HW Studio has completed a remarkable new house in the town of Puerto Vallarta on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Occupying a corner site in a low-rise suburb of most unremarkable two-storey houses, Casa Tao stands out as a sculptural mass of concrete. Reminiscent of one of Tadao Ando’s more abstract mid-period Tokyo residences, the house is the work of Morelia-based HW Studio.

Under the auspices of lead architect Rogelio Vallejo Bores, along with the studio’s Oscar Didier Ascencio Castro and Nik Zaret Cervantes Ordaz, the Tao House emerges from this unlikely context with serenity and precision. Arranged across four levels, the house is defined by the curved concrete wall that encloses the site, leading towards the second level (or the first floor, in European parlance).

A drone's-eye view of the house showcases the carefully stage-managed geometry, with a circular planter screening the entrance from the street and the slim concrete wall rising up as it curves around. Tucked in behind it is a lightwell that serves the three en-suite bedrooms on the first level (at ground level).

The main living space is located on the upper level, which is defined as a large concrete box rising up above the curved wall. In addition to a double-height kitchen, dining and living space, top-lit by neatly defined high level windows, these concrete lined spaces also contain an upper gallery, complete with office and library area.

Designed for photographer and aesthete Gustavo Quiroz and Cynthia Rosaura Sandoval, the architects set out to shape a space that conjured up Quiroz’s memories of his childhood and the importance of light, space and material. ‘He grew up in a humble house made more of effort than of materials,’ the architects say, ‘[As a child, he lived] in Puerto Vallarta, a place on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where sun and humidity define the rhythm of the days, and where shade is not an accident, but a precious asset - a true refuge.’

To recapture these sensations and the important relationship with the sun and shade, light and dark, HW Studio have given the bedrooms a cave-like ambience, with the only illumination coming from the glazed wall looking into the lightwell. Even the basement has its own lightwell, while the carefully controlled lighting in the living area emphasises dark corners and hidden voids.

The architects have managed to treat the ‘concept of shade’ as an ‘emotional condition: a promise of calm, of breath, of silent protection against a clamorous world.’ Even the slender pool, set between two high concrete walls, reads as a hidden oasis tucked away from the sun.

Before commissioning the house, Quiroz and his young family undertook a significant trip to Japan, where they revelled in the ‘aesthetics of emptiness, compositional cleanliness, the stillness contained in every architectural gesture.’ According to HW Studio, part of the brief was to make them ‘feel as if we were living inside a Japanese museum.’

By placing all the service spaces, along with the bedrooms and garage, at the base of the house, the architects were able to give the social life of the structure its own discrete space, shielded from the street.

This insular series of spaces is defined by the curve of the wall, the carefully sited planting and the Zen Garden on the upper-level deck. ‘The elevated patios act as terraces for contemplation,’ say the architects, ‘small platforms from which to better breathe the scent of flowers and hear the murmur of wind among the treetops.’

The inner world of the bedrooms contrasts strongly with the more expansive living spaces, and even these only open themselves up to the exterior on their own terms; it’s a house that appears closed off from the neighbourhood, offering an invitation rather than a series of public facing statements. ‘Everything is arranged so that living happens in a slower, fuller way - more open to the invisible,’ say the architects.

The choice of concrete felt natural, and not just because of its link to serene Japanese houses. It was a way of avoiding dazzling sunlight, instead filtering rays through a soft, absorbent surface that doesn’t scatter light but shapes it. As a result, the restrained forms and shapes of the walls and cell-like rooms become more contemplative. ‘Every corner invites one to remain, not to pass through, and every shadow is a promise of well-being,’ according to HW Studio.

HW-Studio.com, @HWStudioarq

Alexandros Tombazis heads a 60-strong office in Athens and leads about 20 realised and conceptual projects per year. With more than 800 projects under his belt – about 300 of them built – and at least 110 prizes gained in competitions, Tombazis is one of Greece’s most prominent and successful living architects, appreciated more by his peers, perhaps, than by the public.

Born in India in 1939, he spent his childhood in Karachi, Tunbridge Wells and London before his family settled in Athens. At the Architectural School of the National Technical University of Athens, he was taught by key figures of the Greek art and design scene – including Nikos Hatzikiriakos-Gikas and surrealist Nikos Engonopoulos – during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Coinciding with the peak of Greek modernist architecture, it was an exciting time. As a student, Tombazis witnessed the global rise of the International Style, and travelled all over Europe visiting innovative buildings such as Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis’ Philips Pavilion, a multimedia showcase, at Brussels’ 1958 World Fair. From this inspirational start, he developed a dedication that has fuelled his tireless productivity, along with a sense of optimism and a belief in the power of technology in architecture

He set up his own practice in Athens in 1963, while also beginning a three-year stint as a research assistant to Kostantinos Doxiadis, an architect known for his master plan for Islamabad. Tombazis’ interest in the architectural avant-garde surfaced immediately, channelled through a fascination with the Japanese Metabolist movement (which focused on adaptable, large scale housing projects and produced works such as Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower in Ginza, Tokyo, and Kenzo Tange’s vision for a new master plan of the city).

When an open-minded client, whose Athens residence Tombazis had already designed, asked for a holiday house, the architect grasped the opportunity to put his ideas into action. Translating his Metabolist influences into a small-scale residential project, he started work on the house in the seaside village of Kineta in 1968. Revolutionary for its time and place, the house is an exposed concrete composition of closed and open boxes. A twist in its construction is elegantly thin yet perfectly insulated walls – achieved with the then-innovative use of recycled residue from the nearby Elefsina steel industry’s blast furnaces, which provides excellent yet cost-effective insulation. An extra ground floor pod was added as a later extension, against Tombazis’ wishes. ‘It is a pity,’ he reflects, ‘but on the other hand, for how long can an architect have a say for somebody else’s use?’

Tombazis’ Dhifros apartment block in north Athens, with its towering, stacked volumes, and the series of concrete boxes that form a cement company office in the capital’s Lykovrisi suburb, both designed in 1971 and completed in 1975, are key projects from the same period. And like the Kineta residence, they feature bare concrete volumes and compositions of smaller individual units.

It was the oil crisis in 1973 – turning energy efficiency and sustainability into hot issues – that marked a significant change in Tombazis’ work. Already a follower of technological advances in the field (perhaps still influenced by the technologically-minded Metabolists), he became one of the first architects, in Greece and internationally, to embrace bioclimatic design. ‘Beyond the practical advances and the fact that it is a necessity for the salvation of the planet, one of the most beautiful elements of the bioclimatic approach is that it does not dictate a specific type of design,’ says Tombazis. ‘It is a platform, a way of thinking where one can learn and adapt.’

The first project designed using his newfound philosophy was Helios 1, his own holiday house in the Peloponnese. It was also the first house in Greece to use active solar technology. Set on a steep slope, the L-shaped house, with an open plan kitchen, living and dining area, and children’s bedroom accessible by a set of playful wooden ladders, was designed around the north-facing sea views. The brick structure, half set into the slope, has a wooden frame and partial lead cladding. The materials were chosen for their easy maintenance, while the pine interior creates a homely feel.

Another example of Tombazis’ harnessing of alternative energy is his Lykovrisi Solar Village housing scheme from the late 1970s, featuring 435 low-cost apartments heated and supplied with hot water from a creative combination of active and passive solar technologies

More recently, on his Peloponnese plot, he built a second, larger house, Helios 4, for his daughter’s family. Although it adheres to similar eco-friendly principles to the first – featuring solar panels and a solar chimney that forms part of a natural air circulation system – it follows a markedly different aesthetic. The exposed concrete, geometric composition is dominated by cascading planted roofs. An advocate of a bespoke, site-specific design approach, Tombazis explains: ‘I didn’t intend for the two houses to look alike. I don’t think an architect should design instantly recognisable projects. Every work needs to start from a blank page, even though from building to building there may be natural similarities. One always learns and transfers elements from one project to the next.’

While Tombazis’ enthusiasm for eco-design remains central to his work, its application has become seamlessly embedded in his work as his career developed. He maintains that such an approach is key to a sustainable urban future. However, this should not imply a specific stylistic approach. ‘Perhaps it is a matter of maturing as a practice. The more one matures, the more confident one feels about standing on one’s own feet,’ he says.

And Tombazis’ influence stretches far beyond eco-centric architecture. He co-founded the Hellenic Institute of Architecture in 1995, the only independent body that promotes architecture in Greece and is an honorary fellow of The American Institute of Architects, as well as a regular contributor to international conferences. He was selected to design the Greek pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, and before that to build a church for 9,000 pilgrims at the Sanctuary of Fátima in Portugal, a prestigious commission completed in 2007 with local architect Paula Santos.

Religious buildings, he says, are among his favourite commissions. ‘Functionality in churches plays a role, of course, but much less so in other projects. One has to focus on the atmosphere.’ So what’s next? ‘I’d love to work on a big art museum,’ says Tombazis, himself a keen artist. With an impressive legacy and portfolio, including an important cultural commission, an archaeological museum in Vergina, northern Greece shortly to go on site, he may yet get his wish.

A version of this article originally featured in the September 2010 issue of Wallpaper* (W*138)

tombazis.com

If ever a book was designed for a coffee table, it’s this hefty volume on concrete. Pitched at the diehard brutalist who desperately wants to convert others to their cause, Concrete Architecture makes its case through a feast of black and white imagery of the very best concrete architecture from around the globe, spanning the material’s earliest usage right up to the present day. 

Concrete Architecture: thrilling and divisive

Concrete can be seen as problematic, not least because its use often results in the most divisive of all architectural aesthetics, brutalism, but also because the material itself – though long-lasting and hard-wearing if mixed with sufficient care and attention – is extremely carbon intensive. Not only that, but unwanted concrete is tough and pricey to prise off the face of the earth once it’s no longer required.

That’s not a problem with any of the 300-plus projects featured within this architecture book. Although many have had ups and downs in their popularity, the pendulum of public taste has largely swung behind the preservation of even the most pugnacious of concrete structures. That said, some of the featured projects take the definition of architecture to its limits and perhaps reveal why the material could be so reviled.

We’re thinking in particular of the MP4 L’Angle Tower on the island of Alderney, a Second World War-era German fortification, designed by the Organisation Todt as part of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands. Offensive, oppressive and malignant, it also retains a dark sculptural power, something that architects in the decades that followed sought to parlay into buildings that served progressive society, not fought against it.

Hence concrete became beloved of ecclesiastical architects, as well as the designers of concert halls and apartment buildings, monuments, bridges, libraries, schools, hospitals and offices. 

Some of the best-known architects of the modern era shaped their reputations in concrete; it remains the preeminent component of infrastructure projects around the world. 

Nevertheless, its detractors point to its environmental impact and divisive aesthetic, perhaps having never managed to shake off the brutalist association with the bunker. Concrete Architecture is perhaps the best chance you'll get to try and change their mind. 

'Concrete Architecture,' Phaidon Editors, with Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin, Phaidon, £59.95 

Phaidon.com, also available from Amazon

Three Object Apartment is a celebration of a modernist building's frame – as well as an ode to unfinished architecture. The home occupies the entire first floor of an Athens structure whose concrete skeleton was poured in situ but whose construction site was subsequently paused and left incomplete for 30 years. As a result, the building has become a contemporary, conceptual interpretation of its brutalist architecture bones, offering a raw, honest backdrop for Greek practice DeMachinas to create a sculptural, textural home for their private client. 

Inside Three Object Apartment by DeMachinas

'The renovation of the first floor flat of this modernist building upgrades the interior space to an up-to-date apartment, whilst also being a study on unfinished architecture. On this project, together with the clients, we explored and experimented with an aesthetic fully tailored to the existing qualities of the site, as acquired,' write deMachinas. 

The team was headed by the studio's co-founders Elina Loukou and Sabrina Summer (the firm has one base in Athens and another in London). The designers worked with the project's existing piloti feature – an open ground level characterised by a grid of concrete columns, made famous by Le Corbusier and a common element in many Greek polykatoikies (the country's version of multi-family housing) in this residential part of Athens. A round staircase leads up to the first level, where the home is located. 

'The family who bought the first floor perceived it as a “dwelling canvas”, both on the first level and the piloti’s level. Pilotis are usually used as a parking space in the city of Athens. In this case, it consists of a private covered area empty of programme, therefore available to be adapted by the users ad-hoc,' deMachinas explain. 

Internally, the designers maintained a sense of openness and fluidity, which suits the owners' need for flexibility. At the same time, textures are celebrated and add layers of interest that help define areas within the residence. 

There's multi-tasking too. A bespoke, round kitchen counter is at once a worktop, entertainment bar, and dining table. A compact storage block neatly contains the kitchen pantry, cloak, wardrobes and utilities.

Found objects, discovered during the construction form part of the story. The designers explain: 'Hidden layers were revealed and celebrated, in a process akin to archaeology. Concrete ceiling waffles have been carefully exposed and restored in all rooms. The existing marble floor was removed to be repurposed as terrazzo aggregate.'

'The marble pattern within the terrazzo floor was not arbitrarily placed: together with the clients we broke the salvaged terrazzo panels in-situ, in selected locations, retaining the fragments as they fell – freezing the moment of stone breaking into pieces.'

demachinas.com

Arriving at Longarone on a slow train from Venice, zigzagging up the Piave Valley into the jagged heights of the Dolomites, the visitor is faced by a gruff modern road and, on the other side, the unresponsive façades of indifferent 1960s buildings. It seems so very disappointing. Why would anyone build like this in such an eagle’s nest setting?

A two-minute walk from the station explains the out-of-place character of this mountain town. Here, in a small bus station square is one of the most extraordinary of all 20th-century European churches. Antithetical in terms of texture, composition and presence to every other building in Longarone, it’s as if a meteorite has crashed and, trying to raise itself from fractured ground, has morphed into some otherworldly formation. Comprising a pair of intersecting and spiralling concrete amphitheatres – one internal, the other external – the Church of Santa Maria Immacolata, consecrated in 1983, is, in fact, a late-flowering masterwork by Italian architect Giovanni Michelucci, who died in 1990 at the age of 99.

The story of Giovanni Michelucci's Church of Santa Maria Immacolata

Commissioned in 1966, Santa Maria Immacolata is both a parish church and a memorial to the 1,450 citizens of Longarone killed on the night of 9 October 1963 by a megatsunami caused by a landslide crashing into the nearby Vajont Dam, triggering a 250m-high wave that engulfed the town. Ahead of it, a force of air on a par with the power of a nuclear bomb hit Longarone first. The town was almost completely flattened. Which is why, rebuilt at a pace in the 1960s, the buildings seem disappointing when first seen from the railway station.

From the church’s external amphitheatre, gained by winding ramps, you can look towards the disused Vajont Dam. It is a disconcerting sight. Behind it, the geologically nervous Monte Toc, which is prone to landslides, is known as the ‘Walking Mountain’, while its very name in the local Friulian dialect means ‘soggy’ or ‘rotten’. The church, with its exploded architecture, sits in counterpoise to the rugged mountain landscape. 

Although rugged, too, Santa Maria Immacolata is, nevertheless, well crafted as a visitor should expect of a building by an architect born into an Arts and Crafts tradition. Michelucci’s family were craft metalworkers. The curving concrete seats of the internal amphitheatre, surrounding a raised marble altar, are capped with mountain fir. A handless statue of the Virgin Mary, from the pre-tsunami church – found in the Piave River miles to the south – surprises you from a votive altar. Bells rise in a stylised sail. A poignant crypt reached from the ramps shrouds architectural and decorative fragments from the earlier church.

Santa Maria Immacolata is sombre and haunting, a journey of the soul up to the mountains and down again along an enigmatic architectural path. Certainly, Michelucci, a religious man, was a master of commemorative and solemn architecture realised in unexpected ways. Who could not be surprised by his earlier autostrada church, San Giovanni Battista (1960-64), set at the intersection of the A1 and A11 motorways on the fringes of Florence? 

Its sinuous copper roof covers the asymmetric stone-clad concrete building like the folds of a Biblical tent, while the columns supporting the roof form a mesmerising architectural grove. Where else can you find a motorway service area like this? Rather than offering drinks and snacks, it asks those parking here to pray for the souls of the 164 workers who died building the Autostrada del Sole. Stopping for petrol, you can also find spiritual solace.

Born in the Tuscan city of Pistoia, Michelucci studied architecture at Florence’s Academy of Fine Art. His head filled with Futurist ideals, he served as a soldier in the First World War. Post-war, while building and publishing critical magazines, he made his name coordinating Gruppo Toscano, a group of young architects, which won the competition to design Florence’s new Santa Maria Novella railway terminus. As beautiful today as it was when completed in 1934, the station is a fusion of ideas inspired as much by the Viennese Secessionists Adolf Loos and Josef Hoffmann, and by Frank Lloyd Wright, as by Italian discourse.

Under the patronage of a much-impressed Marcello Piacentini – Mussolini’s favourite Italian architect – Michelucci worked in Rome on the new university and on EUR, the imposing southern entrance to the city that opened in the guise of an Expo in 1942. The Second World War intervened, and it was wartime damage to Florence that pushed Michelucci in a wholly new direction. When his ideas for the rebuilding of Florence were rejected – he stood against the ‘museumification’ of the city – he took up the post of professor of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bologna and began to experiment ever more radically with design. What should the contemporary architect’s relationship to history be? What, he wanted to know, was the limit before architecture became arbitrary?

Michelucci experimented with the design of elemental vernacular churches that – giveaway concrete elements aside – might be from almost any century, and created buildings with ambitious open spaces set under equally adventurous roofs (including one for a Pinocchio theme park near Pistoia).

Santa Maria Immacolata took Michelucci’s quest for new types of structure and space into the realm of, if not the arbitrary, then perhaps the near transcendent. It is certainly worth making a design pilgrimage to Longarone. In an otherwise visually prosaic town centre, Michelucci has shaped an architectural odyssey, a true laboratory of space aligning the man-made with the uncertainties of nature, balancing the concerns of life, death and whatever might lie, this side of landslides, beyond those forbidding mountain peaks. 

A version of this article appears in the April 2024 issue of Wallpaper*, available in print, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

Can’t get enough of brutalist architecture? Neither can we. Across the world, neglected brutalist behemoths are being rebooted and given new life. The wave of savvy renovations is being led by a flock of eagle-eyed developers who wish to save – and capitalise on – these concrete urban structures' dramatic shapes. It works on all scales too, as smaller, more boutique constructions in raw concrete (and sometimes also brick, timber or steel) are being snapped up by architecture enthusiasts who transform them into eye-catching homes – helping spring myriad viral trends and visuals off the back of their unmistakable, powerful aesthetic.

What is Brutalist architecture?

The term 'brutalism' is often associated with the French 'béton brut' - raw concrete. It perfectly describes the movement that a handful of modernists developed in the 20th century, which left their, often, highly expressive, concrete structures untreated. It encompasses an honest approach to concrete building, where the roughness of the well-known, ubiquitous material is left exposed and revered, celebrating engineering and functional form with little added decor (other than the build itself's beautiful detailing and concrete's innate tactile texture). Brits Alison and Peter Smithson are among the style's pioneers (among the first who used the phrase 'new brutalism' to describe their work), but many followed, as brutalism spread across continents. At the time of its birth in the 1950s and 1960s, brutalist architecture was often considered too rough and therefore, unattractive. Yet, over time the typology gained momentum - and the term came to be applied to other materials too (you may find the word 'brutalist' associated with brick structures, for instance). It has now been adopted by countless creatives, inspiring numerous architectural iterations, and interpretations across the wider design world - from product to jewellery and fashion.

While plenty of brutalism's best-known examples are in the UK, including from public buildings to homes, this is far from just a London-focused trend. Brutalist architecture around the world is being given a new lease of life. From developments at London’s Balfron Tower or Brussels' brutal tower converted into a co-working space, to a Marcel Breuer building in Connecticut, USA reimagined as a hotel; it's fascinating tracking the lives of this once looked-down-on style as it soars into the realms of high popularity. Scroll below, for some of the world's finest brutalist architecture across the globe.

Brutalist architecture in London

Centre Point

Architect: Richard Seifert & Partners
Date: 1963-1966
Location: London

When completed in 1966, Centre Point represented a beacon of optimism within its original context of a run-down, post-war London, standing out for its avant-garde architecture and engineering. However, it remained underused for years until, in 2010, it was acquired by developer Almacantar, which enlisted Conran and Partners to bring the building into the 21st century. Now the design includes modern apartments, a lavish penthouse and a series of amenity spaces, including a pool and a private lounge/club house area with screening rooms and treatment rooms for residents and their guests.

Thamesmead

Architect: Robert Rigg
Date: 1968
Location: London

‘Thamesmead’. Semantically, the word sounds like a riverside Shakespearean ale house. But, in the public imagination, it conjures images of a 1970s, crime-ridden neighbourhood, and the droogish backdrop to Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 dystopian drama Clockwork Orange. Initially hailed as a futuristic ‘town for the 21st century’, construction of the London City Council-commissioned Thamesmead began in 1968. Despite early promise, it quickly gained a reputation for no-go areas and poor transport links. Recently, after a complicated history, punctuated by well-documented attempts to renew and rethink the area, Thamesmead has been undergoing an extensive regeneration project by Britain’s oldest housing association Peabody, which promises around 20,000 new homes, and improved community facilities. Additional writing: Elly Parsons

123 Victoria Street

Architect: Elsom, Pack & Roberts
Date: 1970s
Location: London

Using Kvadrat curtaining, furniture from brands such as Vitra, Hem, Muuto and a specially-designed staircase, SODA Studio has conjured up classy offices in a brutalist block. The 40,000 sq ft workspace in London’s Victoria goes by the name of MYO, and is property firm Landsec’s first foray into flexible office space. SODA – the architects behind Soho’s new Boulevard Theatre – has converted the second and third floors of 123 Victoria Street, a 1970s building by Elsom, Pack & Roberts, which was refurbished eight years ago by Aukett Fitzroy Robinson. Inside, SODA took its cue from the blocky glazed exterior. ‘We didn’t want to fight against the building,’ says director Russell Potter. ‘Our driving principle was to create a rigorous grid with walls and partitions,’ which, he adds, they treated as ‘a kit of parts.’ These partitions add to the workspace’s flexible credentials. Additional writing: Clare Dowdy

Brixton Recreation Centre

Architect: George Finch
Date: 1974-1985
Location: London

The now listed Brixton Recreation Centre, designed by architect George Finch and completed in the mid 1980s is one of the new additions of remarkable brutalist architecture included in the refreshed Brutalist London Map (Second Edition) by Henrietta Billings and with photography by Simon Phipps, published by Blue Crow Media. The map aims to highlight London's rich legacy in brutalist architecture in order to celebrate and help save many buildings from demolition. 'In 2022, seven years on from the first edition of the map, the environmental impact of demolishing these buildings and their vast stores of embodied carbon is alarmingly clear. From a sustainability, as well as a heritage perspective, we cannot afford to lose any more of them,' says the author. More buildings that made their way into the map for the first time are the National Archives at Kew; Blackheath Meeting House; the Royal College of Art’s Darwin Building; and the Camden Town Hall Annexe, recently converted into the Standard Hotel.

Economist Building

Architect: Alison and Peter Smithson
Date: 1959-1964
Location: London

‘You’d originally sit with a typewriter on the windowsill, then swing round and write longhand at your desk,’ says Deborah Saunt, explaining the Smithsons’ tailor-made office space in the Economist Building for The Economist magazine. Saunt’s practice, DSDHA, won the competition to refurbish this London icon, a building that took the raw pragmatism of brutalism in another, very different direction. The best-known shots of the structure – three ‘roach bed’ Portland stone-clad towers around a central plaza – were taken by a young Michael Carapetian, a friend of the Smithsons who brought a cinematic, reportage-like quality to his images. The AA-trained architect recalls that he ‘wanted a day that was slightly misty and wet. It was the first time a new building had been photographed in the rain.’ The imagery cast has a moody, atmospheric light. ‘It wasn’t seen as shocking, but the building was respected for its ability to blend in with the rest of the street,’ he recalls. ‘The idea was to elevate the plaza above the rest of the street – a sort of utopian idea.’ Saunt says the practice envisaged the structure as a blueprint for a new form of urbanism, linked by walkways and quasi-public spaces. Her studio’s modest but comprehensive refurbishment strips away interiors that themselves were wholesale replacements of Smithsons’ careful original detailing. ‘We’ve made it a lot more harmonious, but have embraced their vision of architecture as a framework,’ she says. The revitalised building will see one of London’s most elegant public spaces brought back to life.

