Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2025 i AZURE

When it comes to product development, even the most seasoned designer cannot rival the first-hand experience of the end user. So in the realm of appliances, who better to turn to than the world’s most exacting professionals: chefs? For Gaggenau, an ongoing dialogue with the culinary industry’s brightest minds has shaped a world-class portfolio of kitchen appliances, introducing professional-grade standards and accuracy into the home. From ovens that bring state-of-the-art steam cooking to residential settings to cooktops designed for absolute control, every detail reflects the rigour and creativity of the chefs who inspire them. Founded more than 340 years ago, the German heritage brand has established a reputation for engineering precision and innovation. What began as a humble metalworks grew to manufacture appliances in the early 20th century, eventually pioneering…

InTuxtla Gutiérrez, thecapital of the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas, asubtle but powerful shift is occurring. Last year, a park in the peripheral district of Las Granjas was renovated by Mexico City–based firm RZERO. The renewed space, known as El Aguaje, now features a central kiosk for neighbourhood assemblies, shaded walkways lined with trees, multi-purpose sports courts, and a communal laundry and play area near a seasonal stream. During rainy months, children splash in the recycled-water pool while their mothers chat nearby. Year-round, the park is teeming with life: Teenagers play ball at dusk, elders rest on benches beneath the trees, and families stroll along the walkways. It’s an elegant and understated intervention — one of five that RZERO completed in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, including a market, a sports centre, a…

There are few projects in Toronto that have been more highly anticipated than Limberlost Place. Nearly a decade in the making, the academic building — which opened this fall on the waterfront campus of Toronto’s George Brown College to house the school’s architectural studies program — marked a major milestone as the city’s first mass timber institution. Its design, by Moriyama Teshima Architects (MTA) in partnership with Vancouver studio Acton Ostry Architects, had been lauded with accolades well before the project even broke ground. When I first visited the building on a hard-hat tour in September 2024, the buzz was palpable as contractors put the finishing touches on the interior. As I stepped off the street and into the soaring, 16-metre-tall Learning Landscape, it was easy to imagine hordes of…

TO GO TO AMIR SANEI AND ABIGAIL HOPKINS’S new home on a vast and historic estate in coastal Suffolk, you drive through wooded grounds and past Victorian buildings and structures, eventually arriving at an opening with a utilitarian shed and a dark brick wall featuring a “moon gate.” It is only once you have walked through this circular arch that the dwelling’s unique configuration — and the expansive and somewhat mystical landscape of heathland and marshy waters below — are revealed. Composed of four geometrically different, discrete and defined volumes arranged off a central courtyard, Housestead (as the home is called) is both strikingly contemporary and richly context-driven, offering a potential blueprint for contemporary rural living and building. “Using the analogy of the farmstead, where every structure has a different…

PHILADELPHIANS HAVE LONG HAD a love–hate relationship with the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a one-mile axis that runs from City Hall to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It may be leafy and lined with cultural landmarks, but its eight traffic lanes make it difficult to cross on foot, and it suffers from patches of undeveloped land — not to mention a dearth of places to stop for a drink. Around 2012, a few new parks, cafés and attractions opened, including the relocated and expanded Barnes Foundation, an elegant limestone rectangle from Tod Williams Billie Tsien set inside a formal landscape by OLIN. But the move for “more park, less way” has languished since then. Now, on the other side of the boulevard, celebrated plantsman Piet Oudolf and architects Herzog & de…

The aphorism that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” dates to at least the early 19th century. And while the well-worn phrase has been applied to everything from fashion and diction to social etiquette, it takes on a particularly acute depth in design, where natural materials are replicated with ever-growing frequency and sophistication. Take hardwood: In recent years, engineered surfaces, vinyl and laminate — and even ceramics — have all sought to simulate the depth, texture and beauty of nature. The results? It should all be taken as a compliment. While imitations abound, the authentic beauty of real hardwood remains unmatched. Under the stewardship of the National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA), the North American hardwood industry is also evolving to meet increasingly rigorous sustainability standards. Today, a growing emphasis…

SINCE ITS FOUNDING IN 1972, Infonavit (the Institute of the National Housing Fund for Workers) has connected Mexico’s formal workforce to credit for housing — becoming, at one point, the largest mortgage lender in Latin America. But quantity often came at the expense of quality. For years, the homes it financed were built on the urban periphery, with minimal access to jobs, transit or public space. Some were so remote or poorly constructed that entire developments were later abandoned. In the past decade, various initiatives have brought Mexican architects to collaborate with Infonavit, signalling an intention toward a more thoughtful approach. Del Territorio al Habitante (2017), for example, invited 84 firms to design housing projects across the country in response to the specific contexts of rural areas, rather than the…

