Furniture waste is not always the result of physical damage that renders a product unusable. Chairs, sofas, and tables are often discarded because they no longer fit an interior concept, are perceived as outdated, or are replaced during a renovation. In many cases, their structures remain functional, even when upholstery is worn, or the surrounding space has changed. The result is a cycle of replacement in which usable products become waste, while new resources are extracted and processed to manufacture their successors.

An opening between two rooms shapes how people move through a building, what they see from one space to another, and whether an area feels connected or separate. Although doors are among the most frequently used interior architectural elements, their impact on the interior organization is often considered late in the design process. Yet their movement and relationship to surrounding surfaces influence circulation, furniture placement, and the perception of space.

In residential renovations, these decisions are particularly important. Existing walls, structural elements, building services, and ceiling heights can limit options, while new layouts often balance open-plan living with the need for privacy. In new construction, architects have greater freedom to coordinate wall cavities, suspended ceilings, and door mechanisms from the outset.

Adding new floors on top of a historic building presents a challenge beyond accommodating additional space: how can a contemporary intervention respond to the character of an existing structure? Material selection plays an important role in establishing a relationship between different construction periods, whether the aim is to complement the existing building or create a more distinct architectural expression. The LH Residence in Varna, Bulgaria, designed by STARH, offers an example of how fiber cement can help relate a contemporary addition to a historic building.

Building Information Modeling has made it possible to attach an enormous amount of information to each element of a design. A wall can carry its fire resistance class and its cost group, and later even the maintenance information a facility manager will need. That possibility creates a temptation: if the model can hold more data, it should. In the process, an important question of efficiency can get lost: does the project actually need this information, and does it need it now?

For architects, BIM is often described as a "single source of truth." Every additional property, however, adds work, coordination, and maintenance, and information entered too early or without a clear purpose can quickly become outdated. What matters is having the right information for the decisions being made at each stage of the project. The Stuttgart-based firm KUBUS360 made that question central to its work on an administrative complex in Baden-Württemberg (Germany).

What happens to the space beneath a roof? In many houses, the answer is simple: it becomes an attic, a storage space, or a largely unused volume between the upper floor and the roof. Yet the same space can become a bedroom, home office, playroom, or additional living area if the roof and the room beneath it are considered together.

This potential matters in both existing buildings and residential architecture. Converting an attic can add usable space without extending the building's footprint, while designing a new house with a usable roof space in mind can make it more adaptable over time. The question is therefore not only how to convert an attic, but how to recognize the architectural potential of underused space created by a sloped roof.

Solar panels are often treated as equipment added to a building. What happens when they become part of the architecture itself? Once integrated into the envelope, photovoltaics can generate energy while also influencing the building's form, construction, and environmental performance.

Roofs are often the most obvious location for photovoltaic panels, yet other parts of the building can generate power while performing additional architectural functions. Facades can provide shading, louvers can control sunlight, and ventilated rainscreens can combine weather protection with energy generation. Their orientation, position, and integration into the building envelope therefore become part of the architectural design rather than a separate technical decision.

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The office chair has evolved alongside changing workplaces over time. In each office era, the chair has reflected the way people work. Early office seating was built for clerical work: fixed wooden chairs arranged in rows across large administrative offices, where paperwork followed standardized routines. By the 1980s, computers began changing how people occupied a desk, and office furniture followed. Designers approached seating through ergonomics and biomechanics, refining adjustable height, lumbar support, synchronized recline, and the relationship between the body and the workstation. Later designers combined ergonomic research with new materials such as breathable suspension mesh instead of conventional foam upholstery.

Unlike buildings, which are anchored to foundations and respond to climate from a fixed position, yachts are designed for constant movement and change. Interiors sway with the vessel, light changes by the minute, humidity is a permanent design condition, and every kilogram influences performance. Designing for the sea therefore requires architects, naval architects, engineers, and interior designers to solve questions that rarely exist on land: how can space remain calm while everything around it is in motion?

What can a textile do that glass, wood, concrete, or metal cannot? Architectural composite fabrics don't replace conventional building materials. Instead, they can complement them and often add another layer of performance to the building envelope. Their application changes with context. A composite membrane can become an exterior shading system for a tropical conservatory, an interior skin that shapes acoustics and spatial experience in a museum, or part of a facade strategy that improves the environmental performance of an existing building.

What happens when architecture is asked to create a room without boundaries? Convention halls, stadiums, factories, and logistics centers all begin with the same architectural challenge: creating large, uninterrupted interiors that can accommodate movement, visibility, and changing uses. The larger the span, the greater the structural demands, and the greater the architectural possibilities.

