Architectural Record

In the neighborhoods that ring Toronto’s downtown core, skinny houses on narrow lots are the norm. When a husband and wife with two small children offered Canadian firm StudioAC (@studioac_architecture ) latitude to reconsider this type, the architects responded with flair: they organized a three-story house with a long vertical atrium that brings daylight from roof to ground and from front to back.⁠ ⁠ The house sits in Trinity-Bellwoods, where its neighbors occupy roughly 20-foot-wide lots and rely on front and rear exposures for daylight. In recent renovations, the usual response is “to leave a void in the center and let light through,” explains StudioAC partner Andrew Hill. This west-facing site, previously occupied by an undistinguished 1980s dwelling, offered more than the usual width and opportunity to try a different strategy: “We saw that there was enough room to make a linear atrium and gallery on the second floor,” he adds.⁠ ⁠ ⁠Learn more about this refined Toronto residence at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Alex Bozikovic (@alexbozikovic )⁠ Photos © Félix Michaud (@michaudfelix_photo )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch

Mere hours before his fictional brutal murder, King Duncan of Scotland arrives with his retinue at Inverness, where he declares himself much impressed by Macbeth’s crenellated crib. “This castle hath a pleasant seat,” says the ill-fated monarch, “the air/ Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself/ Unto our gentle senses.” If only the hospitality lived up to the natural ventilation.⁠ ⁠ While they can count on a more welcoming reception, first-time visitors to the new home of Hudson Valley Shakespeare (@hvshakespeare ) might break out into their own breathless iambs. Framing astonishing views over the river, with West Point Military Academy and Storm King Moun­tain in the distance, the Samuel H. Scripps Theater Center, from the New York outpost of Chicago-based Studio Gang (@studiogang ), is a castle of a very different kind—a prefabricated laminated-timber structure of A-shaped struts supporting a turtle shell–like canopy. “The company does Shakespeare in such creative ways,” says Jeanne Gang, the firm’s founding principal. “We wanted to create a space that reflected their values.”⁠ ⁠ Discover more about the seasonal New York theater troupe's permanent new venue at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Ian Volner (@ianvolner )⁠ Photos © Jason O' Rear (@jasonorear )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #hudsonvalley #hudsonvalleyshakespeare #shakespeare #theater #newyork #hudson

This grand civic building is the home of the famed Fort Worth Stock Show & Rodeo. The arena joins the city’s Cultural District and the Will Rogers Memorial Center as a showcase of refined references to the legendary trick roper and the city’s cattle-driving heritage. The 14,000-seat venue’s Art Deco-inspired style responds creatively to the design of neighboring 1930s-era structures. The open-concept interior is configured to be both elegant and inherently simple to navigate, with a sophisticated palette of finishes. Subscribe for Updates: Link in Bio @nationalterrazzo #ad #terrazzo #nationalterrazzo #dickiesarena

Upon the recent opening of the new Conde M. Nast Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the inaugural exhibition Costume Art, two well-established architects were overheard griping. Their reproach maintained that this was the beginning of the end for the stature of art museums. “It started with the Armani show at the Guggenheim in 2000,” claimed one. “And placing galleries focusing on fashion next to the Grand Hall at the Met means it’s the first department you see as you come in,” noted the other. We won’t name these two critics, just in case Met director and CEO Max Hollein might have them on his RFP list for a future renovation/expansion. In the last few years, Hollein, the highly reputed museum head who is also the son of the prominent Austrian architect Hans Hollein, has been hiring emerging architects to renovate various curatorial departments—Frida Escobedo, Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY, and Nader Tehrani of NADAAA among them.⁠ ⁠ Now the 12,000-square-foot Conde M. Nast Galleries, designed by the young firm of Peterson Rich Office (PRO) (@peterson_rich_office ) in Brooklyn, provides yet another significant architectural component to that list. Nevertheless, with two costume-gallery areas at the Met—the existing Anna Wintour Costume Center in the basement plus the more visible new cluster on the main floor—fashion, called by its more sober-serious name, “costume,” has arrived at an enviable place in the Met’s curatorial spectrum.⁠ ⁠ Read more about the Met's newest galleries at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Suzanne Stephens (@palladiostephens )⁠ Photos © Anna-Marie Kellen / The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1, 4-7); Nicholas Calcott (@nicholascalcott ) (2, 3) ⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #met #fashion #museum #costume

