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Empowering inspirational thinkers. Since 1928.

supplement
100+ Best architecture firms
editorial director
Walter Mariotti
art director
Giuseppe Basile
editorial manager of supplements
Loredana Mascheroni
collaborator
Massimo Valz-Gris

graphics
Elisabetta Benaglio, Franco Miragliotta
coordinator
Miranda Giardino di Lollo
contributors
Francesca Acerboni, Alessandro Benetti,
Giovanni Comoglio, Valentina Croci,
Laura Drouet, Marianna Guernieri,
Olivier Lacrouts, Salvator-John Liotta,
Gabriella Lo Ricco, Fabienne Louyot,
Manuel Orazi, Jessica Mairs, Guido Musante,
Salvatore Peluso, Emanuele Piccardo,
Federica Rasenti, Giulia Ricci
translations
Annabel Little, Miranda MacPhail,
Karen Tomatis, Wendy Wheatley

published with
Domus 1033
March 2019
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Best architecture firms 2019 Best architecture firms 2019

Flavio Albanese Mario Bellini Stefano Boeri François Burkhardt Michele De Lucchi Nicola Di Battista

There are many, a great many, How did I go about choosing the world’s To observe the current panorama of Since the early 21st century, the Today architecture makes sense if it In January 1946, Ernesto Nathan
architects, all very different and spread best architects? Number one, I tried to international architecture and attempt organisation of architecture firms has looks for the significance of buildings, Rogers became the editor-in-chief of
far and wide. avoid any excess of patriotism, and so to build a list – exhaustive and inclusive been changing with the accelerating of living together, of attracting people Domus, appointed by the publisher
They have the same immanent problem: I broadened my field of research well – of recent trends, to come up with pace of increasingly invasive digital and envisioning a better future. Gianni Mazzocchi to substitute Gio
to worthily carry out with the job they are beyond Italy and without any difficulty a “Who’s who”, might seem to be technology, a fact that in itself is not All architecture that does not plan Ponti, the magazine’s founder. Rogers
called upon to do. I was able to choose architects from something simple and almost banal. In negative for the profession’s evolution. something good for the future, that began his committal to his new post by
It is a complex and articulated job, ten different countries. Number two, I reality, addressing such a complex and More worrisome is the priority attributed causes us distress when we see a crane taking a clear stand, adding the subtitle
affected by social emergencies, matters tried to avoid my personal feelings and kaleidoscopic panorama makes it almost to the expansive dynamics of a liberal destroying more pieces of world, that La casa dell’uomo (“Man’s home”)
of aesthetics and the need to find friendships getting in the way, and I also impossible to find univocal rules. We and globalised economy, which has is based solely on the interpretation to the journal’s cover. Unequivocally,
compromises. Compromises that nobody tried not to be self-referential. have therefore come up with a system of entirely modified the relation between of building regulations and technical it stated the main interest of the
wants to consider, the eye of the needle Three: I did a survey among the criteria, divergent and dissimilar so as to architecture and society, substituting our standards – in other words everything magazine’s content under his leadership
of architectural practice. architects working in my firm (many of try and reconstruct fragments of a highly concern for social emancipation and the that takes architecture far from the (Domus issue 205, January 1946).
And in this crowded world, someone them are either young or very young). complex and uneven landscape. decrease of inequality with our haste world – is of no use. This was early in the postwar period,
finds a way to make things work, to Four: although I do consider archi- 1. Delocalisation/Diffusion: there are to reach a simpler aim: the increase of Among the architects I have selected and the country’s reconstruction was
gracefully make a mark on this old designers – that is those who work on no longer nerve centres of creation and profit. there are practices that are not strictly of absolute primary concern. But for
earth’s crust, already filled with built all scale projects – interesting, I focused action. This profound transformation has architectural ones, such as Assemble, Rogers, motivations were even stronger
things. on personalities whose talent has been 2. Divergence: there are no longer had important consequences for the a collective with a multidisciplinary and more complex: there was a
Small works of cosmetic surgery, tested on large scale architecture, fixed guidelines, in fact there is a wide priorities of decision making. Above approach that I chose because it views pressing need at the time to reconstruct
accepting the inexorable passing believing that notoriety exclusively spectrum of forms of interventions, all, it has modified the ideals and goals architecture as a reference point for the very idea of habitation.
of time, addressing the inevitable, based on (undoubtedly) beautiful methodologies, thoughts and forms of pursued by the profession. human beings to give value to their When I was appointed editor-in-chief
unescapable final account. furniture and objects is not enough. Five: work. The role of the architect has been presence on Earth. of Domus in 2013, I too felt the urge
The small workshops of young architects I searched through my visual memory 3. Disorder: studios are organised in a reduced almost solely to the Architecture is also experimentation: to add a subtitle. For me, it was La
are still happy places of shared (paper records, web and journeys) to dispersive fashion, bringing together coordination of architectural planning it is the search for something more città dell’uomo (“Man’s city”). Although
experiences, while the multinationals of retrieve images that over the last months different fields and inputs, expanding processes. To this loss of image and evolved, richer and more seductive conditions were entirely different from
architecture crumble the dreams and have left a sign, a long-lasting sign, their practice. professional freedom we must add in terms of the environment in which the postwar circumstances, the need
aspirations of those who are part of it: in the sense that in my opinion they 4. Local over global: the great return of the sense of suffocation produced we live. Technical possibilities and to redefine the purposes and the to-do
they come across as alienated offices, have offered a significant contribution the vernacular and artisan, fruit of local by bureaucratic regulations and our the force of human imagination today list of architecture as a discipline was
highly-specialised and without vision, to architecture’s time-honoured and thought (without however excluding dependency on increasingly managerial lead us to think up new spaces, new an undeniable priority. The decision
devoured by unexpressed energies. extraordinary history. geographical displacement) clients determined to assert their forms, new settings: the work of artists to refer to “the city of people” brought
Then when the scale is expanded and 5. Rebellion: social themes have economic interests. such as Olafur Eliasson or creators of us to concern ourselves not only with
pieces of city are put forward in a single To these principles I want to add a brief regained strength, architecture is Today, the architect would need to installations like Studio Heatherwick, the physical city, both built and under
moment, the risk of gigantism and a “message in the bottle”: crossed with politics, ecology, society free himself from these paralysing who give priority to the social impact of construction, which was definitely at
design imposed without participation 1. Say no more than you say yes. and development. factors in order to participate actively their work, is also a contribution. This the centre of our interests, but also the
becomes the price that all pay. 2. Do more competitions and less high 6. The rise of the small: the strongest in programmes devised to have a research, even it it does not directly tout ensemble of thoughts, actions and
When instead, by lucky happenstance, society. revolutions occur without making positive effect on the urban, social and produce habitable spaces, enriches the professions that sustain it and make it
through different processes and in 3. Remember that a great project also a noise. Small-scale practices are ecological fabric. There are two big imagination that enables us to look to possible.
different ways, a practice gives rise to a comes from a great client. disrupting the landscape. challenges open to our trade. The first the future with more positive eyes, full In substance, it regarded everything
dignified work of architecture, one has 4. Beware of those who are famous is preserving the environment, reducing of faith in the potential of humans to live that allows humankind to determine
the feeling that it is has overcome the (only) on Instagram. energy consumption and raw materials and survive on the planet. what might be the buildings most
challenge with the present and made an 5. Don’t settle for renderings, always go – in a word, the general diminishment suitable to its wish to inhabit the Earth
encouraging mark for the future. on site, visit it from inside and outside, of consumption. The second is in a conscious and responsible way.
These lucky architects, therefore, from far away and from very close, and guaranteeing constructions a longer Seeing the current conditions of the
manage to smile and to feel less be with the people. life. Both challenges require taking part world, we believe that these issues are
impotent in this complicated and 6. Embrace not only complicated but more forcefully in the battle against land what must be central to the architect’s
fascinating universe that surrounds us. complex challenges. and building speculation. In order to work today – work that must once again
7. Avoid shortcuts. take on such ethical, political and social seek something that will give back
aspects, seeing the urgency of the sense to our efforts. Materially, our
matter, an increased compactness of the craft comes into its own with the built
different professional orders is needed results, but it searches and finds its
toward seeking a shared change of deeper, more necessary meaning only
orientation with broad participation. No in thought that can sustain it, where
longer is it wise to undertake individual “material world and spiritual world
action within the single professions, are joined as one,” as Adriano Olivetti
rather we must create a bona fide once said (Città dell’uomo, Edizione di
political movement that is organised and Comunità, Milan 1960).
developed on several levels.
Best architecture firms 2019 Best architecture firms 2019 002

Portraits by Marco Camandona



Joseph Grima Winy Maas Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani Alessandro Mendini Deyan Sudjic

What is the definition of a successful Our societies are threatened by a form Drawing up a list of the 30 most Mariam Kamara When architecture critics start a
architect? On the face of it, the answer of lethargy, dramatic climate change, important architectural practices of Beniamino Servino magazine, and even in this post print
is obvious, steeped as we are in the cult decreasing resources, huge income our times could be considered an Aldo Cibic era, it still happens, they do it in the
of the architect-hero with commissions inequality, extensive political/social exercise in reflecting on one’s personal Kuehn Malvezzi hope of turning the world upside down.
on multiple continents, an office with disagreement, rapid population growth, predilections: who, today makes the TAMassociati I know I did, a very long time ago, when
more employees than they can recall substantial food, water, energy and architecture that I like the best? It could Urban Think Tank a group of us started a magazine called
the names of, and a status as household oxygen consumption, by globalisation, be considered an attempt to chronicle Juli Capella Blueprint. As is usually the case, this
name nurtured by an almost daily and by menacing outbreaks of populism the latest news: who’s in the limelight, Gary Chang took the form of doing what we could to
presence in the media. Upon reflection, and nationalism. who comes up when discussing big TYIN tegnestue Architects undermine the reputations of a previous
it seems our assumptions around the If there is a threat (and there certainly is names in architecture? Finally, it could generation of designers, architects,
notion success are almost entirely one), we need an agenda to defeat it and be taken as a kind of extract from the I have chosen individual architects or and so, by implication, of a previous
quantitative, with little consideration for design disciplines must provide a range history of contemporary architecture. teams. They belong to very different generation of critics too. We were
the possibility that any of these values of products that meet this agenda. From I am only interested in the third option, areas and geographies and operate championing a new group of names,
might not be universal. Dutch Structuralism to contemporary but it is also the option that most dismays in profoundly different contexts. From drawn from our contemporaries, to help
Given our assignment here was to come Landscape Urbanism, my selection me. All of history has been biased, being rooted in hyper-technological them in their struggle to supplant their
up with a dozen or so names that to our includes a wide range of practices the subject of manipulation that may cultures, or in situations of emergency predecessors.
minds represent a “radical cultural shift spanning object design, buildings, cities or may not be evident; but the history and difficulty, from luxury to emigrants, And of course, as they floated
in architecture”, I would like to submit and entire territories because, after all, of architecture over the last hundred from minimalist to baroque language. apparently effortlessly to the top of the
that there is no gesture more radical in everything is urbanism. years is distinguished in particular by its All these designers, in my opinion, have professional tree, so would we. Now
architecture today than questioning the Some of the architects I chose were shameless partiality. One needs only to great intuitive, methodological and we wait with more or less resignation
canon of success in our profession. I once eager young designers; some think of the exaggerated explanations design qualities, while not following the for another generation to dispatch us,
would like, for a moment, to turn away others are eager designers today. But and resounding omissions of a Nikolaus formula of the Archistars. The result is in electronic haikus, 140 characters at
from the obvious criteria of age and all of them have dealt – and keep on Pevsner or a Bruno Zevi. They stem not an eclectic panorama that mirrors on a time. Or, if we are quick enough, we
generation, or of geographical location, dealing – with everyday architectures, only from particular geographical and the one hand the international nature contemplate knifing our own discoveries
or even design philosophy, and for a with the cities we inhabit, with today cultural points of view, but also from the of their work, always responding to and finding a fresh generation to
moment invite readers to focus on a and tomorrow’s stages of human reckless credit given to skilled self- the dictates of the Web and this kind champion, if necessary, repeating the
group of individuals who – in different endeavours, routines and pleasures. representations of architects such as of hyper-knowledge, and on the other same trick once more in a few years’
ways – have defined through their I share their concerns about the Walter Gropius or Frank Lloyd Wright. hand their intention to remain connected time. Fashion cycles are the natural
work new paradigms of success in homes we inhabit and their belief in Today the partiality of the historiography to their own places of origin, including means for one generation to be edged
the practice of architecture. Some are the capability of public initiative to of contemporary architecture languages, techniques and artisan out of the way to make room for another,
indeed household names, and some respond to collective aspirations. Their has reached atrocious levels. The symbols. My choice has been made from but they don’t always make for the most
have large offices – these are not in designs generate experiences, provoke geography of architectural production a very large range of architects and this reliable of critical judgements.
themselves antithetical to rethinking amazement and help improve our is now completely global and therefore makes me think that it may be possible I hope that by the time I got to Domus,
success. But they have all found ways emotional state. immense, cultural directions are for social architecture to truly bloom in I had managed to acquire enough of
to pursue an ideal that is not purely All of them have addressed the future dissolved in myriads of different the future. a perspective to understand that it
quantitative, and that is something city in their work and many are currently positions and for the most part autistic, is much more interesting to explore
the architecture of the 21st century dealing with the difficult task of merging abandoned to themselves by an the wider architectural landscape.
desperately needs. ecology and design. My selection absence of criticism. And exhibitions Despite the pessimism of a world in
includes authors trying to model urban of architecture, cleverly managed by which authoritarianism seems to have
growth and to design hybrid natural communication professionals, are liberal values on the run, in which
systems and urban developments – increasingly seductive and inconsistent. social media has turned into a digital
authors who effectively understand A choice of contemporary architecture lynch mob spreading falsehoods about
cities as habitats. practices that aspires, albeit with a everything from global warming to
As the Earth enters the Anthropocene, playful wink, to a rigorous historical vaccination, this is a fascinating moment
we are confronted with the issue of base, inevitably comes up against for architecture. There is a generation
design of the planet as a whole. I hope this unsettling situation and mirrors that has tired of excessive interest in
that all my colleagues will accompany its fragility. Symptoms of this are the form making, rediscovered the social
me in the necessary undertaking of absences from our list and presences dimensions of architecture, and the
bringing the global agenda back to the difficult to justify. Such inconsistencies continuing relevance of materiality. At
forefront. are not oversights or errors: they are the same time, this is a moment when
symptoms of the aporias of the history the nature of architectural practice
of architecture today. It mortifies me has been transformed by scale: offices
to think I am partly responsible for this of several hundred employees rarely
profound inadequacy. I am consoled produced work of interest when I began
by being so together with a group of my career. That is no longer the case.
colleagues most of whom I am bound to Equally, the horizons of contemporary
by esteem, in some cases by friendship architecture were once narrowly defined
and all by a magazine that I still feel, 20 by geography, again, something that is
years after directing, is a little bit mine. no longer the case. We are all the better
for it.
Best architecture firms 2019 Best architecture firms 2019

001 2Portzamparc 026 Cobe 043 Gabinete de Arquitectura 060 Maki and Associates 077 Richard Meier & Partners A. 094 Studio Fuksas
Paris (page 8) Nordhavn, Denmark (page 33) Asunciòn, Paraguay (page 50) Tokyo (page 67) New York City (page 84) Rome (page 101)
002 Adamo-Faiden 027 Counterspace 044 Gehry Partners 061 MASS Design Group 078 RMA Architects 095 Studio Gang
Buenos Aires (page 9) Johannesburg (page 34) Los Angeles (page 51) Boston (page 68) Mumbai, India (page 85) Chicago, USA (page 102)
003 Adjaye Associates 028 David Chipperfield Architects 045 Glenn Murcutt 062 Mateo Arquitectura 079 Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners 096 Studio Märkli
London (page 10) London (page 35) Sidney (page 52) Barcelona (page 69) London (page 86) Zurich (page 103)
004 Agency-Agency 029 Diener & Diener Architekten 046 Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos 063 Max Dudler 080 SANAA 097 Studio Mumbai
New York City (page 11) Basel, Switzerland (page 36) Lisbon (page 53) Berlin (page 70) Tokyo (page 87) Mumbai (page 104)
005 Aires Mateus e Associados 030 Diller Scofidio + Renfro 047 Grace 064 Meyer-Grohbrügge 081 Sangath-Vāstu Shilpā Consultants 098 Studio Other Spaces
Lisbon (page 12) New York City (page 37) Milan (page 54) Berlin (page 71) Ahmedabad, India (page 88) Berlin (page 105)
006 Al Borde 031 Dominique Perrault Architecture 048 Grafton Architects 065 Muoto 082 SelgasCano 099 Tadao Ando Architect & A.
Quito, Ecuador (page 13) Paris (page 38) Dublin, Ireland (page 55) Paris (page 72) Madrid (page 89) Tokyo (page 106)
007 Alberto Campo Baeza 032 Edge Design Institute 049 Heatherwick Studio 066 Navarro Baldeweg Asociados 083 Sergison Bates Architects 100 TAMassociati
Madrid (page 14) Hong Kong (page 39) London (page 56) Madrid (page 73) London (page 90) Venice, Italy (page 107)
008 All(zone) design 033 El Equipo Mazzanti 050 Herzog & de Meuron 067 NHDM Architecture + Urbanism 084 Shigeru Ban Architects 101 Tatiana Bilbao Estudio
Bangkok (page 15) Bogotà (page 40) Basel, Switzerland (page 57) New York City (page 74) Tokyo (page 91) Mexico City (page 108)
009 Álvaro Siza 2 - arquitecto 034 Elemental 051 Junya.Ishigami+associates 068 Nlé 085 Smiljan Radic Clarke Architects 102 Terunobu Fujimori
Porto (page 16) Providencia, Chile (page 41) Tokyo (page 58) Amsterdam (page 75) Santiago, Chile (page 92) Tokyo (page 109)
010 Amateur Architecture Studio 035 EM2N 052 Kengo Kuma and Associates 069 Ofis Arhitekti 086 Snøhetta 103 Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects
Hangzhu, China (page 17) Zurich (page 42) Tokyo (page 59) Ljubljana (page 76) Olso, Norway (page 93) Tokyo (page 110)
011 Andrés Jaque Architects 036 Estudio Teddy Cruz + F. Forman 053 Kéré Architecture 070 OMA 087 SO-IL 104 Tyin tegnestue Architects
New York City (page 18) San Diego, California (page 43) Berlin (page 60) Rotterdam (page 77) New York City (page 94) Trondheim, Norway (page 111)
012 Annette Gigon/Mike Guyer A. 037 FCJZ 054 Kollhoff Architekten 071 Patrick Berger Architecte 088 SOM 105 UNStudio
Zurich (page 19) Beijing (page 44) Berlin (page 61) Paris (page 78) Chicago, USA (page 95) Amsterdam (page 112)
013 Assemble 038 Fernanda Canales Arquitectura 055 Kuehn Malvezzi Associates 072 Paulo Mendes da Rocha 089 Sou Fujimoto Architects 106 Urban-Think Tank
London (page 20) Mexico City (page 45) Berlin (page 62) São Paolo (page 79) Tokyo (page 96) Zurich (page 113)
014 Atelier Bow-Wow 039 Forensic Architecture 056 Lacaton & Vassal Architectes 073 People’s Architecture Office 090 Souto de Moura Arquitectos 107 Vector Architects
Tokyo (page 21) London (page 46) Paris (page 63) Beijing (page 80) Porto (page 97) Beijing (page 114)
015 Atelier Kempe Thill 040 Foster + Partners 057 Linghao Architects 074 Rafael Moneo Arquitecto 091 Spbr arquitetos 108 Vincent Van Duysen Architects
Rotterdam, The Netherlands (page 22) London (page 47) Singapore (page 64) Madrid (page 81) São Paulo (page 98) Antwerp, Belgium (page 115)
016 Atelier Masō mi­ 041 Francesca Torzo architetto 058 MAD Architects 075 RCR Arquitectes 092 Steven Holl Architects 109 Yasmeen Lari
Niamey, Niger (page 23) Genoa, Italy (page 48) Beijing (page 65) Olot, Spain (page 82) New York City (page 99) Karachi, Pakistan (page 116)
017 Ateliers Jean Nouvel 042 Frida Escobedo 059 Maison Édouard François 076 Renzo Piano Building Workshop 093 Studio Anna Heringer 110 Zaha Hadid Architects
Paris (page 24) Mexico City (page 49) Paris (page 66) Genoa, Italy (page 83) Laufen, Germany (page 100) London (page 117)
018 Atsushi Kitagawara Architects
Tokyo (page 25)
London
019 Beniamino Servino
3
Caserta, Italy (page 26)
13
020 Bevk Perović Arhitekti 24
Ljubljana, Slovenia (page 27) 28
39 104
021 BIG 40 86 Berlin
Copenhagen, Denmark (page 28) 49 26 53
022 Canali Associati 79 21 54
Parma, Italy (page 29) 83 48 15 68 93 55
110 • 70 105 • Zurich 63
023 Capella Garcia Arquitectura 108
29
•5025 47• 6920 12 64
Barcelona (page 30) 35 98 Beijing
95 88 61 Paris 76 4122100 96
024 Caruso St John Architects 37
• 1 990 23 75 94 106 •
London (page 31) New York City 17 5
• 62 19 58 Tokyo
025 Cibic Workshop 46 73
44 4 31 • 14
107
Milan (page 32) 36 11 56
Madrid 18
30 59 51
65 7 109 10 52
67
71 66 60
77
74 80
87 81 32
82 84
38 101 92
42 89
78
97 99
8 102
16
103

33
57

43 72
91 27

34
85 45
2
Best architecture firms 2019 001 Best architecture firms 2019 002

2Portzamparc Adamo-Faiden

Principals In 2006, Christian de Portzamparc (Casablanca, Morocco, 1944) became Principals Sebastián Adamo and Marcelo Faiden (both Buenos Aires, 1977)
Christian de Portzamparc, the first postholder of the chaire de création artistique at the Collège de Sebastian Adamo, Marcelo Faiden graduated at FADU in Buenos Aires, and attended ETSAB in Barcelona
Elizabeth de Portzamparc France, with an inaugural lesson titled Architecture: figures du monde, while living in Madrid during the vibrant season when Spain had gained
Staff
figures du temps. At the time, he had been developing new formats of Paula Araujo, Sofía Harsich, a prominent role within the architectural debate. The decision to return
Established in
architecture and urban planning for 26 years, starting with his idea for the Luciana Lembo, Tomás Guerrini, to Buenos Aires came with the desire to open their own studio in 2004,
2010
“open block” (îlot ouvert), designed as an alternative to the Haussmann Lucas Bruno, Jerónimo Bailat, in the aftermath of the economic crisis that followed Carlos Menem’s
Office Jonathan Lee, Felipe Vallina,
block and Le Corbusier’s plan libre. De Portzamparc is an absolute presidency. Today, Sebastián and Marcelo live and work in buildings
Paris Agustín Calvetti, Manuel Marcos
believer in the idea of modernity being sensitive to traces of the past, but they designed – their office is located in Edificio 11 de Septiembre 3260
Established in
www.2portzamparc.com immune to the flat stylistics that are more or less postmodern. Indeed, (2012) – corroborating the mandate they have given themselves since
2005
the concept of time accompanies all his ideas for cities and architecture. the beginning of their practice: namely, to commit to the transformation
He continuously rewrites the codes of their design in relation to the Office of their city. Consisting of mainly residential interventions, their work
evolution of visual languages, in a way that is as recognisable as it is Buenos Aires encapsulates their multifaceted reflection on the theme of domestic
difficult to describe. There is a non-banal element of monumentality only space. Whether isolated (Casa Sáenz, 2012-; Casa Macchi, 2016-2018)
www.adamo-faiden.com
partially ascribable to the large scale of the work. In 2010, his atelier or within the chaotic urban context of Buenos Aires (Casa Fernández,
was “doubled” into 2Portzamparc, founded with his wife Elizabeth. Two 2014-2015; Edificio 33 Orientales 138, 2012), their projects are far from
projects from the 1990s that brought his architecture to international being a minimalist whim. On the contrary, their work conveys a sense of
attention – Cité de la Musique in Paris (1990 and 1995), and the Crédit radicalism and pragmatism, where materials are often inexpensive and
Lyonnais tower in Lille (1995) – show a strong contrast of proportions each time arranged in a defined set of details. Industrial metal mesh
between big volumes and small details or apertures, generating an and frames make up buffers that seem to be both viewpoints protruding
amazing, fleetingly scenographic effect. Analogically, the recent towards the exterior and spaces for individuals or families, such as
Musée de la Romanité in Nîmes (2018) is a play of tension between the in Edificio Bonpland 2169 (2016-2018). In these buildings, concrete, a
elementariness of the built box and the fluidity of the facade covering. material that embodies Argentina’s modernist tradition, can be often
The three-dimensional, draped cladding is parametrically composed of found painted white, but the traces of the framework are left visible, so
7,000 silk-screened glass tiles. Narrow horizontal slits in this “fabric” as to acknowledge its history but strip away the sense of nostalgia that
open to show a mirror-clad second skin, capturing the buildings around it it emanates. Their buildings are conceived as spatial infrastructures
in shimmering reflections inside the billowing waves. born out of composition, but designed to accommodate future
Guido Musante transformations.
Adamo-Faiden established itself thanks to these “modest statements”
and is now working on large-scale projects for the city of Buenos Aires
and for private developers, effectively balancing the difficult relationship
between the specificity of the context and today’s international
dimension of architecture as a profession.
Giulia Ricci

Cidade das artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2012 (photo Hufton + Crow) 33 Orientales 138 Building, Buenos Aires, 2012 (photo Pia Castro de la Torre/Adamo-Faiden)

8 9
Best architecture firms 2019 003 Best architecture firms 2019 004

Adjaye Associates Agency–Agency

Principal Since the completion of his first iconic building (Dirty House in London, Principal Agency–Agency was established in New York City by Tei Carpenter
Sir David Adjaye 2002), the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye (Dar es Salaam, Tei Carpenter (NYC, 1982) in 2014 as a woman-led practice pushing the disciplinary
Associates Tanzania, 1966) has never stopped experimenting. Currently working a Staff boundaries of architecture towards new scales, devices and interfaces.
Lucy Tilley (associate principle, 66-storey concrete skyscraper in New York, a new Holocaust Memorial Arianna Deane, Minjae Kim, The studio is currently operating internationally and running a second
UK and global projects), in London and a cathedral in Accra, Ghana, Adjaye Associates (founded Jesse LeCavalier, Ashely Kuo, office in Toronto.
Joe Franchina (associate director, in London in 2000) is known globally for the versatility of its designs. Carsten Rodin, Dan Taeyoung, Carpenter describes her practice as “seeking an expanded role for
US and American projects) Chris Woebken
Ranging from private houses and exhibition displays to civic and architecture by engaging buildings, objects, interiors, infrastructures,
Staff commercial buildings, the architect’s most celebrated works include the Established in speculations and environments,” a quest embodied by two recent
100 Aïshti Foundation museum and luxury shopping centre (Beirut, 2015), the 2014 projects on opposite scales. The New Public Hydrant for the city of New
Established in Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2007), and the Skolkovo School Offices York (2018) is a concept project that redesigns the street hydrant as a
June 2000 of Management (Moscow, 2009). But the Smithsonian National Museum New York City, Toronto water fountain for adults, children, dogs and birds. It was developed
Offices in Washington DC, a 39,000-square-metre exhibition space dedicated to in response to a brief from the Water Futures research programme,
www.agency-agency.us
London, New York City African American history and culture, propelled Adjaye Associates to the whose aim is to find design solutions to water scarcity issues. At the
international limelight. Completed in 2016, the tiered building was named other end of an imaginary line, the competition-winning Testbed project
www.adjaye.com
Design of the Year in 2017 by the Design Museum of London. Two years (Carlsbad, New Mexico, 2017) is an answer to a technical brief: marking
earlier, on the occasion of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial (2015), a nuclear waste plant. The proposal transforms passive protection into
the Art Institute of Chicago presented Adjaye’s first career retrospective. active improvement for the environment by integrating carbon-dioxide-
In 2017, he was granted British knighthood for services to architecture. capturing technology inside the envisioned landscape formations.
His work can be seen at the exhibition “David Adjaye: Making Memory” Enlarging the realm of architectural action is an increasingly relevant
hosted at the Design Museum of London until 5 May 2019. It shows how a priority for contemporary young practices, and Carpenter’s former
building can shape our perception of events and how architecture can be education in the field of philosophy has undoubtedly set a trajectory
used to tell stories. Not limiting himself to the architectural realm, Adjaye towards framing appropriate design questions. This approach is
has worked on several furniture design projects for major brands such as broadened and shared through Carpenter’s research and teaching
Knoll (2014) and Moroso (2015). activity as an assistant professor at the University of Toronto and adjunct
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts assistant professor at Columbia University GSAPP, where she directs the
applied research and design platform Waste Initiative.
Giovanni Comoglio

