#13 Jan/Feb 2007

News and observations

• Copied, moulded, pierced & stuck on: the spectacular hotel Fouquet's Barrière in Paris (FR) by Edouard François
• Arup's Cecil Balmond and engineer Antonio Adao de Fonseca have crossed the Montego River in Coimbra (PT) with an extremely flat-arched bridge
• Update: a new generation of Icelandic architects
• Reality check: Charles Holland of FAT reflects on the practice's Islington Square housing scheme in Manchester (UK)
• Pharmaceuticals giant Novartis is building an architecturally superior forbidden city in the heart of Basel (CH)
• Paris's 37th bridge over the River Seine by Feichtinger Architects
• and more…

New projects

• The extension of the Flemish-Dutch house in Brussels (BE) by RAUW architects is a modern made-to-measure suit with just a dash of symbolism
• The design of Amra Sarancic, Edi Kaljic and Aleksandar Cigan for the addition of new programmes will bring new life to Sarajevo's Skenderija centre (BA)
• Barak architects' Cheese House in Nitra (SK)
• LPR Architects used a contextual approach for the design of Helsinki's new concert hall (FI)
• MEMAR•DUT©H architects' mosque in Rotterdam (NL)

Dorin Ştefan: Fashion, construction, subversion

Bucharest-based Dorin Ştefan, one of Romania's most popular architects, talks to A10's Ştefan Ghenciulescu about his alternatives for easy traditionalism and comfortable neo-modernism: 'I do believe that we need to revive modernism in Romanian architecture.'

New buildings

• In Slubice (PL), BeL architects managed to escape the typical industrial architecture with a lustrous cylinder
• Kauffmann Theilig & Partner's youth and children’s centre in Stuttgart (DE) promises to become home to a lively scene
• Pantelis Nicolacopoulos thinks this house in Athens (GR) could operate just as well as a public building
• Rudy Riciotti has built a temple for dancing in Aix-en-Provence (FR)
• PCA's design for a centre for contemporary art in Kiev (UA) signals the emergence of the new creative pole in Eastern Europe
• Francesco Scardaccione has designed a school in Tirana (AL) that livens up a grey area
• In Amsterdam (NL), Meyer en Van Schooten Architecten have inserted an optimistic apartment block into one of the Netherlands' most famous postwar housing estates
• Is the Tietgen building by Lundgaard & Tranberg a sign that the curve is the new edge in Copenhagen? (DK)
• Penezic & Rogina made use of the wide range of materials and colours in their design of a kindergarten and nursery in Zagreb (HR)
• Andrés Jaque's Tupperware House in Madrid (ES) offers an architectural and financial solution to several concerns about the residential development model in post-euro Spain
• A 'light-footed elephant': Staufer & Hasler's municipal and media building in Chur (CH)
• Project Meganom built a surprisingly modest luxury shopping village in Moscow (RU)

Sculptural skins

Half a century ago, it was difficult to imagine a building without sculptures, reliefs or sculptural details and vice versa. Since then, the two disciplines have taken their own direction. Although left without sculptural ornaments, many buildings still show a strong relation to the other three-dimensional artistic discipline, but now presenting themselves as sculptures, especially by means of their facades. Whether merely decorative, the result of a striving towards a 'Gesamtkunstwerk' or precise, computer-aided calculations, sculptural skins are once again omnipresent these days.

Interaction

Architect Els Zijlstra is director of Materia and the creator of www.materialexplorer.com, a search engine for exploring new materials. Materia has a 500 m² Inspiration Centre in Enter (NL) and curates travelling exhibitions and building trade fairs, both of which offer visitors the opportunity to see, touch and feel various recently launched materials. Starting with this issue of A10, Els Zijlstra will bring us up to speed on the latest materials. This first article is devoted to interactivity.

Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Matthijs Bouw of Dutch practice One Architecture travelled to Tbilisi, Georgia, with four other young Dutch architects. He shares his experiences of this adventurous journey
• Budapest's new beauties: Emiel Lamers has selected 25 contemporary contributions to the Hungarian capital's fabric
• Home/office: Marià Castelló's house and studio in Formentera (ES)
• Profile: Czech office A69 has a fondness for hybrid concepts, creating unlikely yet convincing combinations

Buildings from the margins of modern history

Werner Bossmann and Christian Welzbacher describe the tragic fate of Nikola Dobrovic's Generalstab in Belgrade. This modernist masterpiece from 1961 housed the administrative headquarters of the Yugoslav army, and was partly destroyed during NATO bombings in 1999.