Introduction to Meraki House and Studios

When it comes to designing a place of retreat, few projects balance elemental honesty and immersive hospitality. With its rugged concrete skeleton, Meraki House and Studios by Sigurd Larsen does just that. Perched in the heart of Crete’s central mountains, the studios and a neighboring house are equal parts sanctuary and sculptural intervention, offering visitors a retreat that’s grounded in the textures and contours of the landscape.

Meraki Studios are at once a collection of boutique retreats and a study in restraint. Set into a terraced mountain slope surrounded by ancient olive groves, the project reveals its structure in full view: a concrete frame, raw and orthogonal, planted with the quiet confidence of something meant to age in place. The Berlin-based Danish architect doesn’t hide the grid. Instead, he lets it breathe, shaping a rhythmic order that adapts to the land like a manipulated boulder.

Meraki Studios | images © Kkrom Serrvices

Sigurd Larsen Imagines Modern Cavernous Living

With the Meraki Studios, architect Sigurd Larsen creates six apartment units that burrow into the hillside with the stealth of ancient dwellings. Cavernous and cool, each unit is carved into the frame like a private alcove, open on one end to vast valley views and craggy mountain silhouettes. It’s architecture that prioritizes pause. Interiors are pared down, shaded by custom shutters and pergolas that respond to the movement of the Mediterranean sun. Kitchens are compact but capable — encouraging slow, self-sufficient days spent immersed in nature, not rushing out to find it.

Meraki Studios is surrounded by a landscape that the architect chooses to respect rather than reinvent. The garden winds through olive trees, over meadows, and into secluded stone terraces that act as outdoor rooms. One features a pool hidden among the remnants of an old stone wall, while others offer panoramic vantages or secluded corners for reading and resting.

Meraki Studios by Sigurd Larsen is a boutique retreat set in the mountains of Crete

Meraki House: A Sculpted Shelter in Stone

Meanwhile, Sigurd Larsen sites the neighboring Meraki House further up the slope, away from the Studios. Built for the hosting family, this separate structure is an anchor of hospitality, designed to support guest needs while existing as a fully realized home. The ground floor wraps around an interior courtyard — equal parts gathering space and quiet retreat. Above, the upper level peeks above the treetops, offering sweeping 360-degree views of the surrounding mountain ranges. Here, being a host means being embedded in the experience, not removed from it.

The house continues the design language of the studios with the same orthogonal concrete grid and use of locally quarried stone. The structure feels ancient and futuristic all at once, like a ruin that never crumbled. As with the studios, the stone walls provide natural insulation, protecting against the intensity of Cretan summers. Over time, the surfaces will welcome lichen and moss — living markers of the building’s integration with its environment.

Meraki Studios’ exposed concrete grid adapts to the sloping terrain like a sculpted rock

Meraki House sits higher on the property, offering views through the trees and across the mountains

Meraki House wraps around a courtyard and includes a guest terrace

Design Philosophy

The team at Sigurd Larsen Design & Architecture writes: ‘‘Meraki’ translates to passion, reflecting the spirit of local gastronomy and the dedication required to live in this beautiful yet harsh environment. At Meraki Studios, every detail is crafted with care and appreciation for the natural and cultural richness of Crete, Greece.’

Conclusion

Meraki House and Studios is a masterful blend of modern architecture and natural beauty, showcasing the perfect balance between elemental honesty and immersive hospitality. The project is a testament to the power of thoughtful design, where every detail is carefully considered

Introduction to Nogal House

In a semi-rural pocket of Toluca, Mexico, a city perched at altitude and famed for its colonial fabric, Escobedo Soliz’s Nogal House stands as a concrete contradiction: both spare and generous, industrial and warm, modest and monumental. The project may not flaunt ornate ironwork or tiled rooftops, but its strength lies in subtler gestures — ones that emerge over time, like the shifting shadows on its textured walls.

