The former Assembleia da Granja occupies an entire block in the centre of Praia da Granja. Built in the late 19th century, it emerged from the summer life of the time and became a reference point in the social landscape of the place. Figures such as King Carlos I, Queen Amélia, Eça de Queirós, Camilo Castelo Branco, and Sophia de Mello Breyner were regular visitors. Ramalho Ortigão called the Granja “the most glorious, the freshest, the cleanest of Portugal’s seaside resorts”.

On November 10, 1943, the city of Recco was destroyed forever. Twenty-two bombers of the British Royal Air Force dropped 33 tons of explosives, attempting to demolish the railway bridge, an iconic element of the town and a crucial point for the supply of Nazi-fascist troops. The bombing caused the deaths of numerous civilians and almost completely destroyed the characteristic Ligurian village. The town was razed to the ground. On November 11, the landscape around the railway bridge bore the spectral image of one of the most picturesque villages on the Levante coast: Recco was now only a memory, with only a few houses and a few scattered monuments left intact. During the years of reconstruction, some renowned architects were called upon to revive the town, including Luigi Vietti, the designer of the Town Hall building. Among the victims of the bombing was a large part of a beautiful Franciscan complex dating back to the 1400s, of which the church was almost entirely destroyed.

Twenty meters tall and four thousand years old, the Western Deffufa towers over the adjacent date orchards and ancient city remains in the desert. It is a former religious and administrative building near the modern-day Sudanese town of Kerma. Its significance is not only in its age and size, but also in that it is one of the oldest mud brick buildings in the world. And as the nearby mud brick houses also attest, earth is a material of continuous use from ancient times to the present. Yet, conversations around contemporary building systems have largely ignored this essential material. Some architects on the continent of Africa, however, are changing that.

Qingshuiyan Ancestral Hall Supporting Facility Renovation Set within the core scenic area of the thousand-year-old Qingshuiyan Ancestral Hall in Anxi, Quanzhou, this project renovates a decommissioned old bus station left unused after its functional relocation. The site is anchored by a moss-draped ancient banyan tree at the center of a forest-framed open square, with a dilapidated two-story station building, native rock formations, and ancient mossy paths defining its unique natural and historic context. First built in the Northern Song Dynasty, Qingshuiyan Ancestral Hall sits at the northern foot of perennially mist-shrouded Penglai Mountain. As a vital folk belief center for Fujian, Taiwan and Southeast Asian communities with over 100 million believers, the hall shaped the project's core ethos of harmony with nature and local heritage. The in-situ renovation integrates tea houses, vegetarian restaurants, and rest areas as a complementary facility for the ancestral hall.