National Theatre

Architect: Denys Lasdun
Date: 1976
Location: London

The National Theatre courted controversy from the outset, with the UK's favourite architectural scourge, Prince Charles, casually dismissing the capital's new cultural flagship as a ‘nuclear power station’. Sir Denys Lasdun's rigorously composed concrete statement still looks at fresh as ever, thanks to an £80m refurb by Haworth Tompkins in 2015, not to mention the quality of the original design. With generous terraces that step down to the Thames and a monumental assemblage of interior volumes, spaces and stages, it remains one of London's contemporary classics. The city is also home to Lasdun's other masterpiece, the 1964 Royal College of Physicians, a Brutalist stage set of concrete and stone, rising up amongst the genteel stucco terraces of Regents Park. Lasdun's Theatre refined the aesthetic that had already been established by the adjacent Hayward Gallery and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. These buildings still represent a substantial chunk of London's cultural infrastructure and were built between 1960 and 1968 on the site of the Festival of Britain, alongside the remodelled Royal Festival Hall. Designed by a team of architects employed by the Greater London Council – including key members of the iconoclastic Archigram studio – this group of buildings represents concrete at its most diverse and distracting, a collage of textures and forms that rises up beside the river in a thrilling urban jumble. Much loved, forever threatened, but an integral part of the London experience

Alexandra Road Estate

Architect: Neave Brown
Date: 1968-1978
Location: London

Social housing at its most optimistic, aesthetically sophisticated and single-minded best, the Alexandra Road Estate snakes alongside a railway line in Camden, containing over 500 homes in a variety of configurations. Created by the late Neave Brown – then working in Camden Council's Architecture Department – it went wildly over-budget and later found infamy as a location for dystopian films and television. Yet despite the controversy it continues to be a desirable place to live, with its shuttered concrete flanks rising steeply above a pedestrianised central street.

One Kemble Street

Architect: George Marsh (Richard Seifert & Partners)
Date: 1968
Location: London

This cylinder and box office block is a typical piece of Sixties grandstanding, almost entirely blasé about its immediate surroundings. These days it finds itself an integral part of the eclectic cityscape. Designed by George Marsh, one of the partners in Colonel Richard Seifert's massive commercial architecture outfit, the circular building showcased Seifert's trademark angular modular façade and muscular supporting columns. It was also the HQ to the UK's Civil Aviation Authority for many years. Currently, the central London structure - also known as Space House - is being given a new lease of life by developers Seaforth Land and architects Squire and Partners, who are on site with a transformation of the iconic shell into modern office and retail spaces.

Brunswick Centre

Architect: Patrick Hodgkinson
Date: 1972
Location: London

Patrick Hodgkinson's original vision for Bloomsbury consisted of a vast trench of concrete dwellings and lecture halls, stomping across the remnants of Georgian London with Brutalist glee. The only chunk to be finished, the Brunswick Centre, is perhaps London's sole megastructure, a concrete valley of houses arranged above a shopping parade and cinema. It took three decades before a programme of refurbishment and upgrade works covered the raw concrete in the paint Hodgkinson originally specified. Now a highly desirable and light-filled place to live, it offers an insight into the grandiose schemes of decades past.

The Barbican Estate

Architect: Chamberlain, Powell and Bon
Date: 1965-1976
Location: London

For many Londoners the Barbican defines contemporary Brutalism. Yet behind the fortress-like construction of this 35-acre city centre site is a veritable oasis of greenery, culture, water and calm, all wrapped up in some of the most abrasive concrete finishes ever seen. The Barbican almost took as long to build as a city, with initial plans drawn up in the 50s and the final concrete slotted into place in the arts centre, which opened in 1982. The firm of Chamberlain, Powell and Bon oversaw this expansive piece of urbanism, which continues to define the highest standards of concrete design.

Keeling House

Architect: Denys Lasdun
Date: 1957
Location: London

An earlier outing by Denys Lasdun, Keeling House in East London was intended to form a 'street in the sky', replacing the low-rise back-to-back houses that had succumbed to war damage and old age. The cluster block form was carefully designed, with interlocking, overlooking apartments somehow combining both community and privacy, but it was rather less meticulously built. By the early 90s the block had fallen into disrepair; a pioneering refurbishment by Munkenbeck and Marshall gave it a new lease of life, adding penthouses on top and even securing Lasdun's blessing in the process.

Trellick Tower

Architect: Ernö Goldfinger
Date: 1966-1972
Location: London

The Trellick Tower is the archetypal symbol of brutalism in West London, a bold cliff of shuttered concrete that overlooks the city's western reaches. Despite a rocky start, the Trellick subsequently ascended to the status of cultural icon, adorning everything from t-shirts to coffee cups. Ernö Goldfinger's generous design initially suffered from poor maintenance but today the building's generous apartments are highly sought after, combining space, light and views, with services pushed to one side and contained in a slim adjoining tower.

78 South Hill Park

Architect: Brian Housden
Date: 1963-65
Location: London

Hampstead Heath’s 78 South Hill Park doesn’t look like a house born of embarrassment, but that is exactly what it is. In the 1950s, architect Brian Housden visited Dutch De Stijl master Gerrit Rietveld (who played roughly the role in architecture that Mondrian played in painting) and, when they parted, Rietveld told Housden he’d love to see the plans of the Hampstead house he was working on. Housden said he was mortified, ashamed of the timid designs he had drawn and decided to start over. Rietveld never saw the drawings, but the result is extraordinary – a brutalist house on the edge of Hampstead Heath that is one of London’s most surprising and inventive post-war dwellings. The 1924 Rietveld Schröder House, which so inspired Housden, is always photographed as a freestanding, almost autonomous building, but, in fact, bookends a dull brick Utrecht terrace. Similarly, Housden’s house squats between a pair of more conventional modernist blocks (including one by Howell, Killick, Partridge & Amis, architects of London’s Young Vic theatre), its muscular concrete frame seeming to push them apart, to defy them to crush it. Additional writing: Edwin Heathcote

Barbican sunken bars

Architect: Kam Bava
Date: 2022
Location: London

The much loved Barbican Estate in London comprises many parts and elements – from its famed performing arts centre, a key cultural hub in the City of London and beyond and the largest of its kind in Europe, to its iconic residences, outdoor spaces and brutalist architecture environment. Its scale means that there are many smaller areas, however, which often remain lesser-known, yet are no less important to the Barbican experience. Part of the Grade II-listed Barbican Centre Theatre, the Barbican sunken bars are two hospitality corners of the seminal modernist development, constructed between 1965 and 1971 and located under the steps of the theatre. The spaces were in need of a refresh, so London architect Kam Bava was asked to lead a careful restoration and interior redesign to breathe new life to the complex's much-loved leisure offering.

The bars’ facelift was not just about aesthetic fixes and a superficial polish. The architect ensured a technical upgrade was incorporated as well, because, after years of intensive use, the listed fabric was in dire need of an update. Seeking to maintain the interior's original character, as well as emphasise reuse and recycling as an approach, Bava cleverly redeployed elements found within the Barbican campus. ‘The steel bar structure is made from the handrails on the [Barbican] centre, and the ceiling comes from the art gallery. The handling of these pieces together with the use of mirrors creates a very different scale of experience, using very familiar design cues,' he explains.

South London house

Architect: Whittaker Parsons
Date: 2023
Location: London

This brutalist treasure in south London squeezes a surprising amount of space onto an unpromising spot, enhancing the streetscape. The addition, next to a terraced house, features a tough, hard-wearing exterior that brings a little brutalist architecture glamour to its neighbourhood. Whittaker Parsons’ Corner Fold House was designed for a downsizing couple, who swapped a conventional Victorian terrace for a faceted modern house that makes the most of its awkward site, tucked in between an immovable electricity sub-station and the clients’ former family home. The process was remarkably smooth, according to the clients, who were able to transform a garden plot at the side of their house into a completely separate dwelling, digging down to create a new basement and even finding enough space for a small rear terrace. Describing it as ‘the experience of a lifetime’, the clients are especially impressed by Whittaker Parsons’ ability to maximise the amount of available space.

Brutalist architecture elsewhere in Europe

CBR HQ

Architect: Constantin Brodzki
Date: 1970
Location: Brussels, Belgium

Constantin Brodzki is less than enthusiastic, to say the least, whenever he hears of one of his buildings being renovated. At 93 years old, the Belgian architect is still very much engaged with the architecture world, and he’s eager to point out the ways in which he would like his modernist legacy to be preserved. ‘I have experienced catastrophes before, so I’m suspicious,’ Brodzki admits, taking out plans and photos to show how some firms have botched his former projects. One of his designs, the former HQ of the cement company CBR in Brussels, is currently being converted into a new outpost for Antwerp co-working concept Fosbury & Sons. Close to the Sonian Forest, it’s just ten minutes from the high-end Avenue Louise. For Fosbury & Sons’ founders Stijn Geeraets and Maarten Van Gool, the initial impetus to take on the modernist office building, with its characteristic façade of curved concrete modules, was all about the immediate visual impact. But as they started to explore the building, the full package captivated them. Additional writing: Siska Lyseens

Zvonarka Central 

Architect: Raduz Russ
Date: 1988
Location: Brno, Czech Republic

Brno’s Zvonarka Central Bus Terminal has been a key Brutalist architecture landmark in the city since it first opened in 1988 - and is among the country’s most notable remaining examples of the genre. But years of intense use and high maintenance costs had resulted in a tired, decaying building in dire need of a refresh. Now, the Brutalist bus terminal has been given a new lease of life courtesy of architects CHYBIK + KRISTOF, who in 2011 embarked on a self-initiated journey to restore the famous building to its former glory. The design team worked with the station’s private owners and raised awareness through social media to instigate a discussion about the station’s future, securing the necessary funding for the redesign works in 2015. ‘Demolitions are a global issue,’ explains co-founding architect Michal Kristof. ‘Our role as architects is to engage in these conversations and demonstrate that we no longer operate from a blank page. We need to consider and also work from existing architecture – and gradually shift the conversation from creation to transformation.

Van Wassenhove House

Architect: Juliaan Lampens
Date: 1973
Location: Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium

Those, like us, who have a soft spot for crude concrete architecture, will love the work of Juliaan Lampens (1926-2019). The powerful concrete roughness of the Belgian architect’s volumes is inescapable when you walk past two of his best known buildings, both near Ghent: the Chapel of Our Blessed Lady of Kerselare, in the village of Edelare, and the Van Wassenhove house in Sint-Martens-Latem. However, digging a little deeper into Lampens’ life and work, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to his architecture than brutalism by numbers. Belgian curator Angelique Campens has been studying Lampens’ work since her university years and knew him well. The architect had a reputation for being reserved, keeping his business to himself to the point of avoiding contact with colleagues. He didn’t even travel much, reveals Campens. ‘But he had a lot of books. He admired Oscar Niemeyer and was influenced by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.’ He may seem to have lacked the desire for architectural pilgrimage, but Lampens practised non-stop from his base in Eke, East Flanders, from 1950 until his last work was built in 2002 – creating a legacy of about 50, mostly residential, projects, including the chapel and Eke library. Lampens was born in 1926 in De Pinte and grew up in nearby Eke, the son of a cabinetmaker. After working as a technical draughtsman, he studied architecture in Ghent and set up his own firm straight after graduation, kick-starting it with commissions from his father’s middle-class clientele. While following a more conventional design style at first, he nurtured an interest in modernism. ’His visit to the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels was a turning point for him,’ Campens explains. ’Shortly after that, his designs changed drastically. He thought that Le Corbusier was too sculptural, and Mies too structured, but he wanted to combine the two. Read More

Clifton cathedral (1969-73) by Ron Weeks of the Percy Thomas Partnership

ArchitectL Ron Weeks of the Percy Thomas Partnership
Date: 1969-73
Location: Bristol, UK

Architecture buffs might recognise the brutalist cathedral in Clifton, Bristol by its distinctive, irregular, elongated hexagonal floorplan. What many don’t know however, is that the iconic building has been suffering from water leakages for years, due to its large, striking lead roof not being entirely watertight. Enter architecture and heritage experts Purcell, who have just unveiled their careful repair work to the building’s historical fabric, rendering the cathedral fully watertight for the first time ever. The structure, also known as Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of SS. Peter and Paul in Clifton, Bristol, was originally constructed between 1969-73 to a design by Ron Weeks of the Percy Thomas Partnership, and is a Grade II* listed monument. Due to the building’s sensitive and historical nature, Purcell worked closely with all relevant parties and the Lead Sheet Association to ensure the greatest care is taken when carrying out the repair works. The latter was heavily involved because the pitched roof required the majority of the works – some 86 tons of replacement lead. It was the largest lead roofing project in Britain at the time of its creation.

Rozzol Melara

Architect: built under the direction of Le Corbusier
Date: 1960s
Location: Trieste, Italy

Hefty monographs about concrete were everywhere in 2017. Once a marginalised and maligned genre, brutalism has burst back onto the design scene, cited as inspiration by a new generation seduced by the authenticity and heroic ambitions of this impressive architecture. Yet as well as being fetishised for its rough and ready qualities, there’s also a growing desire to preserve the best examples of concrete architecture in the face of widespread indifference and downright hostility. SOS Brutalism, a monumental survey of the more esoteric expressions of concrete architecture around the world, with a special focus on those that are threatened by alteration or demolition. This impressive book, which grew out of a collaboration between the Deutsches Architekturmuseum and Wüstenrot Foundation and was edited by Oliver Elser, Philip Kurz, Peter Cachola Schmal, is a treasure trove of unsung buildings and oddities, including works in Russia, the Middle East and Asia. Covering the period between 1950 and 1970, it uses new photography and archive imagery to rally for preservation and recognition, making it a must for lovers of architecture’s more far-flung fringes. Lovers of raw surfaces, bold forms and naked concrete are spoilt for choice. Additional writing: Jonathan Bell. Read More

County Hall, Truro

Architect: FK Hicklin
Date: 1963-66
Location: Truro, UK

Owen Hatherley – author of a new book on Britain’s modern buildings – is an architectural journalist with an agenda. Throughout a series of memoirs and travelogues spanning the UK and Europe, Hatherley has proved to be one of the most perceptive and insightful chroniclers of the modernist era. His urban perambulations are in the great tradition of some of the best writers on architecture and design, from Nikolaus Pevsner through to Ian Nairn, Jonathan Meades, and Reyner Banham. Like these critics and historians, Hatherley is adept at eking out some additional fact or stylistic note, while never being afraid of pronouncing an unpopular opinion. Among the buildings featured is Truro Town Hall, pictured here. Additional writing: Jonathan Bell

University of East Anglia in Norwich

Architect: Denys Lasdun
Date: 1962–68
Location: Norwich, UK

Our admiration for all things concrete is part of our DNA, so when we found out about fine art photographer Simon Phipps’ book on brutalist architecture, Finding Brutalism: A Photographic Survey of Post-War British Architecture, we were rubbing our hands together in glee; and when the book reached our offices, it did not disappoint. Filled with Phipps’ distinctive photographic compositions, this is a richly produced tome. The photographer spent more than 20 years, documenting brutalist architecture in Britain, creating a hefty archive of about 125 buildings. The book features some 200 takes of those, making for an impressive collection to reference and savour. Yet if you think that this is all about aesthetics, think again. Phipps, in effect, follows through his lens the rebuilding of Britain after World War II. His numerous photographs of Brutalist masterpieces not only appeal to the eye and refined tastes, but also ‘recognises the architects’ enormous contribution to the transformation of the political and social landscape of the country’ in the aftermath of the war, explain the publishers, Park Books. Included is the University of East Anglia in Norwich (1962–68) by Denys Lasdun, pictured here.

Pilgrimage Church

Architect: Gottfried Böhm
Date: 1968
Location: Germany

Architecture is one of those professions that can often become a family affair. Gottfried Böhm is not only the son of an architect, he is also the grandson, the husband and the father of architects. Since the early days of his career, more than 60 years ago, Böhm has been known for his original work, which, in 1986, earned him the Pritzker Prize. The Pilgrimage Church in Neviges, Germany, perfectly characterises his style – and is nothing like any church you could imagine. The Pilgrimage Church project began as a competition-winning entry in 1964, in response to the Catholic archdiocese of Koln’s call for a church in Neviges, a small town about half an hour outside the city. Böhm’s winning design ticked all the boxes, providing both the space and atmosphere for religious functions – it offers seating for 800 and standing room for 2,200 in a truly spectacular building – without any obvious recourse to traditional religious symbolism. The church was completed in May 1968 and instantly became a landmark in the town. Taking advantage of a row of pilgrims’ houses and the church’s position at the top of a slope, Böhm created a processional way leading up the hill, into the church’s open courtyard and inside, ending at the altar and the pilgrimage’s religious climax. Read more

Kineta holiday house

Architect: Alexandros Tombazis
Date: 1968
Location: Kineta, Greece

Alexandros Tombazis heads a 60-strong office in Athens and leads about 20 realised and conceptual projects per year. With more than 800 projects under his belt — about 300 of them built — and at least 110 prizes gained in competitions, Tombazis is one of Greece’s most prominent and successful living architects, appreciated more by his peers, perhaps, than by the public. Born in India in 1939, he spent his childhood in Karachi, Tunbridge Wells and London before his family settled in Athens. At the Architectural School of the National Technical University of Athens, he was taught by key figures of the Greek art and design scene — including Nikos Hatzikiriakos-Gikas and surrealist Nikos Engonopoulos — during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Coinciding with the peak of Greek modernism, it was an exciting time. As a student, Tombazis witnessed the global rise of the International Style, and travelled all over Europe visiting innovative buildings such as Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis’ Philips Pavilion, a multimedia showcase, at Brussels’ 1958 World Fair. From this inspirational start, he developed a dedication that has fuelled his tireless productivity, along with a sense of optimism and a belief in the power of technology in architecture. Pictured, here, the Kineta holiday house, designed in 1968 and influenced by the Japanese Metabolist movement, features slim but cleverly insulated concrete walls, using recycled waste from local steel industry furnaces. The bottom right unit is a later addition by the owners.

Orientkaj station

Architect: Arup and Cobe
Date: 2002
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Unlike Paris’ 100 year-old Metro and London’s vast and labrynthine Underground, established way back in 1863, Copenhagen’s transport network is very much a 21st century, work-in-progress project. First opened in 2002, the last two decades have seen the Copenhagen Metro steadily growing, its linear, driver-less, rapid-transport tentacles spreading ever-outwards to the city’s new frontiers. For the recently completed Nordhavn metro line extension, connecting northern docklands to town centre, the city has wisely decided against a generic architectural style with two new stations, Orientkaj and Nordhavn, taking a ‘passenger-focused’ approach that celebrates the character and industrial past of the rapidly developing work and residential area, currently one of the largest urban regenerations in northern Europe. London-based architects Arup and Denmark’s Cobe practice (whose office is actually situated in the Nordhavn district) worked together during a seven year period to conceive two new metro stations – one over ground, one underground – that handsomely reflect the character of the urban areas they serve. Photography courtesy COAST

AGET Iraklis

Architect: Alexandros Tombazis
Date: 1972
Location: Athens, Greece

On a generous, green site in one of Athens’ smarter northern residential suburbs, a strange concrete presence rises. The long, relatively low structure features unusual, almost retro-futuristic forms, screens that frame large openings and exposed textured concrete that make itclearly stand out from its neighbours. Locals know it well. This is not your typical Greek office building; it is the former headquarters of AGET Iraklis, one of Greece’s best known cement manufacturers. It was designed in 1972 by one of the country’s most celebrated 20th century architects, Alexandros Tombazis (see W*138). The architectural landmark is emblematic of its creator’s style and early explorations of concrete and Metabolist principles, such as the use of modular design and technology – this part of Athens also features his Iliako Chorio (meaning ‘Solar Village’, a 1980s experiment in environmental architecture) and his own office. The AGET building was left empty for seven years after the company moved out in 2010, but it has now been given a new lease of life by local architect Georges Batzios. ‘I was on the island of Kythnos for work and the client called me up out of the blue,’ recalls Batzios, who set up his boutique studio in the central Athens neighbourhood of Petralona in 2013, following an international career.

Church at Firminy

Architect: Le Corbusier
Date: 1953
Location: Firminy, French

Le Corbusier's built legacy was extensive, yet his archive of unfulfilled schemes was even more so. One town that reaped more than its fair share of his genius was Firminy, in France 's Loire Valley. In 1953, a determined post-war mayor decided that Firminy, a former mining town, was the perfect blank canvas for Le Corbusier's dreams of a vertical garden city: enter Firminy-Vert. The new town has three complete Le Corbusier works, but plans for a new church laundered as subsequent mayors weren't quite so keen on the brutalist style, and work slowly petered out, leaving an unfinished concrete shell. But thanks to former Le Corbusier apprentice, Jo se Oubrerie, the builders returned on site and the church was completed in 2006. Which is especially exciting because St-Pierre - a geometric composition dominated by a huge concrete cone punctured with slots that will allow light to cascade down into the nave - is only the third religious structure in Le Corbusier 's oeuvre. The full version of this article was originally published in the February 2006 issue of Wallpaper*

The Bijlmermeer Estate

Architect: renovations by XVW Architectuur and NL Architects
Date: 2018
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands

The Abbot of Bijlmer pads around his sunlit home in a slogan T-shirt and full beard. Most of the disciples who occupy this nine-flat ‘cloister’ in the Kleiburg building have gone for the day, so he can move freely through the communal kitchen to the slender chapel with the cross-shaped window, past full-height glass to the sweeping balcony. Beyond it, children frolic in a quiet common dotted with mature oaks. They’re lucky: this residential complex is one of the loveliest within the controversial social housing project called Bijlmermeer in south-east Amsterdam. At a long wooden dining table, the abbot (real name: Johannes van den Akker) cracks open a bottle of Kleiburg Sicilian white beer, a citrusy blend he brews, like a good Dutch Trappist, in a nearby hangar surrounded by gardens. The microbrewery, which serves enlightened dishes such as sustainable smokedmackerel salad with grapefruit, helps him underwrite the cloister’s expenses and shelter homeless families. A decade ago, the Kleiburg building’s 500 flats were crumbling to their foundations. Developers bought the lot for a single, symbolic euro and hired XVW Architectuur and NL Architects to rescue it. NL’s Kamiel Klaasse says Bijlmermeer had earned a ‘street cred that hadn’t yet filtered to policymakers. Many famous rappers came out of the area, using the buildings and elevated roads in their videos.’ The full version of this article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of Wallpaper*

Ivry-Cité du Parc and the Albert Einstein School

Architect: Jean Renaudie, Nina Schuch and Serge Renaudie
Date: 1982-83
Location: Paris, France

The photography and essays in Brutalist Paris are underpinned by five years of research into modernist architecture in the French metropolis; they celebrate the city's brutalist architecture, and also make up the first, expansive architecture book from Black Crow Media, long-time specialist in concrete cartography. With photography by Dr Nigel Green of Photolanguage and words by Bartlett associate professor Dr Robin Wilson, Brutalist Paris is very far from being a light-hearted skim over the uncompromising aesthetics of the city’s post-war concrete architecture. Instead, it puts the spotlight on 50 key buildings, connecting them with seven academic essays that look deep into French culture’s relationship with architecture, modernity, and social change. Among the offerings, is Ivry-Cité du Parc and the Albert Einstein School by Jean Renaudie, Nina Schuch and Serge Renaudie, created in 1982-83 and pictured here.

Corpus Christi

Architect: Architects Co-Partnership
Date: 1960
Location: Cambridge, UK

This map of modern Cambridge architecture explores more than 40 buildings throughout the British city, touring its rich art deco, brutalist, postmodern and high-tech building heritage. Covering both the local and international architects that have made their mark here, Modern Cambridge Map refocuses our attention, moving it away from the well-documented historic university buildings, and onto more contemporary forms, as well as the city's extensive modernist architecture legacy. ‘You’ll see the city in a whole new light,’ says architecture, design and culture writer Harriet Thorpe, the map's author and a former Wallpaper* staff member. The selection spans from the angular Arup Associates-designed David Attenborough Building to the boxy extensions of the Cambridge School of Architecture and its university housing, designed by Alex Hardy and John Wilson; this is a layered survey of 20th-century design. The space-age Murray Edwards Building, designed by Chamberlain, Powell and Bon, is also included in the map, while injections of colour come from John Outram’s Judge Business School. Elaborate forms and spindly structures can be found courtesy of the Architects Co-Partnership-designed Wolfson-Trinity building and Corpus Christi. Denys Lasdun's Christ’s College New Court offers an intriguingly layered form. The images for the map are taken by artist and photographer Nigel Green, and add visual prompts to Thorpe’s words, letting us explore gems of the built environment with ease, from hidden concrete staircases to fountains and glass roofs.

