Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2026 i AZURE

ELLIPSIS, A NEW CAFÉ AND BAR near Vancouver’s Granville Island, takes its name from the idea that a good coffee shop should serve as a moment of pause. When it comes to this particular destination, visitors have plenty of architectural history to reflect upon: Ellipsis is located in the Waterfall Building, one of the last built projects by Arthur Erickson (who worked on the design alongside Nick Milkovich Architects). Back when the mixed-use complex was completed in 2001, its prismatic base was home to an art gallery. Over the years, the glazed wedge evolved into an event venue where many a modernist was wed in front of the slanted glass walls that look out to a courtyard waterfall. Now, thanks to Vancouver- and London-based firm Sml Studio Architecture, the pavilion…

IN THE WAKE of Trump’s ongoing taunts and tariffs, the demand for made-in-Canada goods continues to grow — and Ourse is here to deliver. The new furniture brand arrives from two people who are no strangers to the Canadian design scene: Jake Oliveira and Jason Henderson. The former is a Toronto product designer who has already built an impressive portfolio of lighting, seating and more, albeit so far mostly for brands south of the border. And the latter is a co-founder of Henderson Resource Group, a sales agency that brings various Euro, Scandi and North American contract brands to the Canadian market. By this point in their careers, both had recognized the same gap in the national landscape. Oliveira cites an all-too-familiar narrative that he still found to be defining…

On the shore of Lake Ontario in downtown Toronto, the eye is intuitively drawn to the water. Up above the street, condos with unobstructed south-facing views from the city’s growing skyline fetch a substantial premium, their residential interiors framed by sparkling blue. For interior designers, this rarefied context is both a blessing and a challenge. Given raw spaces already defined by natural splendour, how can design respond? In one such condominium, Iman Lalji has delivered an understated yet elevated renovation that celebrates the home’s relationship to the water while carving out a refined sense of place. The spacious 140-square-metre condominium is anchored by an open kitchen. Here, Lalji’s embrace of richly veined marble complements the lake’s fluid waves with a stone bookend. Light wood floors and oak cabinetry quietly amplify…

JOURNAL Untapped 003 EDITED BY TIFFANY JOW With its systems-based approach, residential furnishings brand Henrybuilt seeks to unravel the myriad ways people live with design, and this publication is just one way it does so. Billed as “a design journal that looks back to look forward,” Untapped is an editorially independent initiative teeming with critical long-form content. “Understanding the impacts that objects and spaces have on our lives is no easy feat — which might be why there are so few media outlets devoted to the subject,” explains Henrybuilt CEO and creative director Scott Hudson. To that end, Issue 03 explores the domestic at every scale — from Kate Wagner’s reflections on the resurgence of McMansions to photographer Charlie Schuck’s account of Louis Kahn’s Shapiro House to an essay from…

TIKTOK IS FILLED WITH VIDEOS of people dissecting celebrity makeovers and compiling lists of the ever more popular procedures behind them, from lip filler to laser resurfacing. In line with that, cosmetic surgery clinics have been undergoing a transformation of their own, rapidly evolving into something more akin to a spa or fashion boutique. Indeed, when a husband-and-wife pair of dermatologists started to dream up Oakville’s Surface Dermatology, their initial mood board included images of Aesop stores. They traced those locations back to the architecture firm behind them — Montreal’s Atelier Carle — and gave them a call. 1 | THE BRIEF “Back in my generation, [cosmetic procedures] were something that would be done confidentially,” says founding architect Alain Carle. “Nowadays, people are completely transparent.” Part of helping patients feel…

JUST AS THE DAYS STARTED to grow shorter and the temperatures began to drop, the industry landed in Valencia for September’s Feria Hábitat. For anyone not yet ready to enter hibernation mode, the coastal metropolis offered no shortage of comforting inspiration. Intimate and textured, many of the design fair’s best launches were rooted in a laid-back Iberian aesthetic that proves warmth can be found all year round — outdoors or in. WABISABI POUFFES BY NANIMARQUINA The Japanese principle of wabi-sabi reminds us to embrace imperfection and find beauty in irregularity. Made from 100 per cent New Zealand wool, Nanimarquina’s namesake pouffes are a testament to the philosophy, drawing in the eye with a textured pattern of soft, contrasting tones that echoes organic variations found in nature. Available in three sizes,…

A house is often a testing ground for an architect’s more esoteric ideas. In a private residential project, provided it comes with a daring client, a practitioner can translate their philosophy to form and hone their praxis. For Hevia Poblete, the Chilean firm run by Guillermo Hevia and Catalina Poblete, the central parti is the “single section repeated.” In past projects, they’ve been able to stretch the limits of this minimal industrial language — literally: A recent commission, Casa Curva, snakes across its sea-facing terrain to capture views for every interior along its length. But that wasn’t the case when it came to the Centipede House, which, despite its name, is comparatively compact. That’s because it’s in the city of Santiago, Chile, on a still-capacious 700-square-metre plot nestled between two…