The home is built for a newly married couple looking to build their life, and their home, in stages. Rather than opt for a sprawling footprint or preemptive over-design, the architects proposed a single rectangular volume with soaring ceilings that could evolve with the family’s needs. Using concrete and cement blocks, the initial stage feels both elemental and generous, a pavilion that prioritizes light, space, and flexibility over ornament.

images © Ariadna Polo

Design and Layout

Escobedo Soliz orients its Nogal House to greet the street with an unassuming face, a simple gray form aligned with the front boundary. But step inside, and the architecture reveals its layered nature. At the heart of the main volume, a second rectangular prism crafted from ribbed industrial brick contains essential services like the bathroom, fireplace, and water storage. It’s a quiet move by the architects that organizes the rest of the plan while reinforcing the project’s material palette.

Unfolding as a continuous open space, the home’s living room, study, kitchen, and dining area coexist under a single roof. Above the kitchen, a timber loft holds the bedroom — a warm perch overlooking the main space. The simplicity of the layout belies a keen spatial intelligence: circulation is fluid, and zones feel distinct without the need for partitions or excess structure.

Escobedo Soliz sites its Nogal House in a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Toluca, Mexico

Materiality and Texture

With its Nogal House, Escobedo Soliz demonstrates how humble industrial materials can generate emotional richness. A ceiling system of prestressed concrete beams and ceramic coffers creates texture and rhythm above, while the floor is paved with matching ceramic tiles. The ribbed brick interior core acts as a filter for natural light, casting sepia tones that shift throughout the day. The result is a space that feels tactile and lived-in, despite its raw palette.

The architecture may not clamor for attention from the outside, but that’s precisely the point. The concrete and block exterior blends into the patchwork of neighboring homes, many of which are built from similar exposed materials. But where others stop at function, this house goes further — inviting light, texture, and time to animate its surfaces. It’s a quiet kind of architecture, more interested in experience than display.

the home was designed to be built in stages to accommodate a growing family

the open-plan interior includes living, dining, kitchen, and study spaces

inside the main volume, a ribbed industrial brick core houses service areas

Conclusion

If Nogal House is any indication, Escobedo Soliz has a talent for making the minimal feel meaningful. And in Toluca’s high-altitude terrain, where contemporary and historic design often collides, that’s no small feat. The Nogal House is a testament to the power of subtle, thoughtful design, and its ability to create a sense of warmth and community in even the most unexpected places.

Introduction to Casa Azzurra

Casa Azzurra, a newly built architectural retreat in Joshua Tree, challenges traditional notions of the desert home, offering a spatial experience rooted in memory, place, and sensorial immersion. Designed by Mirtilla Alliata di Montereale — an Italian architect raised in Hawaii and trained at SCI-Arc — the project is deeply personal. It draws on her childhood summers in the Aeolian Islands, professional collaborations with Frank Gehry and Kulapat Yantrasast, and a reverence for the elemental landscapes of Joshua Tree. With a facade of soft blue, the project marks the first in a future hospitality brand and a framework for exploring architecture as lived narrative.

images © Katia Grozov

Design and Architecture

Sprawling across ten desert acres in Joshua Tree, Casa Azzurra is organized around the idea of expansion, both spatially and sensorially. With the design of the retreat, Italian architect Mirtilla Alliata di Montereale does not attempt to compete with the desert. Instead, she leans into it, framing long views and working with elevation to create moments of subtle drama. Set on a rare slope with views toward the mountain range of Joshua Tree National Park, the building opens up through sliding glass walls and view corridors, allowing the interior to feel as though it’s breathing with the land. A palette of five tonal blues coats the cat-face stucco exterior, designed to shift with the sky. It’s a camouflage that also celebrates color in a landscape dominated by neutral tones.

