Brendeland & Kristoffersen   Sweden   The history of many a city is tied up with that of its principal church. Lund Cathedral’s story begins with its construction in the 11th century – with the help of a troll, as the legend goes – and to it we owe what is the oldest primary school in al

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   Since their invention and standardization in the mid-20th century, metallic containers have optimized shipping transportation, ushering in a new era of global logistics and commercial exchange. Later on, new approaches to architectural seriation and

estudioHerreros   China   Subjected to an ambitious urban regeneration process, Unit 8 of the Qianwan area – with the National Museum of China – is bound to become Shenzhen’s epicenter of culture and art. In response to this transformative push, the project proposes a new cit

delavegacanolasso   Spain   Up to 17 May, World Recycling Day, Plaza Juan Goytisolo in Madrid – in front of the Reina Sofía Museum – hosts a pavilion made of prefabricated plastic elements that will later be entirely reused and recycled. A work of the Madrid practice of Ignacio

LRO Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei   Germany   In an artery opened in the 1950s to decongest the historic center, the extension of the local savings bank dialogues with the medieval fabric without sacrificing its contemporary essence. The use of recycled bricks echoes the solid walls of the build

ArchStudio    China   Bringing contemporary life into this traditional courtyard without diminishing memory was the objective of a project fundamentally pursuing dialogue between past and present. Located in a typical alley or hutong in old Beijing, the construction falls

Studio Zhu Pei   China   Close to the ruins of what was the most important porcelain factory during the Ming Dynasty, a new museum echoes the forms and materials of traditional pottery-making ovens. The concrete vaults are clad in bricks left over from previous constructions

LOT-EK   South Africa   Part of a large-scale urban transformation project, this intervention is a response to the post-apartheid generation’s desire to introduce and adopt new models for living. Rising on a triangular plot of land, the building is formed by 140 shipping co

Aires Mateus   Portugal   An old timber wharf stands the test of time in the Sado estuary nature reserve in Comporta, one hour south of Lisbon. Its identity remains beyond the material resistance of its construction. The project stems from the silent respect for this solid es

straddle3 Yaiza Terré Eulia Arkitektura   Spain   The aprop program for provisional housing launched by the City of Barcelona is designed to offer a swift, efficient, and pragmatic response to emergency situations caused by shortage of housing, keeping neighbors from having to leave gentrified distr

Ruizesquiroz Arquitectos   Spain   Ever since the first cargo ship carrying intermodal containers docked in Bremen in 1966, their growth and development in international trade has been spectacular. Shipping containers are icons of our globalized society. Almost everything we buy trave

Playze Architects   China   The visitor center of the ecological farm is formed by stacking containers, whose surfaces are perforated in accordance with geometric patterns and which are connected to one another by bridges of iron structure.

Harquitectes   Spain   The stone wall that marked out the boundaries of the estate went around the whole site, revealing just the tops of the trees inside. The materiality and the irregularity of the geometry of the wall endowed it with a special character and presence, bu

Gino Guarnieri & Roberto Mascazzini   Italy   The single-family houses reuse the demolition debris of the old agricultural building that previously occupied the plot (bricks and stone) as filler material for the new facades, made of copper mesh gabions.

Gabinete de Arquitectura   Paraguay   Built with prefabricated components made with bits of ceramic and recycled glass mixed with mortar, the lattice stretches the whole breadth of the lot without touching the ground. 

Shigeru Ban   New Zealand   Levantada tras un terremoto, la iglesia está construida con 86 tubos de cartón envainados en vigas de madera y 8 contenedores de transporte colocados en la base a modo de estribos. 