Long-span architecture is not a recent ambition. For centuries, architects have sought ways to enclose large public spaces, from the monumental dome of the Pantheon to the iron-and-glass halls of London's Crystal Palace. Each breakthrough expanded the possibilities of architecture, replacing thicker walls and denser structural systems with lighter, more efficient ways of spanning distance. Today, steel continues that evolution, making it possible to span distances that would be difficult to achieve with conventional structural systems while keeping large public spaces open, flexible, and adaptable. Steel's high strength-to-weight ratio makes longer spans possible with fewer columns and lighter structural systems, while prefabricated components simplify construction and reduce on-site work.

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Symbols have always traveled through architecture. They appear in carved stone, woven textiles, painted ceilings and walls, door hardware, and everyday objects, carrying the beliefs, rituals, and histories of the cultures that first created them. Across contemporary interiors, designers continue this dialogue with place by revisiting historical symbols and translating them through new materials, manufacturing techniques, and architectural forms.

The Ruyi knot is one such example. For centuries, the interwoven motif has been part of the Chinese knotting tradition, symbolizing continuity, harmony, and good wishes. Its gently looping geometry has appeared across decorative objects and ceremonial crafts, demonstrating how cultural references can become part of a design vocabulary that extends far beyond ornament.

What transforms a space of living into a home? Beyond ownership or shelter, a home is tied to a quieter sense of certainty: the feeling that one can retreat, rest, and momentarily step away from the world's unpredictability. Homes are where routines accumulate, memories settle into spaces and objects, and where personal identity takes physical form through occupation and everyday rituals. Yet this sense of belonging depends on another condition that often goes unnoticed until disrupted: security. To feel "at home" implies a condition of comfort and stability. When domestic environments fail to provide this, spaces designed for rest become sources of unease, subtly affecting routines and well-being.

Designing a museum interior means negotiating between the needs of the collection and those of the visitor: objects must be protected and carefully displayed, while spaces need to remain accessible, legible, and engaging. Scale, circulation, security, lighting, structure, and technology all become part of the design, often working quietly in the background so that the exhibits remain the focus. So, how do you fit 4.5 billion years of Earth's history into a museum interior? The renovation of the Natural History Museum Oslo, home to one of the largest geological and anthropological exhibitions in the Nordic countries, offers a clear example of how these demands can come together within an existing architectural framework.

The ceiling is one of the largest continuous surfaces in a space, yet why is it rarely the first architectural element people notice? Often perceived as the plane that conceals structure and building services, it quietly recedes into the background while facades, materials, structural systems, and furniture define a building's architectural identity. Yet few architectural elements influence the experience of a space as consistently as this one. The ceiling shapes how sound travels, how light is reflected, how air moves through a room, and ultimately how architecture is experienced, bringing together technical performance and architectural expression through a single continuous surface.

Danish architectural theorist Steen Eiler Rasmussen observed in his book Experiencing Architecture that ceilings shape the character of a room through rhythm, proportion, light, and atmosphere. Rather than simply enclosing space, they help organize it, defining areas and guiding movement without the need for additional walls. As buildings became larger, more open, and more dependent on integrated building services, architecture began asking more of this overlooked surface. The ceiling gradually shifted from a concealed building component into an active architectural system in which acoustics, lighting, ventilation, thermal comfort, and technical infrastructure could converge on a single plane.

What defines the quality of a bathroom beyond its basic functions? As one of the most private spaces within the home, the bathroom is closely connected to everyday rituals and moments of pause. While fixtures, circulation, and technical requirements establish the practical foundation, the atmosphere emerges through a combination of spatial decisions: how furniture meets the floor or deliberately avoids it, how materials interact with light, how storage is integrated, and how form and proportion shape perception.

What allows a single architectural principle to generate many different outcomes? The answer lies in the systems that organize architecture: geometry, proportion, structure, and construction. Together, these can establish a set of rules that can accommodate different programs, contexts, and spatial conditions while maintaining a coherent identity. A structural grid, for example, can organize a variety of uses, just as a single construction detail can be repeated throughout an entire building without producing identical spaces. Can the same way of thinking be translated into furniture design without losing its identity? MTM—Made to Measure, developed by Herzog & de Meuron for UniFor, explores this question. Instead of designing each piece independently, the collection grows from a single structural principle that can be extended, adapted, and repeated across different functions while maintaining its internal coherence.

As the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 came to a close in Barcelona, one message resurfaced across debates, exhibitions, talks, and conversations alike: the future of architecture will depend less on definitive answers than on the ability to accept change and collectively question established models. At this year's Congress, under the theme "Becoming. Architectures for a Planet in Transition," architecture was framed as an evolving practice shaped by interdisciplinary dialogue, research, and collaboration.

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Architecture project information does not live only in CAD or BIM software. Design briefs, drawing PDFs, contracts, quotations, site reports, approval files, and project specifications are often the documents that teams open, revise, send, and confirm every day.

When these files are scattered across emails, chat tools, scanned copies, and different devices, version mistakes, approval delays, and missing information can easily happen. For architects and small studios, this not only slows down communication. It can also affect project accuracy, client trust, and delivery timelines.