Casa Azzurra is a desert retreat in Joshua Tree designed by architect Mirtilla Alliata di Montereale

The Cobalt-Wrapped Courtyard

At the heart of Casa Azzurra, a vivid cobalt-blue courtyard sets the tone for the home’s spatial rhythm. Rather than following a minimalist desert typology typical of Joshua Tree, Alliata di Montereale leans into a richer, more theatrical approach — one that honors both vernacular Mediterranean sensibilities and the experimental lineage of Californian architecture. The courtyard acts as a hinge between public and private realms, a luminous anchor that infuses the surrounding rooms with saturated reflections and a sense of spatial choreography. This central space embodies the project’s core ambition: to make architecture feel both grounded and transportive.

the project draws inspiration from Aeolian summers, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the surrounding desert

Interior and Exterior Spaces

The interior embraces texture and chromatic variety with deliberate precision. Jewel-toned bedrooms — each with its own palette drawn from the architect’s Italian heritage — punctuate the otherwise open and flowing floorplan. These rooms do not simply decorate but narrate: a dialogue between deep greens, ochres, lapis, and terracotta unfolds through linens, built-ins, and Murano glass accents. Tactile richness defines the atmosphere — linen, raw wood, and stone layer into spaces that are at once elevated and comfortable. Dali prints and skylit rain showers add surrealist touches and moments of intimacy with the natural world, inviting slow movement and contemplative pause.

the property spans ten acres and is positioned on a rare slope with views of Joshua Tree National Park

Architectural Interventions and Landscape

Extending outward from the main residence, Casa Azzurra continues through a series of architectural interventions. A minimalist guest retreat sits like a desert observatory, its wood-paneled interior framing the night sky. Landscape and architecture merge in Geoponika’s enclosed garden, a sanctuary within a sanctuary, where desert planting enhances the experience of enclosure and openness. A thirty-foot pool, bocce and pickleball courts, and an outdoor dining area are not amenities in the conventional sense — they are elements of a larger compositional field that encourages movement, gathering, and improvisation. Here, architecture serves life not as backdrop, but as collaborator.

the exterior is finished in five shades of

Introduction to The Frick Collection’s Restoration

Nearly five years after shuttering for its most extensive renovation in nearly a century, the gallery lights are back on at The Frick Collection in New York. Led by Selldorf Architects, a firm known for its sensitive restoration works, the project is subtle, graceful, and designed to last for decades. In collaboration with executive architects Beyer Blinder Belle, this reimagining balances reverence with restraint, breathing new life into one of the city’s last great Gilded Age residences. Designboom visited the museum ahead of its April 17th opening to explore the newly-renovated galleries — watch our video for a first look inside!

More than art, The Frick is about architecture as a form of cultural continuity. Selldorf Architects approached the project with the delicacy of a conservator restoring a Botticelli — respecting the 1914 Carrère and Hastings-designed mansion while threading in precisely calibrated interventions. The most significant structural moves — such as the reconstruction of the rear facade and a raised roofline at the Reception Hall — are hidden in plain sight, subordinated to the original building’s stately composition. A restrained palette of Indiana limestone, Italian marbles, oakwood floors, and bronze detailing ensures seamless integration between old and new, while state-of-the-art conservation studios and education facilities offer a behind-the-scenes upgrade to match the elegance up front.

70th St. entrance, The Frick Collection, New York | image © Nicholas Venezia, video © designboom + studio crow

A Mansion Unlocks Its Second Story

The Frick Collection has long brought a sense of intimacy to New York — a Rembrandt inches from your nose, a Vermeer without the velvet rope. After the restoration led by the team at Selldorf Architects, that intimacy now expands vertically. For the first time in its history, the second floor of Henry Clay Frick’s former residence is open to the public. Once private bedrooms and staff offices, these spaces have been carefully restored to reveal decorative ceilings, marble fireplaces, and period woodwork. Here, the architecture becomes narrative: the original bedroom of Helen Clay Frick now holds gold-ground Renaissance panels, while Henry’s own chamber hosts portraiture in tribute to his collecting passions. The building doesn’t just house the collection, it stands in dialogue with it.

