(Amsterdam, 1975)
Located along the famous ‘Miracle Mile,’ the museum preserves and breathes new life into a 1938 building, the May Company Department Store. The additions dating from 1946 onward have been removed and replaced with a ‘bubble’ containing a theater and
On the banks of the East River, a branch of the Queens Public Library addresses a call for community space in an almost exclusively residential neighborhood. The building, low and compact, takes up little ground, and makes the much used riverside par
The extension of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec sits amid the other three existing institutional buildings creating a complex on the edge of the park. The project tries to establish new relationships between the green areas and the adjac
The only opera that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote, Fidelio, has not ceased to attract music connoisseurs since it premiered in Vienna in 1805. For the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth, the Theater an der Wien has presented – with set designs by
Every year the Serpentine Gallery in London chooses an international architect to build a temporary installation. The pavilion of 2013, designed by Sou Fujimoto, is inspired by the evanescence of clouds, inviting people to explore the place in a new
A home for two plus a dog. The house itself is comprised of three shells of progressive size nested inside one another. The outermost shell covers the entire premises, creating a covered, semi-indoor garden. The second shell encloses a limited area i
A group of dwellings with the prototypical ‘house’ shape pile up in this apartment building in the residential section of the center of Tokyo. It consists of four dwelling units, each made up of two or three independent rooms connected by outdoor sta
A chromatic roof is the highlight in the conversion of a traditional siheyuan courtyard into a preschool center that is remarkable, too, in its openness to daylight and vegetation. The principal strategy of the project involved wrapping the preexisti
The classics believed that places have memory, and that their own character is custodied by a protecting spirit, the ‘genius loci.’ The Vallehermoso Athletics Stadium in Madrid is an example, a place that has gone through many phases. It was here, in
The Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is located within the famous luxury watch manufacturer’s historical complex of workshops and factories. It reflects the innovative spirit of the firm – which has successfully maintained its autonomy as a family enter
Through a careful restoration, the project transforms the old mill complex into the new headquarters of Bombay Sapphire distillers. Located by the River Test, in Laverstoke, the site had become a cluttered and confused mess, with Grade II listed stru
Under the motto ‘Better City, Better Life,’ the Universal Expo of Shanghai 2010 gathered over 200 countries, inviting them to reflect on issues like urban development, well-being, and sustainable growth. Aside from the usual requisites, one of the br
In the village of Rudrapur, located in the Dinajpur Disrtict of northern Bangladesh, the German architect Anna Heringer – in conjunction with Veronika Lang and the non-profit organization Dipshikha – recently completed a therapy center for people wit
One of the recurring motifs in the already very extensive oeuvre of the Danish architect Bjarke Ingels is the spiral. If for architects in past times the spiral was an expression of movement, for Ingels it is also something that has the capacity to g
The idea that architecture is a form of nature has become a maxim that the firm Junya Ishigami + Associates faithfully follows in its work, an oeuvre now enriched by the Botanical Garden Art Biotop: Water Garden in Tochigi, Japan. The singularity of
Located at Hudson Yards in New York, very close to Thomas Heatherwick’s The Vessel (see Arquitectura Viva 213), rises The Shed, another major hybrid of architecture and sculpture, this time by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. While the theme of the ludic mo
After hundreds of trees were removed from a resort in Japan's Tochigi prefecture, the architect set about on a mission to rescue heritage in a new landscape. Relocating the endangered specimens to an adjacent meadow, he set about creating a breathtak
Set amid the tight mass of skyscrapers of Hong Kong, Herzog & de Meuron’s new Tai Kwun Art and Heritage Centre may be modest in size, but certainly not in conceptual aspiration nor in originality. Beyond the talent of its architects, this signals som
It took 18 years to build, has nearly a mile of galleries and is inspired by a desert rose. Hundreds of huge white plates lie scattered along the roadside in the centre of Doha, Qatar, as if someone has had a spectacular accident with a gigantic
Studio Muoto recently completed a multiuse installation for the Université Paris-Saclay campus. Aiming for a combination of rationalization and flexibililty, the Parisian architecture firm has designed a volume characterized by large aluminum sliding
Seven years after winning the competition that was held for the purpose, the Chilean trio of architects composed of Smiljan Radic, Eduardo Castillo, and Gabriela Medrano has been able to inaugurate the Biobío Regional Theater in the city of Concepció
Since 2000 the Serpentine Gallery has been putting up a pavilion on the lawn of Kensington Gardens for the warm months. This temporary structure has become the great summer benchmark of current architecture, biennials aside. At times drawing from con
The petrodollar-funded construction of huge cultural complexes is a strategy used by Gulf countries to craft themselves a recognizable and influential image.
