Architecture is increasingly asked to do less, not more. In environments shaped by constant movement, noise, and expectation, spaces that allow people to stay, pause, and be present have become both rarer and more necessary. Many public and semi-public places are designed to keep people moving, consuming, or reacting, leaving little room for lingering, observation, or simply being without a reason.

In response, a growing body of work is shifting attention away from activation and toward presence. Rather than asking users to interact or participate, these spaces create conditions that support staying. Comfort, continuity, and openness allow people to remain without pressure or obligation, making presence a spatial quality rather than an activity.

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Unlike most popular sports, the origin of basketball has a precise year and creator: it was invented in 1891 in the United States by Canadian physical education instructor James Naismith as an indoor sport for athletes at Springfield College during the winter, after the end of the football season. The sport quickly expanded beyond U.S. borders, being included in the Olympic Games in 1936 and achieving international popularity after the Second World War. As basketball became more widespread, it also left the controlled environment of gymnasiums and began occupying a wide range of locations: playgrounds, public plazas, school courtyards, driveways, and backyard patios became informal courts for play and community life, reinforcing the role of physical activity as a catalyst for social interaction and neighborhood regeneration.

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Lu Wenyu—co-founder of Amateur Architecture Studio with Pritzker laureate Wang Shu—has shaped many of the practice's most emblematic works across China, including the Ningbo History Museum and the Xiangshan Campus of the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Often working outside the spotlight, her leadership is unmistakable in the discipline of execution and the roles she has assumed: in 2003, together with Wang Shu, she established the Architecture Department at the China Academy of Art, where she also serves as Director of the Sustainable Construction Center. Her practice and teaching form a reciprocal loop: research conducted in studios at the China Academy of Art continually folds back into construction strategies on site, while lessons learned in the field return to the classroom as material intelligence rather than abstract theory.

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Once a Najdi settlement defined by mudbrick walls and courtyard houses, Riyadh has undergone one of the most radical urban transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries. The discovery of oil reserves, the consolidation of political power, and the rapid expansion of infrastructure reshaped the city from a regional capital into a sprawling metropolis almost within a single generation. As a result, Riyadh's urban fabric is marked by discontinuities, fragments of vernacular architecture coexist with mid-century institutional modernism, and a rapidly evolving contemporary skyline.

In recent decades, this layered condition has been further intensified by large-scale development strategies and cultural investment programs that position architecture as a tool for redefining national identity. International practices have played a decisive role in shaping key institutions, infrastructures, and landmarks, while local studios increasingly contribute projects that reinterpret climate, materiality, and social space within a contemporary framework.

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Historic center renewal has become a recurring strategy in Central American cities seeking to reassert the symbolic, economic, and functional relevance of their traditional cores. These processes often combine physical rehabilitation, institutional investment, and stricter control over public space. San Salvador offers a recent and instructive case, which allows for understanding of how interventions in inherited civic spaces balance infrastructure improvement with heritage conservation and social regulation. It also enables the assessment of how these choices resonate within broader debates on urban transformation in the region.

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In the translation of three-dimensional reality onto a two-dimensional plane, axonometry stands as one of the graphic systems of representation that form the foundation of the language used by architecture and design professionals. Alongside plans, sections, and elevations, its exploded views often stand out for their ability to study the multiple layers that compose a project. Although axonometry is also employed in other disciplines such as engineering and urban planning, it consistently proves its capacity to function as more than a mere representational tool, strengthening the understanding not only of a project's construction processes, materials, and structural systems but also expanding the communication of the ideas and design processes that shape a project.

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Leisure spaces are often where different generations cross paths. Without formal programs or assigned roles, they allow people to move, pause, and remain together, each engaging space in their own way. In a built environment increasingly shaped by specialization and separation, these shared spatial grounds have become less common, giving leisure-oriented architecture a renewed relevance.

Discussions around public space have repeatedly pointed to the value of openness and flexibility in supporting collective life. As architect Herman Hertzberger has noted, "the more a space can be interpreted in different ways, the more people it can accommodate." Rather than attempting to create interaction, architecture shapes the conditions that make togetherness possible.

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Architecture is most often represented as a stable object: a building captured at a moment of visual clarity, isolated from surrounding contingencies. Plans, sections, and photographs promise legibility by suspending time. Yet many of the world's most enduring public environments resist this mode of representation altogether. They are not designed to be read instantaneously, nor do they reveal their logic through form alone. Their spatial intelligence emerges gradually, through repetition, occupation, and duration.

The bazaar belongs firmly within this category. It cannot be understood through a single drawing or a finished elevation. Its organization is not fixed but rehearsed. What sustains it is not purely architectural composition, but shared timing, collective memory, and long-standing patterns of use. Togetherness in the bazaar does not arise from formal design decisions; it is produced through repeated encounters, negotiated proximities, and social familiarity accumulated over time.

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Breakfast nooks emerged in the early twentieth century in response to increasing domestic density and shifting ideas about everyday life. Rooted in the American Arts and Crafts movement and popularized through bungalow housing of the 1910s and 1920s, they evolved from the more formal Victorian breakfast room into compact, built-in spaces embedded within the kitchen. As houses grew smaller and more economical, architects and millwork companies used fixed benches and tables to occupy corners, alcoves, and bay windows that might otherwise be inefficient. These light-filled enclosures provided an affordable means of concentrating daily activities while preserving comfort and spatial clarity.

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The architectural history of North American cities in the 20th century is often characterized by the pursuit of urban renewal. In the United States, Boston, Portland, and San Francisco are just some examples of when municipal governments prioritized high-speed vehicular infrastructure over the existing urban fabric. In Canada, Montreal would have followed this trajectory if not for the intervention of several figures throughout its history, most notably Blanche Lemco van Ginkel (1923–2022). A Harvard-trained planner and architect who, along with her husband Sandy Van Ginkel, advocated for the preservation of urban heritage while applying the principles of modernist infrastructure.

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