Luis Fernández-Galiano   The architecture of the house is the architecture of the city. From Filarete, the treatise writers were fond of explaining the house as a miniature city and the city as a large house. Although stacking dwellings does not make a city, the greater part

Justo Isasi   Once again, an opportunity to introduce new alternatives in the trite field of residential housing. Something that sounds like a topic from the past century and that at this point, in times of skepticism towards social matters, could be taken as an e

Adela García-Herrera   Half-way through the 19th century, Mulhouse was the French Manchester. The quick development there of the textile, mechanical and chemical industry lead to the rapid increase of its population from 3.000 to 30.000 inhabitants between 1800 and 1850. I

Ginés Garrido   The portrait of the modern architect reflects a sensitivity which does not admit the failure of the avant-garde project, that postmodern skepticism about architecture as a means to transform society. The architect, in his modesty, also contributes to

Baumschlager Eberle Architekten   Austria   Within a dense urban context composed mainly of housing blocks of four heights and sloped roofs, a new building and renovated shed transform the image of the place in order to house nine apartments. The old building is aligned with the street whereas

burkhalter sumi architekten   Switzerland   Up on an area of Zurich where the reminders of a rural habitat – the vineyards, the river, the old plot distribution – still strongly define the landscape, the residential complex seeks harmony with this hybrid landscape between country and city by

Fernando Mejías, Manuel Narváez   Spain   By cereal fields and scattered oak trees, the side view of the consolidated core of Paterna de Rivera extends in a northward direction with 17 new housing units for young people, that in a natural way – and thanks to a design with an emphasis on the

Víctor López Cotelo   Spain   A few minutes from the Plaza del Obradoiro, Santiago de Compostela breaks into an array of scattered constructions which show the agricultural and stockbreeding activities that still go on in its close surroundings. On this borderline, where country

Hentrich-Petschnigg & Partner   Germany   The competition convened by the City of Leipzig and the owners of the plot aimed at creating a residential development that could give an answer to the need for housing of the young families of the city. The winning proposal fulfills the demands of a

BUSarchitektur   Austria   The Otto Wagner competition bases proposed to study two current questions from the point of view of urbanism: the relationship between dwelling and work under the conditions of a growing mobility and an immaterial communication that is becoming more

De Architectengroep   Holanda   The reuse of the plot that housed a storage tank of a former sewage plant was the object of a 1994 competition in Amsterdam-West. The urban plan for the area foresaw a series of single-family housing units in the green area that separated two residen

Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos   Spain   With a layout that, imposed by current regulations, does not adapt to the plot’s slope – which reaches an unevenness at some points of even 8 meters – this U-shaped block contains state-subsidized apartments for the rehousing of people without means.

Alfonso Alzugaray, Francisco Mangado   Spain   The residential development of Mendillorri was created ten years ago in the valley of Egüés in order to meet the growing demand for social housing of the neighboring Pamplona. Since then, more than 5.000 housing units have been built, transforming M

MVRDV   Netherlands   In a residential environment of macroblocks, these 37 pieces create a small multicolor neighborhood within a larger one, on grounds that had once served as an airfield. The project, designed as a pedestrian island, materializes a place with a domesti

Baumschlager Eberle Architekten   Switzerland   The housing complex Achslengut II is located in the Swiss city of St. Gallen, between Lake Constance and the Alps. When Baumschlager Eberle Architekten obtained this commission in 1998, the principal parameters of the project had already been establi

Kollhoff & Timmermann   Germany   Immortalized movies many times, the luxury residential skyscraper – which was so popular in the United States during the 1930s – barely finds equivalents in Europe, where in many places high-rise housing is synonymous with low-cost dwelling and socia

Xaveer De Geyter   Holanda   In the eighties the municipality of Breda came across the possibility of incorporating three old military sites located in the center of the city to its urban development. Two of them remained as public parks, whereas the last one – la Chassé – was t

MVRDV   Netherlands   Located on the Ij River in Amsterdam, the Silodam houses a mixed program of 157 apartments, shops, offices, retail areas, and public spaces. The different uses are stacked in ten levels over the water with a structural grid of piles and loadbearing w

Kees Christiaanse   Holanda   In a recently born neighborhood, traversed by canals that connect farm fields with residential areas, two buildings with a singular program play a leading role in the new urban scene. As points of reference in the urban fabric designed for the distri

Diener & Diener Architekten   Holanda   Flanking the entrance to the renewed island of Java, the two apartment buildings take up the space that was cleared after the urban transformation of Amsterdam’s docks. This intervention, promoted by the city authorities in the eighties, and which se

Alan Levitt, Yves Lion   France   The silhouette the city as it meets the Siena has been redrawn within the limits of a block of the fourth district thanks to a project that, centered in the restoration of the old military barracks of Schomberg, proposes an organization of volumes th

Delugan Meissl   Austria   In the eighties, the new city of Donau intended not only to incorporate the terrains opposite the Danube to Vienna’s development, but also to provide the historic center with an avant-garde and modem counterpoint. Though the urban layout designed to

Wiel Arets   Netherlands   Raised on a plot that in past times housed a small street market on the shores of the river Maas, the 29 floors of the two towers set a new point of height in the heart of Rotterdam. In this city scored by a network of water canals, the complex seems

Delugan Meissl   Austria   The 35 heights of the Mischek tower – named after the developing company, very much involved in its design –, rise over Donau City, a site which has grown during the last decade opposite the historic Vienna and that houses, amongst other important bu