Featured Project

Sulfurcell's solar modules are so ingeniously made that they form an almost perfectly smooth surface, interrupted only by the finest of seams.

Sergei Tchoban is an outstanding architect, and the same applies to his drawing talents. The German architect with Russian roots has provided three drawings to enrich our thematic block on "Invisibility - Out of Sight" and in so doing offered a completely new perspective on the theme.

Today, architecture has a close kinship with the atmospheric environment. Although systems exhibiting a light-handed approach to technical sophistication are considerably less spectacular in terms of their metaphoric qualities than are domed cities or adventure installations made of nothing but atomized water, they make direct use of the effect and the experience of space. It is surely no accident that in doing so, many new systems strive for climatic and aesthetic efficiency.

In the Netherlands, the detached home of the De Haas-Bierings family, with its many large openings, clear routes inside the house, and the use of a reduced range of materials, is a veritable spatial experience.

The meaning of air conditioning is to create a pleasant ambient climate for people in the room. The goal: A climate that ensures the health and comfort of the users. The use of room cooling surfaces, in particular cooling ceilings, is the best way to meet these high standards.

"Light is a medium that is not visible, but that renders things visible," is one of the key ideas that Erco tries to realize, a company that has traditionally focused on our perception of light.

The fittings, attached to the door leaf in reduced form and material, are in fact the only indication of there being a door at all, and are complemented by corresponding aids geared to getting closer to a flush door. A look "behind the scenes" of the door is well worthwhile.

Today, façades do more than merely provide a building with an external boundary or adorn it with an attractive envelope. Above all where energy efficiency is concerned, the function of the façade itself is evolving. And when lighting is allowed to enhance a room without the source of the light getting in the way, the things we are not forced to see become perceptible.

A golden house in Munich is the new company headquarters of pro aurum GmbH. With a volume of some 8,000 cubic meters, its size corresponds to the amount of gold mined to date worldwide. The building combines symbolic architecture with interesting, functional features.

Small, black, multifunctional: The "la candida" community center in Buenos Aires uses a butterfly roof to expand the glazed wall areas and thus brings the garden into the house.

Sergei Tchoban is an outstanding architect, and the same applies to his drawing talents. The German architect with Russian roots has provided three drawings to enrich our thematic block on "Invisibility - Out of Sight" and in so doing offered a completely new perspective on the theme.

Lighting systems that are almost unnoticeably integrated into the ceiling system ensure that the room does not compete with the lighting as the two blend almost perfectly.

In a densely populated district, in the midst of prefabricated buildings and high-rises, a whitewashed dwelling for multiple occupants catches the eye. The building's edges have been angled such that it seems to be attempting to avoid being crushed.

Whether the objective is improving the acoustics of a room, cooling it or heating it, today there are technical solutions that accomplish the desired results without attracting attention to themselves and aesthetically overburdening a space.

A fine, almost invisible channel serves as the water run-off for the shower.

Pleasant ambient comfort is not just a matter of warmth in the room, as the temperature of the outside walls also plays a part. Alongside external heaters that simply warm up ambient air, there are also heating systems integrated into the wall that deliver pleasant radiant heat akin to that from a tiled stove - and yet remain invisible.

Façade constructions usually consist of two individual components which often have to be laboriously adjusted to one another to satisfy the developer's aesthetic requirements and functional demands. But it can be done differently.

A house in the Japanese town of Otake with spacious open and white zones forms a marvelous frame for an almost limitless panorama.

The Art College and Galerie Stihl in Waiblingen both shimmer milky white, playing with the light, seemingly light, and lit up at night.

Acoustics are becoming an ever more important criterion in the planning and outfitting of interiors.

Discretion is a fine thing. What we don't need to see relieves the burden on our eyes. Where a building's appearance recedes subtly into the background and systems that are essential for a building's functionality are no longer visible, it opens up manifold possibilities for design.

What people expect of an office has changed down through time. Today, they are expected to be versatile, flexible, transparent, communicative and yet at the same time offer secluded, acoustically sealed rooms. Designing a glass dividing wall is a special challenge.

Sky-Frame is a frameless high-tech sliding window system that can be fitted flush with walls, ceilings, and floors and meets the highest architectural and building standards.

Architecture and the aesthetics of architecture move on rapidly. That said, it is not only the architects who design a building that are involved in this process but also the architecture systems and products that allow them to realize innovative architectural solutions. In the coming weeks, in our focal topic "Invisibility - Out of Sight", we will be presenting a number of these innovative solutions to you. To begin with, we would like to take a look at whether and to what extent we can trust our perception.

Sergei Tchoban is an outstanding architect, and the same applies to his drawing talents. The German architect with Russian roots has provided three drawings to enrich our thematic block on "Invisibility - Out of Sight" and in so doing offered a completely new perspective on the theme.

In a small house in Amsterdam, the interior fittings are in a restrained all-over white, and certainly recede into the background when they contrast with a green wall covered in ivy.

Flexible usage is becoming increasingly important when designing office and event rooms. The idea is to enable rooms to be adjusted flexibly to their individual requirements.

Spanish architect Enric Ruíz Geli has crossed the borders between industry and art by combining traditional materials with latest-generation materials.

The new Convention Center in Zaragoza takes up the theme of "water" by creating the impression of a water surface in motion.

On the exterior, a rainscreen cladding system of brightly colored fiber cement panels are arranged in a seemingly random distribution pattern to animate the facade and to speak to the center's youthful orientation and re-birth of a community.

Owing to technical shortcomings, the building Max Bächer designed on Stuttgart's Königstrasse, erected in 1974 and boasting an almost sculpturally staggered façade, has been given a new skin. The old façade...

This standardised fastening system, called Tennect, by Carl Stahl, is the first of its kind. It was introduced to the european public at Deubau 2010 in Essen.

The Swissbau trade fair in Basel is a clearly structured and excellent overview of the entire construction trade.

The „Water Cube" seems to be sliced from a giant cube of soap-bubble foam. This prestigious project comprises over 100,000 sq.m. of ETFE foils, meaning it is the single largest ETFE structure in the world to date.