In the Laurentian landscape north of Montréal, where granite bedrock surfaces through boreal forest and light shifts with rare theatricality, Atelier Carle has completed a secondary residence that refuses easy categorization. SONO is not a cottage dressed in regional costume, nor a modernist object dropped into the wilderness. It is something quieter and more considered: a structure that emerged from the site itself, shaped by its contours, its light, and the particular way two people wished to share a life without dissolving into one. Image courtesy of: Félix Michaud At a moment when the architecture of retreat has never been more culturally visible — from shelter magazines to social media feeds thick with lakeside glass boxes — SONO offers a meaningful counterpoint. It chooses depth over spectacle, and in doing so, asks a more honest question: what does it mean to truly inhabit a place? The Approach as Architecture Before one even crosses the threshold of SONO, Atelier Carle makes a declaration. Three long concrete walls of varying heights rise from the earth, scaled not to the human body alone but to the broader sweep of the Canadian landscape around them. They do not announce the house so much as prepare the visitor for it — a slow, deliberate procession that compresses anticipation into a narrow gap, the barely-there opening that serves as the entrance. Image courtesy of: Félix Michaud The walls carry the particular gravity of things built to last. Their materiality speaks of permanence — of marking a site in time rather than merely occupying it. And yet the gap between them is almost tender in its restraint, a sliver of invitation that gives nothing away. It is a choreographed threshold in the oldest architectural sense: the moment of crossing that separates the world from the world beyond. Once inside, the spatial logic shifts entirely. The rigid concrete grammar of arrival gives way to a warm, flexible arrangement of living spaces organized around a timber structure. The sequence meanders — rooms reveal themselves gradually, with carefully controlled sightlines that preserve a sense of personal territory without ever feeling closed. This was, above all, an architecture of cohabitation: two friends sharing a home with a shared desire for togetherness and solitude in equal measure. Light, Wood, and the Phenomenological Turn Atelier Carle's conceptual ambition here is neither stylistic nor nostalgic. The studio explicitly set aside the regional architectural references that might ordinarily anchor a project in its geography, in favour of something more fundamental: the phenomenological experience of being in a space. What does this room feel like at dawn? How does the light change in the afternoon? Where does the sound go? These are the questions the firm asked itself throughout the design process, and the answers are embedded in every material decision. The spaces unfold in terraces that follow the natural slope of the site, each offering a different vantage onto the panorama beyond. The northern light — chosen deliberately by orientation — arrives softly and indirectly, lending the interiors a quality of restrained drama. It does not flood. It reveals. Walls and ceilings become instruments of this choreography and the shifting. The quality of illumination throughout the day gives the house something close to a living rhythm. Hemlock, sourced from a site immediately adjacent to the project, is the material that carries much of the warmth and humanity in SONO. Selected in close collaboration with a local carpenter who was responsible for both its production and installation, the wood appears in the exposed structural elements, the north façade columns, the fascias, and the exterior cladding. Its presence is never decorative in the conventional sense — it is structural, ecological, and deeply local all at once. The narrow grains and pale tones of hemlock have a particular softness that reads against the concrete's resolve, making the interior sequence feel like a passage from earth into shelter. Crucially, the house rests on existing bedrock without blasting or significant excavation — a decision that kept the site's ecological integrity intact and grounded the architecture in a form of radical site honesty. The land was not subdued to accommodate the building. The building learned to accommodate the land. A New Model of Making The story of SONO is also, quietly, a story about process. For Atelier Carle, this project has crystallized something important about how architecture of genuine consequence gets made in the present moment. The studio notes that the traditional fixed-price contract model — linear, siloed, architect-as-sole-decision-maker — could not contain what this project required. What emerged instead was a web of trust: between the firm and the clients, between the architect and the craftspeople, between intent and material reality. The kitchen sits at the heart of this philosophy, made spatial. It is the one room that opens itself completely to the landscape — not merely glimpsing it through a window but offering full, generous communion with the outside. As the social anchor of the home, it draws people together across the threshold of indoors and out, functioning as both a gathering place and a metaphor. Food, conversation, light, and forest converge here. Technical Sheet & Credits Location: Wentworth-North, Quebec, Canada Design Studio: Atelier Carle Alain Carle / Founding architect Isaniel Lévesque / Associate architect Baptiste Balbrick / M.Arch James Jabbour / M.Arch Starr Wang / M.Arch Sarah Mei Mousseau / Architectural technologist General contractor: Metric Construction Inc. Structural engineer: VCMa Engineering consultants Geotechnical engineer: Ingénat Engineering consultants Reclaimed wood: Taylor Lukian Windows: Shalwin Willwork: Xavier Collection About Atelier Carle For more than twenty-five years, Alain Carle has relied on a pedagogical approach that he developed as a teacher and researcher in the Master's program at the School of Architecture of the University of Montreal. In 2023, from a perspective of continuity and consolidation of the achievements of the last decades, Carle joined forces with five key collaborators to become Atelier Carle, thus underlining a new inclusive and forward-looking project. Formed by creative and daring minds, the firm's team presents projects where the specificity of place, the precise work of materiality, and diversified construction techniques are an integral part of the creative process. Founder Alain Carle presents lectures that highlight the firm's creative approach, but also his own sensitivity to the theoretical approach to projects. One of them, "La part du paysage", states the essential component of the landscape not as a vector of identity, but rather as an opening on its specificity, its exemplarity, and its capacity for modification.

For years, the ceiling was the forgotten element of interior design. It was treated as a default white canvas, an afterthought meant to simply fade into the background. However, in 2026, the rules of design have shifted. Interior designers are now looking upward, treating the ceiling as an intentional, dramatic tool to completely alter the volume and emotional weight of a room. The Art of "Colour Capping" At the heart of this movement is a highly effective technique known as colour capping. Instead of stopping paint abruptly where the wall meets the ceiling, this trend involves wrapping a deeply saturated hue or a rich texture across the entire ceiling and pulling it down onto the top fraction of the walls. This creates a seamless canopy over the space, anchoring the room in a way that traditional painting methods simply cannot achieve. Creating an Intimate Cocoon To understand the emotional impact of colour capping, consider a room with soaring, architectural ceilings. Left white, a tall room can easily feel drafty or overwhelmingly large. However, when a dusty terracotta canopy is painted overhead and extended down the top quarter of the walls, the entire atmosphere shifts. The dark, warm colour drops the visual horizon. It instantly turns a vast, echoing space into an intimate, cocoon-like retreat. The emotional weight of the room shifts from stark and distant to snug and inviting, all through the strategic placement of paint. The Spatial Mathematics of the Fifth Wall This trend goes beyond simple aesthetics; it relies on clever "spatial mathematics" to trick the eye and reshape a room's proportions. Expanding Narrow Spaces: It seems counterintuitive, but applying deep earth tones—like rich espresso, moody olive, or warm clay—to the ceiling can actually make a narrow space feel much wider. The depth of these colours recedes to the eye, giving the illusion of a broader, more expansive room. Eliminating Visual Clutter: In standard design, the stark line between a colored wall and a white ceiling creates a sharp visual break. By wrapping the trim, plaster, and ceiling in a single, monochrome shade, those harsh lines disappear. Eliminating these distracting visual breaks allows the eye to travel smoothly across the room, creating a unified and calming environment. When a space requires a bold refresh, the standard flat white paint can finally be left behind. By embracing deep colours and seamless transitions, any room can become a perfectly balanced sanctuary. Ultimately, the most brilliant design choices are often found simply by looking up.

