Albeit small, Slovenia is a captivating country. Bordered by Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, it has one of the most diverse architectural cultures of central Europe. It is also home to one of the richest and most diverse natural landscapes of Europe, stretching from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea. Jože Plečnik, Slovenia’s most influential modernist architect, along with Ivan Vurvik, and his work regarding the iconic “Slovene National Style”, became the founders of the Ljubljana School of Architecture. Their unique architectural style amalgamated modernism, the Vienna Secession (a type of Art Nouveau) and past historical ideas and forms, which became the blueprint for the country’s contemporary architectural practice.

This young generation of architects is passionately embracing environmentally sustainable designs both within dense urban fabrics and natural terrains. Modern structures, such as the Plečnik House and the Stožice Stadium, showcase a fusion of contemporary aesthetics and eco-conscious design principles, developing an extraordinary architectural identity and design practice within the country.

With so many architecture firms to choose from, it’s challenging for clients to identify the industry leaders that will be an ideal fit for their project needs. Fortunately, Architizer is able to provide guidance on the top design firms in Slovenia based on more than a decade of data and industry knowledge.

How are these architecture firms ranked?

The following ranking has been created according to key statistics that demonstrate each firm’s level of architectural excellence. The following metrics have been accumulated to establish each architecture firm’s ranking, in order of priority:

• The number of A+Awards won (2013 to 2026)
• The number of A+Awards finalists (2013 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Project of the Day” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Featured Project” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects uploaded to Architizer (2009 to 2026)

Each of these metrics is explained in more detail at the foot of this article. This ranking list will be updated annually, taking into account new achievements of Slovenian architecture firms throughout the year.

Without further ado, here are the 30 best architecture firms in Slovenia:

30. Prima

© Prima d.o.o.

Prima architectural office was established in 1990. The office uses a multidisciplinary approach to projects of various scales, from urban planning, architecture, interior design, to stage design.

Some of Prima’s most prominent projects include:

• In the Land of Capricorn, Kranjska Gora, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Prima achieve 30th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

29. SKUPAJ ARHITEKTI

© Janez Marolt

Skupaj arhitekti, led by architect Tomaž Ebenšpanger, is an architectural practice active since 2011, bringing together a strong social sensibility and a continuous pursuit of spatial and material beauty. In addition to residential architecture, the practice is actively involved in education and training for both children and adults. Their work is grounded in a participatory approach to planning and design, based on the belief that inclusive design processes lead to a higher quality of living once residents occupy the space. The practice understands architecture as both rational and poetic. In close collaboration with clients, they engage in a shared process of discovering architecture that enhances authentic spatial experience, material expression, and carefully considered architectural details.

Some of SKUPAJ ARHITEKTI’s most prominent projects include:

• Living in Alpine Village, Stara Fužina, Slovenia

The following statistics helped SKUPAJ ARHITEKTI achieve 29th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

28. studio PIKAPLUS

© studio PIKAPLUS

The built and natural environment are inextricably linked. Architecture and interiors frame the views, glorify and enhance the qualities of the environment in which they find themselves.

In STUDIO PIKAPLUS, we are a team of architects and landscape architects who integrate architectural and landscape architectural projects through comprehensive solutions in respect for the environment and to enable the comfort of modern living. We produce comprehensive architecture projects, interior design plans and landscape architecture plans.

Some of studio PIKAPLUS’ most prominent projects include:

• The Wooden house, Slovenia

The following statistics helped studio PIKAPLUS achieve 28th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

27. Gartner Arhitekti

© Gartner Arhitekti

Gartner Arhitekti was founded in 2010. Our field of activity covers everything from interiors and single-apartment buildings to larger and more demanding buildings, as well as energy renovations and renovations of buildings of all sizes. Regardless of the size, we try to create a functional, aesthetic, unique, and technically perfect product with each project.

Some of Gartner Arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• Low-energy Sports Hall Mengeš, Mengeš, Slovenia
• Milka Boutique Hotel & Restaurant, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Gartner Arhitekti achieve 27th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

26. elastik

© Miran Kambic

Elastik is an international brand for networking and designing architecture, urbanism and media with other disciplines. We strive for performative and aesthetic improvement of buildings, for connectivity between functionality and technique.

Elastik is an architectural studio organized as an international network of individuals who come forward to form project groups according to the specific requirements of a given project or of the client in question; hence, the name Elastik. In this context, Elastik works independently of various geographic and political borders and as an adaptable meshwork.

Some of elastik’s most prominent projects include:

• Mezzanine house, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Facelift of a semi-detached house, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Harmonica House, Dolšce, Slovenia

The following statistics helped elastik achieve 26th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

25. Landscape

© Landscape d.o.o.

Established by partners Gregor Vreš and Tina Demšar in 1998, Landscape brings a different way of looking at each design project. Our landscape architectural office focuses on creating modern luxury through fully integrated landscape and architectural designs with strong attention to detail. Through modern reinterpretation of heritage, the traditional and the indigenous characteristics of the location, we create unique spaces.

Some of Landscape’s most prominent projects include:

• BLED // Garden Village Bled, Bled, Slovenia
• Aromatic Mediterranean garden, Slovenia
• Urban garden renovation, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Urban Sculpture Garden, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• LJUBLJANA // Biotechnical faculty, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Landscape achieve 25th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

24. Studio 360

© Miran Kambic

STUDIO 360 is a company providing integrated solutions in the fields of architecture and branding. Ten years of experience, the combination of two- and three-dimensional expertise and many international awards guarantee our excellence, contributing to the strategic brand development, efficient results and client satisfaction.

The 360 architectural department focuses on flexible design concepts and innovative building techniques that improve the quality of living. Every building receives a comprehensive solution: analysis of context, client’s brief, investment and construction technologies. We aim to achieve more with less and creatively transform constraints into opportunities. Our know-how allows a smooth transition from concept to implementation.

Some of Studio 360’s most prominent projects include:

• Geometric Residence, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Cat’s Residence, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Dermatology Clinic, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Exhibition set, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Business society offices, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Studio 360 achieve 24th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

23. AKSL arhitekti

© Janez Marolt

Founded in the year 2000 by distinguished architects Špela Leskovic and Aleš Košak, AKSL architects is a dynamic design firm that emerged from the hallowed halls of the Faculty for Architecture in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Both founders graduated with honors, setting the foundation for a future marked by innovation and excellence.

AKSL architects operates at the intersection of architecture and interior design, bringing a holistic approach to their projects. Their portfolio reflects a commitment to multidisciplinary collaboration, drawing on the expertise of professionals from various fields. This inclusive approach ensures that each project benefits from a diverse range of perspectives, resulting in unique and well-rounded designs.

Over the past decade, AKSL architects has transcended its origins, evolving into an international design office that leaves its mark on a global scale.

Some of AKSL arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• House 5Ž, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Bookstore Modrijan, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Cafeteria Rog
• Restaurant Evergreen, Smlednik, Slovenia
• Restaurant Element, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped AKSL arhitekti achieve 23rd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

22. OD-DO architecture

© OD-DO architecture, Navor

Od-do architecture was founded by architects Aleš Žmavc and Matic Škarabot in 2018. The company was founded as a result of receiving 1st prize in the public competition for the Footbridge over the Soča River in Tolmin, Slovenia. Since then, we have completed over 100 successful projects and expanded our team with skilled architects and design professionals. Our designs cover more than 30,000 square meters of public, private, and commercial real estate, and we have collaborated with over 20 public and private companies. We work on a range of scales from interior design projects to large-scale urban developments. Our portfolio is a testament to our commitment to delivering innovative architecture, high-quality design, and value-driven solutions that meet the needs of our clients and generate value for users.

Some of OD-DO architecture’s most prominent projects include:

• Comprehensive renovation and extension of the Kindergarten, Učenjak unit, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped OD-DO architecture achieve 22nd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

21. ARK Arhitektura Krušec

© Miran Kambic

Arhitektura Sagadin is an architecture firm based in Slovenia. The firm’s portfolio includes an array of projects, from residential to institutional and urban interventions.

Some of ARK Arhitektura Krušec’s most prominent projects include:

• NZS Headquarters, Kranj, Slovenia
• House on Golo, Golo, Slovenia

The following statistics helped ARK Arhitektura Krušec achieve 21st place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

20. Bevk Perović arhitekti

© OFIS architects, SADAR + VUGA, dekleva gregoric architects, Bevk Perović arhitekti

In 1997, Vasa J. Perović and Matija Bevk founded Bevk Perović arhitekti in Ljubljana, Slovenia. They work, alongside the international team of 9 young architects, on a diverse range of projects in different European countries.

Since its beginnings, the studio has received wide international recognition. They have been awarded numerous national and international prizes (European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Emerging Architect Award in 2007, Kunstpreis Berlin in 2006, Piranesi Award in 2005, 5 Plečnik Prizes for best building of the year in Slovenia, 4 Golden Pencil awards by the Chamber of Architects, Prešeren Prize, the highest national prize for culture, awarded by the President of the Republic of Slovenia in 2005, etc)

Bevk Perović arhitekti have recently won a few large international competitions – the competition for Refurbishment of Drama theatre in Ljubljana, the competition for Neue Galerie und Kasematten / Neue Bastei in Wiener Neustadt, competition for Highrise Apartment Building Nordbahnof in Vienna, Austria and most recently the competition for New Court Building and Main Bus Terminal in Ljubljana.

Some of Bevk Perović arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• The Cultural Center of European Space Technologies, Vitanje, Slovenia
• Apartment building Prule, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Bevk Perović arhitekti achieve 20th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

19. Arhitektura Sagadin

© AB objekt d.o.o.

Arhitektura Sagadin is an architecture firm based in Slovenia, with projects centered mostly around residential architecture.

Some of Arhitektura Sagadin’s most prominent projects include:

• Renovation of a house Slavik, Ptuj, Slovenia
• House on the edge of the forest, Sveti Jernej, Slovenia
• House Podgoro, Slovenske Konjice, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Arhitektura Sagadin achieve 19th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

18. Jereb in Budja arhitekti

© Jereb in Budja arhitekti d.o.o.

The office was founded in 2007 by Rok Jereb (1975, Ljubljana) and Blaž Budja (1975, Kranj). They focus strongly on thoughtful and detailed architecture, emphasising relations between the local environment and the client. They won several architectural competitions: Sports hall Stopiče (Novo Mesto, Slovenia), Ljubljana main train station (in collaboration, Slovenia), Kokra Canyon revitalisation (Kranj, Slovenia), Social housing (Ivančna Gorica, Slovenia) and others.

Spots Hall Stopiče was awarded the main Slovenian architecture award, Plečnik medal in 2012 and was nominated for the European Union Prize for Architecture Mies van der Rohe award 2013.

Some of Jereb in Budja arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• Retirement Home Šmarje pri Jelšah, Šmarje pri Jelšah, Slovenia
• Mothers home Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Occupational Activity Center INCE, Mengeš, Slovenia
• Stopiče Sports Center, Novo Mesto, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Jereb in Budja arhitekti achieve 18th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

17. scapelab

© scapelab

Scapelab is an architectural office established in 2001 by Marko Studen, who graduated from the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Architecture and GSAPP, Columbia University, New York. For six years, he was director of Europan Slovenia, an international housing competition project, and a lecturer at both the Faculty of Architecture in Ljubljana and the University of California. He was an editorial board member of Piranesi Magazine and Art.si Magazine, and a member of national and international competition jury committees. He is a co-editor of European Urbanity: Europan 7 and 8, Austria and Slovenia (Springer Verlag, 2006).

Some of scapelab’s most prominent projects include:

• SIMPLE HOUSE, Radovljica, Slovenia
• DR HOUSE, Slovenske Konjice, Slovenia
• Slovenska Boulevard, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• SUN PARK, Lucija, Slovenia

The following statistics helped scapelab achieve 17th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

16. Sanja Premrn

© Sanja Premrn

In our work, we do not distinguish between architecture and interior design. We strive to offer a holistic approach that encompasses all aspects of design.

Some of Sanja Premrn’s most prominent projects include:

• Ceramic studio reno, Slovenia
• SPIN bar, Kozina, Slovenia
• Picerija in oštarija Tonca, Kozina, Slovenia
• Concrete house, Bartlesville, Oakland
• Našahiša, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Sanja Premrn achieve 16th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

15. AB objekt

© Matej

AB objekt is an architecture firm based in Celje, Slovenia. Its work is centered around residential architecture.

Some of AB objekt’s most prominent projects include:

• House on the edge of the forest, Sveti Jernej, Slovenia
• Renovation of a house, Slavik, Ptuj, Slovenia
• House 34m, Vojnik, Slovenia
• House DB, Pongrac, Slovenia
• House Svetelka, Svetelka, Slovenia

The following statistics helped AB objekt achieve 15th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

14. Tria Studio

© Tria Studio

Tria is an architecture studio that creates high-quality and innovative architectural solutions. Since its foundation in 2007, we have received numerous awards and distinctions in the field of architectural creation (public and invited competitions).

