Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i AZURE

1. HOSHIKAGE Named for the Japanese word for “starlight,” this 19-piece collection designed by Yabu Pushelberg marks the 120th anniversary of Noritake by demonstrating the brand’s finely honed production expertise. Textural treatments evoke the mysterious night sky — perfect for anyone who only eats after dark. US$240 2. HORIZON Cult favourite Milanese ceramics maker Laboratorio Paravicini adapted a dozen of Italian artist Vittore Frattini’s abstract linear canvases into hand-finished, hand-decorated earthenware capturing the beauty of far-off vistas. Dinner (or in this case, dessert) and a view! $760 FOR SIX, AT RIVER CROSSING SHOP 3. TRESSAGES EQUESTRES “Once upon a time, there was an enchanting tablescape…” French children’s book illustrator Virginie Jamin honours the storied equestrian heritage and artisanal production of Hermès by bordering the perimeters of this 27-piece dining set…

Centuries before the gallery and bar scene exploded, rendering it a mecca for millennial hipsters, Williamsburg was an epicentre of American industry. The Brooklyn neighbourhood’s waterfront stretch hosted some of the country’s biggest players — among them, Pfizer, Brooklyn Flint Glass Works (now Corning Incorporated) and the Havemeyer & Elder sugar refinery. The latter, subsequently dubbed the Domino Sugar Refinery, was once the largest such operation in the world. When the plant closed in 2004, the fate of the historic landmark hung in the balance. Then, in 2012, developer Two Trees bought the site, intent on transforming it into a modern mixed-use hub while still honouring its past industrial heritage. After the original design team’s master plan was met with lessthan-stellar community feedback, the developer switched gears, tapping SHoP Architects…

IN JANUARY 2025, the World Monuments Fund placed “Gaza Historic Urban Fabric, Palestine” on its Watch. The inclusion of the region’s already damaged or imperilled heritage sites — such as Great Omari Mosque, Qasr al-Basha and Souq Al-Qaisariya — was concurrent with the United Nations’ statement that 92 per cent of homes and 69 per cent of all structures in Gaza had been destroyed or damaged during the Israeli military’s bombing campaign over the preceding 15 months, which was triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, 2023. While it was part of a longer list, one that also included the moon, the WMF’s announcement belatedly put into focus the need to preserve Palestinian architectural identity. Based in Haifa (with a remote presence in Italy), Palestinian architect Elias Khuri has…

FOR TOO LONG, the top-down approach to delivering architecture to Canada’s remote communities has largely been an abysmal failure. Much of the problem, to be sure, derives from the astronomical cost and logistics of shipping materials to the North. Formulaic thinking and old fashioned neglect also figure prominently. Plus, the built landscapes north of the 60th parallel are rarely seen by design journalists and critics, let alone the majority of Canadians. Out of sight, out of mind. And yet, with their rich heritage and perennial need for housing, northern communities should be the perfect stage for innovation and investment in the built environment. A permanent local community with deep ties to the land is a hugely important bulwark against malign foreign interests — especially now, as climate change widens the…

Engineered Stone and Porcelain 1 Le Chic Bohème This is the year of mocha hues — and the Château Brown pattern from Silestone’s latest lineup is a great place to start. Bronze veining and pinkish-copper accents add to the low-silica hybrid mineral surface’s depth, while scratch-, stain- and impact-resistance mean it can stand up to dropped coffee mugs, too. 2 Supernatural Ultra Part of a new expansion to Caesarstone’s collection of marble-inspired designs, Calacatta Nectar pairs especially well with warm woods and metals thanks to subtle golden details. Sold with a lifetime warranty, the polished quartz is offered in supersized slabs that measure a lofty 3.3 by 1.6 metres. 3 I Naturali Laminam captures the expressive undertones of some of the most opulent varieties of marble, including mauve-hued Calacatta Viola…

Ride the Wave The ongoing brutalism revival has scored two major wins lately. First, moviegoers responded enthusiastically to The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour celebration of concrete. Meanwhile, in Sweden, the designers at White Arkitekter made their own case for the movement’s ongoing relevance. The seaport town of Varberg was never lacking for notable attractions — a castle built in the late 13th century and an early radio station facility are two of its historic draws. But with a growing residential population, the locality was in need of a water tower with higher capacity. The solution that the White design team came up with (working in collaboration with local government and the municipal water company Vivab) holds some 10,000 cubic metres of aqua — five times the capacity of its predecessor —…

IN JUNE OF 2021, the University Health Network — a consortium of hospitals in downtown Toronto — announced that it was doing something health organizations rarely do: building homes for high-needs patients. Last October, the UHN, in partnership with the United Way Greater Toronto, opened Dunn House, a complex of 51 single-occupancy units financed by various levels of government, operated by the charity Fred Victor and sited on a hospital-owned parking lot in the city’s Parkdale neighbourhood. The units are being offered on a rent-geared-to-income basis, and the building itself was designed by Montgomery Sisam Architects, a blue chip firm that has been carving out a niche in supportive housing for unhoused people. (Full disclosure: MSA is working on the expansion of Innis College at the University of Toronto, where…