The Peloponnese has long held a particular kind of power over those who visit. It is a landscape of deep olive groves, bone-white rock, and the quiet persistence of millennia. To build within it — and not merely upon it — demands a kind of humility rarely found in luxury hospitality. Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino rises to that challenge with what can only be described as disciplined reverence, offering a resort that earns its place in the landscape rather than imposing itself upon it. Image courtesy of: BREBA Claus Brechenmacher & Reiner Baumann Set above the bay of Navarino, a stretch of coastline that has witnessed history on an almost operatic scale, the resort arrives at a moment when the very meaning of luxury is being renegotiated. Today's discerning traveller seeks not spectacle, but resonance — spaces that feel genuinely of their place, rooted in culture and material reality. Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino delivers both, and then some. The Village Logic The resort's genius begins not in any single room or garden, but in its plan. Inspired by the ancient Greek mandria — those organic stone enclosures that shepherds and farmers shaped to fit the terrain — the design team adopted a deliberately decentralized masterplan. Rather than consolidating the programme into a single monumental structure, the resort distributes itself across the hillside in clusters of accommodation that follow the natural contours of the land. The result is a resort that behaves more like a village — or rather, like the memory of a village, reinvented through contemporary materials and construction. Forty-eight earth-sheltered private villas with pools are embedded into the hill itself, each enjoying the kind of privacy that a conventional hotel corridor could never offer. There is no sense of adjacency here, no awareness of neighbours. Each villa occupies its own quiet world. This dispersal is not merely aesthetic. It is architecturally strategic. Open-air circulation routes replace the usual cooled internal corridors, allowing nature to remain a constant presence throughout the guest's movement across the property. Semi-sheltered entry courtyards and covered terraces act as climatic buffers, moderating the heat of a Greek summer without relying solely on mechanical systems. The layout, in other words, does environmental work quietly and elegantly, in a way the guest may never consciously register — but will feel. A Material Conversation Inside the villas, restraint and richness coexist in careful calibration. Stone and terrazzo are deployed in tactile, understated ways — surfaces that reward touch as much as vision. The palette draws directly from the Mediterranean: warm ochres, weathered greys, the soft whites of sun-bleached limestone. Yet the interiors are not folkloric pastiches. They belong to their place without performing it. The design of thresholds is where the spatial experience reaches its most refined expression. Wide overhangs frame views without surrendering them entirely. Deep-set openings filter the intensity of southern light into something softer, more considered. Each villa moves through a layered spatial rhythm — fully enclosed interior, semi-sheltered terrace, open garden — so that the guest is in constant, modulated dialogue with the outside. The architecture does not simply frame the landscape; it choreographs the relationship between the two. Locally sourced materials wherever possible, planted roofs that insulate and blur the boundary between building and ground, cross-ventilation that draws breezes through thoughtfully oriented volumes — these strategies speak to an operational intelligence woven into the very fabric of the buildings. The resort is designed to breathe. The guest, in turn, breathes with it. Quiet Luxury, Long Thinking The Mandarin Oriental brand has always understood that true luxury is experienced through the quality of attention to detail, to service, to the physical environment. At Costa Navarino, that attention extends to something larger: a conscious rethinking of what a resort owes to the place that hosts it. The master plan supports scalable seasonal operation, allowing clusters of villas and rooms to be brought into or out of use without waste. Water-efficient landscaping and energy zoning reduce the resort's ecological footprint in ways that are systemic rather than cosmetic. These are not gestures towards sustainability; they are its architecture. What the project ultimately demonstrates is that luxury and responsibility need not trade against each other. The resort does not replicate history — it listens to it, abstracts it, and builds something new that could only exist here, on this hill, above this bay. It is a place where the ambitions of a global brand and the wisdom of an ancient landscape have found, against the odds, a common language. Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino offers a new model for resort-making — one, as the design team put it, that "privileges relationship over image, groundedness over excess." In the Peloponnese, a region where the stones themselves seem to hold long memories, it feels less like a design brief and more like a natural law. About Alexandros N. Tombazis & Associates Architects Alexandros N. Tombazis & Associates Architects was founded in 1963. Over the years, the studio has designed buildings of almost any type and scale. Based in Athens, the studio has undertaken commissions which have been constructed in Portugal, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Cyprus, Abu Dhabi, Oman and China. In the late 1970s, Tombazis Associates introduced bioclimatic design in Greece at a time when the term was still widely unknown and became renowned for their holistic and context-sensitive approach, integrating architecture with energy-conscious and sustainable design principles. Paraphrasing Mies van der Rohe, their motto is ‘less is beautiful’ – less meaning a creative and responsible judgement of what is necessary in each case. Many of their commissions result from distinctions in numerous national and international competitions, such as the internationally recognized Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity in Fatima, Portugal. Through a long-standing partnership with Costa Navarino, spanning nearly thirty years, the studio has served as Lead Architect for four five-star hotels in Messinia, Peloponnese: The Romanos, a Luxury Collection Resort; The Westin Resort, Costa Navarino; W Costa Navarino; and Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino - the last in collaboration with K-Studio. Recently, Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino, with its innovative "earth-sheltered" concept, has secured numerous prestigious accolades, including the Architecture Masterprize (2025), multiple AHEAD Europe Awards (2025), and multiple LIV Awards (2025). It was nominated for the EU Mies Awards (2026), finalist for the CDA Awards (2026), longlisted for the Dezeen Awards (2025) and Archello Public Vote Winner (2025) About K‑Studio K‑Studio is a design practice based in Athens, Greece, for over 20 years. Founded by brothers Dimitris and Konstantinos Karampatakis, the studio comprises a multidisciplinary team working across hospitality, residential and the public realm. The practice is grounded in a considered, curious approach to its projects that produces immersive designs that are rooted in heritage and context, creating spaces that are built to last.

For the last decade, the ultimate real estate dream was the open-concept home. Buyers wanted to knock down every wall in sight. But as we move through 2026, the trend has officially shifted. Homeowners are growing tired of echoing, ultra-open floor plans where the kitchen, living room, and dining area blur into one giant, noisy space. Today, the focus is shifting back to privacy, coziness, and clearly defined rooms. Welcome to the era of "broken-plan" living. What is a "Broken-Plan"? A broken-plan home does not mean returning to small, dark, and boxed-in rooms. Instead, it is about creating distinct zones while maintaining a sense of natural flow. Interior designers and builders are using clever architectural details to separate spaces without completely closing them off. This smart zoning is achieved through: Architectural Framing: Half-walls, glass partitions, and wide archways that divide rooms while letting light pass through. Custom Millwork: Built-in bookcases and elegant wood panelling that create natural boundaries. Varied Ceiling Heights: Lowering the ceiling in a dining area or raising it in a living room to make each space feel like its own distinct destination. With a broken plan, a family can share the same house, but everyone finally has a quiet corner to read, work, or relax. The Shift to Warm Minimalism Along with bringing back walls, interior design is getting a major aesthetic update. The early 2020s were famous for sterile, high-contrast black-and-white colour palettes that often felt a bit cold. Now, those stark designs are being replaced by a style known as "warm minimalism." This new approach is all about creating a soothing, inviting, and highly textured environment. It moves away from perfection and instead focuses on how a home actually feels. Key features of this 2026 trend include: Warm, Earthy Palettes: Living spaces are now grounded in rich, nature-inspired colours like baked terracottas, golden ochres, and deep, calming greens. Tactile Materials: To bring warmth to a space, designers are heavily layering textures. Crisp synthetics have been swapped out for heavy, cozy linens that invite people to sit down and relax. Natural Finishes: Shiny and flawless is officially out. Countertops are being crafted from beautifully matte stone, and hardware features unlacquered metals that will naturally age and darken over time, adding rich visual interest. The end of the open concept is not a step backward in design; it is a step toward everyday comfort. By layering rich textures, warming up the color palette, and creating clearly defined spaces, homes are stepping away from the showroom look. Instead, they are turning back into true, private sanctuaries.

Modern homes are reaching for the sky with higher ceilings and taller entryways, but safety can never be sacrificed for style. For years, finding a high-quality, 8-foot-tall door that also met strict fire safety codes was a frustrating challenge for builders and architects. Image courtesy of: Novatech Group Enter Novatech Group. The leading North American door manufacturer has just expanded its popular Altitude Collection with the new N950 door—a smart solution that blends modern design trends with critical safety standards. Developed in Novatech’s Quebec-based innovation lab, the patent-pending N950 is a certified 20-minute fire-rated steel door available in an impressive 8-foot height. It is specifically designed for residential spaces where fire barriers are required, such as the entryway between an attached garage and a house, or the shared hallways in multi-family dwellings and duplexes. What Makes the N950 Stand Out? The N950 is engineered to solve multiple problems at once, offering top-tier performance wrapped in a stylish package: Built Tough: The door features 24-gauge galvanized steel skins, making it highly resistant to everyday wear, warping, and rust. Smart Insulation: Inside, a rigid polyurethane foam core does double duty by keeping indoor temperatures comfortable and blocking out unwanted noise. Easy Installation: Solid wood edges along the door provide strong structural support and make installing locks and hinges quick and simple. Versatile Style: Safety doesn't have to look boring. The collection includes a wide range of both contemporary and classic designs to match any home's aesthetic. “The market has been asking for an 8-foot, fire-rated door for years, and until now, the options have been extremely limited. With the N950, we’re advancing the industry by delivering a certified 20-minute fire-rated solution that aligns with today’s growing demand for taller doors, while maintaining the safety, durability, and performance our partners expect.” -Stéphane Joly, Research and Development Director at Novatech Rigorously tested to meet top fire-resistance standards (including UL 10C and NFPA 252 for sizes up to 36" x 95"), the N950 proves that you no longer have to choose between a beautiful, grand entryway and peace of mind. With this new addition, Novatech now offers one of the most extensive and reliable lines of 8-foot fire-rated doors on the market today. About Novatech Group Founded in 1982, Novatech Group employs nearly 1,500 people and is Canada’s leading manufacturer of components for the window and door industry. The company operates 14 manufacturing facilities, 6 distribution centers, and 3 innovation centers across North America. This operational capacity supports the company’s continued growth and enables it to develop high-performance solutions tailored to the needs of the industry. Novatech's state-of-the-art plants manufacture residential steel door panels, door glass, patio doors, and glass products for residential, commercial, and institutional construction.

Walk into a modern luxury home today, and you might think you have stepped back in time. There are no flashing blue lights on the walls. No bulky touchscreens are buzzing in the hallway. After years of living with constant screen time and endless notifications, homeowners are experiencing major digital fatigue. The era of the loud, futuristic gadget house is officially over. Today, premium buyers want a space that feels calm and natural. They want high-tech convenience, but they want the technology to completely fade into the background. The Rise of "Invisible Integration" For a long time, having a smart home meant showing it off. People wanted visible control panels in every room to prove their house was living in the future. But the modern luxury home shouldn’t look like a computer server room; it should look like a sanctuary. This shift in taste has created a powerful new partnership. Architects and smart-home engineers are now working together from day one to build "invisible integration." Instead of adding technology to a room after it is built, they are weaving it directly into the structure of the house itself. Where is the Tech Hiding? If visitors can't see the technology, where is it? The answer is everywhere—and nowhere at all. Designers are using premium, natural materials to camouflage the brains of the home. Inside Custom Woodwork: Internet routers, smart hubs, and charging stations are seamlessly carved into custom cabinets and wooden wall panels, leaving surfaces completely clean. Behind Hand-Finished Plaster: Advanced ambient air-quality sensors and temperature controls sit entirely hidden behind smooth plaster walls. They monitor the environment without ever making their presence known. Under Natural Stone Flooring: Sound-absorbing materials and smart climate systems live beneath heavy stone floors, keeping rooms perfectly warm and blissfully quiet. A Home That Feels, Rather Than Shows The magic of an invisible smart home is that it works tirelessly behind the scenes while keeping the atmosphere entirely organic. True peace comes from a home that automatically adapts to life, without forcing anyone to stare at a screen to make it happen. Without a single visible button or wire, these homes dynamically adjust to the world around them. They automatically soften the lighting as the sun goes down, tune the indoor temperature as the weather changes, and dampen outside traffic noise to keep the indoors peaceful. True luxury has always been about comfort and peace of mind. By hiding the wires and silencing the screens, invisible tech allows homeowners to escape the digital noise of the outside world. The ultimate smart home isn't the one with the most gadgets—it's the one that lets people forget the gadgets exist at all.