Entrance Hall, The Frick Collection, New York | image © Nicholas Venezia

The Frick Collection’s Expanded Galleries

The Frick Collection in New York has long favored quality over quantity — but with a 27,000-square-foot expansion and 60,000 square feet of reprogrammed space, there’s now room for both. Selldorf Architects’ new additions include the Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries, a purpose-built home for focused presentations. Opening this June is Vermeer’s Love Letters, which reunites three domestic masterpieces for the first time. Downstairs, a new 218-seat auditorium — with a curvilinear ceiling and reception room illuminated by a Murano glass laylight — is set to host concerts and lectures with an acoustic intimacy that rivals the Living Hall upstairs. The addition is buried beneath the 70th Street Garden, whose restoration revives Russell Page’s 1977 design, now visible from newly opened sightlines throughout the building.

Garden Court, The Frick Collection, New York | image © Joseph Coscia Jr.

Library and Education Facilities

The greatest intellectual asset of the Frick Collection has always been its library, founded by Helen Clay Frick in 1920. But until now, it functioned like an introverted sibling. The renovation changes that. A new internal connection now links the Frick Art Research Library directly to the museum, making visible what was once just scholarly rumor. The library’s rear facade has been rebuilt and extended, creating more room for reading rooms, archives, and conversation between disciplines. A new education center, museum shop, and café complete the experience, turning the formerly cloistered institution into a unified campus for art lovers, researchers, and students alike.

Fragonard Room, The Frick Collection, New York | image © Joseph Coscia Jr.

Restraint in Design

The renovation by Selldorf Architects is an essay in restraint. The Frick Collection’s new bronze-and-glass bridge that connects the mansion to the library could have been a statement piece — Selldorf makes it a whisper. The oak flooring in the new exhibition halls doesn’t scream ‘new wing’ — it nods toward continuity. Even the lighting, the custom Murano glass lanterns, and subtly coffered ceilings speak in the visual language of quiet luxury. It’s a modern intervention that doesn’t aim to compete with Fragonard or Gainsborough, but instead sets the scene for them to shine. This is architecture not as spectacle, but as stewardship.

March 26, 2025

Women’s Leadership Center to take root in Williams Bay

Studio Gang, a visionary architecture practice led by Jeanne Gang, and Lincoln Road Enterprises, a philanthropic force behind women’s leadership advancement, have joined forces to create the Women’s Leadership Center in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. This 24,000-square-foot retreat and cultural campus, slated to open in 2026, is nestled above the glacial waters of Geneva Lake and aims to nurture dialogue, growth, and perspective among professional women.

The team envisions the project as a sanctuary, informed by the ecology of the oak savanna and the shimmering lake nearby. The Center’s architecture operates like a forest canopy, with generous forms, porous to light, and tuned to the rhythms of the land. Jeanne Gang likens the design to ‘gaps in the tree canopy,’ allowing light to spill into interiors much like sunlight reaches the forest floor — evoking the quiet intelligence of ‘crown shyness.’ This subtle yet powerful metaphor for leadership embodies clarity without glare.

Studio Gang and Lincoln Road understand the significance of Geneva Lake as a historical node of intellectual discovery, with the famed Yerkes Observatory nearby. The Women’s Leadership Center is poised to inherit this legacy of forward-thinking inquiry, offering a space for professional women to connect, decompress, and catalyze new possibilities that ripple outward from the woods of Wisconsin to boardrooms, classrooms, and institutions worldwide. As Ann Drake, Founder of the Center and President of Lincoln Road Enterprises, puts it, ‘Tomorrow starts here.’

