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Retail stores often take a more-is-more approach, filling their spaces with an overwhelming array of goods, so when one has just the right combination of products and aesthetic appeal, it can give the retailer an edge. That’s what MUJI in Cambridge, Massachusetts, banked on.

In North America, the Japanese company is evolving from a purveyor of stationery into a full lifestyle retailer. For its new location in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, Mapos Architects, in collaboration with ACTWO Architects, was tasked with renovating the Design Research building in Harvard Square—in just 10 weeks.

Photography by Gunnar Glueck, Flaunt Boston.

When the Design Research building opened in 1969, it served as a showcase for architect Ben Thompson’s shop, which included European and Scandinavian housewares. For the MUJI revamp, the architects took a deliberately light-touch approach, revealing rather than replacing the building’s defining architectural elements.

“We uncovered the existing textures to leverage what was already there and bring back the original beauty of the space,” says Colin Brice, co-founder and partner at Mapos Architects.

Photography by Gunnar Glueck, Flaunt Boston.

With a lightness not typical of the period, the structure boasts a balance of concrete and glass curtain walls, forming a jewel-box-like setting that feels surprisingly contemporary and welcoming.

“It’s really an exceptional example of Brutalist architecture and how open it can be,” explains Caleb Mulvena, co-founder of Mapos Architects and partner in charge of the project. “The entire storefront opens to the community, and customers can start shopping from the street as they look in.”

Photography by Gunnar Glueck, Flaunt Boston.

Enhancements begin at the entry, where brick flooring retains its patina, complemented by upgraded lighting and ceilings. Concrete columns, concrete masonry walls, and floating staircases were exposed to add character to the interior. White and gray tones are paired with accents of green and MUJI’s signature red. Accent walls made of locally sourced heart pine introduce warmth and align with the brand’s commitment to sustainable reuse.

Photography by Gunnar Glueck, Flaunt Boston.

Set across four levels, the 12,000-square-foot store encourages easy movement through an expansive, emporium-like layout. In the top-floor café, shoppers will find a robot barista, introducing a hospitality-inspired experience that reflects MUJI’s growing emphasis on stores as destinations rather than simply places to shop.

“It was really about leaning into the space as we found it,” Mulvena adds. “By keeping our touch light, we were able to celebrate these features.”

It is this simplicity, rather than ostentation, that makes the greatest impact. As the first step in MUJI’s broader North American evolution, the Cambridge location demonstrates how thoughtful restoration can reinforce a brand’s identity.

Photography by Gunnar Glueck, Flaunt Boston.

MUJI Harvard Square is open daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sundays) at 48 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The project is located on an agricultural plot defined by the Muda Detailed Plan, in the Rural Intervention Zone – South, in the municipality of Grândola, Portugal. The land area is generous, with approximately 5 hectares, allowing for a 500m2 building away from the access road and other neighbors. The new building was placed in the central area near the western building boundary, in an area where there was a small clearing and on the border between pine vegetation and a small watercourse with other species such as deciduous trees.

Chai keeps its own time. Milk climbs to a boil while tea and spices steep loose in the pot, and the strength shows itself in color, deepening shade by shade until the foam begins to rise. The traditional method of making chai demands attention; it’s a process that has changed very little over time. Dostea, a compact countertop chai maker, was designed to preserve that ritual while bringing the process down to the push of a button.

Photography courtesy of Analogy Design

In 2021, the UK startup behind Dostea engaged Analogy Design, an industrial design studio in India whose portfolio spans housewares and consumer electronics. Together, they took the beverage appliance from concept to product readiness. What Analogy set out to protect was the character of the drink itself while creating an appliance that people would want to leave on the counter, rather than hide away.

“Our goal wasn’t to simplify the ritual but to preserve what people love about it while making it more intuitive for modern kitchens,” says Divya Rao, co-founder of Analogy.

The Analogy Design team built the first prototype. Photography courtesy of Analogy Design.

While coffee has inspired generations of dedicated equipment—from espresso machines to pour-over systems—chai has largely remained a stovetop ritual involving multiple utensils, constant attention, and personal technique. Analogy worked without a template, arriving at a restrained form that combines warm color, material, and finish choices with detailing that references both Indian craft traditions and contemporary European minimalism. Its minimal controls reflect the familiarity of a drink made every day.