On the shores of Lake Memphremagog, an Award of Excellence-winning Quebec residence redefines what it means to belong to a landscape — by disappearing into it. Image courtesy of: Maxime Brouillet There is a stretch of the Eastern Townships where the land does not ease into the water — it plunges. Along the western shores of Lake Memphremagog in the Potton region of Québec, steep forested slopes fall sharply to a narrow lakeside strip, and the light, filtered through dense stands of old trees, arrives late and leaves early. It is a site of elemental drama: ancient, quiet, and not easily won over. This is where the Counter-Slope House stands — or rather, where it settles. Recipient of the 2026 Award of Excellence from the Ordre des architectes du Québec, the project has drawn attention not for grand statements, but for the opposite: for an architectural restraint so deliberate it reads almost as philosophy. The building does not impose. It converses. Image courtesy of: Maxime Brouillet A Fragmented Presence From the outset, the design team resisted the impulse to consolidate. Instead of a single mass asserting itself against the hillside, two distinct volumes emerge from the ground in a fragmented arrangement, each crowned with a dual-pitched roof — a slope and counter-slope — that sets up a quiet visual exchange with the topography surrounding them. The result feels less like a building placed on a site and more like something that grew from it, following the logic of the land rather than overwriting it. The roofline geometry is doing more than it appears to. By breaking down the perceived scale of the structure, the pitched forms keep the architecture in proportion with the trees and rock faces that dwarf everything else here. It is a morphological modesty — a way of saying, architecturally, that the landscape remains the dominant presence. What makes the project genuinely unusual is how it inverts the conventional logic of arrival. Entry occurs from above: one descends into the house, moving from the roof terrace downward toward the lake and the ground. This reversal is not a quirk — it is the organizing idea. At the top, the main volume's roof becomes something more than a ceiling seen from outside. It functions as a belvedere, a threshold, and a vanishing point all at once. On a site defined by steep gradients, a flat horizontal plane becomes a rare and meaningful event. Materials That Weather and Warm The material choices here are calibrated with equal care. At its base, where the house meets the natural rock of the hillside, cast-in-place concrete grounds the structure with an almost geological weight. It is a direct acknowledgment of contact — architecture meeting earth without pretence. Above, the exterior is clad in natural cedar, left entirely untreated so that it will grey and silver over the seasons, eventually dissolving chromatically into the mineral and vegetal textures of the forest around it. This is not low maintenance by oversight; it is longevity by design — the house is meant to age into the landscape. Step inside, and the register shifts. White oak introduces warmth and domesticity — a sensory counterpoint to the rawness beyond the glazing. The contrast is intentional and deeply felt: the exterior belongs to the forest, while the interior creates the conditions for inhabitation, for ease, for rest. The two are held in productive tension, separated by expansive glazed openings that frame the lake and trees as living paintings. The exposed timber structure, left raw throughout, serves as an organizing presence. It punctuates movement through the house — visible, structural, and unhidden — offering both a tactile encounter with construction and a continuous spatial thread that guides the inhabitant from room to room, level to level. Against this, the black elements scattered through the architecture — frames, openings, hardware details — operate almost as brushstrokes, lending depth and sharpening the views they contain. Landscape as Condition, Not Context The two upper volumes — elongated forms that turn their backs to each other — orient respectively toward the lake and the mountain, tucking the bedrooms into the tree canopy. There, the foliage fills the windows like a tableau: not a view to be admired from a distance, but an immersive surround, a living thing that shifts hourly with light and season. The bedrooms do not look at nature; they inhabit it. The spatial organization echoes this. Floors extend outward into balconies, blurring the line between inside and outside. Thresholds — those definitive boundaries that traditional architecture makes so much of — are quietly dissolved in favour of what the architects describe as perceptual continuity. The house does not end where the terrace begins. The architecture simply becomes more open, more porous, more yielding. It is tempting to call this biophilic design, but the term is too clinical for what the Counter-Slope House achieves. This is something less programmatic and more sincere — a sustained act of architectural attention to a place that resists being built upon. The project ultimately asks a question that feels more urgent with each passing year of construction-heavy living: how might architecture inhabit a site not as an object, but as a condition for experiencing it? The Counter-Slope House is neither a retreat from nature nor a conquest of it. It is an architecture of subtraction — one that reveals through restraint, that earns its presence by earning the trust of its site. In the shadows of Lake Memphremagog, where the forest has the last word, that is no small achievement. Project Details Project Name : À contre-pente (The Counter-Slope House) Location: Potton, QC, Canada Architect: yh2 Design team: Marie-Claude Hamelin, Loukas Yiacouvakis, Karl Choquette, Lisa Busmey Contractor: Construction Alain Pouliot Inc. Engineer: Génie X About YH2 architecture YH2 architecture is an architectural design studio founded in 1994 by architects Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis. For YH2, architecture is the art of place—both the physical context in which a project is situated and which it transforms, and the more intimate interior space it creates. The architectural project, the result of a reflection centred on the landscape or the city, serves here as a tool for creating and transforming everyday life. The firm aims to be a workshop for research and exploration of architectural projects, viewed as a totality. Particular attention is paid to materials, their spatial arrangement, and their theatricality. All aspects of a project are carefully studied: integration within a given context, conceptual design, working drawings, architectural details, interior design, and object design. Concepts are developed in such a way that each of the elements must play a part in the overall composition. Nothing is superfluous. YH2 deliberately chose to concentrate on fewer projects. Headed by its two founding partners, the team dedicates its full attention to these projects, which have received numerous awards throughout the years.

Some cities talk about design. Then there is Montréal—a city that, for twenty years, has chosen to "govern" itself. In June 2006, the Québec metropolis became the first city in North America and only the third in the world to join the UNESCO Creative Cities Network in the field of design. Two decades on, that designation has proven to be far more than a badge of honour. It has become the philosophical spine of an entire urban project. As the city marks this milestone anniversary throughout 2026, the occasion calls for more than celebration. It demands a clear-eyed look at what Montréal actually built—and why it matters now more than ever, at a moment when cities everywhere are scrambling to make themselves more livable, sustainable, and resilient. “Montréal’s designation as a UNESCO City of Design is a key lever for outreach and development. More than ever, our city is focused on innovation to meet urban challenges, be they economic, social or environmental. The expertise of our designers and the actions of the Bureau du design continue to reinforce Montréal’s international leadership when it comes to innovation by design.” — Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Mayor of Montréal Designing a City from the Inside Out The story begins not in 2006, but in 1991, when Montréal made a decision that was, at the time, essentially unheard of in municipal governance: it created an office dedicated to design within its city administration. The city's first Design Commissioner, Marie-Josée Lacroix, was charged with building something from the ground up—not just a department, but a new idea about what a city could be. “This role didn’t really exist anywhere, so we had to build it from the ground up. We not only had to prove its worth, but also persuade the City itself to become an exemplary client with regard to design and architecture.” — Marie-Josée Lacroix, Montréal’s first Design Commissioner That mandate seeded a culture of ambition that only deepened after the UNESCO designation arrived fifteen years later. The Bureau du design was established in 2006 as the operational engine of the City of Design vision, transforming the designation from an international distinction into a working policy instrument. Its influence has since rippled outward to shape how some 50 other member cities in the Cities of Design subnetwork approach the relationship between creativity and governance. What makes Montréal's model distinctive is its insistence that design belongs in public life—not as ornamentation, but as a service to citizens. This is the city that pioneered design and architecture competitions for public contract awardance, assessing proposals on the quality of ideas rather than simply the lowest bid. In a North American procurement culture historically governed by rigid tendering rules, that shift required sustained political will. More than 60 competitions later, Montréal has earned recognition as a genuine continental centre of expertise in design-led public commissions. Métamorphose de l’Insectarium de Montréal. Image courtesy of James Brittain A Creative Ecosystem, Built to Scale The UNESCO designation did not just change how Montréal builds—it changed how it earns. In the early 2000s, as the city searched for new economic growth drivers, it placed a deliberate bet on design and architecture as sectors with real futures. That bet has paid off. Greater Montréal today is home to nearly 20,000 design professionals, and a flourishing ecosystem of initiatives has helped nurture talent, raise public design literacy, and export Montréal ideas to the world. The Commerce Design Montréal awards introduced merchants to the idea that thoughtful spatial design is not an extravagance but a competitive advantage—a message so resonant it was eventually licensed to 14 cities, including New York, Brussels, Detroit, and Marseille. The Design Montréal Open House drew thousands of curious citizens behind the studio doors of the city's creative firms. The CODE Souvenir Montréal program celebrated locally designed and made gift objects, quietly arguing that place-based creativity has economic and cultural weight. And the Phyllis Lambert Grant opened doors for emerging practitioners who might otherwise have struggled to gain a foothold in the profession. These initiatives share a common logic: they treat design not as the exclusive province of specialists, but as something that belongs to everyone. That democratising instinct has become one of Montréal's most exportable ideas. The city's influence now reaches from Geelong to Dundee, from Luxembourg to Kaunas, in the form of adapted programs, licensed concepts, and shared governance frameworks. Prenez place. Image courtesy of Raphaël Thibodeau The Next Chapter: Circular, Sustainable, and Ambitious Twenty years in, Montréal shows no sign of treating its UNESCO designation as a resting place. The current focus of the Bureau du design is on the ecological transition—specifically, on what it means to build and design in an era of resource scarcity and urgent climate pressure. The city is actively working with industry partners to map circular-economy and adaptive-reuse value chains in the construction sector, seeking to understand what is holding innovation back and where the most promising opportunities lie. This is not a rhetorical position. The 2019 Montréal Agenda for Quality and Exemplarity in Design and Architecture set out a concrete framework for a high-quality, sustainable built environment, and the recently published 2050 Land-Use and Mobility Plan translates those principles into long-range urban planning. Early in 2026, Montréal was also selected to join a cohort of six cities in "Pioneering Places", an initiative of the Davos Baukultur Alliance powered by the World Economic Forum—a signal that its leadership is being recognized and called upon at the highest levels of global urban dialogue. The results of this sustained commitment are now visible in the city's fabric and in the lives of its residents. Annual visits to libraries in the Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve Borough have climbed 91% since the opening of the Maisonneuve Library. Visitor numbers at the Space for Life complex have surged following the transformation of the Biodôme and Insectarium. Since 2019, nearly 50 awards of excellence have recognized some 30 municipal architecture and urban design projects—from Place des Montréalaises to the Théâtre de Verdure to the Sanaaq Centre. These are not abstract metrics. They are the measure of a city's relationship with its own public spaces. Place des Montréalaises. Image courtesy of Vincent Brillant A City That Earned Its Title What twenty years of Montréal's City of Design experiment ultimately demonstrates is that design is most powerful when it is structural—embedded in policy, budget decisions, procurement practices, and long-term planning—rather than applied as a finishing touch. “Circular construction is a driver of quality in architecture, bridging heritage preservation and innovation. Backed by the expertise of our local firms, Montréal is well positioned to more quickly develop, test and roll out solutions that will help shape the city of tomorrow.” — Andréanne Moreau, City of Montréal Executive Committee The city didn't just commission beautiful buildings. It built an institution, a culture, and a set of practices that have outlasted individual administrations and inspired cities on multiple continents. “As a participant in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and the Davos Baukultur Alliance, Montréal is on the front lines of dialogue around international best practices. The city is now positioned as a genuine testing ground for circular-economy principles applied to the built environment.” — Patrick Marmen, Chief of Staff and Design Commissioner, Bureau du Design That framing—testing ground, not trophy case—captures the essential spirit of a city that has never been content to simply celebrate what it has done. For Montréal, the UNESCO City of Design designation has always been less about recognition and more about responsibility: a commitment, renewed each year, to keep asking what design can do next. Take a look at the attached list of projects! About the Bureau du design de la Ville de Montréal (Design Montréal) The Bureau du design, part of Montréal’s Service du développement économique, acts as a catalyst for creativity, innovation and excellence in design. It provides guidance for municipal projects, supports the local ecosystem and contributes to positioning Montréal as a cultural and creative metropolis. Its team was instrumental in the city’s designation as a UNESCO City of Design, and coordinates the ensuing actions for the benefit of the community.

