PLINTH Est. 2011
PLINTH
Issue No. 47Summer 2026The Vertical City

Buildings that argue with the skyline.

PLINTH is an international review of architecture, urbanism, and the structures that shape how we live — reported from the studios, sites, and cities where the built world is being redrawn.

Enter the Issue ↓
N 50.8503° · E 4.3517°
Featured Projects

Structures worth the detour

01 / Portfolio — 4 Selected Works
Completed 2025

Meridian Tower

Kallio & Voss ArchitectsSingapore68 Storeys

A tapering glass spire whose faceted skin twists eleven degrees from base to crown, engineered to shed monsoon winds while reducing solar gain across its office floors by a third.

Completed 2024

The Kiln Cultural Centre

Odalys FerreiraPorto, Portugal

Board-formed concrete galleries wrapped around a sunken courtyard, referencing the ceramic kilns once fired on the site.

Completed 2025

Sequoia Commons

Hearth CollectivePortland, USA

A mass-timber co-housing block with a planted roofline, built almost entirely from cross-laminated spruce.

Completed 2023

Aurora Plaza

Studio Ren BijlRotterdam, Netherlands1.2 Hectares

A tidal plaza with a folded timber canopy that doubles as flood infrastructure, holding back the Nieuwe Maas during storm surges while hosting markets on dry days.

Urban Design

The city as a working draft

02 / Essays & Reporting
01
Why the 15-minute city keeps getting redrawn

Three planning departments, three definitions of "nearby" — and what that disagreement reveals about how cities actually get built.

→ 02
The alley is making a comeback

Once written off as leftover space, service lanes are being reclaimed as pedestrian streets in Seoul, Melbourne, and Mexico City.

→ 03
Parking minimums, in retreat

A decade after the first minimum-parking repeals, the data on what replaced the asphalt is finally coming in.

→ 04
Who gets to name a neighbourhood

Branding a district reshapes who feels welcome in it. A look at the naming disputes following four major regeneration schemes.

→
Sustainable Architecture

Building within a carbon budget

03 / Materials & Method
Case Study

The solar canopy as civic roof

At the Meridian Market Hall, a lattice of photovoltaic panels does double duty as shade structure and power plant, generating more energy across the year than the building beneath it consumes.

128%Annual energy surplus
0Fossil fuel connections
1,900 m²Panel array
Case Study

The Green Spine, Milan

Terraced balconies planted with over forty native species act as a second skin, cutting indoor summer temperatures by four degrees without mechanical cooling.

4°CPassive cooling
3,000Trees & shrubs
62%Embodied carbon cut
Latest News

Dispatches from the drafting table

04 / This Week
08 Jul 2026 Copenhagen approves timber-first building code for public commissions Policy 05 Jul 2026 Kallio & Voss unveil second phase of the Meridian district masterplan Projects 01 Jul 2026 Venice Biennale names curatorial theme for next architecture exhibition Culture 27 Jun 2026 Lagos breaks ground on elevated rail spine designed to double as flood defence Infrastructure 21 Jun 2026 Studio Ren Bijl wins competition for Rotterdam's new maritime archive Competitions
Featured Architects

The people behind the drawings

05 / Profiles

Elin Kallio

Principal, Kallio & Voss

Known for climate-responsive towers across Southeast Asia, including the Meridian Tower featured in this issue.

Odalys Ferreira

Founder, Ferreira Atelier

A specialist in concrete restoration and adaptive reuse, working almost exclusively with existing structures.

Ren Bijl

Founder, Studio Ren Bijl

Designs public space as infrastructure, treating flood defence and civic gathering as the same design problem.

Tomas Hearth

Director, Hearth Collective

Leads a cooperative practice building mass-timber housing across the American Pacific Northwest.

About Plinth

A record of what gets built, and why.

PLINTH was founded in 2011 by a small group of architecture critics who thought the discipline deserved coverage with the same rigour as science or foreign policy — not just glossy renderings, but the budgets, disputes, and trade-offs behind them.

Today the magazine publishes six print issues a year alongside daily digital reporting, with contributing editors based in London, Lagos, São Paulo, and Seoul. We take no advertising from developers or material manufacturers whose work we cover, and every project featured in these pages is visited in person by a member of our editorial team.

Our name refers to the plinth: the base course that carries a building's load into the ground. We think good criticism does the same for a discipline — unglamorous, load-bearing, and easy to overlook until it isn't there.

47Issues published
14Countries on staff
1,200+Projects reviewed
2011Founded
Masthead
Ingrid SolheimEditor-in-Chief
Marcus AdebayoManaging Editor
Priya NakamuraUrbanism Editor
Diego SalcedoPhoto Director
Elena VossSustainability Editor
Haruto IshidaArt Director
Editorial Standards

Every feature is fact-checked against public planning records and confirmed directly with the architect of record before publication. Corrections are printed in full in the following issue.

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