Brion-Vega cemetery

Architect: Carlo Scarpa
Date: 1978
Location: San Vito d'Altivole, Italy

One of Carlo Scarpa's most iconic and seminal built works (and a project so close to his heart that a space in it was saved for his own use) was the Brion family cemetery. Scarpa (1906-1978) designed the Brion-Vega in San Vito d'Altivole, near Italy's Treviso, as an extension to the family's existing cemetery. The architect developed the geometrical concrete composition over a 10-year period, with works finally reaching completion in 1978. The L-shaped plot includes a complex of five buildings; a small chapel, the entrance hall, a small steel-and-wood pavilion on an island in the site's water pond, the main tomb, and an open-air structure covering the graves.

IVC Group’s office

Architect: J. Verbauwhede and P. Vandekerkhove and Glenn Sestig
Date: 1980s
Location: Belgium

Glenn Sestig is an expert in walking the tightrope between elegance and substance, smoothly balancing craft and a careful use of materials with an architectural narrative and programmatic meaning; as one of his latest workspace commissions, the redesign of IVC’s Flooring Development Centre in Belgium, demonstrates. For this project, Sestig had a double mission. He needed to make sure his design respected the original brutalist structure on site by J. Verbauwhede and P. Vandekerkhove (which was built in the late 1980s and later listed), while ensuring the leading carpet tile, luxury vinyl tile and sheet vinyl manufacturer gained a contemporary workspace, fit for 21st-century use. The existing building's unusual shape might have been a challenge to deal with in different hands, but Sestig embraced it and worked with its distinctive form to make the most out of the visual impact and unique interiors on offer. The office area is spread across two floors, and the architects worked with the principles of collaboration and wellbeing, striving for the highest quality of acoustics and ergonomics. At the same time, Sestig's signature flair for highly sophisticated compositions and a coherent aesthetic is prominent throughout.

The Chichester Festival Theatre

Architect: Powell & Moya
Date: 1962
Location: Chichester, UK

When the Chichester Festival Theatre reopened last weekend with its bold, new rear volume by London architecture firm Haworth Tompkins, it was no less controversial than its original incarnation. That first building launched in 1962 with a modernist hexagonal design by Powell & Moya, which lent itself to a pentagonal thrust stage pointing ahead to a centre aisle. 'It divided the audience and it divided opinion,' says Steve Tompkins, who led the redesign of the concrete landmark. 'Some would say it's the thing that will always make it a flawed space for theatre.' It could have been done away with for good this time, but Tompkins says he and his partners 'liked the eccentricity of it'. ''The correlation between the geometry of the stage and the architecture cannot be changed, lest it destroy the feel,' he continues, so the decision was made to 'ameliorate but not obliterate.' Instead, the architects took a hatchet to the piecemeal extensions added over the years, as the summer theatre festival grew into a year-round concern. 'By the time we were commissioned to renew the building, a lot of the original clarity had been clouded,' says Tompkins.

Loris Gréaud’s Paris studio

Architect: Claude Parent
Date: 2023
Location: Paris, France

Eaubonne, an unassuming suburb north of Paris, is not where you’d expect to find a brutalist bunker by the late architect Claude Parent, rising up like a shark fin in a sea of stucco houses. But Eaubonne also happens to be the home of artist Loris Gréaud, who thrives on the unexpected. Gréaud has garnered a reputation for artworks that mess with viewers’ perceptions, flickering between reality and illusion. He created an underground sculpture park that nobody can see, destroyed a museum exhibit on the night of its opening, and shot a two-hour film for one viewer to watch at a time. As a teenager, he was entranced by the drawings of Parent, a utopian thinker who,in the 1960s, co-developed an architectural theory called ‘la fonction oblique’, using sloped planes to prioritise space over surface. Later, when Gréaud established his name as an artist, he searched for a good reason to collaborate with Parent, finally finding one in 2014, in the context of his feature film, Sculpt.

Cemetery extension

Architect: Leonardo Ricci
Date: 1984-94
Location: Jesi, Italy

A new book on brutalist Italian architecture by the photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego shines a light on Italy’s greatest (and most neglected) works in concrete building. Conte and Perego, whose previous monographs include Soviet Asia, spent five years assembling this portfolio of the country’s contribution to the brutalist architecture movement. Italian brutalism always had a rawer edge than its more rational, robust equivalents elsewhere. There’s something especially sculptural, almost wilfully ephemeral about projects like the spindly columns of Luigi Ciapparella’s cemetery extension in Busto Arsizio, 1971, or the museum dedicated to the sculptor Augusto Murer, designed by Giuseppe Davanzo in 1971, with its bright red roofs and extended steel frame.

World Health Organisation headquarters

Architect: Jean Tschumi, Pierre Bonnard and Berrel Berrel Kräutler
Date: 1066
Location: Geneva, Switzerland

To reach the new addition of the World Health Organisation (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, visitors will need to cross through the entrance of the organisation’s existing, historic building at the end of Appia Avenue. The glazed entrance lobby of the original structure, defined by an intricate structural system on which the tall, pre-stressed concrete volume lies, is suggestive of the building’s modernist value amd brutalist architecture and contributes to the dialogue between old and new. Surrounded by woodland and designed by Jean Tschumi (yet developed posthumously by Pierre Bonnard in 1966), the majestic WHO office building is now being refreshed with an extension by Swiss architecture firm Berrel Berrel Kräutler. The new office building connects to the existing one via a new, underground, elongated plinth – envisioned as the social heart, the ‘agora’, of the entire campus. This gesture further articulates the overall project’s relationship with nature. On ground level, the plinth base becomes a terrace that provides ample vantage points for taking in the surrounding landscape; on the lower ground, it contains a courtyard garden that links and organises the several, different spaces around it. Additional writing: Stamatina Kousidi.

Brutalist architecture in the Americas

Yale Centre for British Art

Architect: Louis Kahn
Date: 1974
Location: New Haven, USA

Louis Kahn’s masterful Yale Center for British Art re-opened its doors in 2016 after the completion of a $33 million, eight-year renovation led by New Haven-based Knight Architecture. The five-story 1974 building houses the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, donated in 1966 by Yale Alumnus Paul Mellon. Its intimate, naturally lit galleries are organised around two ethereal interior courtyards, floored in travertine and clad with grids of bared concrete, matte steel and white oak wall panels. Perhaps most famous for its monolithic anchor piece, a drum-like cylindrical grey cement staircase— the centre is an astonishing example of Kahn’s unparalleled gift for eliciting visceral emotion through pure volume, light, and materials. Much of the renovation, describes Knight Architecture principal George Knight, was ’an effort to defend the architecture in the face of legitimate issues.’ Additional writing: San Lubell. Read more

The home of Pedro Reyes and Carla Fernandez

Architect: Pedro Reyes
Date: 2016
Location: Mexico City, Mexico

This is a dwelling for the caveman of the future; the ruins of a civilization, now extinct, which was more advanced than the one we’re living in now,’ explains Mexican artist Pedro Reyes. He’s referring to the house he’s built with his wife, fashion designer Carla Fernández, in Coyoacán, in the south of Mexico City. Ancient Aztecs meet The Martian Chronicles in the form of hammered concrete walls, chunky furniture hewn from volcanic stone and an abundance of rich, overblown greenery. A ‘pyramid’ at one end is Carla’s studio, a yard behind it will be Pedro’s. It’s currently a ramshackle plot occupied by the team of artisans that is helping finish the house. The couple is in good company in Coyoacán. Fellow artists Damián Ortega and Gabriel Orozco are nearby, Frida Kahlo was born locally, and it’s where her pal, the exiled Leon Trotsky, was murdered in 1940. Those in Mexico’s creative circles joke that Carla and Pedro are the modern-day Frida and Diego (Rivera, Kahlo’s artist husband). Like their predecessors they are bon vivants – 600 guests came to their housewarming – and like their communist forebears, they are politically engaged. Additional writing: Emma O'Kelly. Read more

Teatro Politecnico

Architect: Oswaldo de la Torre
Date: 1965
Location: Quito, Ecuador

Among the Ecuador capital's enduring architectural legacy is the brutalist Teatro Politecnico, designed in 1965 by Oswaldo de la Torre. The structure's unusual, sculptural concrete volume visually instantly stands out, sitting on a concrete plinth. A glass strip across the facade ensures natural light comes into the building. And while this is a piece of architecture that feels thoroughly modern, at the same time it nods to its pre-Hispanic counterparts with its monumentality and subtly dominating presence. The space inside is still in use as a space for events for the local university. Based on an article that first appeared in the Wallpaper* Summer 2020 issue, written by Hugo Macdonald

Casa Hernandez

Architect: Agustin Hernandez
Date: 1970
Location: Mexico

The vertiginously steep and wooded slopes of the Bosques de Ias Lomas district are a lousy place to build a house, but a great place to explore radical and challenging domestic architecture. Which is why, in 1970, Agustin Hermindez, an obscure architect from a local family, built himself an apartment and office that, if nothing else, tried to test the limits of what might be possible with a difficult site. He had a battle on his hands; the local conservative bourgeoisie was not convinced that architecture could change the way you lived. But cynics were proven wrong and Casa Hermindez (W*64) propelled the architect into the big league. Today, the aggressively angular building resembles nothing so much as a spaceship in a madefor-TV sci-fi epic, or perhaps a reworking of the Mesoamerican pyramids 30km away at Teotihuacan, suspended by what was to become Hernandez's signature feature, a soaring single concrete column. In a space on the top floor of his office is the architect's lush apartment, unaltered since the 1970s. Despite a string of vast state projects, such as the 400,000 sq m National Military College, where pyramidal influences are even more obvious, Hernandez always returned to his first love - creating visions of future housing - and Casa Hernandez has always been the closest to his heart. Additional writing: Richard Cook

Beverly Hills house

Architect: iDGroup
Date: 2007
Location: Newport Beach, USA

James Jannard – Jim to his friends – owns a lot of things. He owns several properties in Malibu and in Newport Beach, California. He owns two islands in Fiji, a third in the Pacific Northwest. He also owns a substantial collection of vintage 1980s sunglasses and biking gear. These last two are evidence of something he used to own – the Oakley eyewear brand, which he launched in the 1970s as a maker of motocross equipment, and the sale of which, for $2.1bn in 2007, allowed him to buy many of the other things he owns today. This is a man who knows what he likes, and tends to get it. Jannard has now added another home to his residential options, perched atop a cliff in the chichi Trousdale section of Beverly Hills. The neighbourhood has a standing ordinance forbidding any construction above the first storey, ensuring that the two-acre site has an unobstructed view of nearly the whole Los Angeles basin, from Downtown to the sea. This perch is scarcely less spectacular than the building Jannard has now plonked down on it, an 18,000 sq ft citadel in exposed concrete and aluminium. The house has no official nickname gracing its giant mechanical entry gate; yet the one that suggests itself is cited by both the owner and his architects, iDGroup, as an essential touchstone (so to speak) in developing their brash and brawny scheme: ‘Stonehenge’.

Andes Mountain retreat

Architect: LCLA Office and local architect Clara Arango
Date: 2021
Location: Colombia

Concept-led, sculptural concrete architecture, an expansive, wild, native-species garden, and a rural setting with a pleasant climate in a popular destination; there’s plenty to love about this new residential project in rural Colombia, an Andes Mountain retreat by Oslo-based architecture studio LCLA Office and local architect Clara Arango. But it’s the carefully planned harmony of the above elements, the attention to nature, healthy dose of open-mindedness, and can-do attitude of its makers that elevate this project from being a great house, to a truly idyllic retreat. It all started with a commission that landed on the desk of practice directors Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hanson via a friend from Colombia, who is currently based in Mexico and came to them with an enticing, and unusual brief. He wanted to create a domestic base in Colombia, which he could use in the more distant future as a main home, but also make the most of in the meantime, treating it almost as an unofficial artistic retreat. He saw it as a place to get together with friends, but also one to open to creatives visiting the city, to catch up and talk about their global endeavours. It would be offered to artists on an ad hoc, informal basis, if they wanted to stay there for a few days to produce work. ‘What is unusual is that we were commissioned to design a home for the future, not for right now,’ Callejas points out.

MUBE museum

Architect: Paulo Mendes da Rocha
Date: 1964
Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil

Paulo Mendes da Rocha still channels the energy of a revolutionary. The 81-year-old architect’s discourse, usually self-contradictory, is intense, much like the body of work that spans his 50-year career. Take his house in Butanta, for example, which he built in 1964. Even today, it’s an architectural gesture against the culture of individualism. The banishing of circulation space, and the design of rooms with windows that open not externally but internally towards the common areas, represents a radical proposal of respectful co-existence. Delicate paper models all around his office tell stories about his current projects; the Vitória Museum, already under construction; laboratories for Vale do Rio Doce in Belem do Pani; the Vigo University building in Spain; and the new Carriage Museum in Lisbon. The architect seems genuinely unconcerned about the current global economic difficulties. ‘How can Europe talk about crisis aft er having overcome two World Wars and having rebuilt entire countries from scratch? We should allow capitalism to be discussed as well as reinvented,’ he says. Excerpt from an interview with Paolo Mendes da Rocha in 2010. Additional writing: Isabel Martinez Abascal.

Luna House

Architect: Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Date: 2022
Location: Santa Lucia Alto, Chile

Santa Lucia Alto in Chile’s Yungay region, is green and dramatic, filled with dense forests, fertile agricultural plains and tall mountains – part of the Andes starts here. It is also the home turf of renowned, award-winning architecture practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen, headed by Sofía von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo. And it is here that the dynamic duo embarked upon building their new base, the expansive, combined home and workspace project, Luna House. Exemplifying in one fell swoop the pair’s fascination with form making, exposed concrete and a healthy blend of brutalism and minimalist architecture, Luna House is at once a striking and a calming presence. ‘This is a large and a small building at the foot of the Andes Mountains,’ the architects explain. ‘In fact, it is an aggregate of 12 different buildings separated from each other by visible seismic joints. Saying that this collection of concrete blocks is a house would be too simple.’

Elemental House

Architect: Elemental-Alejandro Aravena
Date: 2022
Location: Mexico

With Elemental House, a lucky architecture lover can use their passion to help communities in need. The new-built home is the most recent work by Chilean architecture studio Elemental-Alejandro Aravena, and will be the first prize in a raffle organised by the Mexican philanthropic institution Sorteos Tec to mark the occasion of its 75th anniversary. Proceeds will go towards the charity’s education programmes. 'This house made for Sorteos Tec transforms architectural value into lottery tickets to finance the education of hundreds of young people and improve their quality of life expectations. This ends up producing a common good – something similar to what is done through social housing. That is what one as an architect seeks to achieve all the time: to contribute to the common good through a work,’ says studio founder Alejandro Aravena, winner of the 2016 Pritzker Architecture Prize. Read more

Casa Alferez

Architect: Ludwig Godefroy
Date: 2022
Location: outside Mexico City, Mexico

The concrete cube of Casa Alferez peeks out somewhat unexpectedly from behind the trees on a woodland plot outside Mexico City. It feels a stark contrast to the natural setting, yet somehow fitting, rising like a monolithic ruin or a futuristic tower in the forest. Its creator, Mexico-based architect Ludwig Godefroy, explains that while its powerful exterior may make a strong statement, it is the result of functional needs. Nothing in this project is random and everything has been carefully planned to fulfil a purpose. Casa Alferez is the weekend retreat of a father and his child, who live and work in the Mexican capital. They got to know Godefroy while he was working on the hotel Casa TO in Puerto Escondido, meeting him through that scheme’s client, and they instantly clicked. The father was already in the process of creating this getaway on a tree-filled site about an hour’s drive from Mexico City (Alferez is the name of the wider region where the project is located).

Cabo Sports Complex

Architect: Hector Barroso
Date: 2022
Location: Baja California, Mexico

A desert site in Baja California Sur plays host to the Cabo Sports Complex – the new home for the Mexican Tennis Open. Designed by Mexico City studio Taller Hector Barroso, the project blends effortlessly the sustainable architecture of earth construction, timber, raw surfaces, and a sense of modernist architecture in a combination that feels entirely fitting for its fascinating, arid landscape. The Cabo Sports Complex site is separated from the beach by the Cabo San Lucas San Jose del Cabo highway. Responding to this, the architecture team conceived the sports complex using elegant, long, compacted earth walls that wrap around the site, protecting it from sun and noise. 'Understanding the meaning of the landscape was crucial for the project. It showed a world where it was possible to create an architecture that, instead of making noise, seeks to remain silent in its context, resting amid the extraordinary natural spectacle we are offered by nature,' the architecture team write.

The Breuer Building

Architect: Marcel Breuer
Date: 1966
Location: New York, USA

The famous Breuer Building is going to be acquired by established auction house Sotheby's, it has just been announced in New York. The celebrated landmark of modernist architecture is set to become the home of the auction house by 2025. 'The acquisition of the Breuer building is an ongoing part of Sotheby’s strategy to grow and enhance its global footprint in order to better serve existing and new collectors across its wide range of collecting categories,' write Sotheby's representatives. The Breuer Building was designed by modernist master Marcel Breuer. It was completed in 1966 and its brutalist architecture facade has become visual shorthand for arts in the city. It has, till now, belonged to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Located at the corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street, the structure is well known for its inverted ziggurat shape.

Nico Sayulita

Architect: Palma
Date: 2023
Location: Sayulita, Mexico

Nico Sayulita sits immersed in tropical foliage, looking over the blue waters of the Pacific. Set in Mexico's West Coast, the expansive residence is a unique, new rental property – a hospitality experience created by developer Hybrid and architecture studio Palma. Conceived as a holiday rental, crafted to welcome guests to this lush corner of the country, the design balances openness and seclusion, flexibility and privacy. Seattle-based property specialist Hybrid collaborated on Nico Sayulita with Mexico City- and Sayulita-based Palma (a 2021 Wallpaper* Architects Directory entry, founded by partners Ilse Cárdenas, Regina De Hoyos, Diego Escamilla and Juan Luis Rivera in 2016).

Magazzino Italian Art

Architect: Alberto Campo Baeza
Date: 2023
Location: Cold Springs, USA

Magazzino Italian Art has unveiled images of its brand new Robert Olnick Pavilion, as the building, designed by Spanish architects Alberto Campo Baeza and Miguel Quismondo, is completed and gears up for its September 2023 launch. The formal opening will take place on the 14 September, adding a second structure to the arsenal of the Cold Springs, NY-located museum and research centre – a unique cultural hub focusing on postwar and contemporary Italian art in the United States. The Robert Olnick Pavilion features the clean lines and minimalist architecture that have become synonymous with Campo Baeza's elegant work. The space was conceived with temporary art shows in mind so its pared-down, white interior surfaces fit the bill perfectly – while adding some 13,000 sq ft of exhibition space to the campus. The generous project also includes a multipurpose room with auditorium capabilities, a café and store on the mezzanine, and a gallery devoted to Italian decorative arts, Murano glass, ceramics, and jewellery.

Habitat 67

Architect: Moshe Safdie
Date: 1967
Location: Montreal, Canada

As Portland’s cement industry bloomed at the turn of the 1900s and architects became increasingly tired of conventional materials, Montreal became something of a playground for concrete experimentation. From Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 – the instantly recognisable model community on the Marc-Drouin Quay – to Roger Taillibert’s monolithic Olympic Stadium, constructs of all shapes and sizes are brought into the fold.

Armstrong Rubber Building, aka the Pirelli Tire Building

Architect: Marcel Breuer
Date: 1970
Location: New Haven, USA

Iconic examples of landmark architecture might not typically be found along major highways, but this is exactly where this brutalist architecture masterpiece, designed by Marcel Breuer, has cut a recognisable figure since it was completed in 1970. Located in New Haven, Connecticut, just off of the Interstate 95, the main north-south highway running along the east coast of the United States, the concrete behemoth was first created for the Armstrong Rubber Company, a tyre manufacturer – making its location apt. Originally designed to house the company’s administrative offices as well as a research and development space, Breuer’s sculptural concrete building is interrupted by a void of negative space. This was intended to help buffer and reduce sound for the offices above from the research labs below. It was finished with a façade created from pre-cast concrete panels that offer shade and protection from glare, while creating a dynamic visual tension. The building, which was bought by Pirelli in 1988 as its North American headquarters, was added to Connecticut’s State Register of Historic Places in 2000. Additional writing: Pei-Ru Keh.

Boston City Hall

Architect: Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles
Date: 1969
Location: Boston, USA

Few buildings have been more controversial than those belonging to the brutalist genre; and Boston City Hall is no exception. When its concrete block volumes were unveiled on the 10 February 1969, the launch was underscored by as much fanfare as criticism. Yet, it has now become a much-loved landmark of contemporary architecture, recognised as one of the brutalist movement’s most significant expressions. And the striking building has just marked the 50th anniversary of its grand launch. Designed by Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles, the Boston City Hall was part of the area’s greater government complex redesign and was created following an international competition. The structure is dramatic, featuring cantilevered elements and a highly articulated concrete facade that is instantly recognisable. The Boston City Hall in Massachusetts, USA, by Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles has recently celebrated the 50th anniversary from its opening. Concrete Architecture and the New Boston’ (Monacelli Press)

San Francisco home

Architect: Joseph Esherick
Date: early 1960
Location: San Francisco, USA

An early 1960s San Francisco residence by architect Joseph Esherick has been brought to the 21st century by Richard Beard Architects and The Wiseman Group. The team worked with the original midcentury home’s brutalist architecture, implementing contemporary interiors to accommodate the owners’ art collection and make the home suitable for a family of five. ‘[We wanted it to be] respectful of the heritage but looking to the future,’ says architect Richard Beard. With the home’s main brutalist space, the atrium living room, featuring exposed concrete and a high, skylight ceiling, Beard admits that making it feel ‘cozy’ was challenging. Yet the architecture team balanced preserving the building’s original character and architectural intention with making changes. ‘The character of the house is and was defined by a number of distinctive details and materials,’ explains Beard. ‘Those we preserved, and enhanced. It would have been a shame to turn the house into just another lovely suburban home. What was odd was the compartmentalised plan. At a time when open plans were becoming an innovative architectural approach to composition, this house was comparatively segmented. We carefully opened a few things up, to give a more expansive feeling through the home.’

Eduardo Leme House

Architect: Paulo Mendes da Rocha
Date: 1969
Location: Sao Paulo, Brazil

When art dealer Eduardo Leme was a boy in São Paulo, he used to look out with endless fascination at a striking modernist house two blocks away. It was the home of Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. When Leme saw a ‘For Sale’ sign outside another da Rocha concrete bunker-style house in the city, he decided to buy it. Known as Casa Millán, it had been built in 1969 for another art dealer, Fernando Millán, and was in serious need of a facelift. Leme called on da Rocha himself to fix it up and a friendship was formed – which resulted the architect building Leme the São Paulo art gallery he owns today. As for the updated residence, ‘the concrete gives the house a very informal feel’, says Leme. ‘It’s the sort of place where you feel at home in shorts and a T-shirt.’ The relaxed vibe is added to by the fact that the house overlooks a quiet local park teeming with monkeys and super-sized vegetation, and has a swimming pool in the garden. Additional writing: Emma O'Kelly

Casa Mérida

Architect: Ludwig Godefroy
Date: 2020
Location: Merida, Mexico

The first thing that stands out about Casa Mérida is its unashamed brutalism, defined by raw and omnipresent concrete, all hard edges and rough surfaces under the strong Mexican sun. The second is that most of the building seems to be open to the outdoors, with few fully enclosed spaces. The project’s defining feature, though, is that it is 80m long but just 8m wide. While this odd stretch would be considered unusual in most places, in Mérida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, it’s fairly common, explains the house’s architect, French-born, Mexico City-based Ludwig Godefroy: ‘This type of lot is everywhere in the historic centre of Mérida and it has to do with inheritance, when people started to slice bi er plots into smaller ones, to distribute to different siblings.’ And while a big part of the city comprises grand colonial architecture, some urban chunks include more humble styles, such as old workers’ cottages. It was one such building that Godefroy came across, when he visited Mérida with his client, a high-flying professional from Mexico City. His family of three was in search of the perfect spot for a retreat, to hide away and use as a base to kite-surf nearby. The strange plot was a quirk Godefroy embraced immediately. ‘The house’s long and narrow site provided a new kind of challenge for me,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing like I’ve done before and by pushing yourself, something new and amazing can come up.’