For years, a paved surface parking lot sat directly west of Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, offering visitors a free place to stash their cars while they browsed the exhibitions. Stop by the Frye today, and you’ll find a very different neighbor in Museum House, a 33-story, residential development comprising two angled towers connected by a glassed-in bridge. Developed by Vancouver, B.C.’s Westbank (@westbankcorp )—a real estate company known for integrating art into many of its projects—and designed by the Seattle office of Perkins&Will (@perkinswill ), Museum House is a turning point for the First Hill neighborhood, which sits adjacent to downtown on the opposite side of Interstate 5 and is best known for being home to multiple major hospitals and health-care facilities.⁠ ⁠ “A lot of the initial planning was all about making the project feel tied metaphorically to the Frye, as well as physically, in terms, of the components and material choices,” says Perkins&Will principal and design director Ryan Bussard, who notes the shared use of concrete, the presence of round apertures, and minimal composition—just at different scales. “Even the way our entryway lines up with theirs is a nod to the museum.”⁠ ⁠ Continue reading about this artful two-towered residential project in Seattle at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Rachel Gallaher (@rachelcgallaher )⁠ Photos © Kevin Scott (@k7scott )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #seattle #washington

The YP Building, a mid-rise tower in Seoul completed in August 2025, is situated at the junction of a low-slung commercial area and a burgeoning residential redevelopment. Realized by local firm Simplex Architecture (@simplexarchitecture ), its composition—a series of stepped terraces unified by a gridded facade of stone panels—is an artfully pragmatic response to setback regulations. The upper floors accommodate leasable offices, except the topmost, which is reserved for the building’s owner. More commercial space occupies the ground floor and even the basement, where the architects have carefully inserted a sunken courtyard to introduce daylight.⁠ ⁠ Link in bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Grace Kuth⁠ Photo © Kyungsub Shin (@kyungsub.shin )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #seoul #korea

A central node of Toronto’s financial district is migrating south and up 80 feet into the air. In response to a design competition by developers Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines to link two sites split by a rail corridor across the street from Canada’s busiest station, London-based architect WilkinsonEyre (@wilkinsoneyre ) has designed two towers connected by a 1-acre park. By so doing, it has created a campus four stories above the pavement for one of the nation’s Big Five banks. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) was announced as the anchor tenant in 2017 and now leases over half of the towers’ 3 million square feet. Dominic Bettison, a WilkinsonEyre board director who led the winning competition submission in 2014, speaks with a note of relief when describing floor plates as “sensible” and “predictable” in a project that is otherwise over the top. It is now a short distance for bankers to travel from trading floors onto a landscaped swath inspired by regional landforms and programmed with a skating rink, to gaze serenely beyond the congestion below.⁠ ⁠ WilkinsonEyre’s strategy for ensuring CIBC Square would “resonate with the bankers” began by replicating a local legend. “The floors are almost identical to the Toronto-Dominion Centre,” Bettison says, referring to the 1960s tower ensemble designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe a couple of blocks north. Each of CIBC Square’s rectangular volumes is split in half by a vertical notch, making the two 820-foot-tall towers look a bit like four. ⁠ ⁠ Discover more about CIBC's new headquarters complex at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Matthew Allen (@the.matthew.allen )⁠ Photos © Doublespace Photography (@2spacephoto )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #toronto #canada #skyscraper

In January, the Chinese social media company ByteDance sold a majority stake of its United States subsidiary, which operates the popular TikTok app, to a group of American investors to avoid an outright ban in this country. That may seem like a setback, but, at its new offices in central Shenzhen, designed by Ennead Architects (@enneadarchitects ), the company’s spectacular growth is on full display.⁠ ⁠ Strikingly for such a dense location—as well as for technology clients, who generally prize privacy—the tower’s first 13 floors include a series of outdoor terraces that wrap around the glazed curtain wall. A prominent horizontal brise-soleil, cantilevered from the building’s primary structure with individually expressed outriggers, provides shading and, at night, with integrated LEDs, lights up the building. On some floors, such as the ninth, the terraces extend diagonally up the north and south side of the building to link to multiple levels above. The 12th floor includes a double-height interior space that features oversized stepped seating up to the 13th floor, mirroring a similar condition on its exterior diagonal terrace.⁠ ⁠ Continue reading about this terrace-wrapped office building in Shenzhen at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Russell Fortmeyer (@rfortmeyer )⁠ Photos © Yihuai Photography Studio⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #shenzhen #china #tower #skyscraper #office #officebuilding

