Horma Estudio   Spain   A coastal house organizes an extensive program through a meticulous composition of spaces, geometries, and materials that together seek to adapt to the diverse needs of the occupants. The external contrast between the whitewash and the red-tiled clad

Francisco Cadau    Argentina   This stand-alone, five-story block rises on a base. The main volume is structured by a double bay of apartments that prolong in terrace-like patios, giving the facade a pattern of repeated squares resembling a checkerboard with alternating voids. The

Vector architects   China   The project renovates an old industrial complex, and with the idea of preserving what already exists it organizes the program around two courtyards: a central one dominated by camphor and wood, and a space to the west with a pond and brick finishes..

Manuel Herz   Germany   In the absence of a clearly defined typological tradition in relation to synagogues, the project connects with Jewish hermeneutics to exalt the written word as an ornamental element.

Anna Heringer   Austria   Light, smells, colors, temperature, textures, sounds… It must be overwhelming to leave a mother’s womb and get born into this world. What should the very first space we ever experience be like? What kind of material should it be made of to make newbo

Domani Architectural Concepts   China   Directed by architect Ann Yu of the firm Domani Architectural Concepts, this building for the company Times China is clad in brick lattices in a reddish tone. Named Times I-City or TIC, the building contains exhibition galleries, selling areas, and o

RAUM   France   The French firm headed by Julien Perraud, Benjamin Boré, and Thomas Durant, RAUM, has built this culture facility on Rue des Pierre Blanches in Saint Jean de Boiseau, a city 13 kilometers from Nantes. Combining terracotta, exposed concrete, and wood,

Localworks   Uganda   This monastery is home to a community of monks of the Cistercan Trappist order who established themselves in Kenya in 1952. Following post-election unrest in the country in 2008, the community moved to Uganda. The project of the firm Kampala Localwor

Palma Hanghar   Spain   As part of Concéntrico festival, the project stacks ceramic blocks to transform a long, narrow corridor in the old Tobacco Factory complex into a built-up space that takes visitors on a promenade through different spatial experiences... 

Kashef Chowdhury - URBANA   Bangladesh   The Friendship Hospital in Bangladesh designed by Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA will be awarded the RIBA International Prize 2021, the global accolade for design excellence and social impact. A project of the NGO Friendship, this hospital complex is locate

Palera arquitectos    Spain   This 192-square-meter house by Palera arquitectos (Sergio J. Díaz and Juan M. Caldero) is located in Los Menas, a village within the municipality of Huércal-Overa, in the north of Almería province. Close to the Almanzora River, the town's urban fabri

TDA   Paraguay   Text by TDA (Miguel Duarte and Larissa Rojas) In these times when information overload and speed affect our capacity to pay attention, we uphold non-protagonist architecture. we call for silence. We understand constructive clarity as something ground

Bast   France   With the idea of enlarging their current residence, a building set between party walls, the clients acquired the property adjacent to their rear patio, and the result is an elongated complex facing two streets, with a central courtyard linking the tw

Vo Trong Nghia Architects   Vietnam   On a corner lot in the center of Bat Trang Town, located just a few kilometers from the Vietnamese capital and known for its pottery-making tradition, stands this residence for the family of an old ceramics specialist.  The building has three overlap

Herzog & de Meuron   Germany   A new wing has been discreetly added to the complex of brick industrial buildings that were originally transformed by the studio in the 1990s into a museum of contemporary art. Aligned with the rest of the industrial constructions near Duisburg’s Inn

BN Asociados Arquitectos    Spain   Led by Silvia Babsky Nadel and Ramón Valls Navascués, Madrid-based BN Asociados Arquitectos won the competition to build the Central Library and Municipal Archive of Leganés, a city within the Madrid metropolitan area. Construction was at an advanced

Crossboundaries   China   The new urban space, pervaded by the spirit of the artistic community of Songzhuang, is articulated by a zigzagging linear wall that alternates brick and steel to conceal the parking lot, and that unfolds to house the different playground areas.

Harquitectes   Spain   The residence presents two central spaces, which receive overhead light in order to curb the excessive shade cast by the trees, and are conceived in bioclimatic terms so that they serve as extensions of the garden. The monolayer solution of the ceram

MCL Studio   Argentina   The city of Moreno, in Buenos Aires province, is the location of this residential complex built by MCL Studio, a firm headed by Juan Micieli. With a built area of 7,200 square meters, the building is organized around a central cloister, which, integr

Ayllón Paradela De Andrés   Spain   Madrid’s Hortaleza neighborhood is the location of this 245-square-meter dwelling, a work of the firm led by Javier Alejo Hernández Ayllón, Verónica Paradela Pernas, and Javier De Andrés De Vicente. The white cube perforated with large windows contai

Mesura   Spain   “Una casa come me” was the instruction that Curzio Malaparte gave Adalberto Libera when he contracted him to build the villa in Capri that Brigitte Bardot would immortalize walking down its stepped roof, wrapped in a bathrobe, in the Godard film. Equ

Batlle i Roig   Spain   The office building Ó is located in the area of the old factory of Can Batlló, one of the most important focuses of development of the city of Barcelona in relation with the economic district of Hospitalet de Llobregat and important avenues such as G

Forgas Arquitectes AMM Arquitectes   Spain   The versatility of exposed ceramic brick – used on walls, pavings, and enclosures – permits its use in all the different volumes of the ensemble and establishes a dialogue between the historic building and the new extension with the garden...