Some of Tria Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• House Celje, Celje, Slovenia
• Farewell Chapel Tuhinj, Zgornji Tuhinj, Slovenia
• Apartment Koseze, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Benetton Flagship Store, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Economics Library, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Tria Studio achieve 14th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

13. Arhitektura Jure Kotnik

© Janez Marolt

Arhitektura Jure Kotnik is an award-winning architectural office located in Ljubljana (SI) and Paris (F). It was founded in 2006 by architect Jure Kotnik. The office works in various fields of architecture, from research, design, to consulting for various international clients. Office became widely known first for its projects in the field of container architecture and later for the research and design of educational architecture, hybrid architecture and design. Jure Kotnik is the author of the bestselling first monograph on container architecture and the author of several internationally published books and articles. Jure Kotnik has won various awards for its innovative approach in architecture, and the projects have received worldwide media coverage.

Some of Arhitektura Jure Kotnik’s most prominent projects include:

• Kindergarten Kekec, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Kindergarten Jelka, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Kindergarten Ajda 2, Ravne na Koroškem, Slovenia
• 2+ Weekend House, Trebnje, Slovenia
• Šmartno Timeshare Kindergarten, Šmartno, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Arhitektura Jure Kotnik achieve 13th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

12. SADAR + VUGA

© Miran Kambic

SADAR+VUGA was founded by Jurij Sadar and Boštjan Vuga in 1996. Over the past two decades, the company has been an incubator of critical European architectural practice focusing on open, innovative and integrated architectural design and urban planning.

The office has a forward-leaping and often critical approach, covering a wide spectrum of production from urban planning to interior design. The stimulation for its projects comes from visual, audial and textual information, from art and fashion, science and technology, allowing them to generate a sensitive and responsive environment we live in.

Some of SADAR + VUGA’s most prominent projects include:

• Air Traffic Control Centre, Zgornji Brnik, Slovenia
• Boutique Almira Sadar, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• The Cultural Center of European Space Technologies, Vitanje, Slovenia
• Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Condominium Trnovski Pristan, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped SADAR + VUGA achieve 12th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

11. Fabrikat arhitektura

© Fabrikat arhitektura d.o.o.

Fabrikat arhitektura is an architecture and interior design firm based in Slovenia. Its work is centered around residential architecture.

Some of Fabrikat arhitektura’s most prominent projects include:

• Comprehensive renovation and extension of the Kindergarten, Učenjak unit, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• House DMD, Cerklje na Gorenjskem, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Fabrikat arhitektura achieve 11th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

10. SVET VMES

© Matevz Paternoster

SVET VMES was founded in 2010 as a non-formal creative group of architects from Ljubljana, with an urge to question, explore and expose the potential of left-over, ‘in-between’ spaces within educational and public buildings. By shifting between observation and action.

SVET VMES analyses the existing dilapidated interior and exterior ‘in-between’ areas, to locate the sore points and to remediate, heal and transform them into places of events, potential, comfort, interaction, negotiation, delight and seclusion, inventing a new kind of ‘loaded’ interstitial typology. Our interventions of various scales allow us to instigate and explore new ‘in-between’ behaviors, encourage spatial sensitivity and emergence among people, challenge their daily patterns and disturb the existing social reality.

SVET VMES has, in recent years, continuously modified and transformed into a venturesome and research-driven design practice, whose work was locally and internationally recognized, published and awarded.

Some of SVET VMES’s most prominent projects include:

• Blue Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• School Landscape, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Three Containers, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Rotating Wall, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Loggia, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped SVET VMES achieve 10th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

9. dans arhitekti

© dans arhitekti

In our office, DANS arhitekti, we create spaces and culture in which we live, work, feel and socialize with each other. We are consciously exploring the relationship between people and the built environment. We think about innovative ways of using the space and, at the same time, drawing from archaic building principles, exploiting the opportunities opened by sustainable construction, and the possibility of creating pleasant, livable spaces. No matter if we are designing urban public spaces or facilities with a focus on engineering and technology, large spaces with heavy flow of people or intimate ambiances we try to create different moods through the use of nuances and careful details.

Some of dans arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• Bicycle Bridge Across the Sava River, Bohinjska Bistrica, Slovenia
• Grosuplje Cultural Center, Grosuplje, Slovenia
• Renovation of terraced houses Progres – Mirje, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Don Bosco Church, Maribor, Slovenia
• Holiday house BNKS, Novigrad, Croatia

The following statistics helped dans arhitekti achieve 9th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

8. abiro

© Miran Kambič

Under this name, a three-room architects’ office was founded in 1998, but later it has been constantly expanding and changing. The current team is made up of Matej Blenkuš — head of the practice, Katja Cimperman, Grega Valencic, Aleksander Cifer, Sara Ambrus and Deja Dukic, all of them graduated architects.

Some of abiro’s most prominent projects include:

• DARS Office building, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Ski Jumps Planica, Rateče, Slovenia
• Wine Cellar, Brežice, Slovenia

The following statistics helped abiro achieve 8th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

7. Superform

© Superform

SUPERFORM is an innovative architectural practice from Slovenia, founded by Marjan Poboljšaj and Anton Žižek in 2001. It is successfully active in the field of architecture, interior design and urban planning.

Superform introduces a new approach: architecture is an experience, which we sense on the three levels of perception: mental level, sensual level and physical level. Every Superform project has a specific code. The code of the project is a sum of the perception levels and the specific name of the project, which classifies the story/saga of each project. With the project code, Superform communicates with the client and the public.

Some of Superform’s most prominent projects include:

• House – My little big world, Rogaška Slatina, Slovenia
• House – Route Home, Maribor, Slovenia
• Assembly and storage facility Tajfun, Šentjur pri Celju, Slovenia
• Kindergarten Cerkvenjak, Cerkvenjak, Slovenia
• Apartment – Towards the sun, Ljubljana, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Superform achieve 7th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

6. Atelje Ostan Pavlin

© Virginia Vrecl

Atelje Ostan Pavlin (Aleksander Ostan, Nataša Pavlin and collaborators) is an architectural firm, active within the broader field of living cultures that include planning, building, leading workshops, teaching, lecturing, researching, writing, etc. The core of our interest lies within the concepts of responsible, sustainable living, planning and building paradigm in urban, rural and natural environments.

We research diverse regional traditions of the world (anonymous architecture) on one hand and new, inventive, participative architecture on the other hand. We love to work in naturally and culturally diverse and sensitive environments, being aware of the complex and critical situation the world is in. We are reading the complex, multilayered context of each situation, trying to respond to the task in a complex but simple way.

Some of Atelje Ostan Pavlin’s most prominent projects include:

• Cycling and Pedestrian Bridge in Bohinj, Slovenia, Radovljica, Slovenia
• Interpretation Center of Biodiversity and Pile Dwellings in the Ljubljana Marsh Nature Park, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Renovation of a residential house in Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Wooden extension to an existing house, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Family Chapel near Bovec, Bovec, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Atelje Ostan Pavlin achieve 6th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

5. dekleva gregoric architects

© Flavio Coddou Photography

dekleva gregoric arhitekti was set up in 2003 by Aljosa Dekleva and Tina Gregoric after returning from the Architectural Association, London, where they had both been studying for their Master’s degrees. Aljosa Dekleva, M.Arch (AA Dist), b.1972, Postojna, Slovenia, 1998 graduated from Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2001 Master’s degree in Architecture with Distinction, DRL, Architectural Association, London. Tina Gregoric, M.Arch (AA Dist), b.1974, Kranj, Slovenia, 2000, graduated from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2001, Master’s degree in Architecture with Distinction, DRL, Architectural Association, London.

Some of dekleva gregoric architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Pavilion of Slovenia: Leave Minimal Mark – EXPO Osaka 2025
• Compact Karst House, Vrhovlje, Slovenia
• Sunken design studio , Škofja Loka, Slovenia
• Chimney House, Logatec, Slovenia
• Home at Arsenale – La Biennale di Venezia, Slovenian pavilion, Venice, Italy

The following statistics helped dekleva gregoric architects achieve 5th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

4. Arhitektura

© Arhitektura

ARHITEKTURA is a company where the experience and ideas of two generations converge in a common cultural motive: making good architecture. Architecture that is both rational and poetic. Architecture, which is the result of a wider spatial, historical, technological and social context, and is something that arises without predefined forms and is only just looking for its aesthetic justification. Architects, model-makers, interior and product designers are working in our office in Ljubljana. Together we have dedicated ourselves to enriching spatial life in the fields of architecture, urbanism and design since 1997.

Some of Arhitektura’s most prominent projects include:

• Suha Private House
• Zois House Studios, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Folding Wall Apartment, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• The Black Barn, Slovenia
• Rafting Bridge, Celje, Slovenia

The following statistics helped Arhitektura achieve 4th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

3. SoNo arhitekti

© SoNo arhitekti

SoNo arhitekti unites a new generation of Slovenian architects to create a modern, high-quality architecture that is emerging as a mix of architectural theory, study and research of the sites’ locations, innovation and testing of new materials and construction methods.

Our typical architecture is a complex, unconventional structure that strives to be placed into the landscape as best as possible, satisfying the client’s desires and needs, efficiently including natural resources, which is reflected in the innovative floor plan solutions.

Some of SoNo arhitekti’s most prominent projects include:

• House M, Slovenia
• House PT, Slovenia
• House Re, Vrhnika, Slovenia
• Mountain View House, Austria
• Musterhaus Wienna, Vienna, Austria

The following statistics helped SoNo arhitekti achieve 3rd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

2. OFIS architects

© OFIS architects

OFIS architects is an architectural office based in Ljubljana, formed by Rok Oman and Spela Videcnik in 1998. They studied architecture at the Ljubljana School of Architecture and at the Architectural Association in London (grad.2000). OFIS work negotiates between architectural projects in different scales (from 30 square meters to 50,000 square meters), performing arts and set design. OFIS has partner firm agreements in London, Paris and Moscow. Their academic career involves teaching at Harvard GSD in Boston.

Some of OFIS architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Alpine Shelter Skuta, Slovenia
• Winter Cabin on Mount Kanin, Kanin
• Shoebox House, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Alpine Ski Apartments, Kranjska Gora, Slovenia
• Tetris Apartments

The following statistics helped OFIS architects achieve 2nd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

1. ENOTA

© Miran Kambič

Enota was founded in 1998 with the ambition to create a contemporary and critical architectural practice of an open type based on a collective approach to the development of architectural and urban solutions. Over the years, Enota has been constantly developing, and from its beginnings, it has served as a creative platform for more than fifty architects. Enota is led by founding partners and principal architects Dean Lah and Milan Tomac. Constant changes and new complex situations in the world around us drive us to think about new ways of architectural and urban organization. In order to be able to produce answers to those new questions, we believe it’s time to surpass the boundaries of conventional disciplines set mainly by our cultural backgrounds.

Some of ENOTA’s most prominent projects include:

• Ptuj Performance Center, Ptuj, Slovenia
• Češča Vas Pool Complex, Češča Vas, Slovenia
• Češča Vas Pool Complex, Novo Mesto, Slovenia
• Velenje Car Park, Velenje, Slovenia
• Wellness Plesnik, Mozirje, Slovenia
• Featured image: Termalija Family Wellness, Šmarje pri Jelšah, Slovenia

The following statistics helped ENOTA achieve 1st place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in Slovenia:

Why Should I Trust Architizer’s Ranking?

With more than 30,000 architecture firms and over 130,000 projects within its database, Architizer is proud to host the world’s largest online community of architects and building product manufacturers. Its celebrated A+Awards program is also the largest celebration of architecture and building products, with more than 400 jurors and hundreds of thousands of public votes helping to recognize the world’s best architecture each year.

Architizer also powers firm directories for a number of AIA (American Institute of Architects) Chapters nationwide, including the official directory of architecture firms for AIA New York.

An example of a project page on Architizer with Project Award Badges highlighted

A Guide to Project Awards

The blue “+” badge denotes that a project has won a prestigious A+Award as described above. Hovering over the badge reveals details of the award, including award category, year, and whether the project won the jury or popular choice award.

The orange Project of the Day and yellow Featured Project badges are awarded by Architizer’s Editorial team, and are selected based on a number of factors. The following factors increase a project’s likelihood of being featured or awarded Project of the Day status:

• Project completed within the last 3 years
• A well-written, concise project description of at least 3 paragraphs
• Architectural design with a high level of both functional and aesthetic value
• High-quality, in-focus photographs
• At least 8 photographs of both the interior and exterior of the building
• Inclusion of architectural drawings and renderings
• Inclusion of construction photographs

There are 7 Projects of the Day each week and a further 31 Featured Projects. Each Project of the Day is published on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Stories, while each Featured Project is published on Facebook. Each Project of the Day also features in Architizer’s Weekly Projects Newsletter and is shared with 170,000 subscribers.

We’re constantly look for the world’s best architects to join our community. If you would like to understand more about this ranking list and learn how your firm can achieve a presence on it, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at editorial@architizer.com.

The post 30 Best Architecture and Design Firms in Slovenia appeared first on Journal.

The judging process for Architizer's 14th A+Awards is now underway. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive updates about Public Voting, and stay tuned — winners will be announced later this spring.  

For decades, urban planning has operated under a constant daytime bias. Our streets, parks and plazas are designed to peak during the 9-to-5 window, with almost no attention to anyone outside that window. Historically, this transition from day to night has been treated as a functional off switch, with cities managing the dark hours through the narrow, clinical lenses of basic visibility or reactive policing.

This traditional approach ignores a fundamental reality: the city doesn’t sleep.

