OLE SCHEEREN THE ARCHITECT WHO MADE THE BUILDING TELL A STORY When Architecture Stopped Hiding Its Interior — and Started Performing It to the City By Arindam Bose | Architect / Designer Spotlight | BeEstates Intelligence | Part 20 | AUGUST 2026 ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ Last in this series found Rem Koolhaas at 81, still reading the metropolitan condition the way a journalist reads a scene — arriving after the fact, deciphering what a city has already done, and writing the theory the buildings were waiting for. This week it finds the architect who stood next to him while he did it. Ole Scheeren joined the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam in 1995, at 24. By 2002 he was partner and director of OMA's entire Asian operation — Beijing, Hong Kong, a decade running the most consequential regional practice OMA has ever had. As partner-in-charge, he led the design and thirteen-year realisation of the China ...
THE MASS-TIMBER HIGH-RISE NEXUS When Cross-Laminated Timber Crosses the 20-Storey Regulatory Line Why the Building That Stopped Burning Stone Is Now Growing Out of a Forest Instead — and What Happens When the Wood Has to Come From 8,000 Kilometres Away By Arindam Bose | BeEstates Intelligence | Technology Tuesday | Construction & Technology | August 4, 2026 ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ Every Tuesday, I promise myself I'll stay below the roofline. Two weeks ago the wall started generating electricity. Last week the floor started storing heat like a battery, melting in the afternoon and freezing at night on a schedule set entirely by the sun. I told myself, both times, that I had finally run out of building components with a secret left to reveal. Skin and skeleton and now the ground beneath the furniture — surely that was the whole envelope, accounted for. This week I stopped looking at what a building is covered in and started lookin...