Brutalist architecture in Asia

Flying Saucer

Architect: Mona El Mousfy
Date: 1978
Location: Sharjah, UAE

The ‘Flying Saucer’ is one of Sharjah’s key Brutalist architecture landmarks. The round, striking building, which was originally constructed in the 1970s and opened in 1978 as a mixed use structure, was acquired by the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) in 2012. Then in a state of disrepair, it has now been given a new lease of life through a thorough renovation by the foundation and architect Mona El Mousfy of SpaceContinuum Design Studio. While the structure was originally conceived to house a one-stop-shop restaurant, newsstand, tobacconist, gift shop, patisserie and delicatessen, after the restoration and redesign, the Flying Saucer is reimagined as an art and community space with a café, library, courtyard and activity spaces.

Sangath

Architect: Balkrishna Doshi
Date: 1981
Location: Ahmedabad, India

Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi was recently announced as the recipient of the prestigious 2022 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture. The coveted gong has been awarded to the established and widely acclaimed Indian architect through the RIBA and by personal approval by Her Majesty The Queen – it is the UK’s highest architectural honour, announced annually and celebrated around the world by the architecture and design field. Balkrishna Doshi, who also won the 2018 Pritzker Prize and was interviewed in his Ahmedabad home by Wallpaper* in 2009, is one of the world’s most respected architects in his field. Here is the architect’s own studio in Ahmedabad, India, Sangath.

Chapel of Sound

Architect: Open Architecture
Date: 2022
Location: Jinshanling, China

Nestled in the green, rolling hills of Jinshanling, in the countryside north-east of Beijing, the Chapel of Sound cuts a sculptural, monolithic figure. The project, resembling something between giant land art and a natural rock formation is the brainchild of Chinese architecture studio Open Architecture. The practice, founded by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, designed the building as an open-air concert hall, offering views to the ruins of the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall of China, merging its strong, rippling concrete form with its context of greenery and historical architecture. Working with a fairly open brief, the architects described wanting the building to help them ‘see the shape of sound’. The building has a brutalist, almost boulder-like appearance. The material is enriched by an aggregate of local mineral-rich rocks, connecting it physically as well as conceptually with its surroundings. This, the rock-like overall composition, and the fact that the volume was carved to be narrower towards the base (designed with the help of international engineering firm Arup), helped the architects ensure that the piece has a gentler impact in its natural surroundings. At the same time, using no heating or air-conditioning, the Chapel of Sound consumes minimal energy, in keeping with this sustainable approach. Read More

Elma Arts Complex Luxury Hotel

Architect: Jacob Rechter
Date: 2015
Location: Zichron Ya’akov, Israel

As the evening sun dips behind the Mount Carmel ridge, Sigalit Landau’s colossal marble statue, Thirsty, is thrown into stark relief – barbed shadows dancing across the 26-tonne form of two figures locked in perpetual exertion. Holding fort opposite reception, it’s the opening gambit at Zichron Ya’akov’s Elma Arts Complex, a 95-room hotel founded by art collector and philanthropist Lily Elstein in 2015. It’s one of over 500 works from her archive that grace the grounds, in addition to those part of temporary exhibitions. And while the Jacob Rechter architecture and astonishing location are undoubtedly draws, it’s this array of artwork that is Elma’s raison d’être. It’s an example of the changed fortunes of so-called ‘hotel art’, once seen as little more than background dressing; abstract pieces in sofa-matching colours or hackneyed watercolours of local landmarks. Of course, over the years a specialised industry has emerged, dedicated to the procurement and curation of artwork collections for hospitality – that often rival those of any independent gallery and provide a cultural tether for travellers. Additional writing: Harry Mckinley

Path House

Architect: Artechnic
Date: 2016
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Japanese architecture firm Artechnic has brought a breath of fresh air to a concrete corner of Tokyo. When approached by a family of five to design its new home in Setagaya-Ku, the city’s most densely populated ward, the practice was presented with an opportunity to shake up the neighbourhood’s urban landscape. Exploring the duality between nature and the man-made, the result is Path house: an experiment in form and function. The home’s sculptural make-up takes the guise of a jagged geological formation, masked by a verdant framework of plant life. The coexistence between natural landscapes and architecture was something that Artechnic principle Kotaro Ide sought to evoke through the project. ‘The image of the rocky mountain is burned in my mind after travelling around the architecture of [Peter] Zumthor in Switzerland,’ he states.

Trees Sliced Through

Architect: Matharoo Associates
Date: 2023
Location: Ahmedabad, India

The design of this Ahmedabad house was led not only by the brief and lifestyle of its human inhabitants, but by its site's flora too. Trees Sliced Through by Matharoo Associates in the Gujarati city – India's fifth largest – is a case study in working with the existing nature on site, while tackling contemporary forms and modern materials, such as concrete. The result? A home led by its context, which at the same time celebrates a brutalist architecture approach, as well as responds perfectly to the needs of its clients – a young couple expecting children, alongside their parents, and dogs. The project's site was dotted by mature, existing trees – a rare sight in dry and sandy Ahmedabad where, unfortunately, common practice often dictates plots are cleared of trees and vegetation before an architect is approached, the studio explains. At the same time, with a hot arid climate where temperatures can reach up to 48°C, foliage and nature become key in maintaining comfortable living conditions. Matharoo Associates, a studio behind many striking 21st-century homes, including multi-generational structures in Surat and its home town of Ahmedabad, decided early on in the process to make the green context central to its design development.

Star House

Architect: Atelier Gratia
Date: 2023
Location: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Star House takes its name from its site's history, rather than its shape. Located on the fittingly named Star Street in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, it also sits on the cross between two urban grids, two planning systems developed during different periods in this urban environment's history, which overlap and find common ground at this point. The result is an angular, loosely star-shaped plot, which lent the home its name. Its architects, the locally based Atelier Gratia, headed by principal Grace Ming-En Chang, enjoyed working with these layers of urban history and playing with this idea of a 'hidden star', which at the same time blends two distinct housing typologies of the region – the row house, and the courtyard house.

Fishmarket

Architect: Ab Rogers
Date: 2022
Location: Kanazawa, Japan

The origins of this brutalist artist's studio can be found in a Thai festival. The designer Ab Rogers and the artist Hiraki Sawa met at the annual Wonderfruit cultural gathering in Thailand in 2018 and bonded over fish, particularly yellowfin tuna. Both are keen cooks and it got them thinking about cooking, eating and creativity, creative time and space. Sawa, who studied at Slade School of Art under British artist Phyllida Barlow and is best known for short films and collage-base animation, splits his time between London and Kanazawa, where he grew up. In 2019 he took over a raw, empty office space in the Japanese city, initially planning to establish a small co-working space with a business partner. He then changed tack and set on creating something more adventurous and typology-busting, what he calls a ‘co-being’ space.

The Wonder Cabinet

Architect: AAU Anastas
Date: 2023
Location: Bethlehem, Palestine

The Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem, Palestine, fosters creativity and cultural production in its region. The building, a piece of brutalist architecture in raw concrete, was designed by AAU Anastas, a practice headed creatively by architects Elias and Yousef Anastas. The structure, which is now operation, aims to become a key hub for craft, design and innovation. The Wonder Cabinet's flexible, open spaces are home to the Anastas' own architecture practice, as well as Radio Alhara, a restaurant, a small store, a showroom for Local Industries (the product design studio founded in 2011 by Elias and Yousef Anastas) and a small cinema.

‘Space of Light’

Architect: Tadao Ando
Date: 2023
Location: Wonju, South Korea

‘Space of Light’ by Tadao Ando is the second meditation pavilion opening at Museum SAN in Wonju, South Korea. Launching on 18 July 2023, this is the newest addition to the Japanese architecture master’s contemplative series, embodying his signature style expressed by concrete, light and integration with nature. Intense sunlight cuts through the square concrete structure, as two narrow slits on the roof intersect and solemnly light up the four walls of the cold, dark void. Although not conceived as a piece of religious architecture, the space invites visitors to an almost sacred moment of contemplation and self-reflection.

Brutalist architecture in Oceania

Punchbowl Mosque

Architect: Candalepas Associates
Date: 2021
Location: Sydney, Australia

Sydney’s Candalepas Associates has brought a slice of brutalism to the city’s Punchbowl suburb with an orthogonal new mosque. The concrete structure provides a new home for the Australian Islamic Mission, and its various educative and community facilities can host up to 300 worshippers at once. The mosque forms the first of a two-part project for the local Islamic community. The second stage of the plan will see the development of new community buildings that will orbit the place of worship, in turn bringing the local faith closer together. Candalepas Associates was resultantly driven to give the mosque a unique architectural vernacular, so to help it stand separate and distinct from its future sibling spaces. Additional writing: Luke Halls.

Less pavilion

Architect: Pezo von Ellrichshausen
Date: 2022
Location: Canberra, Australia

An imposing cluster of slim concrete columns rises amid the ever-evolving landscape of Canberra’s Dairy Road neighbourhood. The area is a formerly industrial part of the Australian capital city, now slowly transforming into a diverse, modern, mixed-use district. One of its latest additions is Less, an architectural pavilion created by developer Molonglo and designed by Chilean architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen. The celebrated and multi-award-winning architecture studio, headed by partners Sofia von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo, is known for its dramatic, sculptural works – often in its home country of Chile, and in textured concrete – which cut imposing, mesmerising contemporary figures in both urban and natural landscapes. With the new Less pavilion, the architects followed their signature approach, carving a collection of 36 vertical concrete elements and a circular ramp, which leads visitors up to a viewing platform.

Canopy House

Architect: Powell & Glenn
Date: 2023
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Inspired by the open-air, concrete architecture of South America, Canopy House sits proud and airy on high ground in a leafy site of Melbourne's Yarra neighbourhood. The architects, Powell & Glenn, founded by Ed Glenn and Allan Powell (and currently led by the former following the latter's retirement), have over the years honed their expertise in creating sophisticated, subtly impactful residences, and this concrete Melbourne home is no exception. Drawing on their client's interest in South American architecture and mindfulness, they created a house that is a carefully choreographed composition of light and space - but which, at the same time, serves the needs of a family lifestyle. The site itself was another key point to consider in the design development, as Glenn explains: 'The site’s cascading topography provided an opportunity to experience the surroundings at multiple levels. At ground level, the thud of the earth is evident, with the progression through the central and upper floors leaving the user floating amongst the tree canopies.'

Brutalist architecture in Africa

Oscar Niemeyer in Algeria 

Architect: Oscar Niemeyer
Date: 1968
Location: Algeria

One afternoon in the British Library, Jason Oddy, photographer, artist and writer, stumbled across some Oscar Niemeyer buildings he was unfamiliar with. The sweeping curves, the volume and the story telling felt familiar, but the location – in Algeria – did not. After further research he discovered that the buildings, two universities and an Olympic-sized sports hall, were largely undocumented. ‘When Niemeyer left Brazil in 1966, after the 1964 military coup, he ended up in Paris, and then in 1968 he travelled to Algiers for the first time. He was there for six years. It’s a long time for an incredibly famous architect to be somewhere, but not that many people are aware of it,’ he tells Wallpaper*. It was in June 1968, that Houari Boumédiène, chairman of Algeria’s Council of Revolution, socialist and hero of the recent War of Independence against France, invited Niemeyer, starchitect of Brasilia (and communist), to ‘project a new vision of Algeria to the outside world, and promote a new generation of engineers and academics.’ Niemeyer got started, designing the University of Constantine, with a sweeping concrete rendition of an open book supported by pilotis for the auditorium, completed in 1975. Then came the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumédiène and the Salle Omnisports known as ‘La Coupole’ for the 1975 Meditteranean Games in Algier’s Olympic Park. Each piece of architecture with their colossal open spaces and grand concrete gestures were designed to reflect Boumedienne’s socialist and militarist principles, and represent an ‘upending of the age-old order’. Pictured here,‘The Village’ VI, University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene, Bab Ezzouar, Algeria. Additional writing: Harriet Thorpe.

The Wonder Cabinet in Bethlehem, Palestine, has just launched, fostering creativity and cultural production in its region. The building, a piece of brutalist architecture in raw concrete, was designed by AAU Anastas, a practice headed creatively by architects Elias and Yousef Anastas. The structure, which is now operation, aims to become a key hub for craft, design and innovation.

Inside The Wonder Cabinet

The Wonder Cabinet's flexible, open spaces are home to the Anastas' own architecture practice, as well as Radio Alhara, a restaurant, a small store, a showroom for Local Industries (the product design studio founded in 2011 by Elias and Yousef Anastas) and a small cinema.

The project, which overlooks a residential area in the Karkafeh valley, was conceived as a 'non-profit and production-driven cultural space. Experimental in nature, it is committed to prioritizing artisanship and physical crafting principles as essential tools of art making. Through its programmes, the Wonder Cabinet brings together art, artisanship, research and education, with an intuitive approach built on knowledge exchange and cooperative labour', says Anastas.

A series of stainless steel letters spelling 'W-O-N-D-E-R C-A-B-I-N-E-T' spins above the main façade. It acts as signage as well as a weather vane, while smartly flagging the building as a beacon for creativity. Upon approach, the building's rough concrete grid and metal detailing made by Local Industries highlight its design-led approach.

Inside, three levels of work and production spaces connect through voids and internal balconies. Meanwhile, a a 'street esplanade' is used for ephemeral set-ups between the various studio spaces.

'The wonder cabinet opening is first and foremost an invitation to explore the building and its surroundings through sound, discussions, objects, experimentations, food and the encountering of disciplines with each other. The opening days are a three day condensed version of what the wonder cabinet is about to unfold into,' Anastas writes.

aauanastas.com

Portuguese architecture studio Aires Mateus’ most recent love affair with concrete is the new Pa.te.os Hotel – or, ‘patios’, in Portuguese. Set in an untamed part of the Alentejo landscape, the project consists of a series of interconnected courtyard houses overlooking the Atlantic in an oak grove on the hillside of Serra da Grândola. Its concrete forms, like sculptures in the wild, allow the natural surroundings to become part of the architecture. Shapes confidently cut out of the strong concrete volumes mimic the hilly topography of the region, offering look-out points to connect with the land and sea.

‘The ambition of this project is to create a relationship between nature and construction, extending it to the built spaces. We frame, we observe, we select, we grab the landscape,’ the architects said. 

To further connect the building with its location, Aires Mateus looked to the Islamic architectural heritage of Portugal’s southern regions. As its name suggests, Pa.te.os explores the area’s legacy of courtyard houses and the concept of the patio as the place where nature and human-made construction meet. 

‘The houses are spread out in outdoor patios, creating a dialogue with the enclosed spaces. The [adjoining] courtyards, in tension [with] the constructions […] prolong the relationship between the interior and the landscape,’ the architects explained. The living spaces extend into courtyards for lounging and outdoor dining. Hidden inner patios frame the sky like a James Turrell installation. Outdoor shower rooms are sheltered from view and protect from the Atlantic breeze. 

The forces behind Pa.te.os are hoteliers Sofia and Miguel Charters of Primosfera. The name of the Lisbon-based, family-run property development company combines the Portuguese words for ‘prime/premium’, ‘property’ and ‘sphere/globe’. Both founders spent their childhood summers in Alentejo, where they returned together as adults with a joint dream to build a summer home based on their memories and their connection to the land, to host family and friends.

They started with the 1,200 sq m Casa de Tijolo (literally, ‘house of bricks’) – their private home in the region, designed by Aires Mateus. It uses local clay and raw material for its handcrafted, bespoke bricks made by local ceramic artisans from São Pedro do Corval. Pa.te.os is located on the same acreage, but was created 15 years later, when the hoteliers brought in the same architects to realise another dream: to share their intimate relationship with the land with the world.

Pa.te.os is composed of four courtyard houses, including from one- to three-bedroom suites, all closely integrated within the natural landscape. Their architectural arrangement was conceived to frame nature, inviting it in, and inviting guests to see it. Each volume is oriented towards sweeping vistas offering views of the Atlantic, the hillside, and the coast of Arrábida. Each view is delicately framed by a ‘disappearing’ glass wall, which, when opened, transforms the interior into an outdoor courtyard.

The openness allows guests to connect with nature ‘not only by sight, but also by smell, by the breeze, by the movement of each day’, the architects say. Indoors and outdoors become interchangeable. In the same manner, an infinity pool in the communal courtyard creates a new horizon and look-out point. 

The houses are designed as if the hoteliers-as-hosts live there. There is an honesty in this approach, which follows Primosfera’s ‘what you see is what you experience’ mantra. Additionally, like all of the company’s projects with Aires Mateus, the design strives for an authenticity in material use, a balance between form and function, and a relationship to sustaining what is local. For example, the slate that came to the surface while land for the hotel’s vineyard was being prepared was collected and used for the tiles in the courtyards that extend into pathways and connect the houses. Meanwhile, the minimal Scandi-inspired interiors expose raw materials in their heated concrete floors, warm oak furniture, and earthy colour palette.

Pa.te.os is the product of its landscape and its creative team’s close collaboration. ‘The entire project is designed starting from the landscape,’ the architects add. ‘All spaces, movements, framings are designed to enhance and extract value from this very special place.’ 

pateos.pt

airesmateus.com

Santa Lucia Alto in Chile's Yungay region, is green and dramatic, filled with dense forests, fertile agricultural plains and tall mountains – part of the Andes starts here. It is also the home turf of renowned, award-winning architecture practice Pezo von Ellrichshausen, headed by Sofía von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo. And it is here that the dynamic duo embarked upon building their new base, the expansive, combined home and workspace project, Luna House. Exemplifying in one fell swoop the pair's fascination with form making, exposed concrete and a healthy blend of brutalism and minimalist architecture, Luna House is at once a striking and a calming presence. 

‘This is a large and a small building at the foot of the Andes Mountains,' the architects explain. ‘In fact, it is an aggregate of 12 different buildings separated from each other by visible seismic joints. Saying that this collection of concrete blocks is a house would be too simple.' 

The building is arranged in a square floorplan, featuring a large courtyard in the middle, around which runs an intermittent colonnade – a bit like a cloister. An asymmetrical cross shape (on plan) divides it into sections with a different identity each – one has a reflective pool, another a flower garden, for example. Various rooms and functions are arranged around it, including purely domestic spaces, workspace, semi-open air and flexible areas.

Each room has its own spatial quality, as this generous building is punctuated by a variety of openings – round ones and slender slits, some on the walls and some on the ceiling forming variously shaped skylights. Some parts feel intimate, and some have a more public atmosphere, almost gallery-like with tall, double-height ceilings. Spreading across some 2,400 sq m, Luna House has space for everything, blending at the same time the perceived harshness of the exposed concrete walls with green foliage, flowers and water elements. 

As to what inspired this expansive home office's moniker? ‘The name of this intricate structure [Luna] is given by the size of that bigger courtyard, which is equivalent to the size of a bullring, called “medialuna” in Chilean rural tradition,' the architects explain.

INFORMATION

pezo.cl

An imposing cluster of slim concrete columns rises amid the ever-evolving landscape of Canberra's Dairy Road neighbourhood. The area is a formerly industrial part of the Australian capital city, now slowly transforming into a diverse, modern, mixed-use district. One of its latest additions is Less, an architectural pavilion created by developer Molonglo and designed by Chilean architecture studio Pezo von Ellrichshausen. 

The celebrated and multi-award-winning architecture studio, headed by partners Sofia von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo, is known for its dramatic, sculptural works – often in its home country of Chile, and in textured concrete – which cut imposing, mesmerising contemporary figures in both urban and natural landscapes. With the new Less pavilion, the architects followed their signature approach, carving a collection of 36 vertical concrete elements and a circular ramp, which leads visitors up to a viewing platform. 

A stream runs below the structure, slow, shallow but continuous, adding dynamism through its perpetual movement and freshness through the water's cooling presence. Around it, 6,000 individual plants of more than 50 different species have been placed to grow and age alongside the structure, many of which are local, and help tie the piece to its surroundings.

Conceived as an experiential piece of public art, a city landmark and a community gathering spot, Less is there to be seen and visited by all. ‘Avoiding a deterministic or transactional approach to use and presence, Less invites the evolving community to interact with and occupy its varied spaces as they see fit,' the architects explain. ‘[It's] Less than a structure, an infrastructure. It is an idiosyncratic place that refuses to be called in a single manner, with a single word.' 

The simple geometries, structures and repetitive format of the pavilion feel steady and reassuring – yet its existence belies a sense of boldness, balancing movement and stillness, the architects argue: 'In its monotonous gesture, in its tedious regularity as much as in its lack of direction, bold columns and slender pillars erode any other function than that of framing every other function. Many events are allowed in unlabelled places.'

INFORMATION

pezo.cl

molonglo.com

This Portuguese farmhouse is the ultimate counrtyside retreat; as well as a working agricultural space. Designed as a collaboration between architects Filipe Pina and David Bilo, the house is nestled in a naturally sheltered area at the foot of the Serra da Estrela, close to the Gonçalo region in central Portugal. Surrounded by nature - namely a dense pine tree forest - the structure, made in concrete and granite stone, appears as a series of geometric boulders among its leafy environs. 

Working with an existing farmland site and an old granite structure within it, the architects reworked what was there, adding a contemporary extension that appears distinctly modern and separate from the historical structure, but at the same time feels at home in its location. The team mirrored the stone building's outline in the new house, spreading the design across a stepped plan that negotiates the site's incline. ‘The final outcome, with the extension of the existing house, resulted from a compromise between the owners wishes and the existing features and morphology of the land, characterized by the existence of several terraces,' the architects explain.

Inside, storage, a bathroom and a kitchen are located in the older structure, and are fully dedicated to the site's farming activities; whereas the living room, bedrooms, and an outdoor leisure space are within the new wing. Everything is enveloped in clean surfaces giving the complex the refreshing, crisp feel of modern minimalist architecture. Concrete, steel and wood are the main materials, while neutral and light colours wrap the home in calming surfaces. The range of outdoor spaces add to its appeal and the opportunity it offers to connect with nature.

The team named the project NaMora House, underlining elegantly its relationship with its setting. ‘[The name] refers to the location of the project, where “Na Mora” would translate into “In Mora” (Mora being the place where the property lies), but “namora” in Portuguese means literally “flirt” or “date”,' they say.

INFORMATION
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dbarquitectos.pt

Inspired by the open-air, concrete architecture of South America, Canopy House sits proud and airy on high ground in a leafy site of Melbourne's Yarra neighbourhood. The architects, Powell & Glenn, founded by Ed Glenn and Allan Powell (and currently led by the former following the latter's retirement), have over the years honed their expertise in creating sophisticated, subtly impactful residences, and this concrete Melbourne home is no exception. Drawing on their client's interest in South American architecture and mindfulness, they created a house that is a carefully choreographed composition of light and space - but which, at the same time, serves the needs of a family lifestyle. 

The site itself was another key point to consider in the design development, as Glenn explains: 'The site’s cascading topography provided an opportunity to experience the surroundings at multiple levels. At ground level, the thud of the earth is evident, with the progression through the central and upper floors leaving the user floating amongst the tree canopies.'

Spread across two levels, the home opens up through high ceilings, large windows and swathes of glass towards the green surroundings at every turn. A vertical circulation core connects everything and 'ties' various spaces together visually too, thanks to a sculptural concrete staircase. 

Clean, horizontal lines, orthogonal columns and a handful of carefully placed curves make up a composition that feels at the same time sharp, timeless and dynamic, but also serene and contemporary. The roof's concrete canopy extends out and connects seamlessly the interior with the lush, verdant exterior and the home's outdoors areas, such as its paved terraces, pergola and swimming pool. A sprawling garden designed by Robert Boyle Landscapes wraps around the property.

'There is an incremental breaking down of elements that helps embed the house with the surroundings, while allowing the family to observe the changing conditions of the natural world,' says Glenn of this concrete Melbourne home, engulfed in greenery. 

INFORMATION

powellandglenn.com.au

KohlerStraumann has created a monolithic but minimalist concrete apartment building in Binningen, a residential neighbourhood to the south of Basel, Switzerland. The new structure is set into a hillside, giving all the seven apartments a panoramic view of the city. At street level, at the top of the site, the block is only two storeys in height.