Smithsonian NMAAHC, Washington D.C., 2016 (photo Brad Feinknopf) Testbed Perspective, 2017 (image courtesy of Agency–Agency)

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Aires Mateus e Associados Al Borde

Principals The brothers Manuel and Francisco Mateus (Lisbon, 1963 and 1964 Principals “Do things with less” is the credo of Al Borde, the Ecuadorian
Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus respectively) established their firm in 1988 following early collaboration David Barragán, Pascual architecture collective founded in 2007 by Pascual Gangotena (Quito,
with Gonçalo Byrne, with whom they maintain an open dialogue, sharing Gangotena, Marialuisa Borja, Ecuador, 1977), David Barragán (Quito, 1981), Marialuisa Borja (Quito,
Staff
Esteban Benavides
60 his approach and investigation in matters of design. Spatial solutions 1984) and Esteban Benavides (Quito, 1985). Featured in landmark
by Aires Mateus are clear and formally defined, while emphasising Staff exhibitions such as “Think Global, Build Social! Architectures for a
Established in
resistance and permanence as core qualities of architecture. 4 Better World” (Vienna, 2014) and “Reporting from the Front” at the 2016
1988
On the one hand, their work can be read within the larger framework Established in Venice Architecture Biennale, the group is known for aiming to turn
Office
of contemporary Portuguese architecture; on the other, it digs into the 2007 scarcity into an aesthetic and socially empowering asset. Convinced
Lisbon
conceptual repertoire of archetypical forms. By simplifying and reducing Office that the strength of an architectural project lies in the later autonomy
www.airesmateus.com the complexity of the composition in a housing project in Leiria, Portugal Quito, Ecuador of its users, Al Borde’s design and decision-making process rely on the
(2010), the architects were able to achieve the quintessential dimension involvement of the community in all phases of planning and construction,
www.albordearq.com
of the house. The archetype of the house is a recurring element in and the systematic exploration of the local context. From Escuela Nueva
their architecture – see the house-shaped entrance to the Université Esperanza (2009), a rural school in the coastal village of Cabuya, to
Catholique de Louvain’s Tournai campus (Belgium, 2017). Here, the Culunco house (2015), a semi-buried family home, and the House
the challenge was to tie together two existing industrial buildings. of the Flying Beds (2017), a renovated historic property in the city of
Aires Mateus graced the existent with the addition of simple but La Esperanza, each of its projects is shaped by vernacular practices
effective scenographic elements. The refined design of their projects is and natural or upcycled materials available on-site. Habitually working
often based on an accurate balance between solids and voids towards with small construction budgets, the team behind Al Borde (which was
an abstraction of the form. This quality is skilfully managed in order to shortlisted for the Swiss Architectural Award in 2018) recently started
define volumes and composition as shown in the facade for Houses to work on projects in emergency contexts. Their Post-Earthquake
for Elderly People in the tiny village of Alcácer Do Sal, near Lisbon (2010), Prototype (2017), for instance, was developed following the earthquake
as well as in a mixed-use building (2008) in Moura, Portugal. that shook the coast of Los Horconcitos-Manabí province, Ecuador in
In these buildings, the formal definition of the facades is characterised April 2016.
by subtracting volumes from the main form, giving shape to the void. Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts
This paradigm of work was illustrated by Aires Mateus in its installation
Voids for the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, where they illustrated
their understanding of space that is a result of “adding subtraction,
building excavation”.
Federica Rasenti

Catholic University of Louvain, Tournai, Belgium, 2017 (photo Juan Rodriguez) Post-earthquake prototype, Los Horconcitos, Ecuador, 2017 (photo JAG Studio + El Sindicato)

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Alberto Campo Baeza All(zone) design

Principal The Madrid-based Campo Baeza (Vallalolid, Spain 1946) took his degree Principal “All(zone) is a group of happy design professionals who joyfully
Alberto Campo Baeza in architecture in 1971, in a historical context marked by the dictatorship Rachaporn Choochuey collaborate with specialists across the borders of their fields and
Staff of Francisco Franco. Nonetheless, he was able to assert independence Staff country. We are fascinated by our ever-changing mega metropolis that
Ignacio Aguirre, Alejandro Cervilla, in his designs from the beginning, aiming for simple, pure forms Ruchanan Patarapanich, gives a form to our everyday life. Our observations are always captured
Miguel Quismondo, María Pérez that look to architecture’s history as a resource to adapt and renew. Asrin Sanguanwongwan, by contemporary vernacular design solutions,” says this Thai firm.
de Camino, Tommaso Campiotti, The extremely clean lines of his projects make them severe in their Archaraporn Vachirasrisuntree, The contemporary architectural era is defined in many ways, mainly
Alfonso Guajardo, Sara Fernández Thanaphat Sangkharom,
volumetric proportions and in their alternation between solids and voids. “modern” coupled with the addition of the prefix “post-”, and lately
Trucios, Elena Jiménez Rasarose Kitmungsa,
His buildings’ closure to the outside goes hand in hand with the opening Wittida Payomyong, Aniroot Unjai, completed with the extra adjective “second”. The fact that All(zone) has
Established in of walls to create patios and internal courts whose archetype belongs to Nawat Pranveerapaiboon, decided to include concepts such as joy, fascination and everyday life
1971
vernacular Mediterranean architecture. His early work such as the Town Pawat Chaijinda in its statement helps us see the emotional, informal eye with which the
Offices Hall (1980) in Fene, Spain and the day-care centres in Onil and Aspe new generation of architects tends to look at the world in an attempt
Established in
Madrid, New York (1982) shows a partiality for Corbusian “white cathedrals”, where the to effectively change its paradigm, a task they undertake without
2009
matrix of the layout is visible in plan as well as in elevation. Later work turning to traditionally modernist solutions. At All(zone), the focus is on
www.campobaeza.com Office
such as the Gaspar house (1992) in Cádiz displays increasingly greater Bangkok materials and colours rather than shape – see the glass-tile facade of
stylistic autonomy. Here, the square plan becomes a hortus conclusus the Maiiam Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, Thailand (2016)
with blind external walls. Only the central portion of the patio is roofed, www.allzonedesignall.com – and on redesign projects rather than design from scratch. Rachaporn
creating the house. All is white; all is symmetrical; and the sky forms a Choochuey, the founder of All(zone), trained at Columbia University
perfect counterpart to the horizontal plane of stone paving. in New York and Tokyo University. She is developing a multifaceted
Campo Baeza’s introverted courts are a recurrent theme in his houses as architecture, interior design, and visual art practice while teaching at
well as his public buildings. As Alessandro Lanzetta writes in the book Chulalongkorn University. Her manifold approach is manifest all her
Opaco Mediterraneo published in 2016 by Libria, “In his work, references works and well represented in Light House, an installation presented
to the vernacular undergo a process of subtraction, in the mode of Mies’s at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015. Intended for the often
‘less is more’, transforming it into a purist and abstract visual language, unfinished spaces of modern high-rise office buildings commonly found
where the control of two absolute, eternal elements – light and gravity – in Asian megalopolises, the project is a temporary prototypical house
dominates.” (plywood floor and metal grid walls lined with translucent synthetic
Emanuele Piccardo fabric) for use as a living unit inside any abandoned, lifeless structure.
Guido Musante

Castilla y León Regional Government, Zamora, Spain, 2012 (photo Javier Callejas) Contemporary Art Museum, Chiangmai, Thailand, 2016 (photo Soopakorn Srisakul/All(zone))

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Álvaro Siza 2 - arquitecto Amateur Architecture Studio

Principal Álvaro Siza’s studio sits on a gentle slope in a modest neighbourhood Principals “My greatest interest now is to go to China’s countryside to find real
Álvaro Siza Vieira of Porto, overlooking the point where the Douro river flows into the Wang Shu, Lu Wenyu culture, history and ordinary people’s lives, since many Chinese cities
Staff Atlantic Ocean. The U-shaped building was designed by Siza himself in Associates have changed too much and it is increasingly difficult to find such things
16 1998 to also host the studios of Fernando Távora and Eduardo Souto de Chen Lichao, Song Shuhua, there.” (Domus issue 1021, February 2018)
Moura. Álvaro Joaquim Melo Siza Vieira (1933) was born in Matosinhos, Jiang Weihua Wang Shu (Ürümqi, China, 1963) comes from this precise territorial
Established in
1953 Portugal. He completed his first building in 1954, before graduating Staff context, where ancient architectural heritage has been all but obliterated
from the School of Fine Arts of the University of Porto in 1955. Since Chen Hao, Wang Tiantian over the past few decades to make place for trivial, hasty modernisation.
Office
then, his approach has challenged scholars trying to read isms into his and four others Awarded with the Pritzker Prize in 2012, this Chinese architect blames
Porto
work, looking at its evident coherency that is nonetheless fleeting, a Established in architecture and urban planning professionals for a disaster that is
www.sizavieira.pt method that turns out to be both intelligible and elusive. To paraphrase 1997 now almost irreversible. He sets out to counteract their work with
Siza, his projects start with an understanding of the place, a search for Office his imperfect, artisanal and somewhat amateur approach: Amateur
the stratified traces of the site through sketching. This hermeneutical Hangzhou, China Architecture Studio is indeed the name of the office he founded in 1997
approach, as Vittorio Gregotti defines it, shows empathy toward what with his wife Lu Wenyu in Hangzhou.
is found, followed by its eloquent materialisation in the construction The firm reinterprets Chinese vernacular in a contemporary key by
process. Siza’s work has been praised since the early stages of his combining traditional materials such as stone, wood and bamboo with
career. Casa de Chá da Boa Nova (Leça da Palmeira, 1963) and the Leça the most modern technology, letting local manufacturers rework the
swimming pools (1966) are taken as emblems of critical regionalism initial concept. This leads to unexpected results. In keeping with ancient
by the British architecture critic Kenneth Frampton for the relationship Chinese tradition, Wang Shu’s practice revolves around finding a delicate
they establish with the natural and cultural context. But the Portuguese balance between nature and the skills mastered by the locals.
master’s work is more heterogeneous than that, and constantly evolving. This approach is reflected in the Ningbo Historic Museum in Yinzhou
See the Bairro da Bouça in Porto (designed in 1970 and completed in (2008), a building with an anti-modern appearance, conceived as if it
2016); the Faculty of Architecture of Porto (1994); the Portuguese pavilion were an artificial mountain. “When I designed this, I was thinking of
at the 1998 World Expo in Lisbon; the Serralves Foundation (Porto, 1999); mountains. I couldn’t design something for the city, because there is no
and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (2012). city here yet, so I wanted to do something that had life. Finally, I decided
Siza was awarded the 1992 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2012 to design a mountain. It’s a part of Chinese tradition,” says Wang Shu in
Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale. In 2014, Domus issue 922.
the architect donated his archive to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, The building’s facades collect snippets of the country’s historical
the Serralves Foundation (both of which preserve his Portuguese works) memory: various types of brick, stone and debris collected from all over
and the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Thanks to the joint efforts the region and from very diverse periods. The wa pan technique used to
of these three institutions, Siza’s work from 1958 to 2012 is being hold fragments and materials together is known only by local craftsmen.
digitalised and will be progressively accessible online. The building thus also becomes a means of transmitting local and
Giulia Ricci traditional knowledge that otherwise might disappear.
Salvatore Peluso

Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2012 (photo Elisabet Benall) Fuyang Cultural Complex, Fuyang, China, 2017 (photo Chen Lichao)

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Andrés Jaque Architects - Annette Gigon/Mike Guyer


Office for Political Innovation Architekten

Principals Andrés Jaque (Madrid, 1971) creates architectural “devices”, a concept Principals Architecture by Annette Gigon (Herisau, Switzerland, 1959) and Max
Andrés Jaque that goes beyond the built environment and the building type. He looks Annette Gigon, Mike Guyer Guyer (Columbus, Ohio, 1958) shares a major feature: the avoidance
Associates at the social and political performance of the project rather than its Staff of trends, lines and styles typical of contemporary times. Still, their
Roberto González, Paola shape. Reacting to our increasingly complex and fragmented reality, 40 30-year production shows specificities and hallmarks. There is the
Pardo-Castillo, Luis González Jaque freely combines architecture with visual and performing arts to employment of colour in the manner of Piet Mondrian’s Neoplasticism
Established in
Staff address both the physical and immaterial dimensions of urban space. 1989 – see the exterior envelope of Résidence du Pré-Babel (Geneva, 2008)
Alberto Heras, Laura Mora, Marta Recently appointed as the director of the master’s degree course in and the balconies of the Brunnenhof housing development (Zurich,
Office
Jarabo, Ruggero Agnolutto, Bansi advanced architectural design at Columbia GSAPP in New York City, the 2007). There is a sculptural quality found in otherwise uniform materials,
Mehta, Jesús Meseguer, Garazi Zurich
Spanish architect aims to trigger political changes and instigate new generating constant unpredictability in highly controlled masses – see
Lara, Senne Meesters, Sebastian
Bech-Ravn, Felipe Arango, Flavio forms of responsibility and subversion. This explains the name he gave to www.gigon-guyer.ch the glass volumes of the Prime Tower office high-rise (Zurich, 2011)
Martella, Juan David Barreto, his firm, Office for Political Innovation, which runs offices in Madrid and and the office building at Europaallee 21 (Zurich, 2013). There is mutual
Sebastian Kurth New York. exchange between rationalisation, individuality and uniqueness – see the
Established in
Banalities, small dystopias and every day contradictions fuel Andrés differentiation of terraces in the mixed-use building in Almere (Holland,
2002 Jaque’s investigation. For example, he recently looked at how dating 2007) and the windows texturing the concrete mass of the Espace de l’Art
apps like Tinder and Grindr change the way we interact, use public space, Concret – Donation Albers-Honegger (Mouans–Sartoux, France, 2003).
Offices
New York City, Madrid and how this influences urban transformations. In February 2018, this All this is combined with the continuous act of conferring the highest
analysis was staged at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New value to the public dimension.
www.officeforpoliticalinnovation.com York with the exhibition “Sex and the So-Called City”. He transformed The transformation of the Löwenbräu-Areal complex (Zurich, 2004–2012)
the gallery into a film set where a documentary celebrating the 20th epitomises this by also embodying the spirit and evolution of Zurich, the
anniversary of Sex and the City (the TV series) was produced and city where Gigon and Guyer founded their practice in 1989 after having
broadcast online. graduated from the ETH, where they have both been teaching since 2012.
The office’s most emblematic work is undoubtedly Ikea Disobedients At the Löwenbräu-Areal, order and exception are found, plus a visual
(2013), the first performance to be acquired by the Architecture and and functional opening towards the city. This creates a dialogue with the
Design section of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It questions existing legacy and establishes the independency of new architectural
the standards of the Western family’s domestic spaces. During the expression, which is at once the firm’s philosophy and the core feature of
performance, actors designed architectural “devices” that disobey the its city.
(world-famous) instructions provided by the Swedish furniture giant, Giovanni Comoglio
creatively asserting their diversity and uniqueness.
Salvatore Peluso

COSMO, installation for MoMA PS1, New York, 2015 Archeological Museum and Park Kalklriese, Osnabrück, Germany, 2002 (photo Gigon/Guyer)

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Assemble Ateliew Bow-Wow

Partners A pop-up cinema in a deserted petrol station, a whimsical folly tucked Principals Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Kanagawa, Japan, 1965) and Momoyo Kaijima
James Binning, Holly Briggs, beneath a fly-over, and a simple yet captivating pastel-shingled Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Momoyo (Tokyo, 1969) met at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and founded
Amica Dall, Alice Edgerley, workshop that inspired a thousand pilgrimages to the depths of east Kaijima, Yoichi Tamai Atelier Bow-Wow in 1992. Since the beginning, the office has
Fran Edgerley, Anthony Engi
London. These are the early works of Assemble, a collective of 22 Associates distinguished itself by effectively injecting its architectural design
Meacock, Angus Goodwin, Jane
members with backgrounds in art, design and architecture. Since its Sofia Ferrari, James Tanner thinking into existing conditions, meaning the day-to-day relation
Hall, Joe Halligan, Eleanor Hedley,
Lewis Jones, Karim Khelil, inception in 2010, the group has trodden the well-toed line between Staff between objects and people in the built surroundings. They call this
Mathew Leung, Maria Lisogorskaya, disciplines. Yuki Chida, Hiroaki Goto, “behaviorology”, which is also the title of a 2010 book documenting the
Alex Maclean, Amy Perkins, Just five years into practice, their nomination, and then triumph, in Andrei Savescu, Ayumi Okano, output of Atelier Bow-Wow.
Louis Schulz, Giles Smith, the art world’s illustrious Turner Prize contest for Granby Four Streets Fumi Yunosako, Makoto Miyata, The premises and results of their studies, often linked to teaching
Paloma Strelitz, Adam Willis Florentia Economou,
(2013-ongoing) – what in essence is an architectural project – outraged activities at a number of universities, converge in the delicacy and
Andrea Briccola
Staff purists. This redevelopment of ten run-down terraced houses to create precision of drawings that represent a world beyond what is normally
Mark Gavigan, affordable homes in Liverpool, England, also saw the group establish a Established in considered the territory of architecture. In the two volumes of Graphic
Audrey Thomas-Hayes 1992
circular economy to feed the project, with the setup of the community- Anatomy (2007 and 2014) Atelier Bow-Wow expresses the meaning it
Established in run business Granby Workshop. Making use of scrap materials, the Office attributes to drawing as a design tool.
2010 workshop reproduces and sells a range of offbeat homeware used to Tokyo Research and practice are hereby inextricably linked, which leads to the
Offices finish the interiors of Granby Four Streets – elegantly patterned tiles, Atelier’s ability to develop projects custom-made for contexts both urban
www.bow-wow.jp
London, Liverpool barbecue-smoked door-knobs, rubble-based terrazzo mantlepieces and rural. Early in their career, Tsukamoto and Kaijima concentrated
and Splatware plates and cups made by squishing together pieces of on the dense surroundings of Japanese cities and metropolises built
assemblestudio.co.uk
coloured clay. after World War II, examining the informal and unplanned genesis of
The success of the project paved their way to inclusion in the Venice micro-architecture and daily urban routines. This became material for
Architecture Biennale three years later, where visitors padded over the books Made in Tokyo (2001), Pet Architecture Guidebook (2001)
Granby-produced tiles at the entrance to the Central Pavilion. It is a loop- and Post Bubble City (2006). Residential buildings were part of this
the-loop process that for the last nine years has seen one project round research, such as the Ani house and the Mini-house (Tokyo, 1999). The
to completion while a tentacle feels around for the starting point of the latter was awarded the Gold Prize of House Architecture by the Tokyo
next – a brutalist playscape reimagined in blocks of pastel-coloured Architect Society. Hybrid designs for public spaces include the Public
foam, a fried-chicken shop run as a social enterprise, a public bath house Kitchen Operation (1994). More recently, Atelier Bow-Wow has been
converted into an arts centre – but always with a concern for better involved in rehabilitation efforts for rural areas that have been affected
community spaces at its core. by population shrinkage and economic hardship, or devastated by
Jessica Mairs natural disasters. In this ambit, the Atelier has focused not only on the
renewal of the physical surroundings, but also on collaborating with
local communities toward using its resources – techniques, materials
and skills – with the aim of sustaining and implementing what it calls
“ecology of livelihood”. Belonging to this broad range of endeavours are
the House of Itakura (2013), an ArchiAid initiative; the Kurimoto Daiichi
Firewood Supply Station (2018); and the Momonoura fishing village
(2017), which was damaged by the earthquake and tidal wave that struck
the coast of Tōhoku in 2011.
Giulia Ricci

Grandby Four Streets, Liverpool, 2013-ongoing (courtesy of Assemble) Momonoura Village, Ishinomaki Miyagi, Japan, 2017 (photo Atelier Bow-Wow)

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Atelier Kempe Thill Atelier Masō mi­

Principals It would be very easy to recognise in work by Atelier Kempe Thill a Principal Architecture as a socially empowering act – this is the thread running
André Kempe, Oliver Thill reiteration of the severely modern and Calvinistic visual language Mariam Kamara through the work by Atelier Masōmi, founded in Niamey, Niger in 2014 by
Staff that sets the design standard in Central Europe. The Atelier located in Staff the Nigerien architect Mariam Kamara (Saint-Étienne, France, 1979). A
25 Rotterdam was founded in 2000 by the two German architects André Djamila Hamani, Harouna Diallo, graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, she began her career
Kempe (Freiberg, 1968) and Oliver Thill (Chemnitz, 1971), who certainly Oumou Soumaré, Fatima Adam by training in the US and Afghanistan. Her aim is to create “spaces that
Established in
2000 do translate the rationality and eminently dry sobriety of Cartesian co- Established in have the power to elevate, dignify and provide better quality of life”.
ordinates into efficient architecture, analogue to what their colleagues 2014 To reach this goal, she revisits the earth architecture that originated in
Offices
Rotterdam, Paris Durisch+Nolli or Meyer Piattini do. However, the cool, almost non- Office this part of Western Africa with the ancient Haus people, long before
stylistic repetitiveness of their buildings calls for broader consideration Niamey, Niger before the French colonisation. This connects her to the environment
www.atelierkempethill.com that can only lead to the big debate on rules and exceptions that was and the materials available in the Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana.
activated in theory and practice in architectural design and urban ateliermasomi.com Kamara – who is currently a protégée under the mentor Sir David Adjaye
planning during the 1980s and ‘90s, which is when this duo trained for for the 2018-2019 Rolex Arts Initiative – pays particular attention to
their profession. Kempe and Thill begin with “models” they essentially sustainability, climate and ecology, but integrates tradition with elements
extract from modernism’s construction traditions, and proceed by of contemporaneity to make “architecture that relies on simplicity to
conducting sophisticated analysis and typological, formal and symbolic produce richness” and that respects the narratives of the people. Her
“montage” (to speak with the Italian architect Giorgio Grassi). These 2018 design for the regional market in Dandaji, Niger met the need for a
procedures are based on a skin-and-bones range of visual elements, but more permanent structure in order to accommodate population growth.
precisely thanks to this, they give life to easy-to-recognise urban layouts A coloured metal roof is pieced together from individual circular shades
and more welcoming spatial sequences. This archetypical strategy is at different heights, offering protection from the sun and amplifying the
as elementary as it is universal. Atelier Kempe Thill applies it to new original experience without betraying the spirit of the place. In the same
monuments such as the Dutch pavilion IGA (2013) in Rostock, Germany; rural Hausa village, Atelier Masōmi renovated the Hikma religious and
residential complexes like the Nieuw Zuid neighbourhood (2017) of secular complex using traditional techniques combined with metal and
Antwerp, and the recently finished campus for vocational education in compressed-earth bricks made with laterite soil found on site (2018, in
Genk, Belgium, based on a strict succession of transparent boxes laid collaboration with Yasaman Esmaili). The bricks have similar thermal
out in a square and looking quite austere in its simplicity. Kempe and benefits to adobe, but need less maintenance. This abandoned mosque
Thill seem to be stating all over again that each building is a part of the is now a community centre with a library plus study spaces that can be
city; each city is part of a grid. But in the end, the grid is what sets free used by other villages nearby.
the interpretation of each space. The same approach was adopted for the Niamey 2000 housing project
Guido Musante (2016, in collaboration with Yasaman Esmaili, Elizabeth Golden and
Philip Sträter), built using locally abundant earth and passive cooling
techniques to protect against Niger’s scorching temperatures. The
complex offers a visually contemporary alternative to expensive concrete
homes.
Francesca Acerboni

T2 - School for vocational education, Genk, Belgium, 2018 (photo Ulrich Schwarz) Regional market, Dandaji, Niger, 2018 (photo Maurice Ascani)

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Ateliers Jean Nouvel Atsushi Kitagawara


Architects

Principals Jean Nouvel (Fumel, France, 1945) is often associated with concepts Principal The architecture conceived by Atsushi Kitagawara (Chikuma, Japan,
Jean Nouvel, François Fontes of dematerialization and evanescence: think of the Tour Sans Fins, for Atsushi Kitagawara 1951) is one based on coexistence. In his buildings elements of great
(company president) instance, the project of a skyscraper for La Défense in Paris (1989-1992) rationality and constructive reliability – first and foremost his renowned
Associates
Associates conceived as a tower that would disappear into the sky and that in fact Tomohiro Kitaguchi, Motomi expertise in the field of highly anti-seismic structures – coexist with a
Frédérique Monjanel (CEO) never appeared (its construction halted) – other than as a visual echo in Nishiuchi, Ryosuke Kuwabara, marked inclination towards plastic expressivity of shapes that place his
countless minor architectural fantasies. Daisuke Kobayashi, Motoo Kubo, yet diverse architectural languages into the family of “great inhabited
Staff
Norio Nakagawa, Tomoyasu
115 After all, Nouvel is the architect that more than any other likes to conceal sculptures”. Another form of coexistence can be recognised in how
Kozakura, Hiroyuki Miyabe,
Established in the building solutions and the technical innovations inherent in his ideas, Masanori Kuwabara his edifices appear as an integral part of the historical tradition of
1994 leaving only the magic to be seen, creating surprise without revealing Japanese architecture as well as fully representative of the abstract and
Staff
the trick. He perhaps would not have become one of the undisputed syncopated codes inherent in international contemporary architecture:
Office Kathrin Sauerwein, Mayuko
Paris protagonists of contemporary architecture if his work had not captured Matsukawa, Shujiro Hara, Takuo so, while the joint wood modules he designed for Expo 2015 in Milan
its contradictions and dualities. The architect of evanescence is, in fact, Hosoya, Takeshi Uchida, Shohei are now preserved in the Arte Sella sculpture park in Borgo Valsugana
www.jeannouvel.com also the architect of emphasis, of the thematic implementation of the Ishiguro, Yuki Nara, Angel Estevez, in Trentino, his super rational and recently completed Toyonaga Gakuen
“oblique function”, a notion that he drew from his mentor Claude Parent Takaya Hyogo, Taro Takeuchi tower stands like a great primordial monolith signalling, with its sharp
and that apart from being a formal solution constitutes a form of lateral Established in protrusions, the entrance to the Tokyo College of Transport. Tectonics
observation. 1982 is where calculus and symbolism can meet. The same could be said for
Cognisant of the power of avant-gardes and of their capacity to capture Offices instance of the logarithmic spiral that carves its way up through the
the essence of things, another key element the French architect Tokyo, Milan headquarters of the medical industry company Nakanishi in the Shibuya
incorporates in his style is the highlighting of few and essential district in Tokyo (2017), that with its swirling architectural promenade
elements, usually drawn from the site’s culture and environment and www.kitagawara.co.jp concisely describes life and its development. Likewise, the Kobuchizawa
often taken to expressive limits where architecture is only a few steps station in Hokuto (2011) establishes a dialogue with the space described
away from art. So, the kinetic weave of the facade of the Institut du by the square before it, becoming a natural sign introducing us to the
Monde Arabe in Paris (1987) shares the same DNA as the spectacular capturing landscape of the adjacent Yatsugatake area.
dome of the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2017), composed of eight layers of Guido Musante
metallic grids filtering the light through 7,850 star-shaped openings. The
same accent on the local factor – reaching extremes that, if it weren’t
forbidden, one might even recognise as Pop – can be found in the huge
cement desert-rose-shaped National Museum of Qatar (Doha, March
2019), or in the polychromatic facades of the La Marseillaise tower (2018)
in Marseille with its range of about 20 vibrant nuances of blue, white and
red, blending into the sky and the city rooftops.
And we are still left to wonder whether this is evanescence or emphasis.
Guido Musante

Qatar National Museum, Doha, UAE, 2019 (photo Iwan Baan) College of Transport Studies, Tokyo, Japan, 2018 (photo Shigeo Ogawa)

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Beniamino Servino Bevk Perović Arhitekti

