Dar San Rokku, located in in Ħaż-Żebbuġ, has received an Honourable Mention in the Adaptive Reuse – Residential category at The Architect’s Newspapers Best of Design 2024 Awards.

Every year for the past 12 years AN has celebrated outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects over a range of categories through their Best of Design Awards, a unique project-based awards program which showcases great buildings, building elements, interiors, and installations, with this edition being spread over 53 categories.

The Best of Design jury selects winners and honourable mentions based on several criteria, including strength of the presentation, evidence of innovation, creative use of new technology, sustainability, and good design, with winning projects being featured on the AN website.

Dar San Rokku converts a16th century nondescript vernacular heritage building into a three-bedroom home. The central design intervention is a colonnaded walkway that floats over an inner courtyard and above Triq il-Kbira, activating the conversion with new circulation and animating the street below. The façade extension was designed with controlled transparency, activation, and rhythm in mind – enlisting the formal qualities of the Mediterranean ‘loggia’ as a means to temper an otherwise solid façade, where an elevated walkway unites two ends of the home. Aside from fragmenting the facade, the loggia works as a subtle activation device – building visual rapport between the village street and the life within the house and bringing contemporaneity to a timeless architectural device – building a permeable threshold between street and home.

The Architect’s Newspaper (AN) is based in New York and has been in circulation for over 20 years. Seven annual print editions are published, with each issue containing industry news and commentary, critique and project previews—led by editors with both a critical eye and a sense of levity.