This rigorous façade is given a strong vertical treatment with exposed shuttered concrete walls, tall windows, and starkly simple detailing. 

The apartments step down the hillside, fanning out from a central staircase. This arrangement creates space for private balconies at every level. The properties surrounding the site were mostly single-family houses, so the architectural approach avoided a monolithic apartment building in favour of a more fragmented, angular plan.

Depending on the angle, the Hasenrainstrasse development appears to morph from a row of modest houses into a large, stepped block of terraces.

During the design process, the site was extended, allowing for seven units to be integrated where previously there had been two houses. The hillside had to be comprehensively excavated in order to fit all the necessary functions and facilities, a process that took five months.

The basement level – which houses a parking garage accessed by a car elevator – is 15m below ground level, with a dramatically lit concrete staircase at its heart. 

The building is arranged around a central stair core, with a wall of glass providing expanding views as one climbs. The lowest residential level is occupied by a large garden apartment, with three apartments flanking each side of the stair core.

The asymmetric, varied floorplans ensure each apartment has a completely different layout. The orientation and outlook also create a strong sense of privacy for every unit. 

While the stair core is finished with the same shuttered concrete as the façades, the apartments have white walls and stone floors, with the occasional exposed concrete ceiling.

KohlerStraumann incorporated a number of different kitchen designs, changing the use of materials to maintain the sense of difference and variety in the apartments. 

Aaron Kohler and Marc Straumann have worked together for almost 20 years.

The young architecture office is based in Basel, developing projects with a strong use of monolithic materials and striking forms.

INFORMATION

KohlerStraumann.com

Concept-led, sculptural concrete architecture, an expansive, wild, native-species garden, and a rural setting with a pleasant climate in a popular destination; there’s plenty to love about this new residential project in rural Colombia, an Andes Mountain retreat by Oslo-based architecture studio LCLA Office and local architect Clara Arango. But it’s the carefully planned harmony of the above elements, the attention to nature, healthy dose of open-mindedness, and can-do attitude of its makers that elevate this project from being a great house, to a truly idyllic retreat. 

It all started with a commission that landed on the desk of practice directors Luis Callejas and Charlotte Hanson via a friend from Colombia, who is currently based in Mexico and came to them with an enticing, and unusual brief. He wanted to create a domestic base in Colombia, which he could use in the more distant future as a main home, but also make the most of in the meantime, treating it almost as an unofficial artistic retreat. He saw it as a place to get together with friends, but also one to open to creatives visiting the city, to catch up and talk about their global endeavours. It would be offered to artists on an ad hoc, informal basis, if they wanted to stay there for a few days to produce work. ‘What is unusual is that we were commissioned to design a home for the future, not for right now,’ Callejas points out. 

Andes Mountain retreat and artists’ bolthole

The site sits about 40km outside Medellín, but it’s on higher ground (some 2,100m above sea level), so enjoys cooler, pleasant temperatures year round, which allowed the team to make the most of the outdoors. The area, traditionally a mix of forests and farmland, has been increasingly popular with creatives who want either a second home or a base away from the density and bustle of Colombia’s second largest city, to be closer to nature. The land where the house is built is a sloped clearing within a larger forested patch of pine and eucalyptus trees, which had belonged to the client’s family for decades. 

It might have been tempting to go big and create a mansion with all mod cons, but for Callejas, it was an easy decision to direct the budget towards quality over quantity. ‘Both the client and we were on the same page. We wanted to dedicate more time, money and energy to detailing and quality,’ he says. ‘I give credit to the client for not seeing this as an investment, but something of real integrity. Investing in the landscape doesn’t have the same return as investing in square metres and architecture, it was brave of him to accept the idea of reducing the house's dimensions in order to be able to have a sophisticated landscape.’

The result is a small complex of concrete objects arranged across the clearing. Two of them are built – one long, lower, semi-buried into the slope, and one more boxy, peeking out from the greenery. A third is yet to come; Callejas envisions it will be added some time in the next year.

Instead of assigning different functions to the different volumes, which would then be connected by outdoors spaces, the complex adopts a more unusual layout. Each structure holds a large, open-plan interior, including space for sleeping and social activities (only the bathroom is a separate room, with its own door). 

The architectural gardens outside are a key part of the home (and the architects collaborated with landscape firm Antropica for the design). ‘It’s a forest clearing, so we were effectively editing the edge of this clearing – trimming, replacing trees that might die soon – so we had to plan for renewal and the future. We brought new plants from local, higher altitudes and placed them across the slope. Because of the nature and angle of the site, the planting is a big part of the view – it’s all you see,’ Callejas explains.

‘It includes wild flowers that grew during the pandemic when building works had to pause for a bit. When we returned to work, we embraced them, so it became this carefully designed thing, but there are also wild moments, which work well, as the client cannot have year-round maintenance.’ The gardens create a layer of separation between structures, while also uniting them. ‘The forest clearing is the house,’ Callejas says. 

The concrete forms of the two geometric structures are powerful and crisp and become a defining part of the project’s identity, but their treatment and material were not chosen for the sake of aesthetics. ‘There is a sculptural ambition, not to be perceived as houses from the outside, to look a bit abstract, to not give away that these are houses, which is challenging with small spaces,’ says Callejas.

‘But actually, the idea was not to be brutalist from the start. What we did is the result of us “stealing” resources and energy from the finishing of the house to apply it to the garden. So the house looks more “naked”, as the time and funds for its embellishment went into the planting and landscape arrangement.’

Still, the team managed to squeeze in a high level of concrete formwork and bespoke ironmongery throughout (the stainless steel door and window frames, made by local farm infrastructure welders, is an example). Bespoke woodwork was done by the client’s nephew, acclaimed designer Simón Ballen. It’s these details and strong overall conceptual thinking that puts the ‘treat’ in this Colombian retreat, which is fully in tune with its surroundings. 

INFORMATION

luiscallejas.com

Located on a tree-lined street in the Lomas de Chapultepec neighbourhood of Mexico City, this striking, monolithic concrete design is the Swiss Ambassador's Residence in Mexico. The majestic – if somewhat enigmatic – volume has recently been renovated and redesigned by Lausanne-based architects Fruehauf, Henry & Viladoms (FHV) and Mexico City studio Blancasmoran. The urban retreat's minimalist architecture takes its cues from the topography and residential identity of the site and the wider area. 

Placed in a relatively narrow, elongated plot, the residence’s reworked shape is defined by the neighbouring structures as well as the footprint of the existing home on site, which the team respected. The new house is located on a plinth and crafted within thick concrete walls, creating a physical and acoustic distance from the street – as the architects treated the residence as a calm domestic retreat, away from the noise of the street. 

‘This sense of calm is reinforced by the omnipresence of the plant element,' say the architecture team, pointing towards the gardens, planted courtyards and indoor greenery everywhere. ‘On the avenue side, the wall becomes a façade. A horizontal folding gives it an austere, intriguing and sophisticated presence.'

Inside, concrete meets light grey terrazzo floors in a graceful, uncluttered interior. Black granite blocks contain service spaces, visually separated from the main living spaces' concrete slabs. Large eucalyptus-wood swing doors separate different spaces. The harder, minimalist surfaces are juxtaposed by greenery everywhere, inside and out, balancing nature and architecture. 

Large glazed surfaces visually connect the home with its surroundings, while at the rear, cascading terraces lead residents out of the house and through the gently sloped urban gardens towards the ravine at the bottom of the site. ‘The topography is a geographical element that strongly defines the site. The area's ravines create wooded natural corridors,’ say the architects, who cleverly juxtaposed the softness of this landscape with a strong, clearly defined volume in this renovation project.

INFORMATION

fhvarchitectes.ch

blancasmoran.com

Nestled in the green, rolling hills of Jinshanling, in the countryside north-east of Beijing, the Chapel of Sound cuts a sculptural, monolithic figure. The project, resembling something between giant land art and a natural rock formation is the brainchild of Chinese architecture studio Open Architecture. The practice, founded by Li Hu and Huang Wenjing, designed the building as an open-air concert hall, offering views to the ruins of the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall of China, merging its strong, rippling concrete form with its context of greenery and historical architecture. Working with a fairly open brief, the architects described wanting the building to help them ‘see the shape of sound’.

The building has a brutalist, almost boulder-like appearance. The material is enriched by an aggregate of local mineral-rich rocks, connecting it physically as well as conceptually with its surroundings. This, the rock-like overall composition, and the fact that the volume was carved to be narrower towards the base (designed with the help of international engineering firm Arup), helped the architects ensure that the piece has a gentler impact in its natural surroundings. At the same time, using no heating or air-conditioning, the Chapel of Sound consumes minimal energy, in keeping with this sustainable approach. 

Open-air concert hall at one with its site

‘The Chapel of Sound sits gently in the valley, with a small footprint anchored to the ground, reducing its impact on the site to a minimum. The different openings on the concrete shell each connect to different parts of the site – the hills and the Great Wall, and the sky above,’ say the architects. ‘To create something that belongs to this very special land, its valley and rocky mountain around, has been the essential question from the inception of the design to the execution of its final details. The colour of the concrete, intentionally darkened to charcoal, blends further to the hilly landscape. The layering of the irregular geometry of the building relates to the rock formation of the surroundings. So yes, it’s both inspired by and intended as an offering to this very special site.'

The Chapel of Sound’s programme includes a semi-outdoor amphitheatre, an outdoor stage, viewing platforms, a rehearsal room and supporting spaces. Researching natural spaces where the sound reverberates, such as caves, the architects sought to compose a structure that is functional and fit for its purpose, but also feels at home in its context, sitting respectfully among nature; all the while creating a striking piece of design too. 

‘We were very aware of the responsibility we had to contribute a thoughtful structure that fits naturally into such a unique landscape,’ they say. ‘We wanted to create something different, and more importantly, something meaningful. We are now at a time that the question of our relationship with nature as human beings is more acute than ever. Can we be humble enough to hear what nature is murmuring to us? The symphony of nature is what we really wanted people to experience here.'

The team drew inspiration from ideas of spirituality and the relationship between music and humanity, places of performance and more. But the surprises that might emerge from the building's use and life have equal value for the architects. ‘Surprises in the enigmatic quality of the space, the way in which light, sound, wind, rain – these natural phenomena – converge inside the building. That goes beyond what we had imagined in the drawings and models,’they say.

Li Hu and Huang Wenjing have been working towards an approach that does not favour ‘Eastern’ or ‘Western’ architecture, avoiding perceived differences between the two. Instead, the pair prefer seeing architecture as ‘the power to connect people with each other, with nature, and with our own past and future’, as they aim to demonstrate with their new open-air concert hall, the Chapel of Sound.

INFORMATION

openarch.com

The brainchild of owners Adrian and Megan Corrigall and RAW Architecture Workshop, Concrete House is a stylish, brutalist family home that balances rich textures at a domestic scale. Completed in early 2019, the ambition of the project was to create a minimalist dwelling 'that retained honesty and simplicity in both material use and in how its occupants use its spaces’ explains Adrian Corrigall. 

Nestled in rich architectural gardens Lewes, East Sussex, the scheme feels both solid and dramatic with its large openings, sleek furniture, and strategic surfaces. The building is made up of a series of five stepped blocks that house four bedrooms. The home is ‘just the right size for our family. No more. No less’ says Corrigall. Boasting floor-to-ceiling height windows, skylights and clean lofty rooms the dwelling employs level changes to draw visitors through its spaces. ‘We wanted to move away from open light-filled spaces and create intimate and unique zones’ explains Corrigall. 

This 260sqm home is the world’s first building constructed using advanced Fibre Reinforced Concrete, a durable anti-cracking material developed by Cemex that doesn’t require reinforced metal bars. ‘People’s perception of concrete as cold and damp can be so far from reality. The thermal performance is a great joy. We have only turned our heating on once and that was just to test it.’ This raw and robust concrete is complemented by crisp plywood cabinetry and rich vibrant furniture that act as colour accents throughout the minimalist home.

The Corrigall family had originally approached Graeme Laughlan and David Mulligan at RAW Architecture Workshop having seen their previous work at Camusdarach Sands. ‘From our first meeting, it was clear they understood our need to collaborate strongly on this project and to avoid the dictatorial nature of so many client/architect relationships. A shared love of the work of Gillespie, Kidd and Coia also informed many of our later design decisions’ explains Corrigall.

‘The desire to create a family home from the ground up has always been an ambition. Less show home and more family home. We were determined to prove good design need not be exclusive as it is so often portrayed.’ 

INFORMATION 

rawarchitecture.net

tarryandperry.com

When French architect Marc Barani got invited to create the new home for Les Davids winery in the South of France, he looked to the landscape for inspiration. Set on the edge of the Luberon, in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and surrounded by orchards and gardens, the sandy-coloured, minimalist concrete estate headquarters appears as a rock formation peeking out of the greenery. 

The building is made in solid concrete, emphasising its clean, mostly opaque volume and grounding it to the site. However, Barani opted for a light ochre colour for his concrete mix, ensuring it reads as close as possible to the rocky landscape further down the winery's valley. At the same time, the weight the structure conveys symbolises neatly the ‘gravitational process of winemaking,' he explains. This connection between the building and the surrounding nature continues through an extended glazed ground floor on the front facade, which opens towards the views and reflects them back onto the building, visually uniting wine production and vineyards. 

On the other side of the glass strip – which wraps a row of concrete tulip barrels - is a large, sheltered terrace offering a place to sit and take in views of the estate, the vineyards and mountains on the horizon. A huge ceramic fresco by the Belgian artist Yves Zurstrassen adorns the entrance corridor from there. 

The winery looks after some 20 hectares of vineyards, which currently produce eleven quality organic wines. The project, which opened to the public earlier this month, included dedicated space for the harvested grapes, then areas for blending, maturing and bottling the wine, and finally a shop and tasting room for visitors. 

Balancing inspiration from nature with minimalist architecture and concrete mastery, this winery building is substantial – at over 2000 sq m. Yet it sits gracefully on its site, offering a nod to the landscape that influenced its design, as well as the perfect place to enjoy a glass of Les Davids fine produce.

Architecture is one of those professions that can often become a family affair. Gottfried Böhm is not only the son of an architect, he is also the grandson, the husband and the father of architects. Since the early days of his career, more than 60 years ago, Böhm has been known for his original work, which, in 1986, earned him the Pritzker Prize. The Pilgrimage Church in Neviges, Germany, perfectly characterises his style – and is nothing like any church you could imagine.

Gottfried Böhm's life and career

Born in 1920, the son of acclaimed architect Dominicus Böhm, Gottfried Böhm began his career combining architecture and sculpture at the Technical University Munich and the Academy of Fine Arts. A few years as an assistant architect in the family business were followed by a brief period of work in the US, where he met Mies van der Rohe and Waiter Gropius. He took over the Böhm architecture studio in Koln after his father's death in 1955, kick-starting a long and impressive career, influenced by his father's designs as well as Bauhaus principles. His finished works include more than 40 churches, from Taiwan to Brazil.

The Pilgrimage Church

The Pilgrimage Church project began as a competition-winning entry in 1964, in response to the Catholic archdiocese of Koln's call for a church in Neviges, a small town about half an hour outside the city. Böhm's winning design ticked all the boxes, providing both the space and atmosphere for religious functions – it offers seating for 800 and standing room for 2,200 in a truly spectacular building – without any obvious recourse to traditional religious symbolism. 

The church was completed in May 1968 and instantly became a landmark in the town. Taking advantage of a row of pilgrims' houses and the church's position at the top of a slope, Böhm created a processional way leading up the hill, into the church's open courtyard and inside, ending at the altar and the pilgrimage's religious climax.

The building's voluminous composition – a constellation of protruding angular polygons with a roof of folded concrete plates – reflects Böhm's experience as a sculptor (he works in clay; sculpting a series of models until reaching the fin a l shape). As irregular as it can be on the outside, the church is equally impressive from within, dominated by strong geometry, an awe-inspiring interior height and spatial complexity around the main hall. The building's plasticity, accentuated by the roughness of materials and the play of light on both the sharp, free-shaped volumes and through the colourful windows, sets it apart fro m the work of Böhm's contemporaries. The church's fragmented volumes elegantly break up its huge bulk and give it a unique form that's hard to imitate – and to categorise.

Modernist principles

Some modernist principles can be identified in the design; Böhm shows Bauhaus ethics – austerity, honesty and an expression of his own time – in his use of materials, the layout and the technology. Still, that doesn't make him a modernist. He rejects labels, although he has been described as both expressionist and post-Bauhaus. He prefers, he says, to be ‘nothing in particular', to shift freely from style to style, from the simple to the complex, experimenting with form and material, utilising steel, glass, brick and concrete to suit each commission.

The Neviges church's revolutionary shape is the antithesis of everything Böhm is against: imitation of historic styles, over-designing and extreme minimalism. His design philosophy veers towards a human yet experimental approach: 'Anyone who does not have the strength to sin will not necessarily be a saint or a good architect – more likely a bore.'

A Pritzker Prize winner

The church is a true icon, very much of its time, and it brought Böhm many more commissions. Today, in his late eighties, he should be content; with the Pritzker Prize and worldwide critical acclaim in his pocket, and having built and taught for more than half a century, he has already left a rich architectural legacy - in more ways than one. Three of his four sons have become architects (the fourth is a painter). But Böhm continues to design nearly every day, either alone or with his sons. And, far from basking in his past glory, he is ever in the present. 'My favourite piece of work,' he reflects, 'is always the one in progress and under construction.'

A version of this article first appeared in issue 189 of Wallpaper* (June/July 2007)

Paulo Mendes da Rocha still channels the energy of a revolutionary. The 81-year-old architect's discourse, usually self-contradictory, is intense, much like the body of work that spans his 50-year career. Take his house in Butanta, for example, which he built in 1964. Even today, it's an architectural gesture against the culture of individualism. The banishing of circulation space, and the design of rooms with windows that open not externally but internally towards the common areas, represents a radical proposal of respectful co-existence.

Delicate paper models all around his office tell stories about his current projects; the Vitória Museum, already under construction; laboratories for Vale do Rio Doce in Belem do Pani; the Vigo University building in Spain; and the new Carriage Museum in Lisbon. The architect seems genuinely unconcerned about the current global economic difficulties. ‘How can Europe talk about crisis aft er having overcome two World Wars and having rebuilt entire countries from scratch? We should allow capitalism to be discussed as well as reinvented,' he says.

‘The best thing an architect can say is that he doesn’t know what architecture is’

Mendes de Rocha's long service as a lecturer at Sao Paulo University would have been longer had the military dictatorship not banned him from teaching for two decades. He suggests today's more benign political environment will allow Brazilian architects to again spark urban revitalisation, just as the country's modernists did.

‘I don't think there is a Brazilian architecture, there is just architecture in Brazil,' he says. He references Rio icons like the Museum of Modern Art by Affonso Eduardo Reidy and the Ministry of Education and Health, by a team that included Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa. ‘These are works of architecture that transform nature,' he says, and by "nature" he explains that he does not mean the simple natural landscape, but the whole socio-geographic phenomena .

Though he seems nonchalant about awards, Mendes da Rocha considers the Pritzker Prize he received in 2006 as recognition of how Brazil's attitude to architecture has had a positive influence internationally. But he suggests there are many challenges that Latin American architecture has yet to overcome.

‘Latin America is still being discovered, but the biggest danger for Brazil would be to stand out before its time. lt would just lead to ephemeral fireworks.' But isn't contemporary architecture also, in a way, ephemeral? ‘The best thing an architect can say is that he doesn't know what architecture is,' comes the reply.

Inside the typical Indian home, you can usually find grandparents scurrying behind their grandchildren while business meetings happen in private quarters. In this part of the world, three – sometimes even four – generations often live under one roof, creating a complex interplay of daily lives. While cultural attitudes towards multigenerational living are gradually shifting, and families now often choose to set up independent units, Matharoo Associates, an award-winning practice based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has retained this traditional living arrangement in its latest project, Plain Ties.

Set in Surat, a Gujarati port city known for its diamond-cutting workshops, Plain Ties is a sophisticated 9,130 sq ft residence that bridges modernity, tradition and a sense of experimentation. This is a house that places innovation at its core, quite literally. Gurjit Singh Matharoo, who founded Matharoo Associates in 1991, is known for his expertise beyond the world of architecture, designing motorcycles, cars and even mobile blood banks (W*125), which enabled the firm to create a circular central lounge with moveable concrete walls that skilfully divide and unify the rooms.

This raw, minimalist space, delicately illuminated by an adjoining skylight, is the heart of the home. ‘This is the default space, where everyone comes together and feels connected,’ explains Komal Matharoo, the principal architect on the project and Gurjit’s wife. ‘The walls become space-making elements and act as an origin point for the horizontal and vertical axes of the building,’ she says. Around this zone are a kitchen, dining area, living room, verandas, and bedrooms for the grandparents, which all look out onto the garden.

The multigeneration dwelling is situated in a quiet neighbourhood that is free of compound walls. ‘The project’s name has a dual meaning as it speaks to the rhythmic horizontal bands on the concrete surfaces, and the deep sense of kinship that permeates the building,’ says Gurjit. The scheme is a masterful array of freestanding concrete planes gracefully tied together by slender weather shades, creating a welcoming home that belongs to everyone. Komal aimed for each member of the household – a couple, their parents and two sons – to feel connected while simultaneously having areas to ‘retreat’.

The home is oriented towards an expansive public garden to the south, away from the towering apartments to the east and lofty compounds to the north. ‘We intended to design a structure that would turn its back to the built context and open up towards the rich landscape,’ says Komal. As you walk along the tree-lined main road to reach the house, it achieves a scale that is both human and inviting.

The site’s unstable black cotton soil meant the scheme required deep foundations. This allowed Matharoo Associates to create a meditation space, temple, gym, storage and staff areas, and a small private medical practice for one of the grandparents, all below ground. Streaks of light filter down as naked concrete walls playfully come alive through calculated sunken courts.

Inside, the slender concrete steps of the main staircase lead to a small light-filled library overlooking the open central space and main gathering point. Here, crisp Burma teak panels complement the robust black Cuddapah stone flooring. ‘From this space, there is a strong diagonal connection to the heart of the building,’ says Komal. Upstairs, the elegant curving stairs strategically tie together several bedrooms and eliminate the need for space-guzzling corridors. This produces opportunities for ‘communal collision’ as family members meander through the dwelling.

By teaming up with structural design firm Rushabh Consultants, Matharoo Associates achieved clean columnand beam-free rooms that create a strong open feel. This sense of fluidity is reinforced by Plain Ties’ lack of doors and meticulous use of daylight. As you travel up towards the apex of home, you are greeted by a spacious roof terrace that provides impressive views of the surrounding foliage. Acting as a private alcove, the top of the house is a well-needed haven from the bustle of the lower levels.

A contemporary interpretation of the traditional Indian home, Plain Ties strikes an intricate balance between seclusion and interdependence. Through its refined central space, cleverly shifting walls and flowing interiors, it provides moments of togetherness while achieving pockets of privacy. At a time when multigenerational living is slowly fading in popularity, Matharoo Associates has successfully created a strong, contemporary house that preserves close-knit family ties.

INFORMATION

matharooassociates.com

This minimalist beach house in California is the brainchild of American architect Dan Brunn. The house, located just on the waterfront of Venice Beach, is an ode to raw concrete and pared-down volumes, yet was born of pragmatism and functionality; Positively Negative, as the house is named, was created as a direct response to ‘the harsh marine weather and densely packed environment of its location,' says the architect. 

Featuring a narrow frontage and attempting to address a healthy balance between natural light, privacy and outdoor space, the house design was conceived as a series of stacked cubes. The composition is quite complex but also feels at home within Los Angeles-based Brunn's portfolio – the architect is well known for his clean, minimalist, sculptural work. 

The interior follows the same aesthetic, with airy, sleek rooms that feature large windows towards the ocean. The striking, calming, long views enrich the interior, while the openings also ensure all internal areas as awash with natural light. 

‘Fundamental to Positively Negative’s design principle is the choreography of circulation, where the spatial and structural arrangement of the home allows for a vibrantly navigated pace as you move throughout, notably punctuated by the central staircase atrium whose reiterated shape forms a sequence of right turns, descending each level,' says the architect. 

Open, generous spaces are matched by naked concrete, natural materials and textured surfaces, which make for a warm and stylish, contemporary home. Meanwhile, a solar energy system on the roof, along with passive cooling and radiant floor heating, not only secure a pleasant atmosphere for the residents but also make this house environmentally friendly. 

