Health/Wellness

Dear FuturArc readers, Let’s talk about this issue’s cover design for a bit. For this theme, we wanted to express the concept of health/wellness as an intimate reality in one’s everyday life. And what’s more everyday than one’s home? So, we took the bold Floating House in Thu Duc, Vietnam, as the ‘exemplar’ home, as […]

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Bamboo and earth-based materials

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When it comes to Green and sustainable housing, Nature offers promising solutions. The fast-growing bamboo is known as a sustainable alternative to conventional building materials such as concrete, steel and timber. When properly treated and engineered, bamboo exhibits impressive compression properties and tensile strength, surpassing traditional materials. In Nepal and the Philippines, homes that are […]

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Ageing in place

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Among the rapidly aging societies in Asia and the Pacific, Hong Kong is expected to have the highest share of the world’s senior population by 2050. More than four in 10 persons will be aged 60 and above then. JLL said the city will face a shortage of over 60,000 senior-friendly places by 2032.19 The […]

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Elimination of asbestos

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In Vietnam, the construction sector uses 54,000 tonnes of asbestos annually, ranking as one of the top importers of ‘fibro cement’. Most of the supply goes to low-income and vulnerable populations unaware of the health risks of exposure to friable airborne asbestos.  In a 2021 project, Habitat for Humanity Vietnam set up zero-asbestos villages21 as […]

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Data modelling in housing design

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Habitat for Humanity Cambodia is working with computational design students from University of New South Wales in Australia to explore the use of data modelling in housing design for future projects. Prior to construction, modelling can help to optimise variables such as orientation of the house to minimise the exposure to sun rays. In Cambodia’s […]

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Milinda Pathiraja, PhD

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Speaking with Milinda Pathiraja feels a lot like being in the presence of a bright light—in terms of an architectural analogy, perhaps a lighthouse. Personally speaking, it would be a familiar lighthouse: Milinda was not only a former FuturArc Prize 2017 juror, but his highly acclaimed projects were also profiled frequently in this magazine over […]

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Ordos Smart Sports Park

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Breathing life into a public space can be challenging. An expansive civic space by itself is not enough to draw the community to use it—let alone one that inspires healthy activities—especially if it comes across as arid or cold due to a lack of human-scale elements. The huge space then becomes a deterrent rather than […]

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