Canada's climate doesn't do subtlety. A building might face -30 °C in January and +35° C in July, sometimes within the same year, sometimes within the same week if you're in the Prairies. For architects and builders, this isn't just a design challenge—it's a physics problem that, if ignored, shows up later as mould, drafts, ice dams, and heating bills that make clients wince. The solution isn't more insulation. It's smarter envelopes. Why Insulation Alone Isn't the Answer For decades, the conversation around energy efficiency centred on R-values—pile on enough fibreglass or spray foam, and the building would perform. But insulation only addresses conductive heat loss. It does nothing to stop air leakage, and air leakage is often the bigger culprit. Picture a wool sweater with holes in it. It's still wool, still warm in theory, but the wind cuts right through. That's what happens to a building with great insulation but a leaky envelope. Warm, moist indoor air escapes through gaps, cracks, and penetrations, carrying heat with it and depositing condensation inside wall cavities along the way. The result: energy loss and, eventually, structural damage from trapped moisture. This is why airtightness has become the real frontier in high-performance building, especially in Canada, where the stakes—and the temperature swings—are higher than almost anywhere else. Sheathing: The Unsung Hero of the Envelope Sheathing used to be a structural afterthought, something to nail siding to. Now it's doing double or triple duty as part of the air barrier, the water-resistive barrier, and sometimes even the primary insulation layer. Several approaches are gaining traction across Canadian projects: Exterior insulated sheathing wraps the building in a continuous layer of rigid foam—XPS, EPS, polyiso, or mineral wool boards—outside the structural sheathing. This single move addresses one of the biggest weaknesses in conventional framing: the stud itself. Mineral wool exterior insulation has become particularly popular in colder regions because it's vapour-permeable, fire-resistant, and doesn't degrade in performance at low temperatures the way some foam products can. Smart membranes that act as both air barriers and variable vapour retarders are now common, allowing walls to "breathe" differently depending on the season—drying toward the inside in winter and toward the outside in summer. The common thread: continuity. A sheathing system is only as good as its weakest seam, corner, or penetration. Thermal Bridging: The Silent Energy Thief Here's the uncomfortable truth most clients never think about: a 2x6 stud has roughly a quarter of the insulating value of the fibreglass batt sitting right next to it. Multiply that by every stud, every floor joist, every window header in a typical wood-framed wall, and you've got what's sometimes called "thermal bridging"—a network of tiny highways for heat to escape. In extreme cold, thermal bridges don't just waste energy. They create cold spots on interior surfaces where condensation forms, which, over time, leads to mould and rot inside the wall. The fix is continuous exterior insulation—a layer of rigid or semi-rigid insulation that wraps the entire building like a blanket, uninterrupted by studs, joists, or structural members. Some firms are going further, using structural elements like ICF (insulated concrete forms), double-stud walls with a thermal break between them, or even mass timber construction where the building's structure and envelope work together rather than fighting each other. Window and door installations deserve special attention here, too. A poorly detailed window opening can undo a huge amount of careful wall assembly work. High-performance triple-glazed windows with insulated frames, installed with proper flashing and continuous air sealing tape, are becoming the norm rather than the exception on ambitious projects. Passive House in the Great White North The Passive House standard—originally developed in Germany—sets famously strict requirements: airtightness below 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals, annual heating demand under 15 kWh per square meter, and total primary energy use capped at modest levels. Critics once argued the standard was built for a temperate European climate and simply wouldn't translate to a place where winter regularly dips below -20°C. They were wrong, but it took some adaptation. Canadian Passive House projects—from Whitehorse to Halifax—have proven the standard is achievable, but it demands a different mindset. Wall assemblies tend to be thicker, often in the 12 to 18 inch range when accounting for both structural cavity and continuous exterior insulation. Triple-glazed windows aren't optional; they're foundational. And mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (an HRV or ERV system) becomes essential, since an airtight building needs a reliable way to exchange stale indoor air for fresh outdoor air without losing all that carefully retained heat in the process. The blower door test—where a powerful fan depressurizes the building to measure exactly how much air is leaking, and from where—has become something of a rite of passage on these projects. Builders increasingly run multiple tests throughout construction, not just at the end, catching leaks while they're still accessible rather than after drywall goes up. What's happening in Canadian envelope design right now isn't just about meeting code or chasing certifications. It's a recalibration of how buildings relate to climate. Rather than fighting extreme temperature swings with brute-force mechanical systems, the new approach is to build envelopes resilient enough that they barely notice the swings at all. For architects and engineers, this means rethinking details that were once standard—how a window meets a wall, how a foundation meets a stud frame, how a roof meets an exterior wall. Every junction is now a question: where does the air barrier go, and is it continuous? For students entering the field, it's worth understanding that this shift represents one of the most consequential changes in building science in a generation. The envelope isn't just a shell anymore. It's the building's first and most important piece of climate technology.