When we design only for daylight, we ignore the second half of the day and the diverse population that inhabits it, from healthcare workers and logistics crews to hospitality staff. The scale of this oversight is massive. According to the World Economic Forum (2024), New York City’s nighttime economy generates over $35.1 billion annually and supports 300,000 jobs, while in London, the nighttime sector contributes £26 billion and employs more than one million people.

Recognising this, a shift in urban governance is taking place. Several years ago, the Netherlands pioneered the role of the Night Mayor (Nachtburgemeester), a municipal title for someone who represents and develops a city’s life after dark. This movement has since gone global; Amy Lamé serves as London’s first Night Czar, and Washington, D.C. has established a Director of the Mayor’s Office of Nightlife and Culture. These officials act as essential mediators between daytime bureaucracy and nighttime reality.

At this intersection, Nighttime Urbanism enters the conversation. This strategic planning approach to the design and management of cities between 6 PM and 6 AM aims to create safe, dynamic and inclusive 24-hour environments. By balancing the needs of the nighttime economy (such as culture, entertainment and logistics) with the requirements of night-shift workers and residents, as well as ecological sustainability, nighttime urbanism ensures that the city remains a living, breathing entity long after the sun goes down.

The Economic Reality of the 24-Hour City

Chinatown Night Market by di Domenico + Partners, New York City, New York

When we discuss the “night economy,” we often think of neon signs and crowded dance floors. While culture and leisure are vital, they are only the visible tip of a massive economic iceberg.

Today’s 24-hour city is a complex machine powered by a diverse, often invisible workforce that keeps the metropolis’s heart beating. The scale of this “second shift” is becoming a primary driver of urban policy.

In the United Kingdom, the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) reported in 2025 that the nighttime economy accounts for 6% of the UK’s total GDP. Furthermore, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that roughly 27% of the total UK workforce (about 8.7 million people) now work during the night.

Also, in the United States, mid-sized cities are showing similar economic weight. According to a 2025 report from the International Downtown Association (IDA), nighttime spending in US 24-hour districts has grown 15% faster than daytime retail spending since 2022. In Philadelphia, a recent study by Econsult Solutions found that the nighttime economy has a total annual impact of $30.4 billion. Crucially, the largest share of this (nearly 40%) comes from “Night Shift Industries” like healthcare, logistics, and emergency services, rather than just food and beverage. Similarly, in Atlanta, the nighttime sector generates $5.1 billion in direct revenue annually, supporting over 41,000 jobs.

AVILA New Nightscape Masterplan by AUREOLIGHTING, Ávila, Spain

For architects and urban planners, these figures represent a massive, underserved demographic. If a city’s economy relies on billions of dollars generated between 6 PM and 6 AM, the physical environment must reflect that value.

Supporting this economy requires moving beyond surviving the night and toward thriving in it. However, the experience of the 24-hour city is not universal; it is also deeply shaped by gender and identity. For women, non-binary individuals and the LGBTQ+ community, the second half of the day often brings a heightened negotiation with the built environment — that is, higher alert. True nighttime urbanism must, therefore, prioritise inclusive infrastructure that goes beyond basic illumination to address perceived and actual safety.

This means designing well-lit transit hubs for the 3 AM nurse, but also ensuring those hubs have “eyes on the street” and clear lines of sight to reduce the feeling of isolation. It involves creating 24-hour third spaces that offer refuge and utility for shift workers and students alike.

For the LGBTQ+ community, nighttime urbanism is also about preserving and protecting queer space. As many traditional LGBTQ+ venues face closure due to rising rents, urban planning must moderate to ensure these safe havens are integrated into the city’s permanent fabric, rather than pushed to the dark, industrial periphery.

From “Daytime Bias” to Architectural Agency

Chinatown Night Market by di Domenico + Partners, New York City, New York

As designers, our professional development is currently inhibited by a pervasive daytime bias. Throughout our education and practice, we are taught to prioritize the aesthetic and functional properties of the built environment under the sun. We render buildings for noon-day clarity, study shadow diagrams for solar gain, and conceptualise masterplans as static, 9-to-5. Even when we personally admire the night city, our representational tools (and by extension, our design instincts) tend to treat the night as a binary off switch rather than a dynamic, distinct design phase. We must face the fact that our current architectural toolkit is largely “solar-centric.” If we only visualize space through the high-contrast lens of daylight, we basically blind ourselves to 50% of the city’s actual operational life.

However, we are at a critical tipping point. As the 24-hour economy becomes a foundational pillar of productivity, and as our climate crisis necessitates more robust adaptation, the night is re-emerging as a frontier for architectural innovation. As daytime temperatures in urban heat islands reach extreme levels, the nighttime use of parks, plazas, and transit hubs becomes a necessary adaptation to keep cities livable.

Frozen Trees by LIKEarchitects, Lisbon, Portugal

We can see the early seeds of this shift in contemporary practice, beginning with the power of tactical activation and modularity.

For example, the Chinatown Night Market in New York shows that nighttime infrastructure does not require massive, permanent construction to succeed. By using a tailored, modular layout for vendor stations and infrastructure, the design team successfully transformed an underutilised plaza into a 24-hour economic engine. This project proves that flexible, human-centric design can successfully invite foot traffic during previously dead hours, showing how we can make our cities more welcoming and accessible by simply reconsidering the temporal choreography of existing civic space.

Beyond temporary activations, we must also explore the potential of atmospheric typology and material innovation. Projects like Frozen Trees in Lisbon and the Open-Air Market in Bangkok challenge the permanence of architectural form. The former uses temporary, ethereal lighting to transform a standard civic square into a sensory nighttime landscape. At the same time, the latter elevates the traditional tent typology into a fixed, semi-permanent structure that accommodates changes in commercial events.

Open-Air Market by STA, Bangkok, Thailand

Also, we must scale these interventions to the systemic level, as shown by the Ávila New Nightscape Masterplan in Spain. This project represents a necessary change in how we view urban lighting, treating light as a precious, non-renewable resource — much like water or energy. By balancing the complex requirements of tourism, economic activity, and safety with the essential ecological need to reduce light pollution and restore the visibility of the stars, the project frames architecture not as a static object but as a dynamic system that intervenes among human experience, economic necessity, and environmental integrity.

So, to design for the 24-hour city, we must abandon the copy-paste approach of daytime planning and instead adopt a nighttime lens: one that prioritizes the sensory experience of the 3 AM nurse, the ecological impact of our light footprints, and the social equity of our public spaces. This requires a new commitment to “night-rendering,” modelling the city as it truly is: a complex, layered and perpetually active organism.

The judging process for Architizer's 14th A+Awards is now underway. Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter to receive updates about Public Voting, and stay tuned — winners will be announced later this spring.  

The post The City Doesn’t Sleep: Nighttime Urbanism and Architecture’s Daytime Bias appeared first on Journal.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

The Baltic States are often discussed in geopolitical terms, occasionally in economic ones, but rarely as architectural protagonists. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania tend to sit in the shadow of their Nordic neighbors, despite producing a body of contemporary work that is confident, precise and distinctly regional.

In the decades following renewed independence, public buildings have taken on particular weight. Museums, concert halls, municipal offices, plazas and even modest infrastructural projects have become ways of expressing identity and long-term direction. Rather than leaning on spectacle, many of these works rely on material clarity, landscape awareness and a measured dialogue with history.

From timber pavilions in small island towns to copper-clad concert halls and carefully inserted museum spaces within centuries-old walls, this collection looks at how the Baltics are shaping their public realm today and why it deserves far more attention.

Kärdla City Pavilion

By Olsson Lyckefors Arkitektur, Estonia

Every small town needs a room of its own. In Kärdla, that room now stands at the center of the square. Built to mark Estonia’s centenary, the pavilion gathers daily life that once felt dispersed. The concept draws on Hortus Conclusus, the enclosed garden. Timber walls define a sheltered courtyard within the open townscape.

The interior is calm and largely open, while activity lines the edges. Market stalls, a small stage and an info center face outward toward the square. Slender wooden slats filter light, with spacers referencing patterns from Kärdla’s textile past. A glass roof admits sky and weather. Over time, the timber will weather, and the garden will grow denser, giving the square a steady civic presence.

Biotoop Cultural Center

By McKinley Studios, Tartu, Estonia

Proposed for a riverside site along the Emajõgi in Tartu, Biotoop Cultural Centre imagines a compact cultural building embedded within parkland. The concept limits its footprint so that the surrounding landscape remains dominant, organizing the program across six levels, with two placed below ground to reduce visual impact.

Each level is conceived as a spatial interpretation of one of Estonia’s five national park landscapes. Undulating floor plates circle an open courtyard and connect through a continuous ramp, guiding visitors upward through museum spaces, a library, a cinema, and restaurants. A rooftop park would frame views over the city, completing a gradual ascent from river to skyline.

Rural Municipality Building in Saue

By molumba, Saue, Estonia

Set at the edge of Saue’s central park, the rural municipal building closes the green space with quiet authority. From a distance, it reads as a pavilion. A carved archway cuts through the triangular volume, marking the entrance while offering shelter to passersby. A double-skin façade protects the workspaces within, balancing openness and privacy.

The plan follows a clear structure. Public services occupy the outer ring. A compact core contains council chambers and meeting rooms. The building is constructed entirely from CLT. Timber surfaces remain visible inside, their texture left raw. Systems are concealed beneath raised floors, keeping ceilings clear. The result is efficient, durable and grounded in material honesty.

V- Plaza Urban Development

By 3deluxe, Kaunas, Lithuania

In Kaunas, a former traffic-dominated square has been given back to people. V-Plaza replaces asphalt with movement shaped by cyclists, skaters and pedestrians. Two ground logics guide the design. A linear grid respects historic sightlines. Curved paths follow natural routes across the site.

Light granite, timber and sculpted white concrete define the terrain. Sloped lawns, stepped seating and skateable forms create an active surface. Water features cool the open plane and invite play. An underground garage keeps cars out of view. Surrounding buildings were renovated and extended, unified by white façades and open interiors. The result supports everyday use, public events and new patterns of urban mobility.

Kaunas City Museum

By Processoffice, Kaunas, Lithuania

Kaunas Town Hall has stood since 1542. Its latest transformation turns the historic structure into a contemporary museum while keeping its layered character visible. The design follows a clear principle: new elements must read as new. A “box-in-box” strategy inserts modern structures within the old fabric without erasing it.

Vaulted basements were cleaned and conserved. The unused attic now holds a suspended glass-and-steel pavilion, set within the timber roof frame. A sculptural copper staircase links the levels and signals the present moment. Original masonry, clay tiles and wood surfaces remain exposed. The result supports exhibitions, events and daily visitors without diluting the building’s past.

Lithuania House of Basketball

By Architectural bureau G.Natkevicius and partners, Kaunas, Lithuania

A museum dedicated to Lithuania’s most celebrated sport, the House of Basketball, stands at the meeting point of Kaunas Old Town and Santaka Park. The building marks the edge of the historic quarter while presenting a clear contemporary form. Its curved volume wraps around a century-old oak tree, which becomes the spatial anchor of the project. A small courtyard forms at this center, guiding visitors toward the entrance.

The façade is composed of aluminum framing, glass and copper plates. Over time, the copper will darken, aligning with the surrounding brick context. Inside, exposed concrete and restrained tones provide a neutral setting for the exhibition story.

More than just a public restroom

By Open Architecture Design, Riga, Latvia

Public restrooms rarely get architectural attention. In this project, however, they are treated as a deliberate urban gesture. Repurposed shipping containers form a compact sanitation block placed beside an existing staircase. The intervention is straightforward and visible, turning basic infrastructure into part of the spatial identity.

The containers are adapted for durability and efficient use. Bright light fixtures define the façade and support orientation after dark. Outdoor sinks help manage crowds during events. Drinking water stations and a small relaxation area respond to seasonal demand. Practical needs are addressed with clarity, giving everyday services a defined presence within the public realm.

Pedestrian Path and View Terrace

By DJA, Valmiera, Latvia

In Valmiera, this pedestrian path and viewing terrace turn a simple walk into a gradual approach toward the Gauja. A gravel track branches from the asphalt road and shifts into a timber walkway. It ends in a circular platform that meets the water with restraint.

The terrace stands above ground, as the site floods roughly once a decade. Its curved outline allows emergency vehicle access. The structure rests on pine timber frames, with concrete slabs used where utilities pass below. Larch planks with an anti-slip milling finish the surface. Seating rises from the deck, offering places to pause and face the river.

Great Amber – Concert Hall Liepaja

By Volker Giencke & Company, Latvia

Popular Choice Winner, Hall/Theater, 4th Annual A+Awards

A concert hall more than a century in the making, Great Amber finally opened in Liepāja in 2015. The monolithic, cone-shaped volume leans slightly, conceived as a response to the city known as the birthplace of wind. Its translucent amber façade wraps an irregular concrete structure, forming a protective envelope around the performance spaces within.

Inside, the main hall follows an oval vineyard layout to achieve precise acoustics, developed with Müller BBM. Helmholtz resonators and an adjustable reflector fine-tune the sound. Fourteen reflective tubes draw daylight deep into the interior. The building houses multiple stages and music education spaces, establishing a new cultural anchor for the city.

