Ocote House / PPAA

Located in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, Casa Ocote is conceived as a peaceful retreat for two friends and their families—where shared living and privacy coexist in balance. The design proposes a layout that encourages connection in the common areas while ensuring intimacy in the private spaces.

Hélène Carrère d'Encausse School / archi5 + bureau faceB

A School in the Trees - Located at one of the entrances to the town, the school heralds the renewal of Marly. The merger of the Nelson Mandela and Louise Michel schools is a powerful political act, embodied by a unifying and emblematic school facility. The green landscape is the foundation of the project. A school focused on nature, surrounded by trees.

Rathnelly House / Studio VAARO

Studio VAARO's Rathnelly House is a comprehensive and formally expressive renovation of an Edwardian-era semi-detached house in midtown Toronto. The project not only enhances functionality and spatial fluidity but also expands the home significantly from within while respecting its existing footprint. The clients, a professional couple with a young child, sought both a pragmatic and aesthetic transformation: to increase usable floor area, raise ceiling heights, and expand storage, all within a welcoming and distinctive design mediating between openness and seclusion. Extensive structural interventions enabled a fundamental reordering of space. The result is an expansive plan that adds 140 m² (1,500 ft²), increasing the functional area of the home by almost 60%.

Dialogue with the Code: Calibrating Standards for Adaptive Reuse to Thrive

There is growing awareness around sustainability—and the environmental cost of prematurely demolishing safe, structurally sound buildings only to replace them with new construction. In the broader race to reduce carbon emissions, corporations and institutions are placing greater emphasis on ESG performance (environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance). Many now require carbon accounting, set "carbon-neutral" targets, or purchase carbon credits to offset footprints.

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