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 moreIt is no secret that from an operative standpoint the internet has proven its worth: as a tool that enables the easy and cheap transfer of data and communication, it has revolutionized architectural working procedures and allowed numerous offices to build globally on an hitherto unknown, at least...
Read moreAt the present time of globalization, the identity-modernity dialectic reappears, though in a different way to how it was addressed in our recent past.
On the one hand we have the defence of the specific, the local, of landscapes that are perhaps not so diverse but, like the climate, permanently...
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...
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...
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 moreThe Jura Mountains are a sub-alpine mountain range located north of the western Alps, separating the Rhine and Rhone rivers and forming part of the watershed of each. At the entrance of the Val du Travers the huge falaise formation of the Creux du Van builds up. On the top of this plateau, about...
Read moreCoincidentally, two dynamically sublime views through window frames of machines in motion mark the beginnings of two “architectural” narratives that have been shaping Middle- Eastern landscapes ever since. In the initial chapter of his 1969’s “Architecture for the Poor”, Hassan Fathy gave...
Read moreIn Three Stories on Painting and Time Orhan Pamuk traces the distinctive qualities of the Ottoman miniature back to a very remarkable ancestral event: the Mongolian siege of Baghdad of 1258. Architecturally structured way of “depiction of the world from an elevated Godlike position attained...
Read moreAll architectural pursuits are tedious, painful & more often than not heart breaking. Its only some individuals, animals and circumstances in the process of building it up that sometimes make the experience light and act as balms or pain relievers. Here are some we encountered along the way to House...
Read moreIn 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 moreWe 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 moreThe Gulf’s architectural forms have, to some extent, been limited by two important factors: climate and the availability of building materials. The...
Read moreIn 1965, the Peruvian Government and the United Nations invited British architect Peter Land to design a strategy for mass housing as an alternative to the massive informal settlements that were dramatically taking place in Lima during that period. In 1966, informal discussions began with the...
Read moreUntil 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 moreAnd Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And The Lord showed him all the land,...
Read moreLocarno is a small town situated on the south side of the Alps, surrounded by Italy bordering just in the very north to Swiss Cantons. Topographically the city lies in the basin of the lake of Lago Maggiore at the bottom of nearly two thousand meter higher mountains. Due to the physical condition...
Read moreThe 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 moreDubai has, in our recent past, been a paradigm of both possibility and delirium. Eulogized by the ever-present messiahs of modernity, whose jaded voices once again announced their tired proclamations of a supposed creative apocalypse; reviled by moralistic social leftist critics, constructive events...
Read moreA journey with our students took us to a place where fire could be
experienced with all the senses: the volcanic island of Stromboli, one
of the pearls of the Aeolian Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. To get
there, we had to cross the deep blue sea. The boat bore the name
Eraclide. It made us...