Pavilion and Workshops for Nature Concert Hall

By DJA, Sigulda, Latvia

Designed for the Nature Concert Hall in Gauja National Park, this pavilion serves as a stage, screen and spatial frame for a multimedia event that unites science and music. A chamber orchestra and band perform beneath its roof, while the façades carry light and video projections.

The volumes echo forms found in the landscape. The structure limits ground contact to protect the meadow. Nearby workshops use modular units that can be rearranged and carefully positioned. Vertical fabric bars wrap both pavilion and modules, rotating to adjust transparency and light. The project turns performance into a dialogue with nature.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

The post Public Architecture in the Baltics: Small Nations, Strategic Civic Design appeared first on Journal.

Other than that, for the first time this year, Architect’26 has started a new project, transforming the space in front of the Sky entrance to become the “Gateway of the exposition” where 40 designers collaborated with exhibitors to create 80 Moodboards, presenting them in the form of an Exhibition called “Palette of Materials Pavilion”.

These dedicated zones reveal the expansive potential of design made possible through collaborative processes that weave together the technical know-how of material manufacturers with the realized imagination of architects.

Before construction begins and installations rise within the exhibition halls of Architect’26, we invite readers to explore and reflect on the conceptual framework behind one of the event’s most anticipated highlights: the Thematic Pavilions and Palette of Materials Pavilion

Watsadu niyom x HAA Studio

Watsadu niyom x HAA Studio take on the challenge of preserving the original condition of every material component that forms their pavilion, specifically APC (Aluminium Plastic Composite) and WPC (Wood Plastic Composite), both recyclable materials. The design ensures that these materials remain intact and can be reclaimed for further use once the event concludes. Their architectural language emerges directly from the realities of the materials themselves, shaped by structural thinking and guided by an ethical approach to material use.

Temporality need not equate to wastefulness. The pavilion thus becomes a point of recognition, both as a spatial presence and as a statement of systemic responsibility toward materials. Its form draws inspiration from the fluid movement of the aurora across the night sky, reflecting the brand, Watsadu Niyom’s ongoing journey of transformation. Familiar materials such as wood-plastic composite louvers are reinterpreted through artistic expression and spatial composition, opening new perspectives on the material itself. The pavilion communicates through an environmental aesthetic shaped by ecological awareness across the material’s entire life cycle.

Vanachai x Studio Tofu

Vanachai x Studio Tofu present ‘Ngon Pavilion,’ a project that features Woodsmith, a wood product brand under the Vanachai Group, positioned as both a companion to homeowners and an environmentally responsible choice. The pavilion transforms these materials into an installation composed in a form deeply familiar to Thai spatial behavior at ground level, whether sitting, reclining, or resting. The floor plane, serving as the primary element of the pavilion, gradually lifts and curves upward, evolving into a curved amphitheater that extends from floor to wall. This gesture allows users to inhabit and engage with the surface freely and in close proximity.

The installation process was executed from the outset with precise calculations to minimize material waste. Should any offcuts remain from production, Vanachai has established a system to channel these remnants to a biomass power plant, where they are converted into energy. The project, therefore, reflects a material-conscious approach throughout the entire process, ensuring that each component is utilized efficiently and to its fullest potential.

TODA x Supermachine Studio

The design concept begins with the statement, ‘Artificiality in the New Reality,’ reflecting a world in which the boundary between nature and the man-made is increasingly blurred. This aligns with TODA’s ongoing work in developing alternative materials for the future, including artificial leather, flooring materials, and interior films; products that have seamlessly integrated into the environments we inhabit daily in the contemporary world.

The design draws upon the atmosphere of science fiction to construct a mechanical life-form vessel enveloped in 860 metal petals. Four natural materials, leather, wood, stone, and sand, serve as representatives of the natural resources from which TODA’s alternative materials originate. These elements act as carriers of a central proposition: that the future demands design and material development oriented toward responsibility, ensuring coexistence with people over the long term.

Panel Plus x ACa Architects

Panel Plus x ACa Architects convey the experience of being immersed in nature, as though surrounded by orderly rows of rubber trees. The design integrates the systematic logic of the architectural grid with the boundless sensation of a forest. The sustainable standard board materials of Panel Plus are transformed into an architectural experience, while simultaneously demonstrating the qualities of Perfect Wood and Perfect Match, whose grain, color, and edges align seamlessly as one continuous surface.

Given the pavilion’s limited footprint, the layout employs diagonal axes and layered spatial configurations to increase both material surface area and functional use. This approach unlocks the potential of wood board products, revealing them as a generative starting point for broader creative possibilities. Wood-grain textures and color variations are juxtaposed with mirrored aluminum panels to create reflections and spatial depth, while lighting design further accentuates the material’s details through the viewer’s own sensory perception.

Häfele x Jenchieh Hung + Kulthida Songkittipakdee / HAS design and research

Häfele x Jenchieh Hung + Kulthida Songkittipakdee / HAS design and research present the ASA Megä Hill pavilion, brought to life through an interpretation of the Architect Expo as a site for professional gathering and exchange within the architectural community. The mountain-like form connects ideas, people, and activities, functioning simultaneously as structure and circulation. It becomes a constructed landscape that visitors can traverse, interact with, and explore, engaging naturally with Häfele’s components and solutions.

The pavilion’s design and installation process prioritize resource efficiency and the reduction of post-exhibition waste. Eco-friendly materials are employed to achieve complex architectural forms while reducing the load on the primary structure. The pavilion is designed for disassembly and future reassembly, enabling reuse beyond the event. In this way, the project aligns creative production with the brand’s broader direction toward sustainable building solutions for the future.

SCG x SaTa Na

SCG x SaTa Na present The Delta Stack Pavilion, developed from an interpretation of the brief, ‘Beyond Materials, Into Life.’ The design begins with the material as the central protagonist. Conceived as a cave-like space, the pavilion invites visitors to inhabit and engage with materials through their own bodily gestures, allowing contact through multiple senses. Understanding of the material is further structured through a layered triangular system formed by the placement of primary materials at a 45-degree angle, combined with DECAAR panels installed at 90 degrees to generate rhythm, structure, and spatial depth.

The pavilion demonstrates that material itself reveals processes of thought, structural strength, and architectural potential, while remaining a tactile surface within close reach of the body. When material is touched, understood, and assembled, the architectural space becomes a space for people; one that can be actively inhabited and animated from within.

SMARTMATT INTO SPEC x Context Studio

SMARTMATT INTO SPEC x Context Studio presents ‘Pransathan,’ a space dedicated to cultivating mindfulness amid the rapid pace of the contemporary world and the surrounding flux of circumstances. The act of meditative breathing is translated into the compression and expansion of interior space, organized into three primary zones: a tunnel for gathering awareness, a space for recognizing one’s present state and surrounding environment, and a central chamber where concentration culminates in heightened mindfulness.

SMARTMATT’s SPC synthetic wood material is composed with careful precision, measured intervals, and voids that form fluid, rounded geometries. These spatial gestures generate atmosphere and shared sensory experience for visitors moving through Pransathan. The material system and structural components are designed for disassembly and reconfiguration, allowing the form to be adapted to varying activities, scales, and sites. In this way, the pavilion conveys its conceptual narrative fully through form and design process.

aluframe x Unknown Surface Studio

aluframe begins its design concept within the aluframe factory itself, drawing from the image of long aluminum profiles stacked in orderly layers on industrial racks. This image prompts a reflection on the intrinsic value of material and the need to cultivate awareness of material through the pavilion as a system of resource circulation. The material stock is thus unfolded into a public space where visitors can directly experience and perceive the potential of aluminum from a new perspective.

A triangular structure unfolds in a fan-like formation, generating multiple overlapping layers reminiscent of materials drawn from storage racks and transformed into architectural space. The voids between layers filter light and create rhythms of light and shadow shaped by the constant movement of people. Surface articulation is achieved by arranging aluminum cross-sections into patterned compositions, animating the industrial material. This strategy is integrated with aluframe’s aluminum sliding system, seamlessly connecting spatial design with engineering systems.

Palette of Materials Pavilion

Another key highlight is the Palette of Materials Pavilion, a collaboration between the organizer and Looklen Architects, created as an inspiring space that showcases the ideas and creative visions of 40 designers through 80 meticulously crafted mood boards composed from 800 different materials. The pavilion allows visitors to experience the emotions, design direction, and material-blending possibilities that shape contemporary architectural expression, offering a fresh and immersive way to engage with the Architect Expo. The Palette of Materials Pavilion serves as a landmark of materials, reorienting visitors and connecting them to the innovation and design at the heart of the expo.

This pavilion features a striking design built on a sustainable concept: reusing the Aluminum structures from S-one Group, which were previously featured in last year’s Architect Expo.

Beyond the main structure, several partners provided materials and equipment to enhance the visitor experience:

● LUMICÈLE™ by CPH: Smart ceiling and lighting systems.
● UNILAMP: ALPHA spotlights.
● TODA: Smart Flex Mirror panels.
● DEFG: A 3 x 2.5 meter LED screen.
● Zonic Vision: Audio and control systems.
● IS DELIGHT: Surrounding landscape design.
● Panel Plus: MDF wood bases for the mood boards.
● Pioneer: Furniture.
● Mahajak: Sound Systems
● Bua: Outdoor Furniture

Together, these elements complete the atmosphere and create a seamless experience for everyone who enters the space.

All eight Thematic Pavilion and Palette of Materials Pavilion can be experienced at Architect’26, taking place from April 28 to May 3, 2026, between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM, at Challenger Hall, IMPACT Muang Thong Thani. Advance registration is now open — click here to register.

For further updates and detailed information, please visit www.ArchitectExpo.com or follow the official channels on Facebook at งานสถาปนิก : ASA Architect Expo and Instagram at ASA Architect Expo 2026.

architectexpo.com
facebook.com/ASAArchitectExposition

The post Material Matters at ARCHITECT’26: When Designers Turn Building Products Into Architecture appeared first on Journal.

Architizer's 14th A+Awards judging is live! Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for updates on Public Voting and the big winner reveal later this spring.

While cohesion is often the safe route, we architects have always had a soft spot for material contrasts that, on paper, shouldn’t quite work, and yet somehow do. But when the line is clear, the result can feel sharper and more intentional than any carefully matched palette.

And at a time when add-ons and adaptive reuse are quite common and a renewed interest in honoring what already exists, these material splits have become even more visible. Extensions declare themselves. Insertions refuse to imitate. But the strategy isn’t limited to just renovations. Even new builds are embracing deliberate divides to clarify structure, signal function or simply establish identity.

This collection spotlights eight projects that draw that line with confidence. Projects where contrast isn’t an unplanned side effect, but the organizing idea.

Virunga Mountain Spirits Distillery

By BE_Design, Musanze, Rwanda

Jury Winner, Architecture +Low Cost Design, 13th Annual A+Awards
Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Low Cost Design, 13th Annual A+Awards
Special Mention, Factories & Warehouses, 13th Annual A+Awards

At the foot of the Virunga Mountains, this 1,100 square meters distillery is organized around a clear material divide. Designed for Virunga Mountain Spirits, a women-led Rwandan company, the building places production at its center and wraps it with a thick inhabitable wall.
The distillery room occupies a transparent and semi-transparent volume that exposes the full height of a 10-meter copper and stainless steel still. Daylight enters freely, turning the technical process into something visible and shared. Surrounding this luminous core, hand-shaped volcanic rock walls form a dense outer ring that contains offices, tasting areas and storage.

The Refinery at Domino

By Practice for Architecture & Urbanism | PAU, Brooklyn, New York

Jury Winner, Commercial Adaptive Reuse Projects, 12th Annual A+Awards
Popular Choice Winner, Commercial Adaptive Reuse Projects, 12th Annual A+Awards

Few industrial conversions have been as closely watched as the transformation of the former Domino Sugar Factory Refinery. Once built for sugar production, the landmark structure has been reworked into contemporary offices through a clear architectural incision: a new building inserted within the old masonry shell.

The original brick remains heavy and scarred, its small windows recalling a time of controlled light and intense labor. Set back from this envelope, a freestanding glass and steel vault introduces tall, accessible floor plates and daylight-filled atria. The contrast is intentional and sharp. Weathered masonry holds memory and mass, while the new interior form reads as light, precise and openly modern, establishing a firm line between preservation and present use.

A TOUCH OF NEW

By ARISTIDES DALLAS ARCHITECTS, Tinos Regional Unit, Greece

In the village of Triantaros, where houses have grown gradually through careful additions, this residence follows the same logic while making the moment of change explicit. The project begins with an existing Tinian stone structure, which is retained as the grounded base of the house. Instead of extending it in stone, a fair-face concrete volume is placed above, held apart by a continuous horizontal slit that marks the junction between eras.

This gap, filled with glazing, brings light into the depth of the plan and frames distant views, while making the construction sequence legible. The rough, load-bearing stone speaks of local building traditions and accumulated labor, while the smooth concrete sitting above reads as intentional and contemporary. The house tells its story through this measured separation, allowing old and new to coexist without imitation.

Arghavan (Cercis) Commercial Project

By 13 Degrees Architecture Studio, Yazd, Iran

Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Innovation, 13th Annual A+Awards

This project elevates wicker weaving from a rural technique to an architectural system, using branches of the Cercis tree to form a full building shell. What is usually temporary and lightweight is here organized, detailed and fixed in place.

