two geometries in conversation

Foxhole, a residence designed by Amsterdam-based Studio Vincent Architecture occupies a threshold condition. Set on the border of Abcoude, in the newly developed De Winkelbuurt neighborhood, the residence takes a step back from the street, introducing itself through a courtyard framed by two abstract forms. One holds the living quarters, the other a pared-down entrance volume, sealed to the road. The spatial pause between them serves as a kind of exhale, filtering the shift from public street to private garden. At dusk, light from the western horizon reaches deep inside.

The home takes shape through a pairing of asymmetrical geometries. The main house sits low and long behind a canal, while its companion structure hugs the edge of the road with a solid face. Together, they define a protected zone that simultaneously welcomes and withdraws. Along the facade, tall pivoting doors can be thrown open, turning the boundary into a passage. Despite the density of the surrounding development, the home finds its own rhythm through this interplay of mass and movement.

images © Jeremy Piret

inside the foxhole residence

Studio Vincent Architecture’s Foxhole residence unfolds internally with a kind of spatial looseness. On the ground floor, a central cabinet wall does the work of traditional partitions, carving out living areas while maintaining a clear visual connection between them. This organizing core brings attention to the kitchen, which appears immediately upon entry. Around it, the open-plan living and dining rooms slide out toward the garden, their generous glass openings responding directly to the house’s stepped siting.

The architects approach the upper floor with a sensitivity to human proportions. Custom built-in storage is wrapped in the same finishes as the walls, dissolving the boundaries between surface and structure. Rooflines slant inward, yet the space opens up rather than compresses. The abstraction of the pitched ceiling gathers daylight and holds it, softening the edges of the compact rooms while drawing attention to the physical presence of the materials.

the house sits between two abstract volumes that create a private courtyard away from the street

studio vincent architecture’s design strategies

Studio Vincent Architecture shapes its Foxhole residence with energy consciousness at its core. The structure is wrapped in thick layers of thermal insulation, serviced by a heat pump, and ventilated through heat recovery systems that preserve warmth without sacrificing fresh air. Its roof is embedded with twenty-six solar panels, flush with the surface, quietly generating more electricity than the house consumes. These decisions are carefully coordinated with the architecture’s orientation, which offers controlled exposures and framed views.

Foxhole adapts to its context with a split personality. Facing the neighborhood, it echoes the familiar silhouette of a pitched roof, anchoring itself among traditional houses. Along the side that meets open land, the roofline folds and cuts, releasing a more experimental outline. The asymmetry allows the building to engage different worlds at once — residential order on one side, open expanse on the other — without flattening into a single gesture.

The home’s floor plan informs its relationship with the land. The pentagonal footprint is not an arbitrary move, but a means to balance light, view, and privacy within a tight parcel. It responds to the canal, the street, and the sun with equal weight. The geometry shelters, but it also opens, making the house feel embedded rather than imposed.

large pivoting doors allow the closed entrance building to open onto the garden

a central cabinet on the ground floor replaces interior walls to create fluid, connected spaces

the upper floor uses built-in furniture and aligned finishes to create a unified flow

rooflines and material heights are scaled to the human body for spatial comfort

project info:

name: Foxhole

architecture: Studio Vincent Architecture | @studiovincentarchitecture

location: Abcoude, The Netherlands

structural engineer: De Ingenieursgroep
contractor: Bouwbedrijf Bon

completion: 2024

photography: © Jeremy Piret | @jeremypiret

The post studio vincent architecture’s ‘foxhole’ home uses rooflines and voids to frame seclusion appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

pyramid book house: a building sculpted by skylights

Beijing and Rotterdam-based architecture studio MAT Office takes to a rural community outside Chengdu to design a temporary bookstore dubbed the Pyramid Book House. The project’s site on the edge of Wanchun Town sees rows of agricultural fields yield to the city’s spreading suburbs. Standing within a greenbelt along Tuanjiequ Road, the book house settles into this setting, shaped by the rhythms of its context and a belief in quiet transformation. MAT Office brings a clear sensitivity to site, allowing architecture to emerge from what the place invites, rather than what a program demands.