The most recent Google Street View of Detroit’s 17th Street is dated November 2022. Looking south from W Hancock Street, you can see that a single boarded-up home, surrounded by a landscape of vacant green lots, fills the foreground. Just down the block, however, change is stirring where a fresh concrete slab is contoured around the promise of a courtyard. Three years later, the site is home to an understated yet deeply unconventional house by architecture studio Dash Marshall. Designed by Dash Marshall co-founder Bryan Boyer, the building was conceived as both a weekday office space and a weekend retreat — essentially, a second home for Boyer and his partner, Laura Lewis. “We could have built a house in the forest up north as an escape from the city, but…

1855 The Grand Hôtel du Louvre hosts its inaugural guests, in town for the Exposition Universelle. Built in just over a year thanks to construction crews who worked day and night, the project embodied French industrial prowess, with gas lighting, a ventilation system, a telegraph office and an elevator — one of the first in Paris. 1887 The ribbon is cut on one of the earliest department stores in Paris, the Grands Magasins du Louvre, while the Grand Hôtel relocates across Place du Palais-Royal, where it still stands today as the Hôtel du Louvre. The department store remains in business until 1974. 1978 Le Louvre des Antiquaires opens with 240 antiques dealers spread across three levels. The luxury marketplace closes its doors in 2019. 2025 Spanning a total of 8,500…

1. LA BELLE DURMIENTE Originally designed in 1985 by Santa & Cole co-founders Gabriel Ordeig Cole and Nina Masó, La Bella Durmiente showcases a captivating contrast of warm and cool colours influenced by the geometric abstractions of Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg. The totemic structure was recently updated with LED technology replacing the fluorescent light source. 2. TWIST Twist’s ingenuity is twofold: Its aluminum body is height-adjustable up to two metres, and the upward-facing light’s distribution field shrinks or expands accordingly. Each positioning of this lamp from Hay, by French designer Romain Sillon, creates different levels of ambiance, from direct and focused to atmospheric. 3. 741HZ With his limited-edition Frequency 2.0 series, Mexican industrial designer Sebastián Ángeles translates sound frequencies associated with healing into physical cast-bronze objects: two chairs,…

SOMARI COLLECTION Inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s iconic mid-century paper lanterns, the Somari collection by LightArt is an architectural lighting system composed of three geometric shapes — Sphere, Saucer and Cylinder — that can be joined vertically or horizontally in compositions up to 2.4 metres long. Each variation is offered in three sizes and seven matte and translucent colours. Cylinder in Clover is shown. DRAPE LIGHT For his Drape Light for Moooi, designer Jamie Wolfond cloaks an intersecting pair of minimalistic glass tubes with an innovative 3D-knitted polyester shade, resulting in a fixture that defies categorization. Shaped by gravity, the mesh-like fabric introduces a captivating play of light and shadow as it filters the illumination emitted from the 360-degree LED conduits. BIND Part of Vibia’s Shaping Atmospheres concept, which focuses on…

Founded in 1967 to protest Toronto’s plans for the Spadina Expressway — which would have connected the downtown core with the growing neighbourhoods to the north and led to the demolition of both natural habitats and hundreds of homes — the Republic of Rathnelly boasts what may be one of the city’s more eccentric histories. The Midtown neighbourhood was established during Canada’s centennial; it recognized its symbolic independence movement by electing a queen, issuing passports and drafting a constitution, among other spirited initiatives. While the declaration of independence was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it played a successful role in the cancellation of the proposed expressway and laid the groundwork for a sense of community pride that is still celebrated today. So when local architecture and design firm Studio VAARO was called to…

CARPET TILE & LVT Wood + Weald Patcraft’s PVC-free take on resilient flooring features 25 per cent post-consumer recycled content and can be fully recycled at the end of its lifespan. Offered in a range of digitally printed wood-like patterns and colours, the scratch- and scuff-resistant planks measure 21 by 129 centimetres and are 2.5 millimetres thick. Smolder Metallic yarn creates wood grain–like highlights that mimic the texture of shou sugi ban in J+J Flooring’s range of 30.5-by-122-centimetre nylon carpet tiles (offered in 10 colourways, including Ignite, shown). A coordinating collection, Smoke, is modelled after crackling embers. Reverie Consider Shaw Contract the Vivaldi of the carpeting world. With its latest hospitality collection, the flooring manufacturer introduces four dreamlike patterns inspired by the four seasons, including Autumn Wind, shown here. Each…

Since 2015, amid ongoing reckonings with systemic racism, the United States has removed more than 150 of its civic sculptures, many of which presented Confederate leaders in the style of bronze superheroes. Meanwhile, Canada has toppled 13 of its own statues, including six tributes to Sir John A. Macdonald, who oversaw the creation of the country’s residential schools. Some argue that stripping away these signs of painful history ignores the opportunity to use them as prompts for reflection. But for a likeness to hold educational merit, it needs to be designed or displayed in a way that considers an individual’s true legacy. This goal is precisely what “Monuments” — an exhibition on view until May 3 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary gallery (with additional works…