The woven screen stands before a conventional structural frame, creating a clear separation between load-bearing construction and climatic envelope. Its porous surface filters Yazd’s intense sun and moderates heat, acting as a breathable membrane rather than a sealed wall. The contrast lies in the meeting of scales and values: fragile branches assembled by hand set against urban mass and standard building methods, transforming low-cost organic material into a permanent civic façade.

VJC Iporaga House

By Marina Salles Arquitetura e Interiores, Guarujá, Brazil

Set on a steep, forested site in Guarujá, VJC House is organized as a vertical sequence of platforms stepping down the terrain. The lower levels are partially embedded in the slope and contain the private rooms, while the upper floor opens toward the canopy and distant sea.
A concrete structure establishes the main slabs and roof plane, giving the house a clear geometric outline. Within this frame, wide glass panels and slatted timber screens define the living spaces. The wood wraps the middle levels as a permeable layer, filtering light and air, while granite floors extend from interior rooms to the pool deck, anchoring the house to the ground.

Thirty75 Tech

By Verse Design LA, Santa Clara, California

From across the intersection, Thirty75 Tech appears as two separate volumes placed side by side. A clear glass corner exposes the office floors directly to the street, while the rest of the building reads as a dense metallic mass.

As you approach, that reading shifts. The seemingly solid volume is, in fact, wrapped in a continuous layer of vertical aluminum louvers set in front of a curtain wall. What first feels opaque begins to reveal depth and spacing. The fins are precisely angled to meet solar shading targets, turning the façade into a performative screen that contrasts with the unfiltered transparency of the glass corner.

Lagar Oliq Complex

By Play Arquitetura, São Bento do Sapucaí, Brazil

Oliq Restaurant completes a small architectural ensemble built over nearly a decade around an olive oil production facility in rural Minas Gerais. What began as a simple shed for processing olives gradually expanded into an annex and, finally, a restaurant positioned at the front of the site overlooking the valley. Each phase is marked by a material shift. The original mill is defined by a broad wooden roof sheltering a timber box. The annex introduces concrete and masonry, partially embedded in the slope. The restaurant continues the progression with a stone-clad base and plastered upper volumes painted dark green. The project does not disguise its evolution. Wood, concrete and stone record different moments of growth, giving the ensemble a layered but legible identity.

Fire Station in Straubenhardt

By wulf architekten, Straubenhardt, Germany

This fire station brings together six previously independent firefighting units on a single, strategically located site. It was conceived according to the »Cradle to Cradle« principle, an approach to circular construction in which materials are selected, detailed and assembled so they can be disassembled and reused at the end of the building’s life.

The project organizes its operational, public and administrative spaces through a clear vertical stacking that is legible from the outside.

A concrete base is cut into the slope, containing the vehicle garage, storage and all essential operational facilities, with the north façade opening directly to the street for rapid deployment. Above it, an open-air deck functions as parking and event space. The top level is built in timber and wrapped in a continuous white expanded metal façade, housing classrooms and offices.

Architizer's 14th A+Awards judging is live! Subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for updates on Public Voting and the big winner reveal later this spring.

The post When Architecture Draws the Line: 8 Projects Where Material Contrast Is the Concept appeared first on Journal.

London is a city that has been forced to redevelop constantly. Like many cities, it has accrued layers of history. However, events like the Great Fire and the Blitz have also torn holes in the urban fabric, necessitating moments of reflection and rethinking. Nowadays, Georgian, Regency and Victorian architecture are intermingled with hulking Brutalist structures, curving glass façades and anonymous steel giants.

Nowadays, the city remains home to preeminent architectural schools such as UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture. In addition, London’s galleries and museums nurture a design culture with thought-provoking exhibitions about space and society, including the ever-popular Serpentine Pavilion. Meanwhile, as a global metropolis, the British city’s diversity is one of its great strengths, becoming home to a bevy of heavyweight firms and up-and-coming studios whose names are known locally and abroad.

With so many architecture firms to choose from, it’s challenging for clients to identify the industry leaders that will be an ideal fit for their project needs. Fortunately, Architizer is able to provide guidance on the top design firms in London based on more than a decade of data and industry knowledge.

How are these architecture firms ranked?

The following ranking has been created according to key statistics that demonstrate each firm’s level of architectural excellence. The following metrics have been accumulated to establish each architecture firm’s ranking, in order of priority:

• The number of A+Awards won (2013 to 2026)
• The number of A+Awards finalists (2013 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Project of the Day” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects selected as “Featured Project” (2009 to 2026)
• The number of projects uploaded to Architizer (2009 to 2026)

Each of these metrics is explained in more detail at the foot of this article. This ranking list will be updated annually, taking into account new achievements of London architecture firms throughout the year.

Without further ado, here are the 30 best architecture firms in London:

30. Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

© Jim Stephenson Architectural Photography + Films

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is an award-winning, international architectural practice based in London. Over three decades, RSHP has attracted critical acclaim with innovative projects across Europe, North America and Asia. The practice is experienced in designing a wide range of building types, including office, residential, transport, education, culture, leisure, retail, civic and healthcare.

The quality of its designs has been recognised with some of architecture’s highest awards, including two RIBA Stirling Prizes, one in 2006 for Terminal 4, Madrid Barajas Airport and the other in 2009 for Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre, London.

RSHP employs around 180 people in offices across the world – London, Shanghai, Sydney and Madrid.

Some of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ most prominent projects include:

• One Park Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan
• Jean Prouvé 6×6 Demountable House, 1944, Adaptation Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, 2015, Paris, France
• International Towers Sydney, Barangaroo, Australia
• Conservation and Storage Facility, Musée du Louvre, Liévin, France
• Oslo Airport Competition, Oslo, Norway

The following statistics helped Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners achieve 30th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

29. Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

© Allford Hall Monaghan Morris

At Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, we make buildings that are satisfying to use and beautiful to look at; an architecture that is defined by the experience of users who should be able to understand and use each building with ease and enjoyment.

We design very different buildings, for very different people to use in very different ways, and, since our early days in the late 1980s, we have grown from four to over one hundred and fifty people and our budgets from a few thousand to tens of millions of pounds.

Through our wide range of projects, we search for opportunities in every site, budget and programme and pursue a pragmatic, analytical and collaborative working method to produce a responsive, intelligent and delightful architecture.

Some of Allford Hall Monaghan Morris’ most prominent projects include:

• North London Hospice, London, United Kingdom
• Alder Centre, United Kingdom
• Barking Central, Barking, United Kingdom
• Burntwood School, London, United Kingdom
• Adelaide Wharf, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Allford Hall Monaghan Morris achieve 29th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

28. Farrells

© Farrells

Farrells is an international firm of architects, urban planners and designers, founded in 1965 by Sir Terry Farrell, an architect-planner and a leading proponent of urbanism. With offices in London, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, the firm is a group of diverse talent that has delivered a broad range of projects worldwide. Our international studios combine urban planning, architecture, and design, providing end-to-end services for projects of all sizes and industries, from concept to completion.

Some of Farrells’ most prominent projects include:

• Chelsea Waterfront, London, United Kingdom
• M+ Museum of Visual Culture, Hong Kong
• Kowloon Station Development, Hong Kong
• Qianhai Financial Centre, Shenzhen, China
• KK100, Shenzhen, China

The following statistics helped Farrells achieve 28th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

27. Carl Turner Architects

© Carl Turner Architects

Carl trained at the Royal College of Art, gaining a first-class honours degree and a RIBA Bronze Medal (runner-up) before undertaking an MA at the Royal College of Art in London. The RCA provided a foundation for collaboration and working across platforms with an integrated approach; Carl sees his approach to design and construction as an extension of his time there as a ‘maker’.

User-focused design was embedded as a founding principle for practice, through a two-year research post for the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre at the RCA, investigating new strategies for wayfinding for BAA plc at Heathrow’s Terminal 5. After working for Norman Foster on the Citibank Tower (Canary Wharf) and Penoyre and Prasad on various community-based projects, Carl formed a partnership (TurnerCastle).

Some of Carl Turner Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Slip House, United Kingdom
• Stealth Barn, United Kingdom
• Ochre Barn, Norfolk, United Kingdom
• Frame House, United Kingdom
• Tulip Bar, Milan, Italy

The following statistics helped Carl Turner Architects achieve 27th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

26. David Chipperfield Architects

© David Chipperfield Architects

David Chipperfield Architects was founded in 1985 and has offices in London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai. The practice works internationally on cultural, residential and commercial projects, providing full architectural and interior design, master planning, product and furniture design services for both public and private sectors. Our diverse built portfolio includes museums and galleries, libraries, apartments, private houses, hotels, offices, master plans, and retail facilities. David Chipperfield Architects has won more than fifty national and international competitions and many international awards and citations for design excellence.

Some of David Chipperfield Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, United Kingdom
• James Simon Gallery, Berlin, Germany
• Cafe Royal, Akasha Holistic Wellbeing Centre, London, United Kingdom
• Villa Eden, Italy
• Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany

The following statistics helped David Chipperfield Architects achieve 26th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

25. Jestico + Whiles

© Benedict Luxmoore

Jestico + Whiles is an award-winning architecture and interior design practice with a respected heritage, driven by curiosity and a passion for design. We run with purpose for the benefit of all.

Established as a design-led studio over 40 years ago, we pioneered employee-ownership in architectural practice in the UK. We have remained true to our core values of humanity and sustainability as we have grown into the thriving international practice that we are today. In 2024, we became a certified B Corp, recognising our commitment to social and environmental responsibility.

Our core ethos is to produce great design and have fun doing it.

Some of Jestico + Whiles’ most prominent projects include:

• National Graphene Institute, Manchester, United Kingdom
• Stoke Newington Sixth Form Centre, London, United Kingdom
• House 19, Amersham, United Kingdom
• Southwark Town Hall & Theatre, Peckham, London, United Kingdom
• Stoke Newington School and Sixth Form, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Jestico + Whiles achieve 25th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

24. Eldridge London

© Nicholas Guttridge

London architectural practice Eldridge Smerin was established in 1998 and has since relaunched as Eldridge London. Architect Nick Eldridge’s vision continues to inspire the design and material quality of the practice’s recent projects in the UK and abroad, defined by a series of cutting-edge houses, including the Stirling Prize-nominated Lawns project and the House in Highgate Cemetery.

The practice has also completed a number of high-profile retail, commercial and cultural projects, including interiors for Selfridges Birmingham, Villa Moda Kuwait, O2’s Mobile Applications Development Centre, the Design Council Headquarters, The Business and Intellectual Property Centre, a restaurant at the British Library and the Globe Theatre’s Sackler Studios.

The practice demonstrates a consistent approach to producing intelligent and unique solutions to specific client briefs and often constrained budgets with an unerring attention to detail from concept through to completion.

Some of Eldridge London’s most prominent projects include:

• Cor-Ten House in Putney, London, United Kingdom
• House in Coombe Park, Kingston, United Kingdom
• House in Epsom, Epsom, United Kingdom
• House in Chelsea, London, United Kingdom
• House in Highgate Cemetery, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Eldridge London achieve 24th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

23. Michaelis Boyd

© Studio Gang

Michaelis Boyd is a design-led architectural practice with a uniquely creative approach that challenges and develops a client’s brief to create elegant, effective and rewarding solutions. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that each scheme functions in the best possible manner, in terms of flow, light and space.

Some of Michaelis Boyd’s most prominent projects include:

• Sandibe Okavango Safari Lodge, North West, Botswana
• The Groucho Club, London, United Kingdom
• 11 Hoyt, Brooklyn, New York
• Arijiju, Kenya
• Brewdog Clapham, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Michaelis Boyd achieve 23rd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

22. FORM studio (previously FORM design architecture)

© Bruce Hemming Photography

Architecture has the power to transform environments and quality of life.

FORM studio aims to create places that can be inhabited and experienced by people in a natural and instinctive way. Enjoyable places with a tranquil sense of simplicity, which create a supportive and uplifting backdrop for life.

Individual solutions are developed for our clients, which are an intelligent, inventive and sustainable response to the complex matrix of issues that shapes each project. Solutions with a lucidity and apparent simplicity that belie their underlying complexity.

Listening, analysis, discussion and clarification are at the heart of an inclusive approach that recognises the fact that some of the best ideas are generated in the space between people rather than by individuals.

Some of FORM studio (previously FORM design architecture)’s most prominent projects include:

• Bermondsey Warehouse Loft, London, United Kingdom
• Walcot Square Mews, London, United Kingdom
• Flatiron House, London, United Kingdom
• Benbow Yard, London, United Kingdom
• Narrow House, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped FORM studio (previously FORM design architecture) achieve 22nd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

21. Hopkins Architects

© Hopkins Architects

Hopkins Architects is an international architectural practice with studios in London and Dubai. Led by its five Principals, the practice’s work is rooted in clear and logical design thinking, a deep understanding of the potential of materials and craft, and consideration of context. A consistent and rigorous approach has resulted in a portfolio of ground-breaking, beautiful and functional buildings across Europe, the US and Asia, which have added tangible value for both clients and users.

The practice has designed and delivered a portfolio of renowned, award-winning projects, including Portcullis House at Westminster and the London 2012 Olympic Velodrome.

