darch_logo
Issue 15 - FireSteinemann RamiasEssays, Studio

STROMBOLI: MOUNTAIN OF FIRE IN THE SEA

by Ramias Steinemann

Stromboli is one of the eight Aeolian Islands. Together they form a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea that arcs across the Mediterranean from Mount Etna over Lipari to Mount Vesuvius. Located off the north coast of Sicily, they are named after Aeolus, the ruler of the winds in Greek...

Read more
Issue 14 - AirSteinemann RamiasEssays, Studio

Fil de Cassons

by Ramias Steinemann

The Fil de Cassons is a mountain range 2700 metres above sea level in Grisons, Switzerland.
In the Romanic language, fil means ridge; i.e. a mountain range without an obvious peak. It forms a two and half kilometrelong northern end of the famous Flimserstein, a massive wall of rock that is a...

Read more
Issue 15 - FireMateo Josep Lluís, Sauter FlorianEssays, Studio

Elemental Conditions

Lecture by Josep Lluis Mateo

We are dealing with fire in a very specific spot: the island of Stromboli, Europe’s last permanently active volcano. Here, we are going to relate to fire in three ways.

First, as a physical presence, as a phenomenon that can be intellectually analysed or sensually perceived. Through...

Read more
Issue 13 - WaterSteinemann RamiasEssays, Studio

The Engadine

by Ramias Steinemann

The Valley of the Engadin begins at the Maloja mountain pass with a chain of lakes running southwest to northeast: « Lej da Segl », « Lej da Silvaplauna « , and « Lej da San Murezzan » . Maloja is a watershed dividing the river « Inn » flowing via the Danube to the Black Sea and the «...

Read more
Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

On Teaching

by Josep Lluis Mateo

Our mission is, of course, to teach people to design: to imagine in physical terms a new reality and, further, to be able to make it possible, to build it.

My interest is more methodological - abstract, instrumental - than stylistic and is situated between awareness of the student’s freedom of...

Read more
Issue 10 - In the DesertSauter FlorianReviews, Studio, Videos

Natural Conditions: An Iconographical Survey of a Hotel Project in the Khor Al-Adaid Desert

by Josep Lluís Mateo, Krunoslav Ivanišin, Ramias Steinemann, Tomeu Ramis and Florian Sauter

The desert – always moving, never static; like an ocean of sand.

TOMMASO GIOVANNOLI
An intervention without scale confronts the infinity...

Read more
Issue 7 - On CanettiMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

Loss of Weight

by Josep Lluís Mateo

The last semester we were involved in a project that tried to connect literature – written knowledge – with architecture. Of course, knowledge has been transmitted until very recently or until now by books, by letters, by printed forms invented in the Renaissance. So, the fact that books have...

Read more
Issue 4 - CinemaMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

ARCHITECTURE and CINEMA

by Josep Lluís Mateo

The relationship between cinema & architecture is mentioned in many occasions and it's partially true. In fact, the architecture in the cinema appears as a background of the scene, as a background of the action. As, happens with photography, the cinema is giving us a specific point of view...

Read more
Issue 3 - On GiacomettiMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

narrative and physical facts

by Josep Lluís Mateo

Our Giacometti project deals with a very important question that is the meaning of the word context. What is a context? Which is the context?

Of course the context is connected with the physical facts, with the geography, the topography, with the climate, the snow, the temperature and also...

Read more
Issue 1 - After Crisis Mateo Josep LluísEssays, Studio, Interviews, Reviews

AFTER CRISIS

In architecture, designing and constructing mean implementing a way of thinking with a view to action in an active relation with the changing conditions of the contemporary world. From our position in academia, in terms of our pedagogical practice (the place where Architectural Papers are produced),...

Read more
Issue 14 - AirSteinemann Ramias, Sauter Florian, Schmidlin Chasper, von Mackensen Till, Mateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

Meteorological Observatory

by Josep Lluis Mateo,Till von Mackensen, Chasper Schmidlin, Ramias Steinemann and Florian Sauter

PAINTING WITH AIR
At an artistic level, the picture could be painted with the remains of the sky;
making the enclosure ready to receive and...

Read more
Issue 15 - Firevon Mackensen Till, Mateo Josep Lluís, Steinemann Ramias, Hotz Anna, Schmidlin ChasperStudio

A Guesthouse on Stromboli

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Anna Hotz, Till von Mackensen, Chasper Schmidlin, Ramias Steinemann

DANGER & DEBILITY

Fire certainly can be dangerous and out of control, destructive and aggressive.
In these conditions, architecture can...

Read more
Issue 13 - WaterSteinemann Ramias, Sauter Florian, Hotz Anna, Obiol Cecilia Videos, Studio

Marina and Thermal Bath

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Anna Hotz, Cecilia Obiol, Florian Sauter & Ramias Steinemann

Palafitic

Gino de Giorgi: On wet or marshy land, architecture is always inserted with care, with the greatest precaution. These sites...

Read more
Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep Lluís, Sauter FlorianVideos, Studio, Essays

Pedagogical Ambition

Lecture by Josep Lluis Mateo

We try to teach how to design, how to produce, how to think and make buildings happen. For me, this is closely connected to the dialectic between concept (abstract conditions) and matter (physical conditions). This kind of synthetic duality is the starting point of our profession, in which an idea...

Read more
Issue 12 - EarthSteinemann Ramias, Sauter Florian, Obiol Cecilia , Jakob Michael , Mateo Josep LluísReviews, Studio

INTERPRETATION CENTER: THE SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Cecilia Obiol, Florian Sauter & Ramias Steinemann

Isabelle Ramseier
The project derives from the typology of the ruins. A ruin generally keep contact to the earth. The more distant part as the roof...

Read more
Issue 10 - In the DesertAl Jaidah Ibrahim Videos, Studio, Essays

Desert Architecture: Some Comments on Qatari Architecture in the Pre- and Post-Oil-Period

Lecture by Ibrahim Al Jaidah

The Gulf’s architectural forms have, to some extent, been limited by two important factors: climate and the availability of building materials. The...

Read more
Issue 7 - On CanettiSteinemann RamiasEssays, Studio

The Ground

by Ramias Steinemann

Until the nineteenth century the Winkelwiese, originally part of a vineyard located on the southeastern boundary of the old town of Zurich, remained open land without buildings. The explosion of the Geissturm in 1652– one of the main fortification towers of Zurich, and located in the actual...

Read more
Issue 3 - On GiacomettiSteinemann RamiasEssays, Studio

Cultural Landscape - Val Bregaglia and the Giacomettis

by Ramias Steinemann

The home of the Giacometti’s, the Val Bregaglia is an Italian speaking valley on the south side of the Alps expanding in an extremely deep drop from the heights of the Maloja and the Septimer pass towards south to the Italian border ending in the lowlands of North Italy in Chiavenna. The...

Read more
Issue 13 - WaterHampe Michael, Sauter FlorianStudio

Panta Rhei and Plato's Revenge

Lecture by Michael Hampe

Philosophy is usually concerned with concepts; abstract concepts like
causality or space and time. Water is not so much a concept as a kind of
pre- or proto-concept: a word that was used before conceptual thinking
really began.

Pieces of water
If you cut this building into two parts,...

Read more
Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep LluísStudio

Models and Images

by Josep Lluis Mateo

Models and images are tools or instruments that provoke the transport or passage of abstract ideas to physical reality.

MODELS

1 Volume
All buildings have a volume, some kind of shape or sculptural presence with a certain definition of the relations between voids and mass. In...

Read more