INFORMATION

danbrunn.com

A modernist home designed by iconic American midcentury architect Charles Gwathmey, originally known as the Haupt Residence, has just been given a new lease of life with a restoration and refresh by New York studio Worrell Yeung. The house, built in the 1970s in Amagansett, New York, cuts a distinctly modernist figure, sat among sand dunes and looking out towards the ocean – a positioning that lends it its name, House in the Dunes. 

Partially clad in gray cedar siding, which is matched by white walls and swathes of glazing, the house is a composition of opaque volumes and voids. These create windows, terraces, rooms and double height living spaces indoors, in a design that feels at once dramatic and comfortably domestic. 

Restoring modernist architecture

Figuring out how to approach a redesign process in such a valued piece of modernist heritage was key, explain the architects, who admit that their first instinct was the keep things very low key. ‘We’re big fans of Gwathmey – particularly his early stuff,' says studio co-founder Max Worrell. ‘So we were very excited when we got the call about the house. Especially given that it was in its original condition, totally untouched. Our intention, at first, was really to do as little as possible.'

Using Gwathmey's original drawings as a reference and starting point, the team went to work. The task included updating the structure where needed, to bring it up to 21st century standards, while gently tweaking the interior to better suite the new owners' requirements and overall functionality. ‘At every stage of the process we were asking ourselves, ‘What would Gwathmey do?' adds Worrell.

A modernist home for the 21st century

A large part of the exterior cladding was replaced and updated. Meanwhile inside, the living, dining and kitchen areas were carefully united, opening up views and routes through the ground level. Attention to detail was key throughout, with the architects ensuring that any new materials introduced in the redesign, for example, felt at home within Gwathmey's building intention. 

The owners are pleased, reveling in the fact that their modernist home is now preserved and cared for. ‘We had a vision of breathing new life into the house, not just as our home, but as an architecturally significant building,' they say. ‘Houses of this vintage are in a dangerous middle ground right now. They are not old enough to be valued for their era appropriate aesthetic. They are either seen as gems to be saved, or outdated and easy tear down material.'

‘But just as any period in time, there are gems worth saving and preserving for future generations to enjoy. This is definitely one of those gems, and we feel grateful and honored to have been part of its story. We hope our efforts from a design and rebuild aspect can highlight all its idiosyncrasies while ensuring its preservation for decades to come. What’s important to me is capturing the transformation we’ve accomplished and having this moment of the house’s life documented, on our watch, before we pass it along.

INFORMATION

worrellyeung.com

An Australian beach house and studio created following the country's 2015 bushfires, Wye River House is the creation of the young architecture studio of Matt Goodman, MGAO. The structure, located by its namesake body of water in a small coastal town in Victoria, was designed pro bono by the Australian practice, which wanted to offer assistance to the local community and undertook three such projects within the affected area. 

The design, a refined piece of minimalist concrete architecture, contains a private home and workspace for a family with a connection to Paddy Harrington, one of the original builders behind many of the small towns in that stretch of the Australian seaside. ‘This family connection to the built fabric of the town, along with our own interest in the vernacular beach shack typology as a reference for design, led to an exploration of simple materials, rational forms and a “careful carelessness”,' says Goodman.

The structure is simple and functional yet tailored to the clients’ needs. Arranged as a series of rooms in a row, all dual aspect and looking out towards the green and water views beyond its hilly site, the house spans two levels.

The entrance, accessed through a bridge, which accomodates the sloped plot's nature, leads through a sheltered terrace and straight into a kitchen and dining space, which is connected to the main living room. Two en suite bedrooms sit at the opposite end of the home. A lower-ground floor contains a further two bedrooms and an independently accessed studio space. A sense of connection with the outdoors is ever present, thanks to a long balcony that wraps around the lower level, larger decked terraces and floor-to-ceiling windows. 

Clean, orthogonal volumes, generous openings and exposed, polished concrete highlight a utilitarian approach that feels at once refined and domestic, light-filled yet also private. Occupying a surface of some 200 sq m, this beach house and studio is a carefully considered home with a distinctly contemporary twist.

INFORMATION

mgao.com.au

This radical transformation of a late Victorian house in Hackney, elevates a standard period property into a modern home with an emphasis on minimalist architecture, light, use of materials and quality of space. The architecture studio behind it, East London based Dedraft, took on the challenge to redesign the building's interior and add an extension to the structure that was previously divided into two apartments. 

The clients – an investor and a singer – bought the property to create their dream family home, so the focus of the commission was not about ‘simply gaining more' in terms of square footage, stress the architects. The four level interior was therefore modernised and thoroughly rethought, highlighting a sense of space, natural light and design and material quality. 

The clients were keen on textured, tactile materials that feel natural and functional. Corten steel and exposed concrete were on their list, so the architects obliged. The new build extension now is fully clad in weathered steel, which wraps around large openings that flood the tall ceilinged spaces inside with sunlight. A sculptural cast-in-situ concrete staircase becomes a monolithic centrepiece of the extension's interior. 

‘To permit light across the floors internal openings were punched, enhancing the quality and volume of space, opening up spatial connections and directing the passage of natural light, inspired by the interiors of La Corbusier’s ‘La Roche House',' add the architects. 

Clever level adjustments and a sunken sun terrace create a pleasant, light-filled basement level, where the kitchen and a family room are located. Main living spaces (including a reception and formal dinning area) are placed on the raise ground floor, while the upper two levels house the bedrooms. 

The minimalist interior becomes a gently lit backdrop where the owners' art can be displayed. While a lush green garden space with a separate studio outbuilding to the rear ensures visual and physical connection with nature and the outdoors - even within the urban environment of East London. 

INFORMATION

dedraft.co.uk

Those, like us, who have a soft spot for crude concrete architecture, will love the work of Juliaan Lampens (1926-2019). The powerful concrete roughness of the Belgian architect's volumes is inescapable when you walk past two of his best known buildings, both near Ghent: the Chapel of Our Blessed Lady of Kerselare, in the village of Edelare, and the Van Wassenhove house in Sint-Martens-Latem.

However, digging a little deeper into Lampens' life and work, it quickly becomes apparent that there is more to his architecture than brutalism by numbers. Belgian curator Angelique Campens has been studying Lampens' work since her university years and knew him well. The architect had a reputation for being reserved, keeping his business to himself to the point of avoiding contact with colleagues. He didn’t even travel much, reveals Campens. ‘But he had a lot of books. He admired Oscar Niemeyer and was influenced by Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.' He may seem to have lacked the desire for architectural pilgrimage, but Lampens practised non-stop from his base in Eke, East Flanders, from 1950 until his last work was built in 2002 – creating a legacy of about 50, mostly residential, projects, including the chapel and Eke library.

Lampens was born in 1926 in De Pinte and grew up in nearby Eke, the son of a cabinetmaker. After working as a technical draughtsman, he studied architecture in Ghent and set up his own firm straight after graduation, kick-starting it with commissions from his father's middle-class clientele. While following a more conventional design style at first, he nurtured an interest in modernism. 'His visit to the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels was a turning point for him,' Campens explains. 'Shortly after that, his designs changed drastically. He thought that Le Corbusier was too sculptural, and Mies too structured, but he wanted to combine the two.'

Lampens' first modern design was his own house and office in Eke, built in 1960. The house, a simple low box with a strong horizontal concrete slab roof and wooden details, was a taste of things to come. Testing the idea of lightness, the architect created the structure with almost no load-bearing walls, based on a steel-column grid. Glass-enclosed apart from a brick wall concealing it from the street, the house connects visually with the outdoors at the back and is largely open-plan inside, with bare brick and concrete on show. For the region at the time, Lampens' approach was radical. Privacy from the street, a connection with the natural environment, the use of exposed raw materials and an open-plan interior all became recurring themes in his work. Lampens also paid special attention to smaller concete architecture details, such as the roof's drains, which he described as 'functional ornaments'.

The commission for the Chapel of Our Blessed Lady of Kerselare followed soon after the completion of Lampens' house. However, the design with which he won the 1961 competition – with Professor Rutger Langaskens, one of his former teachers – was very different from what you see today. Upon winning, Lampens reworked the building, making it so altered from the original and so alien to the neighbourhood that during the concrete casting, passers-by thought it would be a silo. Despite this, and with the incumbent pastor's support, the high-ceilinged chapel – resembling a giant concrete skip – opened in 1966. It featured bespoke concrete benches (currently removed), a large glass wall and a central concrete skylight, while the protruding mono-pitched roof provided outdoor shelter for the congregation.

It was the chapel's large untreated surfaces that led many to label Lampens a follower of brutalist architecture, a tag he has never accepted. 'He never felt part of a group,' Campens stresses. The chapel and his Eke house were landmarks in Lampens' career. Part of his aloof, albeit good-natured, character is reflected in the esoteric, yet sturdy and unexpectedly open designs; street-shy, they are welcoming once you're inside. Certainly, they gained him many new commissions.

Among these was the Van Wassenhove residence, completed in 1974. School teacher Albert Van Wassenhove, admiring the Kerselare chapel, asked Lampens for a similar house. In response, and taking into account the plot's limited views, the architect created an irregular rough-cast concrete volume, blind from two sides and semi-sunken into a hill. For the flowing interior, as with other projects, Lampens designed furniture – chairs, tables and chaises longues – all simple and mainly wooden.

Lampens' most daring work is the Vandenhaure-Kiebooms house in Huise, completed in 1967. The client, Gerard Vandenhaute, hoped for a house that pushed the envelope. His wish was granted. Designed along Lampens' usual lines – a minimal, one-level glass box topped off with a thick concrete flat roof – the house is pillar- and wall-less inside; even the bathroom is open to the rest of the interior, with privacy afforded only by a shoulder-height cylindrical concrete partition. In a play of transparency and openness, the only other fixed component is the kitchen. The roof stands on a solid, street-facing concrete wall and two steel pillars on the opposite side.

Sketching everything from tiny details to larger concepts, Lampens produced hundreds of drawings throughout his career, signing every one. Still, he never cherished paper architecture. 'He called it “embryonic” architecture. For him, drawings were secondary. Built work remained the important thing,' Campens says. Today, these drawings are held at Eke library, where the Juliaan Lampens Foundation takes care of his archive, run by, among others, his son Dieter Lampens and Campens.

Lampens' experimental, concrete architecture work remains largely unexplored. A group exhibition in Brazil he participated in years ago is probably its only appearance outside Belgium. But there remains a devoted local following for his idiosyncratic designs. Tellingly, owners of Lampens’ houses are known to have lived in them for a long time. Campens’ monograph about the architect was published in 2010, and in 2012, the Van Wassenhove house was bequeathed to the University of Ghent. Now on long-term loan to the museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle, it gained monument status in Belgium in 2017. 

A version of this article was first published in the April 2010 Issue of Wallpaper* (W* 133)

Staircases lead nowhere; walls bring passages to an abrupt halt; ceilings appear without warning. In the surreal world of David Umemoto’s brutalist concrete sculptures, reality has little authority and imagination roams free. 

Like many creatives during the pandemic, the Canadian artist was deprived of studio access for many months, forced to find new modes of creation. This prompted a period of exploration, ‘mental gymnastics’ and though the artist was well versed in planning his concrete sculptures on paper, he set himself a new challenge. 

Inspired by Japanese kirigami, the former architect conceived three-dimensional objects using only a square sheet of paper, without loss, without additions and without glue. This resulted in a new exhibition ‘Folded Stone’, now on view at Modern Shapes Gallery in Antwerp. ‘My concrete work is done in the mass. I usually start with a theoretical prism from which I remove matter. The process with paper is totally different since it is surface work’, the artist explains. ‘I start with a generally square sheet that I cut and fold. In this new Folded Stone series, I try to position myself halfway through this mass-surface duality.’ 

Umemoto’s hand-created work sits at the intersection of architecture, sculpture and pure fantasy. His low-tech approach stems from a commitment to plainness, simplicity and imperfection, far removed from the fast-paced demands of modern production. Each component is cast using modular moulds which can be arranged – and subsequently rearranged – like concrete puzzles. 

Umemoto’s influences are somewhat eclectic, from pre-Columbian rock dwellings to fragments of Babylonian cities. Artistically, it’s Rachel Whiteread meets MC Escher; or the surreal twists of Giorgio de Chirico combined with the postmodernist mazes of Ricardo Bofill or the haunting webs of Giovanni Battista’s Prisons of Piranesi. There’s an eerie quality to these matrix-like sculptures – architectural dioramas which, if one were to enter, might never leave. 

Like much of Umemoto’s work, Folded Stone is an exercise in imagination, restraint and the poetics of architecture

INFORMATION

David Umemoto: ‘Folded stone’, 4 March - 28 March 2021, Modern Shapes Gallery. modernshapes.com

davidumemoto.com

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2000 Antwerpen

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The concrete architecture of Greek studio Tense has been celebrated for its sculptural quality, modern forms and functional interiors that work equally well in an urban and rural context. The latest work by Tense Architecture Network (as the practice's full name is) belongs in the latter category, nestled in a hill, overlooking the green landscapes and calm, blue waters of the Euboean Gulf in central Greece. 

The project is a private residence, and it has been composed as a neat arrangement of two clean, geometrical shapes – a triangle and a circle. In plan, the triangular form represents the main house, while the round one is a striking swimming pool, sitting just outside. The house is placed diagonally and towards the uppermost corner of the plot in order to make the most of its long views.  

Entering from the garage and main entrance on the lower level, visitors are guided through a dramatic circular staircase to the residence's piano nobile. This contains an open plan living space and two generous bedrooms. These two ‘wings' are divided by a courtyard in the home's heart, which enhances light and connections between indoors and outdoors. 

The architecture's reinforced concrete structure is treated with earthy, absorbent paint that gives the whole a certain roughness, highlighting the house also as a sculptural object placed among the Mediterranean landscape. Bronze-coloured aluminium frames on doors and windows, tinted glass and white plastered walls inside complete the project's restrained material palette. 
 
While the house may seem more angular, the external spaces and landscaping (designed by Eleni Tsirintani) feels softer. A curved terrace straight out of the living space responds to the terrain's topographic lines and leads to the impressive swimming pool. The last brings to mind an elegantly oversized, concrete architecture version of a bird fountain, or the dramatic experimentations of 20th century Modernists. 

‘The swimming pool refers to [the curved terrace and pergola above it] and is formed in a sculptural way, also from visible uncoated concrete,' says the studio's founder, Tilemachos Andrianopoulos. ‘Its circular shape works in addition to the triangular prism - freely placed into the surrounding countryside.'

INFORMATION

tensearchitecture.net

New York City does not lack for desirable neighbourhoods, but few offer a vantage point for appreciating the architecture of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and enjoying waterfront views of the Manhattan skyline like Brooklyn’s Dumbo. New Yorkers are flocking to the area both to live and visit the many shops and restaurants that now occupy its distinctive brick warehouses. As such, Dumbo’s local architecture boasts several eye-catching developments, including ODA’s newly completed, Rubik’s Cube-like condominium at 98 Front Street.

The minimalist, ground-up building boasts a distinctive concrete sculpted configuration that houses 165 units, ranging from studios to four-bedroom apartments, and uniquely provides residents with as much natural light and outdoor space as possible.

‘98 Front is a product of a few years of study we conducted at ODA, relating to what we refer to as the breathing room of a building. The intention was made to explore the uncharted opportunities in a community of small dwelling units in dense urban cities,’ explains ODA’s founder Eran Chen.

‘What seems complicated is in fact a very regular and simple structure, designed from the inside-out. Every unit is made of one to four modules, from a studio apartment to a three-bedroom home where the living room is always longer and projected beyond the base building line, just enough to allow it to have a corner window and an access to a large, furnishable terrace. This terrace is in fact the roof of another extended living room below. The result is a building where almost every apartment has more than one exposure to light and air and a large outdoor space expanding the indoor living-room experience.’

Made from concrete, which was poured in place, 98 Front Street’s dynamic structure thoughtfully nods to Dumbo’s industrial history through its configuration and elemental choice of materials.

‘Many of the neighborhood’s old warehouses and manufacturing buildings were built of concrete grid-like structures that maximized the load and open space of the floorplan,’ shares Chen. ‘We used wood to balance the concrete material. The underside of the cantilever is clad in wood panels, which is experienced both from inside the apartments and from the street looking up. At night, the light from the homes reflects on the wood surfaces and celebrates the warmth of the building’s interior.’   

Rounded out with well-heeled amenities including a saltwater pool, indoor and outdoor fitness areas, a communal rooftop, as well as a residents’ lounge and co-working space, the Rubik's Cube style residences are perfectly poised for pandemic life and well beyond.

Chen says, ‘The pandemic has been an accelerator for many of the changes we’ve been advocating for a long time. 98 Front promotes indoor/outdoor living at its very core with an extensive private and communal outdoor program. It treats amenities as an open, democratic space providing places that attract people to congregate spontaneously as well as flexible work stations.’

INFORMATION
oda-architecture.com

Residence FSD offers harmony between the manmade and the natural, modernity and a site-specific approach, brutalist concrete and a leafy context. Created by Bruges based architecture studio Govaert & Vanhoutte, the private villa is the primary residence for a family living outside Brussels, and wishing to balance a contemporary home with being close to a more natural environment. 

Engulfed in its woodland setting, sat just on the edge of a forest, the house feels distinctly modern and minimalist, but it was designed to take its cues from the landscape around it. Nestled in a steep slope, it was shaped by its inclined terrain, with an entrance on the plot's highest point and the main living areas orientated towards the drop and the green views beyond. 

Spanning two levels, the brutalist home features a generous, dual aspect piano nobile, where all the main living spaces are located. The master bedroom, a walk-in wardrobe and en-suite bathroom are also on this floor, on the east of the building, flooded in light through a secluded patio that punctures the house's monolithic volume. The lower level contains a garage and facility spaces, such as storage, utility room and a wet room, but also includes a multipurpose room and a further three bedrooms. 

Openings were planned carefully by the architecture team, working with the sun's path, they explain, in order to help naturally cool down and heat the interior: ‘In the summer the sunlight is partially blocked by the trees. In the winter, the bare trees allow a maximum of sunlight to enter the house.'

Special attention was paid to the areas where the brutalist build space meets nature, so surrounding the house is an abundance of outdoors spaces, such as a long decked terrace, concrete canopies and a striking swimming pool with long forest vistas. As a gesture that shows the architecture's respect towards the existing landscape, the pool's depth was adjusted to accommodate the roots of an old tree on site.

INFORMATION

govaert-vanhoutte.be

The city of Doha has just got a new transport system. Conceived and designed by Dutch architecture firm UNStudio, the Doha Metro Network is set to help the city rely on private cars less and make travelling both more streamlined and cleaner in terms of carbon emissions. 

This project was not about your usual station building design. When the practice won the commission, they set out to create a whole toolbox of elements and ideas. Instead of designing buildings, they put together an extensive set of three-dimensional elements that would be modular so that they can be used in different configurations, in various sites and contexts. This would make up a holistic design package that would ensure that not only the current stations follow the same style and architectural approach – in terms of functionality and visual identity – but also any future ones would too. 

‘We set up a unique series of "elements" that you could use, mix and match, mirror and reposition in order to make a variety of stations shapes and sizes,' explains UNStudio co-founder Ben van Berkel. ‘There’s a manual with everything in there – from construction details, to how materials and light in the station needs to be placed, how wayfinding becomes part of the system, so every architect and subcontractor who is called to work on a station in the future can use it and create from this manual.'

The outcome displays the signature UNStudio aesthetic, featuring swooping curves and defining geometries. ‘We have a fascination for complex geometries and we knew that only with a few key, carefully designed elements you can make many variants but also keep the identity of the stations similar – that’s part of what the client had asked,' continues van Berkel. 

This scheme, the architects explain, is also a key step in creating a new public space for the city. The metro network, van Berkel says, should be a space for social interaction, exercise and encounters, as much as a valuable bit of infrastructure: ‘Part of the ambition was to create the network as a part of the city's public life.' Encouraging people to leave their cars behind, walk more and meet, was important. A retail element in the bigger stations helps support the expected footfall. 

‘This project will make Doha a metropolitan city,' the architect adds. ‘I like the idea that the Doha Metro Network will generate an enormous amount of activity. It is made for the city first - but also ease transit in between stadiums during the upcoming world cup.' 

INFORMATION
unstudio.com

Fortune favours the brave. The 1970s were an era of mid-engine madness, when the big sports car makers explored the packaging options of putting the engine behind the driver, allowing for better balance, sleeker aerodynamics, and — most importantly of all — more outrageous styling. Some of the greatest Italian cars of the era benefitted from this layout, from Ferrari’s first mid-engine road car, the 1971 Berlinetta Boxer, through to the angular Lamborghini Countach that ushered in the supercar era. Their compatriots, Maserati, made a similar transition from front-engine sports cars and grand tourers to low-slung two-seaters, with the introduction of the 1971 Bora and its successor, the Merak (actually a four-seater, albeit with very small rear seats). For Maserati, it was an expensive foray into new territory. The 70s fuel crisis, a short but ultimately disastrous spell of ownership by the French marque Citroen, and perpetual cash flow problems meant that Maserati was never able to capitalise on the super sports genre, and the company that ultimately emerged focused almost exclusively on sports GTs and saloons. In 1993 Maserati reconnected with its Italian ancestry with its sale to Fiat and the company has been part of the FCA Group (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) since 2011.

Now the mid-engine Maserati is back in the form of the MC20. Unveiled in early September, it is the car to take Maserati into a new decade, as well as being the first all-new product from the company since the launch of the Ghibli in 2013. On the one hand, it’s a spiritual evolution of a very limited-edition machine, the MC12 Stradale, a raw road-going version of GT racer, developed from the Ferrari Enzo in 2004 of which just 50 examples were made. But on the other it’s a challenger to the status quo established by Ferrari and Lamborghini and soon Aston Martin.

The Maserati Corse 2020 is about speed, dynamics and power. Built around a carbon-fibre monocoque, the MC20 is pared back and functional, inside and out. It exudes a compact, taut capability, and the white finish on the show car’s bodywork is a world away from the glossy, shouty reds and yellows of its rivals. Scissor doors allow access to a dark, focused cockpit, with plenty of exposed carbon-fibre and Alcantara finishes. The audio system was designed in conjunction with Sonus Faber, the acclaimed Italian loudspeaker manufacturers, and is controlled via a dash-mounted tablet. The car will debut with a twin turbo V6, with a hybrid and pure electric version further down the line.

We spoke to Klaus Busse, the man who heads up FCA’s design team, overseeing Fiat, Abarth, Lancia, and Alfa Romeo, as well as Maserati, about the origins and aspirations for the company’s new model

Wallpaper*: This is the first mid-engine Maserati production car for many years. Did you take inspiration from the past or is it a clean sheet design?

Klaus Buss: When it comes to designing a car, how clean sheet can the design really be? If I were to describe the design philosophy behind the MC20 in two words, they would be Purity and Contrast. As you can see from the car, the design is all about purity contrasted by extremely complex functional areas. One of our main inspirations for the MC20 came from the A6GCS Pinin Farina of the 1950s. This car in fact, is naturally pure and beautifully sculpted, creating a silhouette praised for its simplicity, which is then contrasted by the exposed exhaust pipes underneath the driver’s door showcasing its high degree of functionality. This is the same design philosophy used for the MC20 where the upper part of the car is all about purity and sculptural simplicity, while the lower part is true technical performance.

W*: What about more recent examples from the company’s history?

KB: MC20’s design philosophy was not the only thing that was born by looking back into Maserati’s past: there are some details in this new super sports car that are echoes from the past. For example, the new face of Maserati – as in with the low front grill and the high headlights – were inspired by the MC12. MC20 represents not only an ode to the brand’s past achievements but is also the face of Maseratis of the future.

W*: How long has this car been in planning?

KB: The development period for the MC20 was about 24 months.

W*: What are the key visual elements that define a mid-engine Maserati?

KB: There are no key elements that are specific to a mid-engine Maserati, but there are key visual elements that define the MC20 and Maserati’s aesthetic future. As mentioned, our design philosophy is driven by purity. For the MC20, this translated in creating something with no frills, no excess, and no unnecessary details. We tried to avoid visual noise, in order for the car to speak for itself. We did not design it around the air intakes; on the contrary, we restrained ourselves and have them only where they are absolutely necessary. By doing so, we now have a car that is a pure sculpture reduced to the main proportions. A car that does not need to shout at its environment through loud detailing, but truly stands out for raw beauty and capabilities.

