Articles by Hadir Al Koshta

As a personal and experimental project, the B-Frame began during a two-week design-build course with Dalhousie School of Architecture students.

As a personal and experimental project, the B-Frame began during a two-week design-build course with Dalhousie School of Architecture students.

Studio DERA has transformed a former school swimming pool into a sustainable multi-purpose learning and wellbeing space for Waltham Forest College. With the college rapidly expanding its student body, finding new ways to accommodate educational and extracurricular needs was a priority. Studio DERA had already run a sustainable materials workshop for WFC students while building a hempcrete and timber community center and nursery in nearby Higham Hill. College Principal & CEO Janet Gardner then invited Studio DERA directors Max Dewdney and Marcel Rahm to reimagine the long disused swimming pool site and do a feasibility study.

Set within a sloped, wooded site overlooking the Connecticut River, House in the Woods by Tom Lontine Architect is a 4,400-square-foot residence designed for a pair of hardworking professionals seeking a quiet home to age in place. Low-slung and clad in dark-stained cedar, the house is embedded into the hillside to minimize its visual impact and heighten the sense of immersion in the surrounding forest.

A short walk from the heart of San Pedro, Belize, this oceanfront retreat was created for a retired inventor and an interior designer, partners in life and vision. The home is both a personal escape and a destination for gathering, built to host long stays with family and friends in one of their favorite places on Earth.

Adaptive reuse is shifting from simple preservation to active revitalization, a process of structurally rescuing and reprogramming architectural typologies whose original functions are no longer relevant. The obsolescence of architectural spaces occurs for varied reasons: sociological shifts, leaving spaces uninhabited; technological advances, phasing out specific machinery; and economic changes, making centralized functions necessary. The strategy of repurposing focuses on achieving spatial and functional longevity through minimal interventions, allowing the original structure to serve as the memory anchor of the project.

Overlooking the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, Tide Bound stands as an exemplification of architectural dexterity amidst nature’s formidable forces. Along the coastal landscape of Nova Scotia, two imposing gables rise, embodying conformity between built structure and the wild, untamed beauty of the maritime coast.