Architecture

The creative Villa Villekulla in Brooklyn, New York serves as the headquarters of the architecture cooperative Terreform ONE. This is where ideas are generated for the city of the day after tomorrow. And where mobile houses and soft cars are designed.

In 1958, a model housing development was built in Budapest, the designs of which derived from a government-organized architecture and design competition. Even though the house designs were subsequently not built in other places, the interior designs laid the foundations for the modern Hungarian furniture industry.

With the exhibition "Small Scale, Big Change", the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is honoring socially motivated architecture from around the world. On display are eleven projects which, detached from the mainstream, help to improve local living conditions. As meager as the means may in some cases be, the impact this commitment to building has is astonishing.

The projects by the artists' and architects' collective "Raumlaborberlin" are far from being conventional. The group of eight, which is at present developing the exhibition architecture for the "Audi Urban Future Award" that is curated by Stylepark, is currently presenting a very special kind of installation at Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Erich Mendelsohn refers to it as "charm", Peter Zumthor as "spiritual quality" when architecture creates an atmosphere that appeals to all the senses, when rooms jingle, light dances, and materials and colors are carefully combined.

Investors and developers usually have their problems with our aesthetic heritage, especially as the cycles of rejection and appreciation in architecture are unlike those in fashion or design. All the same, the discussion on 1960s architecture is currently growing, becoming more vocal and more differentiated.

After Russia, the Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe in terms of area. While the capital Kiev is characterised by monumental edifices from the Stalin era, in the provincial town of Kharkiv one finds masterpieces of Russian constructivism from the 1920s, in total contrast to the town of Lemberg in the Western Ukraine, where time seems to have stood still since the era of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

A young guy is waiting at the traffic lights next to us wearing a machine gun. While wandering along looking in shop windows, we come across a black and white poster with German text referring to the new paper bag by Munich-based designer Saskia Diez. We are in Tel Aviv, on the trail of the largest conjoined ensemble of buildings in the early international style.

In design, interculturality is currently the big hit. Elements from different cultures are being combined in ever more sophisticated ways. However, the reality in cities like Rio de Janeiro provides a very different picture. Soon the favela could become a model of uncontrolled urban growth in Germany too.

Inspired by colourful leaves the architects Tham & Videgård Hansson create a bold composition of colours and patterns, which flow between the rooms of a large 10-room apartment in central Stockholm.

While it was quite by chance that Haruki Murakami came upon the 100% perfect girl one morning, finding the perfect café in Frankfurt will soon be a reality. This is because very shortly, the café at the Schirn Kunsthalle will shine out in new splendour - and boast a completely new hospitality concept.

Sep Ruf's international breakthrough came with the German Pavilion at the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, co-designed jointly by the architect and Egon Eiermann. For a long time, Ruf's fame was confined to the professional world. Now, a major publication of his work has been published to celebrate the centenary of his birth.

The latest issue of Berker Blueprint is dedicated to the Lloyd Hotel in Amsterdam, a former prison which the Dutch architecture studio MVRDV and numerous designers and artists converted into a design-oriented concept hotel.