Luis Fernández-Galiano   Revolution? No, please, we’re British. The famous joke on sex could be applied to other political or aesthetic excesses. Radical changes affecting institutions or appearances have never been popular in Great Britain, and both the ideological revoluti

Peter Buchanan   Petspective on recent architectural history might be best gained by imagining looking back from the future. Commanding attention then are not the individualistic or ephemeral but the typical and influentially innovative, whether technically, stylisti

Deyan Sudjic   In a London experiencing a once in a century restructuring, with the transformation of a succession of run down inner city slums from Clerkenwell to Hoxton into desirable urban neighbourhoods which have followed each other in quick succession to stak

Foster + Partners   United Kingdom   The McLaren Group is a collection of high-tech companies involved in the design and development of Formula One cars, high-performance road cars, electronic systems and composite materials. In Woking, on the outskirts of London, the company has a Tech

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP)   Japan   Located on a mountainous site where the Shiga, Mie and Nara Prefectures meet, the school of Minami Yamashiro – a small village close to Kyoto – enjoys the views of the surrounding landscape from the brow of a hill. As if it were a new city, the build

Grimshaw Architects   United Kingdom   After an uncertain period, Rolls-Royce sold its production rights to BMW, who resolved to design and build a new model called Phantom continuing the tradition of glamour of the classic English car. Because of its strategic location for export and the

Hopkins Architects   United Kingdom   In Norwich’s anglican cathedral, emblematic temple of the old English city, a restaurant, together with the new hostelry still in progress, shall form part of the visitors’ center that the ecclesiastical institution wishes to create in the old buildi

Peter Cook, Colin Fournier   Austria   For centuries, the quarter of Murvorstadt remained in the shadow of the historic center of Graz, located on the opposite shore of the River Mur. The bridge joining both banks and most of the buildings around it were ruined in the floods of 1827, urgi

Future Systems   United Kingdom   Above all, for the director of the Selfridges department stores, enthusiast of radical architecture, the new building of Birmingham had to be an icon for his emporium and for the British city. The resulting volume, brimming over with mass and form an

William Alsop   Canada   Agrowing recognition of the importance of creative industries to Canada’s economy, led the government to release a significant amount in funding for the extension and refurbishment of the Ontario College of Art & Design. The old facilities it used to

Zaha Hadid Architects   Germany   Conceived as a coda to a series of important buildings designed by Aalto, Scharoun and Schweger, the science center rounds off the north edge of Wolfsburg’s urban center and serves as a connection with the new Volkswagen town, located at the other en

John Pawson   Czech Republic   At the beginning of the nineties ten young men abandoned what was then Czechoslovakia to follow their religious convictions and enter the Cistercian abbey of Sept-Fons, in Burgundy. At the end of that same decade, the increasing number of Czech monks

Tony Fretton   United Kingdom   The Holton Lee trust, situated in a locality of the same name, is a charitable organization dedicated to the development of disabled people through art, the contact with nature and a nondenominational sense of spirituality. An extensive estate in Dor

Caruso St John Architects   Sweden   For the hundred years, the material history of the Swedish city of Kalmar has been marked by the shifting of stones, that were first extracted from the surrounding agricultural land to improve farming conditions and afterwards used to raise the bound

Sergison Bates architects   United Kingdom   Under the name ‘Classrooms of the Future’, the Department for Education and Skills of the British Government set up in 2000 a program to assess and update the educational environment, in response to the growing sophistication of teaching methods and

David Chipperfield Architects   United Kingdom   This design for a studio for the English artist Antony Gormley is located amid the industrial buildings, warehouses and rail yards just north of London’s King’s Cross station. Attempting to create light and open spaces for the diverse and specific wa

Ian Ritchie   United Kingdom   Plymouth is a gray, walled city that extends between the natural park of Dartmoor and the sea. Its granite walls, accustomed to the presence of soldiers and sailors, enclose a small but intense cultural activity of which the Theatre Royal is, since i

William Russell   United Kingdom   Designed as personal residence and located in Bethnal Green, the busy center of London’s East End, the house is delimited on two of its sides by old dark brick buildings. The intention of the project was to round off a residual linear element facing

Adjaye Associates   United Kingdom   The Idea Stores are the product of a concept pioneered by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to improve access to a wide range of information and educational facilities. Somewhere between public building, cafeteria, and department store, these publi