Shigeru Ban   United States   Made of shipping containers and paper tubes, the Nomadic Museum takes the concept of itinerant exhibition to the limit, because not only the works are moved from place to place, but also the building. In the year 2000, the Canadian photographer Grego

VTN Architects   Vietnam   Vietnam is historically an agricultural country, but accelerated economic changes in the last decades are sending young people out of the countryside and into the cities, which have become increasingly polluted ecosystems. To address the situation th

CUAC Arquitectura   Spain   The project for an architectural studio at Calle San Jerónimo 17, just a few meters from the church of the same name, in the city of Granada, involved a radical transformation of a commercial space that had served different purposes in the course of

MVRDV   Netherlands   The city of Almere, within the metropolitan area of Amsterdam, is on the verge of experiencing a large population growth geered by urban plans like that of Oosterwold or Almere 2030, which foresees the construction of 60,000 new homes. In this contex

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   Located in Montuïri (Mallorca) by TEd’A arquitectes (Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez), this house takes up all of a square lot, rising from the very edge of the street in order to free up space inside for an inner garden and give it as much sunshine as p

GRAFT Brandlab   Germany   With their capacity to bear a weight of 26,000 kilograms, the containers are piled on top of one another to form a volume that is perforated to form double spaces or controlled openings to the exterior.

Arcgency   Denmark   The building reuses transport containers to give them a new life as basic elements of a project where almost all the materials are recycled, making it possible to reduce costs and the ecological footprint.

Renco is an American company, based in South Florida, which spearheads advancements in the renewable composites products industry, from which it takes its name (RENewable COmposites). The huge Lego-like blocks they have patented are manufactured with

One of the main obsessions of modernity was the idea of aligning architecture with the factory. Standardization, serialization, modularization, prefabrication, and the recourse to pieces prepared in the workshop were some of the strategies applied in

For the headquarters of the sports equipment and accessories manufacturer Amaya Sport in Noain (Navarre), the architect Josean Ruiz Esquiroz – who works from offices in Madrid and Gorraiz – reused ten shipping containers as structural pieces while st

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   The construction industry is wasteful and creates huge CO2 emissions. But what if new buildings had to be adapted and resused or built only with materials already available? he wrecking ball has always been the great symbol of urban progress, going h

Richard Ingersoll   Although it is impossible to prove, it seems obvious that in the period since the end of World War ii more buildings have been produced than during all of the seven millennia of human construction activity that preceded it. This unprecedented buildin

Juan Manuel Rojas   A casual stacking of containers makes many architects think of buildings. It’s like the game of spotting figures in the shapes of clouds. This leads not only to erecting buildings with containers, but to seeing container buildings as a source of solu

Irene Cuerda   Beatriz Rivela   Life-Cycle Assessment allows determining the environmental impact buildings produce over time, but it is still not among the tools used during the architectural design process. 

Arturo Franco   “Amazed, the old Dersu Uzala discovers Russian soldiers shooting at a bottle hanging from a rope: –Why smash bottle? In Taiga, where find bottle? Waste bullets bad. –Go ahead, old man. Try it yourself. Dersu shoots the rope from over ten meters aw

Lys Villalba   Thousands of plastic containers, hundreds of used tires or dozens of pallets are garbage, aren't they? The fact is that not everything that is discarded has to have ceased to have a use, although it may seem that way. Questioning the possibilities of

‘Naturalmente diversos’ es el lema de la instalación con la que España participa en la sexta edición de Floriade, la feria internacional de horticultura que, desde 1960, se viene celebrando cada diez años en Holanda, y que puede visitarse en la local

Compacto, totalmente desmontable y flexible a los cambios de uso: estas tres características definen la propuesta del equipo formado por H Arquitectes y dataAE, que ha resultado la ganadora en el concurso para el centro de investigación de la Univers

El festival de cultura que todos los veranos se celebra en la región austriaca de Estiria cambia de emplazamiento cada año, trasladándose en su última edición al Forum Stadtpark de Graz. Inspirado en esta vocación nómada, el estudio vienés Feld72 ha

Más de veinte clases de ladrillos y tejas recuperados de demoliciones cercanas conforman los muros del Museo de la Historia en la ciudad china de Ningbo, situada al sur del país. Se trata de un modo tradicional de construcción que los arquitectos Wan