Metropolis Magazine

Alberto Kritzler is at the Forefront of Regenerative Design in Mexico. The Harvard Loeb Fellow is rethinking water scarcity and abundance through his Reserva el Peñón project in in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Alberto Kritzler is a Mexican developer focused on adaptive reuse, urban density, and living systems. He co-founded REURBANO, a platform in Mexico City that revitalizes buildings, reactivates street life, and reimagines urban living. In the countryside, he founded Reserva el Peñón, a regenerative community protecting a rainforest through collective action and rainwater autonomy. His latest venture, La Laguna, transformed a 90-year-old textile factory into a design-driven co-production hub. A Loeb Fellow at Harvard and MBA graduate from Stanford, Kritzler also serves on the boards of a historic ceramics manufacturer and a B-Corp coffee producer. METROPOLIS spoke with Kritzler about his fellowship and Mexico’s water crisis ⁠📝: Jaxson Stone 📷: Courtesy Alberto Kritzler https://lnkd.in/epQrSpsk

David Kohn Architects Designs a Whimsical Quad for New College Oxford. With distinctive undulating roofs, diamond-patterned stone facades, and a series of stone gargoyles, the addition brings a playful approach to the historic campus. In Britain’s ancient university towns, the term ‘town and gown’ has long been used to describe the adversarial relationship between permanent residents and a transient student population—a divide often reflected in the architecture of its educational institutions. When New College Oxford was founded in 1379, the fortress-like quality of its architecture was intended to protect its students from conflicts like the St Scholastica Day riot of 1355, which resulted in almost 100 deaths among both local citizens and scholars. Its pioneering design brought together all college functions—lodgings, library, chapel and dining hall—around one central, cloistered space: the Front Quadrangle. ⁠📝: Debika Ray 📷: Will Pryce https://lnkd.in/eXNJawde

Momentum Textiles & Wallcovering leads the charge in bio-sourced innovation, setting a new standard in sustainable design. Design without compromise with Momentum’s expanding collection of bio-sourced, high-performance textiles and wallcoverings that embrace renewability, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and lower carbon footprints for a healthier planet. Learn more here: https://hubs.la/Q03bRfR40 #Momentum #Metropolis #Sponsored

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How can we build a better future—together? 🌍 Steel and concrete are major carbon contributors—but innovation is changing the game. New materials and technologies are shaping a more sustainable future in architecture and urban design. Join Vestre's commercial director of USA, Kristoffer Vestre, and the Center for Architecture and Design, San Francisco for an evening of inspiring discussions on how architects, designers, and manufacturers are rethinking materials to reduce environmental impact. 🎤 Moderator: Francisco Brown Senior Editor, Metropolis Magazine 🎙 Panelists: Kristoffer Vestre, Mariana Ricker, Brad Jacobson, FAIA, Tim Sperry 📍 San Francisco | April 3, 2025 🎟 Limited spots – Sign up now: https://lnkd.in/ekyN8Ekp

At the Mellon Foundation, Justin Garrett Moore, FAICP Connects Place and Memory. In the past four years, the Mellon Foundation Humanities in Place grant-making program has given more than $200 million for 263 grants, mainly in the United States. It was a grant from Humanities in Place that helped reopen the playwright August Wilson’s home in Pittsburgh, turning the backyard into an ADA-accessible public performance and gathering space and adding to an ongoing fellowship for early-career artists and playwrights. Another grantee, Ekvn-Yefolecv, an intentional community of Indigenous Maskoke people in Alabama, is building a new eco-lodge, or Vlahoke. The lodge will be a center for linguistic revitalization, cultural expression, ecological design, and regenerative agriculture, reconnecting the Maskoke people to their Alabama home, from which they were forcibly removed 180 years ago. 📝: Laura Raskin 📷: Ekvn-Yefolecv, courtesy Ekvn-Yefolecv https://lnkd.in/ecCg3YE7

How Alloy Aims to Decarbonize Real Estate. The developer behind New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper and first Passive House public school shows us what the building industry could be. New York City’s first all-electric skyscraper, 505 State Street was completed in 2024, it’s elegant with a flatiron footprint, gridded glass facade articulated with aluminum, and shallow wedding cake–like setbacks. It’s also carbon neutral, with all its energy coming from solar utilities. Designed and built by the local developer Alloy Development the 44-story building, which features commercial space on the ground floor and affordable and market-rate rentals above, anchors the Alloy Block, a site where some of the city’s most ambitious experiments in real estate and decarbonization are happening. Adjacent to 505 State are two new public schools—the English-Arabic Khalil Gibran International Academy and the Spanish-English Elizabeth Jennings School for Bold Explorers— designed by Architecture Research Office co-located in a structure designed to Passive House standards (also a first for the city), and a soon-to-be-built Passive residential tower will complete the development. https://lnkd.in/eUNySBap

If there’s one defining trend in American architecture over the last decade, it’s the rediscovery of wood as a construction material. Mass timber buildings—made from large wooden panels, columns, and beams—are rising across North America, with developers racing to construct the tallest wooden tower. A new contender, the 32-story Edison in Milwaukee, just broke ground and is set to claim the title of the tallest mass timber building in the Western Hemisphere. But why are American developers, architects, and builders all timberstruck? 🎧 Hear Columbia University professor and author Lindsey Wikstrom and DLR Group Principal Stephen Cavanaugh unpack the potential of mass timber with Metropolis Magazine Editor in Chief Avinash Rajagopal: https://lnkd.in/eshSsZxC This season of Deep Green is produced in partnership with Mannington Commercial. Image © 2019 Creative Sources Photography / Rion Rizzo

How crazy is this?! I love this fact shared by Avinash Rajagopal of Metropolis Magazine. The reuse economy will be an integral part of architecture, design and construction!

here we gooooo - already onto Season 5?! wild that we made it this far Garr Punnett. and what makes it more fun: The Selling Circular Podcast is partnering with Trellis Group and Circularity 25 to bring you this season! In our first episode of this season we brought on Avinash Rajagopal, Editor-in-Chief at Metropolis Magazine, about their recent publication "Seven Proposals for a Circular Built Environment." The AEC community is shifting towards retrofits, renovations, and reuse and could go further if we had more "Dream Jobs" available like the Deconstruction Maestro, Material Magician, and Interior Turnover Specialist! We’ll be diving even deeper into these ideas at Circularity 25 in Denver (April 29-May 1). Podcasting is great because we can connect from anywhere in the world, but nothing beats the feeling of being in the room with SO many inspiring practitioners who are paving the way to our economic future. #CircularEconomy #Circularity25 #Sustainability #Renovation #Interiors #Architecture #Design #Podcast #SellingCircular #refurbish #trellis