W*: How does the design express the technology of the launch V6 and possible future powertrains?

KB: The MC20, being a super sports car in every inch of its design, was created by respecting and embracing technological and performance necessities. Whether it is the silhouette of the car that defines the cabin space, or the aerodynamic flow and the downforce of the car, Maserati has brought to the market a dynamic sculpture, powered V6 twin turbo petrol engine, which will propel the brand into the future. In addition, one should notice the balance between the pure elegance of the silhouette and the integrated air intakes, which are needed to supply the necessary cooling and the thermal exhaust to the V6. However, it is fundamental to keep in mind that the true expression of MC20 is in the incredible collaboration and teamwork we had with the engineers in Modena.

INFORMATION

maserati.com

Also see the 2024 Maserati MC20 Leggenda and Icona, two limited-edition supercars

Southern China’s traditional distinctive round buildings reflect the ancient belief that the sky is round and divine and the earth is square. Now Pritzker prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando has reinterpreted this vernacular and the region’s famed waterside architecture for the new contemporary He Art Museum (HEM) in Shunde.

The founder, He Jianfeng who owns industrial investment Infore Group, one of the region’s most successful businesses, hopes the museum’s striking architecture and Western works of art – by masters such as Pablo Picasso, Olafur Eliasson and Damien Hirst – together with a focus on southern China’s Lingnan culture, including a fine collection of Lingnan-style ink art and Cantonese opera, will spark serious interest in culture and the arts. 

The entrance to the 16,000 sq m spiral-shaped pavilion situated adjacent to Infore’s headquarters and plaza in the central business district, is by a path that crosses the pond encircling the museum. Inside, a monumental central skywell and floor to ceiling windows with aluminium alloy louvers flood the interiors with daylight. An imposing double-helix pair of staircases in Ando’s signature smooth silvery-grey concrete create a dramatic Guggenheimesque feel emphasized by the slightly cantilevered ascending four-storeys. There is a square ground floor gallery, bookstore and café, and circular exhibition spaces above. 

According to HEM Director Shao Shu (previously a curator at Shanghai’s Long Museum), the curvilinear interiors deliberately step away from the contemporary Western ‘white box' style gallery and embrace Chinese culture: ‘In the circular architectural form, it sets out a new form of art space, embedding the culture of the museum with more individuality. At HEM, the space has seamlessly integrated with the experience of art.'

The inaugural exhibition ‘From the Mundane World', by eminent art curator and critic Feng Boyi, perceptively highlights Shunde’s famed cuisine with a metaphorical canteen. However, the star of the show is a site-specific permanent stainless steel tree sculpture by American artist Roxy Paine, a piece titled Ballast from his Dendroids series. Its location in the Crescent Garden was cleverly planned in collaboration with Ando to link the unusual architecture and surrounding outdoors.

INFORMATION

hem.org

On a flat piece of land along the coastline of the Northern Peloponnese region in Greece, overlooking the Parnassos mountain to the north, a single level holiday house stretches out along the coastline, with a beach-side swimming pool running parallel to the sea. Designed by R.C.TECH, the holiday house was designed for a young family in love with the Greek coastal landscape.

The peaks and angles of the white pitched volume and the exposed concrete pergola create a moment of interest in the largely flat landscape, where the sea and the horizon are the only elements of context. The shape of the house is a product of the interior and exterior rooms that interlock to create a diverse number of spaces. The architects see each unique room in the house as a device for making holiday memories.

The architecture balances a coastal lifestyle – where people gather together for late breakfasts at midday and games of cards in the evenings, with quiet and private moments for reading and thinking. While each space has been carefully thought out, the plan is remarkably simple. Two wings for sleeping extend out either side of the central yellow front door. At the heart of the plan is the living space – where kitchen, living and dining are softly separately by the open fireplace, and the two large cylindrical skylights that bring daylight into the kitchen and dining spaces.

An extension of the interior, the outdoor living space sites between pool and indoor living room. Defined by the concrete frame of the pergola, the terrace is orientated towards the beach and the sea, while to south a small courtyard forms a quiet sanctuary.

For R.C.TECH, designing a beach house is serious business – a holiday home is a very special place, where family memories are made and identities are formed. The yellow door for example was designed as a memorable feature for children, while the interplay of shadows and sunlight created to encourage contemplation in time, nature and the earth.

INFORMATION

rctech.gr

Created more as a carefully composed campus, rather than a conventional office, this heaquarters for a notary business in Bruges is the work of local Belgian architecture firm Govaert & Vanhoutte. The studio featured in our Architects Directory as an emerging practice in 2007, yet in the last ten years the then-young studio grew in leaps and bounds to become the international, prolific outfit it is today. 

‘What hasn't changed, is our philosophy,' explain founders Benny Govaert and Damiaan Vanhoutte. ‘We have always felt a correlation between the suprematist work of the Russian artist Malevich and our conceptual language. [...] By suprematism he meant the domination of the pure emotional experience in art, as opposed to the figurative. We also aim to attain this abstraction, this transcendence.'

This approach is evident in the Bruges notary headquarters. Centering their design on a few, key spaces – auditoriums, meeting rooms, closed and open office – the architects created a series of volumes linked by circulation spaces and dotted with courtyards. Large openings frame the outdoors in every single room, making users forget they are indeed indoors. Simple gestures produce a luxurious, yet down-to-earth overall feel. 

The whole is a minimalist composition in glass and grey concrete, put together by a geometric arrangement of clean, rectangular surfaces and low, horizontal lines and roofs. A sense of proportion and hints of nature through planting ensure the minimalist approach is infused with warmth and informed by the human scale. 

Inside, the presence of wood, natural stone, carpet and white painted plaster creates playful contrasts between cool and warm, light and dark. Creating the right interior atmosphere to foster wellness and creativity was a key challenge for the architects - yet not the only one. 

‘The final design was the result of a profound functional analysis of the office's inner workflow,' they say. ‘The business requires high levels of privacy, a flowing route for clientele circulation, as well as employee circulation, and so on, which made this design a tough nut to crack. The final design is the visual embodiment of this inner organization.'

MORE WALLPAPER* ARCHITECTS DIRECTORY 2020

INFORMATION
govaert-vanhoutte.be

Over two decades ago, Los Angeles based architects Frank Escher and Ravi GuneWardena embarked on a career trajectory that explored a trifecta of their collective passions: architectural history, cultural topography and the art world. ‘There are three legs of our practice and they are all connected – there are no firm walls between them, one shapes the other,' said Escher.

The duo has collaborated on historic preservation projects of iconic homes, from John Lautner’s Chemosphere to the Eames house. ‘Over 20 years ago, we were interested in architectural history and art but it has expanded dramatically from local [projects] to all over the US and Europe,' said Escher, ‘and, LA has become an international center for contemporary art.'

When they are not finishing up the Venice Biennale exhibition space for Sharon Lockhart - whom they have been working with for the past 15 years - they are collaborating with artists from Mike Kelley to Stephen Prina. ‘What has developed in the last 20 years, is that these interests are merging,' said GuneWardena.  This includes projects such as the LACMA exhibition ‘The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka' and a pop-up shop for Hermès Petit h in Orange County.

The pair has just completed a new showroom for contemporary, antique and limited edition, hand-woven rug maker’s Woven, across the street from the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood; expertly realised with the help of the studio's Cristiano Aires-Texeira, who was the work's project manager.

‘Woven already had an interesting visual identity,' said GuneWardena, ‘they were already working with artist Rose Mendez and they spoke a similar language to what we are interested in.' This translates to ‘paring down any space, project or assignment to what is essential and then taking away all the distractions,' he said. Since Woven was a project about rugs, ‘we created an atmosphere where the focus is on that product more than architectural work. Though we take great care in creating the architecture, it’s always about giving the pride of place to the activity or product we are working on.'

The rugs are set amid expansive concrete spaces conjuring the atmosphere of the international souks and bazaars in a labyrinth of different routes and pockets with natural light streaming in, positioned as a permanent installation. ‘It’s an attitude that came from working with artists and designing exhibitions,' said Escher. ‘It’s important to understand how you frame things, so people see what you want them to see.' According to GuneWardena, ‘the other thing that informs the layout is really a choreographic path through the space. How can the architecture inform, rather than using signs or a sales person?'

Back to residential and cultural endeavors, current projects include working on restoring Paul Williams personal home, a Richard Neutra house, and a church in Lincoln Heights that was central to the Chicano rights movement.

Another part of the team’s work that developed in the last few decades is exploring spirituality and their environments, as well as the interesting history of religions melding together. Next up for the team is building a Buddhist retreat center in the California San Gabriel Mountain range, and an episcopal Franciscan monastery in an affordable housing project in Riverside, California. 

MORE FROM WALLPAPER* ARCHITECTS DIRECTORY

INFORMATION

eschergunewardena.com

To reach the new addition of the World Health Organisation (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, visitors will need to cross through the entrance of the organisation's existing, historic building at the end of Appia Avenue. The glazed entrance lobby of the original structure, defined by an intricate structural system on which the tall, pre-stressed concrete volume lies, is suggestive of the building’s modernist value amd brutalist architecture and contributes to the dialogue between old and new. Surrounded by woodland and designed by Jean Tschumi (yet developed posthumously by Pierre Bonnard in 1966), the majestic WHO office building is now being refreshed with an extension by Swiss architecture firm Berrel Berrel Kräutler. 

The new office building connects to the existing one via a new, underground, elongated plinth – envisioned as the social heart, the ‘agora', of the entire campus. This gesture further articulates the overall project's relationship with nature. On ground level, the plinth base becomes a terrace that provides ample vantage points for taking in the surrounding landscape; on the lower ground, it contains a courtyard garden that links and organises the several, different spaces around it.

A green atrium at the core of the new building – which spans its entire height and has been recently completed – further nurtures the relationship between inside and outside, and adds to the design's energy-efficient performance. Building on the socially-minded, open-plan office culture of the existing headquarters, the atrium also provides a place for informal gatherings and expresses the formal flexibility underpinning the project; the only truly fixed points in the grid-modular plan are the four service and circulation hubs that run through all nine floors.

The extension building may be tall (reaching around about the same height as the old office, although much slimmer), but its size pays tribute to the original structure on site. A long section reveals that in a similar way, both old and new volumes appear suspended above their connecting base, living next to each other in harmony. The 1960s Tschumi/Bonnard building still seemingly floats above the entire complex, maintaining its iconic presence. 

Currently in construction and seen here in all its brutalist, concrete glory, the project is set to be completed later in autumn 2020.

INFORMATION

bbk-architekten.ch

The sunshade of a small olive grove and a cluster of pine trees with views of the Aegean on a gentle, breezy slope makes for the perfect spot to sit and relax during Greece's many, warm, sunny days. Add to this a sharp piece of contemporary architecture and you get an enviable holiday refuge – this is Scapearchitecture's Secret Garden House. 

The retreat, designed by the young and dynamic Athens-based architecture studio, is located in Faragas, on the southwestern part of Paros Island. Building on a site with a considerably angled terrain and strict planning restrictions was a challenge the architects overcame by semi-submerging the house into the slope. This not only makes for a gentle addition to the picturesque environment, but also allows for a strong relationship between the architecture and the outdoors. 

The living spaces are arranged in a large, open plan room that contains kitchen, dinning and sitting areas, all orientated towards the magnificent views of the green nature and the blue sea. A pergola extends out protecting this space from the intense summer sun, while adding articulation to what is the building's main facade. 

Meanwhile bedrooms, bathrooms and auxiliary rooms are located further into the slope, behind and below the main living areas. This part ‘is accessible from a passageway through the existing olive grove and it is connected with the outdoor living area above through a 2 metre wide stepped ventilation opening,' explain the architects. 

Subtle colours and exposed concrete make the house feel at the same time chic and almost cave-like, effortlessly balancing between architecture and landscape, indoors and outdoors. It is ‘a small refuge hidden in a secret garden, where its occupants can relax and find their inner self, enjoying the pure essence of living in the Cycladic islands,' adds the team.

INFORMATION

scapearchitecture.com

A new exhibition centre for the Nubuke Foundation in Accra, Ghana is now open to the public. Architects Baerbel Mueller and Juergen Strohmayer’s design not only preserves a set of existing 1980s structures on site – which now serve as a shop, archive, and artists studio – but it also allowed a new-build extension with a single purpose; this elegant building, entitled Nubuke Extended, is entirely dedicated to displaying African art.

Gracefully inserted on the edge of the Nubuke site’s premises, the new structure is designed as a harmonious fit to the foundation's complex. Featuring a split-level construction, lifted up on concrete pillars, the volume hovers over the site, creating a sheltered, open area, framing the garden and its Indian almond tree.

Concrete is omnipresent, forming exterior as well as interior walls. From afar, the building appears enclosed, but once inside, it unfolds to reveal generous exhibition areas and a stairway leading to a green roof. The interior is choreographed by rough-textured surfaces, occasionally broken to create a flow of different rooms and an elegant composition of spaces. And while the design appears monolithic, its design provides flexibility for a variety of functions, according to the cultural foundation's needs. Discreet, metal curtain tracks, carefully inserted into the concrete ceiling can transform the space when needed.

‘The design of Nubuke Extended responds to this programmatic layering through an abundance of indoor and outdoor spaces that allow for the hosting of many different scenarios, both intimate and expansive,' explain the architects. ‘The new gallery building is equipped with architectural elements that augment and soften its raw and stark appearance and volume, such as textile curtains on a railing system. These allow for the creation of, and engagement with, flexible and temporary appropriations, subdivisions and niches.'

Accra's climate and geography were key to the overall design. The northern and southern sides of the building are defined by large openings, orientated so as to be aligned with the prevailing wind direction, as well as revealing views towards Accra and the palm grove to the rear of the estate.

‘I like to think of the building as a six-sided box for which each side has been treated with a climatic strategy. The lower surface of the box is raised with a green roof on top,' says Strohmayer. ‘The eastern and western walls are the more closed walls, which help keep out the strong sun in this tropical part of the world, and then the ends of the tube are chopped open to create these very large apertures. It is an unusual object, but it can only exist here on the Nubuke grounds.'

Since its opening in 2006, the foundation has been crucial in celebrating Ghana's art scene, and has become one of Accra’s most highly esteemed cultural venues. This new extension will enable Nubuke to evolve with the city’s growing thirst for arts and culture. ‘The evolution of art spaces and cultural initiatives on the African continent, in relation to their effects on the (urban) context they are located in, is most thrilling,' explains Mueller.

‘New forms of making and showing art, of connecting art and society, and of engaging audiences, are emerging,' continues the architect. ‘These projects and spaces are becoming engines for transformation. In a wonderful way, this is currently happening all over Ghana. Founded already a decade ago, Nubuke was one of the very first initiatives of this kind.'

The Nubuke Foundation revealed its new extension with a retrospective exhibition of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor.

INFORMATION

juergenstrohmayer.net; nav-s.net

English National Ballet’s 70 dancers and 50 staff have relocated from a Victorian mews in Kensington to a £36m translucent box in east London.

The five-storey, 93,000 sq ft structure is one of a cluster of new blocks by Glenn Howells Architects. Together, they make up Hopewell Square, which sits on London City Island, a peninsula on the Thames reached via Ramboll’s red footbridge from Canning Town station.

GHA director Dan Mulligan says of the interior: ‘We wanted it to have the feel of a converted warehouse – lean, raw and industrialised.' Hence the liberal use of concrete. ‘We love the fact that concrete has tonnes of personality,' he adds. Meanwhile the translucency is achieved with big sheets of extra-white industrialised glass.

On the ground floor is a reception area and café, which is open to the public, and a production studio complete with fly tower and bleacher seating that packs away. Zigzagging up the building is a wide staircase of sheet metal with a timber floor and hand rail, and a strip of lighting running along underside.

Upstairs houses seven full-sized rehearsal rooms (with ceilings high enough to perform a lift), a room with rush matting on the floor where dancers do their stretching, a gym and costume workshop four times the size of the old one.

In ENB’s previous home, many of these facilities were either not fit for purpose or off-site. That includes the English National Ballet School, which has moved into the top two floors. Some of these spaces can be rented out to bring in extra income.

Mulligan and his team visited dance institutions around the world to glean ideas. Hence the pigeon holes in the studios where dancers can store belongings, and the internal windows which give the building’s users views into rehearsals.

The ENB, which marks its 70th anniversary this year, is not the only arts organisation on the peninsula. It will be joined by Nicholas Hare Architects’ new home for London Film School.

INFORMATION

glennhowells.co.uk

In the tiny northern Italian town of Bressanone, just outside the medieval city walls, a new concrete structure can be found attempting to hug a tree. The building is in fact a tourism office, designed by local studio MoDus Architects.

Situated between Innsbruck, Lake Garda and the mountain range of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Bressanone, with a population of less than 22,000, serves as a convenient location for tourists destined for the Dolomites. Prior to MoDus’ intervention, a tourist pavilion from the beloved, late, local architect Othmar Barth occupied the site from the 1970s and before that a modernist structure from the 1930s and before that, a 19th Century loggia.

The destruction of these three precursors, is, according the architects, a series of ‘architectural homicides to which their building is the latest episode of. ‘Historical images reveal a collection of eccentric and rather remarkable pavilions that have met their unfortunate demise through their demolition in order to make way for the next ‘victim',' Sandy Attia, co-founder of MoDus says.

This pessimistic view hasn’t hampered the architects, though. Instead, the new tourism office takes cues from all three predecessors and its locale. ‘The building [was] first conceived as a pavilion, or more specifically as a kind of folly, drawing from the small Chinese and Japanese pavilions that mark the corners of the Bishop Palace gardens nearby,' added Attia.

The biggest influence on the design, however, is arguably the large Platanus tree, which the building wraps its concrete form around and gives the project its quirky name: TreeHugger. Using the tree as a fulcrum, five arches span the building’s perimeter and support the structure. Inset windows and a large, if somewhat ominous cantilever, protrudes out to a new town square, marking the building’s entrance. 

The ground floor is almost entirely glazed and here tourist information booths and large media screens can be found along with an internal public space used mainly for coordinating tourist groups. Offices for tourist association employees have also been tucked into the back of the ground floor plan, while the top floor hosts a conference room, kitchen and more offices for the tourist association, the tourism office’s director and others, which can be rented.

To encase this program in an unorthodox plan — totalling 430 sqm — the architects opted for concrete, a material fellow co-founder Matteo Scagnol argues was able to collapse the ‘structure and facade into one, single architectural element.'

Furthermore, the concrete is a bush-hammered, blast furnaced concrete made with aggregates and crushed stone from the nearby Brenner Base Tunnel project (an Austria-Italy railway tunnel due for completion in 2021). While the architects talk tongue-in-cheek about ‘victims' and ‘architectural homicides' one hopes, for the sake of sustainability at least, that TreeHugger lasts a good deal longer than what came before it.

INFORMATION 

modusarchitects.com

A new residential project under construction in Canada’s Pacific North West is a beguiling blend of ornament and minimalism, emphatic curves and defined lines.

Designed for a private client by Vancouver-based OAO, 75 (as the house is called) is built on a constellation of fluid and organic fabric-formed concrete ‘lily pads’ with hollow tops that can accommodate the roots of trees. ‘These "reverse trumpets" are each a different footprint and height and composed relative to each other with an intent to weave domestic space in a cinematographic manner over, under, and through them,' explains Omer Arbel, founder of the practice, who was inspired by the way archaeological ruins are often presented within modernist boxes in museums. ‘I was interested in considering the fabric formed concrete almost as if they were found artefacts on the site, with our task being to enclose them. I enjoy the contrast and tension between these different expressive languages.'

As a studio OAO is committed to developing experimental and innovative methods of making derived from a material’s intrinsic chemical, physical or mechanical properties. With 75 they set out to explore methods of pouring concrete that would acknowledge the material’s paradoxical qualities – plasticity and hardness – and formulate a process that acknowledged its dynamic and sculptural aspects instead of forcing it into a conventional linear application.

The uncommon concrete forming process they landed on to make the nine ribbed ‘lily pads’ involved stretching sheets of geotextile between plywood ribs erected in a radial configuration on a foundation. ‘Traditionally, concrete is poured in several lifts, allowing each to cure before the next is poured, however in our case this was impossible because of the risk of one lift seeping between the extents of the previous lift and the fabric,' says Arbel. ‘In collaboration with our engineer we developed a very slow continuous pour schedule, with the formula for the concrete adjusted so that it cures at the same slow rate as the pour.  In this way the base of the stem gains enough strength throughout the duration of the pour to support the subsequent volume of fresh concrete higher up.'

The house is located on a flat hay farm in an agricultural suburb of Vancouver and the architects treated the field like a carpet to be draped over the house, with the lily pad forms (also appealingly described by Arbel as Chanterelle mushrooms) punching through a cedar-clad façade that will eventually turn silver. Instead of contrasting or offsetting the region’s oft grey rainy skies, the architects chose to embrace it with an exterior palette of different greys (in the form of grey timbers and metal). For three weeks a year however, the flowering magnolia trees planted in the lily pads on the house’s inhabitable roof will bloom, providing a memorable flush of colour. 

INFORMATION

omerarbel.com

‘What is architecture?' asks Grafton Architects' Yvonne Farrell, as she walks through the brightly lit halls of the studio's newly completed building at Kingston University. ‘It is a place for social interaction,' she replies a moment later. Community was a key factor in the design decisions of RIBA Gold Medal-winning Grafton, who won the commission to create a structure to – rather unusually – combine a library and dance studios under a single roof. Welcome to Town House – the newest addition (named after an existing building on site) to the world-class academic institution in London's southwest. 

It was in fact this combination – the need for vibrant dance spaces next to discreet reading rooms – that attracted the Dublin based architects, who were selected from a five-strong shortlist following a competition in 2013. ‘It was the juxtaposition of these two extremes that we found extraordinarily interesting,' explains Farrell, who heads the practice together with Shelley McNamara. This, and the idea of creating a space for the local community – both students and permanent Kingston residents – were the two pillars that shaped Grafton's vision for the design. 

Stepping inside, their intention becomes instantly apparent through the sheer openness of the building – both physical and symbolic. There are no barriers towards the street, so anybody can walk in and stroll around the library or get a coffee at the canteen. It was important for both architects and client that the building felt welcoming to all. ‘Generosity of scale and spirit form the part of the university,’ says Farrell.

At the same time, the interior is composed of large, interconnected halls and double and triple height spaces – the entrance lobby in fact extends almost to the full height of the building, with staircases dramatically hanging from the floorplates, adding a sculptural touch. Nothing seems hidden away, although clever niches were created for when extra privacy is needed. The street facing colonade and a continuation of the floor material from outside in are designed to encourage people to step inside. 

For a building that is primarily made out of concrete – constructed by the multi-award-winning contractor Willmott Dixon using prefabricated elements – the whole feels extraordinarily light. This is supported by large openings throughout and the elegant but hardwearing, everyday materials, such as wood, which help create a sophisticated but comfortable atmosphere, entirely fit for purpose. 

At the building's heart sits an auditorium. It feels fluid and bright, even though placed at the heart of the volume, going deep into the floorplate. But the whole building ‘is pushing activity towards its outer boundaries and the light', explains Farrell. ‘We didn’t want this to be a black box, we wanted the space to be used for the longest possible amount of time, so now it is in use even when not in use.' So partitions can be drawn back to allow for natural light to pour in, through the glass expanses of the facade. The space's flexible nature means it can be adapted to a variety of uses and performances. Meanwhile around and above it are placed rows of bookshelves and reading rooms of varied levels of quietness, and dance studios, which have been meticulously researched and insulated to ensure neighbours don't disturb each other. 

Concrete is omnipresent but the building in fact achieved a BREEAM Excellent rating. Weaving the Town Hall into its surroundings through openings, a stepped volume and landscaping meant that there's roof gardens that allow the use of brown roof technology to absorb water and to enhance biodiversity. The team's sustainability strategy also included promoting healthy living among its users, by placing the lifts to the sides and encouraging people to take the stairs. 

The architects describe the building like a ‘promontory', and indeed it feels rather elemental, sturdy like a cave, but bright and transparent, inviting the eye to travel across rooms and levels and out towards the green suburban countryside.

INFORMATION

graftonarchitects.ie

The iconic Nakagin Capsule Tower has been in danger of demolition for more than a decade, but it seems decision time is upon us, as the verdict surrounding its future will soon be announced in the coming year. The landmark building designed by architect Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1972 is something of a symbol for metabolism, the post-war Japanese architecture movement that explored modern architecture, especially of high density, through the lens of organic growth.