Not so long ago, Boston’s Seaport District was an expanse of abandoned warehouses, surface parking lots, and crumbling piers. Now the once desolate landscape has been replaced by a neighborhood of shiny office buildings and glittering apartment towers. But there is a predictability to this development, at least according to some critics. Typical Seaport buildings, they say, have a sameness about them: they tend to have podiums that extend all the way out to the property line and then, to maximize leasable square footage, unimaginatively extrude straight up.⁠ ⁠ The developer Boston Global Investors (BGI) (@bostonglobalinvestors ) and Sasaki (@sasakidesign ), its architect, sought to do something different with 10 World Trade, a recently completed 600,000-square-foot, 17-story commercial lab and office building. It sits on an oddly shaped 1.1-acre parcel circumscribed by an interstate exit ramp, Congress Street (a major traffic artery running from the Financial District to South Boston), and World Trade Center Avenue (a viaduct elevated 26 feet above grade). “There is a lot going on here,” says Victor Vizgaitis, Sasaki’s principal in charge. “But the complexities gave us reason to be creative.”⁠ ⁠ Read more about this eye-catching Boston tower with an arched great hall at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Joann Gonchar, FAIA (@joann.gonchar )⁠ Photos © Michael Grimm (@michaelgrimmphoto )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #boston #seaport #skyscraper #tallbuilding

“It looks like an alien walking around the city,” says Ramón Bermúdez, partner at Bermúdez Arquitectos (@bermudezarquitectos ) in Bogotá, Colombia. But, rather than wreaking havoc, as in a giant-monster movie, the 16-story educational building that seems to have landed in the center of the sprawling South American metropolis is a result of its rapid growth and may offer a glimpse of more urban development to come.⁠ ⁠ The Colombian capital has rocketed from approximately 6 million residents at the turn of the millennium to just under 12 million today. Projections suggest further but tapering growth over the next few decades driven largely by internal migration from the countryside. This rise in population, coupled with Bogotá’s uniquely constrained geography—nearly 9,000 feet above sea level on a plateau in the Andes Mountains—has led to its being one of the densest cities in the Americas. Apart from a cluster of towers downtown, this urban density has taken the form of mostly low-lying development.⁠ ⁠ Discover more about this vertical campus in central Bogotá at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Patrick Templeton (@patrickatempleton )⁠ Photos © Jairo Llano (1-3, 8, 9) (@llano_fotografia ); Bé Estudio (@be_estudio_ ) (4-7, 10)⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #colombia #bogotà

The deadline to submit to Record Houses has been extended to May 22, 2026.⁠ ⁠ This annual issue show-cases residential design that upends expectation, pushes disciplinary limits, and redefines established vocabularies in imaginative ways.⁠ ⁠ Winning projects will be selected by an editorial jury and featured in September.⁠ ⁠ For eligibility and submission details, see the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Pictured: Morningside Residence in Miami by Brillhart Architecture (@brillhart_architecture )⁠ Photo © Joe Fletcher (@joefletcherphoto )⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #houses #residentialarchitecture #designcompetition

Old-fashioned cold calls seem a rarity nowadays, but that’s exactly how Jamie von Klemperer, president of Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF) (@kohnpedersenfox ), landed the commission for the firm’s latest supertall in New York City.⁠ ⁠ “I found out through some gossip who had bought the site,” von Klemperer recalls. “So I reached out to say, ‘I understand that you’re thinking about a mixed-use tower. Give us a call.’” He admits it was an unusual tactic, but von Klemperer knew the parcel in question all too well. The vacant lot at 520 Fifth Avenue, just around the corner from KPF’s Manhattan office, had been the focus of a feasibility study for a hotel, later abandoned, with a previous client. To von Klemperer’s delight, the new owner—developer Mickey Rabina—returned his call with something different in mind.⁠ ⁠ Architects and developers are often guilty of overusing the term mixed-use. Planting a penthouse atop an office building or positioning retail on the ground floor of an apartment complex hardly warrants the description, but the program of 520 Fifth Avenue indeed justifies it. KPF, responsible for the project’s core and shell, managed to tightly pack a slender, arch-laden tower with a four-story social club, residential amenities, and retail alongside 25 levels of leasable office space and 37 floors of apartments—all on a site that, at 10,625 square feet, isn’t much larger than three side-by-side tennis courts.⁠ ⁠ Read more about this new addition to Manhattan's skyline at the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ Words by Leopoldo Villardi (@leopoldovillardi )⁠ Photos © Raimund Koch (@raimund.koch ) (1, 3, 4); Gieves Anderson (@gievesanderson ) (5); ⁠ Image © Binyan (2)⁠ ⁠ .⁠ .⁠ .⁠ ⁠ #architecture #arquitecturamoderna #architettura #建築 #design #architecturalphotography ⁠#instaarchitecture #archdaily #architect #architectureanddesign #architektur #architecturaldesign #instaarch #newyorkcity #newyork #manhattan #skyscraper