The architecture adopts a composition of three steeply sloped geometries, each assigned a different purpose — reading, display, and leisure. These forms resemble simple pyramids, pitched high enough to catch sunlight through carefully positioned skylights. Each structure is linked by a transparent roof, forming a sheltered corridor that opens both visually and atmospherically to its surroundings. The project takes its name from these volumes, but the real architecture lies in the way they modulate light and define space

images © Arch-Exist

mat office draws from rural chinese vernacular

The Pyramid Book House by MAT Office uses humble, local materials in a deliberate expression of place. Wooden tiles line the exterior, creating a tactile surface that connects with the vernacular textures of the Chengdu Plain. Pine plywood defines both the walls and ceiling inside, where the same surfaces that support the structure also shape the spatial experience. The wood-framed structure reveals itself without disguise, allowing each joint and surface to participate in both the building’s appearance and its function.

The architects design with a focus on economy, and this constraint is handled as a design strategy rather than a compromise. Construction avoids complexity where simplicity will do. Columns and beams are expressed as straightforward wooden members, placed with care rather than ornament. The structural frame is exposed, but it doesn’t strive for austerity. Instead, it feels open and generous, defined by clarity rather than minimalism.

the Pyramid Book House by MAT Office is located in a greenbelt on the rural edge of Chengdu

a glowing lantern

MAT Office’s Pyramid Book House is part of a larger initiative that aims to embed reading spaces into the daily life of Chengdu’s outer communities. Here, the architecture acts as a gentle interrupter, a pause in the ordinary. Its small scale creates intimacy, while its form stands out just enough to arouse curiosity. Within weeks of completion, it became a gathering point. Locals stopped to peer inside, then lingered, then returned. A new ritual took hold — reading in the sunlight, and lounging on the grass.

As daylight fades, the building’s skylights dim and its interior lighting begins to glow. From the road, it looks like a warm flicker in the agricultural fields, a gentle presence offering something intangible. Though its footprint is small, its radiance extends. Architecture becomes hospitality, and the book house becomes a place where people stay longer than they planned.

its three pyramid-shaped volumes define spaces for reading display and leisure

wooden tiles and pine plywood reflect the traditional materials of the Chengdu Plain

the project emphasizes low-cost construction with exposed wooden structural elements

it has become a social hub for both residents and visitors from nearby towns

project info:

name: Pyramid Book House

architect: MAT Office | @matoffice.architects

location: Chengdu, China

area: 78 square meters

completion: 2023

photography: © Arch-Exist | @archexist

The post three sloping geometries shape MAT office’s pyramid book house in rural china appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

pyramid book house: a building sculpted by skylights

Beijing and Rotterdam-based architecture studio MAT Office takes to a rural community outside Chengdu to design a temporary bookstore dubbed the Pyramid Book House. The project’s site on the edge of Wanchun Town sees rows of agricultural fields yield to the city’s spreading suburbs. Standing within a greenbelt along Tuanjiequ Road, the book house settles into this setting, shaped by the rhythms of its context and a belief in quiet transformation. MAT Office brings a clear sensitivity to site, allowing architecture to emerge from what the place invites, rather than what a program demands.

The architecture adopts a composition of three steeply sloped geometries, each assigned a different purpose — reading, display, and leisure. These forms resemble simple pyramids, pitched high enough to catch sunlight through carefully positioned skylights. Each structure is linked by a transparent roof, forming a sheltered corridor that opens both visually and atmospherically to its surroundings. The project takes its name from these volumes, but the real architecture lies in the way they modulate light and define space

images © Arch-Exist

mat office draws from rural chinese vernacular

The Pyramid Book House by MAT Office uses humble, local materials in a deliberate expression of place. Wooden tiles line the exterior, creating a tactile surface that connects with the vernacular textures of the Chengdu Plain. Pine plywood defines both the walls and ceiling inside, where the same surfaces that support the structure also shape the spatial experience. The wood-framed structure reveals itself without disguise, allowing each joint and surface to participate in both the building’s appearance and its function.