Some of Hopkins Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Harold Alfond Athletics and Recreation Center, Colby College, Waterville, Maine
• Buhais Geology Park Interpretive Centre, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
• Eton Sports & Aquatics Centre, Windsor, United Kingdom
• Khor Kalba Turtle and Wildlife Sanctuary, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
• London 2012 Olympic Velodrome, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Hopkins Architects achieve 21st place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

20. RCKa

© RCKa

RCKa provides an innovative model for young architectural practices operating in a challenging and changing civic and economic landscape. Our active and enterprising approach to enabling and securing projects of relevance to the local community is based upon critical dialogue and was developed to satisfy the central ambition of the practice, to produce consistently high-quality, pioneering and socially responsive architecture.

Formed in 2008 following a successful international housing competition win, RCKa quickly established itself as one of the UK’s most exciting young practices.

Some of RCKa’s most prominent projects include:

• Masterplan Begbroke Innovation District, Oxford, United Kingdom
• The New Generation Youth Venue (TNG), London, United Kingdom
• Twisted House, London, United Kingdom
• De La Rue Technology Centre, Basingstoke, United Kingdom
• Churchley Road Allotment Apartments, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped RCKa achieve 20th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

19. 6a architects

© Johan Dehlin

6a architects was founded by Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald in 2001. They are best known for their contemporary art galleries, educational buildings, artists’ studios and residential projects, often in sensitive historic environments. 6a architects rose to prominence with the completion of two critically acclaimed public art galleries, Raven Row (2009), which won a RIBA Award in 2011, and the expanded South London Gallery (2010).

Recently completed projects include a new 68-room hall of residence at Churchill College, Cambridge (2016), which garnered a RIBA Regional East Award (2017), and a new studio complex for photographer Juergen Teller (2016), which was the winner of both RIBA London Building of the Year (2017) and a RIBA National Award (2017).

Some of 6a architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Façade for Paul Smith, Mayfair, London, United Kingdom
• Tree House, London, United Kingdom
• V&A Gallery 40, London, United Kingdom
• Cowan Court, Churchill College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Photography Studio for Juergen Teller, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped 6a architects achieve 19th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

18. DA bureau

© DA bureau

DA BUREAU is a team of architects and designers working on public spaces worldwide. We create creative concepts and architectural solutions for restaurants, retail, hotels, residential complexes, offices and individual projects.

With a team of more than 30 architects and designers, our strength lies in creating designs that respect their context, integrate contemporary technologies, and deliver sensory experiences that vividly connect with and recontextualise urban landscapes.

Some of DA bureau’s most prominent projects include:

• KINKALLY restaurant & bar KINKY, London, United Kingdom
• GH17 apartment, Berlin, Germany
• COMO restaurant, Yerevan, Armenia
• OSSU eatery, Saint Petersburg, Russia
• GRASSA restaurant, Moscow, Russia

The following statistics helped DA bureau achieve 18th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

17. Atelier Chang

© Kyungsub Shin

Atelier Chang is an international design praxis based in South Kensington, London and Zurich since 2011. Our design philosophy is to create innovative design through focusing on the unembellished basics – the basics of nature, social behaviour, and urban phenomena. To achieve this absolute simplicity of content through impactful forms takes extra effort in researching the context, a devotion to material and technology, and active interaction with other industries. Currently, we work on projects in Asia and Europe at multiple scales of design, covering master plans, architecture, interior design, installations and products.

Some of Atelier Chang’s most prominent projects include:

• Knot House, Geoje-si, South Korea
• SJCC Glamping Resort & White Forest Restaurant, Suncheon-si, South Korea
• Glamping, Yangpyeong-gun, South Korea
• KCP Fffice, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Atelier Chang Ltd achieve 17th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

16. Levitt Bernstein

© Tim Crocker

As architects, landscape architects and urban designers, Levitt Bernstein creates award-winning buildings, living landscapes and thriving urban spaces, using inventive design to solve real-life challenges. Putting people at the heart of our work, each of our projects is different, but the driving force behind every one is the desire to create an environment that is beautiful, sustainable and functional.

Some of Levitt Bernstein’s most prominent projects include:

• Neutron Research Centre, Grenoble, France
• Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France
• Vaudeville Court, London, United Kingdom
• The Courtyards, Dovedale Avenue, Lancashire, United Kingdom
• Sutherland Road, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Levitt Bernstein achieve 16th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

15. Haworth Tompkins

Photo: Philip Vile - © Haworth Tompkins

Haworth Tompkins is an award-winning British architectural studio united by a commitment to integrity, intellectual quality and the art of making beautiful buildings. Founded in 1991 by Graham Haworth and Steve Tompkins, the rapidly-growing London-based studio consists of 70 people, and specialises in bespoke buildings in the public, cultural, private and financial sectors.

Acclaimed projects include the Everyman Theatre, winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2014, Young Vic Theatre, Royal College of Art campus in Battersea, Coin Street housing development and the London Library, for which they received the prestigious American Institute of Architects’ Excellence in Design award. The studio is currently working on a number of highly anticipated schemes, including the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Fish Island Village, Bristol Old Vic and Kingston University.

Some of Haworth Tompkins’ most prominent projects include:

• National Theatre ‘The Shed’, London, United Kingdom
• Everyman Theatre, Liverpool, United Kingdom
• Dovecote Studio, Snape, United Kingdom
• Open Air Theatre, London, United Kingdom
• Park View School, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Haworth Tompkins achieve 15th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

14. AL_A

© AL_A

Architecture studio AL_A was founded in 2009 by the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning architect Amanda Levete with directors Ho-Yin Ng, Alice Dietsch and Maximiliano Arrocet.

Their designs are conceived not just as buildings, but as urban propositions. Spaces that promote reciprocity between nature and neighbourhood; projects that express the identity of an institution, reflect the ambitions of a place, and hold the dreams of a community.

Some of AL_A’s most prominent projects include:

• Maggie’s Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
• MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal
• V&A Exhibition Road Quarter, London, United Kingdom
• Corian Super-surfaces
• Spencer Dock Bridge, Dublin, Ireland

The following statistics helped AL_A achieve 14th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

13. Buckley Gray Yeoman

© Buckley Gray Yeoman

Formed in 1997, Buckley Gray Yeoman is an award-winning architecture and design practice based in Shoreditch, London. Directed by Matt Yeoman and Paul White, the firm provides pragmatic and deliverable solutions to complex design issues.

Founded on the premise that outstanding results require careful planning and an intuitive approach, Buckley Gray Yeoman’s designs adapt and respond to the context of each project to create intelligent and enduring architecture. The practice’s work is driven by the needs and ambitions of its clients.

Some of Buckley Gray Yeoman’s most prominent projects include:

• Apparatus, London, United Kingdom
• Carnaby Club, London, United Kingdom
• Henry Wood House, London, United Kingdom
• Channing School, London, United Kingdom
• The Buckley Building, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Buckley Gray Yeoman achieve 13th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

12. Bennetts Associates

© Bennetts Associates

Bennett’s Associates creates sustainable and enduring architecture. As one of the UK’s leading practices, their diverse portfolio has been celebrated with more than 150 awards over 30 years and covers education, cultural and workplace projects in both the public and private sector, ranging from masterplans to small historic buildings. They are an employee-owned trust of 70 people with studios in London, Edinburgh and Manchester, and have recently earned Building Design’s Higher Education Architect of the Year 2019 Award.

Bennetts Associates also leads in their field in sustainability — in April 2019, they became the world’s first architects to secure Science Based Target approval and commit to the UN’s Climate Neutral Now campaign.

Some of Bennetts Associates’ most prominent projects include:

• The Royal College of Pathologists, London, United Kingdom
• Jaguar Land Rover Advanced Product Creation Centre, Gaydon, United Kingdom
• Storyhouse, London, United Kingdom
• Syngrou Avenue Office Complex, Athens, Greece
• 11-21 Canal Reach, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Bennetts Associates achieve 12th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

11. Studio Seilern Architects

© Studio Seilern Architects

Studio Seilern Architects is a London-based international creative practice established in 2006 by Christina Seilern with the intent of producing exceptional architecture that lasts, working across geographies, building sizes and typologies. Our diverse portfolio of built work spans the UK, Europe and Africa.

While we tackle a diversity of projects, it is our conscious decision to keep working on the smaller and larger scales, both simultaneously and continuously: from new build to restoration works. Irrespective of size or context, each project we undertake informs another. The smaller scale keeps our pencils sharp on questions of intricate detailing and the unraveling of the human condition, both on the living and working fronts.

Some of Studio Seilern Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Andermatt Concert Hall, Andermatt, Switzerland
• El Gouna Plaza, Hurghada, Egypt
• Boksto Skveras, Vilnius, Lithuania
• G.W.Annenberg Performing Arts Centre, Reading, United Kingdom
• Paros Residence, Paros, Greece

The following statistics helped Studio Seilern Architects achieve 11th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

10. Hawkins\Brown

© Gareth Gardner

The first time someone decided to mix sweet and salty popcorn, their guests must have been horrified. Minutes later, though, they would be guzzling the lot. That’s the thing about new combinations — you have to be a bit odd to consider them in the first place, but when they pay off, you’re left wondering how you managed before they existed.

Admittedly, this isn’t a usual sort of About page for an architectural practice, but we’re not a usual sort of practice. We believe that projects come alive through uncommon combinations of ideas and people. In fact, we think that’s the only way they really come alive at all.

Some of Hawkins\Brown’s most prominent projects include:

• 1235 Vine Street, Los Angeles, California
• Masterplan Begbroke Innovation District, Oxford, United Kingdom
• Corby Cube, Corby, United Kingdom
• Student Village, Royal Veterinary College, North Mymms, United Kingdom
• Park Hill, Sheffield, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped HawkinsBrown achieve 10th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

9. Steyn Studio

© Steyn Studio

Steyn Studio is a collaborative architecture practice. We believe that design has the power to solve problems, inspire, and improve lives, and we work hard every day to realise this ambition. We always aim to do this honestly and with the freedom to creatively explore meaningful design solutions. Designs that make a real difference to the end-user and the client, culturally and commercially.

Some of Steyn Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• Bosjes Chapel, South Africa
• Spens Garden Café & Winkel Gift Shop, South Africa
• Sierra House, Madrid, Spain
• Kombuis Restaurant, South Africa

The following statistics helped Steyn Studio achieve 9th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

8. Allies and Morrison

© Nicholas Guttridge

We are architects and urbanists. We strive to design beautiful buildings that have a long life and can adapt over the generations. We also shape enduring places, whether new pieces of the city or settlements at any scale. All our projects are concerned with the crafting of every detail and an appreciation for the uniqueness of each context.

As architects, we are known for the rigour of our technical delivery, a commitment to quality, and to embedded environmental performance. As urbanists, we are known for developing plans that are flexible and pragmatic, inspirational in vision, responsive to the local climate and character. Based in London and Cambridge, we come from around the world, and our diversity is one of our fundamental strengths.

Some of Allies and Morrison’s most prominent projects include:

• Msheireb Downtown Doha Phase 4, Doha, Qatar
• Top image: King’s Cross Masterplan, London, United Kingdom
• London College of Fashion, London, United Kingdom
• 2150 Lake Shore, Toronto, Canada
• 100 Bishopsgate, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Allies and Morrison achieve 8th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

7. Squire and Partners

© Jack Hobhouse

Squire & Partners is an architecture and design practice with experience spanning four decades, earning it an international reputation for architecture informed by the history and culture of where it is placed. Their award-winning portfolio, for some of the world’s leading developers, includes masterplans, private and affordable residential, workspace, retail, education and public buildings.

In addition, the practice has a series of dedicated teams for modelmaking, computer-generated imaging, illustration, graphics and an established interior design department, which has created a number of bespoke product ranges.

Squire & Partners’ approach responds to the unique heritage and context of each site, considering established street patterns, scale and proportions, to create timeless architecture rooted in its location.

Some of Squire and Partners’ most prominent projects include:

• The Ark, Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, London, United Kingdom
• Zubabox, Bogotá, Colombia
• 5 Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom
• Mayfair House, London, United Kingdom
• Reiss HQ

The following statistics helped Squire and Partners achieve 7th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

6. bureau de change

© bureau de change

Bureau de Change is an award-winning architecture practice founded by architects Katerina Dionysopoulou and Billy Mavropoulos. Its work is a direct product of the founders’ upbringing, passions and experiences – combining the pragmatism and formality of their architectural training with a desire to bring a sense of theatre, playfulness and innovation to the design of spaces, products and environments. The result is a studio where rigorous thinking and analysis are brought to life through prototyping, testing and making.

Some of bureau de change’s most prominent projects include:

• The Interlock, London, United Kingdom
• Nikos Koulis’ flagship, Athens, Greece
• Clay House, London, United Kingdom
• The Uxbridge Bower, London, United Kingdom
• Step House, London, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped bureau de change achieve 6th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

5. Alison Brooks Architects

© Alison Brooks Architects

Founded in 1996, Alison Brooks Architects has developed an international reputation for delivering design excellence and innovation in projects ranging from urban regeneration, masterplanning, public buildings for the arts, higher education and housing.

ABA’s award-winning architecture is born from our intensive research into the cultural, social and environmental contexts of each project. Our approach enables us to develop pioneering solutions for our buildings and urban schemes, each with a distinct identity and authenticity. Combined with rigorous attention to detail, ABA’s buildings have proved to satisfy our clients’ expectations and positively impact the urban realm.

