GENETIC STRATEGY
Interview with Fumihiko Maki
You worked on the PREVI competition in 1969 with Kisho Kurokawa and Kiyonori Kikutake as members of the Metabolism movement. Did you consider the PREVI as a chance to develop some of the Metabolism principles?
In a retrospect, my answer is yes. But when we were approached by Peter Land...
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TRADITIONS
Interview with Ulrich Bellwald
There is a certain romantic aspect to the Middle East, very hard to avoid when we look at it from a European perspective: a mythical storybook place where anything can happen. How does the contemporary Middle East look from the inside, in terms of architecture?
After having lived for such...
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RECOVERING THE MATERIALITY OF THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
Interview with Richard Sennet
Purely manual, machine- aided, or performed entirely by the machine, mechanical work is a spatial experience. This basic truth from the high school’s mechanics applies in architectural and urban space too. From the beginning of history, working conditions have been shaping human settlements, in...
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BIG HOPES
Interview with Alfredo Pini, Atelier 5
Various international architects who were addressing new forms of dwelling and settlement in the 1950s and 1960s were chosen for PREVI competition. Atelier 5 caused an international sensation with the Siedlung Halen settlement. Why was this topic a cause for such an international concern at the...
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THERE IS A COMBAT IN EVERY CONTEXT
Interview with Bernard Khoury
And when we move from these private projects with a certain public purpose to the more “normal” projects like the residential blocks with very neutral, generic names, such as #183, IB3, #732, #893 etc? Do these projects for everyday purposes reflect the same experimental origin...
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Jose Maria Sanchez Garcia - Consistent Expression
by Ramias Steinemann
Jose Maria Sanchez Garcia’s work seems to be a combination of the affinity to solid geometries and the play of light and shadow. He sees architecture as something monumental and massive that is carved out. The traces can be read already in his childhood: “I always lived in a house with vaulted...
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Mount Fuji Studio - Structural Atmosphere
by Anna Hotz
Mount Fuji Studio realised different private houses in cities of Japan, well adapted to the limited space available there. They also deal with aesthetic improvement in the neighbourhood for instance by designing outdoor furniture.
In the architecture of Mount Fuji Studio the construction permits...
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SUSTAINABLE URBAN DESIGN
Interview with Jan Carmeliet
Ecology and Urbanism
I prefer not to use the word ecological, but instead, I rather speak about sustainable urban design. Ecology is just one of the aspects of sustainability, besides economical and social aspects. Our research contributes to the sustainable design of existing and future...
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Tao Lei - Pursuing Inner Peace in a Society of Chaos
by Huang Xusheng
In the 21st century, a new generation has played a fundamental role in Chinese
architectural field. Tao Lei, who has made architecture for ten years and founded his own studio in 2007, is one of them. They do not act as an introducer of western architecture, an avanti-courier or an experiment...
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Sean Godsell - The Solid is the root of the Light; the Quiescent is the master of the Hasty
by Florian Sauter
Sean Godsell’s architecture is one of ambiguities: monumentality is achieved through lightness, easiness of living by hand of discipline in plan,...
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Text + Project
Interview with Pier Vittorio Aureli
Besides your practical activities, you have written a lot. Theory and Practice go sort of hand in hand. How would you differentiate or relate these two forms of architectural expression?
It is a good question. First of all I do not believe in the separation of theory and practice, which...
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