The architects design with a focus on economy, and this constraint is handled as a design strategy rather than a compromise. Construction avoids complexity where simplicity will do. Columns and beams are expressed as straightforward wooden members, placed with care rather than ornament. The structural frame is exposed, but it doesn’t strive for austerity. Instead, it feels open and generous, defined by clarity rather than minimalism.

the Pyramid Book House by MAT Office is located in a greenbelt on the rural edge of Chengdu

a glowing lantern

MAT Office’s Pyramid Book House is part of a larger initiative that aims to embed reading spaces into the daily life of Chengdu’s outer communities. Here, the architecture acts as a gentle interrupter, a pause in the ordinary. Its small scale creates intimacy, while its form stands out just enough to arouse curiosity. Within weeks of completion, it became a gathering point. Locals stopped to peer inside, then lingered, then returned. A new ritual took hold — reading in the sunlight, and lounging on the grass.

As daylight fades, the building’s skylights dim and its interior lighting begins to glow. From the road, it looks like a warm flicker in the agricultural fields, a gentle presence offering something intangible. Though its footprint is small, its radiance extends. Architecture becomes hospitality, and the book house becomes a place where people stay longer than they planned.

its three pyramid-shaped volumes define spaces for reading display and leisure

wooden tiles and pine plywood reflect the traditional materials of the Chengdu Plain

the project emphasizes low-cost construction with exposed wooden structural elements

it has become a social hub for both residents and visitors from nearby towns

project info:

name: Pyramid Book House

architect: MAT Office | @matoffice.architects

location: Chengdu, China

area: 78 square meters

completion: 2023

photography: © Arch-Exist | @archexist

The post three sloping geometries shape MAT office’s pyramid book house in rural china appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

teamlab biovortex kyoto set to open later this year

teamLab announces the launch of its upcoming museum, teamLab Biovortex Kyoto, set to open in Minami-ku, Kyoto in the Fall of 2025. The immersive space will serve as a cultural hub for experimental digital art, featuring new and previously unseen works that merge perception, environment, and embodied experience. Continuing the Japanese art collective’s exploration of what it means to ‘see’ and ‘exist’ in a world shaped by light, space, and interactivity, it will invite visitors to move through environments that defy conventional notions of physical form. From floating spheres to a suspended landscape of light, each of the artworks will change and evolve in response to the body and its surroundings.

Among the highlights is Massless Amorphous Sculpture, an immersive, bubble-filled environment in which a vast floating form hovers mid-air. Shifting continuously, it resists the constraints of mass or boundary. Visitors can physically enter the sculpture, yet it remains structurally stable, restoring itself if disturbed, and collapsing only under irreparable pressure. The piece exists as a ‘high order sculpture,’ shaped by energy and environment rather than matter.

Morphing Continuum | all images © teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery

from massless suns to shape-shifting forms

Also premiering at teamLab Biovortex Kyoto is Massless Suns and Dark Suns, a cognitive artwork formed of intangible light spheres. When touched, these spheres ripple across the space, yet they have no material surface and cannot be photographed. The installation plays with perception, suggesting that it exists only within the viewer’s consciousness — a ‘sculpture’ made of interaction and interpretation rather than physical mass. Morphing Continuum expands on this idea of spatial-temporal existence. Made up of glowing elements suspended in air, the work behaves like a living system and maintains form even as its components shift. Its ambiguous edges and changing structure create an experience that is fluid, immersive, and self-regenerating.

In Traces of Life, people generate the work simply by being present. As they move through the space, their footsteps leave behind traces that accumulate over time. yet without the presence of people, the space remains inert. The work reflects teamLab’s belief that art is ever-evolving and co-created, activated through collective experience.

Forest of Resonating Lamps — One Stroke, Fire

the new digital museum enhances kyoto’s cultural ecosystem

The new museum will form part of a larger development effort led by Kyoto City to create a cultural and creative zone in the southeastern area of Kyoto Station. With support from local companies in Kyoto and Osaka, teamLab Biovortex Kyoto aims to become a platform for youth culture, interdisciplinary collaboration, and new forms of artistic production. In this context, the museum is both an artwork, continually changing shape within, and a new cultural infrastructure that is anchored in Kyoto’s long-standing artistic heritage while oriented toward emerging digital futures.

