Metropolis Magazine

Monograph and Naya are transforming architecture and design workflows. They are designed to help architects and industrial designers streamline project management and boost collaboration. Efficiency and collaboration are critical in the fast-paced architecture and design industry.?Monograph?and?Naya are responding by reshaping workflows with platforms tailored to industry needs ???: Francisco Brown ??: Naya https://lnkd.in/dx45dwj3

How UPSTREAM calculated the carbon footprint of Portland’s new mass timber terminal. ZGF Architects, in collaboration with the?University of Washington’s Applied Research Consortium, has developed an innovative wood life cycle calculator called?UpStream. This spreadsheet tool helps designers assess biogenic carbon storage, forest carbon sequestration, and end-of-life scenarios for wood products. Portland Airport’s wood roof served as a perfect test bed for this tool. “We were trying to understand upstream carbon dynamics of mass timber—going back to the forest and connecting everything,” says?Jacob Dunn, ZGF’s principal. UpStream aims to integrate carbon impacts from forest management into life cycle analyses (LCA) and allows for custom end-of-life scenarios for wood products. ???: Francisco Brown ??: Ema Peter ZGF Architects, Port of Portland https://lnkd.in/eK_7Xfxk

Villejuif-Gustave Roussy Station is the latest addition to the Grand Paris Express, Europe’s largest infrastructure project reflecting aesthetics, practicality, and comfort that contribute to the city’s urban and social transformation. The Grand Paris Express is Europe’s most ambitious civil engineering undertaking, spanning over 200 km of automated metro lines and 68 new stations. This massive infrastructure project embodies a territorial transformation and the making of a new urban experience aligned with aspirations for modern metropolitan living. At the heart of this visionary initiative,?the?Grand Paris?Express?has unveiled its newest architectural addition: the Villejuif-Gustave Roussy Station. Designed by Dominique Perrault Architecture the transport hub’s helicoidal structure draws the urban fabric toward the underground, erasing the boundaries between open public and enclosed station space and blurring the limits of the city. This underground marvel exemplifies innovative design that enhances connectivity, urban development, and social integration. https://lnkd.in/eFWgVkjV

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Even in 2025, American design remains heavily influenced by Eurocentric ideas and colonial histories. How can we change that? The answer lies in decolonizing design. Decolonizing design means challenging the historical dominance of Western perspectives in design practices and elevating Indigenous architectural methodologies. By embracing these non-Western cultural frameworks, we can reshape design education and discourse, creating a more inclusive and equitable creative landscape. Here, METROPOLIS critically explores what decolonizing design entails, offering insights into how architects and designers can rethink design canons. Project Image: Oklahoma City’s First Americans Museum, designed by Johnson Fain. ???: METROPOLIS editors ??: COURTESY ? GRAY CITY STUDIOS, Scott McDonald https://lnkd.in/eiiNDTWS

Duolingo’s New Office And The State of the Workplace David Galullo of Rapt Studio—the design firm behind Duolingo, Glossier, Goop, and Tinder’s offices—shares how ambitious companies are approaching workspace design.The gaming company Roblox’s headquarters in San Mateo, California, has all the hallmarks of a Silicon Valley new workplace. There are bustling cafes, meeting rooms filled with brainstorming teams, and desks for heads-down work. But what’s different from its peers is how the spaces are organized. Rapt Studio, the firm behind the design, has sequestered a quiet environment for individual work away from boisterous communal lounges by placing a “defensive line” of phone and meeting rooms between them. “We’ve lovingly coined it ‘The Chamber,’” says David Galullo, the CEO and Chief Creative Officer of Rapt Studio, the firm behind the office’s sensory-based arrangement. It’s the result of the company recognizing that it has many highly sensitive employees that prefer to work from home. “The organization sees the benefit of bringing people together, but also acknowledges that they’re the kind of people that would like to cloister themselves away,” Galullo explains. ??: Diana Budds ??: Duolingo https://lnkd.in/eBwGTFwx

Help! We’re Drowning in Bio-Lingo. Clarity is coming. Scores of academics and practitioners are working hard right now to help each other define and discern which natural and nature-inspired materials meet specific goals. They are using tools and lists like the HPD (Health Product Declaration) Standard and mindful MATERIALS. The Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design has developed a compendium of these sorts of tools, along with its own vetted lists of categorized building products, like 16 “Adhesives, Mortars, Grouts, and Sealants.” Meanwhile, here’s a stab at working definitions for six commonly used bio-words, based on interviews with some of the people paying the closest attention. Project: Sunby School by HENNING LARSEN ARCHITECTS SL ???: Audrey Gray ??: Courtesy Rasmus Hjortsh?j / HENNING LARSEN ARCHITECTS SL https://lnkd.in/eG_hxbNh

PaperShell is transforming Turns Paper Back into Wood that can be used in furniture, building materials, and other applications. When Arper reintroduced the iconic Catifa Carta chair at last year’s Salone del Mobile.Milano, the furniture titan also heralded its collaboration with Scandinavian biogenic material company PaperShell. With its signature thin silhouette intact, Catifa Carta became the first commercial product to don PaperShell’s dynamic technology, which reinstates paper as a durable, artificial wood. “[As a] tree grows up, it takes the carbon from the atmosphere, and we reduce that tree to paper with a single life,” says PaperShell cofounder and CEO Anders Breitholtz. “We should be able to do something much more advanced around this." ???: William Speros ??: Salva López https://lnkd.in/e66CWkcg

The t?m?sew?tx?, Canada’s first completed Zero Carbon–certified aquatic center, cuts back on its carbon emissions while building community engagement. Designed by Vancouver-based?hcma architecture + design, t?m?sew?tx? replaces an aging indoor pool that had been built for the 1970 Canada Games. Three times as big as its now-demolished predecessor, with a state-of-the-art pool-water filtration system, the new facility is Canada’s first completed?Zero Carbon–certified?aquatic center, according to the architects. The project includes a comprehensive program of pools, saunas, workout rooms, a childcare center, gymnasiums, offices, a café, and a wealth of hangout spaces—elements that were defined through a three-year-long community engagement process that prioritized the voices of Indigenous community members. ???: Adele Weder ??: nic lehoux https://lnkd.in/e5dnUzXH