MAD Architects   China   The idea of nature in the east – connected to the cultivation of the spirit – gives rise to the concept of city committed to the emotional well-being of its dwellers. True to this premise, the Beijing-based studio of Ma Yansong proposes a sports park

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   The topographic drop of the plot is solved with a central courtyard that favors cross ventilation and with a structure of longitudinal loadbearing walls that connects both sides of the house, defining and organizing the interior spaces around the cou

Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos   Spain   The Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, built by order of King Philip II, was not only a political and religious utopia, but also an environmental one that shaped the mountainous woody landscape around. Precisely in a special enclave of this lan

Tadao Ando   Japan   A steep hill at the foot of Mount Rokko, facing south and with panoramic views from Osaka Bay all the way to the Port of Kobe, was the site chosen for this residential complex built over the course of two decades. In spite of having been completed i

Vector architects   China   The tea factory is located in a rugged area of steep slopes and tropical flora. Hence the decision to apply the strategy of embedding the entire program into the mountain, and covering it with an artificial hill: a formation of stepped green roofs. W

Vector architects   China   On a slope of the Yanshan Mountains in northern China, at one end of the east-west axis that crosses Beijing, the theater rises as a material symbol of the contrast between the sinuous natural landscape and the vast open urban setting of the city. Th

waa / we architech anonymous   China   Playgrounds emerged during modernity, and constitute small oases that separate children from a city for which they are still not prepared. Robert Moses saw them as symbols of democracy; Aldo van Eyck, as spaces that are fundamental for social integra

Alberto Campo Baeza   Spain   The brief was to build a house on a hilltop outside the city of Toledo. The hill faces southwest and offers views of the distant horizon, reaching the Gredos Mountains to the northeast. The 60x40-meter site has a 10-meter drop. At the highest point w

Alberto Campo Baeza   Mexico   As if it were the deck of a ship stranded between two beaches, a horizontal platform on a huge stone box that seems to have emerged from the bowels of the Earth offers views of the distant sea... 

Alberto Campo Baeza   Spain   Conceived as a ‘cascade of volumes,’ the building is staggered over four levels between the two streets to adapt to the steep site so that, from the sea, this new house is seen as just one more piece of the village... 

Alberto Campo Baeza   Spain   Inspired by the legacy of César Manrique in Lanzarote, the center is designed as a dark, horizontal plane made out of the island’s volcanic ash, managing to merge the building with the terrain... 

Archwerk Formafatal   Costa Rica   Overlooking Hermosa Beach from a Costa Rican jungle slope, five small shelters adapt to the site by levitating over the ground. Designed by the Czech firms Archwerk (Martin Kloda and Hana Procházková) and Formafatal (Dagmar Štěpánová), they are part

Carme Pinós   Spain   Located at the foot of the Serra de Tramuntana, close to the town of Pollença, in the southernmost tip of Mallorca, Son Brull is a five-star hotel located in an old Jesuit monastery from the 18th century, and which was carefully restored in 2003 by i

Zuloark Santiago Pradilla   Colombia   Nocaima is a remote community of just twenty families scattered along a mountain path that negotiates its way amongst dense forests and sugar cane and coffee plantations. The villagers tend to form terraces when building their homes, following the to

José María Sánchez García   Spain   Less than an hour’s drive from the Spanish capital, in an area of great historical and natural importance marked by the presence of the Monastery of El Escorial and the landscape protected by the south slope of Mount Abantos, the house complies with

MAD Architects   China   The sports facilities blend into a public park whose design will attract citizens to practicing exercise. Facades disappear into the terrain, covered by greenery, and contours are engraved into the surface, some forming pedestrian pathways.

Dorte Mandrup   Norway   A platform rises as a prolongation of the rocky coastline and creates an ideal spot for watching huge cetaceans in the course of their summer migration toward the polar circle. Like the tail fin of a whale emerging from underwater, a walkable stone-p

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   Located on the outskirts of Palma de Mallorca, the building pursues two fundamental objectives: on the one hand to go unnoticed, and on the other to tie up with the island’s vernacular architectures. The first addresses the topography of the site, wh

Kengo Kuma   Italy   Comissioned by the Italian company Casone Group, the two showrooms – Naturescape in Milan and Stonescape in Bologna – recreate a topography molded by the interaction of stone and water.  

Jørn Utzon   Spain   After leaving Australia in 1966, Utzon decided to build a getaway where he could spend time with his family, and in Mallorca he found the ideal place. However, as time went by Can Lis became, as happened with his other few works, a pilgrimage site fo

Jørn Utzon   Denmark   Built in 1959 and in 1963 respectively, the Kingo and Fredensborg houses share one same system of organic growth based on the repetition of the same residential type. In both cases, the main idea is to combine the privacy of domestic life – through i

Harquitectes   Spain   The house sits on a site with a deep slope covered with trees and undergrowth. The project is set out to build without harming the place, so the house sits on a rock platform which is also used as an exit and garden. Both architects and developers ag

Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos   Spain   The complex features of the site – with a fragment of the medieval Marinid city –, the compactness of Ceuta, and the deep slope called for a proposal with a unifying character. The architecture is born from the place, offering one reading in spite of

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The tabula rasa of modernity was historical, but also topographical. In its effort to raise generic buildings, canonical functionalism decided to erase the traces of the architectural languages of the past, which could be felt as a heavy burden of hi

Stan Allen   Either merging with the landscape or in themselves becoming landscapes, topographical buildings suggest altogether new ways of shaping the flows of cities and territories.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   American architect Peter Eisenman is the winner of the international competition to design the Galician City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela.