Concrete

Paul Rudolph’s New York penthouse has lots of levels. Even today, architectural history is divided on the true significance of the building in which Rudolph lived with his partner Ernst Wagner.

Extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner has collected many things on his expeditions. He presents the items arranged thematically in the “Messner Mountain Museums” chain. The sixth and final one designed by Zaha Hadid has just opened.

Textile research institutes and corporations have in recent years researched fiber-based alternative construction materials and developed products ready for market destined to replace classic materials like steel.

At this year’s BAU in Munich manufacturers didn’t really seem to have that much thirst for the future. The industry is stuck between pragmatism and risk minimization, which impacts on architecture for sure.

Gottfried Böhm’s oeuvre is immense and even with 95 work still has a firm hold on him. We congratulate the first German Pritzker Prize winner to his birthday and take you on a journey in time through five of his buildings in Cologne.

Guaranteed no “themed giant flumes” or “hot whirlpool” at Álvaro Siza’s “Piscinas de Marés”. Here you can immerse yourself in Portuguese Modernism.

Forget about the mixed sauna! In Bochum, people not only analyze urban interstices, they also get in a sweat all by themselves.

The “Lina Bo Bardi: Together” exhibition at Deutsches Architektur Zentrum (DAZ) in Berlin focuses on an architect who came to fame as a passionate champion of subsidized building in Brazil. Yet she remained an outsider at the “Escola Paulista”.

Budapest’s fourth metro line opened this spring. Hopes of additional urban development projects are associated with this infrastructure project.

In 1996, Austro-American architect Raimund Abraham designed his “House for Music”. Today, 18 years later, the unusual home for music is now built – on the missile base of Stiftung Insel Hombroich nr. Neuss in the Rhineland.

What happens to military installations when they are no longer needed? Examples from Germany and the Netherlands show what potential such places have.

The exhibition “In Beton gegossen” (Cast in concrete), on show in Stuttgart’s Architekturgalerie am Weissenhof from February 27 to April 6, pays tribute to the oeuvre of Ulrich Müther, whose extraordinary reinforced concrete shell structures were a cut above East German architecture at the time.

The tower of Goethe University Frankfurt’s Educational Department has been demolished. The building was just 42 years old. An obituary.

The exhibition “Think global, build social” at the DAM in Frankfurt shows how architects support social building projects in developing countries, in a sustainable and communal fashion – using local materials. Yet many questions go unanswered.

The Boston City Hall is one of the most controversial examples of American Brutalism. Once celebrated as avant-garde, today it gets greeted only with scorn - and is gradually falling apart.

Concrete is by no means simply gray and monotonous. Recent years have seen the development of numerous new concretes that reveal the various uses to which it can be put.

The new Material Edition will showcase many other types of concrete including, for example, glass-foam concrete, translucent concrete, colored and recycled concrete. Be inspired by the sheer wealth of possible uses!

Concrete is the epitome of the Neues Bauen movement and linked inseparably to Modernism. Yet despite the multifarious opportunities for use it still has a hard time being perceived in terms of its aesthetic qualities as well.