ASCER, the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association, announced the winners of the latest Ceramic Tile in Architecture and Interior Design Awards, given yearly to highlight projects completed in Spain that have made outstanding use of ceramic f

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   One hundred years after Anni and Josef Albers met, their work, philosophy and funding clout have made possible a stunning hospital that is saving lives in one of the hottest places on Earth. When Anni Albers began weaving at the Bauhaus in the 1920s,

The new winners of the Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, organized by the the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association (ASCER), have been announced. The purpose of these prizes is to promote use of Spanish tiles in arc

In the capital of the Indian state of Odisha, the New Delhi-based firm Studio Lotus has built new offices for the Department of Agriculture. As a government building it was conceived at the outset strictly for official use, but the architects propose

On marshland where lotus plants abound, a pair of mid-20th-century granaries that were in disuse have been brought back to life as a 2,448-square-meter art exhibition gallery, thanks to a project carried out by the Shanghai-based firm Roarc Renew, wh

The Beijing studio Zhu-Pei has built a museum adjacent to what is left of the thousand-year-old imperial pottery-making complex of the prefectural city of Jingdezhen, a porcelain capital of the world, China’s Sevrès. The building is composed of a ser

Brick Award   In 2020, six winners were awarded in five categories: Sharing Public Spaces (University of Silesia, Faculty of Radio and Television, by BAAS Arquitectura), Feeling at Home (Can Jaime I nIsabelle, by TEdA arquitectes), Living Together..

There are new holders of the Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, organized by the Spanish Ceramic Tile Manufacturers’ Association (ASCER) to draw attention, precisely, to the use of ceramic tiles in works of architecture and in

Joaquín Medina Warmburg   In the work of Eladio Dieste, whose birth has been one hundred years, technical ingenuity was placed at the service of the social program and Catholic fervor.

Elena Merino   Fernando Moral   In the humble words ‘brick’ and ‘tile’ lies the simplicity, only apparent, of a material that has come down to our days with very specific technological variations. Nevertheless, the modest nature habitually attributed to brick is quickly proven wron

Pepa Cassinello   The idea of baking clay arose shortly after the discovery of fire. So prehistoric man did the first mutation of this natural material, and obtained something more stable and resistant: ceramic. With it he made small everyday utensils, such as bowls,

Eduardo de Miguel   Last February, two major international events connected to the industrial sector of ceramic claddings took place. First was CEVISAMA, the International Exhibition of Ceramics for Architecture, held yearly in Valencia for manufacturers to present thei

Fernando Tabuenca   Jesús Leache   A material used in diverse periods and civilizations, modular and warm at the same time, brick has been discredited by modernity but maintains its place in contemporary architecture.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Brick is the Esperanto of construction. While a few cultures may ignore its grammar, those that command its vocabulary are legion, expressing physical needs and immaterial yearnings through the essential language of ceramic prisms. Versatile as no ot

This brick house in Buenos Aires has two theoretical references. On one hand, Kenneth Frampton’s definition of tectonics, which he considers not only a “mere disclosure of the construction technique, but, rather, its expressive potential.” To Frampto

During the late 1980s, the German architect Hans Kollhoff designed and carried out works of great material force, among them Piraeus – a vast flexing brick apartment block located in one of the dockland sites of Amsterdam – and the ascetic mass housi

In the olden days, when bricks were brought out of the kiln where they were baked, the pieces closest to the focus of heat – and therefore overbaked – were discarded on account of their dark burnt tone and their rough volcanic texture. At the start o

First introduced in the 17th century through the master builders of Italy, the timbrel vault became part of the heritage of traditional construction in eastern Spain. Nevertheless, it was in the United States much later on, towards the end of the 19t

España está construida con ladrillos. La edificación con materiales cerámicos está tan arraigada en la historia, y tan presente en la vida cotidiana, que el término ‘ladrillo’ designa popularmente al conjunto de la construcción. Se habla de invertir

José María de Churtichaga   Clay, basic ingredient of ceramic, is one of the most ancient materials used for building and a key element in architectural history. However, for some time now, its role has undergone a period of redefinition and in many cases of retreat. This is pa

Eduardo de Miguel   Pocos términos remiten a un universo tan extenso, rico y sorprendente como la palabra cerámica —hecho de arcilla— y que se refiere al arte de fabricar objetos de barro cocido; un proceso de transformación en el que se fusionan los cuatro elementos cl

José Ignacio Linazasoro   En el siglo XIX la expresividad de los materiales a la manera de las construcciones medievales y vernáculas fue adquiriendo carta de legitimidad frente a los revestimientos y a la decoración propios de la arquitectura del Renacimiento y del Barroco.