The Neighbourhood That Rewrote Medellín Cities spend billions trying to “activate” public space. Comuna 13 did it with brick, paint, music, and a set of escalators clawing up a mountainside. Walking into it feels like stumbling into a city built on improvisation—walls turned to canvases, staircases to storefronts, every corner buzzing with kids, vendors, andContinue reading “The Anti-Mall: How Comuna 13 Outperformed Urban Planners”
Category Archives: Urban Design
Gran Hotel Ciudad de México: A Hidden Glass Ceiling in the Heart of Centro Histórico
In Search of the World’s Most Beautiful Glass Ceiling Field Reflection: I wasn’t planning to write about an elevator today. But maybe I should’ve seen it coming. Every trip ends with one. As for now, today I was chasing a memory, a fuzzy, architecturalish, probably warped by Pinterest and Instagram memory. A massive Tiffany’s glassContinue reading “Gran Hotel Ciudad de México: A Hidden Glass Ceiling in the Heart of Centro Histórico”
Neo-Andean Futurism Architecture: A Journey Through Bolivia’s Vertical Identity
Riding the Teleférico to Freddy Mamani‘s Neo-Andean Dreamscape I woke up in La Paz with that specific kind of thrill only architectural pilgrims know. The kind that creeps in your chest when you realize: today you’ll get to see a building you’ve studied in photos for years or click through everytime Instagram’s algorithm finds you,Continue reading “Neo-Andean Futurism Architecture: A Journey Through Bolivia’s Vertical Identity”
Brutal Concrete: The Architectural Evolution of Piccadilly Plaza in Manchester
A deep dive into Manchester’s City Tower (originally Sunley House)—a brutalist landmark of concrete geometry, sculptural form, and evolving modernism.
Pilgrimage to the Soviet Ministry of Highways Headquartered in Tbilisi Georgia
Rising from the forested hills on the edge of Tbilisi, the Ministry of Highways feels less like a building and more like an idea made solid — a radical composition of concrete slabs suspended midair, stacked with impossible confidence. Designed in 1975, it embodies a moment when architecture aimed to float above the landscape, not dominate it. Seeing it in person, surrounded by trees and silence, the structure felt suspended in time — a relic of utopian ambition still clinging to the hillside.
From Factories to Parks: How Cities Keep Surprising Us
Urban Alchemy: Transforming Spaces, Layering Stories There’s a quiet kind of magic in watching a city reinvent itself. Factories become art studios, railway yards sprout breweries and playgrounds, and once-forgotten churches glow again as homes filled with life. These transformations aren’t just clever design tricks — they’re proof that cities, like living organisms, have theContinue reading “From Factories to Parks: How Cities Keep Surprising Us”
My Adventure Recording Dubai Mall: A Journey Through a Designer Wonderland
Dubai Mall. If there was ever a place to prove that “everything is bigger and better in Dubai,” this is it. Imagine a place so large that I thought I was on a never-ending treasure hunt for cool spaces—and trust me, I almost gave up at one point. But then, I remembered: I’m here toContinue reading “My Adventure Recording Dubai Mall: A Journey Through a Designer Wonderland”
Uncovering Nature in the City: The Architectural Brilliance of Mishima’s Genbe River Walk
At its core, the Genbe River walk is an act of urban rediscovery, an effort to peel back the layers of concrete and asphalt that typically define Japanese cityscapes, revealing the natural landscape underneath.
Magical Winter Walk in Downtown Ottawa
Skating the Rideau Canal in a Heavy Snowstorm. Growing up in Canada, skating was as natural to me as walking. Whether it was on freshly flooded rinks, frozen ponds, or even the occasional stretch of river behind my house, I always found joy in carving lines into the ice. But nothing could have prepared meContinue reading “Magical Winter Walk in Downtown Ottawa”
Ron Thom’s Trent University: A Brutalist Campus in Harmony with Nature
An Underappreciated Masterpiece of Canadian Architecture Trent University’s architecture stands as a remarkable yet often overlooked achievement in Canadian modernism. Designed by Ron Thom, it exemplifies how brutalist principles can harmonize with the rugged landscape of Southern Ontario. More than just a collection of buildings, Trent embodies a masterfully planned environment that responds to bothContinue reading “Ron Thom’s Trent University: A Brutalist Campus in Harmony with Nature”
NOMAD SKETCHBOOK 