Principal Born in 1960 in San Giuseppe Vesuviano, near Naples (Italy), Beniamino Principals Founded in Ljubljana, Slovenia in 1997, the Bevk Perović office took part
Beniamimo Servino Servino lives and works in Caserta, a city not far from his hometown. Matija Bevk, Vasa J. Perovic� in the “silent revolution” that concerned one generation of Slovenian
Established in Known for his prolific drawings production – emanating from Serven, a Staff architects in the early 2000s, especially in Ljubljana. They designed
1986 think tank he founded in 1994 – Servino reflects on architecture theory, Blaž Goričan, Christophe Riss, mostly residential architecture that was without visual excess, but
questioning its monumentality and quest for symbols and archetypes, Irene Salord, Martin Tomažič, characterised by elements that had been planned in minute detail, with
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against the backdrop of abandoned or developing landscapes. He Vid Tancer, Mitja Usenik, an affinity for vernacular building traditions. Their architecture stood out
Caserta, Italy
Johannes Paar, Rok Smrkolj,
explored these themes in a number of books including La città from the social housing blocks from the 1950s and ‘60s, and contrasted
Maša Kovač Šmajdek,
eccentrica (Nuova Arnica Editrice, Roma 1999), to Monumental need Gašper Skalar, Samo Bojnec with the established cookie-cutter developments of two-storey single-
(LetteraVentidue, Siracusa 2012) and Obvius (LetteraVentidue, Siracusa family houses.
Established in
2014). Merging different techniques – from traditional drawing to Both Vasa Perović (Ljubljana, 1965) and Matija Bevk (Ljubljana, 1972)
1997
collage – his graphics often combine visionary and built architectures studied abroad during the historical period when their country passed
to suggest new realities. His imaginary world is composed of cathedrals Office
from socialist dictatorship to capitalist democracy. Their focus is a
Ljubljana
and watchtowers, as well as gasometers, oil rigs and ruins of a decadent hybridisation between theories and models from Western architecture,
industrial era, to which typographical elements and notes are regularly www.bevkperovic.com and the political and cultural context in Slovenia. Traces of work by the
added. His drawings have been displayed in architecture exhibitions such Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger (Amsterdam, 1932) appear in their
as the Venice Architecture Biennale (2006 and 2014), and more recently social housing projects, whose formal identity is determined by the
at the first Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans in France (2017-2018). requirements of communitary life. Other characteristics are the use of
Despite his theoretical research and graphic production being vaster inexpensive building materials, which allows them to spend part of the
than his built work, Servino is nevertheless known for his minimalist budget on the creation of outdoor public areas, a vital feature integral
architecture seeking the pure essence of materials. Casa a Pozzovetere, to their designs. Social housing designed by Bevk Perović includes the
a renovated family house entirely realised in local stone for instance, Zeleni Gaj in Ljubljana (1999, EU Mies Award 2003), which was one of
received the International Award Architecture in Stone in 2007 and the their first, marked by sequences of balconies that create loggias sunken
Special Honour of the German Natural Stone Award in 2011. behind the perimetral facade; and the 3-wing complex Dolgi Most (2016)
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts in Ljubljana, whose 30 apartments are laid out along an external corridor
to facilitate access by the disabled. Every decision related to form
represents a solution to an objective problem.
Valentina Croci

Small church, Gioia Sannitica, Italy, 1990 (photo Beniamino Servino) House D, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2008 (photo Miran Kambič)

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BIG Canali Associati

Partners Bjarke Ingels Group is a collective of architects, designers, builders Principal Guido Canali was born in Sala Baganza in the province of Parma in 1935.
Bjarke Ingels, Sheela Maini and thinkers based in Copenhagen and New York. While made up of 17 Guido Canali He is famous in Italy for his renewals of ancient architecture, starting
Søgaard, Kai-Uwe Bergmann, partners and 26 associates, it is difficult to isolate the activity of the in 1970 with the extension of the Galleria Nazionale, the 17th-century
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Thomas Christoffersen, Finn
group from the brilliant and flamboyant personality of founder Bjarke Francesco Canali, Paolo Simonetti stables and the Guazzatoio courtyard, all at Palazzo della Pilotta in
Nørkjær, David Zahle, Jakob Lange,
Ingels (Copenhagen, 1974), who demonstrates not only design ability (seniors) and 20/30 juniors Parma, where his renovation work on different parts of the complex
Andreas Klok Pedersen, Daniel
Sundlin, Jakob Sand, Brian Yang, that is out of the ordinary but also a way of communicating his identity, continued until 1991. In 2002, he transformed the former Santa Maria
Established in
Beat Schenk, Agustin Perez- and consequently that of the practice, using the language of the pop della Scala hospital in Siena into a museum. Rationality is central to his
1994
Torres, Martin Voelkle, Leon Rost, star – from teaser videos about current projects, a documentary film (Big work, which is stripped of all frills. Great strictness is found in the spatial
Catherine Huang and Ole Elkjær- Time by Kaspar Astrup Schröder, Denmark 2017) and careful planning Office
proportions of his designs, from museum displays to Prada factories. In
Larsen Parma, Italy
on Instagram (545,000 followers) that mixes construction sites and present-day Italy, where conservatives constantly criticise the relation
Associates evocative photographs with glimpses of private life. In the full-length between ancient and contemporary, Canali’s work – like that of Giancarlo
26 feature film we have open access to Bjarke’s creative process as well De Carlo in Urbino; Franco Albini in Genoa; and Carlo Scarpa in the
Staff as the vicissitudes of his personal life. In the background, the building Veneto region – demonstrates the possibility of marrying architecture
500+ that changed the New York skyline: the W57 residential complex in from different periods. Palazzo della Pilotta remains emblematic
Established in Manhattan (2016), a skyscraper characterised by its angled facades of Canali’s capacity to create interiors that offer a complete spatial
2005 and large, open internal courtyard. The development of a design by BIG experience. Spectators are immersed in an effective, theatrical staging
Offices often starts with the intersection of geometries and functions, such as of an important collection of paintings and sculptures.
Copenhagen, New York City, in the 8 Tallet, a huge residential-commercial complex of 61,000 square At Pilotta, he built architecture inside the architecture by inserting a
London metres (Ørestad in Copenhagen, 2009), that reinterprets housing blocks structure of white-lacquered scaffolding pipes, lending lightness to
by rotating the volumes on an 8 m plan and calibrating the inclination of the space. Paintings are displayed against wooden wall panels painted
www.big.dk
the floors in function of solar irradiation allowing people to cycle from neutral grey, hanging from the framework, creating a play of surfaces
the street up to the apartments on the tenth floor. The studio’s projects that fill the big gallery rooms. The pragmatism and airiness crafted
are many and different. Those currently under construction include: the by Canali in Parma are also seen in the factories he built for Prada,
Nuuk Stadium in Greenland, the super-fast transport system on wheels work environments laid out around internal gardens and luminous
Hyperloop One in Dubai, the multifunctional complex 670 Mesquit in Los patios. These production facilities are located in Montevarchi (Arezzo),
Angeles and the headquarters of Gruppo Sanpellegrino near Bergamo. Montegranaro (Ascoli Piceno) and Valvigna di Arezzo (2018).
To expand the internal skills and capacity to manage the design process Another Prada project is the Lamos shoe factory (1999) in Montevarchi,
independently, in 2017 the in-house BIG engineering department was Tuscany, where a central parallelepiped hosts the production hall.
set up, led by Duncan Horswill. This was followed by BIG ideas, created Grafted onto it are warehouses and offices whose transparent envelope
to extend the field of action to product design and the world of graphic is reminiscent of the Olivetti extension (1934–1936) in Ivrea designed by
design and IT, and BIG landscape, a division created in 2017. Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini.
Valentina Croci Emanuele Piccardo

Tirpitz Museum, Blavand, Denmark, 2017 (photo Rasmus Hjortshøj) Prada headquarters, Valvigna (Arezzo), Italy, 2018 (photo Alessandro Ciampi)

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Capella Garcia Arquitectura Caruso St John Architects

Principal Founded in 2001 in Barcelona by Juli Capella (Barcelona, 1960), with Principals Adam Caruso (Montreal, 1962) and Peter Saint John (London,
Juli Capella Miquel Garcia and designer Cristina Capella, Capella Garcia Arquitectura Adam Caruso, Peter St John, 1959) established their practice in London in 1990. Educated in the
is a flexibly generalist studio that sets out to push its creativity along the Rod Heyes (London); Michael cultural context of postmodernism, they soon developed a critical
Associates
Schneider, Florian Zierer (Zurich)
Juli Capella, Miquel Garcia, legendary “from the spoon to the city” pathway, but that primarily aims reinterpretation of both modernism and historical styles, formulating a
Cristina Capella at reversing the very logic of that pathway. The subtly iconoclastic and Associates design statement that has lasted through two decades now. In contrast
openly ironic attitude that accompanies their design thinking process, Nina Lundvall, Simon Davison, with the widespread domination of the open-plan space, Caruso St John
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Stephanie Webs, Timo Keller
Román Ávila, Lisardo Adán, manifests itself in all their projects, whatever the scale, in the direct uses the vertical linear element – the wall as an interface – to generate
(London); Adriana Mueller
Lorelay Gazo, Pamela Könsgen, dialogue it establishes with modern compositional and constructive architecture. A relationship between the building and the contemporary
Philipp Boenigk, Silvia Pfaffhauser,
Félix Lora Deborah Morales, aspects, often challenged by the insertion of surprising interpolations city is created by using the shapes and aesthetic assets of the
Thomas Wirz (Zurich)
Gerard Puig, Alejandro Raya
or even surreal nuances that deform the exactitude of that code. Capella surroundings. The firm specifically designs the wall interface to control
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Established in Garcia’s practice might therefore be less explicit and more subtle than the connection between outer space and inner functions, to regulate the
London 29; Zurich 43
2001 the 1970s postmodern approach – which has had an impact on their communication between house and city, shared and private living. Such
Established in
Office theoretical framework – but their output is certainly not less cultured studies turn the exterior envelope into intense and vital devices that
1990
Barcelona or pervasive. An approach that also reflects in the studio’s multifaceted master the experimentation, and sometimes the revival, of brick, stone
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activity and that of Juli Capella himself, who besides being an architect is and wood cladding, light-controlling masses and surfaces – see the
www.capellagarcia.com London, Zurich
also a journalist and an architecture and design theorist. Like the pli that floors and skylights of the firm’s recent spaces for art exhibitions.
for Deleuze epitomised the Baroque process, the architecture conceived www.carusostjohn.com The evolutionary trajectory of such exploration includes the Brick
by Capella Garcia usually incorporates a fold adding complexity and House (2001–2005) in London, where the wall interface is wide open
meaning to shape; a fold that at times is not only metaphorical. This is to contemporaneity; the strict facades of the mixed-use development
the case of Espai Ridaura (2007) for instance, a multi-purpose building in Europaallee Baufeld E (Zurich, 2007–2013); and the synthesis between
Santa Cristina d’Aro near Girona, whose shape seems to emerge from a five types of industrial building at Newport Street Gallery (London,
process of “ground-exfoliation”. Even more radical in this respect is the 2004–2015).
Hotel Omm in Barcelona (2003) whose façade is composed of stainless Caruso and Saint John were appointed by the Tate Britain in London to
steel prefabricated curved modules, like layers of tin curved by a giant redesign the interiors of the Millbank complex between 2006 and 2013.
can opener that let light into the rooms, but that primarily and powerfully Giovanni Comoglio
question the traditional notion of architectural ornament.
Guido Musante

Hotel Omm, Barcelona, Spain, 2003 (photo Wenzel) Bremer Landesbank, Bremen, Germany, 2016 (photo Hélène Binet)

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Cibic Workshop Cobe

Principal In Aldo Cibic (Schio, Italy, 1955), we recognise the Italian design tradition Principal Founded in 2006 by the architect Dan Stubbergaard (Copenhagen, 1974),
Aldo Cibic that enjoys tackling objects on diverse scales – alternative, visionary Dan Stubbergaard who used to work at MVRDV in Rotterdam and Plot in Copenhagen, the
Associates urban planning concepts like Microrealities (2004) and Rethinking Staff Cobe collective has designed large-scale urban projects and master
Chuck Felton, Diego Lucchini Happiness (2010), both of which were presented at the Architecture 130 plans, museums, schools, libraries, housing, stations and restaurants. In
Staff Biennale in Venice; interiors; and objects for De Castelli, Paola C. and Established in line with its progressive ideas for the urban development of Copenhagen,
Ljuba di Paolo, Martina Ortoleva, Venini. 2006 the firm is located in the post-industrial zone of Nordhavn, a 3.6 km2 port
Susanna Slossel Cibic aims to give his projects a soul, seeking vitality in the relation area currently undergoing metamorphosis according to a master plan by
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Established in with materials, the way rooms promote interpersonal contact, or in Copenhagen Cobe. The aim is to create houses and offices for 80,000 people in the
1989 (as Cibic & Partners) architecture that communicates with the existing surroundings. Having next 40–50 years.
been one of the initial partners in Sottsass Associati in 1980 and a www.cobe.dk “The city has become a 1:1 laboratory of our work in all scales, an
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Milan founding member of the Memphis group in 1981, Aldo Cibic has a extended living room where the boundaries between private and public
propensity for experimentation and a dynamic relation between space become fluid,” says Stubbergaard.
www.cibicworkshop.com and people, often by way of contrasting colours and materials, and Also in Nordhavn, there is an emblematic piece of work by Cobe: The Silo
eclectic cultural references. The above-mentioned urban planning (2017), a reinforced-concrete 17-floor structure formerly used for grain
concepts and the boutique hotel Savona 18 Suites (2017) located in the storage and now an apartment complex with art galleries and a rooftop
Navigli area of Milan show how he uses the built environment as a way to restaurant, making it an attractive destination for the entire city.
tell stories and catalyse moments of sharing in collective life. To further Cobe has just opened a cafe and bookshop on the ground floor of
a new awareness of public space, Cibic turned his office Cibic & Partners its office, wishing to create an in-between space where the line
(founded in 1989) into Cibic Workshop in 2010, where he conducts between work and leisure is blurred. It is a place for interpersonal
multidisciplinary research focused on the creation of sustainable exchange between citizens and architects, where you can take a look at
architectural designs that improve entire areas while stimulating our architectural models on display while enjoying a coffee.
cultural, emotive and ecological conscience. Aldo Cibic teaches at the From the triangular roof of the Red Cross Volunteer House (2017)
Milan Polytechnic, the IUAV in Venice and Domus Academy in Milan. in Copenhagen, which has become a sloping piazza, to the covered
He is an honorary professor at Tongji University in Shanghai. square for the Rond-point Robert Schuman in Brussels (yet to begin
Valentina Croci construction), which will turn a busily trafficked and anonymous part of
the city into a pedestrian area under a circular canopy, all Cobe projects
have in common a strong urban impact and a careful relation to the
human scale of the built environment.
Francesca Acerboni

Microrealities, 2004 (photo Andres Otero) Tingbjerg Library and Culture House, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2018 (photo Rasmus Hjortshøj/COAST)

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Counterspace David Chipperfield Architects

Principals Founded in Johannesburg in 2015 by the all-women team of South Principal Founded in 1985, David Chipperfield Architects is located in four cities:
Sumayya Vally, Sarah de Villiers, African designers Sumayya Vally (Pretoria, 1990), Amina Kaskar (Durban, David Chipperfield London, Berlin, Milan and Shanghai. Whether designing new-built,
Amina Kaskar 1990) and Sarah de Villiers (Johannesburg, 1990), Counterspace offers large-scale architecture from the ground up such as the Amorepacific
Partners/Directors
Staff a heterogeneous range of services: architecture exhibition design, Benito Blanco, Libin Chen, headquarters (2010–2017) in Seoul; or renovations of historic buildings
Sarah Harding, Tarika Pather, art installation visualisation, public events curation and urban design. Christoph Felger, Harriet Miller, such as the Neues Museum (1993–2009) in Berlin; or household products
Adam Osman Projects begin with the cultural, social and environmental matrix of Harald Müller, Martin Reichert, for Alessi, the practice’s work seeks simplicity, uses quality materials
Billy Prendergast, Eva Schad,
Established in the city where their adventure began, Johannesburg. At Counterspace, and connects to the vernacular.
Alexander Schwarz,
2015 professional practice and conceptual research mainly concern the Chipperfield is attentive to the relationship between building and
Giuseppe Zampieri
Office exploration and deepening of inclusivity, otherness and future. Working context, and expresses it in a visual language that is compatible with
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Johannesburg at a crossroads of disciplines, Vally, Kaskar and de Villiers activate each the identity of the location. His architecture is neither minimalist nor
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new initiative by extracting from the complex substrate of Johannesburg classifiable as a specific style; if anything, it derives from the search for
www.counterspace-studio.com Established in value in each single structural element by means of a reduction process.
the primary codes needed to develop a design language that is properly
1985
African. This operation sometimes attains alchemical connotations. His architecture is never self-referential, but is inserted in a process
The outdoor installation Folded Skies (2018-2019) in Stellenbosch, Offices of rehabilitation and interpretation of the surroundings. Two examples
for example, was inspired by the iridescent qualities of South African London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai of his work in Berlin are paradigmatic: the refurbishment of the Neue
cities and landscapes, which is sometimes heightened by the chemical Nationalgalerie (2012–2019), where he rose to the challenge of the
www.davidchipperfield.com
compounds in the cities’ mining dust. Counterspace applied those same original building from 1968 by Mies van der Rohe, and the 19th-century
pigment compounds (copper, aluminium, cobalt and ferrous oxide) to Neues Museum (1993–2009), where the contemporary architecture
large metal disks that capture the vivid, changing hues of South African followed the guidelines of the Charter of Venice, respecting the historical
light from sunrise to sunset. Then there is “Play Africa Maker” (2018), structure in its different states of preservation, filling in the gaps and
a playful exhibit to promote creativity in children. A diverse set of reshaping the functions without competing with the existing structure.
materials and colours provides children with modular shapes with which Chipperfield is much loved by fashion houses, too. He began with Issey
they can build creatures and settings. Easy to reconfigure, the set can Miyake and has worked with Bally and Brioni, as well as designing the
be transported by truck and reassembled in rural and urban areas to many Valentino boutiques around the world, including the majestic
function as an element of congregation for communities, somewhat like one on Fifth Avenue in New York. More recently, Chipperfield designed
a small city. Ssense, an online fashion platform with a global presence.
Guido Musante Valentina Croci

Ndebele Landscape, Johannesburg, 2018 (photo Counterspace) Neues Museum, Berlin, Germany, 2009 (photo Ute Zscharnt/David Chipperfield Architects)

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Diener & Diener Architekten Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Principals Roger Diener (Basel, 1950) and his father Marcus founded Diener & Partners Founded in 1981 by Elisabeth Diller (Lodz, Poland, 1954) and Ricardo
Roger Diener, Terese Erngaard Diener Architekten in 1980. It currently employs 75 professionals. Since Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Scofidio (New York City, 1935), this multi-disciplinary practice is
(since 2011), Andreas Rüedi (since 2011, Roger Diener and his associates Terese Erngaard (Denmark, 1962), Charles Renfro, Benjamin Gilmartin involved in architecture, town-planning, art installations and multimedia
2011), Michael Roth (since 2011)
Andreas Rüedi (Basel, 1958) and Michael Roth (Basel, 1971) have been Associates performance. In 2004 Charles Renfro (Baytown, Texas, 1964) became a
Staff directing the firm’s two offices in Basel, Switzerland and Berlin. Work 24 partner and their name changed to Diller Scofidio + Renfro; they now
75 ranges from urban housing and offices to commercial buildings and have over a hundred employees and, since 2015, another new partner
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Established in universities. One of the fields in which Diener & Diener has the most approximately 100 Benjamin Gilmartin (Poland, 1970). DF + R is known for the High Line
1980 experience is the design of architecture as annexes to important pre- (New York, 2014), a public park almost two kilometres long built on the
Established in
Offices existing buildings. The firm considers architecture to be independent 1981 site of an abandoned railway line. This project, along with the piazza
Basel, Berlin from all other disciplines, a line of thought (found in the writings and and the Infoscape at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts in New York
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conferences held by Roger Diener) that originates in the legacies of New York City (2009-2010) focuses on public space as a tool not only for repairing the
www.dienerdiener.com Aldo Rossi, Luigi Snozzi, the “scuola ticinese di architettura”, and urban fabric but also for redesigning the flows and rhythms of the people
Marcus Diener. In buildings, this translates to simple shapes marked www.dsrny.com of the city. Another non-typical building is The Shed (New York, under
by rhythmically placed solids and voids. In Basel, see the building on construction) a centre for performing arts developed over 18,000 square
Hochstrasse (1988), the office building on Steinentorberg (1990) and the metres. Along with highly flexible interior spaces, it has a telescopic
Warteckhof complex (1996). In Amsterdam, see the giant housing project roof that moves on wheels across the adjoining piazza, doubling the
(2001) in the East harbour linking the KNSM and Java islands. In Zurich, area of the building for large-scale open-air events. Also designed
see the Swiss Re headquarters (2017), whose volume and undulating with the emphasis on functional flexibility is the refurbishment and
glass facade are an abstract dialogue with the historic Swiss Re building extension of around a third of the volume of Museum of Modern Art in
next door. All these designs show the inclination to distil and employ the New York (2019), which will optimise the existing spaces making them
tight relations between historical traditions, material characteristics and more adaptable and technologically sophisticated, create relaxation
classic building types, leading to results that are firmly rooted in their areas for visitors and connect the museum better to the urban fabric of
specific location. In other cases, the firm applies models from the past to Manhattan. Their design work is connected to their artistic research,
give projects “objective” rationality. See the three-aisled structure of the where installation becomes a means for the space to be perceived in a
Migros shopping centre (2000) in Lucerne, which emulates the building more emotional way. This can be seen in two very different works: Blur
type common to basilicas or market halls. For the Swiss embassy Building (Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland, 2002), a metal structure where
extension (2001) in Berlin, Diener & Diener looked to the Göteborg City the water vaporised from the lake has been transformed into a cloud; and
Hall extension (1936) by Gunnar Asplund and the Tristan Tzara house Exit, an installation that dynamically visualises human migration across
(1926) by Adolf Loos in Paris. Yet for Diener & Diener Architekten, the the globe (2008-ongoing).
grounding of projects in historical tradition does not mean refusing Valentina Croci
contemporaneity. The extension for the art centre PasquArt (1999) in
Biel, Switzerland; the Foksal Gallery Foundation (2014) in Warsaw; and
the extension of the Aarau City Museum (2015) are cases in point.
Gabriella Lo Ricco

Stadtmuseum, Aarau, Switzerland, 2015 (photo Walter Mair) High Line, New York City, 2014 (photo Julien Lanoo)

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Dominique Perrault Edge Design Institute


Architecture

Principal Architect and urban planner, Dominique Perrault (Clermont-Ferrand, Principals It would be difficult to be born in Hong Kong and not deal with the
Dominique Perrault France, 1953) was just 36 years old when he won the competition for the Gary Chang issues of living in compressed space and of the relationship between
Associates National Library of France which granted him worldwide recognition. Staff intimacy and exchange. Born in 1962 in this city where he founded his
Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost Recipient of the Mies van der Rohe Prize in 1996, in 2010 he was awarded 16 studio Edge Design Institute in 1994, Gary Chang has worked to rethink
(art director, designer) the honorary gold medal of the French Academy of Architecture and traditional definitions of the house or, rather, the potentialities and the
Established in
Staff named the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Laureate for Architecture. 1994 limitations of flexible space. So it’s revealing that the project-manifesto
50 Perrault’s approach to architecture is highly nuanced: his projects show of both his professional career and life is his own house. Realised in
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Established in a very simple syntax, yet a very rich morphology. For the EWHA Womans Hong Kong 2007 and renamed Domestic Transformer, the apartment measures 30
1981 University in South Korea (2008), Perrault cut the landscape in two, square metres or, more correctly, 90 cubic metres (4 x 8 x 2,5 m), and
creating a promenade leading to the entrance of the Campus Centre. www.edgedesign.com.hk is conceived as a dynamic device capable of multiple transformations
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Paris, Madrid, Geneva In this project Perrault blurs construction and topography, fitting the according to the varying needs. This new cabanon not only embodies
campus centre inside the sloping hills. His idea is to create not an iconic an investigation that has involved Chang since childhood but also
www.perraultarchitecture.com building that goes up, but a landscape-sensitive architecture that goes develops, right down to the most minute details, a prototype for the
down, in a seamless fusion with the setting. The result is memorable compact house (for which he himself is the “test subject”) that can be
with Perrault’s statement project clearly expressing the institution’s adjusted to different conditions of the contemporary city’s tight space.
commitment to the future, to its heritage, to the environment, and to its Nevertheless in Chang’s vision the house mustn’t be perfectly ordered,
students. For the Vienna DC Tower (2016) project, Perrault was asked because it is precisely the lack of total control that constitutes the very
to add a last piece to the master plan of the so-called Danube City essence of domesticity. The four cardinal elements of Edge – change,
initiated by Hans Hollein. For Perrault, the heart of the city lies within choice, connection, coexistence – consider every type of space, not
its renowned Ringstrasse – a circular road completed in the mid-19th only the domestic one, as a more or less extended portion of the city;
century punctuated with Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Baroque, Neo-Gothic and so these four features can operate for a one-person apartment
monuments and later with iconic Viennese Secession buildings. Vienna, measuring 30 square metres as well as for a large house designed for a
however, has expanded beyond its historical centre and therefore small community. The Suitcase House, built in 2003 in the vicinity of the
Perrault’s project tries to relate to its historical heritage through a Great Wall, not far from Beijing, combines architecture with an object
building that reinterprets its atmosphere: a black shimmering 60-storey of use, transforming a collective habitation into a sort of oblong piece
monolith mixed tower whose design evokes the flow of the Danube River. of furniture with a great many compartments intended for everyday
For the Longchamp Racecourse (2018) project, Perrault conceived a activities of a more or less individual or collective nature.
structure able to accommodate the 60,000 spectators of the renowned Guido Musante
Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe but also the much smaller audiences that
come to the racecourse on normal days. This framework inspired him
to imagine a flexible architecture, partly intimate partly grand with
elongated floors conveying a sense of movement, an asymmetric
cantilevered structure, and shining gold finish on the facade: a triumph of
dynamism celebrated by a masterly use of light volumes.
Salvator-John Liotta

Longchamp Racecourse, Paris, 2018 (photo Michel Denancé/Dominique Perrault) Suitcase House, Commune by the Great Wall, Beijing, China, 2003 (photo Edge Design)

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El Equipo Mazzanti Elemental

Principal Founded by Giancarlo Mazzanti (Barranquilla, 1963) in 1993 in Bogotá, Principal Elemental is a “do tank” founded in Providencia, Chile, in 2001 and is
Giancarlo Mazzanti Colombia, El Equipo Mazzanti (EEM) works on projects that have a Alejandro Aravena led by 2016 Pritzker Prize winner, Alejandro Aravena (Santiago, Chile,
Staff strong tie to the social and political environment in which they are Associates 1957) together with partners Gonzalo Arteaga, Juan Cerda, Victor Oddó
39 inserted. Mazzanti has a systemic view of designing architecture and Diego Torres, Juan Cerda, and Diego Torres. Not a think tank therefore, but a group that aims to
seeks the contribution of urban planners, sociologists and artists in Gonzalo Arteaga, Victor Oddo take action through architecture, in which the architect is a mediator
Established in
1993 his projects. He is convinced that studying the relations and behaviour Staff between technical, social and political processes. Paradigmatic is the
buildings activate is an opportunity to better define them and make their 10 housing project at Iquiqui (2005), where, at a cost of 7,500 US dollars per
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Bogotá results more valuable. For Mazzanti, architecture is a means to trigger Established in unit, corresponding to the government subsidy for the purchase of the
communication mechanisms that provoke and produce new dynamic 2001 site, the planning fees and construction costs, 93 families participated
www.elequipomazzanti.com interaction. in both the construction of the houses and the altering of the plots,
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This approach is seen in the Marinilla Educational Park (2015) erected on Santiago conceived with a part to be completed based on the needs of individual
a hill in a residential quarter of Marinilla. It samples the building tradition families. Elemental does not design finished objects but an “open
of the favelas located around Colombian metropolises. Opening like an www.elementalchile.cl system” of incremental housing models, able to respond to continual
urban piazza, the park is meant to transmit vernacular culture. change. Another example of this type is the social housing complex Villa
For the España Library (2005) in Medellín, an industrial city in the Verde (Constitución, Maule Region, 2010), half of which is a built house
mountainous state of Antioquia known for being a drug-trafficking (40 square metres) with the other half available for extension, in such
centre, Mazzanti created a fascinating and mysterious-looking a way as to respond to the needs of families with different incomes.
landscape-building. Composed of faceted volumes similar to the Aravena has also designed major public buildings such as the Innovation
surrounding mountains, the complex is not merely formal play, but Centre Anacleto Angelini in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
operational “geography” that melds architecture with the surroundings. (Santiago, 2014), where he built the faculty of Medicine (2004), the
The three great blocks dominate the city from above like the peaks of the School of Architecture (2004) and the Faculty of Mathematics (1999),
Andes. They symbolise emerging culture, one that will lead to the rebirth focussing on low energy consumption for the buildings and the creation
of the city through urban transformation. of convivial areas. More recently, the Bovartis Campus Shanghai (2017),
A theme seen in EEM architecture is that of the module used as a explores different ways of working – individual, collective, formal and
component to generate form by adding, stacking and connecting. informal – to encourage interaction between users.
The sports centre Escenarios Deportivos (Medellín, 2009) designed with Valentina Croci
Plan:b arquitectos uses a module to create the entire complex: a large
bent beam used as a structural roof element. It is varied by lengthening,
rising and shortening according to the needed space and its desired
shape. The result is a complex organism of four sports buildings whose
green-painted geometric waves integrate perfectly with the mountainous
landscape of the city.
Francesca Acerboni