In a city where architectural trends shift as quickly as its skyline, there is something quietly radical about staying the course. For 26 years, one Toronto-based studio has been doing exactly that, refining a singular approach to residential design rather than chasing the next big thing. Now operating as Michael Taylor Architecture + Design (MTA+D), the practice marks a new chapter while holding firm to the values that built its reputation in the first place. Image courtesy of Ben Rahn/A-Frame Inc. & Virginia Macdonald Founded in 2000 as Taylor Smyth Architects, the firm has spent over two decades crafting custom homes across Canada and abroad. Today, under Michael Taylor's sole direction, MTA+D offers an even more personal take on that legacy, one built for clients who want architecture and interiors imagined as a single, seamless vision. A Practice Rooted in Experience Michael Taylor is not a newcomer to testing ideas on his clients. A registered architect since 1993 and a graduate of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he brings decades of hands-on expertise to every project that crosses his desk. That depth of experience is matched by continuity within his team: senior associates Marco Bonatti and Brian Harmer, both OAA-licensed architects, have worked alongside Taylor since 2006, joined more recently by architectural intern Benjamin Bomben. This kind of longevity is rare in design practice, and it shows in how the studio operates. Taylor stays involved from the first client meeting through to the final stages of construction, treating architecture and interior design not as separate disciplines but as two expressions of the same idea. The result is homes that feel resolved down to the smallest detail, rather than assembled from disconnected parts. Two Decades, Five Homes, One Sensibility The firm's portfolio reads less like a list of buildings and more like a study in how architecture can respond to memory, landscape, and material honesty. Image courtesy of Kerun Ip House on a Ravine, completed in 2001 in North York, set an early benchmark. The 7,000-square-foot home opens onto a conservation ravine through ten-foot mahogany-and-glass doors, its split-faced limestone exterior giving way to walnut floors and polished plaster within. It earned the 7th Annual Best of Canada Award and the National Post Design Exchange Award, both in 2004. Image courtesy of Ben Rahn/A-Frame Inc. A few years later came Bishop Street Residence, a striking conversion of a post-industrial Yorkville building into a two-bedroom home centred on a private courtyard and plunge pool. Clad in black standing seam zinc and grey concrete block, it picked up the OAA Award of Excellence in Design in 2009, proof that the studio's restraint could thrive just as well in a dense urban infill site as on a sprawling lot. Image courtesy of Ben Rahn/A-Frame Inc. Perhaps the most personal project in the firm's catalogue is House on the Bluffs, a 2,300-square-foot residence in Scarborough built on the very foundations of the owner's childhood home. The project went on to receive the 2011 International Property Award, the 2013 OAA Award of Excellence in Design, and the OAA People's Choice Award, a rare trifecta that speaks to how deeply the design resonated with both critics and the public. Image courtesy of Ben Rahn/A-Frame Inc. In Forest Hill, one of Toronto's oldest and most established neighbourhoods, the studio took on a different kind of challenge with Russell Hill Road Residence. The 5,700-square-foot new build, clad in Indiana limestone with a base of split-faced Algonquin stone, had to feel contemporary without feeling foreign to its surroundings. Interiors developed in collaboration with Cecconi Simone helped the home earn a 2019 BLT Built Design Award and an honourable mention at the 2021 Architecture MasterPrize. The firm's most recent work, Percy Lake Cottage, completed in 2024 near Algonquin Park, shows a studio still evolving. Set into a steep, wooded slope on the Canadian Shield, the 2,800-square-foot single-storey cottage is built to disappear, with only its chimney and roofline visible from the road. Dark wood siding lets the structure recede into the treeline, while Douglas fir ceilings flow from the interior straight out to a screened porch, blurring the line between shelter and forest. Image courtesy of Tom Arban Listening Before Building What ties these projects together is not a signature material or a recognizable silhouette, but a process. At MTA+D, design begins with research, conversation, and three-dimensional models that clients can explore alongside the architects themselves, long before a single wall is drawn. Taylor's working principle is straightforward: understanding the client and the site always comes before shaping the building. That philosophy explains why a Forest Hill mansion and a Haliburton cottage can both carry the same studio's fingerprints despite looking nothing alike. Material choices, the quality of natural light, and the relationship between a home and its landscape are never treated as afterthoughts. They are woven into the brief from day one, which is exactly why each MTA+D project feels less like a statement and more like a place someone was always meant to live. A Legacy Still Being Written Twenty-six years in, Michael Taylor Architecture + Design is proof that consistency and craftsmanship can be more powerful than reinvention. The studio's homes, whether perched on a ravine, tucked into Yorkville, or set into the Canadian Shield, share a quiet confidence that comes from decades of getting the fundamentals right. As MTA+D steps into its next chapter, that legacy looks less like a finished story and more like a foundation for what comes next. About Michael Taylor Architecture + Design MTA+D is a Toronto-based, internationally renowned architecture and design firm that draws on three decades of award-winning design excellence. Under the direction of esteemed architect Michael Taylor, the accomplished team partners with clients to understand their visions and bring their design inspirations to fruition. MTA+D brings this client-centred approach to everything they do, from custom urban residences, lakefront properties and cottages to commercial and institutional buildings

Gone are the days when college dormitories were cinderblock rooms and fluorescent lights. At Bard College, a new standard for student living has officially been set. Image courtesy of: Chris Mottalini Design studio CIVILIAN has unveiled the stunning interiors for the college’s new North Campus Residence Complex. Working alongside the renowned architecture firm KPF and project management group DBI Projects, CIVILIAN has transformed a massive 134,360-square-foot footprint into a vibrant, design-forward community for over 400 students. Located right next door to the iconic Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, the new complex features four distinct dormitory buildings and a striking 20,000-square-foot "Head House" dedicated to student life and study. Honouring the Modernist Greats When dreaming up the interior spaces, CIVILIAN looked to the past to inspire the future. The design draws heavy inspiration from legendary Modernist architects like Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier—visionaries who understood that a campus building could be both a functional living space and an enduring work of art. By taking material and structural cues from this rich architectural lineage, the new interiors do more than just house students. They give the North Campus a distinct, creative identity and prove Bard's deep commitment to high-quality design. The Head House: A Hub for Creative Energy Bard College has a long-standing reputation for nurturing creative minds, boasting alumni like actor Blythe Danner, comedian Chevy Chase, and filmmaker Gia Coppola. The Head House was designed to capture and encourage that exact spirit of innovation. Entered from a central green that anchors the residences, the ground level acts as a welcoming, democratic space. Students are greeted by: A central stair atrium that beautifully connects the building's levels. Soft-seating lounges and quiet office spaces. Contemporary, custom furniture, including bespoke side tables and integrated lighting for late-night study sessions. Archival photography lining the walls, capturing historic moments of creative exchange on campus. Image courtesy of: Chris Mottalini Moving to the upper floor, the focus shifts to focused collaboration. Here, students can tuck into private study carrels hidden behind elegant slatted screens, or gather in adjoining lounges to brainstorm group projects. Elevated Everyday Living The true magic of the project shines in the 92 individual student apartments. CIVILIAN approached these communal living quarters with a focus on three things: durability, affordability, and a warm, inviting user experience. To bring this vision to life, the design team collaborated with furniture manufacturer Foliot to create a totally custom line of residential pieces. The result is a perfect balance of practicality and high-end style. Key features of the student apartments include: Living Areas: Deep blue wool modular sofas paired with custom coffee tables and solid wood benches. Dining Spaces: Sturdy dining tables featuring trumpet bases and solid tops. Bedrooms: Highly functional, bespoke laminate beds with built-in drawer storage, matched with custom desks and armoires. Lighting: Unique lighting fixtures layered throughout the apartments that gently nod back to mid-century Modernist designs. A Space to Live and Learn Ultimately, CIVILIAN has crafted a design response with young, creative people entirely in mind. The interiors are practical yet deeply tasteful, relying on elevated simplicity rather than visual clutter. With its playful yet sophisticated atmosphere, the North Campus Residence Complex is a brilliant addition to Bard College’s innovative living-learning environment. Project Details Architecture: KPF Interior Design: CIVILIAN Project Management: DBI Projects Head House Area: 20,000 sf Residence Area: 134,360 sf Location: Annandale-on-Hudson, New York About CIVILIAN CIVILIAN is a New York City-based building and interior design studio founded in 2018 by designers Nicko Elliott and Ksenia Kagner. We specialize in collaborating with mission-led, forward-thinking companies, visionaries, and innovators to design environments that foster community, advance the organization’s goals, and deepen the shared ground for dignity and delight. Our work transcends scale and disciplines, crafting spaces that resonate deeply, inspire connection, and empower users to thrive.

In 2026, clients are pushing back against sterile, ultra-sleek spaces. Instead, they are craving warmth, soul, and the human touch. The current design landscape is dominated by the imperfect: hand-troweled plaster walls, the natural knots of raw wood, and the slight, beautiful unevenness of handmade ceramic tiles. People want spaces that feel lived-in and deeply connected to nature. But for architects and designers, this creates a fascinating digital hurdle. Building Information Modelling (BIM) platforms like Revit and Archicad are engineered for mathematical precision. They love straight lines, perfect right angles, and flawless, repeating patterns. So, how do designers use rigid, math-driven software to communicate the soft, organic feeling of a hand-crafted biophilic space? Bridging the Gap Between Math and Mood To sell a tactile, organic vision to a client, the presentation cannot look like a rigid wireframe. It needs to look like a place they can run their hands across. Here is how leading professionals are tricking their rigid software into embracing imperfection. 1. Breaking the Grid BIM software automatically snaps objects to a perfect grid, creating unnatural flawlessness. To mimic reality, designers have to manually "break" this perfection. Instead of letting the software tile a backsplash flawlessly, professionals are intentionally introducing slight rotations and offsets. Staggering the placement of natural wood planks or gently tilting a few handmade tiles tricks the eye into sensing a human installer rather than a robotic algorithm. 2. Upgrading the Surface A flat gray wall in Revit will always look like a flat gray wall. The secret to communicating texture lies in advanced material maps—often called Physically Based Rendering (PBR) textures. Instead of just pasting a photo of wood or plaster onto a 3D wall, these texture maps tell the rendering software exactly how light should interact with the surface. They add microscopic bumps, tell the light where to bounce off a shiny glaze, and create tiny digital shadows in the grooves of rough plaster. This is what transforms a flat polygon into a wall you want to touch. 3. Grazing the Light Even the best digital plaster will look fake if lit poorly. In the real world, texture is revealed by shadows. To highlight the "wabi-sabi" nature of a space, designers are moving away from bright, even overhead lighting in their models. Instead, they are using soft, natural daylight that grazes the walls from a side angle. This raking light catches the deliberate imperfections in the digital materials, emphasizing the bumps in the stone or the grain in the wood. 4. The Rendering Hand-Off Revit and Archicad are brilliant for building the bones of a structure, but they aren't always the best at capturing its soul. The standard workflow in 2026 relies heavily on a clean hand-off. Architects build the precise geometry in their BIM tool, but they bring the model into advanced rendering engines like Enscape, Lumion, or Twinmotion to bring it to life. These programs are specifically designed to handle the messy, atmospheric elements of reality: the soft glow of dust in a sunbeam, the gentle drape of a linen curtain, or the organic shadows cast by a leafy indoor tree. Ultimately, the goal of a client presentation isn't to show off a perfectly calculated digital model. The goal is to make the client feel something. While modern BIM tools are built for rigid perfection, the designers who stand out are the ones who know how to bend the software. By embracing high-quality textures, breaking perfect grids, and mastering natural light, architects can use the most rigid tools in the industry to build spaces that feel wonderfully, beautifully human.

