Every architect has a drawer full of them: the projects that never got built. It’s a rite of passage. And honestly, each one carries lessons I still use today.

In my latest video, I walk through the five most meaningful unbuilt designs in my career. Projects that shaped how I see light, structure, space… and disappointment.

But there wasn’t room for all of them. So, in this issue, I’m sharing two extra projects that didn’t make the video both responding to the same brief in completely different ways.

🎥 Watch the video here →🗳 Vote for your favorite unbuilt project →

A small-scale housing project that explored visual permeability, thermal buffering, and urban friendliness by repositioning the courtyard and prioritizing bike infrastructure. We redesigned the units to optimize daylight, but in the end, the developer pulled the plug due to market pressures.

This school addition reimagined classroom orientation by bringing light in from the front and opening the corridor to the outside under a generous pergola. It was designed to work with—not against—the existing playground, but didn’t make it past the competition stage.

Designed as a circle to protect children and avoid urban chaos, this daycare centered play and passive climate design through an inverse panopticon layout. It was deeply personal, reflecting my own parenting experience, which made the rejection sting even more.

This building curved between trees without ever touching them, housing a café, classroom, and exhibition space in full dialogue with the forest. The idea was to create a tension between the horizontality of the building and the verticality of the trees.

My most ambitious design: a spiraling tower where daylight entered only from above, symbolizing surrender as you ascend toward the sky. It was powerful, unconventional, and likely too radical to be built but it still shapes how I think about light and space

For this extension we were approached with a very clear demand “We want to add as much space as possible!”. There was no real program, just a real demand for space.

The problem however was that the plot was already quite densely built. The areas that where not built where covered by important trees which we were not willing to knock down, and neither where they.

We identified for our intervention 2 zones. The red and the purple one here on the plan. We first decided to go for the red one as it was clear and away from the trees and making use of a part of the plot which was really not exploited at all.

We proposed a project that had no internal corridor. This stems from a double logic. On one end we did not want to have “extra” space that had to be mechanically conditioned. At the same time we felt that corridors should be avoided in these kind of spaces unless they can serve a double purpose.

There was yet a third reason, and this was that it allowed for this new external space to serve as a buffer between our new building and the existing one. This was technically a very good idea as it would save costs   given that we were now not approaching the foundations of the existing building.

We wanted this extension to hide and create patios where privacy was required. Unfortunately, the neighbor started creating trouble, scaring my client and we ultimately had to drop this project and we started exploring further the other area we identified, the purple one.

This new proposal was mandated by the trees and served to articulate the relationship between all the existing buildings that made up the cultural center.

We proposed a terrace area that could be used as an additional courtyard. This space could also be used to connect all the buildings without having to go through our new proposed building.

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🎬 Shorts of the WeekThis week’s two Shorts are here! The first reveals a subtle design mistake I discovered mid-project. The second is a shoutout to an app I genuinely love — Morpholio — which has become part of how I design on the go. (No, this isn’t sponsored… yet.)

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You’ve asked for it! (no you didn’t actually, but we didn’t ask for the Ipad either and we still got it).

The “Green Ginger series” is coming up as of this Tuesday and every Tuesday at 17:00 CET. It will be a series of shorts dedicated exclusively to bite-sized, actionable sustainability concepts.First one drops Tuesday, June 3rd.

✍️ Final ThoughtUnbuilt doesn’t mean unworthy. Every project I’ve shared in this issue — even the abandoned ones — has sharpened how I design, how I listen, and how I fight for an idea. Sometimes what doesn’t get built shapes the architect more than what does.

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Have a project of your own where fresh eyes could help?I open a few slots every week for deep, high-value consultations. Let’s talk.

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As always, thank you all for your support,

M.Arch. Pedro Augspach

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