Our approach has led ABA to be recognised with both national and international awards, including the Architect of the Year Award 2012 and Housing Architect of the Year 2012.

Some of Alison Brooks Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• The Smile, London, United Kingdom
• Lens House, London, United Kingdom
• Exeter College Cohen Quad, Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
• Mesh House, London, United Kingdom
• Severn Place, Cambridge, United Kingdom

The following statistics helped Alison Brooks Architects achieve 5th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

4. Adjaye Associates

© Ivane Katamashvili

Since establishing Adjaye Associates in 2000, Sir David Adjaye OBE has crafted a global team that is multicultural and stimulated by the broadest possible cultural discourse. The practice has studios in Accra, London, and New York with work spanning the globe. Adjaye Associates’ most well-known commission to date, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), opened in 2016 on the National Mall in Washington DC and was named “Cultural Event of the Year” by The New York Times.

Further projects range in scale from private houses, bespoke furniture collections, product design, exhibitions, and temporary pavilions to major arts centers, civic buildings, and master plans.

Some of Adjaye Associates’ most prominent projects include:

• The Abrahamic Family House, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
• dot.ateliers, Accra, Ghana
• Winter Park Library & Events Center, Winter Park, Florida
• 130 William, New York City, New York
• Abrahamic Family House, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

The following statistics helped Adjaye Associates achieve 4th place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

3. Heatherwick Studio

© Heatherwick Studio

Heatherwick Studio is a team of 180 problem solvers dedicated to making the physical world around us better for everyone. Based out of our combined workshop and design studio in Central London, we create buildings, spaces, master-plans, objects and infrastructure.

Focusing on large-scale projects in cities all over the world, we prioritise those with the greatest positive social impact. Working as practical inventors with no signature style, our motivation is to design soulful and interesting places that embrace and celebrate the complexities of the real world.

The approach driving everything is to lead from human experience rather than any fixed design dogma. The studio’s completed projects include a number of internationally celebrated buildings, including the award-winning Learning Hub at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010.

The studio is currently working on 30 live projects in ten countries.

Some of Heatherwick Studio’s most prominent projects include:

• Coal Drops Yard, London, United Kingdom
• Maggie’s Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
• Bombay Sapphire Distillery, Hampshire, United Kingdom
• 1000 Trees Phase 1, Shanghai, China
• Little Island, New York City, New York

The following statistics helped Heatherwick Studio achieve 3rd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

2. Foster + Partners

© Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners is a global studio for sustainable architecture, engineering, urbanism and industrial design, founded by Norman Foster in 1967. Since then, he and the team around him have established an international practice with a worldwide reputation. With offices across the globe, we work as a single studio that is both ethnically and culturally diverse.

Some of Foster + Partners’ most prominent projects include:

• Legacy of Bodegas Faustino Winery, Oyón-Oion, Spain
• Apple Battersea, London, United Kingdom
• Ombú, Madrid, Spain
• Transamerica Pyramid Center, San Francisco, California
• Apple The Exchange TRX, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The following statistics helped Foster + Partners achieve 2nd place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

1. Zaha Hadid Architects

© Zaha Hadid Architects

Internationally renowned architecture firm Zaha Hadid Architects works at all scales and in all sectors to create transformative cultural, corporate, residential and other spaces that work in synchronicity with their surroundings.

Some of Zaha Hadid Architects’ most prominent projects include:

• Beijing Daxing International Airport, Beijing, China
• KnitCandela, Ciudad de México, Mexico
• Leeza SOHO, Beijing, China
• Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan
• Striatus 3D Printed Bridge, Venice, Italy

The following statistics helped Zaha Hadid Architects achieve 1st place in the 30 Best Architecture Firms in London:

Why Should I Trust Architizer’s Ranking?

With more than 30,000 architecture firms and over 130,000 projects within its database, Architizer is proud to host the world’s largest online community of architects and building product manufacturers. Its celebrated A+Awards program is also the largest celebration of architecture and building products, with more than 400 jurors and hundreds of thousands of public votes helping to recognize the world’s best architecture each year.

Architizer also powers firm directories for a number of AIA (American Institute of Architects) Chapters nationwide, including the official directory of architecture firms for AIA New York.

An example of a project page on Architizer with Project Award Badges highlighted

A Guide to Project Awards

The blue “+” badge denotes that a project has won a prestigious A+Award as described above. Hovering over the badge reveals details of the award, including award category, year, and whether the project won the jury or popular choice award.

The orange Project of the Day and yellow Featured Project badges are awarded by Architizer’s Editorial team, and are selected based on a number of factors. The following factors increase a project’s likelihood of being featured or awarded Project of the Day status:

• Project completed within the last 3 years
• A well written, concise project description of at least 3 paragraphs
• Architectural design with a high level of both functional and aesthetic value
• High quality, in focus photographs
• At least 8 photographs of both the interior and exterior of the building
• Inclusion of architectural drawings and renderings
• Inclusion of construction photographs

There are 7 Projects of the Day each week and a further 31 Featured Projects. Each Project of the Day is published on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Stories, while each Featured Project is published on Facebook. Each Project of the Day also features in Architizer’s Weekly Projects Newsletter and shared with 170,000 subscribers.

We’re constantly look for the world’s best architects to join our community. If you would like to understand more about this ranking list and learn how your firm can achieve a presence on it, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at editorial@architizer.com.

The post 30 Best Architecture and Design Firms in London appeared first on Journal.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

Orange, right? A color that tends to divide the room. Some people swear by it, others avoid it like a questionable paint choice from the early 2000s. Trends have pushed it in and out of fashion, and yet, it never quite disappears. Maybe that is because orange carries a certain energy that architecture sometimes needs.

It can signal warmth, movement, even a bit of mischief. A flash of orange can guide people through a building, call attention to a structure, or give a space a sense of life. The projects below show architects leaning into that attitude. No hesitation. Just confident, unapologetic orange doing exactly what it does best.

Design of kiosks and observation decks in Wuhan Tianhe Airport T2

By UAO Design, Wuhan, China

At Wuhan Tianhe Airport T2, UAO Design faced a tricky challenge: introduce new kiosks and observation decks into an almost finished terminal, and do it fast. Their answer was a lightweight architectural system built from stainless steel frames and prefabricated modules based on a grid, allowing the structures to arrive ready for quick assembly with minimal disruption.

Columns wrapped in translucent Plexiglas filter the daylight from above, casting soft color across the concourse. Then thermal orange steps into the scene. Warm and unmistakable, the color cuts through the airport’s pale interior, shifting as the light changes and turning these modest pavilions into lively markers that catch the eye and invite travelers to pause.

Porcelain Factory Plugin Revival

By People’s Architecture Office, Jingdezhen, China

PAO approached the regeneration of this former porcelain factory with a clear idea: add new life without erasing the old one. Their “plugin architecture” strategy inserts contemporary elements into the preserved workshops. New rooms, stairs and walkways slip inside the historic shell while a glass pavilion anchors the public square.

Brick vaults and tall chimneys still tell the story of ceramic production. Then comes the orange. Bold and warm, it cuts through the muted brick palette. The color recalls the glow of kiln fires and hot clay. These flashes of orange mark new spaces and guide visitors, giving the historic complex a fresh pulse.

Go-Green Biomass Power Plant

By Urbansense Arquitectura e Planeamento, Constância, Portugal

You could spot this power plant from a distance, and that is very much the point. Instead of hiding the machinery behind neutral cladding, Urbansense Arquitectura e Planeamento gave the new biomass facility a façade that openly celebrates the process inside. Curving dark grey metal panels wrap the main volumes, but the boiler house is wrapped in translucent orange polycarbonate. The color proudly marks the place where energy is produced, turning the technical core into the building’s visual center.

During the day, the orange surface cuts through the muted industrial surroundings. At night, the illuminated interior turns the structure into a glowing landmark, a warm signal of the site’s shift toward fossil-free energy.

Hampi Art Labs

By Sameep Padora and Associates, Hampi, India

Hampi Art Labs by Sameep Padora and Associates, Hampi, India | Photographed by Studio Recall

Set against the rocky landscape of Hampi, this art campus rises from the ground with a low, flowing form that follows the curves of the nearby Tungabhadra River. Studio Recall shaped the galleries as a series of earth-like mounds that open into quiet courtyards and shaded passages. The surfaces carry a deep iron-oxide orange, drawn from the region’s soil and stone.

In the strong southern light, the color feels confident and grounded. It ties the architecture to the landscape while giving the complex a clear identity from afar. Against green vegetation and a wide blue sky, the orange walls glow with warmth, turning the campus into a sculptural landmark.

Coach Airways

By Spacemen, Malacca, Malaysia

An abandoned Boeing 747 in Malacca now hosts one of the most unexpected interiors around. Designed by Coach NY with local studio Spacemen, the aircraft was transformed into a retail and café experience that nods to the glamour of 1970s air travel. Visitors move through a sequence of cabins that mix retro aviation details with playful retail displays.

Then comes the café at the rear of the plane, and the mood shifts. The entire space is drenched in orange. Seats, walls, counters, everything. The color brings warmth to the metallic shell of the aircraft and turns the cabin into a glowing, almost cinematic setting that feels lifted straight from a retro-futurist dream.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

The post Orange You Glad When Architects Bypass Standard Neutral Palettes? appeared first on Journal.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

Large civic and institutional buildings often face a common design challenge: scale. Sports centers, town halls, research facilities and industrial campuses require large spans and expansive floor areas. This fact often results in buildings that feel heavy and difficult to appreciate at the human scale. When handled poorly, these structures also dominate their context rather than relate to it.

One strategy architects increasingly use to manage this scale is the use of repetitive roof forms. Instead of covering the entire structure with a single massive roof, some designers repeat smaller roof units such as gables, pitched volumes, or saw-tooth profiles across the building. This approach breaks down large masses into more legible parts while maintaining the spatial continuity required for such buildings.

Beyond visual relief, repetitive roof systems often carry practical advantages. This repetition can simplify structural spans and create opportunities to solve some design challenges, such as lighting and ventilation. The following civic projects demonstrate how architects use repetitive roof forms to control massing and create public buildings that feel more approachable in scale.

Haidong City Sports Center, China

By Character Architecture Design Studio, China Architecture Design & Research Group, Haidong, China

Haidong City Sports Centre by Character Architecture Design Studio, China Architecture Design & Research Group, Haidong, China

The Haidong City Sports Center spans 678,126 square feet (63,000 square meters) and includes a 15,000-seat stadium, a 5,000-seat arena, and a swimming facility. Instead of covering this large program with a single roof, the architects organized the complex under a series of folded saw-tooth roof forms that step across the sloping site. These repetitive roof forms break the sports complex into smaller visual volumes that follow the terrain of the site.

Town Hall and Culture Center Son en Breugel

By INBO, Son en Breugel, Netherlands

Town hall and culture center Son en Breugel by INBO, NB, Netherlands

INBO converted a 1960s church of at least 25,000 square feet (2,322 square meters) into the town hall and cultural center for Son en Breugel. The architects retained the building’s distinctive concrete shed roof and organized new civic functions as independent volumes beneath it. Instead of replacing the structure, they used the existing repetitive roof forms to introduce daylight into the deep interior. INBO inserted roof lights along the existing roof folds and opened sections of the façade to improve illumination.

Museum Kaap Skil

By Mecanoo, Oudeschild, Netherlands

Museum Kaap Skil by Mecanoo, Oudeschild – Texel, Netherlands| Image via Mecanoo

Mecanoo designed the 12,916 square feet (1,200 square meters) Museum Kaap Skil for the small harbor village of Oudeschild on Texel Island. Civic buildings in modest settlements like this must avoid overpowering their surroundings, so the architects used repetitive roof forms to control the building’s scale. They used four atypical linked gabled roofs to break the museum into smaller volumes and match the roofing style of the neighboring buildings. These repeated roofs also shape the exhibition space below and bring daylight into the upper gallery.

MiZa – MAKE + SEAF

By DRAW architecture + urban design, Abu Dhabi, UAE

MiZa – MAKE + SEAF, by DRAW architecture + urban design, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Large industrial buildings often read as long, continuous volumes. DRAW addressed this challenge in MiZa – MAKE + SEAF, a cultural makerspace spanning at least 25,000 square feet (2,322 square meters) in Abu Dhabi’s Mina Zayed district. The architects adopted the district’s warehouse typology and organized the building into five repeated gabled roof bays. Each roof defines a structural span and houses creative workspaces. The repetition breaks the long volume into smaller parts and keeps the building aligned with the industrial rhythm of the area. DRAW Architecture then lifted and rotated a pavilion between two roof bays to create a shaded courtyard. This move interrupts the roof sequence and introduces a central gathering space while maintaining the overall roof rhythm.

Horsevænget

By Christensen & Co Architects, Rødovre, Denmark

Horsevænget by Christensen & Co Architects, Rødovre, Denmark

Buildings for children must avoid the scale and character of typical civic institutions. The architects addressed this challenge at Horsevænget Daycare Center, which accommodates 128 children and 40 staff members. They organized the new building as a sequence of repetitive roof forms instead of a single volume. Each roof defines a smaller learning space and connects directly to outdoor play areas. The architects also shift the roof units to different heights. This variation breaks the building mass further and introduces more dramatic interior spaces with changing ceiling levels.

