Magazine

To express the fluid, soft shapes of their design of the Hainan Science Museum, now under construction in Haikou, China, Ma Yansong and MAD Architects opted for panels made from fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP). John Hill

Rotterdam's Studio RAP recently completed Ceramic House, a new facade on Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat, Amsterdam's famous designer shopping street. Algorithmic design and 3D printing combined to create a contemporary riff on traditional masonry architecture. John Hill

MUNCH, the museum in Oslo dedicated to famed Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, opened to the public on October 22, 2021. Designed by Madrid's estudioHerreros, the towering museum is covered in perforated aluminum outside, with Munch's artworks carefully illuminated with LED spotlights inside. John Hill

Blending into the trees of Tokyo’s only major public park, Kengo Kuma and Associates' new museum for the Meiji Jingu is a testimony to Japan’s current architectural soul searching. Ulf Meyer

The coronavirus pandemic may have kept New Yorkers from traveling to London last year, but it didn't stop the transatlantic collaboration that resulted in a timber pavilion recently built on a residential rooftop. Made from dozens of interlocking curved timber tiles, the canopy designed by New... John Hill

Nature is clearly the star at the aptly named Natu Restaurant at the Goulandris Natural History Museum in Athens. A variety of trees, plants, and herbs combine with stone surfaces and steel furniture to create an oasis that looks even more inviting in the age of coronavirus. John Hill

There exists a Niemeyer in Leipzig — not a landmark in the middle of the city center, but a small sphere appended to a former boiler house in the Plagwitz industrial area. Housing a restaurant and bar, it is the last structure Oscar Niemeyer designed before he died in December 2012 just shy of... John Hill, Katinka Corts

Concrete's high carbon footprint has led to many calls for alternative materials. It might also be possible to keep using concrete, but do more with less. Researchers at ETH Zürich are exploring a significant reduction of the material through optimized shapes, as illustrated by a new... John Hill, Elias Baumgarten

Grafton Architects' competition-winning design for the planned Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation in Fayetteville, Arkansas, is conceptualized as a Story Book of Timber: a teaching tool for future students at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design to... John Hill

The fourth configuration of MultiPly, a pavilion made from twelve cross-laminated timber (CLT) modules, was on display in early February as part of the Madrid Design Festival, provoking visitors to reconsider how buildings and cities are constructed. 

On September 29, 2019, Copenhagen's Cityringen (City Circle Line) metro opened to the public. Color is used to aid in wayfinding and to create a distinct identity for each of its seventeen stations. The entrances and platforms of some of the stations are lined in ceramic panels made by... John Hill

Immobile sunscreens that are designed for a particular location and aim to amplify and optimize sunlight at certain times of the year rather than simply screening the sun are an integral element in three recent projects designed by John Hill

As part of the Gwangju Design Biennale, which wrapped up its two-month run on the last day of October, AIM Architecture installed a pop-up garden that briefly turned "a bare leftover public space into an urban oasis." John Hill

A curved bench with the name "The Best Weapon" was recently on display at the entrance to the United Nations in New York City. Coinciding with the 74th session of the UN General Assembly, the bench invited dignitaries to heed Nelson Mandela's advice and "sit down and talk." John Hill

Architect Joan Miquel Seguí's design for the new entrance to the Intermodal Station in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, is appropriately the winner of a 2018 Tile of Spain Award: the ceramic latticework filters sunlight during the day and glows like a beacon at night. John Hill

The North Rhine-Westphalia Textile Academy (Textilakademie NRW), established in 2018, aims to ensure the future of the textile and clothing industry in Germany through education and vocational training. Appropriately, its new home is draped in a textile membrane. John Hill

The Interlock, a new five-story mixed-use building in London's Fitzrovia neighborhood, features a brick facade that was designed by Bureau de Change Architects to appear "of uncertain heritage: simultaneously historic and contemporary, familiar yet foreign." John Hill

The Shed, the cultural venue on Manhattan' West Side that features an attention-getting movable shell, opened to the public in April. The sliding enclosure is enabled by Vector Foiltec's lightweight ETFE foil cushions. John Hill