Marinilla Educational Park, Medellín, Colombia, 2015 (photo Rodrigo Davila) Incremental Housing Complex, Yungai, Chile, 2016 (photo Elemental)

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EM2N Estudio Teddy Cruz +


Fonna Forman

Principals One is met with surprise when looking at the profile of EM2N – an Principals Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman is a cross-discipline practice
Mathias Müller, Daniel Niggli architecture practice with offices in Zurich and Berlin founded by Teddy Cruz, Fonna Forman that combines architectural research, political theory and urban policy
Associates Mathias Müller (Zurich, 1966) and Daniel Niggli (Olten, Switzerland, Staff as a means for social transformation. It blurs conventional academic
Bernd Druffel, Fabian Hörmann, 1970) – on reading their declaration of attack, something decidedly out Jonathan Maier, Marcello Maltagliati, boundaries, mediating between top-down institutions and bottom-up
Verena Lindenmayer, Björn Rimner, of the ordinary: “We aim to produce powerful and personal architecture, Dario Guazzo, Paúl Moscoso initiatives. Founded in 2011 in San Diego, California by Teddy Cruz,
Gerry Schwyter, Christof Zollinger that can be loved or hated but towards which one should never be a Guatemala-born architect and urbanist, professor of public culture
Established in
Staff indifferent”. This combative tone betrays the duo’s strong fascination 2011 and urbanism at the University of California – and Fonna Forman, a
60 with the avant-garde: not so much on an expressive level but rather on professor of political theory and the founding director of the Center on
Office
Established in a theoretical one. Children of the post-idealist generation born between San Diego, California Global Justice at the University of California, San Diego – the studio
1997 the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, Müller and Niggli leads a variety of socially engaged programmes. These include the Civic
state that they do not associate themselves with a single great truth but estudioteddycruz.com Innovation Lab and the UCSD Cross-Border Initiative. The latter rethinks
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Zurich, Berlin find rather in the fractures of reality a terrain to which they can anchor public space and civic activities through cooperation with marginalised
their architecture. A declaration that is partly surprising because their communities living on both sides of the USA-Mexico border. Using this
www.em2n.ch codes of expression appear at first sight to be decidedly affirmative, the area (specifically the region of San Diego and Tijuana) as a research
www.em2n.de
outcome of controlled procedures defined in every detail. And above all, ground, Cruz + Forman have theorised the concept of the Political
a long way off from Robert Venturi, assumed by the two designers as Equator, an imaginary line along the border that extends across the
their initial conceptual reference. Nonetheless it is not a communality world, highlighting an area of global conflicts where conditions of
with the figurative aspects of the author of Learning from Las Vegas that social and economic emergency could lead to new cultural responses.
should be considered, rather the revolutionary relationship with the city Their work has been exhibited worldwide, receiving The James Stirling
that his thinking established, liberating itself from dogma and opening Memorial Lecture On The City Prize (2004-2005). “Mexus: A Geography
up to the possibility of comparison with the urban landscape. When one of Interdependence” was exhibited at the US pavilion at the 2018 Venice
looks, for example, at the conversion of the gigantic former dairy Toni- Architecture Biennale, stressing an idea of citizenship grounded in
Areal in Zurich (2014) the doubt arises as to whether one is looking at a environmental solidarity and ecological goals shared by neighbouring
building or a piece of the city. The same question can be posed in a very countries.
different context, both on an urban level and a volumetric one, as in the Marianna Guernieri
refurbishment of an old farm at Cham, in Switzerland (2014). The decision
to intercept the elements of transformation over time of the Hammergut
complex in order to reinterpret them in a new evolutionary phase makes
the architecture similar to an organism, but also to a city on a small
scale. And, as in every kind of evolution, the results can be imagined but
never predicted with absolute certainty.
Guido Musante

Toni-Areal, Zurich, Switzerland, 2014 (photo Filip Dujardin) Mexus and the Cross-Border Commons, US-Mexico border, 2018

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FCJZ Fernanda Canales


Arquitectura

Principals Trained as an architect in Berkeley, California in the early 1980s, Chinese Principal Among the distinguishing features of the work of Fernanda Canales
Yung Ho Chang and Lijia Lu architect Yung Ho Chang (Beijing, 1956) founded the Beijing-based Fernanda Canales (Mexico City, 1974) is the way she has continually combined the practice
Associate Atelier FCJZ together with his partner Lijia Lu back in 1993. Known as Staff of architect and designer with that of architectural critic and curator,
Liang Xiaoning China’s first independent architectural firm, Atelier FCJZ looks at design Guillermo Acosta exploring in particular the nature of Mexican design. Having trained with
Staff from a cross-disciplinary perspective, exploring subjects as diverse Established in Toyo Ito in Tokyo and Ignasi de Solà-Morales in Barcelona, she seems
26 as furniture design, theatre costumes, architecture and urbanism. 2008 to translate the disruptive and innovative approach of the former with
Crystallised in a major retrospective entitled “Yung Ho Chang + FCJZ: the capacity of the latter to sink the roots of design into the depths of
Established in Office
1993 Material-ism”, presented at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Mexico City history and culture. It would therefore be a mistake to attempt to read
Beijing (2012), Yung Ho Chang’s architectural vision focuses on research her expressive language as the umpteenth native interpretation of the
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and craft. Distilling a sense of belonging in each of his designs, the www.fernandacanales.com themes inscribed by universal modernity. The work of Fernanda Canales
Beijing, Shanghai
architect takes advantage of any resource available on a local scale moves more in parallel with respect to these two polarities: all of her
www.fcjz.com (bamboo, rammed earth,...fibreglass), seeing no contradictions in the architecture can thus be observed indifferently as local or international,
use of both old and new technologies. Such versatility in the choice of without the former affirmation containing vernacular certainties, or the
materials has led Atelier FCJZ to conceive contemporary yet eclectic latter generic asepsis. Casa Bruma in the Valle de Bravo, not far from
structures. Among the many projects developed by the studio, are the Mexico City (2017), for example, evokes recollections of some of the
Jishou Art Museum, composed of two bridges one on top of another cornerstones of living such as Casa Bunker and La Maddalena by Cini
(2018), the brutalist looking Museum-bridge (Anren, China, 2009), which Boeri in 1967 or Seijo TownHouses in Tokyo by Kazuyo Sejima in 2008.
stands as both a museum dedicated to the Chinese Great Cultural In all three projects, the deconstruction of the “mother” unit of the
Revolution period and a pedestrian bridge over a river, and the Vertical traditional house generates a new idea of open living, but while in rough
Glass House, a conceptual building merging a solid concrete envelop concrete Casa Bruma retains a massive force belonging to Sardinian
with an interior composed of transparent ceilings and walls, built on the nuraghe as much as to pre-Columbian architecture, from Sejima it has
occasion of the first edition of the West Bund Biennale of Architecture absorbed the interpretation of the house as a small city and family as
and Contemporary Art (Shanghai, 2013). Internationally acclaimed, a variable community. Already in 2012, with the design of the Elena
Yung Ho Chang was a member of the Pritzker Prize Jury between 2011 Garro Cultural Centre at Coyoacán, Canales demonstrated a remarkable
and 2017 and currently teaches architecture at the MIT in Cambridge, capacity to articulate history and stories with great agility, bringing out
Massachusetts. the essence without flattening it. The extension of a villa from the early
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts 20th century presents itself on the main elevation as a heroic cornice in
cantilevered concrete, that recalls the wonder of an interior as protected
as it is exposed, behind a simple large continuous element of glazing.
Guido Musante

Jishou Art Museum, Jishou, China, 2018 (photo Tian Fangfang) Bruma House, Valle de Bravo, Mexico, 2017 (photo Rafael Gamo)

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Forensic Architecture Foster + Partners

Principal What do drones, explosions, shipwrecks and environmental crimes have Principal The history of Lord Norman Foster as an architect and the founder
Eyal Weizman to do with architecture? The Forensic Architecture research laboratory Norman Foster of Foster+Partners is one that crosses all design scales and many
Staff uses architecture in support of justice and truth with an unusual Associates disciplines. His firm is one of the most important of the post-World
27 combination of technology, visual arts and investigative journalism, Spencer de Grey, David Nelson, War II era.
employing spatial analysis as a tool to study conflicts and crimes from an Grant Brooker, David Summerfield, Born in Manchester, UK in 1935, he founded Foster Associates (later
Established in
unprecedented perspective. Luke Fox, Stefan Behling, F+P) in London in 1967 after obtaining a master’s degree in architecture
2011
Gerard Evenden, Nigel Dancey,
The interdisciplinary think-tank was founded by Israeli architect and at Yale University in Connecticut in 1961–’62. Ever since, he has been
Office Matthew Streets
London (at Goldsmiths University) intellectual Eyal Weizman (Haifa, Israel, 1970) in 2010 and is based at exploring technology and form as an integrated system with which to
Staff answer all design requests – infrastructure, public buildings of diverse
Goldsmiths, University of London. The group works with international
1,375
www.forensic-architecture.org institutions and NGOs – such as the United Nations, Amnesty types, urban planning and industrial design, in the spirit of the American
International and Human Rights Watch – to investigate human rights Established in architect Richard Buckminster Fuller and his techno-spatial matrixes.
abuses and injustices by corporations or state governments. 1967 Foster was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1999. His use of materials
Presented over the years at biennials and cultural institutions around the Offices ranges from concrete, glass and light metals (the Carré d’Art in Nîmes,
world, Forensic Architecture’s work brings together data, maps, official London, Abu Dhabi, Bangkok, 1993) to wooden shingles (the Chesa Futura apartment building in St
documents, material research, photographs and audio-visual recordings. Beijing, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Moritz, Switzerland, 2004). Foster+Partners is a global design company
Hong Kong, Madrid, New York City,
Their installations produce a visual synthesis of collected evidence and providing integrated design services under a broad network of consulting
San Francisco, Shanghai, Singapore
create correlations in order to make complex analyses and hidden truths partnerships. Its main focus is the production of large public buildings
comprehensible. www.fosterandpartners.com that deal directly with history, forming a framework of infrastructural
Exhibited in 2018 at the nomadic art biennial Manifesta 12 in Palermo, milestones (the Millau Viaduct in France, 2004; Beijing Capital
Forensic Oceanography is one of the London collective’s most current International Airport, 2008). Mediations between technology and heritage
and relevant researches: a critical, spatial and aesthetic investigation are represented by the Great Court at the British Museum in London
on Mediterranean Sea migrations in which the two authors, Lorenzo (2000); the redevelopment of the Freie Universität Berlin (2005), which
Pezzani and Charles Heller, analysed and represented the direct effects respects the legacy of Team X; and the Apple stores located at the core
of European policies on the ongoing migratory catastrophe occurring of urban and architectural identities of American and European cities.
on the southern border of the Union, the legal disputes between nation Giovanni Comoglio
states and the NGOs that help migrants, and reconstructed in detail a
shipwreck in which 63 people lost their lives.
Forensic Architecture therefore not only experiments with new forms of
documentation within the fields of international law and politics, but also
operates as a laboratory inspiring debate and personal mobilisation on
some of the main issues of our time.
Salvatore Peluso

Sheik Hassan site, Iraq, 2018 (courtesy of Forensic Architecture) Maggie’s, Robert Parfett Building, Manchester, England, 2016 (Nigel Young/Foster + Partners)

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Francesca Torzo architetto Frida Escobedo

Principal Among the young Italian designers who look more deeply at things, Principal “You don’t create space by constructing a building but with research,
Francesca Torzo Francesca Torzo (Padua, 1975) interprets the lessons in history from the Frida Escobedo representation, legislation, exhibitions.” The youngest architect to be
Staff IUAV in Venice by perceiving architecture as a powerful medium, able to Staff appointed a Serpentine Pavilion (2018), Frida Escobedo (Mexico City,
Marco Guerra, Antoine Lebot magnetise data and emotions and to connect worlds, stories and cultures Federica Lombardi, Yetzi Tafoya, 1979) explores the social and human aspects of space: occupation,
(senior collaborators); Liaohui Guo, that are seemingly distant from one another. A small construction detail, José María Gómez de León, spontaneous appropriation, relationship among users, participation and
Anna Opiz, Pablo Brenas the nuance of a cladding material or the sound of steps in space are Gustavo Silva,Mads Bjørn encounter. Her projects reveal the authenticity of materials as they are,
Christiansen, Héctor Arce,
Established in thus all elements able to resound in memory as well as draw on the focusing on interaction. Her specific approach is best expressed in her
Matthew Kennedy (architects)
2008 humus of cities, recalling deep-seated recollections as well as projecting boldest piece of work, the renovation of La Tallera (2012) in the city of
Daniela Ramírez (design and
Office themselves into future languages. As the architect herself points out, it communication) Cuernavaca. What used to be the atelier of the Mexican muralist David
Genoa, Italy is the recognition of these relationships, able to reawaken memories of Ixchel Abarca (administration) Alfaro Siqueiros was transformed into a public space where Escobedo
other spaces, beyond the form and the material, that allow us to access Established in used traditional latticework to outline the building’s functions and
www.francescatorzo.it rearrange the facilities. Trees were left untouched and two gigantic
experiences lived by us or others. The job of the architect, therefore, 2006
is a discipline of observation and reflection, towards the primary murals hidden in a closed patio were rotated to create an open piazza.
Office
relationships that underlie the slow phenomena of human culture. Mexico City Her conceptual work on time, authenticity and interaction is seen in
A “slow design” that is expressed well, for example, in the Z33 museum public works such as the Plaza Civica (2013) in Lisbon and the pavilion
for contemporary art, recently completed in the Belgian city of Hasselt. fridaescobedo.com at the Museo Experimental El Eco (2010) in Mexico City. Escobedo was
The two-storey building incorporates the existing building Vleugel ’58 raised in Mexico City, and spent a good part of her life in the Chimalistac
and the result is an extension made up of a series of rooms of different neighbourhood, surrounded by the legacy of Luis Barragán. After training
sizes, proportions and atmospheres, directly connected to one another. at the Universidad Iberoamericana, she spent several years working as an
The complexity of the labyrinthine spatial layout recalls the multiplicity architect before obtaining a master’s degree in art, design and the public
of experiences encountered when moving through a city, in a continuous domain at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2003 she opened
intermediation between public and private, exposure and intimacy. her first studio, PerroRojo (“red dog”) with Alejandro Alarcón, where they
In the same way, the brick facade sets up a sensitive dialogue not only worked on small assignments regarding the reactivation of abandoned
with the construction traditions of the place but with the colour and urban areas. In 2006 she began her own Taller de Arquitectura with five
physical variations of a material connected to temperature, light and the architects, one administrator and three interns. Her work includes private
nuances of the sky. houses, community centres, art venues, hotels, exhibition design and
Guido Musante publications, all designed in parallel to teaching at institutions such as
Columbia University, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the
Architectural Association in London. Interested in empty spaces and
real estate speculation, she is currently working on ruins and the cultural
representation of the past.
Marianna Guernieri

Z33, Hasselt, Belgium, 2019 (photo Gion Balthasar von Albertini/Francesca Torzo Architetto) La Tallera, Cuernavaca, 2012 (photo Rafael Gamo)

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Gabinete de Arquitectura Gehry Partners

Principals Gabinete de Arquitectura, specialised in architectural design and Partners The American architect Philip Johnson had no doubts about Frank
Solano BenÍtez, Gloria Cabral industrial design, began in 1987 in Asunción, Paraguay. It is directed by Frank Gehry (founder), Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao: it was no less than “the greatest
Solano Benítez (Asunción, 1963), Gloria Cabral (São Paulo, Brazil, 1982). John Bowers, Jennifer Ehrman, building of our time”. Completed in 1997, it was a disruptive project in
Established in
Berta Gehry, Meaghan Lloyd,
1987 Work by Gabinete de Arquitectura is intimately linked to the climatic, many respects. Not only did it reverse the fortunes of the Spanish city
David Nam, Tensho Takemori,
Office political and economic context of the place where it is built. In most Laurence Tighe, Craig Webb struggling with post-industrial conversion, but it importantly suggested
Asunción, Paraguay cases, the firm uses modest materials such as stone, brick and recycled an unprecedented connection between architecture, planning and
Associates
rubble that are chosen less for their technical and constructional urban marketing. The “Guggenheim effect” was something many cities
55
www.gabdearq.com qualities than for being economic and widely available in Paraguay. the world over relied on in the following decades to enhance their
Staff attractiveness, and Gehry became a beloved interpreter of this new
Spaces of great height, buildings with very few apertures and the habit
153
of adding sun-screens to open-air passages adjacent to buildings are all phenomenon.
design devices perfectly suited to the Paraguayan climate. The Unilever Established in Born in Toronto in 1929, Frank O. Gehry was a leading figure of the
building (Villa Elisa, 2001); la Casa Las Anitas (Santañí, 2008); the 1962 deconstructivist movement when Johnson and Mark Wigley included
children’s rehabilitation centre Teletón (Lambaré, 2010); the barbeque Office him in the exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” they curated at the
gazebo Quincho Tía Coral (Asunción, 2015); and the installation Breaking Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1988. He is a virtuoso of parametric
the Siege (winner of the Golden Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale) show design, a Pritzker Prize winner (1989), and has built countless iconic
www.foga.com
the firm’s capacity to turn pragmatic necessities into opportunities buildings including the Chiat/Day “binoculars building” in Venice, Los
while refining novel visual languages and exploring fresh qualities for Angeles (1991, with artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen),
habitation. Such particularities are obtained through the experimental, the “Fred and Ginger” Dancing House in Prague (1996), the Beekman
expressive use of materials and the inventive ideation of structures that Tower in New York (2011) and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de
can be made by unskilled labour. Boulogne, Paris (2014).
Work by Gabinete speaks of the virtues of handwork, patience, care, low More than half a century after establishing his practice in Los Angeles
cost, deep thought and ingeniousness. The firm pursues these values in 1962, Gehry remains controversial. Legend has it that on an infamous
with a twofold aim to improve local living conditions in Paraguay, and morning in the early 1990s, he dealt a hammer blow to the walls of his
to accomplish poetic outdoor surroundings protected by extraordinary bathroom at his Santa Monica house in order to make it brighter. True or
membranes of openwork brick, or indoor spaces enriched with textures false, it is just an example of the brilliant, whimsical attitude of an artist
composed of different materials and singular volumetric shapes. who embodies better than most the multiple meanings of the widely
Gabriella Lo Ricco misused neologism starchitect.
Alessandro Benetti

Breaking the Siege, Venice, Italy, 2016 (photo Francesco Galli/La Biennale di Venezia) Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, California, 2003 (courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP)

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Glenn Murcutt Gonçalo Byrne Arquitectos

Principal Born in London in 1936 to Australian parents, Glenn Murcutt grew up in Principal Relation to landscape, urban continuity, the city as an element integral to
Glenn Murcutt New Guinea but trained as an architect at the University of New South Gonçalo Byrne the landscape, recontextualisation of disempowered areas, public space,
Wales in Sydney. He established his practice in 1969 preferring since Staff preservation of the city’s time-layered identity, architecture as an agent
Established in
the beginning, to focus on small-scale realisations and project-based 15 for transformation: these are the preoccupations of the architect Gonçalo
1969
collaborations instead of developing a large architecture studio. Having Established in Byrne (Alcobaça, Portugal, 1941). He believes there is a vital notion
Office a one-man office has enabled Murcutt to continue experimenting with 1991 underlying each city, originating in its past and its ever-changing present,
Sidney
natural elements, materials, light and shapes in every project. From his and architecture can find its place within this process. The intention
Office
first building, the Marie Short House in Kempsey, Australia (1974-1975), Lisbon behind his proposal for the assembly space at the Sanctuary of Our Lady
to the Berowra Waters Inn, a restaurant located in Berowra Waters of Fátima (Fátima, Portugal, 1998) was to contain and almost nullify
close to the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Australia (1983), and www.goncalobyrnearquitectos.com volume. He created an accessible roof, a place of wonder, by ritualising
more recently the Australian Islamic Centre in Melbourne (2016) – in the approach to the sanctuary and avoiding a rupture in terms of visual
collaboration with Elevli Plus Architects – his approach has always been continuity and scale between the Paul VI Centre and the Sanctuary. The
profoundly inspired by his early readings. It was thanks to his father’s invisibility of the project reflects and reveals the sacredness of the place
encouragement that he discovered Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth while offering a solution of extraordinary continuity with the city and
House (1951), but also the reflexions of American writer Henry David the landscape. Another key project is Byrne’s Maritime Traffic Control
Thoreau about living a simple life, at the heart of which architecture Tower in the Port of Lisbon. Rooted in the landscape, this construction
plays a central role. Masters such as Alvar Aalto, Luis Barragán and Frank is part of a temporal and symbolic matrix given by the constructions and
Lloyd Wright – whose work he became familiar with during his extensive monuments that have accumulated over the years, punctuating the Tagus
travels – also played an important role in defining his architectural vision. riverbank and marking temporal stages along the Vasco da Gama Bridge.
Infused by the idea of an architecture that is profoundly rooted in the Gonçalo Byrne is an architect who works with time and space dilation.
natural landscape and that embraces Australia’s climates, topographies His project for the Machado de Castro National Museum of Coimbra
and vernacular practices, Murcutt develops buildings that literally blend (1999-2013) was awarded the 2014 Piranesi Prix de Rome. It is based
into their environments. This respectful and sensitive approach granted on a solid relation between the past (represented by the exhibits) and
him the Alvar Aalto Medal in 1992 and, ten years later, the Pritzker Prize, the contemporary quality of the museum. It offers a new vision of this
making him the first Australian architect to be recognised at such a level. historic location, adjusting to the scale of historical context, a setting
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts that possesses over two millennia of sedimentation. Throughout his
career, Gonçalo Byrne has conceived his buildings on a scale of time
and urbanity. His current project for the Cité de la Musique in Geneva is
inspired by balance, formal awareness and elegance.
Fabienne Louyot

Australian Islamic Centre, Melbourne, Australia, 2016 (photo Gene Kehoe) Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, Coimbra, Portugal, 2013 (photo Duccio Malagamba)

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Grace Grafton Architects

Principals Grace was established in 2016 by the former OMA collaborators Principals Yvonne Farrell (Tullamore, Ireland, 1951) and Shelley McNamara
Ekaterina Golovatyuk, Ekaterina Golovatyuk (Dubna, Russia, 1977) and Giacomo Cantoni (Milan, Yvonne Farrell, Shelley McNamara (Lisdoonvarna, Ireland, 1952) began marching slowly but surely toward
Giacomo Cantoni 1986). It is strategically based in each of their two hometowns, but a trip global success in 1978, when they established their firm Grafton
Staff
Staff to the somewhat remote city of Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, would Gerard Carty and Philippe O’Sullivan Architects in Dublin. International fame came in the late 2000s but it was
Arslan Arkallayev, Ksenia Bisti, provide the best overview currently available of the firm’s work. There, (co-directors), other 38 team definitely worth the wait.
Gaia Fusé, Marianna Katenko, Grace curated and designed the exhibition “Beginning” in 2017, the first members and approximately 60 The extension of the Bocconi University in Milan (2008) is an
Tatiana Levitskaya, Emanuele collaborators
to take place at Tselinnyi Center for Contemporary Culture in Almaty. architectural masterpiece resulting from the dialogue between a
Moro, Andreas Noussas,
Although the Tselinnyi will not officially open until 2020, the Soviet-built Established in forward-looking client, a top-tier competition jury chaired by Kenneth
Luca Putzolu, Federico Segat,
cinema has begun functioning as an exhibition space organized with the 1978 Frampton, and Grafton’s ground-breaking project for a suspended
Cecilia Tramontano, Ivano Viceconte
support of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Office architecture/infrastructure, emphatic yet carefully contextualised,
Established in
For “Beginning” Golovatyuk and Cantoni had a chance to test their non- Dublin allowing the campus and the city’s public domain to merge visually and
2016
ideological approach to restoration on the derelict shell of the 1960s spatially.
Offices www.graftonarchitects.ie
movie theatre, reconfiguring the multiple and often incongruous layers Imbued with kaleidoscopic references ranging from brutalism to early
Milan, Moscow
of its interior. Preservation issues, with particular focus on modernist modern avant-gardes, the Bocconi was the watershed that led to a
www.grace.eu heritage, were addressed. The exhibition is a temporary cultural event series of successful designs for teaching institutions, all sharing the
that gave Grace the opportunity to make structural interventions to the same momentum towards spatial generosity, and peaking with the
complex, and work on the threshold between architecture, exhibition dramatic “man-made cliffs” of the Lima UTEC campus (2015). At changing
design and curatorship while calling into question the dominant format scales and responding to different commissions, such projects as the
of Western museums. Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, Ireland (2008), the office building for
These issues link the remarkable outcome of “Beginning” to the firm’s the Department of Finance offices in Dublin (2009) and the president’s
previous projects, including several historical flat renovations, the Lars house at the University of Limerick (2006–2010) add to the clarification of
Müller Publishers nomadic bookstore at the 2017 Milan Furniture Fair, Grafton’s main preoccupation: through the last four decades, they have
and steady collaboration with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art been searching for “freespace” in architecture.
in Moscow – see the fading pink-blue canopy of Garage Screen (2017), an “Freespace” was the title of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale
ephemeral, iconic open-air amphitheatre. curated by Farrell and McNamara. As the architecture critic Rowan
For its commitment to engaging with the built heritage, its interest in Moore noted in The Guardian (29 April, 2018), in addition to their ongoing
subverting shared historiographical interpretations, its capacity to read commitment to teaching – they are both full professors at the Accademia
time in architecture as a non-linear, open-ended sequence of alterations, di Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland – Farrell and McNamara remain
and its participation in a global rethinking of the architect as much more “well-respected architects who, determinedly, consistently and over a
than a professional builder, Grace is an office to keep an eye on in the long period of time, do their stuff”, always searching for the “spatial gifts
next few years. that architecture can offer,” as they themselves describe their quest.
Alessandro Benetti Alessandro Benetti

Garage Screen, Moscow, 2017 (photo Alexey Narodizkiy) UTEC - Universidad de Ingeniería & Tecnologia, Lima, Perù, 2015 (photo Iwan Baan)

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Heatherwick Studio Herzog & de Meuron

Principal He entered the spotlight thanks to the iconic UK pavilion for the Founding partners The work of Jacques Herzog (Basel, 1950) and Pierre de Meuron
Thomas Heatherwick 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, whose prickly surface of optic “hairs” Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron (Basel, 1950) is known almost in its entirety. Their office, Herzog &
Group leaders made it look like a giant sea urchin. Thomas Heatherwick’s work is Partners de Meuron founded in Basel in 1978, is one of the most recognised
Stuart Wood, Mat Cash, Lisa Finlay, distinguished by the expressive characteristics of its materials, the study Christine Binswanger, Ascan in the hemisphere of global architecture, having designed several
Eliot Postma, Dani Rossello Diez, of construction processes and especially its jumps in scale. Designs Mergenthaler, Stefan Marbach, of the most iconic super-places of recent decades at every latitude,
Neil Hubbard by the London-based office founded in 1994 include the mixed-used Esther Zumsteg (senior partners); from the Tate Modern (2000) in London to the Beijing National Indoor
Michael Fischer, Jason Frantzen,
Staff megacomplex 1000 Trees (2017) in Shanghai, whose 800 structural Stadium constructed for the 2008 Olympics, and Tai Kwun, a centre for
Andreas Fries, Robert Hösl, Wim
250 columns widen at the top to form a large tree planter; the design of heritage and arts in Hong Kong built in 2018. Herzog and de Meuron
Walschap
Established in museum spaces such as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa are interpreters of a meaningful “fold” (see Gilles Deleuze, 1992) of
Staff
1994 (2017) in Cape Town; the New Routemaster (2011) diesel-electric double- expressive languages in architecture. They seek primary codes that
approximately 450
Office decker bus operated in London; unique collectible design pieces; and precede and therefore renew the languages of the forms deposited by
serially produced objects such as the rotation-moulded plastic Spun Established in
London the modern matrix inherited by their generation.
1978
chair (2010) for Magis, the company that received a Compasso d’Oro Just like the artists of Arte Povera conceived of the world as a collection
www.heatherwick.com award for this seat in 2014. These projects capture people’s interest for Offices of coherent fragments, it is possible to distinguish heterogeneity and
their playful, sculptural visual language that remains non self-referential. Basel, Berlin, Hong Kong, coherence in the eclectic work of this Swiss firm. It is seen in a small
London, New York City
For the shopping centre Coal Drops Yard in London, two sinuously house (1982–1988) in Tavole, Liguria made of rough-hewn rock and
kissing roofs were added to straight parallel rows of 19th-century coal www.herzogdemeuron.com industrial cement. To the same extent, it is seen in the neo-mediaeval
warehouses lying behind King’s Cross Station, creating a covered shard that reshapes a long urban strip of Milan (headquarters for
open-air piazza as a meeting area. The interdisciplinary nature of Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2013–2016). Herzog & de Meuron
Heatherwick’s office is given by a team of 250 problem solvers that lead captures and reworks in vitro the prominent elements of places,
different lines of research, ranging from crafts and applied arts to social landscapes and usages assigned to architecture. It manipulates genetic
studies, market analysis, urban planning and engineering. An internal codes to emphasise their qualities, searching for new practices of
workshop where models and prototypes are built allows for continuous disorientation that always end up being more familiar than perturbing,
verification of ideas. Formal results are given by construction materials perhaps because they are always closer to physical tectonics than the
used in challenging ways. For his 2010 exhibition at the gallery Haunch of evanescence of pure speculation.
Venison in London, Heatherwick made five versions of the Spun chair in Guido Musante
copper and stainless steel by rotating a single profile over 360 degrees, a
complex process borrowed from aerospace technology and executed by
the world’s largest extrusion machine.
Valentina Croci