The University of Alberta has officially opened the doors to University Commons, a breathtaking 405,000-square-foot transformation of its century-old Dentistry and Pharmacy building. Designed by the visionary team at Zeidler Architecture, this monumental project turns a historic landmark into a vibrant, modern gateway. Image courtesy of: Adrien Williams Positioned at a key entrance to the North Campus, the reimagined space serves as both a literal and symbolic front door for the university. By replacing fragmented, faculty-specific hallways with open, flexible environments, the design establishes a new heartbeat for the campus—a place deeply rooted in openness, accessibility, and interdisciplinary connection. Creating a "Sticky" Campus From the very beginning, the goal was to create a space that naturally draws people together. University President Bill Flanagan describes the vision simply: students want a "sticky campus"—a place where they feel welcome, supported, and part of a larger community. To achieve this, Zeidler Architecture drew inspiration from nature and the warmth of human connection. The building’s design is anchored by two powerful metaphors: the tree of knowledge and the conviviality of a shared meal. The Central Atrium: Acting as the core of the building, a stunning central atrium pulls in natural daylight and organizes movement across multiple levels, radiating outward toward various collaborative zones. Seasonal Neighbourhoods: Situated at the building's corners, these double-height gathering areas are intentionally left unprogrammed. Much like gathering around a dining table, these spaces invite spontaneous conversations, relaxed studying, and informal encounters between students and faculty. James Brown, a Partner at Zeidler Architecture, notes that this nature-inspired approach encourages spontaneity, helping students explore their relationships with their peers and the world around them. Designed for Every Mind Eliminating old institutional barriers was a core principle of the renovation. University Commons is built on the belief that everyone deserves equal access to daylight, space, and opportunity. The building seamlessly blends essential administrative services—like the registrar and the dean of students—with academic departments, open lounges, and bookable meeting rooms. This thoughtful layout dissolves the traditional boundaries between students and university staff. To accommodate diverse learning styles, the interior offers: Modular Classrooms: Adaptable layouts that can shift based on the needs of the lesson. Warm, Welcoming Materials: Custom acoustic treatments and designer furniture that provide comfort for long study sessions. The Calming Room: A sensory-conscious space designed specifically for mental restoration. Remarkably, this quiet refuge was designed by a University of Alberta student who won a campus-wide design competition, showcasing the university's commitment to empowering its students to solve real-world challenges. Rooted in Indigenous Storytelling A true highlight of University Commons is its deep connection to history and identity, brought to life through the work of acclaimed Métis artist Christi Belcourt. Known for her profound respect for traditional knowledge, Belcourt’s naturalistic artwork animates the shared spaces throughout the building. Drawing inspiration from native flora, her storytelling weaves a beautiful connection between nature and the campus community. These artistic accents ensure that everyday encounters in the Commons are grounded in cultural recognition, fostering a deep and reflective sense of place. Image courtesy of: Adrien Williams A Masterclass in Adaptive Reuse Coordinating a project of this scale requires incredible precision. Zeidler Architecture utilized advanced Building Information Modelling (BIM) to navigate the complex renovation, perfectly aligning modern systems within a historic century-old shell. This project adds to Zeidler’s impressive portfolio of post-secondary renewals across Canada, including major works at York University, the University of Victoria, and the University of Toronto. Today, University Commons stands as a testament to what happens when thoughtful architecture meets community needs. It is no longer just a building; it is a shared crossroads for learning, connection, and community. The doors are now open, inviting students, faculty, and visitors to experience the future of the University of Alberta. Technical sheet & Credits Project Name: University Commons Location: University of Alberta, Edmonton Architect of Record & Base Building: GEC Architecture Interior Architecture & Fit-out: Zeidler Architecture Heritage & Preservation Architect: ERA Architects General Contractor: Clark Builders Structural & Building Envelope Engineer: RJC Engineers Mechanical Engineer: AME Group Electrical Engineer & Lighting Design: SMP Engineering Civil Engineer: V3 Companies Shoring & Retention Design: Isherwood Geostructural Engineers Landscape Architect: Janet Rosenberg & Studio Featured Indigenous Artist: Christi Belcourt About Zeidler Architecture Zeidler is a leading Canadian architecture and interior design practice with a portfolio of award-winning, inspiring work that fosters social engagement, facilitates excellence, and delivers lasting value. The firm believes that architecture should enrich lives and strengthen communities. Driven by curiosity and guided by evidence, they embrace innovation in sustainability, accessibility, design theory, and materiality. They work closely with clients and communities to design resilient environments that foster connection, promote well-being, and achieve long-term impact. Zeidler doesn’t just design buildings—they shape resilient environments that help shape the future. About The University of Alberta The University of Alberta (U of A) (1908) is a research-intensive, innovative institution located in Edmonton, Alberta, that attracts the best and brightest minds from around the world. U of A is ranked in the Top 100 Universities in the world and Top 5 in Canada. You can choose from more than 200 undergraduate specializations and 170 graduate programs in 18 Faculties that are among the best in Canada. The U of A serves more than 43,000 students and is recognized internationally for its excellence in education and research. Students enjoy an exceptional quality of life on a friendly campus in the heart of Edmonton.

Enter the Vancouver Tall Challenge: Building Higher Downtown. Organized by Buildner in collaboration with the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), this international competition invites creative minds to rethink the future of tall buildings in one of the world’s most celebrated urban environments. PRIZE FUND: CA$ 15,000 CAD 1ST PLACE: CA$ 7,000 2ND PLACE: CA$ 4,000 3RD PLACE: CA$ 2,000 Student Award: CA$ 1,000 Sustainability Award: CA$ 1,000 DATE: Closing date for registration: 29 October 2026 Competition Q&A deadline: 3 November 2026 Closing date submission: 30 November 2026 - 23:59 (London Time) Announcement of the winners: 26 January 2027 PARTICIPANT: Everyone (No professional qualifications required) COST: Early Bird (01 Jun - 15 Jul); 110 € (Students: 90€) Advanced (16 Jul - 09 Sep): 120 € (Students: 110€) Last Minute (10 Sep - 29 Oct): 140 € (Students: 120€) As cities worldwide face the dual pressures of rapid growth and environmental responsibility, the role of the skyscraper is shifting. It is no longer enough for tall buildings to add floor area or serve as skyline vanity projects. A "City in Nature" Under Pressure Vancouver is internationally recognized for its delicate balance between dense urban living and access to nature. Framed by the Pacific coastline and dramatic mountain ranges, the city has historically prioritized public space, sustainability, and quality of life in its urban planning. However, Vancouver is evolving. Like many global hubs, it is grappling with complex challenges: Surging population growth and housing demand The need for sustained economic development Major investments in public transit networks These shifts make questions about height and density unavoidable. Taller buildings offer a clear path to accommodating growth, but they must be implemented thoughtfully to preserve the city's unique identity and exceptional public realm. The Challenge: Beyond Height The competition asks architects, landscape architects, designers, and planners to look beyond the basic metrics of height and density. Participants are challenged to design bold, innovative proposals that explore how architecture can contribute to a vibrant, resilient, and inclusive city. A successful proposal will address how building higher can deliver tangible public benefits, including: New housing solutions Enhanced cultural and civic facilities Meaningful public amenities Improvements to the everyday street-level experience The goal is to define what a genuinely made-for-Vancouver approach to vertical density looks like—one that respects the city's natural setting while pushing the boundaries of environmental performance and architectural excellence. Shaping Future Policy This competition isn't just a theoretical exercise. It is directly tied to the City of Vancouver’s ongoing Higher Buildings Policy Review. City planners are currently exploring the long-term role of tall buildings in shaping the downtown core. By opening this conversation to the international design community, the Vancouver Tall Challenge aims to generate fresh perspectives and innovative concepts that will actively inform how the city approaches vertical growth in the decades to come. Together, we can build a vertical city that prioritizes people, place, and the public good. Your next big idea starts here. Visit Buildner. [ENTER NOW]

Where the dramatic topography of the Genesee River gorge meets western New York’s deep industrial roots, a new vision for urban public space is taking shape. The New York High Falls Riverfront Market competition is calling on architects, designers, and creative thinkers to reimagine one of Rochester's most historically significant landscapes. PRIZE FUND: US$ 10,000 1ST PLACE: US$ 5,000 2ND PLACE: US$ 2,500 3RD PLACE: US$ 1,000 Student Award: US$ 1,000 Sustainability Award: US$ 500 DATE: Closing date for registration: 10 December 2026 Competition Q&A deadline: 16 December 2026 Closing date submission: 18 January 2027 - 23:59 (London Time) Announcement of the winners: 9 March 2027 PARTICIPANT: Everyone (No professional qualifications required) COST: Early Bird (24 May - 29 Jul); 110 € (Students: 90€) Advanced (30 Jul - 07 Oct): 120 € (Students: 110€) Last Minute (08 Oct - 10 Dec): 140 € (Students: 120€) A Site of Converging Histories The project centers on the evolving landscape of the future High Falls State Park. This area is a unique geographical and historical intersection—a place where raw natural power (the waterfalls and the gorge), heavy infrastructure, and centuries of industrial heritage converge. For decades, the riverfront was defined by its utility. Now, the competition asks how architecture can act as a catalyst to transform this rugged edge into a contemporary public landscape focused on gathering, culture, and everyday urban life. The Design Challenge Participants are tasked with designing a contemporary riverfront market and its surrounding public spaces at the Smokestack Portal site. This location is pivotal, as it will serve as one of the primary entry points into the future High Falls State Park. A successful proposal must balance several demanding elements: Dual Functionality: The site must operate as both a bustling, active civic destination in its own right and a welcoming gateway into the wider park system. Topographical Sensitivity: Designs must carefully negotiate the dramatic elevation changes and rugged edges of the Genesee River gorge. Contextual Identity: The architecture needs to converse with the area's rich industrial past while creating a modern, forward-looking space for the community. A Collaborative Vision This initiative is a heavyweight collaboration aimed at turning conceptual design into community momentum. The competition is presented by Buildner in partnership with AIA Rochester (as part of its annual Designers Unleashed initiative). They are joined by Community Design Rochester and Future Reality Services, ensuring that the competition explores not just theoretical aesthetics, but practical, community-centred urban transformation. By inviting global and local talent to tackle the Smokestack Portal, the competition hopes to unlock the potential of the Genesee riverfront—proving that Rochester's industrial past can seamlessly support its vibrant, public future. Building a new gateway to the Falls, one design at a time. Your next big idea starts here. Visit Buildner. [ENTER NOW]

