah bah non, ça on les laisse chez Google en croisant les doigts pour que tout se passe bien jusqu'à la fin de nos jours. C'est quand même un peu dinguo quand on y réfléchit sérieusement.

Et pourtant, y'a des années de conversations là-dedans ! Des factures en pièce jointe, des confirmations de commande, des échanges pro avec votre comptable, des mots de passe envoyés en clair (oui, hélas, ça arrive encore). Du coup, quand un hébergeur mail décide de changer ses conditions générales ou de fermer boutique, tout part à la poubelle si vous n'y faites pas attention.

Eonvelope , c'est un outil open source en Python qui permet de sauvegarder automatiquement tout ça sur votre propre serveur et qui se lance avec un simple docker compose up.

Le truc, c'est que des outils comme Gmvault font déjà le boulot via cron, mais uniquement pour Gmail et en ligne de commande alors qu'Eonvelope, lui, un peu à la manière de Bichon , tourne en arrière-plan avec une interface web et archive en continu tous vos comptes. Franchement, c'est pas le même délire. Vous branchez vos comptes IMAP, POP3, Exchange, et même JMAP (le protocole poussé par Fastmail qui commence tout juste à se démocratiser), vous réglez la fréquence, et hop, vos mails atterrissent dans votre instance sans que vous ayez à y penser.

Attention par contre, c'est de l'archivage, pas un client mail... vous ne répondrez pas à vos mails depuis l'interface.

Côté installation, c'est du Docker avec seulement 2 conteneurs, le serveur web et la base de données. En fait, comptez 5 minutes chrono si vous avez déjà un serveur dédié ou un VPS, le fichier docker-compose.yml est fourni et les variables d'environnement sont bien documentées sur ReadTheDocs . Y'a même un mode basse consommation pour ceux qui font tourner ça sur un Raspberry Pi 4 avec 2 Go de RAM ou un petit Synology ! SSL et HTTPS sont inclus par défaut, et l'authentification multifacteur aussi.

Mais le vrai point fort, c'est les intégrations avec le reste de l'écosystème self-hosted. Concrètement, vous pouvez envoyer vos pièces jointes PDF vers Paperless-ngx pour l'OCR, les photos vers Immich, et exporter vos contacts vers votre carnet d'adresses Nextcloud. Y'a aussi un endpoint Prometheus pour brancher Grafana et suivre vos stats d'archivage. En gros, si vous avez déjà un homelab qui tourne, ça vient se brancher dessus comme une pièce de Lego.

L'interface web est en PWA (donc utilisable sur votre téléphone), avec un moteur de recherche, du filtrage par date et par expéditeur, des fils de conversation reconstitués et de l'import/export en EML et MBOX. Franchement, c'est propre. Y'a aussi une API REST pour ceux qui préfèrent scripter par-dessus plutôt que de passer par l'interface.

Le projet est sous licence AGPLv3 et son dev déclare l'utiliser lui-même au quotidien, ce qui est souvent bon signe. Notez que la migration depuis un backup existant n'est pas forcément fluide mais qui ne tente rien n'a rien !

Bref, ça comble un vrai manque dans la stack de nos machins auto-hébergés mais je trouve que l'approche est clairement plus intégrée que ce qui existe (genre MailPiler ou un combo fetchmail+dovecot). À surveiller donc !

Source

Most garden structures ask one thing of you: sit still and enjoy the shade. A pergola is a pergola, a gazebo is a gazebo, and neither one particularly cares what the afternoon light is doing. Michael Jantzen’s Interactive Garden Pavilion operates on a different premise entirely, one where the occupant has as much say over the structure as the designer did.

Built from sustainably grown stained wood and painted a uniform forest green, the pavilion sits on an octagonal support frame fitted with 30 slatted hinged panels across its walls and roof. Each panel pivots independently, sliding and rotating along the frame before locking into position. Open them wide on a hot afternoon, and the interior breathes. Angle them down against the glare, and the space dims considerably.

Designer: Jantzen

That last point is where the design earns its name. Most adjustable outdoor structures offer a single variable, usually an awning or a retractable canopy, within an otherwise fixed form. Here, the entire skin of the building is the variable. The wall panels, roof panels, and ground-level platform extensions can all be repositioned, which means the pavilion can look substantially different from one afternoon to the next.

Pull the panels shut on three sides, and the structure becomes a genuinely private enclosure. Splay them open, and the interior connects fully to the garden around it. In one arrangement, it reads as a dense closed form. In another, the structure opens up entirely, and the slatted framework becomes almost sculptural against the lawn.

Inside, two benches with adjustable backrests run the length of the interior, facing each other. The seating is built into the frame, which keeps the floor plan clean and leaves room to recline fully. When the overhead panels are partially open, sunlight enters in sharp parallel bands that shift across the benches as the day moves, a quality that is either meditative or distracting depending on what you came in for.

The construction logic is also notably practical. The pavilion is a prefabricated modular system, so the components can be scaled before assembly or joined with additional units to form a larger cluster. No foundation is required in most configurations. Given its size and type, a building permit is unlikely to be needed in many jurisdictions, which removes one of the more tedious barriers between an interesting design and an actual garden.

Jantzen has spent decades proposing architecture that responds dynamically to its occupants, much of it remaining on paper. This pavilion is one of the cases where the idea got built, and the result holds up at close range. The slatted wood is honest about what it is, the green paint ties the structure to the garden without trying to disappear into it, and the hinge mechanism does exactly what it promises.

The post Michael Jantzen’s Garden Retreat Has 30 Panels to Rearrange by Hand first appeared on Yanko Design.