Dom Architektów   Poland   The Polish firm Dom Architektow -- founded by the married couple Walenty Durka and Emilia Durka-Zielińskaha – has developed a timber system of modular dwellings. The DA House combines simplicity and prefabricated construction with recyclable and eco

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) Luis Vidal Meta Engineering Carlos González Casado Fhecor   Spain   The solar roof, formed by a simple structure of individual pitched modules, protects more than 130,000 square meters of station, and adopts a dynamic parallelogram shape that softens its encounter with the city along its four orientations…

Grimshaw Architects TYPSA Rubio Arquitectura   Spain   The proposal’s main aim is to improve the connection between Chamartín and the city, turning the plaza into a destination in its own right. Modular and prefabricated construction is used both on the roof and on the short-distance train platforms…

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Netherlands   The modular wood system developed by Circlewood – a collective of architects, engineers, builders, and researchers headed by OMA/David Gianotten – came about as a response to the City of Amsterdam’s Innovation Partnership School Buildings program of

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Switzerland   A rigorously orthogonal grid is used as a composition tool in working out a flexible arrangement of the different programs housed within a center for university-level business studies. The regular scheme generates cubic modules stacked in a stepped f

Sauerbruch Hutton   Germany   This modular office structure for the German Bundestag reacts to the monumentality of its surroundings in Berlin’s parliamentary district with great simplicity: a straight-forward H-shaped plan based on prefabrication and modularity. While the southe

El Equipo Mazzanti   Colombia   The Atlántico Department, north of Colombia, with its vast prairies, big rivers, and variable climate, is also an area historically affected by poverty. The lack of public infrastructures – and the poor maintenance of the existing – moreover makes th

El Equipo Mazzanti   Colombia   This project is part of an initiative to build new public recreational facilities in the city of Barrancabermeja, focussing specifically on those residential areas most affected by social conflict, safety issues, and lack of public services. The main

El Equipo Mazzanti   Colombia   The project is located in altos de Cazucá, a neighborhood in the municipality of Soacha, a peripheral conurbation of the city of Bogotá. Socioeconomically it is a highly depressed area, lacking public infrastructure of any nature. It is notorious for

estudioHerreros   Spain   Located in the far eastern part of Alcudia Bay, Colonia de Sant Pere is a spot which does not go by the usual standards of beauty, picturesqueness, and quality demanded by the elite tourists who visit the island of Mallorca. Nevertheless, as much its

estudioHerreros   Switzerland   The proposal for a research center for the EPF Lausanne and the University of Freiburg understands that the building must construct the urban image of an institution that is open, multidisciplinary, inclusive, and transversal. The access canopy offer

Alberto Campo Baeza   Spain   On a hill north of Madrid, with the sierra as backdrop in the distance, a house for Ana. Once again, we try to build the loveliest house in the world. And to capture the 360º panorama of the landscape, we propose a belvedere at the top of the house

Tatiana Bilbao   United States   The urban strategy was distilled into a ‘wheel of life’; a way of seeing the co-relation between activities usually understood as separate entities – life, knowledge, production and strength –, resulting in a series of tools for designing spaces. The

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   This building was commissioned by the Provincial Development Company of West Flanders to provide four large rentable working and production spaces for young companies in various professional fields. Raised on an elongated site in the municipality of

Levelstudio   Kazakhstan   Located 3,200m above sea level, this modular glamping is one of the highest altitude hotels in the world, and was built in under five months. Each cabin is assembled from three modules made of a steel frame and aluminum sandwich panels with stone woo

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   The privacy of a house and the variety of a city coexist in this mental health center for children in Hokkaido. Chance is introduced as part of the design process, but is not less precise for this reason: precision planning that generates an accident

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   The privileged site is on a southwestwardly slope facing the sea in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan. The programme, consisting of a rehabilitation facility for mentally disabled people, required an ambiguous atmosphere between the intimacy

Josep Ferrando Architecture   Argentina   A rectangular block marked by a strong structural order closes up a block of the popular Barrio River neighborhood, completing the premises of a university campus with new facilities. A sequence of concrete portal frames that reduce in number towards

Aires Mateus   Portugal   A natural platform in the Melides mountains, just a few kilometers from the coast, provides the site for this holiday rental home, promoted by Primosfera: a Lisbon-based company which assesses the construction of properties with the same dedication a

Sauerbruch Hutton   Germany   Located between two branches of the River Elbe as it flows through Hamburg, the Wilhemsburg quarter was built on the principles set forth by the 2013 International Building Exhibition, which promoted sustainable, ecological, and socially inclusive ur

COFOarchitects   Netherlands   The complex is designed as a modular system that guarantees its adaptability to future demands, in which the ‘rambla’ – a pedestrian street that favors social interaction – enters into the ‘kapsalon’ – a center for cultural and production activities.

Kengo Kuma   Spain   The Camper shop on Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona reinterprets the traditional jack-arch brick by creating a modular element that is used to complete all the furniture, from counters, to shelves or seating.

E2A   Switzerland   The planar building – a slender volume 75 meters long, 15 meters wide, and with 12 levels – can be interpreted as a solitary gesture. The orthogonal form of the plane dialogs with typologies present in the surrounding urban fabric, which is character

David Mencías   Modular architecture is still one of the most fascinating themes for architects from the perspective of rational thought. It evokes the childhood construction games that are so fondly remembered. The kit of parts offered endless combinations, but ins

The prefab shelter has been one of the obsessions of modern architecture, but the fruits of this obsession have been meager in terms of social and economic impact. As a matter of fact, prefabricated dwellings – except in their most profitable and ban

Alejandro Bernabeu   Among structural systems inspired in nature, tree structures – or branching structures – are perhaps the ones which most directly present a formal and functional analogy. But the structural behavior of trees and the requirements they have to meet dif

Industrialized construction has many advantages: it enhances building quality, improves work conditions, reduces building time and, in theory, also costs. All this without giving up typological freedom and achieving a good energy efficiency. These as

Jesús López Díaz   La vivienda social mínima catalizó los estudios pioneros de Rafael Leoz sobre la estandarización y las leyes de modulación geométrica del espacio, cuyo valor fue reconocido por Le Corbusier, Sert o Jean Prouvé.

Jean-François Archieri   In 1947, Ateliers Jean Prouvé abandoned its outgrown workshops on Rue des Jardiniers, in the town center of Nancy, for larger space in an industrial area on the northern edges of the city. The need for expansion came hand in hand with a desire to tak

Stansted airport (1981-1991) takes from Renault the modular forest of masts, and from Hong Kong the shafts of four cylindrical steel pillars; but the exposed fan of cables of the distribution centre is here a knot of braces that hold together the bra

The coordination of structure and services in containers of rigorous modularity and immaculate detailing had been the main constructional challenge of the Foster team during the sixties, and this interest in the flexible fast-track shed was extended

In the optimistic and experimental climate of the sixties, the 1967 competition for a school and multipurpose building in the Welsh town of Newport allowed the newly founded Foster Associates to develop the umbrella concept in this maiden project whi

If the family was changing, so was the workplace. And this electronics factory, designed and built in ten months of 1965 and 1966, gave Team 4 the opportunity to develop a system which was both a model of industrial construction and a paradigm of ind