Resonating Microcosms — Solidified Light Color

The Eternal Universe of Words

Massless Amorphous Sculpture

Massless Amorphous Sculpture

Ephemeral Solidified Light

Living Crystallized Light

Spherical Crystallized Light

project info:

name: teamLab Biovortex Kyoto

artist: teamLab | @teamlab

location: Kyoto, Japan

The post teamLab announces kyoto museum with massless sculptures and interactive light works appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

Atelier Alter installs galaxy of cultural memory in china pavilion

Atelier Alter Architects transforms the Chinese Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale into a galaxy of cultural memory with Dunhuang Con-stella-tion, a luminous sculptural installation. Architects Yingfan Zhang and Xiaojun Bu materialize a 12×8×6.5-meter 3D star field using metal rods, spherical forms, mesh, and multicolored acrylics. This construct acts as a spatial telescope linking two ancient ports of knowledge exchange, Dunhuang and Venice, through a radiant cloud of artistic and philosophical symbolism drawn from Indian, Persian, Greek, and Chinese traditions.

At the global stage of the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion is one of the twelve featured works in the China Pavilion, selected under the curatorship of Ma Yansong (MAD) (read designboom’s interview with MAD’s Ma Yansong here). Interpreting the exhibition’s theme, CO-EXIST, the installation reimagines Cave 285 from Dunhuang’s Mogao Grottoes as a celestial archive of civilizational fusion.

all images by Demone, Mint, Atelier Alter, Li Chunchao

Cave 285 as a celestial archive of ancient knowledge

The Mogao Caves, carved into China’s Mingsha Mountain beginning in 366 CE, are a Silk Road palimpsest where spiritual belief intertwines with global exchange. Cave 285, a focal point of the installation, contains the earliest known star chart of the Northern Hemisphere, painted across a four-sloped dome in the Western Wei period. This celestial ceiling combines deities and iconography from a rich cross-section of cultures: Indian Brahma and Ganesha, Sogdian sun and moon gods, Chinese phoenixes and Fuxi, and Persian motifs, all rendered in polychromatic harmony. The duo of Atelier Alter abstracts this cosmic fusion into an artificial nebula, where each material element represents a stroke of ancient craftsmanship, a brush of stardust floating in architectural orbit.

By reframing the cave’s sacred geometry through contemporary topological language, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion reveals a nonlinear constellation of meaning. The installation positions the original cave as a ‘civilizational energy diagram,’ mapping out four cultural nebulae, Indian Buddhism, Central Asian commerce, Persian artistry, and Greek sculpture, into a shared cosmological grammar. Ancient astrological systems become dynamic fields of data, visually and conceptually resonating with modern geometric thought. This echoes the Tang Dynasty’s Dunhuang Star Atlas, whose constellations mirrored imperial Chang’an’s night sky and aligned with three schools of astronomy, a precedent for this contemporary act of cultural coding.

a galaxy of cultural memory

Dunhuang Con-stella-tion, a model of cultural rebirth

Curated by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, Dunhuang Con-stella-tion responds to the Biennale’s global constellation of architectural thought by aligning the ancient inclusivity of Dunhuang with the fluid hybridity of Venice. The installation aims to be a speculative model of cultural rebirth. Every metal sphere, every dust particle becomes a mnemonic device, a poetic echo of how civilizations have long intertwined through migration, translation, and artistic syncretism. As Atelier Alter suggests, cultural convergence is not about layering styles, but about generative collision, where flying apsaras dance with Greek Bodhisattvas, and Sogdian phonemes echo through Chinese sutras.

Atelier Alter Architects transforms the Chinese Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Biennale

Yingfan Zhang and Xiaojun Bu materialize a 12×8×6.5-meter 3D star field

Con-stella-tion takes its place in the China Pavilion

a spatial telescope links two ancient ports of knowledge exchange

drawing from Indian, Persian, Greek, and Chinese traditions

one of twelve featured works featured in the China Pavilion

project info:

name: Con-stella-stion:Dunhuang
artist: Atelier Alter Architects | @atelier_alter_architects

location: Chinese Pavilion, Venice, Italy

lead designers: Yingfan Zhang & Xiaojun Bu

curator: Ma Yansong (MAD)

program: Venice Architecture Biennale | @labiennale

dates: May 10th — November 23rd, 2025

dimensions: 12 × 8 × 6.5 meters

photographers: Demone, Mint, Atelier Alter, Li Chunchao

designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: thomai tsimpou | designboom

The post atelier alter crafts glowing nebula of civilizational stardust for the venice biennale 2025 appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

inflated Temporality suspended at berlinische galerie

At the Berlinische Galerie, artist Daniel Hölzl opens a new chapter in his ongoing conversation with space, structure, and impermanence. For the museum’s 50th anniversary, the artist has installed ‘soft cycles,’ an architectural intervention that fills the void above the main entrance with 800 cubic meters of gently shifting air. The installation hovers in the threshold, its sculptural monoliths suspended between expansion and collapse.

