ARCHITECTURE Budapest concrete5/26/2014Budapest’s fourth metro line opened this spring. Hopes of additional urban development projects are associated with this infrastructure project.
ARCHITECTURE The dreamed-up house5/19/2014With the Director’s Villa and the Moholy-Nagy House the ensemble of Gropius’ master houses in Dessau is complete again – and that includes a wall and the Mies van der Rohe kiosk. Repairs, reconstruction or radical reinterpretation, ghastly houses or gesamtkunstwerk, experiment or irritant?
ARCHITECTURE Disc music5/14/2014In 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.
ARCHITECTURE May we introduce Rupert?5/12/2014In an idyllic countryside near Lithuania's capital Vilnius, the Rupert Art and Education Centre offers artists and designers a working retreat. It was designed by Audrius Ambrasas, one of the country’s most famous architects.
ARCHITECTURE World panorama and digitalized top4/28/2014The days where information could simply be provided are long since over. Today the news is dished up, explained, elaborated on in depth, and commentary given. The design of news studios plays an important role in this regard. Among others, the new “Tagesschau” studio for Germany’s ARD channel shows just how many things can change around a news desk.
ARCHITECTURE Architecture’s creative struggle4/18/2014Architecture as a non-artistic discipline struggles between being a creative process and functional parameters. How could architecture transcend its eternal dilemma: the obligation to be critical in the face of inescapable submission?
ARCHITECTURE Going local: Tatiana Bilbao4/3/2014Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao makes buildings that sensitively engage with the specifics of the locations where they are erected. The result is an architecture that is pleasantly bemusing.
FEATURED Light and yet precious4/1/2014Van Cleef & Arpels has been a first class address on New York’s Fifth Avenue since the 1930s. Following necessary renovation work, the designers at the Jouin Manku Studio set about refurnishing the legendary jewelry store, drawing inspiration from New York Art Déco in their planning.
ARCHITECTURE Smart Cities – Big Data, Civic Hackers, and The Quest For A New Utopia4/1/2014In the cities of tomorrow high-tech networks are expected to make everyday life a lot easier. But the more complex the systems become, the more error-prone they get. Anthony M. Townsend confronts us with the extremely fragile systems of permanent enhancing efficiency.
ARCHITECTURE Architecture with an encore: Rojkind Arquitectos3/31/2014In a previous life Michel Rojkind played the drums for “La Gente Normal”, one of Mexico’s hottest rock bands. Luckily for us, he didn’t stay in music but decided to make architecture instead.
ARCHITECTURE Museum with a hair-do3/30/2014The new Jumex Museum in Mexico City by Chipperfield Architects speaks a pleasant, restrained architectural language.
ARCHITECTURE Derek Dellekamp’s fine feel for interspace3/26/2014Derek Dellekamp is one of the group of architects who helped rebuild the architectural scene in Mexico following the economic crisis there in the 1980s and 1990s. A portrait of one of the protagonists in Mexican architecture who is still successful today.
ARCHITECTURE Producing architecture3/26/2014Productora – stands for unusual yet pragmatic furniture by four young architects from Argentina, Mexico and Belgium, respectively.
ARCHITECTURE Book treasures in the Tobacco Factory3/26/2014The “La Ciudadela” is an example for a sensible restoration of an historical building, showing the flexibility of its use – and how wonderful it is to be surrounded by books.
ARCHITECTURE More space for moving images3/26/2014Rojkind Architectos’ National Cinematheque in Mexico City offers not only new spaces for the film museum and film archive, the architects also created a new public space for open air film events.
ARCHITECTURE 10 of the over-40s3/21/2014Anyone visiting Mexico City should put aside some time to visit the marvelous buildings erected in the megapolis before 1980. We’ve compiled a hit list of the ten most interesting buildings aged over 40.
ARCHITECTURE Book machine3/20/2014The Vasconcelos Library by the architect Alberto Kalach combines a library and a botanical garden – and looks like a version of Cedric Price’s Fun Palace.
ARCHITECTURE Culture in Construction3/20/2014Javier Sanchez Arquitectos and Arquitectura 911sc have modernized a building in Mexico City which dates from the 18th century and is now used by the Spanish Cultural Center.
ARCHITECTURE Mextropoli3/18/2014Mexican architecture journal Arquine is hosting a conference for the 15th time. This year it centers on the Mexico City metropolis and is accompanied by a highly diverse festival program.
ARCHITECTURE Mexico City’s Gordian knot3/18/2014Almost everything is a challenge in this megalopolis with over 20 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area that includes 40 municipalities of the State of Mexico. Alejandro Hernández Gálvez, chief editor at the mexican architecture magazine Arquine, explains why.
ARCHITECTURE London's change of things3/7/2014London engages modernity on its own terms: hosting modern architecture without ever really entering into the obligation to modernize as a city.
ARCHITECTURE The mastermind of building shells from Rügen2/26/2014The 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.
ARCHITECTURE Missing Link2/26/2014A waterfront sullied by Frankfurt Airport’s oil tank farm and a gap in the network of cycling routes that begged to be closed precisely at this spot: Raunheim’s new oil harbor bridge is a structure that self-confidently stands out in what is otherwise a surreal environment.
ARCHITECTURE Bad weather pool2/12/2014In the Netherlands the number of days with strong precipitation increased to 85 percent. What to do with all the water in a sealed city like Rotterdam? With their concept for Rotterdam’s Benthemplein square, the architects and planners at De Urbanisten demonstrate how water management can be incorporated into urban square design.
ARCHITECTURE Campus Kramer2/11/2014An exhibition in the Frankfurt Museum Angewandte Kunst focusing on the furniture of designer Ferdinand Kramer. But his product designs remain tied to his architectural legacy, which is well worth taking a look at.
ARCHITECTURE The selfie façade2/6/2014“Selfie-ism”, the well-known phenomenon of uploading cell-phone photos onto social media platforms, is now also possible on building façades. Architect Asif Khan has created a façade that portrays three-dimensional faces.
ARCHITECTURE Good illumination2/6/2014Media façades tend to be viewed with a critical eye – at least by architects. Indeed, many are just a glowing, in the worst case, flashing form of decoration for mediocre architecture. But is everything that flashes instantly bad?
ARCHITECTURE AfE-Tower 1972 – 20142/4/2014The tower of Goethe University Frankfurt’s Educational Department has been demolished. The building was just 42 years old. An obituary.
ARCHITECTURE Holidays with Tito2/2/2014The legendary statesman had a penchant for luxurious hotel complexes. These and others are now featuring in the illustrated volume “Holidays after the Fall”: A photographic journey to the architectural legacy of the heyday of tourism in socialist Croatia.
ARCHITECTURE Locomotive Breath1/29/2014Wildau Technical University of Applied Sciences stands on the grounds of what was once Europe’s largest locomotive factory. The old and new buildings together form a highly attractive campus on Berlin’s doorstep.
ARCHITECTURE N minus X – to read is to learn, part 31/23/2014The stack’s getting smaller, but the work of remembering what was left lying is not yet at an end. Because quite a lot has accumulated as regards architecture and the museum.
ARCHITECTURE N minus X – to read is to learn, part 11/15/2014Each time a new year begins, one is beset by a strange sense of disquiet. As though we needed to fight off a virus, we start tidying up. And in so doing, come across piles of books that deserve to be ignored no longer. So, here we go – let’s take a look at what we’ve got.
FEATURED Efficient light in Geneva1/14/2014The new WTO building is a persuasive mix of transparency, clarity and a lot of light. Stuttgart's wittfoht architekten chose LED luminaires by Nimbus for the job.
