Designing with Smoke: The Chimney as Architectural and Environmental Instrument

Chimneys are among the most quietly persistent elements in architectural history. Yet their presence persists in nearly every cultural and climatic context, serving as a technical feature and a spatial, atmospheric, and symbolic device. It populates dense city skylines and anchors rural horizons alike, its vertical silhouette as ordinary as a window or a doorframe. This apparent ordinariness is deceptive. The chimney is one of the few architectural components that links the intimate scale of interior life with the expansive forces of the environment. For architects and designers, the necessity of the chimney presents a choice: to let it recede quietly into the building's functional fabric or to amplify it as a central, expressive element that shapes a project's identity.

Set against the wild limestone cliffs and dense coastal forest of Punakaiki, Punangairi redefines what a visitor centre can be. Designed by Sheppard & Rout Architects, in collaboration with Ngāti Waewae, the project moves beyond tourism infrastructure to become an act of cultural and ecological restoration.

Cobbadah Beach House is a multi-generational home located at Tugun, a laid-back surf beach on the Gold Coast in southern Queensland. The house is situated on the ridge of a densely vegetated bluff above a beach, with panoramic views to South Stradbroke Island to the north and Coolangatta headland to the south.

The Shanghai Baoshan Long Beach Winder Tower Complex is strategically located at the Yangtze River estuary beside the Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal—Asia's largest and the world's fourth-largest home port. DLR Group won an international design competition with a vision to transform the industrial port into a new waterfront landmark. The complex is 2M SF, bringing together a 180-meter observation tower, a 120-meter Grade-A office building, an 80-meter five-star hotel with 300 keys, a 1,027-seat concert hall, a tunnel operations center, and retail.