Luis Fernández-Galiano   Minimum scale and maximum intention: such is the guiding thread of the works gathered here. The small scale has always been a good field for architectural experimentation, leaving many masterpieces over the course of history. Each mutation of intenti

Astearchitecture   Austria   Situated on a glacier up in the Austrian Alps, at an altitude of about 3,200 meters above sea level, is this new observation platform of Corten steel with wooden rails and a prefabricated metal structure.

Ateliereen Architecten, Bram Hurkens, Maud Nieraeth-van Banning   Netherlands   Designed for sport activities like climbing and rappelling, this 25-meter-tall tower consists of six cubes of local wood piled atop one another irregularly around a structural core of steel columns.

Architektur & Landschaft, Stefan Giers   Germany   Conceived as a landmark in its setting, the building is a tower of Corten steel that rises 30 meters and is traversed by a huge sculptural staircase with nine landings leading to an observation deck situated on the top level.

70°N arkitektur   Norway   A 60-meter-long wall built with a steel structure that has been coated with wooden laths and boards serves to shield the actual rest area from the strong winds of the region as well as to separate it from the parking zone.

Vicente Guallart   Spain   Hexagonal platforms made of Ipe wood, each one laid on a pivoting structure and a base of reinforced concrete, create small islands of varying dimensions in the most rocky areas of the south coast of Vinarós.

TYIN Tegnestue, Pasi Aalto   Thailand   Using traditional building techniques, the classrooms of this small orphanage were raised with wooden structures prefabricated and assembled on site and then covered with woven bamboo canes.

Haugen/Zohar Arkitekter (HZA)   Norway   Situated beside a kindergarten is this facility for recreational activities that takes inspiration from Norwegian huts, with small leftover pieces of core of pine forming superposed circles.

China   A lightweight metal structure strengthened with steel braces and resting on a solid concrete foundation simultaneously serves as a bridge, a small school, and a social center for the inhabitants of the village.

Atelier Provisoire architectes   France   A simple, dismountable, modular, and itinerant volume that could well fit into a cube with five-meter sides contains a classroom-workshop conceived as a venue for educational activities involving thirty pupils.

KARO* architekten   Germany   A unique facade that has been constructed with aluminum modules recycled from a razed sixties building shields a large public space where benches and shelves serving the new library have been placed.

Luis Ferreira Rodrigues   Portugal   The mountainous terrain of Trás-os-Montes is the frame of the chapel’s simple white prism, which is dominated by large windows opening on to the landscape and a wooden sliding door situated at the entrance.

Poland   The construction of the church is basically a frame of wooden beams clad with boards and shingles of the same material. The entrance facade is opaque, while the gable on the other end, behind the altar, is totally glazed, bringing in light and offeri

Kunze Seeholzer, Peter Kunze, Stefanie Seeholzer   Germany   The chapel is a volume of exposed concrete and wood that, in spite of its reduced dimensions, manages to include a bell tower that, like a portal, covers the threshold of the entrance. The hermetic interior is toplit.

Estudiantes del IIT de Chicago   Germany   A group of students led by Professor F. Flury and with the help of Ecker Architekten designed this chapel of ecumenical denomination, in the building of which wood from nearby municipal forests was used.

Granger Moorhead, Moorhead & Moorhead, Robert Moorhead   United States   This small space for prayer is part of a project whereby six mobile constructions are to travel to rural communities in the state of North Dakota, in the northernmost part of the USA, offering places for retreat.

Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas   Spain   The exhibition space has been set into an old granary attached to the city ramparts through the restoration of the wooden structure that is held up by four columns and several pillars built into the walls.

studioMAS Architecture & Urban Design   South Africa   Rising on a narrow corner lot, highly visible in the city, the building adopts the form of a concrete ellipse with the vertical circulation elements flowing along the perimeter and a skin made of aluminum slats.