Daniel Hölzl constructs ‘soft cycles’ from pieces of earlier inflatable works, all previously situated across Berlin. At Berlinische Galerie, these fragments, crafted from white parachute silk, are gathered into a single translucent volume. This temporary skin encloses what once were doors, vaults, or corners, reframing memory as spatial tension. With each breath, the structure shifts, and new forms begin to unfold within the old.

images © Clemens Poloczek

daniel hölzl sculpts Structures with rhythm

The choreography of artist Daniel Hölzl’s ‘soft cycles’ plays out in timed repetitions at Berlinische Galerie. Air is absorbed and released according to an engineered sequence, activating the form like a lung. Daniel Hölzl situates this rhythm within the architecture of the gallery, where exhibitions, like the installation itself, are temporary and perpetually renewed. The building becomes a participant in the cycle, inhaling fragments of the past and exhaling new constellations of space.

In the hands of Daniel Hölzl, the materials carry their own logic of erosion. The parachute silk is durable, yet chosen for its delicate translucency. It registers each inflation as a gesture toward disappearance. At Berlinische Galerie, the fabric’s softness sits in contrast to the museum’s robust concrete and steel. What emerges is a negotiation between the fixed and the fluid.

Daniel Hölzl fills the entrance of Berlinische Galerie with a site-specific, inflatable intervention

balancing the Material and Ephemeral

Berlinische Galerie itself becomes a co-author of ‘soft cycles.’ Hölzl’s installation echoes Fritz Balthaus’ 2004 marked space – unmarked space, an embedded line of stonework across the plaza. Where Balthaus traces the footprint of the absent building, Hölzl fills the air above it. This vertical expansion reframes the museum’s entrance, reorienting attention toward the space that architecture leaves behind.

The air inside ‘soft cycles’ is at once a structural necessity and a carrier of memory. Daniel Hölzl approaches volume as a medium of change. Within the Berlinische Galerie, the inflating mass becomes a kinetic archive, holding traces of past exhibitions, prior forms, former sites. With each cycle, that archive is reordered, collapsed, and rebuilt again.

Living and working in Berlin since his studies at Kunsthochschule Weissensee, Daniel Hölzl takes the city as both subject and source. ‘soft cycles’ mirrors Berlin’s continual reconstruction, where no surface remains untouched for long. Hölzl pulls from this urban condition without dramatizing it. His response is quiet and grounded in material empathy.

‘soft cycles’ is composed of recycled fragments from Hölzl’s earlier inflatable works across Berlin

the structure breathes in and out at set intervals, creating a continuous spatial rhythm

parachute silk forms a translucent membrane that contrasts with the museum’s solid materials

the work responds directly to Berlinische Galerie’s architecture and past artistic interventions

the installation cycles through fullness and collapse, revealing impermanence as form

‘soft cycles’ draws attention to the evolving nature of cities materials and exhibitions

project info:

exhibition: soft cycles

artist: Daniel Hölzl | @hoelzldaniel

gallery: Berlinische Galerie | @berlinischegalerie

location: Berlin, Germany

on view: April 25th — September 29th, 2025

photography: © Clemens Poloczek | @clemenspoloczek

The post soft cycles: daniel hölzl fills berlinische galerie with inflatable ‘breathing’ monoliths appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

inflated Temporality suspended at berlinische galerie

At the Berlinische Galerie, artist Daniel Hölzl opens a new chapter in his ongoing conversation with space, structure, and impermanence. For the museum’s 50th anniversary, the artist has installed ‘soft cycles,’ an architectural intervention that fills the void above the main entrance with 800 cubic meters of gently shifting air. The installation hovers in the threshold, its sculptural monoliths suspended between expansion and collapse.