Studio Gang and Lincoln Road Blur Architecture and Ecosystem

The design proposes a built environment that behaves like an ecosystem, with gently curving forms mirroring the forest’s organic geometries and wide windows opening the interior to uninterrupted views of lake and trees. Natural materials, such as white oak harvested on-site and locally sourced Wisconsin stone, ensure the buildings feel like extensions of the land rather than interruptions. Within this context, gathering becomes more than an agenda item, with every moment nested in nature, whether dining beneath the oaks or reflecting in a skylit room.

The Center is organized as three distinct yet interconnected structures: the Lodge, the Council, and the Cabin. The Lodge offers large-scale social space with indoor-outdoor continuity, while the Council houses meeting rooms for collaborative work arranged around a verdant courtyard. The Cabin provides overnight accommodation for experts-in-residence, compact, quiet, and intentional. Together, the trio activates an 8.6-acre site with meandering paths, accessible landscaping, and spatial variety that mirrors the spectrum of leadership styles.

Sustainability without Performativity

Studio Gang and Lincoln Road pursued ecological intelligence not as a checklist, but as a mode of thinking. By preserving topography, elevating parts of the structure for airflow, and orienting buildings to catch lake breezes, the design avoids mechanical overcomplication. Cross-ventilation, mass timber, low-carbon concrete, and regionally sourced materials contribute to a lighter footprint, making LEED Gold achievable without being the primary focus. In this way, sustainability becomes structural, not performative, allowing the Center to support innovation, collaboration, and leadership development for professional women while minimizing its impact on the environment.

The design draws inspiration from the surrounding oak savanna and Geneva Lake landscape, with light filtering through skylights and windows like sun through a tree canopy. Footpaths and courtyards invite informal connection and interaction with nature, creating a sense of community and belonging among visitors. With the Center breaking ground in 2024 and expected to open in 2026, it is set to become a hub for women’s leadership and a model for sustainable design.

Project Info:

Name: Women’s Leadership Center

Architect: Studio Gang | @studiogang

Location: Williams Bay, Wisconsin

Collaborator: Lincoln Road

Completion: Expected 2026

Visualizations: © Studio Gang

Conclusion

The Women’s Leadership Center in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, is a groundbreaking project that embodies the perfect blend of innovative design, sustainability, and community building. By creating a space that nurtures dialogue, growth, and perspective, Studio Gang and Lincoln Road are setting a new standard for women’s leadership development and retreats. As the Center prepares to open its doors in 2026, it is poised to become a beacon for professional women from around the world, offering a unique opportunity to connect, learn, and thrive in a stunning natural setting. With its commitment to sustainability, community, and women’s empowerment, the Women’s Leadership Center is an inspiring example of what can be achieved when vision, creativity, and collaboration come together.

Introduction to IEIE Residence

MASA Architects completes IEIE in Urayasu City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, a project that integrates residential and professional spaces within a single structure. Designed for a couple who hosts piano lessons, IEIE incorporates multiple house-shaped volumes within a larger architectural composition. The structure evokes an abstract streetscape, where shifting light and layered spatial elements create a fluctuating perception of place. Horizontal metallic steel sheets clad the exterior, reflecting the changing sky.

all images courtesy of MASA Architects

Architectural Design and Natural Light

The Japanese architecture firm explores the idea of an urban experience within a private dwelling, where spaces are not rigidly defined but flow into one another. At dawn, sharp beams of natural light enter through a house-shaped slit at the top, illuminating the interiors with a soft glow. Throughout the day, light filters into different volumes—falling first into the entrance, then into the toilet—guiding movement and subtly altering the ambiance. At dusk, a mix of blue-tinged natural light and warm artificial illumination enhances the atmospheric depth of the MASA Architects’ house, making it feel less like a conventional home and more like a space shaped by chance, akin to a cave.

Unique Design Elements

A striking element of the design is a bedroom perched atop the main house volume, resembling a birdhouse. This elevated retreat emphasizes the layering of domestic and urban references, reinforcing the conceptual framework of the structure. Meanwhile, the eaves, shaped like piano keys, provide an interactive feature for children attending piano lessons, adding a playful architectural gesture to the composition.

reflecting the changing sky

Integration of Residential and Professional Spaces

IEIE incorporates multiple house-shaped volumes within a larger architectural composition, creating a unique and functional space for the couple who hosts piano lessons. The structure is designed to integrate residential and professional spaces, providing a seamless transition between different areas of the house.