In an interview, Professor Markus Pfeil advocates that resource-saving, efficient, and integrated energy and air-conditioning concepts should be given a greater emphasis in the practical work of architects. After the ISH trade fair, we talked to him about product highlights and the... Martina Metzner

Digital networking and control determine the bathroom of the future when it is up to the sanitary suppliers at the ISH in Frankfurt. This is the first part of our trade fair review. Martina Metzner

The Eco Brooklyn Show House is a traditional brick rowhouse with a difference: it's fronted by a living wall. Completed late last year, the Eco Brooklyn Living Wall hopes to set a precedent for the facades of residential buildings in the borough of Brooklyn – and beyond.... John Hill

Michele De Lucchi's L'Anello Mancante ("The Missing Link") is a site-specific installation inside Zaha Hadid's MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome. On display until March 2019, the accessible object made from Solid Surface... John Hill

Like other architecture fairs, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) has its share of manufacturer booths, in this case accompanying the crit rooms where architects presented their projects to juries. A standout was the MaterialDistrict pop-up; here we present a slideshow of it and some material... John Hill

The Staatsoper Unter den Linden (State Opera House) in Berlin traces its origins to 1742, though the building was rebuilt following a fire in the 1840s and bombing in World War II. Although the latest renovation maintains the building's historical architecture, at its heart is an innovative... John Hill, Thomas Geuder

Two new lecture halls on a medical campus outside Stockholm are covered in concrete panels that glow from the inside, thanks to a technique developed by Sweden's Butong. John Hill

Two recent Swiss buildings ― an apartment building in Winterthur and villas at Bürgenstock Resort in Obbürgen ― use Air-Lux sliding wall systems to open up their interiors to the elements and to views of their surroundings. John Hill

James Turrell's Skyspace Lech opened to the public on 17 September 2018 near the village of Lech am Arlberg in the high mountains of Austria's Vorarlberg province. The largely underground, oval space is open to the sky and illuminated on the inside with Zumtobel fixtures and... John Hill

Mario Botta grew up at the base of Monte Generoso and used to climb to the summit, camping there overnight to watch the sunrise. Some six decades later, the world-famous architect has capped the summit with a restaurant, a flower-like design that alternates stone and glass. John Hill

Buildings for banks often express their brand rather than anything of architectural interest. An exception is found in Tourcoing in northern France, where architects D’Houndt + Bajart have created a facade whose design was inspired by a material integral to the bankers' core business. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

On the first day of June, the Kunsthalle Mannheim will celebrate its grand opening, with a new extension designed by Hamburg's gmp. The architects conceptualized the extension as a "city in the city," using the metal panels and metal mesh on the facade to express it. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

On February 8th at Empa in Dübendorf, Switzerland, the "Urban Mining & Recycling" residential unit (UMAR) was inaugurated inside NEST. Designed by Werner Sobek with Dirk E. Hebel and Felix Heisel, the unit aims "to advance the construction industry's transition to a... John Hill

Harvard GSD's Material Processes and Systems (MaP+S) Group teamed up with ASCER Tile of Spain to create Ceramic Tectonics: Tile Grid Shell at the Cevisama International Fair for Ceramic Tiles and Bathroom Furnishings that took place in Valencia, Spain, earlier this month.  John Hill

A new building for the Kate Tiedemann College of Business at the University of South Florida-St. Petersburg features glass facades with circular patterns meant to recall the coral stones that inhabit much of the area's coastline. John Hill

The real estate mantra of "location, location, location" is particularly important for hotels, which position themselves for the convenience of travelers. The Hotel Tivoli in Aachen is located appropriately on a busy, four-lane thoroughfare, a site that gave CROSS Architecture the... John Hill, Thomas Geuder

The aptly named Brock Commons Tallwood House – currently the world's tallest mass timber tower – opened on the University of British Columbia's Point Grey campus in July 2017. The building, designed by Acton Ostry Architects, delivers on the promise of mass timber and aspires... John Hill

Barozzi / Veiga's extension to the Graubünden Museum of Fine Arts in Chur, Switzerland, is a strong architectural statement that relates to its predecessor through prefabricated concrete elements that cover its facade in a regular grid. John Hill, Thomas Geuder