Architectural Record

11/05/2025

Winner: 2025 Architectural Record Awards | Adaptive Reuse & Renovation category ⁠
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Dutch architecture firm MVRDV has given the Pyramid of Tirana a colorful makeover and a future-facing new purpose. The structure was first built in 1988 as a museum honoring Enver Hoxha, the former Communist dictator of Albania. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the Pyramid served a range of purposes, from housing a nightclub to acting as a NATO base during the Kosovo War. There had been several proposals to demolish it, but a majority of Albanians were in favor of keeping the Pyramid. In 2017, the Albanian government announced plans to transform the building in the nation’s capital into a digital hub for the country’s youth. The renovation retained the existing structure, which had undergone a series of incomplete renovations and fallen into disrepair over the years. MVRDV added an operable glass facade, which allows for temperature regulation. Most notably, the architects added colorful boxes embedded in, on top of, and on the grounds around the Pyramid. These boxes house TUMO Tirano, an educational program that offers free courses in technology, robotics, and animation. Stairs were added to the building’s sloping faces to enable access to the Pyramid’s roofscape through multiple paths. One sloped section was left uninterrupted so that young people can still climb up and slide down the building, a favorite pastime.⁠
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Read more, including the jury quote of the project: https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/17833-2025-architectural-record-awards-winner-the-pyramid-of-tirana
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Photos © Ossip Van Duivenbod

11/05/2025

We are currently in an age—or perhaps its denouement—when having a conversation with someone who has been “canceled” implies an endorsement of that person or whatever bad behavior led to their ostracism. This conversation is not that. Nor is it an effort to brush aside or minimize the severity of the accusations. It is, instead, an acknowledgement of an unprecedented convergence of achievements to which one cannot turn a blind eye. David Adjaye—shunned since July 2023 when a Financial Times article exposed claims of sexual misconduct from several female employees against the architect—has three major museums opening within two weeks of each other. RECORD editor in chief Josephine Minutillo spoke with Adjaye about this exceptional creative and professional moment.

Read the full interview: https://brnw.ch/21wXekF

Images © Adjaye Associates

11/05/2025

The Baby Changing Elevation
A new combination of hygienically clean plastic Baby Changing Stations with Stainless Steel front panel offers a refreshingly stylish addition to the existing Baby Changing Station family.

Learn More: https://brnw.ch/21wXeaZ

11/04/2025

Winner: 2025 Architectural Record Awards | Office & Workplace category + Building of the Year ⁠
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Dynafit Headquarters—designed by 2014 Design Vanguard Barozzi Veiga and located in Kiefersfelden, Germany—was named “Building of the Year” by the RECORD editors. The office building’s form of two interlocking triangular wedges evokes the dips and peaks of the surrounding Alps along the German-Austrian border. The interior, designed as a series of bright, open spaces, maximizes efficiency by concentrating the essential services at opposite ends of each floor. The simple concrete structure is supported by service cores on opposite ends in either volume. A glass-enclosed atrium at the building’s center is the primary circulation route; it is flooded with light throughout the day. Offices and makerspaces are, by virtue of the structure’s tapered pyramidal forms, of a more human scale. Inspired by Dynafit’s skiing apparel and equipment, the facade system aims for lightness. A diagrid of white perforated-aluminum brises soleil wraps and shields the building from solar radiation, while still allowing for expansive views. The shading system is reflected in an ever-changing pattern across the building’s exterior and interior glazing. This project of seeming simplicity confounds and delights in its thoughtful detailing and sectional complexity.⁠
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Read more, including the jury quote of the project: https://brnw.ch/21wXcnE
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Photos © Simon Menges & Nino Tugush

11/04/2025

“When we decided to create a foundation, we had to think about how to be philanthropic,” says Kristian May, director of Denmark’s Fonden for Fonden for Håndværkskollegier (FfH). “What challenges in society might we address? One of them is that not enough young people want to be educated in the manual trades.” After a first campus in the coastal town of Horsens, FfH’s second “handwork college,” as the term literally translates, is located in Herning, a small but dynamic town in rural Jutland. “College” is a little misleading, since these are not places of education per se—rather, their primary function is to offer affordable housing to young people starting out in the construction trade (plumbers, carpenters, metalworkers, housepainters, etc.). Apprentices in local firms, they live at the Håndværkskollegiet for an average of four and a half years, during which time they benefit from on-site workshops where, in the evenings and on weekends, they can hone their skills under a mentorship arrangement.

In such a context, the architecture itself has an inspirational role to play, not to mention a didactic function. To ensure that quality matched ambition, FfH organized a design competition for the Herning campus in 2021, to which it invited five renowned Danish firms, among them C.F. Møller Architects and Schmidt Hammer Lassen. Located on a windy and waterlogged site at the town’s edge, with the local technical college to the east (where many apprentices study intermittently), and lakes and heathland to the west, the 98,000-square-foot complex accommodates up to 84 young people between the ages of 18 and 28. “I imagined our project as a floating island in the wetland,” says Dorte Mandrup, the principal of the winning office.

Read more about this circular residential complex for apprentices: https://brnw.ch/21wXc7a

Words by Andrew Ayers
Photos © Adam Mørk

11/03/2025

As this issue highlights the inaugural Architectural Record Awards, as well as extraordinary examples of recently completed buildings, we are reminded of the potential of design.

