Designarcus

Life Behind the Walls: A Powerful Immersive Exhibition on North Korea

This groundbreaking spatial installation by B² Architecture transforms personal testimonies into a deeply moving experience. Designed in collaboration with Korean studies expert Nina Špitálníková, the exhibition takes visitors on a journey from light, playful propaganda imagery into darkness and the hidden realities of life under a totalitarian regime.

Starting with an interactive maze for children and adults alike, it gradually reveals the human stories behind the carefully staged images, creating space for reflection, empathy, and understanding.

A bold and sensitive project that proves architecture can be a powerful tool for education and emotional awareness.

Full story: https://designarcus.com/life-behind-the-walls-exhibition/

Nestled in Haotang Village, Henan Province, this 405m² timber building by Primary Architects beautifully revives traditional carpentry while serving as a vibrant community hub.

Designed with twelve elegant curved glulam beams and a sweeping hyperbolic roof that echoes the surrounding mountains, the structure blends seamlessly into the hilly landscape. It functions as both a working woodworking workshop for local craftsman Old Zhang and a lively space for education, exhibitions, and village gatherings.

Warm timber, natural light, and thoughtful connections between indoors and outdoors create a living tribute to craftsmanship where tradition meets contemporary rural life.

Project: Carpenter’s Home
Design: Primary Architects
Location: Haotang Village, China | 2025

Full story: https://designarcus.com/s/d8u

In a bamboo grove beside Shisanba Bridge in Huizhou, LUO studio has created a modest micro museum dedicated to the vernacular stone bridges of the region. Conceived as part of the Nankunshan Luofushan Rim Pioneer Zone Architectural Art Project, the building is both an exhibition space and a spatial device, allowing visitors to look again at a form of rural infrastructure that has quietly shaped everyday movement, labour and memory for generations.

Project name: Huizhou Vernacular Historic Bridges Micro Museum
Architectural practice: LUO studio /
Collaborating artist: Liu Qingyuan
Location: Shisanba Bridge, Mazha Town, Longmen County, Huizhou, Guangdong, China
Design start: March 2025
Completion: December 2025
Area: 73.55 square metres
Photo: Zhu Yumeng

Read full: https://designarcus.com/s/d6u

Set within a site long associated with the legendary calligrapher Wang Xizhi, Ink Wash Pool by y.ad studio approaches cultural preservation not as reconstruction, but as a quiet act of spatial reinterpretation. Rather than replicating historical forms or dissolving the past beneath an assertive contemporary gesture, the project positions architecture as a mediator between memory, landscape, and everyday public life.

Read full: https://designarcus.com/s/d2a

Project name: Ink Wash Pool
Architecture studio: y.ad studio
Building area: 790.57 sqm
Design phase: November 2025 to December 2025
Construction phase: December 2025 to January 2026
Photo: Alice

A futuristic yet deeply grounded desert outpost - meet Desert Ark, China’s groundbreaking 3D-printed architecture by designRESERVE.

In this compelling interview, architect Feng Yue shares how his team created a resilient, modular compound in the harsh Tengger Desert using robotic 3D concrete printing. Built with desert sand, aerodynamic curves, and reversible foundations made from cargo pallets, the project serves as both a field base for reforestation and a prototype for future habitats in extreme environments including outer space.

Every detail reflects a thoughtful balance: minimal ecological impact, off-grid solar power, wastewater recycling into fertilizer, and a design that can be disassembled and moved without leaving permanent scars on the fragile landscape.

This isn’t just a building, it’s a powerful statement on temporary, adaptive, and humane architecture in the face of climate challenges.

Read the full interview here:
https://designarcus.com/s/d48

Discover how Vienna transformed four giant 19th-century gas tanks into a modern, livable district.
These enormous brick structures once powered the city with town gas. Left empty in the 1980s, they could have become ruins.

Instead, visionary architects turned them into something extraordinary.

Today, the Gasometer City offers apartments, offices, shopping malls, cinemas, and concert venues, all within the preserved historic shells.

A perfect balance between heritage and contemporary living.

Read the complete feature here:
https://designarcus.com/gasometer-wien-adaptive-reuse/

In the heart of Lisbon’s Aquilino Ribeiro Machado Horticultural Garden, From Sky to Table transforms an underused urban fragment into a vibrant community greenhouse and civic space.

Designed by Parto Atelier, this 2025 project blends architecture with permaculture to create a living bridge between people and food. A striking vaulted greenhouse with translucent skin showcases vertical farming systems, turning cultivation into a beautiful public spectacle.

Outside, a circular forum welcomes workshops and gatherings, surrounded by vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and an organic pond, all woven into the existing landscape of cork oaks and eucalyptus.

More than just a farm, it’s a social catalyst that shortens the distance between farm and table, encourages community participation, and promotes a slower, more sustainable urban life.

Read full: https://designarcus.com/s/cex

Project: From Sky to Table
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Design: Parto Atelier / .atelier
Year: 2025

GreenArchitecture

The Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC), designed by BIG–Bjarke Ingels Group in collaboration with William Rawn Associates and HASTINGS Architecture, repositions Nashville’s cultural core along the Cumberland River. Extending the energy of downtown across the water, the project establishes a new civic landmark for the city’s evolving East Bank district.

Project name: Tennessee Performing Arts Center
Size: 307,000 sq ft
Location: Nashville, United States
Design Firm: Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) /
Photography: BIG, bloomimages

Read full: https://designarcus.com/s/c0g

On the golden shoreline of Kozhikode, Kerala, The Purple Ink Studio has created a breathtaking temporary pavilion for the Kerala Literature Festival.

Inspired by centuries of cultural exchange between Kerala and Germany, this structure feels less like a festival tent and more like a welcoming home by the sea. Its sail-like angled planes embrace the wind, light, and open horizon, creating a soft rhythm of openness and intimacy.

Locally sourced bamboo forms the light structural frame, wrapped in hand-woven cotton rope screens, flowing calico drapes, terracotta tiles, and a breathable roof of woven paaya (dried grass). Every material tells a story — rooted in the legacy of the old Commonwealth Weaving and Tile Factories while remaining fully reusable after the event.

Warm, tactile, and deeply connected to place, the pavilion transforms a fleeting festival moment into something memorable and meaningful.

Project: Kerala Literature Festival Pavilion (German Pavilion for Goethe-Institut)
Location: Kozhikode, Kerala, India
Design: The Purple Ink Studio

Full story here:
🔗 https://designarcus.com/s/bjn