#14 Mar/Apr 2007

News and observations

• Santiago Calatrava's Guillemins TGV station in Liège (BE)
• Monopoly-inspired kiosks appear in Madrid (ES)
• Rotor's recycled office in Brussels (BE)
• Update: Scotland
• Colourful student rooms at Krabbesholm Art College (DK)
• Reality check: Centra Nams in Riga (LV)
• and more…

New projects

• Silis, Zabers & Klava challenge the traditional image of a theatre in their design of a concert hall in Riga (LV)
• The results of the Proyecto VIVA housing competition in Spain shows that young architects search for innovation via strategic rather than formal processes
• Projektil has designed two very different but equally iconic libraries in Prague and Hradec Králové (CZ)
• Tadeusz Kantor's Art Documentation Centre, alias 'Cricoteka', by Wizja and nsMoonStudio 'clashes' with Cracow's old architecture (PL)
• Marios Economides and Maria Akkelidou won the competition for the Cavo Greco information centre (CY)
• Ski manufacturer Rossignol's headquarters in the French Alps by Hérault & Arnod pays homage to the mountains, but also to technology

Paul Kahlfeldt: Being modern

Berlin-based architect Paul Kahlfeldt explains why all architecture is basically the same ever since it has been known that loads are transferred vertically towards the centre of the earth: 'That is why the column is a central element in construction.'

New buildings

• Dorte Mandrup Architects evoke warm feelings with a cool sports and culture centre in Copenhagen (DK)
• Raumzeit have given space, colour and a sense of luxury to a youth hostel in Bremen (DE)
• In Tallinn (EE), KOKO architects have placed a glass box on top of the Fahle building, symbolizing its conversion from paper to lifestyle factory
• No w here architects' cathedral choir school in Stuttgart (DE) is not spectacular, but certainly unconventional
• On Malta, Architecture Project has turned a garden into a spectacular outdoor living room
• In Dromahair (IE), Dominic Stevens has realized his ambition for building a house that would literally become part of the Irish landscape
• ZOOM's unorthodox apartment building in Sofia (BG) had to weather a few local storms before being accepted
• Despite its makeshift appearance, MARC's sports club boathouse on Lake Como (IE) was built to endure
• In Joensuu (FI), Lahdelma & Mahlamœki designed a pavilion-like primary school with a 'windmill' plan
• The undulating balconies of RVDM's Glicinias housing in Aveiro (PT) prompt Pedro Gadanho to reflect on how taste changes
• 'A case of cannibalism in architecture' is what EM2N architect Daniel Niggli calls his conversion of the Stadthof 11 in Zurich-Oerlikon (CH) into a theatre for musicals
• Fast, cheap, non-aesthetic: Catalin Berescu's emergency housing in Dorohoi (RO) is miles away from contemporary fashionable experiments

Climate control

The connection between climate and building has undergone a paradoxical evolution. Whereas houses used to provide their occupants protection from the climate, they must now protect the changing climate from human beings.

Diaphanous materials

Materials that are light-permeable are usually called 'transparent' or 'translucent', although it might be more accurate to call them 'diaphanous' - of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through; translucent or transparent (from dia-, 'through' + phainen, 'to show, to appear'). It is related to 'phantom', something apparently sensed but having no physical reality.

Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Over the last few years a trend has been emerging in Dutch architecture that could perhaps be categorized as 'unspectacular'. After the visual frenzy of supermodernism and neo-traditionalism, this looks like a choice for the middle of the road. The opposite is true: it signifies a deliberate reticence.
• An architectural tour guide of Brno's boxes and anti-boxes (CZ)
• Home: Ilja Skocek's apartment, Bratislava (SK)

Buildings from the margins of modern history

Oliver Elser takes a closer look at Gert Hänska's monstrous Research Facility for Experimental Medicine, established with the best of intentions and set down in an almost idyllic landscape location in Berlin (DE).