#18 Nov/Dec 2007

News and observations

• The building boom in Madrid (ES) is reaching a climax with the imminent completion of a high-rise quartet
• Starchitects descend on Ireland
• High-rises are the talk of the town in flat Copenhagen (DK)
• Reality check: architect Tarla Macgabhann comments on the finished Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny (IE)
• Update: the new Dutch
• 'Urban zig-zag': a piece of high quality contemporary urban 'furniture' in Tirana (AL)
• Russia has once again embraced the practice of holding design competitions, but now not only in Moscow and St. Petersburg
• and more…

New projects

• JDS Architects' ski jump in Oslo (NO) is extending a tradition… to the sky!
• A Hungarian-Japanese team has won the competition to rehouse Hungary's ministries in Budapest (HU)
• A crematorium in Schiedam (NL) is Asymptote's second opportunity to build in the Netherlands
• Rudy Ricciotti returns to simple gestures with his 'giant nest' in Paris (FR)
• Erik Nobel's design for a broadcasting building in Tallinn (EE) is tasteful, but a missed opportunity for innovation

Oleg Drozdov: Architectural ambulancer

In Ukraine, where people pay millions to spend their lives in 'historical fakes', a European-oriented architect like Oleg Drozdov is seen as an exotic exception. Working at an urban scale in several of the biggest Ukrainian cities, he produces positive changes in physical surroundings as well as in professional circles. Kseniya Dmitrenko investigates the intellectual background of Drozdov's work.

New buildings

• Denton Corker Marshall's Civil Justice Centre in Manchester (UK) confirms the re-orientation of the city
• Kalle Vellevoog reinterpreted Pärnu's (EE) famous white Funk in his design for a holiday apartment building
• A wave-like roof announces Alberto Nicolau's new swimming pool in Valdemoros (ES)
• In a park in Grafenegg (AT), the next ENTERprise have designed a stage for music festivals and general lingering
• Suburban abstractionism – Johannes Norlander's first Swedish building, located in Stockholm (SE)
• For a house extension in Oelde (DE), Matthias R. Schmalohr finds a new 'archaic' form of expression for ecological architecture in the pueblos of New Mexico
• If Marks Barfield have been worried about being typecast by the London Eye, then their Lightbox Gallery in Woking (UK) will probably do the trick
• Aeby & Perneger challenge the banal with a new crèche in Geneva (CH)
• With the completion of this library interior in Palermo (IT) Sicilians embrace Italo Rota's 'post-everything' work
• Hin Tan designed Tirana's new Mother Teresa International Airport - the first building of modern, transparent Albania
• In Vienna (AT), Adolf Krischanitz and friends have created paradigms in concrete

Wood

Wood is the oldest building material known to architecture and one of the materials provided by nature itself. Wood can be easily worked by human hands into just about all the parts one needs to build a house: the structural frame, the façade and roof cladding, the doors and windows, the furniture, ornaments, down to most of the tools.

Biomimicry

The science of biomimicry looks at how fascinating designs and processes found in nature might be applied to other fields. How, for example, the behaviour of red algae might be used to prevent bacteria from attaching themselves to a surface. Nature-based solutions to technical problems are being sought all over Europe.

Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Maximum Security City: finding solutions that strengthen the city
• 25 recent buildings worth visiting in Istanbul (TR), the city that spans two continents and has a population of over ten million people
• Profile: Adams & Sutherland believe in design's potential for social good (UK)
• Home: Jorge Mestre's hillside house in Alella (ES)

Buildings from the margins of modern history

In the 1960s and 1970s, many German medium-sized towns that had profited from the 'economical miracle' were building town hall towers. Some are still standing, but none of them exudes the charm of the 1970s with as much freshness and elegance as Offenbach am Main’s town hall (1968-1971), designed by Maier, Graf & Speidel. Christian Welzbacher takes a look at this triangular tower block with a glassed-over hall.