“We wanted the product to feel rooted in the warmth and familiarity of chai while introducing a clean, contemporary aesthetic,” Rao adds.

Working on a cardboard prototype of Dostea. Photography courtesy of Analogy Design.

Inside, the mechanism was engineered alongside the shell, its part count pared down to fit the small footprint. The harder work was upstream of the hardware. “One of the biggest challenges was ensuring users could still customize their tea, whether that’s the strength, milk ratio, or brewing style, without losing the convenience of one-touch operation,” Rao explains. The machine preserves that flexibility, letting each household keep its own version of the cup.

Analogy led the project from industrial design through product development and manufacturing planning, shaping not only how Dostea works but how it fits into contemporary kitchens.

Photography courtesy of Analogy Design

To learn more about the project and its launch timeline, visit Analogy Design or follow the studio on Instagram.

The style is characterized by eclectic, bolt and vibrant designs, and an explicit need to imbue a more sophisticated identity to those who wish to distinguish themselves by transcending fashion boundaries.

In a mid-20th-century building in Higienópolis, Lucas Jimeno Dualde transforms a 280-square-meter apartment into something akin to a domestic temple. Its frugal architecture eliminates visual and material noise to focus attention on the experience of the body, light, color, and objects. The building does not claim a place in the modernist pantheon. It is simply a good residential building with a generous floor plan, like so many that shaped Higienópolis between the 1940s and 1960s.

The C+C House reimagines a 1930s brick house in Toronto's Humewood Cedarvale neighbourhood. Conceived as an exercise in adaptive reuse, the project transforms a compartmentalized urban home into a contemporary residence tailored to a dynamic family of four.

The Vergalderie is located in the small mountain village of Gargellen, nestled in a side valley of the Montafon region at an altitude of 1,530 meters. The tranquil, minimalist structure, topped with a simple gable roof, houses three holiday apartments for short-term stays and a central gallery space for contemporary art.

Mycology for Architecture explores how mycelium – the root network of fungi – as a living material is transforming architecture into a discipline that is not only sustainable but regenerative, adaptive and deeply entangled with ecological systems. Bringing together leading researchers, practitioners and educators, it charts how living matter is reshaping the way we conceive, fabricate and inhabit built environments.

Organised in three parts, the book begins by positioning mycelium as an alternative to conventional construction materials, with applications ranging from bricks and skins to adaptive structures and even space habitats. The second part turns to the methods and practices of

ONRAMP 8 captures the culminating thesis work and final projects of SCI-Arc’s Undergraduate, Graduate, and Postgraduate programs for the 2024–25 academic year. Edited by Marcelyn Gow under the editorial leadership of Director and CEO Winka Dubbeldam, the publication presents a wide-ranging body of work that confronts climate resilience, artificial intelligence, advanced fabrication, and new material systems. Developed within SCI-Arc’s experimental studio culture, these projects reflect the institution’s commitment to critical inquiry, technological advancement, and speculative design. Richly illustrated and thoughtfully organized, ONRAMP 8 serves as both an academic archive and a forward-looking survey of emerging architectural thought.

Claying Architecture: Making Machine and Material Kin presents a curated collection of essays, interviews, and projects from leading architects, designers, and researchers who are analyzing the role of clay 3D printing in contemporary architecture. The book blends research, theory, and practice to highlight how this ancient material is being reimagined through 3D printing, robotic fabrication, and innovative construction techniques. Through original essays and project showcases, Claying Architecture brings together 30 plus voices from contemporary architectural academia and practice to interrogate why clay is a protagonist in contemporary architecture as an agent capable of binding new kinships between processes, environments, and

Theme
“Living with Children”

We are looking for proposals such as:
・Furniture or woodwork products that ignite children's creativity and encourage independence.
・Designs that help children experience the joy of saying, “I did it myself.”
・Furniture that reduces everyday family stress and enables comfortable coexistence between children and adults.
・New solutions that support modern family lifestyles.