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, 2017 (photo Iwan Baan) Tai Kwun, centre for heritage and arts, Hong Kong, 2018 (photo Iwan Baan)

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Junya.Ishigami+associates Kengo Kuma and Associates

Principal A few centimetres: the thickness of the 305 steel pillars supporting a Principal Throughout his career, Kengo Kuma (Yokohama, 1956) has established a
Junya Ishigami 2,000-square-metre canopy at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology Kengo Kuma contemporary architectural code combining vernacular architecture and
Staff workshop in Japan (2008). Partners traditional building techniques with advanced technologies. Although
16 Three millimetres: the unsettling thinness of Magic Table (2006), 6 immediately recognisable, his projects are always new and fresh,
Established in whose largest size measures no less than 18 square metres, resting Staff revealing a true interest for native construction techniques as well as
2004 solely on its 4 corners. 186 an attraction for globalised aesthetics. The most celebrated among
Four metres: the height reached by the Architecture as Air installation his recent projects is the V&A Museum in Dundee (2018): a faithful
Office Established in
Tokyo at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010 right before it crashed to the 1990 translation of his respectful view of nature, landscape and people. His
floor a few hours before the grand opening. Hongkou Soho tower (2015) is an innovative building not only by virtue of
Offices
www.jnyi.jp Fragile: no adjective could more appropriately describe the Japanese its delicate folded fabric-like facade, but also because it reflects Kuma’s
Tokyo, Paris, Beijing
architect Junya Ishigami’s best projects. Proudly, they declare their extensive research on high-rise buildings and the creation of community
seemingly precarious balance – the result of high-precision research on www.kkaa.co.jp links within dense urban environments.
the potentials of each building material. Kuma’s architecture has known many phases: a postmodern period,
Despite being a blatant structural failure, the Biennale awarded the the anti-object period, and the new organic period. In the first period,
beautiful, barely visible ruins of Architecture as Air a Golden Lion, his work had a strong iconic character and explored the importance
opening a whole new phase in the career of this Japanese architecture of architecture’s symbolic message. In its anti-object phase, Kuma’s
prodigy. Born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1974, a former collaborator of the practice shifted its focus towards the “erasing of architecture”,
Pritzker Prize winner Kazuyo Sejima, Ishigami has been relentlessly merging structures into the site and integrating natural materials. The
investigating specific design topics over the last decade – above all, “new organic” period instead is about an architecture stemming from
an imperative issue of continuity between the inside and the outside, structural analysis and that is not defined by mass, but rather by what
architecture and landscape, natural and man-made materials. His Kuma terms “molecularity”. In Kuma’s work the use of wood reflects a
explorations are found in a wide range of projects, including the House political stance and the architect has publicly underlined the importance
with Plants in Tokyo (2012), the astounding Chapel of Valley in Shandong, of scale in the relationship between people and architecture. Following
China, and a glass pavilion in Vijversburg Park, The Netherlands (2017). the March 2011 earthquake that devastated the shores of Japan, he
In 2018, an exhaustive monographic exhibition at the Fondation Cartier reiterated that humankind today has come to a turning point in its use
de l’art contemporain in Paris confirmed, if ever proof were needed, that of resources. For Kuma, the 20th century has been about reinforced
Ishigami can now be counted among the stars of worldwide architecture. concrete, a technology that has led us to build beyond a healthy scale
It also underlined how his one-of-a-kind environmental sensibility and ratio by inducing us to think that everything is allowed. The use of wood
uncannily poetical design language can appeal to a very wide public. as a primary construction material is a path that can lead to the recovery
Alessandro Benetti of a sense of proportion and humanity. Projects such as Sunny Hills
(Tokyo, 2012) make use of timber and traditional techniques, paired with
parametric software technology. Kuma’s quest for the use of wood as
a material able to restore a sense of human scale is epitomised in his
unique 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games project for the world’s largest timber-
framed architecture: a 62,000-seat stadium.
Salvator-John A. Liotta

Kanagawa Institute of Technology workshop, Atsugi, Japan, 2008 (Junya.Ishigami+associates) Hongkou Soho, Shanghai, China, 2015 (photo Jerry Yin)

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Kéré Architecture Kollhoff Architekten

Principal Diébédo Francis Kéré (Gando, Burkina Faso, 1965) wields architecture Principals Aldo Rossi’s book on the role of permanence in the urban fabric (The
Francis Kéré as a tool for emancipating people and producing prosperity on the land, Hans Kollhoff, Helga Timmermann Architecture of the City, 1966); Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s
Staff starting with the culture and people of the place. Kéré is first in line Associate love of the ordinary aesthetics of everyday architecture; Oswald Mathias
17 for a transformation of the paradigms of architecture. From Burkina Alexander Pols (The Netherlands) Ungers’ historical and formal reinterpretation of modernism – all this and
Established in Faso, where he trained as a carpenter, he moved to Berlin and earned a Staff more references to prominent thinkers of postmodernism echo in the
2005 diploma in architecture, after which he returned to his native country to 18 work of Hans Kollhoff (Lobenstein, Germany, 1946).
address unresolved questions from poverty to climate change. In Burkina After the fall of the Berlin Wall, following somewhat radical beginnings
Office Established in
Berlin Faso, 45 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and only 1978 given by his collaboration with the Austrian architect Hans Hollein,
36 per cent is literate. Through practice, or rather with the realisation Kollhoff became a leading figure of Berlin’s “critical reconstruction”
Offices
www.kere-architecture.com of buildings constructed by local communities using low technology as promoted by the city planner Hans Stimmann, a notion originally
Berlin, Florence, The Hague
combined with materials found on site, Kéré demonstrates the political developed by Josef Paul Kleihues. The Kollhoff projects Oranienburger
value of architecture. In the last 15 years, he has built in Gando a primary www.kollhoff.de Tor and Europäisches Haus (both in Mitte, 1999) and the Leibniz-
school (2001) in rammed-earth bricks with a double roof to protect from Kolonnaden in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district (2000) restore a
the heat and rain. The roof is a structural lattice system that can be connection with the premodern Prussian city, in contrast with the
erected without the use of a crane. The school cost just 50,000 dollars. widespread approach to Berlin as an urban laboratory.
In 2003, houses for the teachers were built, and in 2008 a library with The Daimler Chrysler tower on Potsdamer Platz (2000) is a memorable
four halls. In Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Kéré designed landmark of that period, and possibly the design that best embodies
the new Parliament, now under construction. The 25,000-square-metre Kollhoff’s handling of history. While explicitly tracing its lineage back
building is conceived to be a formation of shaded public spaces for to a diverse range of examples – Chicago’s pioneering skyscrapers,
the community. In 2017, he symbolically brought his native country to Europe’s early modernists Hendrik Petrus Berlage and Erich
the outside of the Serpentine Gallery in London, building a temporary Mendelsohn, and the neoclassical master Karl Friedrich Schinkel – this
pavilion that was inspired by the vegetation and trees of Burkina Faso, massive, sculptural, brick volume aspires to be a cornerstone of the
characterised by a steel roof and wood through which light filters in by future city’s built memory.
day, and out by night, becoming an illuminated beacon. The structure is In different contexts and with uneven formal outcomes, the much-
currently on display in Malaysia. admired residential complex (1991-1994) on KNSM Eiland and the recent
Valentina Croci Zuidblok building on Stadionplein (2017) – both in Amsterdam – as well
as the four high-rise buildings (2005-2013) in Amersfoort, Holland can be
considered solid masses participating in a relentless drive for continuity
and duration in architecture. This is the obsession of a respected but
controversial thinker, consciously balancing on the dangerous brink of
the quicksand of historicism.
Alessandro Benetti

Primary school extention, Gando, Burkina Faso, 2001 (photo Jan Ouwerkerk) Leibniz-Kolonnaden, Berlin, 2000

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Kuehn Malvezzi Associates Lacaton & Vassal Architectes

Principals Founded in Berlin by Simona Malvezzi (Milan, 1966), Johannes Kuehn Principals Specialised in private and public buildings and social housing, Lacaton &
Simona Malvezzi, Johannes Kuehn, (Hamburg, 1969) and Wilfried Kuehn (Hamburg, 1967), Kuehn Malvezzi Anne Lacaton, Jean-Philippe Vassal Vassal is one of the most influential architecture firms in France.
Wilfried Kuehn Associates operates in different fields and on different scales of It was founded in Paris in 1987 by Anne Lacaton (Saint-Pardoux-la-
Staff
Staff architectural design. The office has a special predilection for the creation Julien Callot, Florian Depous, Rivière, 1955) and Jean-Philippe Vassal (Casablanca, 1954), whose
Nina Beitzen, Karin Fendt, of art-related spaces – installations, exhibitions and museums – always Gaëtan Redelsperger, vision is based on a clear and structured understanding of space,
Daria Grouhi (directors) cooperating directly with artists, curators and institutions. Emmanuelle Delage, Elisabeth architecture and society. Envisioning better living solutions is one of
and 15 others Amorin, Francisco Latorre Navarro,
Dialogue is certainly key in the architecture designed by Kuehn Malvezzi, the practice’s core aspects, while considering this field of research not
Carina Sacher, Julien Sage-Thomas
Established in whatever the purpose of the building. We see a dialogue between only to concern housing, but also the complex system of relations that
2001 viewers and artwork at the Documenta 11 installation (Kassel, Germany, Established in can develop between a space and its users. The perceived roughness of
1989
Office 2002) where visitors could create individual trajectories across the Lacaton & Vassal projects paired with their distinctive simple finish are
Berlin exhibition spaces. We see a dialogue between social, religious and Office integral aspects to programmatically light architecture. The reduction
cultural backgrounds in the House of One, an interreligious house of Paris of their formal language to a range of simple elements, however, is
www.kuehnmalvezzi.com
prayer and learning (Berlin, 2017). And we see dialogue between context not underpinned by minimalist aesthetics, but is a way of intensifying
www.lacatonvassal.com
and history in architectural statements based on the coexistence of new an unrestricted experience of the quality of space. Regardless of the
and existing elements (Flick Collection, Berlin, 2004), on the critique of functional purpose of the individual building, the practice understands
historicist interpretations of the city (the firm’s project for the Humboldt- architecture as a continuous process of addition. The extension of the
Forum competition, Berlin, 2008), and on visually narrative functions Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2002-2012) is an elegant, respectful design,
(the renovation of Rolf Gutbrod’s Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin, 2014). without rigid architectural constrains that limit internal fluidity by
At Kuehn-Malvezzi, the controlled creation of form is a programme- imposing their presence on the displayed artworks. The social purpose of
generating process. Theoretical categorisations such as “spaces for art” buildings by Lacaton & Vassal comes to the fore in housing projects such
or “rational shapes” are definitions of how space can be understood as as the Grand Parc in Bordeaux, which entailed the transformation of 530
a generator of a critical approach that establishes connections between apartments (2016), and Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in Paris (2011), where spatial
the inhabitant and the content, between the inhabitant and the project dignity and generosity are the main elements behind the transformation
itself in relation to its purpose and context. of an entire housing block.
Giovanni Comoglio Federica Rasenti

Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2007 (photo Ulrich Schwarz) Fonds régional d’art contemporain, Dunkirk, France, 2015 (photo Philippe Ruault)

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Best architecture firms 2019 057 Best architecture firms 2019 058

Linghao Architects MAD Architects

Principal Ling Hao (1968) founded his office in 2000 in Singapore, the city-state Principals Founded in Beijing in 2004 by Ma Yansong (Beijing 1975), MAD
Ling Hao island said to have shifted from “third world to first world in a single Ma Yansong (founder and principal Architects works on an architectural line aimed at a future that is marked
generation” under the government of Lee Kuan Yew (1959-1990). partner), Dang Qun (principal by large-scale megalopolises and increasingly elusive relations between
Established in
partner), Yosuke Hayano (principal
2000 Born in Kuching, East Malaysia, Hao graduated from the University of built space and non-anthropic space. Said future envisioned by MAD is
partner)
Office New South Wales, Australia. In 1993, he moved to Singapore to join not only full of new kinds of material and technology, but also based on
Tangguanbee Architects where he worked for five years. In 1998, he Associates the popular imagery that developed back when humans first explored
Singapore
Andrea D’Antrassi, Lui Huiying,
founded Ham Architects with Tan Kok Meng. the possibility of transporting life far away from planet Earth. The
Lu Junliang (Dixon), Kin Li, Fu
www.linghaoarchitects.com Hao grew up in a 1960s concrete “compound” house (a word said minimalistic-looking codes and interiors of spaceships transferred ideas
Changrui, Tiffany Dahlen, Flora Lee
to come from kampong, the Malaysian word for “village”). This is a for new aesthetics and visual languages to the terrestrial world – the
Staff
building type where the ground floor is completely open. Here, he had lunar landing and return to Earth of the Apollo 17, and the inauguration of
100-150
the opportunity to experience life in an exuberant environment. Ling the Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo both took place in 1972, three years
Hao’s practice is underpinned by the keen observation and study of the Established in before Yansong was born. Fantasy-filled imaginary extra-terrestrial life
2004
tremendous transformations that took place in and around Singapore, is one of the recurring themes inspiring MAD architecture, expressed in
and how old and new inhabitants populate these areas. His architectural Offices gigantism and fluidity of forms and space. The Harbin Opera House in
thinking is attracted by soft space delimitations such as curtains, plants Beijing, Los Angeles, Rome Harbin, China (2015) and other projects under construction – including
and promenades architecturales. Such elements are seen in the T House the Ouzhou Sports Campus in China and the Lucas Museum of Narrative
www.i-mad.com
(2011), a renovation of a one-story terrace house from the 1950s, where Art in Los Angeles – are where cities and landscapes follow the inverse
rooms are arranged around a central court and connected by paths. It route with respect to that pursued by science fiction in the last 100 years,
is crowned by a 6 x 12.5-metre rooftop garden for family activities and bringing to Earth scenarios already visualised in other worlds. Reading
gardening. At Satay by the Bay (2012, in association with KUU architects), between the lines of these often surprising buildings, there does not
an open-air food pavilion set in the gardens of downtown Marina Bay, appear to be a real change of paradigm with respect to that century-old
Singapore, customers are protected by a sculptural, curvilinear concrete modern trajectory. Whether they have only been imagined or resemble
slab of 2,000 square metres. Without concealing its presence, the those already built in the past when technology and means were less
planted canopy blends into the site’s lush vegetation. Both projects were powerful, the forms that MAD proposes come across as being crazy yet
recipients of the President’s Design Award Singapore in 2013 and 2014, familiar, perhaps due to the fact that they have existed in our minds for a
confirming Ling Hao’s ability to define spaces with a soothing sense of very, very long time.
intimacy, regardless of scale. Nowadays, when he speaks of his work, he Guido Musante
uses a specific vocabulary that reflects his understanding of architecture
set in the atmospheric conditions of the equatorial climate: tactile
materials and textures, actions in space, experiences of space, and a
blurring of boundaries between inside and outside.
Giulia Ricci

T House, Singapore, 2011 (photo Jovian Lim) Harbin Opera House, Harbin, China, 2015 (photo Hufton + Crow)

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Maison Édouard François Maki and Associates

Principal Known as a pioneer of green architecture, the French architect Édouard Principal Fumihiko Maki was born in 1928 in Tokyo, where he graduated in 1952.
Édouard François François (Boulogne-Billancourt, France, 1957) established his practice in Fumihiko Maki He continued his studies in the US at Cranbrook and Harvard, after
Staff Paris in 1998. Ever since his first experiments in the late 1990s, François Staff which he worked at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in New York City.
25 has been continuously seeking new solutions to place nature at the core Tomoyoshi Fukunaga, Yukitoshi Throughout his long career, he has combined architectural research with
of his designs. In 2000, his L’immeuble qui pousse (“the building that Wakatsuki, Hirochika Kashima, commissioned work. Although he was part of the architectural movement
Established in
grows”) was completed in Montpellier. Described as a living organism, Gary Kamemoto and 34 others called Metabolism, begun by young architects and designers working
1998
the structure is made of stones and soil packed in gabions on which Established in under Kenzo Tange, he maintained an autonomous role. His booklet
Office
plants can grow. Tower-Flower and Eden Bio, built in Paris in 2004 and 1965 Investigations in Collective Form (Washington University, St. Louis 1964)
Paris
2009 respectively, are two of his landmark projects from the early 2000s. Office explores three types of urban form that were of interest to this Japanese
edouardfrancois.com Conceived as a vertical extension of the nearby park, Tower-Flower is Tokyo neo-avant-garde group: Compositional form, Megastructure and Group
a social housing block encircled over its full height by giant concrete form. The writing was a prelude to his return to his homeland in 1965,
www.maki-and-associates.co.jp
planters sprouting from the balconies of each floor. Filled with bamboo when he founded Maki and Associates. His international training allowed
trees, the planters rest in circular holes cast directly in the concrete floor him to bridge the cultural divide between East and West. The continuous
slab. The Eden Bio is a low-rise social housing complex surrounded by a research and technological precision he learned at SOM made him a
grid of wooden trellises that welcome the growth of wisteria plants. Until very versatile but not eclectic professional. He has designed nearly
recently, most of François’ buildings were designed to fit in the typically all building types: houses (YKK guest house in Kurobe, 1982), offices,
37-metre high skyline of the French capital, but with the 50-metre M6B2 convention centres (Makuhari Messe International Convention Complex
Tower of Biodiversity (2016), he was recently able to enjoy an exception in Chiba, 1989), museums, schools, universities and religious buildings
from that rule. Planted with wild species, cladded in green titanium (Kaze-no-Oka Crematorium in Nakatsu, 1997).
panels, the structure is described as an environmental asset. Indeed, its Maki’s repertory is extremely vast, located in three continents, but
height facilitates the dispersal of seeds and thus the biodiverse verdancy always features the modernist materials of cement, steel and glass. He
of the city. The project has opened the way for new vertical ventures: the is the second Japanese architect to win a Pritzker Prize (1993), six years
Gardens of Anfa in Casablanca, Morocco, and the Limassol Giverny Oasis after his mentor Tange. Maki conceives the creation process of the
in Cyprus, both due for completion in the upcoming years. architect as “a discovery, not an invention”.
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts Manuel Orazi

Tour Panache, Grenoble, France, 2018 (photo Boegly-Grazia) Kaze-no-Oka Crematorium, Nakatsu, Japan, 1997 (photo Toshiharu Kitajima)

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Mass Design Group Mateo Arquitectura

Principals Unlike the other practices that appear in this catalogue, Mass Design Principal If one were to compile a minimal taxonomy with just two categories
Sierra Bainbridge, Group did not indicate the names of its founders. Instead, it answered Josep Lluís Mateo of contemporary architecture, perhaps they could be “volume” and
Christian Benimana, Justin Brown, the Domus request by writing “six people”. Mass was launched in 2008 “surface”. The volume architects have the propensity to seek the
Staff
Kelly Doran, Patricia Gruits,
by six students from Harvard Graduate School of Design. From the start, Till von Mackensen (head of design strength of mass, the play of volume, the excitement of the cantilever.
Chris Kroner, Sarah Mahland,
they had an ethical vision of design and naturally, a shared mission. It department), Xavier Monclús The surface architects put three-dimensionality on a back burner,
Michael Murphy, Alan Ricks,
all began with an initial group that changed along the way with various (head of construction department) preferring the communicative quality of skins, screens and patterns
David Saladik, Amie Shao
and 14 more
additions and substitutions. The current office is non-profit and non- on elevations. But deciding how to classify the architecture of Josep
Associates
hierarchical, a progressive maturation-by-experience that incorporates a Established in Lluís Mateo (Barcelona, 1949) is a difficult operation. While maintaining
25
strong social commitment it found in its first project, the Butaro District 1991 coherence and balance in each of his designs, the Spanish architect
Staff
Hospital in Rwanda (Burera, 2011) ). The enquiry “Can a building heal?” Offices always oscillates between the two polarities, often taking them to
61
underlies all the Group’s architectural adventures of the following years. Barcelona, Zurich, Paris an extreme, but without the rudeness of someone who just wants to
Established in impress. As pointed out by the architecture critic Miquel Adrià, this
The quality of the hospital building and its expressive characteristics
2008 www.mateo-arquitectura.com
can be traced back to the overall process. For example, Mass Design quality gives Mateo’s work the benefit of the doubt, of ambiguity.
Offices Group used local materials such as volcanic rock, which has stimulated “You never know if his buildings are heavy or light, solid, liquid or gas,
Boston, Kigali (Rwanda), the regional economy and reduced the construction costs to two thirds beautiful or ugly,” he says. We cannot know if they are more volume or
Poughkeepsie (New York)
of the Rwandan standard. In subsequent Mass Design projects, we see more surface. For example, at first glance, the building for the Cultural
massdesigngroup.org the emergence of a more marked visual approach. So when faced with Centre at Castelo Branco in Portugal (2013), is striking for the majestic
another ethical theme, but of a symbolic nature and with an easy risk cantilever over the plaza at its foot. The floating is accentuated by the
of rhetorical emphaticness, the Group chose to merge the seemingly slope of the large access ramp beneath, which rises in the opposite
incompatible aspects of monumentality and dynamism. Dedicated to the direction. A closer look reveals how the notion of the facade as an
victims of racism in American history, the National Memorial for Peace “urban filter” has been carefully designed. Mateo coined and developed
and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama (2016) is laid out around a building the filter principle as a conceptual and technological development of
that resembles a contemporary temple. Its thin columns emerge from the brise-soleil. He considers the outer surface of buildings the ultimate
stele-like 6-foot-tall mini-monuments in rusted CorTen weathering steel limit of the building space, as well as an element of mediation between
on which are engraved the names of over 4,000 victims of lynching. In inside and outside. He plays with the contrast between the zinc cladding
contrast to the static nature of the structure, the inscribed monuments lie of the overall building and the lateral facades cladded in strips of wood
duplicated to the side of the pavilion, available for distribution as ethical that can be adjusted according to the angle of the sun. In this way,
fragments to each county where the crimes occurred, preferably to be set Mateo bestows on the suspended volume at Castelo Branco a skin that
up at a spot where a lynching took place. The thought procedure behind is equally “suspended”, a bit like if Moby Dick and the Pequod were to
it has elements of mail art. emerge from a wave, united in a single body.
Guido Musante Guido Musante

Maternity Waiting Village, Kasungo, Malawi, 2015 (photo Iwan Baan) Cultural Center, Castelo Branco, Portugal, 2013 (photo Adrià Goula)

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Max Dudler Meyer-Grohbrügge

Principal After having worked for several years in the studio of the German Principal After graduating from the ETH Zürich, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge
Max Dudler architect Oswald Mathias Ungers, in 1992 Max Dudler (Altenrhein, Johanna Meyer-Grohbrügge (Sigmaringen, Germany, 1979) worked at SANAA in Tokyo from 2005
Staff Switzerland, 1949) founded his own firm with branches in Switzerland Staff to 2010, after which she branched out on her own, her work showing
120 and Germany. Ranging from civic and public buildings – such as libraries Jennifer Kurth, Thibault Trouve, continuity with her former place of employment. With her SANAA
and museums – to residential projects, his architectural practice draws Sophia Frommel, Frank Wang, colleague, the American Sam Chermayeff, she founded the office June
Established in
from the rational volumes and lines that characterised Ungers’ work. Eva Lindsey 14 in Berlin and New York. Since 2015 she has also been developing an
1992
Rigorous and direct, Dudler’s practice is often referred to as realistic Established in independent trajectory with her own firm, Meyer-Grohbrügge, in Berlin.
Offices
and seeks continuity and inclusion with local contexts. Completed in 2015 Mainly designing and redesigning spaces for contemporary art, Meyer-
Berlin, Zurich, Munich, Frankfurt
2009, the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Centre of the Humboldt University Office Grohbrügge has maintained a certain coherence in her spatial approach.
www.maxdudler.de in Berlin, encapsulates his architectural language. With its monolithic Berlin Her spaces are activated and shaped by simple, light geometric elements
facade, rhythmed by rows of slender windows, and its reading room that separate or define different areas and stress certain directions or
www.meyer-grohbruegge.com dimensions. By using light and visual texturing, the space itself is made
– a long nave illuminated by natural roof lights – Germany’s largest
open-access library is infused with austerity. Along the years, Dudler’s visible, more than the building elements.
calibrated approach enabled him to undertake various renovation At the Julia Stoschek Collection offices (Berlin, 2016), a curtain is used
projects of historical buildings. In 2014, he realised the visitor centre as the linear normative element for space, defining inside and outside,
of the Sparrenburg Castle, a 16th-century fortress located in the city of go and no-go for sight and light. Similar expressions of this principle are
Bielefeld, Germany. With its thick “rammed concrete” walls, the building found in the installation design for the Edi Hila retrospective (Warsaw,
was conceived as a “contemporary update” to the existing and eclectic 2018), which features the translucence of barely material white partitions;
architectural ensemble, whose latest extension dated from World War or the Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler Gallery (Berlin, 2017) organised by an
II. Three years earlier, Dudler had already successfully worked on the open modular structure constituting a space matrix, fully reconfigurable
integration of new and old in his Hambach Castle restaurant project according to different requests in time and space.
(2011) for which he received the DAM Prize for Architecture in 2012. Meyer-Grohbrügge taught at several institutions in the United States
Accustomed also to urban planning, between 1997 and 2013 the architect including Columbia University GSAPP and is currently a guest professor
realised the Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz S-Bahn station, one of the four at DIA Dessau.
stops of the Leipzig City Tunnel railway line, which features a 140-metre- Giovanni Comoglio
long bright tunnel made of prefabricated backlit glass bricks.
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts

Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm Zentrum, Berlin, 2009 (photo Stefan Müller) Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin, 2016 (photo Jan Bitter)

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Muoto Navarro Baldeweg Asociados