Brian Hooper, m3architecture   Australia   Through a box full of timbers the installation recreates, in the negative, the volume of the canopy of a tree long gone, in an attempt to activate collective memory and make the place a point of reference in the city.

Yasutaka Yoshimura   Japan   The idea of peeping through the holes of a wall became a game and advertising gimmick in the recycled shipping container that was a mail-order furniture magazine’s stand at the Tokyo Designers Week fair.

Elisa Valero   Spain   The motto of the project, ‘A Crossed Garden’, sums up the purpose of the intervention: to create an underground space for art works that serves to connect two houses and maintains the composition of the preexisting garden.

Netzwerk Architekten, Thilo Höhne, Karim Scharabi, Philipp Schiffer, Jochen Schuh, Markus Schwieger, Oliver Witan   Germany   With its different T, L, and Z shapes, the tram and bus stops and transport information boards situated in front of the main station create a landscape of sculptural objects of steel and colored glass in the city.

Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, Carlo Baumschlager, Dietmar Eberle   Austria   On the shore of Lake Constance, close to the natural reserve of the Rhine Delta, Nordwesthaus serves as a meeting point for users of the Rohner Yacht Harbour. Located in the village of Fußach, in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, the premises belong

Form Art   Austria   Situated near the main access to the city’s airport, this new parking lot with capacity for 130 vehicles was put up with a steel structure that was coated with a fine white translucent PVC membrane.

Carlos Bañon, Fernando Valderrama, Subarquitectura, Andrés Silanes   Spain   Two narrow bottomless boxes 36 meters long and 3 wide, perforated all around and on the top with 800 holes that serve to let light pass through and held above the ground by a few slender posts, are posed over the platform and the rails to create a co

Boris Egli, L3P Architekten, Markus Müller, Martin Reusser   Switzerland   Cinco prismas de base rectangular de hormigón armado, construidos con encofrados de tableros de madera, albergan un pequeño aparcamiento para las bicicletas de los alumnos de un centro de educación secundaria.

SANAA, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa   United Kingdom   Held up by delicate supports, the temporary pavilion’s lightweight, undulating, aluminum-clad wooden roof floats among the trees of Kensington Gardens, reflecting the landscape on its mirror surface.

Zaha Hadid Architects   United States   Right at the heart of Central Park, a mobile pavilion has gone up for the famous French fashion house, its steel structure sheathed with reinforced plastic panels that make it easy to assemble and transport.

UNStudio   United States   Raised along the banks of Lake Michigan to celebrate the centenary of the Plan of Chicago of 1909, the temporary pavilion has a perforated roof through which the visitor can have a peep at the urban skyline.

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas   South Korea   Located in the gardens of Gyeonghuigung Palace in the Korean capital, the Prada Transformer pavilion was conceived as a lightweight and adaptable piece that could accommodate a broad range of fashion, art and movie events during 2009, and whose image

Tezuka Architects, Takaharu Tezuka, Yui Tezuka   Japan   Conceived to shelter a children’s play park, this permanent pavilion is made of 320 square-sectioned pieces of timber put together in an assemblage derived from ancestral Japanese construction techniques.

Valerio Olgiati   Switzerland   Built on a plot of land at the center of the Swiss village, the form of the small volume engages in dialogue with preexisting constructions and shelters a studio for a musician in a single space that opens on to a large courtyard.

Piet Hein Eek   Netherlands   Built in the garden of a one-family residence, the small studio has a wooden envelope that serves to insulate the interior space against low temperatures, with tree trunks arranged in a way that brings to mind a pile of logs when the shutters are com

José Selgas, Lucía Cano, Selgascano   Spain   Located in a residential area on the outskirts of the Spanish capital, the studio has a skin of transparent plexiglass on the north, and a plaque of fiberglass and polyester on the south that protects it against the sun.

dmvA Architecten   Belgium   Intended as a workspace annexed to the house, the egg-shaped office is constructed with a simple wooden stucture and a fiberglass skin, and besides an actual studio contains a kitchen and a small bathroom.

