Archive

For the exhibition “Monditalia” 41 teams were asked to design a piece about the country of Italy. The result: a show that is diverse, chaotic and at times pure kitsch.

“Fair Enough” reads the lettering heading the pavilion of the Russian Federation. In other words: Very well! Or could it indeed imply that someone is fed-up with economization? In any case, this pavilion is great fun – while smart and critical at the same time.

Rem Koolhaas has assembled a marvelous architecture biennial that mines Modernism to uncover its foundations in a bid to address the urgent issues of building in the 21st century.

When it comes to designing fragile luminaires that have a minimalist, elegant look-and-feel, Michael Anastassiades, a Cypriot-born designer now living in London, is considered a master in his field. He even succeeds in teasing extraordinary shapes from a solid block of marble.

Traditional tools and techniques governed the aesthetic flavor at Clerkenwell Design Week. Young UK companies like Dare Studio, Deadgood, Case and James UK celebrated their British roots and personalities – presenting a breed of truly British future antiques.

“Yourtopia” is the name Dutch architects SeARCH have given their pavilion located next to Het Nieuwe Instituut. An urban “Walden” and a call for us to leave our comfort zones.

“A structure I have always wanted to demolish” was the title of a design assignment that Arno Lederer gave several times at Stuttgart and Karlsruhe universities. Not that the architect had always been hell-bent on tearing down the buildings belonging to the Stuttgarter Hospitalhof complex. Now he has had them demolished after all – and in their place realized a very convincing alternative that exudes nothing but perfection. Almost.

June 7 sees the opening of the 14th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Rem Koolhaas has chosen the basics of building as the main theme, along with “Absorbing Modernity 1914 – 2014”. So whom has gondoliere Rem welcomed on-board for the ride?

Yukio Hashimoto is one of Japan’s top interior designers and imbues hotels, spas and restaurants with a very special look and feel. Martina Metzner met the architect and asked him how he blends tradition with modern aspects, and why restaurants need dramatic lighting effects.

The architects at Dutch firm Personal Architecture planned the partial refurbishment of the cube complex that Piet Blom built in 1980s Rotterdam. Now the “Supercubes” have been reintegrated into Rotterdam’s urban fabric and society.

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

On the occasion of the fifth annual conference on global urbanism at the Columbia University, New York, Catriona McLaughlin talked to thinker Saskia Sassen about the relation between invisible and visible mobility, the power of open-source-systems and her ongoing research on “urbanizing technology”.

In the Audi-Forum in Ingolstadt the teams in this year’s Audi Urban Future Award allowed the public a first look at their research.

Big Data, sharing systems and super-trains: At the “Mobilities in Cities” conference in New York urban planners, architects and transportation experts met to swap ideas on past, present and future mobility.

With 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?

Can a KIA “Picanto” write design history? Is there even any justification for cars’ continued existence in the future? Journalist Niklas Maak, philosopher Martin Gessmann and architect Max Schwitalla sat down in Cologne to discuss the most popular form of auto-motion.

Designers Vicente García Jiménez and Cinzia Cumini presented their new magical piece for Foscarini in Milan: A spacious ceiling-mounted luminaire that is thoroughly well conceived technologically speaking, and entrancingly light.

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.

In 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.

At long last it’s OK to like postmodern architecture again. Why? Found out in the exhibition “Mission: Postmodern – Heinrich Klotz and the DAM Chamber of Marvels” at Frankfurt’s Deutsches Architekturmuseum.