#8 Mar/Apr 2006

News and observations

• What appeared on renderings as a translucent design has taken on a more massive form that towers above the environs: the National Library of Belarus in Minsk (BY) is nearing its completion
• The Centre for Central European Architecture (CCEA) promotes 'Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Austrian, Slovak and Slovenian' architectural talent
• A masterpiece reappears: Aldo van Eyck's 1960s Sonsbeek pavilion rebuilt in Otterlo (NL)
• Reality check: 'four squares in one' by SLA in Copenhagen (DK)
• Update: four practices that had a hand in raising a debate about the built environment in Malta
• The Berlin Pavilion, a 1950s modernist gem, has received a new lease on life as a Burger King restaurant (DE)
• and more…

New projects

• Future Systems lives up to its name with a retro-futuristic design for an apartment building in the Copenhagen harbour (DK)
• Ifau and Jesko Fezer from Berlin won a competition to convert Palais Thinnfeld in Graz (AT) with a plan that refuses to make a spectacular gesture
• Architecture association L'Atalante invited twelve teams of architects to design 'Global Models for Local Houses' in Portugal
• Massimo Acito has built a house in Metaponto (IT), avoiding the use of special effects or coquettish tricks
• For the first time, 2012 architecten have applied their 'recyclicity' building method to a house in Enschede (NL), appropriately located on the spot where a fireworks disaster occurred in 2000
• Sarah Wigglesworth converted a former school building for the Siobhan Davies Cance Centre in South London (UK)

Plot: New Plots

A10's Claes Sörstedt talks to Julien De Smedt and Bjarke Ingels about Copenhagen-based practice Plot and the splitting up of a highly prolific collaboration.

New buildings

• Wandel Höfer Lorch + Hirsch created a structure to house a permanent exhibition dedicated to a former SS special camp in Hinzert (DE)
• Maria Vives of GDA architects designed an office building in Barcelona (ES) with more individuality than strictly necessary
• Inspired by the house he grew up in, Jens Studer built an internally foldable building in Uerikon (CH)
• With four different facades, Kenan Sahovic's library in Sarajevo (BA) does its best to fit into its surroundings
• The elegant new blocks for Bedales School in Petersfield (UK) by Walters and Cohen might well be capable of seducing both ardent modernists and Prince Charles sympathizers
• CVDB have replaced the theatre in Cartaxo (PT) with a new building that makes a strong impression on its context
• Tallinn's new KUMU museum, designed by Finnish architect Pekka Vapaavuori, is Estonia's most expensive public building
• Localarchitecture has given a rural typology a contemporary shape with their design for a cow shed in Lignières (CH)
• The first phase of Jestico and Whiles' extension to London's Central School of Speech and Drama promises well for the future (UK)
• Tomasz Glowacki's fashionably modern house in Gatowice (PL) recalls both traditional Polish barns and country churches
• In a hilly suburb of Budapest (HU), Zsuffa and Kalmár have designed a town hall in the form of an 'artificial rock'
• Architect Nicola Probst carefully folded a house in Lugano (CH)
• The commission to enlarge Vienna's Stadthalle, won by Dietrich | Untertrifaller architects, called for both homage and critique (AT)
• American-Romanian Westfourth Architecture has built an office tower that is the highest in its part of Bucharest (RO)

Focusing on European countries, cities and regions

• Less than three decades after its glorious arrival, postmodernism is about to meet
• its Judgement Day. Christian Welzbacher writes an obituary and makes an attempt to put 'PoMo' in an historical context
• Sixty years after the Second World War, Wroclaw – better known to the rest of the world as Breslau – is still searching for an architectural identity of its own and agonizing over its attitude to the existing architecture
• A10's Emmett Scanlon takes us for a whirlwind tour of Ireland's most interesting new town halls, theatres, schools, libraries, arts centres and collective housing, which are gently and persuasively stitching themselves into and onto the existing fabric of Irish towns and villages
• Home: Berger+Parkkinen's contemporary barn in Vienna (AT)

Buildings that already get their share of media attention

Madrid's new airport terminal, designed by Richard Rogers Partnership and Estudio Lamela, will double the airport's current capacity of 35 million passengers a year. The negative effect on the immediate surroundings highlights the fact that Rogers' architecturally magnificent terminal is, by the very nature of its programme, at loggerheads with his ecological commitment.