Imagine living in a home that naturally stays cozy in the dead of winter and refreshingly cool during the peak of summer, all while slashing heating and cooling bills by up to 90 percent. It sounds like science fiction, but it is actually a proven building standard known as "Passive House" (or Passivhaus). Despite the name, this concept isn't just for single-family houses. The Passive House standard can be applied to skyscrapers, schools, supermarkets, and apartment buildings. It is a smart, science-based approach to construction that focuses on creating ultra-efficient, incredibly comfortable, and long-lasting buildings. Here is everything one needs to know about how Passive Houses work, why they matter, and the five simple principles that make them possible. What Exactly is a Passive House? At its core, a Passive House is a conservation-first building. Instead of relying on massive furnaces or oversized air conditioners to keep the indoor climate comfortable, a Passive House is designed to need very little energy in the first place. Think of a standard home like a leaky coffee mug. To keep the coffee hot, you have to constantly keep it on a burner (the heater). A Passive House, on the other hand, is built like a high-quality thermos. It traps the heat inside so effectively that you rarely need to use the burner at all. By preserving the energy generated by the sun, the appliances, and even the body heat of the people inside, a Passive House maintains a stable, comfortable temperature year-round. The Five Core Principles of Passive Design To achieve this incredible level of efficiency, architects and builders rely on a holistic system made up of five interlocking principles. If one is missing, the whole system suffers. 1. Superinsulation (The Winter Coat) A Passive House is wrapped in a thick, continuous layer of high-quality insulation. This acts like a heavy winter coat, slowing down the transfer of heat. In cold climates, it keeps the warmth inside; in hot climates, it keeps the blistering heat out. Because the walls, roof, and floor are heavily insulated, the building is exceptionally quiet and durable. 2. Airtight Construction (The Windbreaker) Insulation alone isn't enough if cold wind can blow right through the walls. Standard homes have thousands of tiny cracks and gaps that let indoor air escape and outdoor air sneak in. A Passive House is built to be completely airtight. Builders use special tapes and membranes to seal the building envelope, preventing drafts, moisture damage, and energy waste. 3. High-Performance Windows (The Smart Glass) Windows are usually the weakest link in a building's defence against the weather. Passive Houses use highly advanced windows—typically triple-glazed (three panes of glass) with specialized coatings and gases sealed between the panes. These windows are carefully placed to capture free heat from the sun in the winter, while special shading prevents the home from overheating during the summer. 4. Thermal-Bridge-Free Design (No Thermal Leaks) A "thermal bridge" is a spot where a highly conductive material (like metal or solid wood) creates a shortcut for heat to bypass the insulation and escape outside. Imagine wearing a heavy winter coat, but leaving it unzipped; the cold will find its way in. Passive House designers meticulously plan every corner, balcony, and window frame to eliminate these weak points, ensuring the insulation works at full capacity. 5. Heat Recovery Ventilation (The Lungs of the Home) If a house is completely airtight, how do people breathe fresh air? The answer is a continuous mechanical ventilation system, usually a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV) or Energy Recovery Ventilator (ERV). This machine acts as the lungs of the building. It constantly exhausts stale, polluted indoor air and pulls in fresh, filtered outdoor air. The magic is in the "recovery"—as the warm stale air leaves, the machine transfers its heat to the cold fresh air coming in, without mixing the two. The result is continuous, fresh, filtered air without losing your hard-earned heat. Why Choose a Passive House? The benefits of building to the Passive House standard go far beyond just saving on utility bills: Unmatched Comfort: There are no drafts, no cold spots near windows, and no sudden temperature swings. Every room stays at a consistent, comfortable temperature. Healthier Air: Because the ventilation system constantly filters incoming air, indoor spaces are free of dust, pollen, and outdoor pollution. Peace and Quiet: The thick insulation and airtight seals make Passive Houses incredibly soundproof, blocking out traffic and neighbourhood noise. Climate Action: Buildings are responsible for a massive portion of global greenhouse gas emissions. By cutting energy use by up to 90 percent, Passive Houses are a crucial tool in the fight against climate change. Resilience: If the power goes out during a winter storm, a Passive House will stay warm for days, whereas a traditional home will freeze in a matter of hours. A Passive House is not about sacrificing modern comforts to save energy; it is about building much smarter from the ground up. By combining superinsulation, airtightness, superior windows, careful detailing, and brilliant ventilation, the Passive House standard delivers a living space that is healthier, quieter, and deeply respectful of the environment. It is not just the house of the future—it is the standard we need today.

Montreal’s design scene is glowing a little brighter. Cœur d’artichaut, the city’s premier destination for distinctive furniture and home accessories, has officially announced an exclusive new partnership with the prestigious Spanish brand, Peralta Vidavi. Image courtesy of: Peralta Vidavi For the first time, this brand's masterfully crafted lighting fixtures and lampshades are available to the Canadian market by special order, bridging the gap between European heritage and local design. Four Decades of Artisanal Light Peralta Vidavi is not just a manufacturer; they are true artisans. With over 40 years of experience, the brand has built a global reputation for preserving traditional Spanish craftsmanship while seamlessly integrating modern innovation. Every piece is treated as a bespoke work of art. By blending rich, premium materials with exacting attention to detail, Peralta Vidavi creates fixtures that do more than simply illuminate a room—they elevate the entire atmosphere. Sustainable Design, Tailored to You In a world of mass production, Peralta Vidavi takes a more thoughtful approach. Every fixture is entirely handcrafted in Spain. By collaborating closely with local suppliers, the brand maintains a deep commitment to ethical and sustainable production. This careful manufacturing process guarantees a long-lasting product while offering incredible flexibility for buyers: Premium Materials: A carefully curated selection of high-end textiles ensures both lasting durability and a timeless look. Complete Customization: Whether you need a specific dimension, a unique texture, or a custom colour, the fixtures can be adapted to meet the exact needs of any project. A Distinctive Signature: With expert creative guidance, standard lighting is transformed into a one-of-a-kind collector’s piece. A New Era for Local Interiors Cœur d’artichaut now serves as a direct link between this Spanish artisanal expertise and Montreal's vibrant design community. Whether the goal is to transform the mood of a private residence or to shape the visual identity of commercial spaces like hotels, restaurants, and offices, these lighting fixtures act as stunning statement pieces. “With Peralta Vidavi, we are offering our clients nearly unlimited creative freedom. It is the perfect meeting point between European heritage and contemporary innovation.” - Elisheva San Nicolas, President of Cœur d’artichaut. Through this new partnership, Cœur d’artichaut continues to deliver on its core mission: bringing exceptional, handcrafted innovation straight to the heart of Montreal. About Cœur d’Artichaut Cœur d’artichaut, located in the heart of Montreal, is a premier destination for design enthusiasts and interior design professionals. The company specializes in curating furniture, décor, and lighting pieces that combine timeless aesthetics with exceptional craftsmanship and superior quality.

The modern family is changing, and so is the American backyard. Multigenerational living—where grandparents, parents, and children share the same property—is no longer a rare setup or a temporary compromise. Today, it is a driving force in the housing market, sparking a new wave of premium home design. At the center of this movement is the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), often known as a guest house or detached coach house. But these new structures are a far cry from the cramped backyard sheds of the past. A Major Shift in How Families Build The numbers speak for themselves. According to Houzz research, over 65% of homeowners currently renovating are actively planning for the future. They are designing spaces meant for aging in place or for creating shared footprints that can comfortably house multiple generations. This growing demand has completely changed how architects look at the backyard. Instead of treating the ADU as an afterthought, top designers are approaching it as a premium architectural challenge. The main goal? To figure out how to maintain complete privacy for everyone while sharing structural resources on a tight plot of land. Beautifully Accessible Design The magic of a luxury ADU lies in how it blends high-end aesthetics with everyday accessibility. Homeowners want spaces that are safe and easy to navigate for older family members, but they refuse to sacrifice style to get there. Modern residential architecture solves this by hiding practical features within beautiful design choices. Key features of the luxury ADU include: Spa-Inspired Wet Rooms: Gone are the days of clunky shower grab-bars and plastic seats. Designers are installing curbless, open-concept showers that look like they belong in a five-star hotel. Because there is no step to get in, they are perfectly safe for older adults while feeling incredibly luxurious. Grand Walkways: Hallways and doors need to be wider to accommodate mobility aids like walkers or wheelchairs. Instead of making these spaces feel like a hospital, architects are using the extra width to create walkways that feel grand, open, and elegant. Hidden Thresholds: To prevent tripping and make moving between rooms effortless, modern ADUs use smooth, zero-step transitions from the indoors to the outdoors. These hidden thresholds smoothly accommodate multi-tiered family dynamics, from toddlers learning to walk to grandparents needing a steady, flat surface. The Design Philosophy: True luxury means a home works beautifully for everyone, regardless of age or mobility, without ever looking like a compromise. A well-designed luxury ADU gives families the ultimate gift: closeness combined with independence. Grandparents can live just steps away from their grandchildren, enjoying family dinners and backyard playtime, while still having their own quiet, premium retreat to return to at the end of the day. By treating the backyard guest house as a masterpiece of design rather than a simple add-on, architects are proving that the future of housing is flexible, accessible, and beautifully connected.