Daniel Hölzl constructs ‘soft cycles’ from pieces of earlier inflatable works, all previously situated across Berlin. At Berlinische Galerie, these fragments, crafted from white parachute silk, are gathered into a single translucent volume. This temporary skin encloses what once were doors, vaults, or corners, reframing memory as spatial tension. With each breath, the structure shifts, and new forms begin to unfold within the old.

images © Clemens Poloczek

daniel hölzl sculpts Structures with rhythm

The choreography of artist Daniel Hölzl’s ‘soft cycles’ plays out in timed repetitions at Berlinische Galerie. Air is absorbed and released according to an engineered sequence, activating the form like a lung. Daniel Hölzl situates this rhythm within the architecture of the gallery, where exhibitions, like the installation itself, are temporary and perpetually renewed. The building becomes a participant in the cycle, inhaling fragments of the past and exhaling new constellations of space.

In the hands of Daniel Hölzl, the materials carry their own logic of erosion. The parachute silk is durable, yet chosen for its delicate translucency. It registers each inflation as a gesture toward disappearance. At Berlinische Galerie, the fabric’s softness sits in contrast to the museum’s robust concrete and steel. What emerges is a negotiation between the fixed and the fluid.

Daniel Hölzl fills the entrance of Berlinische Galerie with a site-specific, inflatable intervention

balancing the Material and Ephemeral

Berlinische Galerie itself becomes a co-author of ‘soft cycles.’ Hölzl’s installation echoes Fritz Balthaus’ 2004 marked space – unmarked space, an embedded line of stonework across the plaza. Where Balthaus traces the footprint of the absent building, Hölzl fills the air above it. This vertical expansion reframes the museum’s entrance, reorienting attention toward the space that architecture leaves behind.

The air inside ‘soft cycles’ is at once a structural necessity and a carrier of memory. Daniel Hölzl approaches volume as a medium of change. Within the Berlinische Galerie, the inflating mass becomes a kinetic archive, holding traces of past exhibitions, prior forms, former sites. With each cycle, that archive is reordered, collapsed, and rebuilt again.

Living and working in Berlin since his studies at Kunsthochschule Weissensee, Daniel Hölzl takes the city as both subject and source. ‘soft cycles’ mirrors Berlin’s continual reconstruction, where no surface remains untouched for long. Hölzl pulls from this urban condition without dramatizing it. His response is quiet and grounded in material empathy.

‘soft cycles’ is composed of recycled fragments from Hölzl’s earlier inflatable works across Berlin

the structure breathes in and out at set intervals, creating a continuous spatial rhythm

parachute silk forms a translucent membrane that contrasts with the museum’s solid materials

the work responds directly to Berlinische Galerie’s architecture and past artistic interventions

the installation cycles through fullness and collapse, revealing impermanence as form

‘soft cycles’ draws attention to the evolving nature of cities materials and exhibitions

project info:

exhibition: soft cycles

artist: Daniel Hölzl | @hoelzldaniel

gallery: Berlinische Galerie | @berlinischegalerie

location: Berlin, Germany

on view: April 25th — September 29th, 2025

photography: © Clemens Poloczek | @clemenspoloczek

The post soft cycles: daniel hölzl fills berlinische galerie with inflatable ‘breathing’ monoliths appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

A home hidden in St-Henri, Montreal

Alexandre Bernier Architecte’s Maison-Jardin BEAU hides within Montreal’s St-Henri neighborhood with an understated confidence. Here, in a district shaped by industrial history and tight urban fabric, the house maintains a quiet autonomy. Its slender vertical form, shaped by concrete, engages gently with the street, while turning its focus inward toward a garden.

The architect approaches the project as a radical interpretation of the traditional Montreal duplex. Constructed almost entirely from concrete, from structural core to floor surfaces, the house proposes a bold redefinition of domestic architecture. In a city where residential buildings are often timber-framed, this mono-material choice sets the project apart, both in presence and performance.

images © Maxime Brouillet

Maison-Jardin beau Opens onto a Garden

With its Maison-Jardin BEAU, Alexandre Bernier Architecte reveals a subtle duality. The design team pairs concrete’s density with a transparent garden-facing elevation, allowing the home to breathe within its envelope. Its structural core supports open, stacked floor plates, freeing the facades to invite light into every corner. Against the solidity of its mineral surfaces, shadows from surrounding foliage animate the interiors with a gentle rhythm.