Principals The pure volumes of the Oscar Niemeyer-designed former home of the Principal Navarro Baldeweg Asociados are based in Madrid where José Luis
Gilles Delalex, Yves Moreau French Communist Party dominate the wide traffic circle of the Colonel Juan Navarro Baldeweg del Cid Mendoza and David García Dieguez have a fixed collaboration
Staff Fabien metro stop in Paris. Coincidentally, the Muoto office lies nearby. Staff with Juan Navarro Baldeweg (Santander, 1939). Painter, sculptor and
12 This is somewhat surprising, seeing its architectural work contains José Luis del Cid Mendoza, architect, a keen scholar of the architecture of John Sloane, Baldeweg
a subtle but unmistakable reference to modernism. The oxymoron David García Dieguez oscillates between one artistic territory and another with a perspective
Established in
2003 “archaic modernity” was chosen by Muoto to define its approach, which Established in of historical awareness that is also evident in his writing. This skilful
contrasts with “heroic modernity” centred on the idea of progress. 1976 and subtle oscillation between different disciplines together with a
Office
Paris Muoto explains its brand of modernity as being “joyful and dark at the Office marked sensitivity towards the use of materials associated with studying
same time”, stemming from the firm’s origins in a period of economic Madrid engraving while young, have fed into the characteristics of scale and
www.studiomuoto.com recession. Here, expressivity gives lifeblood to limited material means, a appropriateness, fantasy and allusion that run through the projects by
spirit that is echoed in the name Muoto, which means “form” in Finnish. www.navarrobaldeweg.net the studio. Projects that, since 1976, range from an architectural scale to
Gilles Delalex (Thonons-les-Bains, France, 1972) and Yves Moreau an urban one and an exquisitely artistic one. It is within this interpretative
(Uccle, Belgium, 1976) founded the office in 2003, after working together framework that the Conference Centre at Salamanca (1992) sits: the low,
at Dominique Perrault Architecture. The Frenchman Delalex teaches suspended dome that characterises it appears in the numerous paintings
and directs the Department of Theory, History and Design at the École in which Baldeweg explores lighting effects. It has already been tried
nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais. out in the library in the centre of San Francisco el Grande (Madrid, 1985)
The Dutch-Belgian Moreau is the winner of the 2007–2008 Nouveaux and follows Sir John Soane’s illusionistic interpretations by overturning
Albums des Jeunes Architectes et des Paysagistes. the notion of load and support. A solution that if in the 1980s and 90s
Seeking a new narrative with every project, Muoto’s work is formally provided a valid alternative to the weight of classical culture from
heterogeneous and coherent in its solutions, giving rise to an identity the time of Franco, also indicates the continued approach of Navarro
that is at once sober and audacious. The school complex Boulogne Baldeweg Asociados to look at the past as a source of inspiration that
Billancourt (2018), which sits on a triangular lot at the Rives de Seine is never reduced to sterile and inappropriate imitation with respect to
development, is cladded with blue-anodised corrugated aluminium the theme or the time in which the work is carried out. An approach
panels in commemoration of the area’s industrial past. The student hall highlighted in different ways by the Biblioteca Hertziana (Rome, 2013)
(2016) on the Saclay University Campus in Paris, inserted into a master or the Edificio de Juzgados (law courts) in Mahón, Minorca (1996) and
plan by Xaveer De Geyter Architects, shows a minimal structure of metal that in the research centre in the National Museum and Research Center
and concrete responding to the requirements of a tight budget. of Altamira (Santillana del Mar, 2001) finds a further interpretation.
This condition did not prevent Muoto from reaching a high level of spatial Composed of distinct bodies marked by shed roofs, the construction
and expressive quality, a fact that has been awarded several prizes. is developed below the line of the ground to accommodate the copy of
The Stendhal building (2017) on Rue Stendhal in Paris is a mix of social the grottoes of Altamira: the real grottoes are in front of this “museum
housing, kindergarten and emergency shelter. With a staggered elevation industry” that respectfully faces them and gives form to the product of
toward the street, the main facades are enlivened by external white an era in which the industry of mass tourism assumed significant weight:
blinds slid into a grid of dark frames. ours.
Giulia Ricci Gabriella Lo Ricco

Paris-Saclay University Campus, Paris, 2016 Museo y Centro de Investigación Altamira, Santillana del Mar, Spain, 2001

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NHDM Architecture Nlé


+ Urbanism

Principal Founded in New York City in 2010 by Nahyun Hwang (Seoul, 1973) and Principal His Makoko school concept floated in the Arsenale basin in Venice three
Nahyun Hwang, David Eugin Moon David Eugin Moon (Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1974), NHDM approach the Kunlé Adeyemi years ago. His lectures are scheduled inside and outside universities
Staff design of architecture by looking first at its use, before considering Staff across the world. Kunlé Adeyemi epitomises a generation of architects
Clare Hacko, Stella Ioannidou, its characteristics in terms of form or construction: a quality that 5 in evolution. Born in Kaduna, Nigeria in 1976, a former associate and
Justin Kollar, Violette Yang in itself demonstrates the intertwining of the two young architects’ project architect at OMA, Adeyemi founded Nlé (which means “at
Established in
Established in research and teaching activities with the practice of the studio. Human 2010 home” in the Yoruba language) in 2010 together with his partner Berend
2010 actions like sharing, interpreting, lingering or exchanging are thus Strijland, opening branches in the city of Lagos, Nigeria and Amsterdam .
Offices
Office seen as opportunities to test out new approaches to buildings and Amsterdam; Lagos, Nigeria Both before and after starting his own practice, Adeyemi has
New York City spaces, allowing them to be appropriated in an unconventional manner concentrated on developing a line of research. His focus is envisioning
and to activate more flexible modes of use, open to individual and www.nleworks.com settlement solutions to face the challenges of increasing urbanisation
www.nhdm.net collective transformation and interpretation. As such, the design of in countries such as his homeland by consolidating communities around
the Library in the Nam June Paik Art Center at Yong-In (South Korea, safe and inclusive spaces. This devotion to research has been articulated
2011) takes inspiration from the processes of the Korean artist Nam through teaching and lecturing at universities, and through participation
June Paik to define a multifunctional spatial device that redefines the in the extra-academic debate.
relationship between users and access to information. In contrast The aim at Nlé is to increase quality of life by responding to basic needs
with the conventional typology of the library, characterised by the while designing space as both social and environmental improvement.
centralised, unidirectional and static placement of the contents, the Immaterial assets are integrated in order to catalyse community interest,
programme developed by NHDM offers non-linear and dynamic access provide visual enrichment and offer appreciation of the context and the
to information, transforming a visit to the library into a multi-directional living space.
and reciprocal experience. In a way that is even more pervasive, the This theoretical line has found two different realms for its practical
design of the social building Wolgok Youth Platform in Seoul responds application: a poorer and a richer context where there is an equal
in particular to the difficult economic and living conditions experienced effort to maximise the experience of human association in its positive
by many of the inhabitants of the Korean capital aged between 20 aspects. The Makoko Floating School (2012) was awarded the Silver
and 35 years. The design thus exploits the opportunity offered by the Lion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, and is now enjoying its
collaboration between a non-profit organisation and local government third reformulation in Minjang, China. The design provides safety from
for developing a new alternative housing prototype for young people, floods and is at the same time a cheap multi-scale settlement concept.
proposing flexible living units, integrated with spaces where long-term The Summer House for the Serpentine Pavilion (London, 2016) creates a
programmes for learning and working can be developed. sense of place by reinterpreting monumental heritage.
Guido Musante Giovanni Comoglio

Nam June Paik Library, Yong-In, South Korea, 2011 MFS IIIx3 – Minjiang floating system, Chengdu, China, 2018 (photo Iwan Baan)

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Ofis Arhitekti OMA

Principals Ofis was founded in 1996 by Rok Oman (Jesenice, Slovenia, 1970) Partners The Office for Metropolitan Architecture was founded in 1975 by Rem
Rok Oman, Špela Videčnik and Špela Videčnik (Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1971), both graduates of the Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Koolhaas (Rotterdam, 1944), Elia Zenghelis (Athens, 1937), Zoe Zenghelis
Faculty of Architecture of Ljubljana with master’s degrees from the Reinier de Graaf, Shohei (Athens, 1937) and Madelon Vriesendorp (Bilthoven, Holland 1945)
Staff
Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka,
Andrej Gregorič , Janez Martinčič , Architectural Association of London. Their education was influenced by in London. The studio relocated to Rotterdam in 1978 and expanded
Chris van Duijn, Ippolito Pestellini
José Navarrete Jiménez, Katja the important modernist legacy of Jože Plečnik and Edvard Ravnikar, considerably, changing its configuration. Today, OMA counts seven
Laparelli, Jason Long,
Govednik, Mojca Bek, Mateja Obid and by the opening to stylistic pluralism that became possible after the offices and nine partners, including Koolhaas, who received the
David Gianotten
Established in independence of Slovenia in 1991. As young architects, Oman and Pritzker Prize in 2000 and graduated from the Architectural Association
Principals
1998 Videčnik witnessed the intense period of economic and cultural School in London in 1972. Early on, he worked as a journalist for the
Adrianne Fisher, Carol Patterson,
Offices reappraisal and reinvention of their country. In 1998, Ofis received Marco Ooijendijk, Shaun Palmer, newspaper Haagse Post in The Hague. Koolhaas’s architectural thinking
Ljubljana, Paris critical acclaim for its extension of the City Museum of Ljubljana, but Dongmei Yao, Jeremy became influential and internationally recognised with the publication
the firm is best distinguished by its design of housing from 30 to 50,000 Higginbotham, Samir Bantal, of Delirious New York (1978). Many years later, he published S, M,
www.ofis.si square metres, ranging from the mountain cabin (see the Alpine Shelter Paul Jones L, XL (1995). In 2002, Koolhaas and Reiner de Graaf founded AMO, a
in Skuta, 2016) to large complexes of inexpensive housing. The latter Associates think-tank parallel to OMA for the activities of research, curatorship
show the exploration of modular units, variously aggregated in plan and 13 and publishing. OMA and AMO join forces for specific projects and
elevation, presenting variations in pattern. The two blocks of Honeycomb Staff buildings, often where a study of corporate identity and branding is
social housing in Izola, Slovenia (2005) are graced with balconies shaded approximately 350 required, such as for the European Union and Prada, or for exhibitions
by coloured fabric and cladded with high-pressure laminate. Similarly, Established in such as “Fundamentals”, the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale curated
the Tetris apartments in Ljubljana (2007) are built from extruded units 1975 by Koolhaas. A major exhibition titled “Countryside: Future of the
of alternating solid walls, glazed segments and balconies positioned World” curated by AMO will open at the Guggenheim museum in New
Offices
for a rhythmic effect. The balconies of the Basket student housing in Rotterdam, New York City, Hong York in February 2020. OMA is an international practice; its projects
Paris (2012) are made of strips of high-pressure laminated wood, and Kong, Beijing, Doha, Dubai, Perth include Nederlands Dans Theater (The Hague, 1987, now demolished),
angled to turn away from each other, transforming the facade into a Villa dall’Ava (Paris, 1991), Seattle Central Library (2004), Fondaco
playful composition. The organically shaped Ofis-built football stadium www.oma.eu dei Tedeschi (Venice, 2016), Fondazione Prada (Milan, 2018), Qatar
in Borisov, Belarus (2014) is faced with shaped aluminium panels with National Library (Doha, 2018) and Blox, home of the Danish Architecture
cut-outs that allow the entrance of natural light and favour passive Centre (Copenhagen, 2018). Work by OMA and AMO, plus Koolhaas’s
ventilation. At Ofis, the starting point is function, the relation to the site, architectural thinking, which aims to broaden architecture’s field of
local imagery and building techniques. Then they follow the modernist operation, have been seminal. Their influence is found in architects such
route, from master plan to construction detail. as Willem Jan Neutelings (Neutelings Riedijk), Winy Maas and Jacob van
Valentina Croci Rijs (MVRDV), Kunlé Adeyemi (Nlé) and Bjarke Ingels (BIG) – all of whom
used to work at OMA.
Giulia Ricci

Borisov Arena football stadium, Borisov, Belarus, 2014 (photo Tomaz Gregoric) Qatar National Library, Doha, Qatar, 2018 (photo Delfino Sisto Legnani, Marco Cappelletti/OMA)

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Patrick Berger Architecte Paulo Mendes da Rocha

Principal Patrick Berger was born in Paris in 1947 and founded his office there in Principal Soon after graduating from the Mackenzie Architecture School in São
Patrick Berger 1975. Parallel to his practice, he teaches at schools in Sainte-Étienne, Paulo Mendes da Rocha Paulo in 1954, Paulo Mendes da Rocha (Vitória, Brazil, 1928) started to
Staff Paris and Lausanne. His essay Formes cachées, la ville (2015) is about Staff ground his work by defining his own distinctive architectural discourse.
15 the hidden geometry present in every programme, the figure of which Helene Afanasieff He was able to clearly affirm his vision of space and architecture in
Established in must coincide with three shapes: the shape of use, the relation to the Established in the Paulistano Athletic Club Gymnasium in São Paulo (1958) which he
1978 site, and the built system, which adapts to the preceding two shapes 1956 completed when he was 30 years old and where the combination of
through the choice of materials, elements and structure. In his projects, Office
balanced forces and a striking structural conception led to the creation
Office
Paris Berger attempts to express these “three shapes in one” by imagining São Paulo of a powerful platform suspended above a set of six elegant vertical
the character of the building, based on a constant balance between and thin concrete elements, which are also connected to the steel top
www.patrickberger.fr logic and sensibility. In 1985, two competitions made him internationally structure through an refined system of cables. The space in the project is
famous. The first is the École d’Architecture de Bretagne in Rennes predominantly defined by horizontal lines, which amplify the perception
(1990): he took up the French building tradition of maçonnerie and of a continuous ground floor, where barriers between inside-outside
charpente (masonry and wood framework), using them in an elementary, spaces are blurred. His training as an architect was informed by the
structural and symbolic way. A Cyclopean granite wall and a monolith are synergic action of two strong beliefs: on the one hand, appreciation
a reference to the archetypical origins of architecture, but also a clear and respect for construction techniques, an approach inspired by his
declaration of contemporaneity. The second was the Parc André-Citroën father, who was an engineer; and on the other hand, the importance of
(1992): Berger designed the Jardins Sériels, two large glasshouses and architecture’s social dimension, an idea that he probably consolidated
other smaller ones, plus ramps, water features and large elements to during his collaboration with João Batista Vilanova Artigas, who
structure the park designed by Gilles Clément. He renewed the frayed mentored him in the early days of his career. The programmatic structural
edges of the former Citroën industrial area by positioning a “fourth clarity and the almost diagrammatic simplicity of his first project have
perspective” of Paris (after the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides and the Jardin remained constant in his extensive body of work, alongside the political
des Plantes). He revolutionised the idea of the contemporary urban park quality of his interventions. At the Museu Brasileiro da Escultura in São
in the relation between the permanency of architecture and the mobility Paulo (1998), a thick, uninterrupted 60-metre horizontal line shelters an
of growing vegetation, creating a hybrid of city and nature.The recent intriguing portico of sculpturally defined public space. In his projects,
project of the Canopée des Halles, designed with Jacque Anziutti in 2007, massive forms of raw concrete always find a counterpart in light and
is a monumental and symbolic access portal to Le Grand Paris, from sophisticated construction details: even the most complex engineering
the underground to the centre. It is the area of Les Halles, demolished solution is balanced and conceived in order to convey the feeling of
in 1971, formerly a giant covered market called “the belly of Paris” by essentiality and simplicity of form. Awarded with the Pritzker Prize in
Émile Zola in his novel Le Ventre de Paris. Berger conceived the site 2006, Paulo Mendes da Rocha is one of the architects whose work has
as a vertical urban district (plunging underground by up to 24 metres to opened new trajectories in the contemporary landscape of Brazilian
reach the RER and subway lines) to be connected to the horizontal city at architecture.
street level, where there is sky and light. The resulting system stems from Federica Rasenti
studies of light, traffic flow, historical memory of the city, perception
from the inside looking out, under the great roof of lightweight steel that
airily reflects the changing skies above la Ville Lumière.
Francesca Acerboni

La Canopée, Paris, 2016 (photo Xavier Bélorgey) SESC 24 de Maio, São Paulo, 2017 (photo Nelson Kon)

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People’s Architecture Office Rafael Moneo Arquitecto

Principals Immersed in the hutong alleys of ancient Beijing is People’s Architecture Principal Combining professional practice with research, critical writing and
Zang Feng, James Shen, He Zhe Office (PAO), founded in 2010 by the Chinese architects Zang Feng, He Rafael Moneo academic activity, Rafael Moneo (Tudela, 1937) stands as one of the
Staff Zhe and James Shen, whose titular mission is to bring people to the Staff most complex and interesting contemporary Spanish architects. Before
25 centre of architectural design. 15 founding his own firm, he worked with Francisco Javier Sáenz de
Established in The heart of China’s capital is for them a privileged observatory from Established in Oiza and later collaborated with Jørn Utzon in Copenhagen. Since the
2010 which to study and experiment with tactics of urban innovation. Rather 1965 beginning of his career, Moneo has worked on refining an innovative
than enhancing the historical heritage, endangered as it is by the rapid architectural language of semantics that incorporate and interpret
Offices Office
Beijing, Boston changes of the metropolis, PAO is interested in improving daily life and Madrid modernism. Accuracy in the choice of materials and attention to
experimenting with contemporary forms of social interaction. construction details are qualities that can be appreciated in his entire
www.peoples-architecture.com The architects’ symbiotic relationship with Beijing’s historic www.rafaelmoneo.com production. The complex relation between history, heritage and context
neighbourhoods has materialised in “acupuncture projects” such as the is a recurring theme in his architectural research. As shown in the
Courtyard House Plugin (2014–2015), a modular system of prefabricated National Museum of Roman Art in Merida (1980-1986), the repetition of
elements designed to regenerate old, dilapidated structures and brick arches combined with the study of light create a sense of tension
provide essential modern comforts. It consists of composite panels echoing monumental atmospheres, while the new structures openly
that are cheap to ship and easy to install using only a hex wrench. They declare their contemporary nature. The rhythmic facade of the Murcia
incorporate structure, insulation, wiring, plumbing, windows, doors, City Hall (1998) is another example of Moneo’s precise architectural
and interior and exterior finishes in one moulded part. Such low-cost gesture, that in this case gives rise to a balanced juxtaposition of the
modules make it possible to maintain the human dimension of the new building’s outstanding presence and the historical baroque urban
hutongs and revitalise buildings at risk of being abandoned without fabric around it. Throughout his long career, Rafael Moneo’s work has
having to museumise the historical heritage. been internationally recognized and awarded several prizes, including
PAO uses pop-up architecture, movable, reversible and low-cost the Pritzker Prize (1996) and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal (2003).
structures inspired by the hybrid approaches that the radical avant- Federica Rasenti
gardes in Europe experimented with in the 1960s and 1970s.
A project that sums up the inspiration and ideas of the Beijing studio
is The People’s Station (2017), a cultural centre in the Chinese city of
Yantai. Its reticular metal structure features portable latch-on rooms that
extend the surface area and diversify use of the building. These parts can
be detached and cycled to other public spaces to host activities in hard-
to-reach areas.
Salvatore Peluso

The People’s Station, Yantai, China, 2017 (photo Zhu Rui) City Hall extension, Murcia, Spain, 1998 (photo Michael Moran)

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RCR Arquitectes Renzo Piano Building


Workshop

Principals Nowadays, the majority of renowned architecture firms are based in a Partners In his approach to architecture, Renzo Piano has maintained the strong
Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem, select number of major and internationally connected cities and open as Renzo Piano, Emanuela Baglietto, imprint of his origins and a propensity for experimentation.
Ramón Vilalta many branches as possible in the various hubs within this world network. Antoine Chaaya, Serge Drouin, Born in 1937 to a family of builders in the industrial port of Genoa,
Giorgio Bianchi, Elisabetta Trezzani,
Staff However, there are firms who choose to keep away from this beaten path, his early career was marked by working experience with Franco Albini,
Antonio Belvedere,
Gilles Trégouët, Borja Fernández distancing themselves from the epicentre of the world of construction, Peter Rice and Richard Rogers.
Joost Moolhuijzen, Mark Carroll,
Rodríguez, Idurre Garcia Fernández, taking outstanding, out-of-the-box design stances. His collaboration with the latter resulted in the seminal Centre Georges
Philippe Goubet
Ângela Luisa Barroso Moura,
RCR Arquitectes is certainly one of these firms. Founded in 1988 by Pompidou (1971-1977) in Paris, which represented the foundation of
Verónica Sofia Tavares Vitoriano, Associates
Noèlia Baldayo Nebot (architects); Rafael Aranda (Olot, 1961), Carme Pigem (Olot, 1962) and Ramón 30 Piano’s line of design, independently of his later stylistic evolutions.
Gemma Puigvert Molas (technical Vilalta (Vic, 1960), it has its premises in the architects’ small hometown The large architectural device of the Pompidou Centre shows both
Fellows
architect); Marta Subirós Bassols Olot, in Catalonia. The choice to remain closely linked to their roots confirmation and denial of that period’s radical architecture. On the one
5
(administration) resonates with the architects’ primary concern for context. Landscape hand, consolidated architectural canons are really turned inside out.
and community might be words often used by greedy developers as mere Established in The project eliminated the concept of a facade and the division of interior
Established in
1981
1988 diversions for an unconcerned audience, but in the projects developed by spaces, making the building become part of an imaginary platform as
RCR Arquitectes these words certainly retain their authentic meaning. Offices infinite and homogeneous as the one theorised by Archizoom in No-Stop
Office
Just to give a few examples, their Punta Aldea Lighthouse (1988) in Grand Paris; Genoa, Italy; New York City City (1970). At the same time, the Centre Pompidou Centre established
Olot, Spain
Canaria is an unusual interpretation of a lighthouse as a horizontal a clear difference with respect to radical architecture, favouring solid,
www.rpbw.com
www.rcrarquitectes.es building merging with the coastline; some 20 years later, under feasible solutions as compared to highly imaginative, delicate flights
completely different circumstances, their project for the Sant’Antoni- of utopia. In a subtle balance between vision and pragmatism, the
Joan Oliver Library (2002-2007) – paired with an elderly people’s architect from Genoa has succeeded in moving like an amazing machine
centre and the Cándida Pérez gardens – created a much-loved public through a global programme of architecture. For half a century now, he
space nestled into the Barcelonian grid designed by the urban planner has been managing projects of very large scale with almost disarming
Ildefons Cerdà in the 19th century. The marquee they designed for Les nonchalance. Some follow the horizon (Kansai Airport, Osaka, 1988-
Cols Restaurant in Olot (2007-2011) seems almost to disappear in the 1994). Others point up to the sky (The Shard, London Bridge Tower, 2000-
woods, setting the scene for the guests’ very own déjeuner sur l’herbe, 2012). One of such conceptual trips toward the axes of the world was
as in Édouard Manet’s famous painting. Finally, the Soulages Museum travelled again recently in Paris. Very different from its more renowned
in Rodez (2014), a bigger-scale project where museum and landscape cousin in the Beaubourg area, the Tribunal de Paris (2010-2017) certainly
merge into one. has no truck with the construction technology of the Centre Pompidou,
When RCR Arquitectes won the 2017 Pritzker Prize, the jury (chaired let alone its codes of expression. Perhaps its powerful composition,
by Glenn Murcutt, one of the finest landscape interpreters) praised this like the block layout of a city uprooted from the ground and mounted
relatively unknown Spanish firm for its “ability to express the local, but vertically, is only further evidence of the rational utopia that has always
also the universal, uniting us with one another through architecture.” guided seafarers.
Alessandro Benetti Guido Musante

Soulages Museum, Rodez, France, 2014 (photo Hisao Suzuki) Paris courthouse, Paris, 2017 (photo Sergio Grazia/RPBW)

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Richard Meier & Partners RMA Architects


Architects

Principal “A Meier building is an exploration of solid and void and light and Principals Once in a while, certain facts are so nearby and real as to be practically
Bernhard Karpf (managing principal) texture, and an essay on composition,” says the home page of Richard Rahul Mehrotra (founder) invisible. So much so, that in order to discover them, you need to bend
Meier & Partners Architects (founded in 1963), quoting the words of the Nondita Correa Mehrotra (Boston) your head to the side and observe them from a different perspective.
Partners
Robert Stephens (Mumbai)
Reynolds Logan, Dukho Yeon, architecture critic Paul Goldberger and echoing Le Corbusier’s 1923 One of these is the concept of “threshold” in architecture. Beyond
Payal Patel (Mumbai)
Vivian Lee description of “masses brought together in light”. its shape, function and link to the times, architecture is a more or
This is not without reason. In the 1960s, Richard Meier (Newark, New Associates
Staff less voluntary device that builds or strengthens social and individual
Jay Vadodaria, Prayag Bagde,
40 (New York City), Jersey, 1934) actively participated in the New York-centred cultural wave thresholds. Perhaps uncoincidentally, similar thoughts lie at the basis
Srijaya Simhadri, Jahnavi Thakkar,
25 (Los Angeles) supporting a critical rehabilitation of the modern movement. As one of of the work by Rahul Mehrotra (New Delhi, 1959), an architect, urban
Ela Singhal (director, research)
Established in the “Five Architects” originally united by Arthur Drexler and Colin Rowe planner and theoretician who founded RMA Architects in 1990 in
Staff
1963 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969, as well as in the Mumbai. As an heir to the big tradition of cultured architecture, Mehrotra
26
Offices namesake book published in 1972, Meier has stayed true to his faith combines his professional activity and teaching with in-depth studies
Established in
New York City, Los Angeles in Le Corbusier more than any of his fellows, meaning Michael Graves, of the qualities of the city and contemporary architectural design. He
1990
Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Peter Eisenman. explores the friction between Indian specificity and the ancient grafts
www.richardmeier.com From his early works – such as the Douglas House in Harbor Springs, Offices of codes and visual languages that grow on it. It would be reductive to
Michigan (1973) and the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana (1975–1979) Mumbai, Boston connect his thoughts on the threshold to a speculative extension on
– all the way to his international, large-scale commissions of the last two the thousand-year-old subject of the castes, which still today, 70 years
www.rmaarchitects.com
decades – including the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (1995) after their official abolition, strongly condition the balance of power
and the controversial Ara Pacis Museum (1995–2006) and Jubilee Church and subdivision of resources in India. To Mehrotra and RMA Architects,
(1996–2003) in Rome – the history of his designs is one of continuity and a threshold can be constituted in multiple and dynamic ways – from
variation on the same themes. the phenomenon of a city for 5,000 inhabitants that can appear and
If a Richard Meier style exists, it is given by carefully calculated disappear within a few days (Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral
proportions, the outspoken use of grids to make them visible, and the Mega City. A project by Harvard University, Hatje Cantz, Germany 2013)
colour white, which he famously glorifies as “the most wonderful one, to a small building that functions as an entrance in a surprising fashion.
because within it you can see all the colours of the rainbow”. The elliptic stainless steel-and-glass body of the visitor centre at the
One project stands out in his entire production, suggesting better than CSMVS Museum (2011) in Mumbai not only opens to visitors, but also
any other the cultural preoccupations underlying his formal research: the works as a symbolic optical lens. It welcomes while distorting with its
Getty Center (1997), a gated acropolis dissociating itself from the chaotic reflections the stout basalt heritage building that is the Prince of Wales
sprawl of Los Angeles. No cars are allowed inside this one-of-a-kind Museum, an ornate, static structure built in an eclectic local style in 1905
complex, which is certainly Meier’s most ambitious attempt to build a to honour King George V.
Europe-inspired alternative to Reyner Banham’s America. Guido Musante
Alessandro Benetti

Seamarq Hotel, Gangneung, South Korea, 2015 (photo Roland Halbe) Cept Library, Ahmedabad, India, 2017 (photo Rajesh Vora)

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Rogers Stirk Harbour SANAA


+ Partners

Partners After exactly 30 years of activity, the Richard Rogers Partnership founded Principals Established in 1995 in Tokyo as the combination of the two individual
Stephen Barrett, Ian Birtles, Lennart in London in 1977 by the British-Italian architect Richard George Rogers Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa practices of Kazuyo Sejima (Ibaraki, 1956) and Ryue Nishizawa (Tokyo,
Grut, Ivan Harbour (senior partner), (Florence, 1933) became Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners, to reflect 1966), SANAA is a globally renowned reference in terms of an almost
Associates
Stephen Light, Andrew Morris,
the vital contribution of two long-standing collaborators, Graham Stirk Yoshitaka Tanase, Yumiko Yamada, immaterial control of architectural shape and programme.
Tracy Meller, Richard Paul, John
and Ivan Harbour. “We wanted to avoid the situation where the name Rikiya Yamamoto The uniqueness of its architecture lies in its mastery of the relationship
McElgunn, Richard Rogers (senior
partner), Simon Smithson, Graham of the practice is someone who died 100 years ago. Architecture is a Staff with the surrounding environment – enclosure or disclosure,
Stirk (senior partner), Andrew Tyley living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to 40 transparency or filtered translucence, full contact with the ground or
Staff change,” explains Rogers in a 2012 interview in The Guardian. The words Established in buildings as free surfaces floating above the site. Such relational choices
170 reflect an essential element of his design vision: addressing what lies 1995 are not a consequence of an ideology, but originate in the programme,
ahead. The whole thing began in the mid-1960s, when particularly in the namely the experience of the place, function and space. Fluidity between
Established in Office
1977 (as Richard Rogers UK, high tech was considered more reliable than anything traditional. But Tokyo public dimension and private experience is created, differently fine-
Partnership; current branding since buildings made of tensile structures, Vierendeel frames and curtain walls tuned according to each project. This approach sets SANAA firmly
2007) in glass and steel (see the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and the Lloyds www.sanaa.co.jp in contemporaneity. Theirs is a continuous dialogue with present
Office building in London, two of the practice’s early works) did not remain experiences rather than a reference to the past.
London fixed in time. It is interesting, exciting even, to recognise some of these Their experimental studies culminated with the appointment of Sejima as
elements in the firm’s recent work, always optimistically suspended the curator of the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, SANAA creating the
www.rsh-p.com between radical dream and technological certainty (or the other way 2009 Serpentine Pavilion in London, and the duo being being awarded
around). The Macallan Distillery and visitor experience at Speyside in the 2010 Pritzker Prize.
Scotland (2018) designed by Graham Stirk is striking for its undulated Their built works have explored all possible scales and functions. See
timber roof, which reflects the interior, a series of open-plan units that the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa (1999-2004);
house all the production phases of whisky. The continuous, green, dune- the Louvre-Lens Museum in Lens, France (2005-2012), which alternates
shaped roof brings to mind the “this was tomorrow” of the British avant- material and immaterial restitution of the surrounding landscape
garde, as well as an enchanted elsewhere, almost as if the architecture through an almost theoretical employment of aluminium and glass; the
by Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners wished to remind us that time generation of minimal open spaces by torsions of volume in Sejima’s
holds many dimensions, and just as many surprises. Small House (Tokyo, 2000); and the translucence of the Kitagata housing
Guido Musante complex in Tokyo (1995-2000) and of the Rolex Learning Center in
Lausanne (2010). Here, perception is the key to time-and-place-specific
designs.
Giovanni Comoglio

