Concrete architecture

Tadao Ando-designed Wrightwood 659 exhibition space opens in Chicago

Chicago’s architectural legacy has always been an integral facet of the city’s culture – one that has experienced fresh interest with the occurrence of the Chicago Architecture Bienniale since 2015. The opening of Wrightwood 659 this week, a private institution...

Concrete architecture: our pick of the finest

Tadao Ando to John Pawson and OMA, many architects and practices have been inspired to use concrete – durable, low maintenance, strong and supremely moldable – it’s one the most versatile building materials available and has been used to create churches...

A wedge-shaped retreat, buried in the hillside in Ticino, Switzerland, is a house of many layers

Modern Switzerland means concrete, not cow bells. The country’s reputation as a wellspring of discreet but daring domestic invention has been much chronicled in these pages, but every now and again a house comes along that redefines the form yet...

France celebrates George Clemenceau, First World War prime minister with two architectural projects

This year France celebrates journalist and politician George Clemenceau, the country’s prime minister during the First World War with a series of projects and events paying homage to this key political figure rolling out across the country to mark the event. Nantes-based architecture...

First look at Kengo Kuma’s V&A Dundee

The highly sculptural V&A Museum of Design Dundee is Japanese architect Kengo Kuma’s first UK building – as well as Scotland’s very first dedicated design museum. The new structure is now complete and gearing up to throw open its doors...

KWK Promes wraps up a house with a concrete road in Poland

Located in the heart of the green Polish countryside next to a winding river, the By The Way house designed by KWK Promes is formed of a long concrete pathway that wraps up the house, views and landscape together. The client requested...

Ibañez Shaw’s Fort Worth Camera Studios land in Texas

Fort Worth is blessed with a wide range of cultural institutions by an enviable array of international architecture heavyweights. With Louis Khan’s Kimbell Art Museum (including Renzo Piano’s recent extension) and a modern art museum by Tadao Ando, the Texan city easily...

Pálás in Galway takes arthouse cinema to the next level

Some 14 years after the idea for a new arthouse cinema in the west Irish coastal town of Galway was initially proposed, and now with film producers Element Pictures (who also run Dublin’s Light House Cinema) firmly on board, Pálás...

Oasi Architects’ FGN House is an exercise in concrete subtlety

The sleepy village of Fagnano Olona in Italy – also home to an Aldo Rossi-designed elementary school – has just welcomed a new piece of modern architecture; a new-build house by Busto Arsizio-based architects Oasi. The structure, a home for a local family, is...

London’s brutalist Balfron Tower is brought back to life

Completed in 1967, the Balfron Tower, as well as the low-rise Carradale House alongside it, remains one of the best-known works of the legendary modernist provocateur Ernö Goldfinger. Located on the northern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel, in London’s Poplar...

New brutalism: Constantin Brodzki’s Brussels HQ is up for renovation by Fosbury & Sons

Brutalist cathedral in the UK opens to the public following renovation

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...