MASA Architects completes IEIE in Urayasu City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Additional Design Features

The house also features a unique design with metallic steel sheets cladding the exterior, reflecting the changing sky. The eaves, shaped like piano keys, add a playful touch to the composition.

a project that integrates residential and professional spaces within a single structure

designed for a couple who hosts piano lessons

March 26, 2025

Nakano House: Brutalism on a Feline Scale

Suzuko Yamada Architects’ Nakano House isn’t so much built as it is carefully wedged into a 26-square-meter pocket of Tokyo. Despite its compact footprint, this Brutalist dwelling makes a surprisingly grand statement. Designed for a couple and their two cats, the house treats architecture less as a set of rooms and more like a curated arrangement of elemental forces: concrete, light, air — and cats, of course. ‘As long as there was an outer shell for living and space for the cats to run around,’ the clients said, ‘the rest could come together over time.’ This care-free brief is just the kind of prompt on which Japanese architect Suzuko Yamada thrives.

images © Kei Sasaki

A Compact Concrete Home in Tokyo

Suzuko Yamada Architects approaches its Nakano House by occupying the entire lot edge-to-edge, constructing a thick concrete perimeter that at once shields and defines the interior parameters. Inside, essentials like the kitchen, bath, and toilet coexist with less conventional features: cat walkways, handrails, and stairs that feel more sculptural than functional. ‘These components feel oversized in relation to the house,’ the architects explain. ‘Their scale is the same — or even larger — than the rooms themselves.’ In this compact home, there’s no single viewpoint that reveals the full picture. Instead, architecture becomes a series of tactile fragments: the cool dampness of raw concrete, soft shafts of light, the faint scuff of feline paws.

Suzuko Yamada designs the compact, Brutalist home for a couple and their two cats

Suzuko Yamada’s ‘String of Voids’

Inside its Nakano House, Suzuko Yamada Architects orchestrates a choreography of voids. Life, it seems, happens not within rooms but in the negative space between forms. Activities like cooking or laundry become spatial negotiations between monolithic elements. ‘The family of objects appears to have looked for and found their places within the structure,’ the architects note, describing a kind of architectural natural selection. The two cats traverse this new terrain with ease, moving through openings and around corners, trailing breezes that thread the structure with fresh air and ambient noise from the street.

Nakano House occupies the entire 26 square meter lot in a dense Tokyo neighborhood

Friction and Tension

The architects reject the idea of a ‘seamless integration’ between architecture and life. Instead, they set up a productive friction. Light from the street collides with concrete. Air tangles with handrails. Cats confront gravity. ‘Both life and nature are in tension with the architecture,’ they write. ‘They exist together and sometimes connect, but never blend.’ The result is a house that feels more like a chunk of urban geology than a home — a Brutalist mountain lodged in the cityscape, unyielding yet strangely poetic. In resisting comfort, it creates something oddly comforting, a space that’s alive precisely because it’s not trying to be.

two staircases and cat walkways are treated as core structural elements

the interior is defined by raw concrete surfaces and oversized architectural elements

Conclusion

The Nakano House by Suzuko Yamada Architects is a unique and fascinating example of Brutalist architecture in Tokyo. The house’s compact footprint and carefully curated arrangement of elemental forces create a surprisingly grand statement. The architects’ rejection of seamless integration between architecture and life has resulted in a productive friction, creating a space that is alive and strangely poetic. The house’s interior, defined by raw concrete surfaces and oversized architectural elements, is a testament to the architects’ vision and creativity. Overall, the Nakano House is a must-see for anyone interested in innovative and thought-provoking architecture.