Project of the Week

A headliner on CNN, Curbed, Dezeen, and Architectural Digest, this week’s featured project has been widely talked about in the press and has made waves across the architecture community. A truly incredible undertaking, Zaha Hadid Architects‘ Bejing Daxing International Airport is a 12.9 billion dollar, 700,000 square meter masterpiece.

Alert! Alert! Great architecture inbound. This week’s featured project is Matthew Millman’s photographs of AIA CC Merit awarded House of Earth & Sky by Aidlin Darling. And where there is beautiful architecture, there is beautiful photography.

This series is steeped in strong geometric shapes and the golden light that early evening brings.

It’s official. I want to be Chase Daniel when I grow up. I could go on and on about his work forever, but it’s probably just easier to show you how beautiful, clean, and well thought out each of his compositions are. I drooled over Chase’s website for an absurd amount of time — scrolling through Japanese/Texas fusion restaurants, smokey bars, cowboy boot peddlers, cabins, and ranches.

Here on Architectural Photography Almanac, we tend to focus on — well — architecture. Not to be overlooked though, is photography with an emphasis on the design of a space. This Project of the Week by Melbourne based Jack Lovel is great study on clean edits, simplicity, and the “less is more” aspect that shines when working with interior designers.

Ahh New Zealand; the magical land where perfect scenery and perfect architecture collide. This week’s shining example is a residential home by Cheshire Architects, with interior design by Terry Hunziker, photographed by Seattle based Aaron Leitz.

Aaron’s architectural photographs cast a strange magic over me this week, and I found myself coming back to his website time and time again.

When you’re hired to photograph a resort, your end goal is to sell the experience. If there’s one guy who can pull this off, it’s architectural photographer Joe Fletcher. Three photographs into his collection on Amangiri Resort, and I was trying to justify spending my F-You Fund on a vacation.

What do you get when you mix an incredible photographer from Russia with a premier design school in Italy? Nope, this isn’t the start of a joke. It’s this week’s featured project!

The Scuola Politecnica di Design (affectionately known as SPD) is a postgrad design school in Milan, Italy.

Strap on your swimmies because Norwegian photographer Ivar Kvaal is literally taking us under the sea in this Project of the Week. Not only does the exterior of Snøhetta's restaurant Under just descend into the ocean like it's starring in The Hunt For Red October, but inside, you dine in a lair fit for a supervillain.

Large bold shapes, vibrant colors, perfectly captured repetition, contrast through lighting and color, and a whole lot of texture; This week’s featured project is a shining example of visual hierarchy at work.

In the small Moroccan town of Laayoune lies the Universite Ibn Zohr.

Just nine miles south of the razzle and dazzle of Las Vegas lies Henderson, Nevada. This sweeping desert town houses fossils, state parks, and an architectural gem: Ascaya. Although it broke ground in 2004, Ascaya – a luxurious custom home community – screeched to a halt during the recession.

Australian architecture is such an interesting mix of modern and tropical design. Built to contend with the harsh temperatures and elements, these homes are never boring and almost always beautiful. Enter Murray Fredericks and his series on Bondi House by the architects at CplusC.

Simon Devitt is a fantastic architectural photographer based in Auckland, New Zealand. Bivvy House is a one-of-a-kind project on New Zealand’s incredible South Island. Here we have what I’d call a match made in architectural photography heaven.

Originally I had set out to feature one of Simon’s other beautiful projects – Scrubby Bay.

Tom Blachford's Midnight Modern project stopped me dead in my tracks. It is essentially everything I love in the universe, wrapped up in one otherworldly series. Mid-century architecture & classic cars, all captured by moonlight.

Patagonia is one of the most extreme and beautiful places on this planet. It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit, so lucky for me, the masterful James Florio is taking us on a visual adventure to an incredible hotel there.

This week’s featured project takes place at architect Cazú Zegers Hotel Tierra Patagonia.

This week we're back in Brazil, but this time with the great Maíra Acayaba. Three hours outside of São Paulo lies the Gonçalves municipality, home to our featured project, Casa Gonçalves by Frederico Sabella Arquitetura. Maíra Acayaba has a stellar body of work as a whole, but Casa Gonçalves is hands down my favorite series. Perched on top of the highest mountain in the Gonçalves region, the house sits among the clouds. Maíra had to split the shoot into two days to combat the fast-moving fog and cloud cover that came and went.

On this episode of Project of the Week, we’re teleporting you to the Norwegian wilderness. Keeping in line with last week’s moody & broody theme, Swedish architectural photographer Åke Lindman has documented Kolman Boye's Vega Cottage complete with foggy exteriors and soft-lit interiors. The atmosphere of this set renders it worthy of Project of the Week, so let's dive on in!

Xiao Yin Architecture Design Firm's "Ranwu Lake Campsite" has been so masterfully documented by the crew at Arch-Exist Photography that I felt like I was transported there, and I can't stop looking at this set of photographs. What I admire most about this series by Arch-Exist is how they captured the structures of the campground in tandem with the environment of Ranwu Lake, all with plenty of mood. Contrary to most architecture photography that's put out into the world, this set is dark and deep and a bit otherworldly feeling.

Feast your eyes on the National Museum of Qatar, a structure masterfully designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, and documented in equal mastery by Slovenian photographer Danica O. Kus. The museum is an enormous sprawling building that looks out onto the Persian Gulf. A union of various "disks," the museum is subject to such interesting highlights and shadows thrown by the harsh Qatar sun. The time of day Danica chose to photograph the exterior shows off the dimensionality of the building nicely.

In this Project of the Week, photographer Montse Zamorano makes a gas station look - dare I say - sexy! The flagship CEPSA fueling station by Malka + Portús Arquitectos in Spain is a sight to behold. Montse did a perfect job of conveying the station's beautiful design overhaul, focusing on the new tech, usability, and the focal point of the entire project, that incredible canopy.