The tower sits in Ginza, right in the heart of Tokyo, a locale originally conceived to target elite businessmen seeking conveniently located private or rented accommodation or offices, towards the end of what was a high growth period for Japan. Kurokawa planned to change each capsule every 25 years, but his plan never materialised due to logistical obstacles (owners timing preferences and financial complications). As a result, while some 100 of the 140 capsules are still in use, some as residences, others as office space or creative studios, the remaining 40 are abandoned and lie in ruins.

Back in 2007 (also the year of Kurokawa’s sad passing), an announcement was made by the building’s management society (which comprises of the owners) that the Nakagin Capsule Tower was to be demolished to give way to a new apartment building, but the project’s developer went bankrupt because of the global economic downturn at the time; and since then, the tower’s fate has been up in the air. This led to a huge rift between owners (capsules were sold individually in the past), who were eventually divided into two camps – one to save the tower, because of its architectural value, and one to demolish and rebuild, cashing in on the land value.

‘We are in a critical situation, but there is a last hope, and I’m trying to make it happen,' says Tatsuyuki Maeda, head of the ‘save’ group, arguing for the building’s preservation and restoration. The final decision will be made by the building’s management society through a vote. Maeda has been slowly acquiring capsules (15 are currently in his possession), trying to increase his voting power and promote owner change to support his cause.

According to him, the Nakagin group (the original land owner) gave up on trying to resolve this situation and sold their title and some of the capsules that they owned to a real estate company. The real estate company proceeded to keep buying more capsules and now owns around 70 of them, which gives them majority-voting rights. Furthermore, they blocked future capsule trading, putting Maeda’s side to a huge disadvantage.

‘Currently, a European company is showing interest in buying outright the land and capsules, effectively saving the building. We plan to soon remove one of the capsules to test the strength of the main axis, which holds each capsule through four bolts. It also helps to estimate the costs for exchanging all the capsules for new ones in the future. I had also been negotiated with some Japanese companies, but they all declined taking this on. We, the capsule owners in the ‘save’ party want to keep our capsules of course, but if this European company can keep this building and replace the capsules to new ones, we’d be happy to leave and let them do it.'

In Japan, neither the government nor local authority usually intervene in the affairs of private property, and in order to register a building as a protected monument, they need to be at least 50 years old. The Nakagin Capsule Tower is now 48 years old, but even when it becomes 50, permission is still required of all the owners in order to submit it for monument status. ‘Nothing can be done with this scattered divisional ownership situation. Thanks to that, it has been possible for the building to survive until now, but it also means that it cannot be restored. If the Nakagin group had full ownership, this building would have been gone twenty years ago,' says Maeda.

Summer is too hot and winter is too cold, the original air conditioning system and the hot water supply have long been broken, but it’s still great having a space in Kisho Kurokawa’s masterpiece. I cannot do anything more than pay my rent, so I have to go with the flow. But when they decide to demolish this building, I’d like to take this round window with me as a memento,' says Takumi Miyamoto, who moved in his capsule this year and uses it as the base for his interior design business.

To see the building in the flesh is no doubt fascinating for the architecture enthusiast, but also shocking. Some of the rooms are damaged badly and have long been abandoned, their metal doors rotten and broken, ceilings and walls peeling off and the asbestos inside the walls revealed. Miyamoto says to eliminate the asbestos alone and restore the damage requires so much money (more than a million yen just for the 2m x 5m capsule ceiling) that some of the capsule owners are simply waiting for it to be demolished.

So will Kurokawa's metabolist gem soon be a long lost part of architectural history? Tokyo is famous for its scrap and re-build culture, and that’s also part of the urban ‘organic growth’ the Metabolists talked about. ‘I like to put the zeitgeist into my work, and be fulfilled when later generations understand how my time was by seeing my work,' once said Kurokawa in an old interview.

The tallest structure is set at the centre of the plot and houses an upper-level bedroom, accessed via a pyramid-like concrete staircase that nods to local Mayan architecture.

The first thing that stands out about Casa Mérida is its unashamed brutalism, defined by raw and omnipresent concrete, all hard edges and rough surfaces under the strong Mexican sun. The second is that most of the building seems to be open to the outdoors, with few fully enclosed spaces. The project’s defining feature, though, is that it is 80m long but just 8m wide.

While this odd stretch would be considered unusual in most places, in Mérida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, it’s fairly common, explains the house’s architect, French-born, Mexico City-based Ludwig Godefroy: ‘This type of lot is everywhere in the historic centre of Mérida and it has to do with inheritance, when people started to slice bi er plots into smaller ones, to distribute to different siblings.’ And while a big part of the city comprises grand colonial architecture, some urban chunks include more humble styles, such as old workers’ cottages. It was one such building that Godefroy came across, when he visited Mérida with his client, a high-flying professional from Mexico City. His family of three was in search of the perfect spot for a retreat, to hide away and use as a base to kite-surf nearby.

The strange plot was a quirk Godefroy embraced immediately. ‘The house’s long and narrow site provided a new kind of challenge for me,’ he says. ‘It’s nothing like I’ve done before and by pushing yourself, something new and amazing can come up.’

And come up it did, as the wildly di erent design emerged, transforming the existing structure into a 21st-century ascetic refuge. Taking the site as the main inspiration, Godefroy started to explore the possibilities; he also looked to the local culture and vernacular as well as personal in uences, constantly adjusting areas until the whole project felt just right, both answering the client’s needs and  tting in the urban context.

The site’s history was important for Godefroy: ‘I wanted to keep elements of the old house as testimony to what was there before, so I decided to leave it as a sort of ruin. From the street you cannot really see the new house, it’s like a secret garden house and the old home essentially becomes the entrance to the new design,’ he says. So while the interior is entirely new, the front façade and old building’s bones were kept, revealing nothing about what goes on behind the enigmatic street-facing stone wall.

Once past the front door and a walled entrance hall with a garage next to it, everything changes. ‘This is not a house with a garden. It is a garden with a house,’ explains the architect. Making the most of the region’s warm weather and taking his cues from the outdoor lifestyle of the locals, Godefroy composed a journey through a sequence of permeable spaces along the plot’s long axis, dotted with four courtyards. This helps negotiate the awkward length, which otherwise could have meant a series of dark rooms.

Meanwhile, an open-air strip running the entire length of the house acts as a backbone for the design. ‘The long corridor on the side of the plot helps with ventilation but also acts as the main circulation space,’ he continues. ‘When moving through the house you always come back there.’ The various courtyards alternate with living areas and bedrooms, one of which can be used as a studio, with its own kitchenette and bathroom. Another is slotted on an upper level, under a concrete, pyramid-esque roof that nods to Mayan culture – a key part of Mérida’s heritage.

‘Casa Mérida is not a house with a garden. It is a garden with a house’

Sculptural concrete appears everywhere and unites the whole, forming anything from reading nooks and benches to ceiling beams, unexpected openings and even three oversized rainwater collectors (which help return water into the subsoil through absorption wells). The house’s main social area is located towards the rear, far from street noise, for peace and privacy.

The walk through the plot’s 80m culminates in a spectacular, secluded swimming pool, which is fully wrapped in concrete and inspired by cenotes (natural sinkholes found all over the region, considered sacred by the Mayan people). Apart from such references to local culture, there’s also something rather modernist in the house’s clarity, and the architect admits to in uences from the great masters. ‘I tend to mix brutalism with archaeological sites and vernacular architecture, all in the simplest way possible,’ he says. ‘I wanted this house to symbolise a return to a simple way of life.’ He cites Juliaan Lampens, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and Aldo van Eyck as references.

Bold colour is distinctly absent from the house, which mixes Mayan cream stone, naked grey concrete and pine wood in a fairly neutral colour palette. This adds to the overall calming effect, and underlines the house’s role as a sanctuary. Fittingly, there are plenty of hammocks; a shorthand for relaxation, these are also central to the local way of life (Yucatán is renowned for handwoven Mayan hammocks). ‘I made sure there is the option to put a hammock in most places in the house,’ says Godefroy. It’s the perfect invitation to relax.

As originally featured in the December 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*249)

INFORMATION

ludwiggodefroy.com

There is a row of small models sitting on the smooth, grey terrazzo bench at artist Monika Sosnowska’s new atelier in Warsaw. It’s surprising that her monumental works – vast brutal collages of welded steel and cast concrete contemplating constructivism and modernism – all start as dainty three-dimensional sketches in wire, cardboard and paper.

Minimal and tidy, her voluminous concrete and glass studio lends itself to pure, undistracted experimentation.

When Sosnowska bought the plot of land neighbouring her home and former studio space, she was seeking more room to work on a larger scale, and the continuation of her pleasant commute through the garden to work. Beyond that, what inspired her was what an empty space could bring to her artistic process.

She picked up the phone and called Basel-based architects Karolina Slawecka and Pawel Krzeminski, whom she had met at Art Basel in 2004, where Slawecka had helped bring one of her artworks to life. She caught them at a good time. It had been two weeks since they decided to leave their respective posts, at Herzog & de Meuron and Atelier Peter Zumthor, to co-found their own studio, Architecture Club.

Swiss precision and first-project pressure meant pushing themselves to the limit to reach the ‘best, most radical’ solution for Sosnowska. It required searching, then re-searching, and thinking, then re-thinking, until the solution was at its most functional, and importantly, most extreme: ‘Just two walls and a slab,’ says Krzeminski.

The 5m by 12m concrete frame, with a steel structure and two glazed façades, may look effortless, but it is the result of a two-year process. All the utilities are hidden in that form, including heating, cooling, an alarm system and acoustic panels. The smooth terrazzo bench levels the atelier up to the street. Light glows from behind the steel I-beam frame that will soon be fitted out with an art crane to suspend and lift heavy works, leaving Sosnowska with a void – the ‘best, most radical’ void – of light-drenched space, filled with undefined artistic potential.

It’s also filled with a custom-made service station and parallel table, both in solid oak. The pieces feel architectural; they ‘belong to the space’. The cuboid station unfolds into a kitchen, storage area and a toilet, while the table hosts a series of models featuring red spikes poking out from a mini polystyrene base.

The design – ‘two walls and a slab’ – was at its most functional, and most extreme

Artist and architects found common ground in model-making. ‘We brought suitcases from Basel filled with different models,’ says Slawecka. And when they arrived, the modelling process continued. They mocked up 1:1 sections of the building façade on site – Krzeminski calls it ‘testing by physical reality’ and there’s even a prototype corner of the building buried somewhere under the studio.

‘Karolina made a beautiful model with Monika. They were cutting cardboard and Plexiglas, and quickly gluing it all together,’ he says. By the time they finished, they had reached the final idea for the space. It captured how light would travel through the building, the roughness of the materials and their industrial references.

The concrete formwork of the walls nods to the coarse timber of early shed-like buildings found in the once-rural suburban neighbourhood. The translucent glass of the street-facing façade, reinforced with gridded wire, blurs outside activity and brings privacy, while the regular glazing to the north reveals the tranquil garden scene with clarity.

The façade was welded on site by the same contractor who works on Sosnowska’s sculptures. ‘It was the natural thing to do. She had the know-how and the people,’ says Slawecka.

It was Sosnowska’s open mind that allowed them to reach the ‘best, most radical’ solution: ‘We discussed details with Monika that we wouldn’t usually discuss with a client. She understands proportions in a beautiful way. Whether you’re designing for one person or 1,000, the principles are the same. It’s the intimacy with the client that becomes more specific when designing for one.’

Slawecka and Krzeminski are well-versed in working on art-related buildings: Slawecka led the LACMA project at Atelier Peter Zumthor; and while at Herzog & de Meuron, the pair worked together on the Tate Modern extension – specifically on its staircase, the spinal chord that shifts from animated public space to rudimentary step-way: ‘The team was stuck, and Jacques and Pierre asked us to work on it for a few months for a bit of freshness,’ says Slawecka.

And fresh they still are. They say they are fairly ‘old’ to be starting their own thing. But as they move through the space, playfully finishing off each other’s sentences, recalling laugh-out-loud anecdotes and off-the-record moments, Slawecka and Krzeminski seem anything but old. In architecture years, they are still young, and with this first project completed, it certainly feels like the start of something. §

As originally featured in the November 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*248)

INFORMATION
architectureclub.ch

hauserwirth.com

In the lush green environs of the Italian Emilian countryside, at the foot of the Parmesan Apennines on the edge of a vineyard, Di Gregorio Associati has cloaked an old rural house in a floating concrete pergola – and given the house itself a total modernist makeover.

While the Monticello House has been transformed, much of its design was translated from the original simple barn architecture – volumes have been expanded, openings widened and glazed, bricks restored and rebuilt. The new concrete frame is another extension, and the defining element that gives the house its new identity. The bold structure responds directly to the scale of the house, yet quite sensitively never actually touches the house.

‘The interstitial space, the void, located between the bricks of the ancient manufacture and the new concrete frame, ideally represents the intimate relations between past, present and future, on which the house is constantly interrogating, silently lying on the ground to which it belongs,’ says lead architect on the project Francesco Di Gregorio, who is son of Gianni Di Gregorio, founder of the more than 30-year-old practice. 

Plants will soon find their way between these interstitial spaces, softening the square columns and tumbling over the platform edges – just like Di Gregorio intended.

Each new exterior cube in the concrete frame responds to an interior space that consequently doubles in size with its mirror image reflected back at it. And the architects’ use of glass walls and exposed concrete finishes on the ceilings magnifies this illusion even further. Inside, smooth lines and clean volumes create a minimalist stage for living.

Volumes of European oak hide facilities and in-built storage and the interior brick walls of the original house have been upholstered with German fabrics, Italian ceramics and quartzite from the nearby Val Taro river.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the architect of this cinematic vision of unfolding frames, echoing exterior and interior landscapes and the weaving of nature and concrete, is in fact also an associate producer at Paris-based film production company ZID Films. And that Di Gregorio, born 1985, studied architecture in Mendrisio under Mario Botta, the master of bridging concrete geometry and organic forms in architecture.

Information

digregorioassociati.it

Five years ago, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes and his wife, fashion designer Carla Fernandez, decided to make the big move from their home in Colonia Roma, Mexico City, to the city's southern neighbourhood of Coyoacán. Their new, tailor-made, sculptural, concrete home (published in W*201) was a prefect fit for their creative temperament, but the extra space provided by the larger plot there also helped, as the pair was planning to soon expand their workspaces locally.

‘As I am a sculptor, I needed more room for a larger atelier and decided to move south of the city', recalls Reyes. ‘Coyoacán is a settlement that dates to Pre-Colombian times, 800 years ago. It means the place of the coyotes, and curiously, it had been a place where sculpture and art had been practiced at that time.'

This part of the Mexican capital is well known for its ancient volcanoes and lava rock formations and is known as Pedregal – and is also the place where the city's main University Campus is, as well as the location of several works by Luis Barragán. Aztec sculptors also used its rocks for carvings, and Reyes became very much attracted to the locale's strong history and links to art and design. ‘Even Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived two blocks away from where I live now, as well as Leon Trotsky', he adds. 

Now, following his home's completion in 2015, Reyes has just finished works on his studio there, the main headquarters of his creative output and the place where he finds daily inspiration and produces his internationally revered pieces. He also recently designed a store nearby for Fernadez's brand, featuring bespoke concrete tiles, interiors and furnishings.

Since Coyoacan has been an established community since the 16th century, it has strong planning rules, which dictate you cannot build anything higher than two levels. This safeguards it from intense construction and rapid gentrification, making large developments a no-go, explains Reyes. ‘It is a time capsule that keeps very much the lifestyle of all Mexico'. There are plenty of older buildings and grand colonial styles around, yet when Reyes pondered on the design of his studio, he decided he wanted something unmistakably contemporary. 

‘I wanted it to have a modern feel, industrial, almost like a work of infrastructure,' he says. ‘The facade of the property had been damaged by the earthquake of 2017, which allowed me a permit to do constructions, but it had to be done fast, so to respond to that opportunity I decided to use prefab elements.' Inspired by the Brutalist architects of the 1960s, the artist worked with prefabricated concrete elements, creating pronounced curves for its edges, which gives it an object-like feel. 

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given its creator is an artist who has also been trained as an architect, the new building has a very distinctive feel. ‘The studio is not grounded on the floor, but sitting on it. More like a rock would sit on the ground. I was interested in this sculpture-like quality'. The surfaces inside were created with bamboo formwork, which gave the walls a rough, tactile texture that accentuates the plasticity of concrete. 

The new building includes a double height stone workshop complete with a traveling crane, a woodworking space, a plaster workshop, a drawing room, computer room, tools storage, a kitchen and dining room, and some storage space. Skylights were used to maximise daylight where needed.

Having completed his own home, studio and his wife's retail space, Reyes now has a couple more residential projects in the pipeline. ‘There is only a limited number of architectural projects that I can undertake,' he explains. ‘And what I can do as an architect will always be very sculptural, so it's only when it is a client who understands this combination and who is looking for this kind of bespoke plasticity, that I can respond.'

INFORMATION

pedroreyes.net

One afternoon in the British Library, Jason Oddy, photographer, artist and writer, stumbled across some Oscar Niemeyer buildings he was unfamiliar with. The sweeping curves, the volume and the story telling felt familiar, but the location – in Algeria – did not. After further research he discovered that the buildings, two universities and an Olympic-sized sports hall, were largely undocumented.

‘When Niemeyer left Brazil in 1966, after the 1964 military coup, he ended up in Paris, and then in 1968 he travelled to Algiers for the first time. He was there for six years. It’s a long time for an incredibly famous architect to be somewhere, but not that many people are aware of it,’ he tells Wallpaper*.

It was in June 1968, that Houari Boumédiène, chairman of Algeria’s Council of Revolution, socialist and hero of the recent War of Independence against France, invited Niemeyer, starchitect of Brasilia (and communist), to ‘project a new vision of Algeria to the outside world, and promote a new generation of engineers and academics.’

Niemeyer got started, designing the University of Constantine, with a sweeping concrete rendition of an open book supported by pilotis for the auditorium, completed in 1975. Then came the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumédiène and the Salle Omnisports known as ‘La Coupole’ for the 1975 Meditteranean Games in Algier’s Olympic Park. Each piece of architecture with their colossal open spaces and grand concrete gestures were designed to reflect Boumedienne’s socialist and militarist principles, and represent an ‘upending of the age-old order’.

‘He was commissioned to design a whole new downtown Algiers, in the manner of Brasilia, to create a huge municipal area with a new city for residential housing for Algerians, instead of the French. He also designed, in a moment of inspiration, a new mosque, that would float off shore into the Mediterranean.’

It was an exchange between architect and commissioner that summarized the politics of this place for Oddy: ‘Your mosque is beautiful, but it is quite revolutionary,’ said Boumédiène of the design. To which Niemeyer replied, ‘It is revolutionary, but the revolution cannot be stopped halfway.’

In his essay Oddy ponders on what ‘revolution’ meant to these two revolutionaries in this exchange, and whether they were talking about architecture or politics – it is possible that neither were on the same page of this open book. Nevertheless, when Boumédiène died in 1978, all of the projects got cancelled. Hence the title of Oddy’s book: The revolution will be stopped halfway.

After spending a week in Algiers in 2010, Oddy left the country with a better understanding of why the architecture had gone so undocumented. During his visit he came up against many bureaucratic barriers to photographing the government-owned buildings, and learnt more about the political history of the country, and its approach to tourism today. Unperturbed – Oddy has documented ‘the politics of place’ in some of the world’s most restricted spaces including the Pentagon, Guantanamo and a Nazi holiday resort – he spent three years pursuing permits to photograph the buildings.

On his return to Algiers, Oddy spent three weeks at the three venues, carefully documenting everything. His photographic technique, using a 5x4 inch plate camera, requires time and consideration that has become central to his style: ‘Unwieldy and slow-moving it obliges me to explore places in a measured, almost meditative way.’ And his results are therefore ‘traces of a deliberate engagement with space’.

Oddy describes how while seeing and spending time with the architecture was extraordinary, it was also complicated. ‘These buildings are modernist treasures. Some Algerians are very proud of them, but at the same time their upkeep is not a priority,’ he says.

Algeria has had other priorities – which Samia Henni, Algerian architectural historian, outlines in her introduction ‘When Militarism meets Modernism’. After the fight for independence between 1954 – 62, during which one in 10 Algerians died, the post-colonial period was marked by revolutionary excitement, yet stagnation and corruption followed. Civil War broke out in the early 1990s between Islamists who won an election, and the military, the original vanguard of the revolution.

While designed optimistically for a democratic state, Niemeyer’s buildings also became national scars of the military rule. Archival materials documented at the end of the book document the extent of the schemes on a Brasilia-style scale that could have been – many published here for the first time. ‘It was a unique moment. A project like that could have only happened under certain circumstances and with a revolutionist vein. It had everything in it,’ says Oddy. But, unfortunately for architectural history and Niemeyer fans, the revolution was stopped half way.

The politics of a photograph

Oddy describes the political complexity behind one of his photographs taken at the University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene:

‘I constructed this image out of a number of images. While I was walking around the campus, which is located just outside Algiers in a suburb called Bab Ezzouar, I found a whole new section that included 24 lecture halls in the shape of bunkers. At that moment, I had a sense I was stumbling across a modern ruin. There was a lot of knee-high grass growing and the concrete bunkers were emerging from the earth like sarcophagi. The whole place is very sculptural, and each of the 24 lecture halls is identified by a letter of the alphabet.

‘Why are these bunkers in a university in Algiers, designed after it had gone through a revolution and had an ‘Arabisation’ of culture, still using the Roman alphabet, the language of the colonizer? After the 150-year French rule, there was an anti-French campaign in the 60s led by one of the revolutionary figures, and then there was a further campaign in the mid-70s to Arabise the military.

‘I photographed each one of these doorways to the lecture halls, and the letters A to Z in them and I laid them out like a French keyboard. I wanted to ask the question about the status of language in the educational system, the meaning of being educated in the language of the colonizer, and how this impacts the outcomes of education on the people of Algeria.

‘Soon I began to understand that French is very much seen as the language of the upper classes, linked to privilege, and then corruption and the military state that took control of oil and gas money. The story is incredibly complex, and as an outsider it’s hard to make a rounded comment, but this is my take.’

INFORMATION

The Revolution Will Be Stopped Halfway: Oscar Niemeyer in Algeria by Jason Oddy
Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

arch.columbia.edu/books

Even before Juliaan Lampens acquired his architecture degree, he had started to build houses. The Belgian architect, son of a carpenter, was born in 1926 near Ghent in Belgium. He founded his architectural practice in 1950, and was active predominantly in the East of Flanders.

Like many Belgians of his generation, he visited the World’s Fair in Brussels in 1958, an experience of profound impact. The modernist architecture on show there, by Le Corbusier and others, introduced both Lampens and the wider Belgian public to modern architectural styles.

But although the influence on Lampens was immediate, causing him to drastically rethink his architectural direction and prompting him to design his own avant-garde home in 1960, it took a few decades before his radical vision on architecture was recognized as exceptional and brilliant in Belgium and beyond.

Lampens said his house in Eke – which was characterized by a massive concrete roof, an open floor plan across the entire volume, and a harmonious connection between interior and exterior – was “the ultimate calling card”; and indeed, commissions from likeminded clients increased thanks to this visual manifesto.

In the Vandenhaute-Kiebooms House, completed in 1967, and the home he designed for the teacher Albert Van Wassenhove near Ghent in 1974, these same elements recur most drastically: the sizeable raw concrete and glass structures have a minimal amount of load-bearing walls, are closed at the facade but fully opened-up toward nature elsewhere, and within the open floor plan even the bathrooms are spatially integrated within concrete cylinders.

Site-specific wooden furniture designed by the architect turned these homes into Lampens’ individual expression of a Brutalism-inflected Gesamtkunstwerk.

Through his architecture Lampens championed a family-focused and egalitarian way of living that went against the grain of his contemporaries’ bourgeois emphasis on individuality and hierarchy.

Apart from the bunker-like homes Lampens designed, he also authored a pilgrimage chapel (Edelare, 1966) and a library (Eke, 1970) – structures that, despite their relatively small scale, exude an equally monolithic sculptural sensibility that enhances community.

Today, four of Lampens’ homes have received heritage-listed status. Their protective concrete shell that embraces a family-centric focus on interconnected living all the while relating holistically to their natural surroundings, is part of an architectural language Brutal in form but human in function that speaks to us still.