estudiHac   Spain   The Valencia-based studio has a space in which to display the broad range of creative possibilities that this brand specialized in claddings offers, presented through the superposition of materials, plans, textures, and colors...

P-M-A-A    Spain   The new circular skylight is a unique addition that transforms an old and dark space into an atmosphere filled with natural light. Concentrating the program at the corners generates an open-plan space of squared proportions and symmetrical in section

Evvo Retail   Spain   ‘Layers’ of industrial materials – aluminum and concrete – are added to the space that preserves the original walls, in contrast with the elegant and theatrical textures in an atmosphere of pastel colors that uses the curve as a sculptural element...

querkraft   Austria   With facades resembling a set of shelves bearing plants, IKEA Wien Westbahnhof opens its doors in the Austrian capital. A work of the local firm Querkraft, the 26,200-square-meter building rises seven floors, and on top is the Jo&Joe Hostel – tak

Happenstance Collective [HaCo]    Japan   This shop for UPI, a company that specializes in equipment and paraphernalia for mountaineering, hiking, and camping, is a work of Javier Villar Ruiz and Tomoki Yamasaki of Happenstance Collective [HaCo]. Blurring the limits between interior and exte

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Germany   Berlin’s historic Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) department store has opened phase 1 of its OMA-designed renovation. A concentric void that spans six floors features a battery of wood-clad escalators. At the base, a large retail space also serves as a

Estudio DIIR   Spain   Vienna’s walls came down to the rhythm of Strauss waltzes. Valencia’s, to the beat of taurine fiestas. And like the Ringstrasse, even without its grandeur, the paseo de ronda that replaced the ramparts of the Mediterranean city became a vibrant trade

Jean Nouvel   China   Split up by a covered central passageway connecting two streets – Ma Dang and Dan Shui – in Shanghai’s Huangpu district, this complex contains 25,000 square meters of office space and 15,000 of commercial units. The location is in what was part of th

Dominique Perrault   France   The planning frenzy that Baron Haussman breathed into the Paris of 1850 led to an ambitious succession of urbanistic operations of an imperial grandeur that continued even after the establishment of the Third Republic twenty years later. It was in th

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The small town of Tielt, in the province of West Flanders, is the home of this electronic components shop built on an an elongated, irregular site. The first design decision was to raise the brick party walls to their maximum height. On the side towa

Adjaye Associates   United States   “The acropolis of consumerism.” This was the media’s pronouncement on opening day, in 1982, of an eight-floor bulk raised on an entire block between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, and which has since provided Angelenos with high-end stores, popula

Studio Animal Studio Animal   Spain   The design of this tent-like shop combines emphatic geometries in bright colors with a humorous language, a strategy that is also used in the rest of their collaborations, and that aims to create an aesthetic image distinctive of the brand.

Arquitectura-G   Sweden   A former banking office in the Swedish capital – an anonymous institutional building located in the city center – became world-famous in 1973 thanks to an armed heist and hostage crisis that triggered in the victims a psychological reaction later cal

gmp Architekten   China   In the Chinese province of Jiangsu, in the eastern part of the country, Changzhou is a 2,500 year old city with a dense network of rivers that is becoming the new industrial and technological hub in the prosperous Yangtze River delta area. There in C

Nendo   China   Shanghai Times Square within the Pudong district is the result of working on a nine-floor commercial building containing over 53,000 square meters of space. The objective was to accommodate 170 establishments, mostly fashion and lifestyle stores but

gmp Architekten   China   In the Chinese province of Jiangsu, in the eastern part of the country, Changzhou is a 2,500 year old city with a dense network of rivers that is becoming the new industrial and technological hub in the prosperous Yangtze River delta area. There in C

Herzog & de Meuron   Japan   The fire that in 1872 devastated an area of the city recently renamed Tokyo was seized by the Meiji government as an opportunity to implant on its streets the European-style model of modernization that it was trying to institute in the country. This

Ferrier Marchetti Studio   France   Adjacent to the Saint-Lazare Station in Paris, this mixed-use development is the work of the local practice of Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti. The project involves restoring and rehabilitating a listed historical edifice, and raising a 20,000-

Wutopia Lab   China   To build a church within a church: this was the intention of Wutopia Lab for one of Shanghai’s most emblematic bookstores. The first church addressed by the project is an Orthodox temple raised in 1932, the walls of which have been kept intact and th

Esrawe Studio   Mexico   Serving as a showroom, the building resonates with the quarry it is located in – and with the idea of a forum – through the monumentality expressed by its wrinkled and veined stone cladding. Two volumes make up the complex. The more monumental constr

External Reference   Spain   Carmelo Zappulla of External Reference Architects and Chu Uroz renovated this liquor store in a 700-square-meter space located at kilometer 1187 along the N-340 road leading from Vendrell to Comarruga, in the Lower Penedes region. With verbal informa

Koichi Takada   Qatar   The interior design of the National Museum of Qatar in Doha sought first of all to resonate with the image of a desert rose that the French architect Jean Nouvel had chosen to give the building, and secondly to ensure an intelligible reading of the i

Peter Marino Jun Aoki & Associates   Japan   Inspiration for the curving glass facade of the Louis Vuitton store in Osaka, designed by Jun Aoki & Associates and Peter Marino, came from the sails of old Japanese merchant vessels, in reference to the history of a city defined by the importanc

Foster + Partners   Apple Aventura embodies Miami’s spirit of openness and generosity, bringing people together under an undulating vaulted roof that is reminiscent of the city’s nautical and architectural roots. The materiality and flowing spaces are inspired by the re

Using architecture as an emblem, sometimes as a technological lure, is nothing new. Suffice it to remember the recurring association of avant-garde buildings with automobiles, a link forged in times of Le Corbusier and continuing to this day. But aft

Joan Ockman   El consumo somos nosotros. Eso sostiene la Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, un libro de 800 páginas recién publicado por Taschen. Se trata del resultado de una serie de seminarios de investigación conocidos como Project on the City e impartid