For CDM Digi Fab COMPETITION 2026, CAINZ, with its expertise in consumer-focused product development and distribution; KOKUYO, with its expertise in furniture and spatial design; and VUILD, with its digital fabrication technology and implementation expertise, will collaborate to explore the potential for new value creation enabled by digital fabrication technology and

Architerrax invites architecture students from around the globe to participate in the Architerrax Portfolio Competition. This international competition provides a prestigious platform to showcase your architectural vision, demonstrate your versatility, and gain direct exposure to leading architecture firms worldwide.

About the Competition
The Architerrax Portfolio Competition aims to identify outstanding architecture students and graduates who excel in academic rigor and design excellence, helping them stand out from their peers and bridge the gap between academia and global professional practice.

Brief & Requirements

The Challenge: Select and curate a collection of three of your most spectacular architectural designs and present them in a

Imagine a corridor. Concrete walls two meters apart, a low ceiling, artificial lighting with neither shadow nor gradation. At the far end, a bulletproof glass window, and on the other side, a uniformed officer. You are at a port of entry. It could be in Calais, El Paso, or Lampedusa. An anonymous space, yet far from neutral. Designed so that anyone can understand: passage is not a right; it is a concession.

Site and Landscape - Casa Macahuite is conceived as a composition of five planes (four vertical walls and a floating pergola) arranged in direct relationship with the landscape: sea and mountains. Their configuration generates intermediate spaces that provide shade, cross-ventilation, and continuous visual connection with the surroundings, making climate and site the primary organizers of the project.

At the UIA World Congress of Architects 2026 in Barcelona, discussions surrounding the future of housing frequently extended beyond questions of design to include governance, ownership, and long-term stewardship. Among the speakers contributing to these conversations was Cristina Gamboa, co-founder of the Barcelona-based cooperative Lacol, whose practice combines architecture, housing advocacy, construction management, and environmental research through a cooperative model. During the Congress, ArchDaily spoke with Gamboa about how cooperative practice reshapes the architect's role, why participation extends beyond consultation, and how projects such as La Borda and La Morada continue to inform broader discussions on housing, care, and collective living.

Architecture studio Polysmiths built a three-bedroom house on an infill plot in East London, using cork and other sustainable materials that remained readily available during the pandemic.

"Map the New World" is the motto of Project PLATEAU, led by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT), to develop and expand access to 3D models representing the diversity of cities across the country. Japan comprises a total of 744 cities, including 14 with populations exceeding one million, 190 with between 100,000 and one million inhabitants, and 540 with populations between 10,000 and 100,000. To date, 3D models of more than 250 cities have been made available as open data through the country's public G-Spatial Information Center, and can also be accessed via an online browser viewer. According to public authorities, the project aims to strengthen urban resilience by providing society with new tools to address local challenges. This involves not only urban space modeling but also collaboration with local governments, private companies, and technology communities. The project also includes a digital reconstruction of the recently closed Osaka World Expo site.

Concéntrico returned to Logroño for its 12th edition in June and transformed the city into a working site for architecture. Since its founding in 2015, the festival has built an identity on resisting a distant, controlled exhibition of design by constructing full-scale installations in the city's streets, plazas, and vacant lots, engaging residents and visitors as part of daily life. This year's program brought together more than twenty interventions by architects, designers, and researchers working across a wide range of geographies and methods, each contributing to a citywide experiment in reimagining public space.

The project was developed through a collaboration between students from Kaiserslautern University of Applied Sciences and the Innsbruck-based collectives Gans Anders and Bonanza. As part of the Gabonsa Music Festival, the students designed a temporary pavilion for the Rossau Recreation Centre, a former municipal landfill site that the collectives seek to reactivate as a public space through cultural events. The result is a hybrid structure situated at the intersection of furniture, installation, and architecture, functioning simultaneously as a seating landscape, landmark, and social meeting point while embodying the festival's experimental spirit.

Set within the climatic and cultural context of Ahmedabad, the House of Green Court draws from the courtyard typology to organize a three-generational family into an individualized yet cohesive whole. The project modulates privacy while responding to the present and evolving needs of its inhabitants.