Toronto’s Dufferin Street ranks among the city’s most stress-inducing arteries. A messy ballet of honking cars, endless potholes and overstuffed buses meets an eclectic landscape of houses, apartment towers, tightly packed strip malls and sprawling shopping centres. Follow it just 40 kilometres north, however, and the frenetic city dissolves into an entirely different setting. Messy urbanity turns bucolic rolling woodland, and the street itself gently morphs into a rustic gravel road. All the way up at 17000 Dufferin Street, the five-digit address sits among foliage so thick it nearly obscures both the side road and the signage announcing the campus around the corner. Past the leafy branches, you can just about make out the lettering: University of Toronto — The Koffler Scientific Reserve. Down a smaller gravel path, a hilltop…

Our guides to the newest furniture, finishes, building materials and more SOFT COLOUR BLACK & WHITE ARTISTIC TACTILE…

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER. As the Centre Pompidou prepares to close for a five-year restoration led by Moreau Kusunoki and Frida Escobedo, the inside-out spirit of the Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building seems to be taking the Parisian creative scene by storm all over again. During the city’s September design week, festival-goers were eager to discuss “Nothing could have prepared us — Everything could have prepared us,” the Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition that served as the Centre Pompidou’s pre-reno swan song. Staged in what would normally be the museum’s library, it was a monumental finale to the architectural landmark’s first chapter, with many Tillmans photos placed in amusing relationship to their surroundings. In one corner, a splotchy abstract shot mirrored a stain on the floor below it, while…

Two kitchens that emphasize a connection to the outdoors, top-notch systems for al fresco dining and the latest multi-mode cooking appliances OPEN TO THE OUTSIDE, but protected and sheltered. Expansive, but humble and unobtrusive on the land. These were the seemingly incongruous directives ACDF Architecture was given for a new-build chalet along the shore of Lac Archambault, near Mont-Tremblant, Quebec. In response, the firm delivered a low-slung, glass-wrapped marvel that creates a harmonious relationship with its surroundings, dissolving transitions through well-orchestrated architectural gestures and a restrained material palette. The home’s defining feature is a massive coffered glulam roof structure organized in a 1.5-by-1.5-metre grid, a framework that is repeated in the floor plan to create a pleasing rhythm of rooms that open to one another in a fluid and intuitive…

“We have cut through the noise of distraction to once again create cars that bring us joy as engineers and as designers, as drivers and as passengers — cars that are the culmination of everything we know and of everything we are today,” announced Audi CEO Gernot Döllner. “This is the start of something new: our striving for clarity.” Standing on a stage surrounded by a rapt audience in a beautiful Milan courtyard, Döllner was priming everyone for the reveal of a brilliant new all-electric sports car: Audi Concept C. Elegant and sculpted, bold yet minimal, the EV rolled onto the stage to raucous applause. Clamouring to get a closer look, audience members flocked to the titanium-finished marvel. For the world-renowned German auto manufacturer, Audi Concept C is a return to…

In 1950, the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy stood on the precipice of a bold, transformational shift. That year, the husband-and-wife team of Romeo Giacobazzi and Afra Fontana opened one of the region’s first modern factories, setting the stage for rapid economic development. A decade later, the operation employed some 2,000 people producing over 20 million square metres of floor and wall tiles per year. By the time Romeo and Afra’s son Dante Giacobazzi co-founded Italgraniti in 1994, the company was becoming a global innovator. In 2025, it stands at the industry’s innovative edge — and at the brink of another existential shift. Today, Italgraniti is at the forefront of a sector reinventing itself for a sustainable future. Now an unparalleled global hub of ceramic design innovation, the Emilia-Romagna region is…

BOONSERM PREMTHADA WAS A CHILD in Bangkok when he learned the basics of making — using old newspapers to build toys when his family couldn’t afford them. He describes the place where he grew up as a slum; it was within this survival-oriented environment that he discovered imagination’s power to break barriers. “My approach to my practice doesn’t come from theory; it comes from the soul,” Premthada tells me. There’s both magic and pragmatism in the Thai architect’s work. He defines being “human” not in terms of taxonomy but in the ability to relate more generously to non-human life. He grounds himself in a world where elephants and people live side by side, and in rural sites that sit forgotten on the margins. To him, sustainability must extend beyond green…

CONCRETE & COMPOSITES TERRACOTTA & METAL…

WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT was an urban waste dump. Coal ash, garbage, slag — those were the only features of this former industrial site in the Chinese city of Handan. That was the dismal panorama, stretching out for 325 hectares, that Kongjian Yu would have first encountered. By the time he was done with it, though, the place would become the vibrant composition of cascading terraces that you see here — one that cleans wastewater and recycles solid waste, with a 20-metre-high mound made of debris at its apex. It’s a marvel, inviting back nature — and people, who were always gregariously welcomed into Yu’s rescued landscapes with whimsical pavilions and elevated walkways. The Handan Wastewater Purification Terraces is one of a thousand projects that Yu and his Beijing…