Of a few places one could safely retreat and relax in this pandemic time is one’s own abode. Many has since reconsidered and rethought their perspective of what an ideal home should be. Among many criteria of an ideal home expected by many homeowners today, having an inner garden or courtyard is on the top list. Completed in 2020, the Raffles House by eben is an ideal example of house with courtyards that promotes the dwellers’ well-being in this current situation.

In the recent years, e-commerce has been disrupting the operations of physical retail spaces, especially malls and department stores. But even if many people now prefer to shop through their handheld screens, the culture of hanging and dining out with others prevails. This makes way to new developments of retail spaces, such as a lifestyle mall that is smaller in size and provides more dining experience and entertainment. These smaller spaces that contain only more or less a dozen curated outlets have been gaining popularity and popped up in many cities.

The Auckland War Memorial Museum prepares to open the doors to its South Atrium to the public this week on 3 December, after undergoing refurbishment for approximately 18 months.

Among the typical home office buildings in Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, the office of Mantab Group stands quite prominently thanks to its gleaming gold-coloured façade. Hovering over the second floor of the building, the metallic façade wraps the front-facing part of the building with its folded surface. Yet, in contrast with the grandiose façade, a modest and small timber finished box figure stands next to it, marking the entrance to the office.

Situated next to the Yishun Pond, Tzu Chi Humanistic Youth Centre is recently opened to facilitate one of the organisation’s missions to provide supplementary education for the Singapore’s young generations. As a multipurpose public building, this youth centre houses facilities such as a function hall, classrooms, studios and workshops, study rooms, F&B outlets and other congregational spaces for members and visitors to meet and interact.

Sitting on a generous 3,500-square-metre land plot, House68 is a private residence that tries to integrate its surrounding natural feature seamlessly. The architecture firm, Design Collective Architects (DCA) takes a bold viewpoint of how a building in the tropics should be, “Tropical architecture is not to shield and protect the users from the elements but to enhance the experience and bridge the relationship between them.”

Mary Henry reflects on three recent Jasmax tertiary education designs that respond to the evolution of the tertiary education sector, its contradictory drivers of physical and virtual environments and the ways in which universities encourage students to stay on campus.

Richard Harris is one of New Zealand’s most experienced architects and practice leaders. Now running his independent company, he was a co-founder and long-time director of Jasmax, a past president of the NZIA and a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute. In his career, from graduate to practice director, he has encountered – and survived – several significant economic downturns. He discussed his experience of difficult times, and the lessons he learnt, in a webinar addressed to NZIA members. This article is based on that presentation.

Anthony Brand meets Groupwork's Amin Taha, discusses the rise of ‘amnesic architecture’ at an Oxford conference about memory and place, and finds several practices using narratives about material traces to counter the trend.

Jeremy Smith had a hectic 2019. Hard on the heels of his Essay from America, traversing several United States schools of architecture, he reports from Kerala, India, as international juror and keynote speaker at the Indian Institute of Architects’ National Awards for Excellence in Architecture 2019.

The unearthing of a single personal letter in the early 1980s was powerful enough to destabilise one of the foundations of Western conceptual art history, reminding us again of the power of printed media to subvert or revise established canons.

One of the many things we didn’t see coming with the arrival of COVID-19 to our shores was the nationwide protest on Queen’s Birthday in support of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Sparked by the brutal video of George Floyd’s death – a sickening public lynching – it’s not surprising that so many would want to take a stand against such inhumanity.