IDENTITY. Could we say that there is a new tendency in Chinese architecture orientated to the recovery of its original identity?
WANG LU. Shortly to say in China we cannot escape from style. After the Cultural Revolution the whole China started to reconsider how to build the...
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 moreTradition in the Beijing urban development
ZHU WENYI: From the viewpoint of urban space or urban design, a lot of things are related to tradition; they have not disappeared and still alive. The Chinese architecture and city, as same as the Chinese food, is a part of Chinese culture...
There is a certain romantic aspect to the Middle East, very hard to avoid when we look at it from a European (“Western”) perspective: mythical place from books where anything can happen. How does the contemporary Middle East look like when seen from inside, related to architectural project...
Read moreArchitecture and product design are closely related. Matharoo Associates deal with both. For this reason they have structural engineers in their team. The interest in product design shows up not only in there projects, where they often design the complete building from the external shell to the door...
Read moreJP I grew up at my grandfather’s small farm in central Finland, so I have
a farm boy’s mentality. I was the only boy within five kilometres and
had to invent things for myself to do. When you have a lot of time,
there are, of course, endless miracles happening in nature. So, my...
Could you shortly explain the formation oft he Jura mountains and ist relationship with the Alps?
The rocks which we find in the Jura mountains formed at the northern margin of the Alpine see. This northern margin occupied a shallow marine environment where mostly limestones were diposited. Most...
Not Vital was born in 1948 in Sent, Graubünden (CH) and has been living and working between the USA, Africa, Chile, Italy and Switzerland.
In 2008 he commissioned his collaborator, the young Japanese architect Mitsunori Sano, to design his new Atelier in Caochangdi, an artist neighbourhood of...
The PREVI competition established a theoretical framework that revised the functionalist urbanism established by the former CIAM according to new urban principles. Could you define those principles?
The PREVI built project itself define the new urban principles. It is a more comprehensive...
DEFINITION
Yaşar Adanali: Defining the Middle East, its boundaries, different meanings, layers is by itself a very difficult, value-bounded and mainly a political challenge. Especially, when one looks at the region from the perspective of its “western” neighbors, many...
Public space in a Middle Eastern city
MOHAMMAD AL ASAD: this is a very difficult subject to address because there is always the talk of the fact that there are no true public spaces in this part of the world, but then you have Cairo and “Tahrir square” which shows how a public space...
A Robinson Crusoe-like spirit of adventurousness and desire to mark out human territory permeates the work of Angelo Bucci. In both a historical perspective considering the voyages of the classical navigators and their conquest of a primordial American wilderness, but also in terms of an...
Read moreGV First of all, I think we have to recognise that architecture and landscape
architecture always deal with culture. This means that we only see
what we know. Without knowledge, you cannot perceive or value the
landscape. In this way, architecture and landscape are similar. Here,
of course, we...
IC Fire as a form of energy and its mastering gave rise to human civilization.
From its central role in the organization of space, the architectural
presence of fire has declined somewhat during the last two centuries.
On the one hand, its potential dangers led it to be shut away, first...
When the PREVI competition was announced in 1969, there was an intense debate in Europe in relation to the former CIAM approach to the city leaded by the young members of the Team10 and some of them were invited to participate in the competition. How did that debate influence the work of the...
Read moreWhy are questions of identity and authenticity so central to the discourse on architecture in the Arab world?
Bechir Kenzari : As far as I am concerned, I think it is a wrong question, it is a false problem. In time of crises the issue of identity becomes a refuge. Eventually it...
AMUNT architects martenson und nagel thiessen were founded in 2005 as an architecture cooperation in Aachen and Stuttgart. Together they realised several small projects. Each project is approached with a critical examination. Topics such as energy efficiency or societal changes concerning habitation...
Read moreHow in your opinnion the strong physical and geographical conditions of Bregaglia influence the architecture of the valley?
There are some very strong elements, as the mountains and the shapes, these very stiff shapes. I live in Soglio, where the strong presence of the mountains is always...
JLLM The first question is about the dialectic between the terms identity
and modernity. The typical understanding of modernity is the creation
of a kind of layer that is added to a place. For instance, Rem
Koolhaas’s ideas about China twenty years ago again introduced
this excitement about...
Our semester task was earth: To speak of the earth requires us to think about the other elements the water, the air and the fire. How do you relate earth to the other elements?
Of the four elements, earth is the one that represents the solid state of matter, and consequently, is the...