THE PROJECTS OF BPLUS.XYZ sometimes have quirky names — Antivilla, Mäusebunker (Mouse House), Casa Storta (Crooked House) — which befit their transmogrified forms. Through the renovation of often brutalist structures, the Berlin firm founded by Arno Brandlhuber (first as Brandlhuber+ in 2006, then as B+ in 2021) has amassed an eclectic portfolio of imaginatively repurposed buildings. Most remarkable: its own offices in two towers that remained standing like a soaring relic after the surrounding buildings that once joined them to form a factory complex were torn down. Nicknamed San Gimignano Lichtenberg — a wink at the medieval towers of the Tuscan town — the restored buildings are the locus of a growing movement. The firm’s latest undertaking is the design of legislation that would incentivize adaptive re-use over the type of…

On Lansdowne Avenue, a north–south arterial road near the Junction, the building stock is mostly modest two-storey brick builds dating back to the turn of the 20th century. When a semi by local firm StudioAC began to take shape on the street, it stood out dramatically against this typical Toronto backdrop. First, it was a purpose-built multi-generation residence. Then, its form — a minimal flat face and a bold double-gable roof — signalled a modern sensibility. The landscaping around the home mediates its outsized visual presence on the street, but the building still grabs the eye. Its white oak–framed second-storey openings, including a terrace carved into the envelope and planted with a green Japanese maple, captures the imagination. Stepping inside one of its side-by-side units, which are split north–south, you…

FILM Sitting Still Growing up in Alaska, legendary landscape architect Laurie Olin learned early the importance of shared spaces, especially in impoverished communities. It was there that he began to see and understand the world through drawing. “Out of ordinary things come moments of perception. It’s the fact that you get more, and you savour more and learn more if you move a little slower. And drawing really slows you down,” he explains in this documentary about his human-centred design approach, directed by Gina Angelone and presented in January at ADFF’s Humanity in Architecture event. The democratization of space has become a throughline in Olin’s epic body of work, turning parks from “a repository for the people society doesn’t want to deal with” into thriving urban hubs. People, he says,…

Back when Vlasta Kubušová was completing her Master of Design in Berlin, she found that many of her courses were dedicated to working with plastic. She understood why: “It’s the most widespread material, and it’s cheap,” she says. But at the same time, it wasn’t something that she was particularly eager to use. Instead, she started exploring eco-friendly alternatives. In 2016, together with her partner, Miroslav Král (who comes from a stage design background), she founded Crafting Plastics, a studio devoted to developing biopolymers from sugars, starches, algae and cellulose. Since then, the duo has specialized in translating cutting-edge research into compelling bio-spectacles. Its latest proof of concept was Liminal Cycles, shown above at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, in collaboration with Lexus this past December. At the heart…

New artificial sweeteners keep being invented, but sugar remains one of the world’s most popular ingredients — an estimated 194 million tonnes were produced between 2023 and 2024. Manufacturing all that sweetness comes with a cost. Along with detrimental health implications, the global sugar production industry has significant impacts on the environment, contributing to water and air pollution, land degradation and a massive amount of agricultural waste — a main component of that being bagasse, the fibrous material left over from sugarcane after it has been pulverized to extract its juices. While the low-carbon, renewable material is often upcycled into paper and packaging or used as a biofuel, bagasse is still a relatively underutilized resource. Researchers at the University of East London (UEL) are ready to change that. Since 2021,…

WEEKS AHEAD OF OUR CALL, I try to bridge the 12,000-kilometre distance and learn as much as possible yet keep an open mind. The Internet makes it hard. When I Google “Dharavi,” autocomplete immediately adds “slum” — a word that appears 11 times on the first page, even though I reject the addition. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the Mumbai district is among the world’s largest unplanned settlements, with an estimated million residents. While the scale is almost unprecedented, the density is broken up into surprisingly intimate milieux and intricate hyper-local economies. Dharavi’s oldest neighbourhood is a case in point. Built as a fishing village by the region’s Indigenous Koli people centuries before Portuguese colonialism, the Dharavi Koliwada remains home to nearly 700 households — including some 370…

THE LOS ANGELES WILDFIRES — social, urban, environmental catastrophes — mark a bitter, ash-tinged end of the Western imaginary. In the Pacific Palisades and in Altadena, the American dream of a domestic pastoral has gone up in smoke, a burnt offering to the gods of 20th-century real estate development. Its acrid stench reached me on January 7, a Tuesday night whipped by howling winds. Earlier in the day, while driving the 134 Freeway from Pasadena to Silver Lake, I had seen a plume rising over the Westside: the Palisades Fire. I found it concerning, but distant, like a black and white photograph of an atomic bomb. By evening, Altadena was aflame. The community tucked into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains is just a few miles from my apartment,…