On the ground floor, the boundary between home and garden dissolves. Alexandre Bernier designs the residence with a sliding glass wall that retracts entirely, allowing daily life to spill into the landscape. A shallow reflecting pool stretches across the threshold, gathering sky and sunlight, offering a quiet contrast to the house’s heft and grounding its mass in an element of weightless movement.

Maison-Jardin BEAU is located in Montreal’s St-Henri neighborhood

alexandre bernier responds to urban living

Alexandre Bernier Architecte curates the interiors of its Maison-Jardin BEAU with expressive concrete, a raw material palette which reveals a surprising softness. The team selects distinct finishes — scarified terrazzo floors glint with exposed aggregate while the formwork’s traces remain visible on the walls. These surfaces, though heavy in material, become tactile and expressive. A fourteen-foot kitchen island, sculpted with rounded edges, serves as both anchor and gathering place, cast in the same concrete language as the rest.

The architecture does not rely on concrete just for its design aesthetic. Alexandre Bernier taps into its thermal properties to regulate interior comfort. The mass stores heat in winter and moderates temperature in summer, assisted by a radiant floor system that runs through the home. The structure’s integrity allows for larger window openings, which are strategically oriented to optimize daylight and seasonal solar gain.

The home is a new response to urban living. Rather than expanding outward, the compressed volume opens vertically and allows the garden to flourish around it. This way, the space feels private and intimate, yet it opens widely onto its surroundings. In this balance of contrasts, the house cultivates a way of living that feels both resilient and open to change.

Alexandre Bernier designs the vertical single-family home to be constructed almost entirely of concrete

sliding glass doors on the ground floor dissolve the boundary between the house and garden

the solidity of concrete is balanced with openness toward a private garden through a transparent facade

a long, curved, concrete kitchen island serves as a sculptural centerpiece within the open-plan interior

project info:

name: Maison-Jardin BEAU

architect: Alexandre Bernier Architecte | @alexandrebernierarchitecte

location: Montreal, Canada

photography: © Maxime Brouillet | @maximebrouillet

The post alexandre bernier architecte designs concrete residence within a garden in montreal appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

A home hidden in St-Henri, Montreal

Alexandre Bernier Architecte’s Maison-Jardin BEAU hides within Montreal’s St-Henri neighborhood with an understated confidence. Here, in a district shaped by industrial history and tight urban fabric, the house maintains a quiet autonomy. Its slender vertical form, shaped by concrete, engages gently with the street, while turning its focus inward toward a garden.

The architect approaches the project as a radical interpretation of the traditional Montreal duplex. Constructed almost entirely from concrete, from structural core to floor surfaces, the house proposes a bold redefinition of domestic architecture. In a city where residential buildings are often timber-framed, this mono-material choice sets the project apart, both in presence and performance.

images © Maxime Brouillet

Maison-Jardin beau Opens onto a Garden

With its Maison-Jardin BEAU, Alexandre Bernier Architecte reveals a subtle duality. The design team pairs concrete’s density with a transparent garden-facing elevation, allowing the home to breathe within its envelope. Its structural core supports open, stacked floor plates, freeing the facades to invite light into every corner. Against the solidity of its mineral surfaces, shadows from surrounding foliage animate the interiors with a gentle rhythm.

On the ground floor, the boundary between home and garden dissolves. Alexandre Bernier designs the residence with a sliding glass wall that retracts entirely, allowing daily life to spill into the landscape. A shallow reflecting pool stretches across the threshold, gathering sky and sunlight, offering a quiet contrast to the house’s heft and grounding its mass in an element of weightless movement.

Maison-Jardin BEAU is located in Montreal’s St-Henri neighborhood

alexandre bernier responds to urban living

Alexandre Bernier Architecte curates the interiors of its Maison-Jardin BEAU with expressive concrete, a raw material palette which reveals a surprising softness. The team selects distinct finishes — scarified terrazzo floors glint with exposed aggregate while the formwork’s traces remain visible on the walls. These surfaces, though heavy in material, become tactile and expressive. A fourteen-foot kitchen island, sculpted with rounded edges, serves as both anchor and gathering place, cast in the same concrete language as the rest.