Korteknie Stuhlmacher Architecten   Netherlands   With a single space, large collapsible doors, and solid panels of laminated wood over a steel structure, the mobile studio can be easily transported from place to place without having to be disassembled.

Ensamble Studio   Spain   The Truffle is a piece of nature built with earth, full of air. A space within a stone that sits on the ground and blends with the territory. It camouflages, by emulating the processes of mineral formation in its structure, and integrates with the en

Abigail Hopkins, Amir Sanei, Sanei Hopkins Architects   United Kingdom   Constructed with recycled materials, the small mobile house can be easily transported on detachable wheels by two people and contains five individual bunk beds and a double bunk stacked vertically in a minimal space for use by a family.

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   The final wooden house wants to take wood architecture to the limit, and to prove through it that it is possible to do primitive and new architecture simultaneously. One single element – solid cedar blocks – are piled endlessly, generating a prototyp

Andrea Deplazes, Bearth & Deplazes, Valentin Bearth, ETH Zürich   Switzerland   Up in the Alps of Valais, at an altitude of 2,800 meters above sea level, is a refuge for 120 people, a wooden structure covered with shimmering aluminum panels and incorporating a system of solar plaques that guarantee a high degree of energy effici

baumraum   Germany   Suspended from an alder tree by means of strong straps and stainless steel cables, this small wooden shelter has a spatious living room and two terraces that face southwest and overlook views of the landscape.

Julien Boidot   France   Situated in the heart of the Loire Valley, simple volumes built mainly with sustainable and durable materials contain the campground’s new facilities: a reception area, the bathhouse, and some bedrooms.

Diego Jiménez López, DJ arquitectura, Juana Sánchez Gómez   Spain   On an artificial valley that takes advantage of the terrain’s uneven surface are the swimming pools and recreational zone, while under the slope-simulating planes are the service areas and changing rooms.

Adrien Besson, Group 8, Laurent Ammeter, Tarramo Broennimann   Switzerland   Meant for the breeding and care of exotic birds, the aviary has a structure consisting of 16 tree-like steel pillars ten meters tall and a concrete slab for a roof, its curving perimeter delimited by a metal mesh skin.

Pacific Environments Architects   New Zealand   Inspired by a chrysalis, an oval-shaped volume constructed with slender pieces of pinewood adapts to the form of a tree trunk, wrapping itself around it, to house a restaurant admitting 25 people as well as a small bar.

White Arkitekter   Denmark   A circular wooden construction held up by slender supports is raised a meter over the water’s surface to create a space for bathing that is protected against strong winds and equipped with recreational facilities.

Judith Wellmann, Martin Ladinger, wellmann ladinger   Austria   Exposed reinforced concrete and wooden boards are the materials used in a construction of simple forms and clear-cut edges, entry into which is through a double door that also serves as a blackboard.

Annette Spillmann, Harald Echsle, Spillmann Echsle Architekten   Switzerland   Constructed by stacking seventeen used freight containers, with one pile rising 26 meters, the Freitag flagship store in Zurich provides four sales floors next to storage space for the firm’s recycled freeway bags.

brut deluxe, Ben Busche   Spain   With its pitched roof, the kiosk is a volume that evokes the recognizable profile of a toy house. Its exterior skin consists of a steel sheet three millimeters thick, on which a decorative pattern has been applied. Equipped with an opening mechanism

topos-architecture   France   Set up along the French city’s recently refurbished sea front, each 6 meters long and 3.3 wide, the prismatic volumes are constructed with simple wooden modules and large aluminum shutters that can be folded back.

Satoshi Ohtaki/Wood Program   Finland   Inspired by the designs of the typical wooden railings seen in the town’s houses, three patterns of slats juxtaposed in different combinations give rise to the organic motifs adorning the envelope of the stand.