#15 May/Jun 2007

News and observations

• 'Il buono volcano': Renzo Piano's volcanic shopping mall in Naples (IT)
• Artist Olafur Eliasson designs a 'rainbow roof extension' for the ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus (DK)
• Cité de l'Architecture opens in Paris (FR)
• Update: Madeira
• Facelift for Communist-era schools in Tirana (AL)
• Reality check: Citroën's Champs-Elysées showroom, Paris (FR)
• and more…

New projects

• Palatium Stúdio collaborates with four other firms to design ten stations for Budapest's fourth metro line (HU)
• 24H architecture's building for the Rudolf Steiner College in Rotterdam (NL) reinterprets Steiner's philosophy
• Dekleva Gergoric arhitekti's winning proposal for the redevelopment of Ljubljana's tobacco factory grounds (SI)
• The Power Fold tool by Atelier Data has won the Lisbon Ideas Challenge
• By winning the competition for the design of the Czech National Library in Prague (CZ) Future Systems' Jan Kaplicky finally gets an opportunity to design a major project for his native country

Andrès Jaque: Democracy in space

Speaking with Ariadna Cantis, Spanish architect Andrès Jaque pleads for a new definition of the role of the architect in society: 'I think it is akin to that traditionally played by hostesses: to bring together different actors and enable them to develop emotional connections.'

New buildings

• Reiach and Hall's Forth Road Bridge toll canopy in Edinburgh (UK)
• In their design for a library building in Grosuplje (SI), A.biro respond to a mixed context with an equally heterogeneous building
• C+HO_aR and Tomas Pejpek designed a home on top of a former grain silo in Olomouc (CZ)
• Selgascano architects' silicone house in Madrid (ES) seems to have sprung naturally from the ground
• The addition to the Lateran University Library in Rome (IT) by King and Roselli
• X-TU architecture translated the required segregation in a Paris (FR) police station into a recognizable two-tone structure
• In their design for an apartment building in Bjelasnica (BA), Studio Non-Stops breaks with standard alpine architecture
• FKL architects' Reuben Street housing in Dublin (IE)
• Modus architects' heating plant in Bressanone (IT) is also a skating rink
• Does the community centre in Corpataux (CH) by nb.arch and 2b architectes ignore or mimic its context?
• Yannis Aesopos tells the ins and outs of the office building he designed in Athens (GR)
• Ivana Franke and Petar Miskovic's pastry shop in Zagreb (HR) is a serious minimalist joke

Glass eyes

Just as buildings are often compared to bodies, so windows are often called their eyes; they allow light to enter spaces and users to look outside. And like human eyes, they are one of the most expressive architectural elements of a building, giving it much of its personality.

Textiles

There is some confusion about the meaning of 'textile'. It is sometimes thought to be a separate class of material whereas in fact textiles are the result of a processing technique that can be applied to many materials. For example, there are textiles made of wood and metal.

Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Sander Laudy puts the forthcoming Expo 2008 in Zaragoza (ES) in the context of the recent successes and disasters of other Expo cities
• Moscovite housing production comes in two sizes: large and extra large (RU)
• An architectural tour guide of Athens' post-Olympic architecture (GR)
• Home: August Schmidt's timber addition to a listed dwelling in Trondheim (NO)

Buildings from the margins of modern history

Maria Topolcanska praises the endangered Hotel Kyjev and Prior Store in Bratislava (SK). Together they form one of the most exciting examples of the city's rich heritage of postwar modernism.