Imagine waking up in a city where the traffic lights adapt to the number of cars on the road, your garbage is collected only when the bins tell the city they are full, and your entire morning commute is powered by clean energy. This isn't a scene from a sci-fi movie—it is everyday life in the world's smartest cities. Every year, the IMD (International Institute for Management Development) releases its Smart City Index, ranking cities around the globe based on how well they use technology to improve the lives of their residents. Right now, the smartest cities are heavily concentrated in Europe and Asia. But what exactly makes them so smart? Let's dive into the fascinating world of the cities of tomorrow. How Do They Measure a "Smart" City? Before we look at the winners, we have to understand how the IMD decides who gets the crown. The IMD doesn't just look at how many cool gadgets a city has. Instead, they ask the people who actually live there. They survey residents based on two main pillars: Structures: This looks at the physical foundation of the city. How good are the roads, the hospitals, the public transport, and the existing buildings? Technology: This looks at the digital tools available. Are there apps to help you find parking? Is the Wi-Fi fast and accessible? Are government services easy to use online? Residents rate these two pillars across five key areas of daily life: Health and Safety * Mobility (getting around) Activities (things to do) Opportunities (work and school) Governance (how the city is run) To keep things fair, the IMD doesn't compare a developing city to a wealthy metropolis. They distribute the cities into four groups based on the country's Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI). This ensures cities are compared to peers with similar economic and social resources. By pairing advanced AI, clever digital infrastructure, and a deep focus on making life better for everyday people, these cities have risen to the top of the IMD ranks: 1. Zurich, Switzerland (The Reigning Champion) Zurich consistently locks down the number one spot because it flawlessly blends high-tech infrastructure with an incredible quality of life. Instead of focusing on flashy, sci-fi gadgets, Zurich uses technology behind the scenes. It features smart public transit networks that are perfectly synchronized, cutting-edge clean energy grids, and world-class public safety systems. It proves that the smartest cities are often the ones where the tech is so seamless you barely notice it. 2. Oslo, Norway (The Green Pioneer) Oslo is entirely focused on a zero-emissions future. The city utilizes a meticulously optimized, intelligent traffic grid featuring smart electric bus fleets and an automated waste management system. Its city systems constantly communicate with each other to minimize pollution, proving that a city cannot be truly "smart" if it isn't also deeply sustainable. 3. Geneva, Switzerland (The Human-Scale Hub) As the second Swiss city in the top tier, Geneva excels at making sure digital infrastructure directly serves human needs. It features highly responsive public services and a heavy emphasis on eco-friendly mobility. Because it is a smaller metropolis, Geneva delivers elite digital governance without the typical congestion, noise, or pollution found in massive megacities. 4. London, United Kingdom (The Megacity Master) Managing a massive, historic global hub like London is an incredibly complex task, but real-time data makes it possible. London relies on massive data streams to coordinate its legendary transit system, optimize heavy traffic flow, and deploy emergency services at lightning speed. Furthermore, its open-data platform allows local tech entrepreneurs to access city data to build helpful, everyday apps for residents. 5. Copenhagen, Denmark (The Livability Blueprint) Copenhagen routinely scores off the charts for public safety, recycling programs, and overall citizen happiness. The city uses intelligent traffic lights that prioritize cyclists over cars during rush hour, and smart energy grids to power its neighborhoods. Copenhagen is proof that technology works best when it makes the physical streets safer and healthier to walk on. 6. Dubai, United Arab Emirates (The Futuristic Accelerator) Dubai is one of the fastest-rising cities in the history of global indexes, driven by aggressive digital transformation. Through the unified DubaiNow app, residents can seamlessly access over 130 municipal services. Whether you need to pay a parking ticket, renew your residency, or manage your home utilities, you can handle it all in seconds on a single smartphone screen. 7. Lausanne, Switzerland (The Tech Oasis) Yes, a third Swiss city makes the top ten! Lausanne may be smaller than London or Dubai, but its smart infrastructure is world-class. As a major hub for world-renowned tech universities and research institutions, the city excels in smart governance and eco-compatible urban design, ensuring that natural lakeside beauty and high-tech living grow side-by-side. 8. Canberra, Australia (Oceania's Eco-Leader) Representing Australia, Canberra stands out for its exceptional air quality and forward-thinking environmental tech. The city has made major waves with its "Zero Emission Vehicle Strategy" to rapidly phase in electric transport. It is also actively developing a "Digital Twin"—a highly detailed virtual 3D replica of the city that allows authorities to monitor water resources and energy grids in real-time. 9. Singapore (The Digital Superpower) Singapore is a global gold standard for urban innovation. Through its famous "Smart Nation" initiative, the island is covered in a vast network of IoT (Internet of Things) sensors. These sensors track everything from traffic bottlenecks and air quality to crowd density, allowing the government to make instant, data-backed adjustments to keep public spaces safe, cool, and efficient. 10. Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (The Oasis of Safety) Rounding out the top ten is Abu Dhabi, which earns elite marks for world-class healthcare infrastructure and incredible public safety. Alongside its neighbour Dubai, Abu Dhabi uses cutting-edge digital portals to make starting a business, accessing medical care, and interacting with government agencies completely frictionless for its citizens and expats alike. When we look at the IMD’s smartest cities, one clear theme emerges: technology is useless if it doesn't help people. The cities of Zurich, Oslo, Singapore, and others aren't building technology just for its own sake. They are using data, AI, and green energy to give their citizens cleaner air, shorter commutes, and an easier, happier life. That is the true mark of a smart city! Ready to go beyond the top 10? visit it IDM-WORLD COMPETITIVENESS CENTER

For nearly a century, Reitmans has been a familiar and trusted name in Canadian women's wear. Now, the beloved brand is stepping into a bold new era. At CF Carrefour Laval, Reitmans recently unveiled a stunning new concept store designed by the renowned studio BURDIFILEK. Image courtesy of: A-Frame Photography, Ben Rahn Positioned comfortably alongside strong international competitors, the redesign sends a clear message: Reitmans is evolving, and it is here to stay. Designing for the Modern Shopper How do you update a legacy brand without losing its soul? For BURDIFILEK, the answer lies in translating Reitmans' deep-rooted heritage into a thoroughly contemporary retail experience. Inspired by the polished strategies of high-fashion boutiques, the design studio crafted a strong visual identity that immediately captures attention through a single, striking signature colour. However, the space remains incredibly welcoming. The design pairs the natural warmth of wood with sleek, high-gloss finishes. With clear sightlines and an open, airy flow, the layout makes shopping an intuitive and relaxing experience. "Reitmans has a long-standing legacy. Our goal was not to reinvent it, but to reinterpret it. We highlighted the familiarity of the brand within a confident setting that will resonate across Canada." Diego Burdi, Founder and Creative Director, BURDIFILEK Built to Last, Not Just to Impress Rather than chasing flashy spectacles or fleeting trends, the new Carrefour Laval location is built for longevity. It is a highly adaptable environment designed to serve a broad audience for years to come. The space feels practical yet perfectly composed, bringing everyday ease to the forefront. For BURDIFILEK, smart design is more than just aesthetics; it is a vital business tool. "In an era of rapid retail change, the forces at work are both global and local. Our partnership with Reitmans reaffirms design as an investment in business strategy for legacy brands and secures its longevity in a demanding market." Paul Filek, Founder and Managing Partner, BURDIFILEK A Confident Leap Forward This fresh look is a significant departure from the Reitmans stores of the past. It represents an ambitious leap into the future, offering a forward-thinking vision for Canadian retail. The elevated store environment perfectly highlights Reitmans’ trend-right collections, upholding the brand's century-long mission: to provide high-quality, inclusive style that empowers Canadians to live confidently. The successful redesign also speaks to a deep, collaborative partnership behind the scenes. "This new concept reflects the strength of our brand and the teams behind it. In partnership with BURDIFILEK, whose creativity and design expertise were instrumental, it became a meeting of shared passions, grounded in a mutual commitment to the Canadian customer and to creating an environment she truly deserves. It’s a clear expression of where Reitmans is today, and where we’re going next." Andrea Limbardi, President and CEO of RCL - Reitmans Canada Ltd. With its roots honoured and its sights set firmly on the future, Reitmans’ new concept store is a brilliant reminder of the lasting power of smart, intentional design. Technical sheet Client: Reitmans Design Team: BURDIFILEK Founder and Creative Director: Diego Burdi Founder and Managing Partner: Paul Filek Project Manager and Studio Director: Tom Yip Senior Designers: Michael Del Priore, John Seo Designer: Douglas Chun, Justin Dang CAD Technicians: Daniel Mei, Anna Nomerovsky, Anna Jurkiewicz Location: CF Carrefour Laval About BURDIFILEK BURDIFILEK is an award-winning interior design studio that transforms spaces to inspire possibility and purpose through design. Founded by Diego Burdi and Paul Filek in 1993, the firm puts creative intelligence, cultural relevance, and flawless execution at the forefront of all projects to create unexpected and impressive interiors for world-class brands around the globe.