Articles by Paula Pintos

Commissioned for a family embracing an active lifestyle of immersive environmental experiences, the firm was tasked with creating a home that would be contemporary and warm, yet seamlessly blended into the rugged beauty of its natural surroundings. In addition to an interior program that included a primary suite, a secondary suite, three additional bedrooms, and a large communal living and dining space, the 15-month build prioritized an external focus that includes an entry rotunda, a shaded courtyard, and a view frame overlooking the surrounding landscape.

Brown & Brown has completed a new low-energy home in a conservation area of Aberdeen, Scotland, turning an open plot into a private, leafy retreat that foregrounds craftsmanship and design.

The meeting between Japan and Milan in a neighborhood bar. Pan’s architectural project stems from the desire to create a physical and material transposition of the innovative format of the place: Pan is a bakery, kitchen, and wine bar, a neighborhood place born from the collaboration between the Japanese chef Yoji Tokuyoshi and Alice Yamada, with the goal of democratizing Japanese culture.

Cardigan is a young and dynamic Montreal-based digital advertising agency founded in 2016. As their need for expansion grew fast, their team was looking for a new location that could accommodate their 25 employees. In 2020, they found this two-story high stone building located in the heart of the Rosemont borough of Montreal. Originally built to be a bank in 1907, the building had many lives over the years and was most recently used as a religious establishment. Consisting of a 1250 square-foot open space on the ground floor, the building holds an equal-sized basement underneath and an independent residential condominium above. With its unique history and architectural features, the space seemed like a great place for Cardigan’s new offices.

The project takes advantage of the uniqueness of the lot, accessible by two streets. It is built in place of a parking lot accessible from rue Henri-Julien, and the townhouse completes the construction of an existing sixplex on Drolet Street. The whole, organized around a central courtyard, creates a two-headed multiplex, a new typology for this atypical lot.

“This is actually not architecture anymore, this is a park that takes place in an architectural fragment. And behaves the same way – there is no center, it’s open, and you can sit on the bench with a few people and feel comfortable; but it can also become quite dense. And in the sense of artistic research, it’s really an experimentation, a sounding out of what this space can be permanent. With the luxury that first of all there’s no functional constraint that you have to accommodate, but that you can completely engage with the place.”