Sam Lubell

1 month ago | metropolismag.com | Sam Lubell

At a time when optimism is in short supply and the virtual dominates real experience, the idea of convening for another World Expo seems…quaint. Yet Expo 2025 Osaka, which opened to the public on April 13 on a man-made island in Osaka Bay, is a reminder that the institution can still teach us. The event’s goal—like those of most Expos—is to gather the countries of the world to respond to our most urgent challenges.

1 month ago | latimes.com | Sam Lubell

The fundamental way most homes are built in America — the labor-intensive process of constructing conventional wood framing on site — hasn’t changed much for more than a century, even though more industrial methods and technologies have long held the potential to be faster, cheaper or more reliable. In Sweden, for instance, 90% of single-family homes are prefabricated — entire buildings, or large portions, constructed in a factory for efficiency and then assembled quickly on site, said Ryan E.

1 month ago | metropolismag.com | Sam Lubell

John Friedman Alice Kimm Architects (JFAK)’s Palm Springs Homeless Navigation Center, which opened at the end of last year, is one of a new generation of nurturing, multifunctional facilities transforming the way we think about housing the unhoused.

2 months ago | bostonglobe.com | Sam Lubell

For the foreseeable future, a school that burned during the fires in Los Angeles this year will call a retrofitted Sears home. Students and teachers at Palisades Charter High School have met online since a wildfire swept through Pacific Palisades in January and decimated their school building and many of their homes.

2 months ago | metropolismag.com | Sam Lubell

The LMN Architects–designed Summit Building reinvents the convention hall as a light-filled urban connector—and is one of few worldwide to achieve LEED Platinum certification. By: Sam LubellThe very earliest convention centers—exquisite, soaring amalgams of art and technology designed to showcase innovations in the most innovative way possible—were some of history’s great buildings, like the Crystal Palace in London (1851) and the Palais de l’Industrie in Paris (1855).