The Macallan Distillery, Speyside, Scotland, 2018 (photo Mark Power/Magnum Photos) Rolex Learning Center, Lausanne, Switzerland, 2010 (photo SANAA)

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Sangath - Vāstu Shilpā SelgasCano


Consultants

Principal Born in India (Pune, 1927), Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi trained as Principals “The relationship between humans, space and nature shows how
Balkrishna Doshi (founding partner) an architect in his home country before moving to London in 1951 José Selgas, Lucia Cano everything is part of a unicum that is life. This applies to the city,
Partners where he completed his studies at the Royal Institute of British Staff too. Architecture should not be the protagonist (neither should the
Rajeev Kathpalia, Sönke Hoof, Architects. Soon after his arrival, he met Le Corbusier who offered Diego Cano-Lasso, Paolo Tringali, architects), but stand among things, among the people for the people,”
Radhika Doshi Kathpalia, him a job as an apprentice in his studio in Paris. In 1954, he returned Víctor Jiménez, Inés Olavarrieta, say the architects of SelgasCano.
Khushnu Panthaki Hoof to India to oversee the Swiss architect’s projects in Ahmedabad and Sara Ouass, Juan Jose Muñoz, To grasp what that means, it suffices to visit the two-building house
Catalina Vazquez , Pilar Cano
Staff Chandigarh. Two years later he founded his own practice, Vāstu Shilpā of José Selgas (Madrid, 1965) and Lucía Cano (Madrid, 1965). Built in
(architects)
60 Consultants, in Ahmedabad. Suffused with the spirit of the pioneers 2006 and 2008, the structures are immersed in greenery and nestled
Established in of modern architecture – Doshi has also worked with Louis Kahn on Established in in the ground, respectfully growing around the existing trees, and
1956 the construction of the Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad, 1996 light-heartedly contrasting with the authoritative appearance of the
Office 1974) and several other projects – the studio is known for its poetic and Offices surrounding historical residences in the Spanish capital.
Ahmedabad, India functional language. Conceiving architectures that are both modern and Madrid, Los Angeles, London The living and working spaces are appendix-like and unassuming areas
rooted in the Indian cultural landscape, Vāstu Shilpā Consultants often from which to watch nature following its course.
www.sangath.org merges prefabricated elements with traditional practices and shapes, www.selgascano.net SelgasCano conceives architecture as an artificial extension of the
such as sunken vaults, patios and gardens that help to regulate heat, natural landscape. A common feature of its projects is found in hand-
an approach that can be seen in many of the practice’s buildings, from crafted, low-tech construction details and materials, which are often
The Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore, 1977-1992) with its inexpensive, recycled, or unusual for the field of architecture.
lush courtyard and covered pathways, to the iconic Sangath complex The firm’s favourites are plastics and translucent materials, which it
that hosts his architecture studio (Ahmedabad, 1980). Ranging from transforms from amorphous blob into attractive elements that illuminate
institutional buildings to public spaces and private residences, Doshi’s and colour the gloom of the urban suburbs.
work also gives prominent importance to affordable social housing This is seen at Merida Factory (2011), a youth centre in the Spanish
projects. As an acknowledgement of his sustainable engagement, in region of Extremadura that hosts a wide variety of sporting and cultural
2018 he was the first Indian architect to be awarded the prestigious activities. Impossible to delimit or constrain in a grid, the project
Pritzker Prize. Doshi’s work was also celebrated in “Celebrating Habitat: resembles the instant, nomadic architecture conceived by Archigram in
the Real, the Virtual and the Imaginary”, an exhibition that was held the 1960s. Like many other projects by the studio, it looks like a coloured
in 2014 at the National Gallery of Modern Arts of New Delhi and at the inflatable hooked to the ground but ready to fly away at any time. It
Power Station of Art Shanghai in 2017. In 2019, Vitra Design Museum summarises all the key elements of SelgasCano design: playfulness,
(Germany) will retrace his extensive career – spanning more than six transparency, colour and freedom.
decades – in the exhibition “Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the Salvatore Peluso
People” (30.3–8.9.2019).
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts

Sangath Architect’s Studio, Ahmedabad, India, 1980 (photo Vāstu-Shilpā Foundation) Merida Factory, Spain, 2011 (photo Iwan Baan)

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Sergison Bates Architects Shigeru Ban Architects

Principals “Picturesque and mercantile, practical and poetic, perfectly imperfect”: Principal Shigeru Ban (Tokyo, 1957) founded Shigeru Ban Architects in Tokyo in
Jonathan Sergison, Stephen Bates, this is London’s urbanism described through the words of local Stephen Shigeru Ban 1985. Its three offices in Tokyo, Paris and New York City are coordinated
Mark Tuff Bates (1964), co-founder with Jonathan Sergison (1964) of the firm respectively by Nobutaka Hiraga (Tokyo 1949), Jean de Gastines
Employees
Associates Sergison Bates architects, based in the British capital since 1996. 50 employees (Casablanca, 1957) and Dean Maltz. Shigeru Ban Architects currently
Kirsten Gäbriels Webb, And although the duo’s activities now largely exceed the borders of the employs 50 professionals. Work ranges from exhibition design and
Established in
Andrew Jackson, José Bergua United Kingdom – they hold an academic chair in Mendrisio and Munich industrial design to single-family homes, public buildings and large
1985
Orduna, Michael Stettler
respectively, a second branch of their office opened in Zurich in 2010, temporary structures. In parallel, Shigeru Ban Architects has an active
Offices
Staff and they have been building through mainland Europe and beyond – a commitment to disaster relief through the construction of easily built
Tokyo, Paris, New York City
24 (including associates) silver thread links the fundamentals of their approach to the recent shelters. Using modest materials, the firm has created temporary refuge
Established in architectural and urban history of their country. www.shigerubanarchitects.com for domestic, religious and collective purposes in Ruanda, Nepal, China,
1996 This is especially true when considering their residential projects – the Italy, Japan and Turkey. The Cardboard Cathedral (2013) in Christchurch,
Offices urban housing in Finsbury Park, London (2008) and the suburban housing New Zealand replaces a cathedral damaged in an earthquake in 2011.
London, Zurich in Aldershot (2016), amongst the others – embodying their commitment Unusual materials, elementariness and inventiveness in amazing
to bringing quality back to the domestic space, as a reaction to construction systems are distinguishing features of work by Shigeru
www.sergisonbates.co.uk
decades of unsuccessful public policies, substandard designs and Ban Architects. The House of Double Roof (Yamanashi, 1993), the
poor construction works. Sergison Bates implement spatial evolutions, Furniture House (Yamanashi, 1995), the Atelier for a Glass Artist (Tokyo,
experiment with traditional and modern-day building materials, and 2006), the Paper Theatre (Amsterdam, 2003), the SBA Temporary Studio
outline a contemporary architectural language, set apart from pure (Paris, 2004) and the Nomadic Museum (Santa Monica, 2006) show
modernism, heroic Brutalism, as well as from the indulging neo- how simple steel pipes, prefabricated furniture, elements from office
vernacular of the Thatcher era. shelving and pressed paperboard can become structural elements. A
Such projects as the Craft centre in Ruthin (2008), the university campus leitmotiv is found in giant, awe-inspiring trellis-work roofs made in wood
in Aldgate East, London (2013), and the Blankenberge City library in according to a hexagonal pattern. Held up by a giant grid of pillars, such
Belgium (2011) expand the research on these same issues to other constructions are found at Centre Pompidou–Metz (2010), Haesley Nine
typologies and different contexts, inflecting them according to the Bridges Golf Clubhouse (Korea, 2010) and the YufuInfo building (Oita,
specificity of each commission and yet suggesting possible transversal Japan, 2018). Decoration similar to woven fabric is seen at the Aspen Art
strategies to be applied all through the body of the European city. The Museum (Colorado, 2014) and the Prefectural College of Arts and Culture
Erich Schelling Prize, the Heinrich Tessenow Gold Medal and the RIBA (Oita, Japan, 2015). Shigeru Ban Architects shows an elevated ability
Award are just a few of the prizes which have so far acknowledged to transform the normal into the extraordinary, make refined what is
Sergison and Bates’ remarkable impact on the contemporary culture of rough, and turn the fragile into being sturdy – all typical qualities running
design, as two of the finest interpreters of what could be recognised as a through Far Eastern culture as a whole.
widespread resurgence of the “ordinary” stance in architecture. Gabriella Lo Ricco
Alessandro Benetti

Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales, 2008 (photo David Grandorge, Ioana Marinescu) Centre Pompidou-Metz, France, 2010 (photo Didier Boy de la Tour)

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Smiljan Radic Clarke Snøhetta


Architects

Principal A Chilean of Croatian origin, Smiljan Radic (Santiago de Chile, 1965) Principals Setting out to understand the most profound meaning of the word
Smiljan Radic Clarke graduated from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in 1989 and Kjætil Trædal Thorsen, Craig Dykers “environment” and of sense of place, the Norwegian studio Snøhetta
Staff for two years continued to study in Venice and in Greece. On returning Staff tackles the most diverse projects – small shelters, large in-stitutional
Cristian Fuhrhop, Danilo Lazcano, to Chile, he established his own professional practice in the capital 245 buildings, graphic design and product design assignments – with an
Patricio Mardones, in 1995. His first projects were all at a small scale, one of refuges in inexplicably “northern” take, capable of finding balance between in
Established in
Gabriela Medrano, Carlos Sfeir the mountains, in the country or by the sea such as Copper House 2 the complex relation between natural and human-made landscape.
1989
Established in or the Pite House in Papudo, both from 2005. This encounter with the Founded in Oslo in 1989 by Craig Edward Dykers (Frankfurt, 1961) and
Offices
1995 variegated Chilean landscape led him to look more to artistic rather than Kjetil Trædal Thorsen (Haugesund, 1958), Snøhetta’s first major project
Oslo, New York City, Innsbruck,
Office architectural references, such as Land Art. Adelaide, Paris, Hong Kong, was Bibliotheca Alexan-drina in Egypt (1989-2001). The project that
Santiago An important step in this regard was the collaboration with sculptor San Francisco really brought them under the international spotlight was the Norwegian
Marcela Correa, that characterises in particular the two installations that National Opera and Ballet (2008) where architecture turns into landscape
snohetta.com and public space, and its structural elements, such as the roof and the
brought Radic international attention: the first, The boy hidden in a fish,
a large mass with wooden inserts dug into it, was placed at the entrance halls, establish a connection with the city. Today, the studio counts on
to the Corderie dell’Arsenale during the 12 Architectural Biennale 240 employees from 32 different countries, manly based in the Oslo
directed by Kazujo Sejima in 2010. The second, somewhat similar but offices but also working in the New York and San Francisco branches:
much bigger, was built in the summer of 2014 for the Serpentine the first opened for the construction of the cultural building in the
Gallery in London. The use of rocks has become a constant in his work, National September 11 Memorial Museum Pa-vilion (2004-2014), the
both as a structural element as in the facade of the Mestizo restaurant in second for the new extension of the SFMoMA (2010-2016). Other Snøhet-
Santiago (2007) and as part of the Zen garden that surrounds the ta branches are in Innsbruck, Stockholm, Paris and Adelaide.
Wik cellar at Milhaue (2014). More than individual buildings, Snøhetta architectures are stories: Under,
More recently the Chilean practice has also addressed urban themes their underwater restau-rant currently being constructed in Lindesnes
such as the extension and refurbishment of the Museo Chileno de Arte in the south of Norway, will be set five metres below sea level; Svart, a
Precolombino (2014) also in the capital, thus continuing the thread of hotel project that started in 2017 in Svartisen, in collaboration with Arctic
research concerning the relationship between art and architecture, Ad-ventures of Norway, Asplan Viak and Skanska, will translate into
object also of his occasional writings and university lectures in Texas. a circular building set on piles and capable of producing clean energy
Manuel Orazi in the north-European environment; and their Outdoor Care Retreat in
Oslo and Kristiansand (2018), small 35 square metre wooden retreats for
open-air as-sistance of hospital patients – created in collaboration with
the Friluftssykehuset Foundation – aim at restoring balance between
body, mind and nature.
Valentina Croci

Serpentine Gallery Pavillion, London, 2014 (photo Iwan Baan) Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, Oslo, Norway, 2008 (photo Thomas Harryson)

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SO–IL SOM

Principals SO-IL is the acronym standing for the “Solid Objectives” of Florian Partners Few firms can boast such a long history as SOM, originally founded in
Florian Idenburg, Jing Liu Idenburg (Haarlem, 1975) and Jing Liu (Nanjing, 1980), partners since Mustafa K. Abadan, 1936 in Chicago by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. In 1939, they
2008 and currently based in New York. The notion of “solidification” for Stephen Apking, William F. Baker, were joined by John O. Merrill, giving birth to the office’s now legendary
Associates
Thomas Behr, Keith Boswell,
Ted Baab, Kevin Lamyuktseung them has much to do with the possibility to “translate their ideas into acronym. And even less practices can claim such a privileged connection
Carrie Byles, Larry Chien,
Staff matter”, even in the ravaged economic context of the immediate post- Leo Chow, Brant E. Coletta, to a specific building type. SOM’s eight-decade career remains
Martina Baratta, Sanger Clark, crisis age when they started their activity. Chris Cooper, Paul Danna, inextricably linked to the formal, spatial and technical implementation of
Sofia Maria Forelle, Andrew The firm come under the spotlight with their playful winning entry for Michael Duncan, Scott Duncan, the skyscraper and its consecration as the architecture par excellence of
Fu (studio manager), Karilyn 2010 MoMA PS1 Young Architect Program, a temporary, “sensory- Philip Enquist, Laura Ettelman, any self-respecting downtown.
Johanesen, Sophie Nichols charged and participatory environment” inviting visitors to engage with Xuan Fu, T.J. Gottesdiener, Even the structure of the Skidmore, Owings and Merrill office proved to
and 11 others Gary Haney, Craig W. Hartman,
its light unstable structure, and by doing so, to raise their awareness of be forward-looking: the now globally established integrated approach
Kent Jackson, Colin Koop,
Established in their use of space. to design has a direct lineage to the pioneering multidisciplinary
John Kriken, Brian Lee,
2008 Their later designs also investigate the link between architecture, its configuration at SOM.
Kenneth A. Lewis, Mark Sarkisian,
Office surroundings and humankind, focusing on the building’s shell as a crucial Gene Schnair, Adam Semel, In an early phase, most of the studio’s commissions came from the USA,
New York City threshold. This also results in a few groundbreaking outcomes in terms Jonathan Stein, Douglas Voigt and this is how they helped shape the modernist urban landscape of
of experimentations on construction materials: the draped facades of the Staff such cities as New York and Chicago. The Lever House (1952) and the
www. so-il.org
Kukje Art Gallery in Seoul (2012), for instance, are wrapped in a hand- 1,200 Manufacturers Trust Company Building (1954), both in Manhattan, as
made chainmail veil made of no less than 510,000 metal rings. Established in well as the later John Hancock Tower (1969) and Sears Towers (1973) in
The tent for the Frieze Art Fair in New York (2012) and the so-called 1936 Chicago, are valuable evidence of their commitment to evolving and fine-
“grand canopy” of the recently completed Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti tuning the features of the largely Mies-inspired International Style.
Offices
Museum in Davis, California (2016, with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson) New York City, Chicago, Half a century after the completion of these iconic designs, SOM proudly
develop a research on exhibition spaces preoccupied both by their San Francisco, Los Angeles, defines itself “one of the largest and most influential architecture,
performances as enclosed places, under controlled conditions, and by Washington, London, Hong Kong, interior design, engineering and urban planning firms in the world”.
their connection to the outside world. Shanghai, Dubai, Mumbai It counts 10 offices scattered over 3 continents, more than 10,000
SO-IL’s growing portfolio now features a varied range of completed projects built in 50 countries and approximately 2,000 prizes awarded.
www.som.com
and ongoing projects – including Logan headquarters in New York As was repeatedly the case throughout the 20th century, its portfolio
(2012), Las Americas social housing in Leon, Mexico (ongoing) and a includes not only the tallest building of the Western hemisphere – One
design proposal for Place Mazas in Paris (2018). They all share the same World Trade Center (2014) in New York City – but even the highest man-
concern, pragmatic and optimistic at the same time, summed up by made structure ever accomplished on earth – the awe-inspiring 829.8
Idenburg and Liu’s words: “We work within pre-existing ecosystems to metres of the Burj Khalifa (2010) in Dubai.
ensure that places will remain adaptable to a dynamic future”. Alessandro Benetti
Alessandro Benetti

Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, USA, 2016 (photo Iwan Baan) One World Trade Center, New York City, 2014 (photo James Ewing/OTTO)

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Sou Fujimoto Architects Souto de Moura Arquitectos

Principal One of the legendary aspects of architecture from at the last century, Principal According to a shared historiographic interpretation, a continuous thread
Sou Fujimoto if not more, is the elimination of the boundary between inside and Eduardo Souto de Moura links three generations of Portuguese architects, whose most prominent
Staff outside, traditionally achieved with numerous, large openings “that Staff figures are, in order of appearance, Fernando Távora (1923-2005), his
47 project the landscape into the house”. Sou Fujimoto (1971) perhaps one 21 (Porto), 6 (Lisbon) disciple Álvaro Siza (1933) and the latter’s former collaborator Eduardo
Established in of the most prominent young architects of the last ten years, simply Established in Souto de Moura (1952).
2000 pulverises ontologically the boundary: not so much by bringing natural 1993 Working on the threshold between tradition and modernity, gifted
elements into the living space but rather by attributing an almost with outstanding formal mastery and at the same time profoundly
Offices Offices
Tokyo, Paris magical state of uncertainty to the space, the forms, the functions, Porto, Lisbon preoccupied by the social dimension of the architectural discipline,
to the possibilities of architecture, causing one to doubt where one the three of them have been revolving around the Porto School of
www.sou-fujimoto.net actually is. Some see in the geographical origins of Fujimoto – he Architecture, and have largely contributed to reshape their city’s
was born in the region of Hokkaido, rich in forests and valleys – the contemporary landscape.
reasons for this kind of “hypercritical regionalism” that is not limited One project embodies better than any other the strong connection
to mining the foundations of modernity but the very fundamentals of between Souto de Moura, who started his own practice in 1980 (his
building. In effect, his buildings often seem to have been transformed would establish his current firm in 1993), and his hometown: even more
into games to be interpreted, like those you might find in a public park. than the stately Burgo Tower (2007), it is the design of a large number of
Unlike these however, it is white that dominates and not colour or pure stations for Porto’s light metro system (between 1997 and 2005, but still
material: the almost immutable code of Japanese architecture post- expanding) which left a clearly recognisable imprint on the entire city.
Sejima (whom Fujimoto is considered the greatest heir to). So perhaps Souto de Moura teamed with Siza on this and many other occasions,
it is no coincidence that Tokyo, a megalopolis made up of a myriad of including the design of the 2005 Serpentine Pavilion in London.
small things, starting from the building plots, has had the capacity to A diverse range of completed projects including Braga Municipal
accommodate this minute sensitivity “of the forest floor” where every Stadium (2003), the Casa das Histórias Paula Rego in Cascais (2009)
movement, use of space and habit is trusted to instinct. And perhaps it is and the Convento das Bernardas in Tavira (2013) testify to the architect’s
no coincidence either if the designs in which the element of vegetation remarkable capacity to handle a multiplicity of languages, forms and
is not present in itself but rather used as a metaphor – the house-game materials, ranging from fair-faced concrete to irregularly textured stone,
House NA in Tokyo (2011) or the metallic cloud of the Serpentine Gallery lavish marble and simple plaster.
Pavilion (London 2013) – end up being the more effective of the recent Awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2011 and a Golden Lion in 2018, Souto de
interpretations of the theme “forest-building”. The most successful Moura increasingly but reluctantly finds himself under the spotlight of
project of these, The Arbre Blanc in Paris (2019), is also striking not so the architectural jet set. Still, he holds on to his distinctively reticent
much for the presence of trees as much as its gigantic pineapple shape, attitude – for instance, his office has no website! – and remains
the result of emphasising the number and the phenomenal cantilever of preoccupied in the first place by the actual issues of construction, as
the balconies that project into nature. well as by the need “to produce work that has a social significance”.
Guido Musante Alessandro Benetti

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, 2013 (photo Iwan Baan) Casa das Histórias Paula Rego, Cascais, Portugal, 2009 (photo Luiz Ferreira Alves)

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Spbr arquitetos Steven Holl Architects

Principal Brazilian architecture went through a golden age in different phases. Principal Founded in 1977, Steven Holl Architects is made up of a staff of 29
Angelo Bucci In 1960, Brasília was founded as the capital, with the ground-breaking Steven Holl people. Chris McVoy, Noah Yaffe and Roberto Bannura work alongside
Associates contribution of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer. But before that, in the Partners Steven Holl (Bremerton, Washington D.C. 1947) in managing two
Tatiana Ozzetti, Victor Próspero, postwar, the Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi, who early on worked with Chris McVoy, Noah Yaffe, offices, in New York City and Beijing. The studio’s activity ranges from
Felipe Barradas, Lucas Roca Carlo Pagani for Gio Ponti on the magazines Lo Stile and then Domus, Roberto Bannura urban projects to residential and office buildings, as well as one-family
Established in was a considerable influence on the architectural debate in Brazil, above Staff homes; the development of collective constructions tied to the world
2003 all in São Paulo. 29 of art is one of the fields in which Steven Holl Architects can boast its
Office The work of Angelo Bucci (Orlândia, São Paulo, 1963) originates in the Established in vast experience. The attention towards the architecture’s corporeal and
São Paulo cultural context of Brazilian neo-brutalism, as practised first by Paulo 1977 sensory elements – light, colour, material – and the distinctive ability to
Mendes da Rocha and then by Lina Bo Bardi (see the São Paulo Museum master formal and spatial solutions are constant features of the studio’s
Offices
www.spbr.arq.br of Art MASP, 1968 and the SESC Pompeia building, 1977–1986), who architecture. Whether or not these characteristics derive from Holl’s
New York City, Beijing
were references for the younger generations. Since his early career (see training at the AA, they are present in the motivations of a philosophical
the Clínica de Odontologia in Orlândia, 1998–2000), Bucci has been www.stevenholl.com nature to which the architect often refers in his writings, such as the
working on the exterior envelope. Walls and floor slabs in fair-faced phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty or the use of categories that
reinforced concrete enclose a second envelope composed of glazed recall the experience of perception. Yet buildings such as, for example,
surfaces that make the volumes materialise, giving lightness to the the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma (Helsinki, 1998), the Simmons
built space. The Brazilian architect Bucci applies the same approach Hall university dormitories at MIT (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002), the
to housing. His Casa de fim de semana (São Paulo, 2014) is suspended extension of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Missouri,
aboveground in an homage to the Farnsworth house (1951) built in Illinois 2007) or the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth
by Mies van der Rohe, with a few variations: the structure of white- University (Richmond, Virginia, 2018) show how the studio’s architecture
painted steel beams is substituted by rough concrete walls and unframed projects cannot be considered in just one light; each building is
glazed surfaces, which gives a clear, sharp and radical separation interdependent on the several contexts to which it relates. Thus it’s
between materials without the least conceptual ambiguity. Bucci’s up to Holl’s conceptual watercolours, painted before the realisation
buildings belong to the kind of neo-brutalism that takes simplicity, of the buildings, to highlight the fundamental ideas of each project;
elementariness and clarity as key design elements. for instance, the figure of the chiasma for the Helsinki and Kansas
Emanuele Piccardo City museums, the diagrammatic metaphor of the sponge for the MIT
building, the various conceptions of ‘time’ for the Richmond museum.
In the case of urban projects, complexes like Linked Hybrid (Beijing,
2009) or Sliced Porosity Block (Chengdou, China 2012), indicate the
disposition of Steven Holl Architects towards making hybrid buildings
whose functional complexities are confirmed by passageways or raised
footbridges that break the geometrical rules of construction; in so doing,
they become alternatives to the isolated and single-function buildings
typical of the 21st-century megalopolis.
Gabriella Lo Ricco

Weekend house, São Paulo, 2013 (photo Nelson Kon) Visual arts building, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2016 (photo Michael Moran)

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Studio Anna Heringer Studio Fuksas

Principal Internationally known for her practice advocating a more resilient Principals The career of Massimilano Fuksas (Rome, 1944), is split into two phases.
Anna Heringer and socially engaged architecture, German architect Anna Heringer Massimiliano Fuksas, After studying at the Sapienza university and taking an active part in
(Rosenheim, 1977) received the Global Award for Sustainable Doriana Mandrelli Fuksas the movements of 1968 in Rome, he graduated with Ludovico Quaroni
Staff
4 Architecture in 2011. Giving back value to locally crafted and not Staff in 1969. The first part of his career was spent as a partner in the studio
standardised materials, such as rammed earth and bamboo, which, she 170 Granma, opened together with his first wife Anna Maria Sacconi and
Established in
2005 argues, “can be reclaimed by nature over time”, Heringer suggests that Established in characterised by a series of public works in small towns in central Italy
an alternative to steel and concrete is not only possible but necessary. 1969 built almost exclusively in reinforced concrete: schools, sports centres,
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Laufen, Germany From the METI Handmade School (Bangladesh, 2006), a two-storey Offices swimming pools, cemeteries. The most noteworthy of these were the
building which was granted the Aga Khan Award in 2007, to the Bamboo Rome, Paris, Shenzhen sports centre at Sassocorvaro (1972), the first work to show a Kahn-like
www.anna-heringer.com Hostels, a series of three circular buildings designed for the first influence, and the gym at Paliano (1982), with a false sloping elevation
International Bamboo Architecture Biennale in Baoxi (China, 2016), and www.fuksas.com that had resonance particularly in France, where from the mid 1980s
ever since her early projects, Heringer has systematically turned her he gradually relocated to. In 1989 he opened Studio Fuksas in Paris
vision into tangible outcomes. Having explored the building qualities together with his second wife Doriana Mandrelli. Also on the other side
of rammed earth in several conditions and in various geographical of the Alps his work developed in small towns, but began to diversify in
locations, on the occasion of the XV Venice Architecture Biennale (2016) terms of materials, above all embracing the French tradition of metal
she was invited to co-curate the exhibition Mud WORKS!, an in-depth construction. The entrance to the grottos at Niaux (1994) in Corten
overview regarding the possible uses of “mud as the material for our steel is a light and brutal metal structure, a sculptural sign in the rocky
future cities and homes”. Yet, her engagement in the promotion of landscape that marks the entrance to the site of primitive cave paintings.
local materials as valuable and precious know-how is not only limited In 2000 Fuksas was director of the Venice Architecture Biennial entitled
to the building process but is also seen as a way to empower local “Less Aesthetics, More Ethics”, installing at the centre of the corderie a
communities, and especially women. Beside her architectural practice, long screen that projected videos of the megalopolis. In the same year he
in 2012 Heringer founded Didi Textiles, a sustainable clothing brand returned to Rome, winning various competitions thanks to his decisive-
that designs contemporary clothes using reclaimed saris the traditional looking designs of strong impact that often landed him in the midst of
dresses worn by Bangladeshi women – sewn by the women of the village media controversy: the long, glass carpet of the Fiera at Rho Pero (2005),
of Rudrapur, in the north of the country. The project, which is conceived the church of San Paolo Apostolo at Foligno (2009), the somewhat
as a “spatial and urban intervention” was presented during the last problematic Nuvola convention centre at EUR (2016) and terminal 3 at
Venice Architecture Biennale, in 2018. Shenzhen-Bao’an airport (2013) that extends with the elongated form of
Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts a manta ray.
Manuel Orazi

Three Hostels, Baoxi, China, 2016 (photo Julien Lanoo) Convention center, Rome, 2016 (photo Roland Halbe)

