Articles by Camilla Ghisleni

In 1962, the architect Buckminster Fuller envisioned a floating city that would free humanity from its dependence on the Earth. The speculative project consisted of enormous geodesic spheres that would naturally levitate in air warmed by the sun and be anchored to mountaintops. Designed to house thousands of people, Fuller’s Cloud Nine aimed to ease land ownership pressures, address housing shortages, and contribute to environmental preservation.

Architecture can no longer be conceived as an isolated object, detached from the technical networks that sustain contemporary life — a condition that calls for new readings and approaches. It is within this context that, in March, ArchDaily’s monthly theme focused on The Technosphere, a topic both broad and inherently complex. Drawing on the concept of the technosphere, coined by geoscientist Peter Haff to describe the totality of human-made artifacts, a landscape emerges in which contemporary life is deeply intertwined with machines, data, and energy networks.

At a time when satellites orbit the planet, submarine cables sustain the global flow of data, and algorithms organize everyday life, a question emerges within architecture: at what scale are we actually designing today?

Viewpoints are structures designed for observing the landscape from elevated positions. Set within natural settings or urban environments, they act as devices that organize the gaze and establish a direct relationship between the body and the territory. At this threshold between observer and landscape, viewpoints can take on a wide range of configurations, from subtle gestures to monumental structures, always responding to their specific context. Regardless of scale, they are — to some extent — attempts to domesticate vastness: precise framings that make legible what, without mediation, might otherwise appear as excess.

Ambulance for Monuments is a first-aid initiative dedicated to safeguarding Romania‘s endangered built heritage, operating in a race against time to prevent collapse and irreversible loss. The project responds to the growing vulnerability of historic structures, from Saxon fortified churches and manor houses to wooden churches and rural landmarks, many of which no longer benefit from the community networks that once sustained them. In a country deeply affected by emigration since 1990, where nearly half the population still lives in rural areas, entire villages have lost the people, skills, and everyday care that once kept these monuments standing.

Symbols of technological development and urban density, tall buildings as we know them today emerged in the late nineteenth century, particularly in the United States, as a response to the rapid expansion of urban commerce and the need to grow cities without occupying additional land. The term skyscraper, for instance, was coined in the 1880s and originally referred to buildings with around 10 to 20 stories—an impressive height for the time.

The relationship between architecture and gastronomy goes beyond the simple function of providing a place to eat. It is a sensory symbiosis in which the environment prepares the palate as much as seasoning does. The visual composition of a dish can be understood through principles such as volume, balance, contrast, and rhythm — concepts that are equally fundamental to architectural design. In the same way, a restaurant’s architecture — its colors, lighting, and material choices — acts as an invisible ingredient, capable of elevating the dining experience and shaping the perception of flavor even before the first bite. Both disciplines are dynamic, directly reflecting social behaviors and cultural trends that influence how we occupy space and how we nourish ourselves.

Education and culture have long been established as strategic pillars for promoting profound social transformation. In this context, the quality of physical infrastructure is not merely a functional concern, but a structural element in the implementation of consistent public policies — especially in territories marked by urban precarity, historical inequality, and institutional fragility. Within this framework, school architecture can assume a role that extends far beyond the classroom, becoming a catalyst for social transformation.

When we enter a museum, walk through a historic center, or review a country’s list of protected heritage sites, we rarely think about the process behind those choices. Who decided, on behalf of all of us, that certain objects, places, and architectures deserved to be preserved and disseminated, while others were discarded?

When placing a house on its site, one of the first steps is to recognize the territory that surrounds it, identifying its potentials and tensions. In this process, we inevitably select, cut, hide, or enhance certain views, shaping the architectural experience according to the sensations we wish to foster.