Read the November Editor's Letter: https://brnw.ch/21wXaGX

Photo © Jillian Nelson

As this issue highlights the inaugural Architectural Record Awards, as well as extraordinary examples of recently completed buildings, we are reminded of the potential of design.

11/03/2025

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities arrives at Oxford University with a long list of superlatives attached. At 272,300 square feet, the academic hub designed by Hopkins Architects is the largest single building ever constructed by the university, and the largest in England built to the exacting Passivhaus sustainability standard. It also contains the world’s first Passivhaus concert hall. All this is enabled by a record-setting $250 million donation from its eponymous benefactor. It is, then, an emphatic statement of confidence in disciplines such as literature, history, and philosophy, often said to be in crisis, with falling student enrollment worldwide and a diminished voice in cultural debates dominated by technological advances.⁠
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This behemoth sits at the heart of the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter—a 10-acre development north of the city center—among sundry small historic buildings and glassy newcomers including Herzog & de Meuron’s Blavatnik School of Government (2015) and the Rafael Viñoly–designed Mathematical Institute (2013). With classical proportions and heavyweight facades of brick and stone, the expansive four-story humanities building takes center stage with calm self-assurance—a solid anchor around which the whole eclectic ensemble now seems to revolve.⁠
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Learn more about Oxford's new humanities center with a luminous atrium: https://brnw.ch/21wXarC
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Words by Chris Foges
Photos © Hufton + Crow (1-3, 5-9), French+Tye (4)

11/02/2025

Last evening immediately following the annual Innovational Conference in New York City, the editors of RECORD recognized the best recent projects–built an unbuilt—across 14 categories at a presentation of the inaugural Architectural Record Awards. The recipients of the awards, including architects hailing from Rome, Stockholm, Barcelona, and across North America, were on hand at a ceremony and reception to accept the honor.

Each of this year’s winning projects, selected by a jury of editors and distinguished guests, are showcased in the November issue of Architectural Record, alongside nine total honorable mentions. They will also be published throughout the month on the magazine’s website and across our social media channels. Among the winners, in the Office & Workplace category, is Barozzi Veiga's striking new headquarters for alpine sports company Dynafit located on the German-Austrian border. It was subsequently singled out by the editors as Building of the Year. While numerous North American projects are recognized, other winners, much like our Building of the Year, can be found farther afield, including in Rwanda, Albania, Morocco, China, and Spain’s Basque country.

See the full list of all the winning projects here:
https://brnw.ch/21wX8Pb

11/02/2025

An off-grid, net-zero family retreat offers an opportunity for a young Toronto-based family to relive childhood memories of summers spent at this lake in Peterborough, Ontario. Given the remoteness of its island site, Peter Braithwaite Studio had to coordinate commissioning barges, constructing docks, and organizing the transportation of heavy machinery over the frozen lake just to build Armstrong Cottage.⁠
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The idea for a remote cabin on an island was born out of the owners’ desire to spend time in nature with their two young children. Therefore, environmental concerns were at the forefront of the design and construction process.⁠
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The resulting volumes, conceived as four separate pavilions, engage with the natural environment while sitting lightly on the land, minimally disrupting the native ecosystem. Two pavilions make up the dwelling house: one for sleeping and another for living. They are connected by a glazed bridge, which also serves as an entry. The sleeping pavilion is oriented east, with windows on its southeast elevation for morning light. The living pavilion is oriented due south, with glazing on the east, west, and south faces maximizing light and views. Another pavilion, the “bunkie,” serves as a guest house or a remote office space. The fourth pavilion is a boathouse, with a deck/patio for fishing or suntanning. All pavilions are clad inside and out in wood.⁠
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Read more about this off-grid lake retreat in Ontario: https://brnw.ch/21wX8AH

Photos © James Morley / doublespace photography

11/01/2025

Home to Dartmouth College's drama and music departments, the Hopkins Center for the Arts—better known simply as “the Hop—celebrated its grand reopening earlier this month following the completion of a $124 million renovation and expansion led by Snøhetta that fortifies its role not just as a campus arts hub but as a cultural destination for the entire Upper Valley community of New Hampshire and Vermont. “It’s not just a great place for art, but a regional gathering place—the rural context makes it even more so,” says Hopkins Center executive director Mary Lou Aleskie of the Hop and its immediate neighbors, the Charles Moore and Chad Floyd–designed Hood Museum of Art, renovated and expanded by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects in 2019, and Machado Silvetti’s Black Family Visual Art Center (2012). Upon the Hop’s 1962 debut, multi-disciplinary art centers were a rarity on university campuses. “The collision of having everything under one roof created community,” adds Aleskie.⁠
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As part of a 15,000-square-foot expansion to the west of the Hop’s existing footprint, where a moribund central courtyard once stood, the center has gained a soaring recital hall overlooking the campus Green; a versatile, state-of-the-art black-box performance lab with seating for 200; a collaborative theater space named after Dartmouth alumna Mindy Kaling; and a professional dance studio, a first for the Hop, with 24-foot-high ceilings and north-facing clerestory windows. Existing spaces including Harrison’s main lobby (a groovy mid-century delight), the Top of the Hop lounge, and the center’s flagship performance venue, the 792-seat Spaulding Auditorium, have also been refreshed. ⁠
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Read more about the renovation and expansion of the Hop: https://brnw.ch/21wX7RQ

Words by Matt Hickman
Photos © Chris Turner, Downriver Media (1, 9, 10), Jeff Goldberg (2-3), Alexa Bendek (4-8)