The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship

By Sasaki, Washington, Connecticut

The Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship by Sasaki, Washington, Connecticut

Replacing large institutional buildings on historic campuses can create a scale problem. Sasaki addressed this challenge in the design of the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship at the Frederick Gunn School. Instead of introducing a single large structure, the architects organized the building into three pavilion volumes, each with repetitive pitched roofs inspired by the region’s farmhouse typology. Sasaki arranged these pavilions along the campus edge and connected them internally to house labs, classrooms, and collaborative spaces. This strategy breaks the overall mass into smaller parts and allows the building to match the scale of surrounding campus structures.

Large civic buildings rarely escape the challenge of scale. Programs that require large spans and expansive interiors often produce buildings that feel heavy or difficult to read. Repetitive roof forms offer one way to address that condition. By dividing large structures into smaller roof units, architects can make complex buildings easier to understand while keeping the structure efficient.

Architects: Want to have your project featured? Showcase your work by uploading projects to Architizer and sign up for our inspirational newsletters.

The post The Power of the Pitch: 6 Civic Buildings That Multiply the Gable appeared first on Journal.

Architizer's diverse jury of global experts is currently reviewing submissions to the 14th A+Awards! Sign up to receive updates on Public Voting and spring winner announcements.

Ask any AI platform to write an architectural concept statement, and the result will feel strangely familiar. Vague phrases such as “the building establishes a dialogue with the landscape”, “the façade acts as a porous urban threshold,” or “the structure serves as a catalyst for community interaction” appear in most architecture texts — from competition entries and awards submissions to press releases and project descriptions. Yet, after reading them, it is often impossible to answer a simple question: what does the building actually do? And, for that matter, what role did the architect play in making design decisions?

Paradoxically, artificial intelligence exposes this problem rather than causing it, simply reproducing the empty language it has learned from architects themselves.

How did architectural writing become so abstract? Competition culture encourages impressive, often ostentatious language, while academic influence introduces theoretical vocabulary that is not always accompanied by the rigor or references that originally gave it substance, and — from a market point of view — PR agencies frame projects through flamboyant storytelling instead of providing more practical narratives. To some extent, AI mirrors this writing practice, but it also reveals a very interesting dynamic: in order to generate a text that is freed from clichés, architects must provide a clear prompt, a clear idea and a clear objective.

In other words, a clear brief is the strongest communication tool in the architect’s arsenal and yet is oftentimes the most overlooked. Pulling three projects (and their descriptions) from the Architizer Database, we will explore how strong texts define as well as produce architecture that can be explained clearly, answering the questions of:

• The Brief – What problem needs solving?
• The Constraint – What made the project difficult?
• The Design Move – How does the architecture respond?
• The Result – What the building actually does.

Weishan Chongzheng Academy Bookstore of Librairie Avant-Garde

By Trace Architecture Office, Dali, China

Jury Winner, Commercial Renovations and Additions, 13th Architizer A+Awards

The Brief: The project’s aim was to repair and renovate the historic Chongzheng Academy in Weishan Ancient Town, turning it into a multifunctional bookstore that includes spaces for exhibitions, a theatre and a café. Additionally, this intervention intends to revitalize the surrounding area and reactivate the cultural life of the town.

The Constraint: The site includes a 500-year-old academy, a 330-year-old banyan tree, and a 1960s iron factory with a preserved wooden structure. Consequently, any design gesture needed to preserve and protect these historic elements, while introducing new spatial connections between the new and the ancient town.

The Design Move: The project conserves the historic walls, the wooden structures and the surrounding vegetation while inserting two lightweight Book Galleries that reconnect the academy’s courtyards and create spaces for reading and cultural events. The intervention strategy is surgical and strategic, working closely with the existing context.

The Result: The academy is reactivated as a public cultural destination that supports the community and takes advantage of the history and the “artifacts” found on site. The architecture becomes an agent of preservation, insertion and connection, creating a multifaceted civic space.

Fog Bridge

By Art+Zen Architects, Rongcheng City, China

Popular Winner, Unbuilt Transportation, 12th Architizer A+Awards

The Brief: As part of the renovation of the Sangganhe Botanical Garden in Rongcheng, the project required a new bridge to connect the two sides of the Sanggan River. Apart from the bridge acting as a transitional circulation space, the aim was to create a structure that would incorporate a park and support community gatherings.

The Constraint: The bridge design had to accommodate both pedestrian and bicycle circulation, without disrupting the botanical garden’s vegetation and views. In parallel, the structure needed to cover the span of the river using as few supports as possible in order to not to disturb the natural landscape.

The Design Move: The project transforms the bridge into a hybrid infrastructure that simultaneously shapes space. Separate lanes organize bicycle and pedestrian circulation, while a spiral path links the bridge to the café below and to a viewing platform above the river. Structurally, a wooden truss system stabilized with metal cables allows for a large span with minimal piers.

The Result: The project reframes a simple infrastructural requirement and turns it into an opportunity to expand the area’s public space. Consequently, a bridge that usually functions solely as a crossing becomes a connection as well as a horticultural destination.

The Perch

By Nicole Blair, Austin, Texas

Finalist, Residential Renovations and Additions, 12th Architizer A+Awards

The Brief: The clients, a hairstylist and a landscape designer, needed a flexible studio space that could accommodate work, guests and occasional living. At the same time, they wanted to preserve their backyard landscape and avoid relocating during construction. Consequently, the design had to be a compact addition and minimal intervention that could expand the functionality of the existing bungalow.

The Constraint: The project had to overcome several issues such as preserving the mature backyard landscape, comply to local building regulations and limiting construction disruption. Furthermore, the addition had to be lightweight and occupy a small footprint while providing sufficient, flexible space for multiple uses.

The Design Move: A compact 660-square-foot (61 square meter) structure is designed above the existing bungalow. To preserve the surrounding vegetation, the addition rests on four steel columns – three of which pass through the bungalow walls to stabilize the structure – allowing the ground-level landscape to remain largely untouched. The plan follows a split-level organization combined with vaulted ceilings to create a sense of spatial generosity, while integrating ample amounts of storage. Finally, multiple building components were prefabricated off-site to minimize construction disturbance.

The Result: By concentrating the building footprint and lifting the program above the roofline, the project expands the home’s capacity without sacrificing the landscape that initially defined it.

What Architects Can Learn From This Exercise

Across these briefs, a clear pattern emerges: strong projects often begin with a clearly articulated problem, and a successful design brief makes the logic of the architecture immediately legible. What happens, though, when architecture has no problems to solve? What about all the luxury villas or the iconic buildings, whose aim is primarily aesthetic dominance or imposing status? In these cases, the brief serves as justification rather than articulation, and this perhaps is why architectural language has drifted towards metaphor.

Not every project needs to solve a problem. However, the ones that are grounded in clear briefs and real constraints tend to produce the most substantive architecture. And the best part? AI tools may promote this kind of thinking by exposing the ideas that lack specificity. Because AI is remarkably good at repeating architectural clichés and remarkably bad at hiding them.

Architizer's diverse jury of global experts is currently reviewing submissions to the 14th A+Awards! Sign up to receive updates on Public Voting and spring winner announcements.

The post Architects’ Guide: Writing Project Descriptions That Actually Explain the Architecture appeared first on Journal.

Now, however, the “mights,” “coulds” and “shoulds” have given way to something more urgent: a growing sense that the industry is mid-transformation, and that the architects who understand it will define what practice looks like for the next generation. It’s into this moment — charged, uncertain and alive with possibility — that the ATN Summit took form.

Two days, one stage, world-leading firms, and a deliberately TED-style format, the event was designed to make sure every talk earns its place in the room. The Summit is the flagship event of Archi-Tech Network (ATN): a platform founded by Oliver Thomas, a former Design Technology Manager at Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), who has spent five years at the intersection of architecture, technology and knowledge-sharing.  It took place at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, London, from March 18th to 19th, 2026. Stay tuned for more events to come!

From Clubhouse to Conference

ATN didn’t begin with grand ambitions. It began, as many of the best things did, in the early days of COVID, with a podcast on Clubhouse, a chat app that briefly turned the internet into one enormous, unruly salon. “You were just in a room with Snoop Dogg talking about NFTs,” Oliver recalls, laughing, “and then Elon Musk would pop in. It was a weird moment.”

But beneath the chaos, Oliver spotted something real: a gap he’d been watching widen from his desk at BIG. “Even there, we were seeing junior, mid-level, and senior people come into the office without the digital skill set they needed to actually work in practice,” he explains. “If this is what we’re experiencing from people in New York, from Harvard — there’s clearly something missing between university and practice.”

The existing landscape wasn’t much help. On the one hand: formal, dry training resources. On the other: a wave of young online creators, engaging and accessible, but sometimes missing crucial real-world experience. Oliver saw the gap between them and decided to occupy it — teaching architecture technology from the perspective of practice, with the sensibility of someone who’d lived both worlds.

What began as a weekly podcast grew into a YouTube channel, then into courses covering Rhino, Revit, and Grasshopper. Inside, AI, and visualization — all taught from the inside out, the way Oliver had trained people within BIG itself. Then came the events. When he moved back to London and took up the role of Design Technology Manager at BIG’s London office, he could feel something else in the air: a post-COVID hunger to be in a room with other people. So he created one.

Pecha Kucha in the Pub was a deliberate reinvention of the architecture meetup format. In short: no hour-long talks. Instead, 20 slides, 20 seconds each, starting in a pub so people already had a drink in hand. No awkward sponsor pitches wedged into the middle. Just fast, sharp ideas and the kind of conversation that actually happens at 9pm rather than being rushed into the last beer before the last tube. Every event sold out (some within 30 minutes!). The format traveled to Copenhagen, New York, and eventually to Epic Games’ innovation lab in London.

The Summit is where all of that leads. “It’s basically a culmination of five years of doing ATN,” Oliver says (hence the name, Summit). “These little meetups have evolved into the big leagues.”

What Makes This Different

Architecture conferences have a reputation. There’s the trestle-table sponsor zone, the clash-detection pitch nobody asked for, the keynote speakers who’ve given the same talk three times already this year. The ATN Summit has been designed, consciously and with some glee, as an antidote to all of it.

The format is TED-style: 20–25 minute talks, back to back, one stage, no competing streams. (“I hate when you have multiple stages and you want to see two people but you can’t,” Oliver says.) The sponsor zone has been reconceived as the Innovation Pub — high-top bar tables, open conversation, and a beer tap in the afternoon. The kind of space where you sit down next to someone building the next generation of BIM software and actually want to hear what they’re working on, as if you were sitting in a pub.

The speaker lineup reflects five years of genuine relationships, not a booking agency. BIG, Foster + Partners, Zaha Hadid Architects, MVRDV, Heatherwick Studio and Mamou-Mani, alongside a constellation of startups reshaping the tools of practice: Motif, Qonic, Giraffe, Finch, Speckle and Automated Architecture (and many more — you can read the full lineup here). The conversations between these worlds — established global firms and the lean, fast-moving companies building the software they’ll use next — are the kind that don’t often happen in the same room.

And the room itself is genuinely international. As of a few weeks before the event, attendees had registered from 28 countries, with over 100 firms represented in the audience. The balance skews professional — this is a conference for practitioners, not a student expo — but student tickets were available, and the ATN Influence Day running on the Saturday after the main Summit was priced specifically to be accessible to junior and emerging voices.

Architect 3.0: What You’ll Actually Walk Away With

Oliver talks about the value of in-person events with the conviction of someone whose career was shaped by them. A single conference in 2014, Smart Geometry, connected him to the people who eventually led him to BIG. “From this one conference, I met all these different people,” he says. “It was right at the time I wanted to get into computational design. Did I want to do a degree? So I simply went to a conference about it — and that really brought me into this world.”

What the Summit offers is harder to quantify than a workshop certificate, but more lasting: the inspiration of seeing what’s actually possible at the leading edge, and the serendipity of being in a room when it matters. You’ll hear from architects who are using computation and AI to drive daylight and solar analysis, from firms like Mamou-Mani who are 3D-printing recyclable furniture and taking it back at the end of its lifecycle to reprint the next project, and from startups using timber automation to make sustainable construction economically viable. And you’ll hear something more surprising — a serious conversation about game engines.

“Everyone is focused on AI, but this world of Unreal Engine, more and more architects getting into this space and then having opportunities in film, VFX, gaming — I think it’s a really slept-on aspect of the industry right now,” Oliver says. It’s one of the Summit’s deliberate interventions: to make space for the conversations the industry isn’t quite having yet, alongside the ones it can’t stop having.

Because behind all of it is a bigger question. Oliver calls it Architect 3.0 — a shift as significant as the move from drafting by hand to CAD. In this new era, AI and emerging tools aren’t replacing architects; they’re accelerating the parts of practice that don’t need human ingenuity, so the parts that do can breathe. But the profession needs to be intentional about what it does with that freedom. “We’re already doing more, even faster, for the same amount,” Oliver says. “If we’re not careful, AI will do the same thing.”

That’s the conversation the Summit exists to have.

The ATN Summit took place 18–19 March 2026 at Protein Studios, Shoreditch, London. Further information is available at atn-summit.com.

Learn more about ATN social media: 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@architech.network

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/architech.network/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/architech-network/

The post Architect 3.0 Has Arrived. These Are the Firms and Startups Building It. appeared first on Journal.