As we continue our exploration through a year of Domus, the category that embraces all the others, i.e. renovation, also speaks to us of architectures that acquire value the moment they take it on for the community, often at the moment when it is an idea of reuse to gives such value.

And this happens without distinction of function, geography and, above all, scale. We start with Paris, which in 2024 has endeavored a deep self-rethinking, between the reopening of Notre Dame, the restoration of the Grand Palais for the Olympics and the temporary rebirth of the Tati – the former “Galeries Lafayette du pauvre”, as its founder called it – to bring together the international basketball community. From Mad Architects’ gigantic manifesto train station in China to a small club with great importance for another community – surfers in Ghana – we then meet museums rethought in Amsterdam by Marcelis and Cournet, or created inside Scottish palaces by Mecanoo, Wright’s theatre reopened at Taliesin, different visions of different countrysides and houses from Canada to Switzerland that rethink the value of history preserved in the structure, or reflect on the idea of workers’ living, taking it from the 20th century to the present day.

At 7 p.m. on April 15, 2019, the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral—a jewel of 12th-century Gothic architecture and one of the most visited churches in the world—succumbed to flames. Faced with such a severe shock, reconstruction became a national priority. Read more

The Grand Palais represents a certain idea of France, encompassing both its grandeur and adventures. Built in record time from the ashes of the Palais de l’Industrie, this massive complex designed to host the 1900 Universal Exhibition has stood as a new symbol of modernity since its inauguration. As large as the palace of Versailles, it embodies an architectural vision that combines the ideas of splendor and progress. Read more

Founded by young Tunisian immigrant Jules Ouaki in 1948, the Tati department store chain — known for transforming the fashion industry with its low-cost textiles and distinctive pink gingham pattern — debuted in Paris with its flagship store Barbès in the 18th arrondissement, a neighborhood inhabited by immigrant communities from diverse diasporic backgrounds. Read more

Located in the center of Jiaxing, a historic city 100 kilometers southwest of Shanghai, the project replaces an old train station that stood on the site between 1995 and 2019, with an area of only 4,000 square meters, no longer suitable for a rapidly expanding city. Read more

The Perth Museum, restored by the Dutch firm Mecanoo, is one of the iconic sites of Scottish history and culture, now home to arguably the world's most famous piece of sandstone, the Stone of Scone – also known as Stone of Destiny – which for centuries since the times of Edward I Plantagenet has been a source of contention between England and Scotland. Read more

With a collection of around 90,000 works from 1870 to the present day, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is the most important museum of modern and contemporary art in the Netherlands. To celebrate the city's 750th anniversary, the Museum has renovated its entrance spaces to make them more accessible and attractive to the entire community, with the aim of bringing an increasingly heterogeneous public closer to the world of art. Read more

In Simala, a small town in Sardinia, Martino Picchedda’s studio has transformed an old ruin into a new public place. What was once a house thus opens up to the outdoors, the thicket of plants that haunted the abandoned place lets the stone pavement and wall fragments describe a new idea of space, and what was once an entrance archway lets the area and its renewed identity be accessed from the street. Read more

In France, on the peninsula of Rhuys, the municipality of Sarzeau has launched an initiative to revive the local wine culture that, for centuries, defined the area, located in the heart of Brittany, for centuries.
This revival of the wine industry has become a project of replanting vineyards and an opportunity to regenerate and restore some of the historic structures that dot the countryside. Read more

A former barn located in an early 20th-century farmhouse in Rosà in the province of Vicenza, Italy, has been transformed into a modern, well-balanced flat by Didonè Comacchio Architects. Once located above a stable, the space has retained some of its original characteristics: the roughness of the bricks and wood, the robustness of the pillars that mark out the rooms, the arched shape of the window at the entrance, and the spatial balance and regularity. Read more