A Scratch Should Not End a Chair: Designing Furniture for Refurbishment
Furniture refurbishment begins in the first design. An analysis of joints, surfaces, interiors and the practical conditions that let useful furniture return to use.
Design
Contemporary Design
Design across interiors, furniture, lighting and products, with attention to use, manufacture and material expression. Coverage examines how objects and spaces respond to everyday needs and how design decisions affect the experience of their users.
Explore connections with architecture and materials, review project applications, and follow related design news.
The Body That Wears Our Identity
How clothing, mannequins, uniforms and exhibition spaces help construct identity. An analytical reading of effigies and embodied representation, with practical design applications.
The Poster Must Explain
Architectural poster design connects images, drawings and words into a readable argument. An analysis of presentation boards, social posts, bilingual layouts, AI and print production.
The Cognitive Handoff
Traditional design sketching functions as a cognitive loop between the mind and hand, where thinking and making occur simultaneously. The…
Napa Bistro: How Ceilings, Glass and Seating Turn One Hall into Rooms
A spatial reading of Napa Bistro in Charlotte: curved ceilings, colored glass and changes in seating and flooring divide an open restaurant without closing its views.
The Plate That Fulfills Its Purpose by Breaking
A critical essay on dining room design, Greek kefi and the tension between preserving beautiful objects and making room for shared human experience.
The Discipline That Optimizes the Given
Industrial engineering applies methods like process optimization to reduce waste, cost, and time in construction. However, its core focus is…
Cine Tutu: From Street-Level Gathering to the Screening Room
Cine Tutu uses a blue service ceiling, cork-lined foyer and green auditorium to distinguish arrival, waiting and shared viewing through materials, light and seating.
Turtle Stool: Moving the Seat and Its Storage Together
Turtle Stool combines a molded seat, two storage bins and a bolted aluminum frame on casters. A reading of reach, assembly and stability.
Hope Table Lamp: A Ceramic Gap That Shapes Light and Touch
Hope by Alexey Danilin uses a split ceramic body, concealed LEDs and a metal touch control. A reading of light, placement and repair.
Ikebukuro Living Furniture: Two Platforms for Pausing on the Pavement
Ikebukuro Living Furniture uses paired platforms, reused counters and a clock to create a place for meeting and pausing on Tokyo’s Green Boulevard.
Handle Table: Making Room for Small Objects Within the Table
Handle Table integrates a storage recess into stained bamboo furniture. A reading of usable surface, material edges and everyday organization.
Shifting Center: A Metal Grid That Changes With Its Visitors
Shifting Center turns a modular metal frame into a participatory environment, revealing the difference between visual order and bodily movement.
More Than Cardboard: How Design Gives Collectibles Their Value
How visual design, scarcity, memory and display shape collectible cards, with a critical distinction between commodity fetishism and personal attachment.
The Furniture Still Works. Can It Change?
What makes furniture genuinely upgradable? A critical review of modularity, joints, spare parts, service commitments and the limits of circular design.
Hayy Jameel, A Little Too Reserved
Ibrahim Fawakherji — ArchUpI did not visit Hayy Jameel to test how quickly I could walk. I went to see…
BuildFest 2026: What Full-Scale Timber Prototypes Teach About Construction
BuildFest 2026 at Bethel Woods in New York brought students and faculty from 15 institutions onto the landscape of the…
The Spetses Players: How an Island Became a Distributed Stage
Between 1972 and 1979, the Spetses Players turned a Greek island into more than a backdrop. The group—artists, teachers, students,…
Casa POP: A 78 m² Apartment Organized by Storage, Colour and Sliding Doors
Casa POP is a 78-square-metre apartment renovation in Vicálvaro, eastern Madrid, by gon architects. Its owners had lived with the…
Super F: A Streetwear Store Built as a Reversible Steel Kit
Didea turns a 600-square-metre store in Mercury Tower into a reversible steel system with movable rails, integrated services and event capacity.
Lilac Apartment: A 44 m² Plan Built Around a Circulating Core
BUREAU reorganizes a 44-square-metre Lisbon apartment around a central wet core, four openings and a continuous domestic route.
