Melting cities: What record-breaking heat means for the places we live and work.

The New Climate Reality Traditional building designs are increasingly turning our homes and offices into literal heat traps, pushing air conditioning systems to the brink and driving up carbon emissions. As global temperatures soar and extreme heat w...

The Urban Sponge: Designing Buildings That Drink Up Floods

We spent centuries treating our cities like umbrellas—paving over every square inch to repel water as fast as possible. With extreme storms and urban flooding on the rise, that strategy is failing. The new standard isn’t fighting the water; i...

THE GREEN CHOICE Why Renovating an Old Building is the Ultimate Act of Environmental Responsibility

You want to build sustainably. You care about your carbon footprint, resource conservation, and the future of our planet. When faced with the choice between constructing a sleek, modern, net-zero building from scratch or taking on a flawed, aging str...

The Invisible Interior : Wellness & Air

Letter from the Editor: The Luxury of the Invisible Dear Readers, When we think of a “hotel stay,” our minds immediately go to the visible: the sweep of a marble lobby, the curated art on the walls, or the way the sunlight hits a mid-century ...

In search of Carbon Neutral Cities

At one of our office Lunch & Learn seminars, we were reviewing Masdar Project in Abu Dhabi and all the technologies involved into making this “city laboratory” a carbon neutral city. The question of the day was;  “Given the prohibitive cos...

The Sustainability Equation

When I first returned to Asia from England some 25 years ago, Bangkok rivers and canals were polluted, the air was un-breathable, garbage disposal unregulated, but one thing in the midst of all this chaos, was how highly organised it all was!! ...

Glass Pt. 3: The Endless Choice

When it comes to glass, its characteristics allow it to be modified for so many uses. The design and constuction industry has been using glass for so long, yet it’s so impressive how much progress and innovation is made.  We can find glass bei...

Glass Pt.2: Vaguely Opaque!

From simple particles of silica, glass has become one of the most used materials in the construction industry. It’s many valuable characteristics contribute to its value of being one of the most sustainable and wellness promoting products comme...

Glass Pt. 1: Let’s Get Cracking

GLASS: It can be clear, it can be frosted, it can be curved, it can be recycled, it is unstoppable.  Before we get to far, let’s first start with the initial question. What is it really made of? The over-simplified answer is: Sand!  Have you ...