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The Architecture Archive
Before the calculators, Urbarama was an architecture atlas. These are the project profiles other publications still cite — restored.
From 2008 to 2023, Urbarama catalogued notable buildings around the world, and the atlas collected links from publications, universities and magazines — links that mostly pointed at pages which no longer existed. Rather than leave the strongest of those citations landing on a homepage, we have rebuilt the six profiles that are still actively linked: a volcano museum in the Azores that New York Magazine sends its readers to, a Colombian library from BuzzFeed’s list of the world’s most breathtaking libraries, a Swiss pavilion made of fog, London’s first zero-carbon neighbourhood, a serpent-shaped housing complex in Mexico, and a buried winery in Catalonia.
Each profile is rewritten from published sources, which are listed on the page — the same standard the calculators follow. The rest of the atlas stays retired; these six earned their way back.
Capelinhos Volcano Interpretation Centre
A museum buried in volcanic ash beside the lighthouse the 1957 eruption swallowed, on the Azorean island of Faial.
ArchitectureVillanueva Public Library
A library of river stone and pine in Casanare, Colombia, designed by four young architects and built by its own town.
ArchitectureBlur Building
Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s walk-in cloud on Lake Neuchâtel — a pavilion of fog, built for Expo.02 and dismantled within the year.
ArchitectureBedZED
The Beddington Zero Energy Development — 82 homes in Hackbridge, London, designed in 2002 to run carbon-neutral.
ArchitectureQuetzalcoatl’s Nest
Ten apartments inside a giant serpent — Javier Senosiain’s organic-architecture landmark in Naucalpan, Mexico.
ArchitectureBell-lloc Winery
RCR Arquitectes’ underground cellar of rusted steel at Palamós — a winery buried in the soil that grows its grapes.
Urbarama today is a calculator hub for remodeling projects — the practical math of the built home. The archive is the site’s memory. See About & methodology for how both are put together.
About the author
Harrison Alley is a web publisher and data enthusiast based in Dallas, Texas. He built Urbarama’s remodeling calculators and maintains them.
Harrison Alley on LinkedIn