dezeen.com

Architecture Club has completed a sculpture studio for Polish artist Monika Sosnowska, featuring board-marked concrete walls and huge windows. Located in Warsaw, the 150-square-metre studio is described by its architects as "a generous light-drenched space for undistracted experimentation". It is a five-metre-high concrete box, with large, bespoke window walls on both the north and the south sides. "Introducing south light into an artist's studio was experimental, but conceptually it was what we wanted," said Krzeminski.

This holiday home in Spain by Laura Álvarez Architecture is built from the walls of a stone ruin and generates more energy that it consumes. It is designed to have minimal impact on its environment, and relies on an air-heat pump with a low-temperature heating system and high-quality insulation to maximise its energy efficiency. The windows are made from high-performance glass, designed to warm up the interior in the winter, while big wooden shutters that sit externally are designed to protect it from heat gain in the summer. In contrast to its exterior, Laura Álvarez Architecture designed Villa Slow's interiors to be bright and minimal, creating a calm atmosphere while retaining focus on the views outside.

Buildings could be cooled with zero energy using the Invert shading system, made from a smart material called thermobimetal that changes shape in response to heat. The invention of architect Doris Sung, Invert looks like a regular decorative shutter, but its metal pieces curl and flip over in the sun, altering how much light and heat can enter a space. Huge amount of energy used to cool buildings Sung, who is based at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, has been working with thermobimetals for years in the hope that they can help cut fossil fuel emissions from the heating and cooling of buildings. The most recent, Fuller at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, was inspired by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome and used the material's special properties for the purposes of connector-free assembly instead of heat regulation.

Haller modular furniture can be used to create a "third space" between the workplace and the home, say Thomas Dienes of USM and Ren Yee of UNStudio in this movie produced by Dezeen during Milan design week. For the second consecutive year, Swiss furniture company USM enlisted Dutch architecture office UNStudio to create a booth at Salone del Mobile for the exhibition of its modular products. Once assembled, the basic Haller frame can be scaled up and reconfigured according to the requirements of the user, as USM demonstrated at last year's Salone del Mobile by housing its booth within a giant Haller grid. This year, Haller units featured throughout the installation but were customised with additional USM products such as soundproof panels and table tops, in order to create four distinct zones.