The architecture does not rely on concrete just for its design aesthetic. Alexandre Bernier taps into its thermal properties to regulate interior comfort. The mass stores heat in winter and moderates temperature in summer, assisted by a radiant floor system that runs through the home. The structure’s integrity allows for larger window openings, which are strategically oriented to optimize daylight and seasonal solar gain.

The home is a new response to urban living. Rather than expanding outward, the compressed volume opens vertically and allows the garden to flourish around it. This way, the space feels private and intimate, yet it opens widely onto its surroundings. In this balance of contrasts, the house cultivates a way of living that feels both resilient and open to change.

Alexandre Bernier designs the vertical single-family home to be constructed almost entirely of concrete

sliding glass doors on the ground floor dissolve the boundary between the house and garden

the solidity of concrete is balanced with openness toward a private garden through a transparent facade

a long, curved, concrete kitchen island serves as a sculptural centerpiece within the open-plan interior

project info:

name: Maison-Jardin BEAU

architect: Alexandre Bernier Architecte | @alexandrebernierarchitecte

location: Montreal, Canada

photography: © Maxime Brouillet | @maximebrouillet

The post alexandre bernier architecte designs concrete residence within a garden in montreal appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

satellites exhibition bridges cinematic and gaming worlds

Satellites, on view at Prada Aoyama in Tokyo, brings together the elective affinities of two of contemporary culture’s most distinctive storytellers — Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima. The project transforms the fifth floor of Herzog & de Meuron’s iconic glass structure into an immersive transmission chamber, where cinema, gaming, and design come together to hint at a future common territory made possible by technologies.

The duo has been exchanging ideas for over a decade, and the exhibition turns that ongoing conversation into a physical installation realized as a domestic environment somewhere between a film set and a dream sequence. The first room of the stylized and sparse mid-century apartment is decorated with a bed, lamp, and a rotary phone that seem lifted from a bygone era. Around the space, six television monitors — each retrofitted to resemble small retro-futuristic spacecrafts — float like artifacts, while projecting inside them video portraits of Refn and Kojima speaking to one another in loop about the universal concept of human exchange. The surreal interrelation between these two entities, while surrounded by the familiar, creates a tangible yet distant space that transports visitors into an alternate dimension. Supported by Fondazione Prada, Satellites will remain on view until August 25th, 2025.

all images by Yasuhiro Takagi

nicolas winding refn & hideo kojima imagine a collective future

Each TV is partially dismantled, exposing wires, circuits, and internal components to form an architectural echo of the exhibition itself, which lays bare the machinery of dialogue. Nicolas Winding Refn and Hideo Kojima’s conversation in English and Japanese is broad and unscripted, touching on memory, friendship, authorship, identity, the afterlife, and the strange overlap of real and virtual worlds. The tone is also informal, feeling like two people working things out in real-time, even if they’re separated by medium, language, or physical presence. Their exchange reflects a shared belief that the boundaries between film and gaming are steadily dissolving, and, in the future, may merge into a shared digital dimension.

The second room of Satellites takes this idea further, with a dressing area filled with cassette tapes that allows visitors to listen to AI-translated fragments of the original conversation. Each tape reveals a slightly different version of the dialogue, refracted across languages and interpretations, inviting the audience to reconstruct the exchange in their own way — a nod to Kojima’s nonlinear storytelling style and Refn’s interest in hypnotic worldbuilding and recursive internal spaces. The layering of translations and formats hints at a potential version of a shared digital environment both artists see emerging, which can open up new ways of experiencing ever-evolving narratives collectively.

Satellites brings together the elective affinities of filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn and game designer Hideo Kojima

imagined as a mid-century apartment decorated with a bed, lamp, and a rotary phone

an immersive transmission chamber, where cinema, gaming, and design come together

suspended inside them in a bilingual exchange, run videos of Refn and Kojima speaking to one another in loop

each TV is partially dismantled, exposing wires, circuits, and internal components

on view at Prada Aoyama in Tokyo

project info:

name: Satellites

artists: Nicolas Winding Refn | @nwrefn, Hideo Kojima | @hideo_kojima

location: Prada Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan

organized by: Prada | @prada

supported by: Fondazione Prada | @fondazioneprada

dates: 18th April—25th August, 2025

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