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Studio Gang Studio Märkli

Principals If there is one element capable of identifying the current architectural Principal Peter Märkli was born in 1953 in Quarten, a small town in the canton
Jeanne Gang (founding principal); season, whose evolution over the last century has exceeded the limits Peter Märkli of Saint Gallen, Switzerland. He studied architecture in the early 1970s
Juliane Wolf, Weston Walker, of pure formal language, that element is contemporary architecture’s at the ETH in Zurich, and opened his office in the same city in 1978.
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Thorsten Johann (design principals);
capability to intercept and incorporate spatial dynamics, usage and Fabian Kopp, Lucas Frehner, The tradition of Swiss rationalism, particularly as found in work by his
Mark Schendel (managing principal)
interpretation. Within this framework operates Studio Gang, an Martin Rathgeb, Louise Olsson, mentor Rudolf Olgiati, has informed his work from the start. Onto this
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architecture and urban planning practice founded in Chicago in 1997 Hermann Fritschi, Nathalie Fritschi, substrate, Märkli grafts the fundamental technique of drawing as the key
114 Jakob Frischknecht,
and run by Jeanne Gang (Belvidere, Illinois, 1964). This practice activates to his design thinking. His sketches are small, “small enough to not have
Anastasia Vaynberg, Marcel Pola,
Established in processes that are primarily focused on relations between individuals, to complicate them with useless details,” and numerous. Sometimes
Steve Roth, Claudia Lehmann,
1998 communities and environments, delivering a heterogeneous and they are drawn without a specific project in mind and taken up years
Claudia Zimmermann, Marchet
Offices multifaceted body of work spanning different scales and typologies, Saratz, Adrian Berger (architects); later as an architectural basis. His search for essentialness, or rather
Chicago, New York City, reaching beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries. Each building Lisbeth Märkli, Anna Märkli the essence of essentiality, is not only seen in his drawings, but also
San Francisco, Paris is designed to define more cohesive social processes, develop new (support and administration) in his breakthrough building La Congiunta (1992), the “house for art”
materials, and interact with new urban landscapes: the roof of the Art Established in in Giornico in the Ticino canton that received international attention
www.studiogang.com
Deco building where the studio is headquartered, for instance, has 1978 from architecture critics. Designed with Stefan Bellwalder, it is a Cubist
been transformed into a space where “wild nature” and “leisure” can Office bunker made of rough concrete erected in the middle of vineyards and
converge (Studio Gang Sky Island, Chicago, 2017); the Arcus Centre for Zurich made to host the reliefs of the sculptor Hans Josephsohn, another
Social Justice Leadership in Kalamazoo (Michigan, USA, 2014), instead important influence on Märkli’s work. The meticulous compositional
www.studiomaerkli.com
is based on a construction system employing wood as an effective and aspects, the careful proportion and layout of the volumes show a
easy-to-read macro-Braille alphabet spelling out “low-tech, low-cost and coherent and rigorous will to preserve and apply the modernist codes
sustainable”. Defining a space dedicated to projects related to human that have gradually fallen out of favour in other geographic and cultural
rights and social justice, the Centre is designed to activate exchange ambits – ever since Märkli’s years of architectural training, to be precise.
and training projects for students, teachers, scholars, operators and An apparent partial softening of these aspects in several successive
the general public: a project based on the valorisation of daylight as a projects can be ascribed more to contingencies of context and building
circadian vehicle favouring interaction. A similar approach is reflected type than to a real redefinition of his principal design paradigms. Recent
in the Writers Theatre in Glencoe (Illinois, USA, 2016) where the focus significant (in this sense) projects include the headquarters for the
is not on accentuating the multiple relational energies, but rather on Swiss pharmaceutical giant Synthes (2012) in Zuchwil in the canton of
channelling them into an immersive and intimate connection between Solothurn. Its terse, relentless compositional theme is given by structural
the actors and the audience, transforming the architecture into a device grid of concrete alternated with large windows and rhythmically accented
for the amplification of the literary experience itself. with shallow setbacks over the entire oblong building, the body of
Guido Musante which theoretically could continue to infinity, much like the modernity it
represents.
Guido Musante

Writers Theatre, Glencoe, USA, 2016 (photo Hedrich Blessing) Im Gut cooperative housing complex, Zurich, 2014 (photo Studio Märkli)

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Studio Mumbai Studio Other Spaces

Principal Seeking freedom of expression and independence from a pre- Principals Olafur Eliasson (Copenhagen, 1967) is not an architect but rather an
Bijoy Jain established system, Bijoy Jain (Mumbai, 1965) founded Studio Mumbai Olafur Eliasson, artist of space; since the Danish artist’s studio opened in Berlin in 1995,
in 1996, a one-of-a-kind workshop located in Alibag, an hour south of Sebastian Behmann he has explored the workings of perception, movement and human
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30 the capital of Maharashtra. The studio follows a production model where Associates relationship to the environment. Conceiving of the artwork as something
a small team of skilled local craftspeople both design and construct, Taylor Dover, Niël Meyer relevant for society, he exploits its universal vocabulary in projects of
Established in
2005 combining tradition and modernity. This process of learning-through- Staff denouncement, meant to change the usual way of perceiving natural
making is based on concern for the relation between people, nature and 7 events or physical phenomena such as light. His artworks take the
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Mumbai, India context, resulting in buildings that are open yet private and intimate. Established in form of installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs or films and,
The Palmyra House (Nandgaon, 2007) is surrounded by palm trees and 2014 bypassing museum spaces, they enter the public domain by becoming
www.studiomumbai.com built with local ain wood and traditional interlocking joinery; the Tara temporary architecture or collective actions. Paradigmatic of this
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House (Kashid, 2005) is laid out around a tropical garden that hides an Berlin development was the installation titled Ice Watch (2018) outside the Tate
underground room filled with aquifer water; and the Ganga Maki textile Modern in London, in which 12 large blocks of ice that had detached
studio in the Himalayas (2017) is a weaving and dying workshop, a gallery www.studiootherspaces.net from the Greenland ice sheet were arranged in a circle, as if marking
and house made of brick, lime and stone that combine Indian craft skills the hours on a clock face. The artwork created a tangible experience
and Japanese aesthetics, all arranged around a central courtyard. Jain’s while declaring the reality of the melting of Arctic ice. Another example
working method was the subject of the installation Work-Place at the is the spectacular Waterfall, built for the gardens of Versailles (2016):
2010 Venice Architecture Biennale, which earned a special mention from supported by a pylon, the flow of the water called attention to the
the international jury for distilling the messiness of a working studio into presence of greater natural forces as these play off our artificial
a harmony of tools, wooden models and samples. Bijoy Jain received environments. Parallel to producing this kind of artwork, Eliasson’s
his master’s degree in architecture from Washington University in St. interest in architecture continued to grow and culminated, in 2014, in
Louis, Missouri in 1990 and trained with Richard Meier before moving the founding of Studio Other Spaces with architect Sebastian Behmann.
back to India in 1995. His work has been exhibited globally and awarded Located in Berlin in the same building as the Studio Olafur Eliasson,
several prizes including the BSI Swiss Architectural Award in 2012 and SOS allows the artist and the architect to test, in an interdisciplinary
the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture from the Institut Français way, a new concept of public space; among the works moving in this
d’Architecture (IFA) in 2009. direction we recall here the Cirkelbroen bridge in Copenhagen (2015),
Marianna Guernieri composed of five offset circular platforms that form flat connecting
boat shapes, encouraging those who pass over the bridge to linger.
The most emblematic work is Fjordenhus (2018), an SOE project that
was developed in close collaboration with SOS facing the port of Vejle,
on the Danish peninsula of the Jutland. This building in brick, sculpted
by parabolic arches that seems to emerge from the depths of the sea
and rise to a height of 28 metres, serves as the new headquarters of
the Danish firm Kirk Kapital and is intended as a total work of art, with
especially-designed furniture and lighting, as well as some site-specific
artworks.
Valentina Croci

Ganga Maki textile studio, Dehradun, India, 2017 (photo Chiaki Maki) Fjordenhus, Vejle, Denmark, 2018 (photo Anders Sune Berg/Olafur Eliasson)

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Tadao Ando Architect TAMassociati


& Associates

Principal Before becoming an architect (without ever graduating, by the way, just Principals Taking Care – designing for the common good is TAMassociati’s mission.
Tadao Ando like Frank Lloyd Wright or Carlo Scarpa), Tadao Ando first worked as Massimo Lepore, Raul Pantaleo, Founded by Massimo Lepore (Udine, Italy, 1960), Raul Pantaleo (Milan,
a truck driver and then perused a career in boxing. Rumours? Urban Simone Sfriso 1962) and Simone Sfriso (London, 1966) the firm sets out to show how
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25 legends? Or perhaps simply the truth (as the many and much-viewed Associates architecture can be a profession at the service of communities and a tool
training videos on You Tube seem to confirm)? Either way, all these Laura Candelpergher, Annamaria for civil action.
Established in
stories only make each of his architectures more fascinating. Draghetti, Enrico Vianello The firm operates in heterogeneous contexts, but is best known for its
1969
Although casted in cement – as grey and smooth as a tatami – Tadao Staff projects in emergency contexts, in Africa and the Middle East, often
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Ando’s spiritual and metaphysical notion of space stands in sheer Emanuela Not, Milena D’Acunto, collaborating with NGOs such as Emergency. Compressed earth blocks
Tokyo
contrast with the idea that the hand that drew his architectures once Valentina Milan and bamboo weaving, lowered brick vaults and undulated steel pitched
www.tadao-ando.com used to wear boxing gloves punching into sweaty bodies or used to Established in roofs constitute a simple and austere vocabulary that these architects
drive heavy trucks made of steel and rubber. One might think that when 1990 use to offer beauty and dignity to territories troubled by conflict.
Kenneth Frampton included Tadao Ando (Osaka, 1941) among the leading Offices TAMassociati proposes a different modernity, an alternative to the
figures of Critical Regionalism, he wasn’t acknowledging the Japanese Venice, Bologna, Trieste - Italy western model of uncontrolled development. In the words of Austrian
quality of this architect’s interpretation of modernism, but rather the philosopher and pedagogist Ivan Illich, their architectures are “tools for
www.tamassociati.org
slight, omnipresent, coarse, and instinctive corporeal quality of its conviviality”: they encourage self-sufficiency, using local techniques and
structures. skills to find contemporary solutions, always acknowledging the social
Ando himself, on more than one occasion, observed how the context and the community’s needs.
transcendental space of his churches and of all his buildings in fact, is One example is the construction of the H2OS eco-village in Keur Bakar
not underpinned by a western-like transcendental quality, but is rather Diahité, Senegal in 2017, a project that includes a community centre with
the result of an instinctual investigation of the fusion with nature, a rammed-earth structure built with the villagers, with whom experts
a fusion which however cannot be correlated to Japanese animism or have undertaken an educational path to increase knowledge in the fields
pantheism. So, for instance, his most iconic work, the cross cut of construction and agricultural efficiency.
into cement of the Ibaraki Church of the Light (Osaka, 1989) must Taking Care was also the theme TAMassociati chose for the Italian
be read as a double compensation: light and material are mutually Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. This curatorial project
necessary in relation to their opposite and different natures. provided thought, meeting and action opportunities that allowed the firm
Paradoxically, the fact that the church floor and pews are made with to incorporate a broader reflection into its practice, translating into a
the scaffolding planks is a conceptually refined detail, so regional collection of case studies, interactions with different agents operating in
it might almost seem autobiographical, more than self-critical. urban and world peripheries, and the creation of five mini-architectures
But perhaps this is just another rumour. resulting from the collaboration between architects and NGOs.
Guido Musante Salvatore Peluso

Church on the water, Tomamu, Japan, 1988 (photo Yoshio Shiratori) Healing garden, Port Sudan, Sudan, 2012 (courtesy of Massimo Grimaldi and Emergency)

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Best architecture firms 2019 101 Best architecture firms 2019 102

Tatiana Bilbao Estudio Terunobu Fujimori

Principal Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico City, 1972) is a prominent figure in the Principal Much has been written of the inventive skill of Terunobu Fujimori
Tatiana Bilbao contemporary landscape of Mexican architecture. Her practice shifts Terunobu Fujimori (Nagano, Japan, 1946): the contemporary architect perhaps most able
Associates from small-scale projects to large-scale urban inter-ventions. Since her Staff to move through the worlds of the oneiric and the fantastic, who has
Catia Bilbao Spamer, first occupation as advisor for the Urban Project at the Urban Housing Naoe Kowatari for decades transported us into his Chashisu (Japanese tea houses),
Juan Pablo Benlliure and Development Department of the Municipality of Mexico City, to her in worlds suspended among the clouds and tree branches, houses on
Established in
Staff latest publication A House Is Not Just a House: Projects on Housing 1991 stilts with Gaudi style legs. Yet his ability does not cease to amaze,
50 (Columbia University Press, New York 2018), the common thread of her proposing us “something else of something else”, continuously turning
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Established in research has always been oriented towards finding new strategies for Tokyo things upside down with respect to the concept of the fantastic, surreal
2004 inhabited solutions. As a starting point of her process, whether is a low or metaphysical that all of us expected. So, for example, on visiting
budget intervention or a luxury project, she tries to find simple and low the Vatican Chapels, the pavilion of the Santa Sede in the garden of
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Mexico City cost solutions to overcome the constrains embedded in each context. the Isola di San Giorgio at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the
For her Ajijic house project (Jalostitlán, Lago de Chapala, Mexico, 2010), Japanese architect surprised everyone with a chapel more chapel-like
www.tatianabilbao.com in order to comply with the client’s budget, she tested the potentiali- than the others: so close to Asplund’s original idea of the building from
ty of rammed earth, and explored the possibility of applying it to the 1920 – proposed as a design matrix to all the creators participating – yet
whole building, from the structure to the finishes. The materiality of able to offer a Japanese interpretation of the key millenary elements
architecture is an important feature of her work as confirmed by the of the West, by proposing trees instead of columns or integrating the
mirrored glass house built inside the forest in Monterrey. Throughout her Christian symbol of the cross into the timber structure of the building.
carrier, Bilbao has predominantly explored the theme of housing, tackling With just as much skill however, Fujimori’s storytelling is able to address
the topic from different points of view. Considering the house a major other worlds and other imageries. As such, a sweet factory (La Collina
social concern in Mex-ico, she has worked alongside administrations and at Omihachiman, Shiga, 2015) or a museum of mosaics (the Mosaic
researched incessantly on this topic. At Chicago Architecture Biennial Tile Museum at Tajimi-city, Gifu, 2016) – themes that in themselves
2015 she presented a prototype of affordable houses starting from an are already quite fantastical – seem two different operations in which
8,000 dollars construction budget; the modularity of the project allows the basic elements of a dwelling inspired by a Tolkein saga have been
flexibility of use, reaffirming once more the political role of architecture extracted and then distilled to generate two works of architecture so
in fragile contexts. descriptive as to be timeless, abstract and totally contemporary.
Federica Rasenti A light but ruthless magic, dreamy and surgical, that can be explained
perhaps only considering that Fujimori conceived his first architectural
design at the age of 45, having dedicated the first part of his life to
medicine. After which he decided to plunge himself into childhood, for as
long as he had left.
Guido Musante

Sustainable housing, Acuña, México, 2015 (photo Iwan Baan) La Collina, Omihachiman, Shiga, Japan, 2015 (photo Terunobu Fujimori)

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Toyo Ito & Associates, Tyin tegnestue Architects


Architects

There are two types of architects. Most plan from the exterior towards Principals Founded by Andreas Gjertsen (Trondheim, Norway, 1981) and Yashar
Principal the interior: regardless of the plan, of the facade or the three- Andreas G. Gjertsen, Yashar Hanstad (Teheran, Iran, 1982), Tyin is an architecture studio based in
Toyo Ito dimensional models, the heart of the space is reached at the end of the Hanstad and Ørjan Nyheim Trondheim, Norway that has been socially engaged since its debut
(partners)
Staff process, as the result of a gradual progression that prioritizes the large in 2008. At the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, they were the only
45 over the small. Toyo Ito (Seoul, 1941) is not one of these architects. Associate Scandinavian architects selected by Alejandro Aravena, the curator of
Today one of the most prominent Japanese and world architects, Ito Fredrik Asplin “Reporting from the Front”. Working in close relationship with local
Established in
1971 conceives each of his projects as a sort of cellular generation developing Staff communities and future users, a good number of Tyin’s early projects
by “mitosis”, from the interior towards the exterior and from small to 4 were developed as part of humanitarian initiatives in the Far East.
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Tokyo large, on a scale with the city. Established in After careful preliminary scouting of the local context, the Klong Toey
The work of Toyo Ito & Associates founded in Tokyo back in 1979, is still 2008 Community Lantern playground (Bangkok, Thailand, 2011) and the Cassia
www.toyo-ito.co.jp underpinned by the architectural vision of Urban Robot (URBOT), the first Co-Op Training Centre (2011), an ethical school for local farmers located
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practice that was set up eight years before. Groundbreaking in his use Trondheim, Norway near Lake Kerinci in Sumatra, Indonesia were built in collaboration with
of parametric design, Ito has always critically and sensitively used these students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology,
methods to establish relations between space, form, and technology, www.tyinarchitects.com Trondheim, where both Gjertsen and Hanstad teach.
in ways that have often likened his work to that of an artist. In fact, Their latest project, the award-winning Fordypningsrommet (2017), is a
projects such as the Mikimoto Ginza Tower 2 (2005) or the Tama Art ten-cabin hideaway retreat on the small island of Fleinvær, Norway.
University Library (2007), both in Tokyo, stand as templates for thousands Despite being a high-class destination, the ensemble adopts elements
of students and professional architects pursuing the highest standards that characterise Gjertsen and Hanstad’s design vocabulary: simple yet
of the art of construction the world over. Even the Sendai Mediatheque functional forms and sustainably produced materials for a limited impact
(2000), perhaps the work that more than any other has left a mark in on the local landscape and low production and maintenance costs.
global culture, can in fact be understood as an “interior-centred” project. Laura Drouet, Olivier Lacrouts
The whole structure of the building is in fact supported by its internal
void: large perforations from top to bottom, defined by tensile structures,
burrow into the transparent box of the structure like alien entrails.
Therefore it’s not so surprising that when invited by Domus to indicate
a project that represented his work, Ito pointed to an interior, the
multipurpose facility “Minna no Mori” Gifu Media Cosmos (Gifu 2015).
Its polyester transparent domes, growing like upside-down mushrooms
from the lattice roof could be read as protections for the study and rest
areas, but also as elements guarding a precious secret: perhaps a secret
at the origin of the project itself.
Guido Musante

Minna no Mori Gifu Media Cosmos, Gifu, Japan, 2015 (photo Iwan Baan) Fordypningsrommet Fleinvær, Gildeskål Kommune, Norway, 2017 (photo Pasi Aalto)

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UNStudio Urban-Think Tank

Principals The Moebius house was built in Het Gooi, The Netherlands, not far from Principals The specificity and interest of Urban-Think Tank reside in the way it
Ben van Berkel (founder), Amsterdam between 1993 and 1998. Its layout is a continuous surface Hubert Klumpner, overlaps the fields of research and design. On the one hand, its members
Caroline Bos (co-founder) with a double loop that creates an indoor circulation route and the Alfredo Brillembourg conduct a critical, non-ideological investigation of the multiple shapes
Partners home’s different functions. The design brought international attention Established in that urbanity can assume nowadays. These endeavours are nurtured
Astrid Piber, Gerard Loozekoot, to UNStudio (United Network Studio) founded in Amsterdam by Ben 1998 by the teaching activities carried out by the office’s founders Alfredo
Hannes Pfau van Berkel (Utrecht, 1957) and Caroline Bos (Rotterdam, 1959) in 1988. Brillembourg (New York, 1961) and Hubert Klumpner (Salzburg, 1965)
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Associates This experiment in tectonics is paradigmatic of that era’s search for Zurich at the ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. On the
Jan Schellhoff, Marianthi Tatari the fluidity of shapes, where there is a new marriage between indoors other, they actively work on one of the most compelling battlefields
u-tt.com of contemporary architecture and urbanism: the informal city, and
Staff and out; form and function. Now, 30 years, 200 employees and 4 offices
276 (Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Frankfurt) later, UNStudio especially South American favelas.
Established in is investigating a concept it calls “superliving” with experts from Here, they implement convincing strategies that have proven to involve
1988 other disciplines, working on new sensorial and adaptive technology, local communities, engage with the dense, piecemeal nature of the urban
accessibly priced dwellings, small living units and designs that define fabric, and drastically enhance its potential. The Metro Cable (2010),
Offices
Amsterdam, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the future of single-family housing. Two examples are Raffles City in for instance, is a suspended cable-car system that radically improves
Frankfurt Hangzhou, China (2008-2017) and Lane 189 in Shanghai (2013-2017), the accessibility of the steep, isolated San Agustín neighbourhood in
both of which show the attentive channelling of the flow of people, Caracas without any major destruction. The Vertical Gyms – the first one
www.unstudio.com functions and infrastructure in an ecological way by applying innovative was completed in the Venezuelan capital’s barrio of Chacao in 2004 – are
technology and superseding the concept of architectural style for its tool kits rather than architectural designs, replicable prototypes aimed at
own sake. In parallel, the four UNStudio offices have established an multiplying the available surface area of public space while being easily
internal research and innovation unit called UNSKnowledge, which assembled with the locals.
makes use of a database containing 30 years of design projects to offer A comprehensive publication, and a Golden Lion award for the
consultancy regarding engineering, strategic positioning, technology installation Torre David at the 2012 Venice Biennale are all that is left of
and sustainability. The external unit called UNFutures collaborates with Urban-Think Tank’s most emblematic experience: a two-year exploration
partners including the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, of the squatted Torre David, an iconic, unaccomplished high-rise in
Microsoft, the Hardt group, USM and Mitsubishi to study user-centric the heart of downtown Caracas. For a short while, top-down design
design solutions that are adaptable to the future. and bottom-up adaptation strategies seemed destined to virtuously
Valentina Croci complement each other in this one-of-a-kind context before conclusive
eviction was carried out by the police in 2014.
Alessandro Benetti

Raffles City, Hangzhou, China, 2017 (photo Hufton + Crow) Empower Shack, Cape Town, South Africa, 2019 (photo Jan Ras/ETHZ U-TT)

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Vector Architects Vincent Van Duysen


Architects

Principal The work of Vector Architects demonstrates how vast and Principal Ever since the beginning of his career in 1990, Vincent Van Duysen
Dong Gong heterogeneous the architectural landscape is in China, a country that Vincent Van Duysen (Lokeren, Belgium, 1962) has produced work ranging from architecture
Associates has undergone extensive economic, social and environmental changes in Staff to interior design and even down to the object. The scale of the design
Zhang Han, Feng Chaoying, the past 30 years. The Beijing-based architect Gong Dong, who founded 24 is not important since each discipline completes the other, with his aim
Chen Zhoujie, Lyu Ru Vector in 2008, has developed a personal approach that absorbs and of exploring the project’s very essence. In his décors, especially those
Established in
Staff combines different cultures, respecting the country’s millenary tradition 1990 made for specific commissions, Van Duysen demonstrates the ability
16 without making it a doctrine. to transform space, while in his architecture he prefers to concentrate
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Established in Born in Beijing in 1972, Gong Dong graduated from Tsinghua University. Antwerpen, Belgium on the smallest details of his materials or textures. The works that best
2008 He then studied in Germany and the United States, where he worked with capture his way of approaching the project include the private residence
two great masters, Richard Meier and Steven Holl. www.vincentvanduysen.com DC II in Tielrode, Belgium (2012), where the buildings are covered by a
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Beijing Vector Architects materialises in architectural experiences the different uniform fabric of wooden slats that continue even to the peak of the roof.
issues encountered in a given urban context: the programme, the Van Duysen creates environments that are essential and minimal, yet
www.vectorarchitects.com morphology of the site and its essence. Its projects are often located in they succeed in radiating a certain warmth as they explore the expressive
unique urban and natural landscapes, places that the Chinese architect nature of traditional materials and architectural typologies. This can be
observes, discovers and tries to capture in their spirit. seen in the TR residence and farm in Knokke, Belgium (2014), in which
In different contexts and ways, this can be seen in four of his most he fuses the archetypal forms of house, stable and hayloft applying
representative projects. A community centre (2015) in Chongqing merges a single model to develop all the functions. The three volumes are in
with the hilly site, fluidly combining interiors and open space both black-painted wood which has also been used to define the interiors. In
natural and artificial; a library (2015) on a solitary beach in Nandaihe general, Van Duysen chooses pure and tactile materials such as bricks
offers shelter from the chaos of the metropolis and interacts with the and ceramics, exposed concrete and wood, for a clean and timeless
ocean thanks to a facade that changes according to weather conditions; design as well as for an aesthetic that lasts beyond fashions and design
and a house in Beijiao, renovated in 2017, connects two sea views with trends. In 2016 he was named art director of the Molteni&C and Dada
different characters in one environment; the Alila Yangshuo resort brands, handling their global image and designing their individual brand
(2017), a disused sugar mill in China’s mountainous Yangshuo county stores, exhibition stands and furnishings. In 2018 he became part of the
transformed into a resort hotel featuring a group of gabled masonry creative team behind product development at Sahco, the Dutch brand
structures designed to complement the existing industrial architecture. owned by Kvadrat.
The element these projects have in common is concrete. Valentina Croci
Salvatore Peluso

Alila Yangshuo resort, Guilin, China, 2017 (photo Su Shengliang) Youth Hostel, Antwerp, Belgium, 2010 (photo Koen Van Damme)

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Best architecture firms 2019 109 Best architecture firms 2019 110

Yasmeen Lari Zaha Hadid Architects

Principal Yasmeen Lari (Dera Ghazi Khan, Pakistan, 1941) is Pakistan’s first female Principals In 1988, MoMA inaugurated “Deconstructivist Architecture” curated
Yasmeen Lari architect. She graduated in 1964 from the Oxford School of Architecture Patrik Schumacher (principal), by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, an exhibition that would greatly
(todays’ Oxford Brookes University) and she is considered one of Gianluca Racana (board director), influence future contemporary architecture. The display presented
Staff
Jim Heverin (board director),
Naheem Shah, Ashfaq Ahmad the pioneers of Brutalist architecture. She is the author of important projects by seven architects, including Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind
Charles Walker (board director),
(architect), Mohammad Mehdi projects in Pakistan, such as the Anguri Bagh Housing complex and Rem Koolhaas. The only woman admitted to this highly selected
Mouzhan Majidi (chief executive)
(architect) (Lahore, 1978), with its low-cost dwelling units with innovative solutions milieu was Zaha Hadid (Baghdad, 1950 - Miami, 2016), the architect who
Associates
Established in for common kitchen facilities. Apart from the iron components, the more than any other, over the course of her thirty-year career, was able
17 associate directors, 28 senior
1980 complex is entirely made with local materials, thereby epitomising Lari’s to consistently pursue the great myth of deconstructivist complexity:
associates, 56 associates
Offices architectural philosophy based on a respectful approach to vernacular not only via her apparent and radical anti-Cartesian swirling Piranesian
Staff
Base camps in post-disaster areas techniques and the adoption of traditional building methods within shapes, but also and perhaps even more so by means of her project
400 approximately
of Battal (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), an efficient and rational structural framework encouraging the users’ definition processes, building technologies, and patterns of spatial
Moak Sharif (Sindh), Makli (Sindh) emancipation. Other important built projects for the tertiary sector Established in interaction. Captured in neo-suprematist formulations, the Iraqi-British
1979
include the Finance and Trade Center (Karachi, 1989), the Pakistan State architect’s spatial visions, processed by sophisticated parametric
www.heritagefoundationpak.org
Oil House (Karachi, 1991) and the ABN Amro Bank headquarters in Offices technologies for architectural design construction and management,
Lahore and Karachi (1998, 2000). In 2000 Yasmeen Lari closed her firm London, Hong Kong, Beijing, turned ZHA into a recognised standard for the application of Building
New York City, Mexico City
to dedicate herself to the activities of the Heritage Foundation Pakistan, Information Modeling, whatever the project: be it a calibrated museum
the non-profit organisation she and her husband Suhail Zaheer Lari www.zaha-hadid.com construction in Italy (MAXXI, Rome, 2010), a new monument celebrating
founded back in 1984. Created to protect Pakistan’s cultural heritage, Azeri culture (Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, 2012) or a wave-building
the Foundation has also undertaken humanitarian projects. After the for swimming in the city (London Aquatics Centre, 2012). In all fields
earthquakes of 2005, this institution has in fact promoted programmes to explored by the studio’s practice, the plastic use of shapes, incorporated
train people to self-build zero-carbon footprint shelters using bamboo, into white and cement volumes and at all times reflecting a harmonious
lime, and mud with traditional building techniques: 40,000 of these units blend of vision and calculation, revived the great structural tradition that
were built. Along the same lines is the project for the self-built Pakistan was first tested by the great engineers and architects of the 20th century
chulahs, the open-air kitchens made with sun-dried mud bricks and projecting its memory into the future.
clay by the women living in rural communities. With the aid of an on-site Guido Musante
master trainer, at a cost of only eight dollars per family (which include
the two dollars for the training) the project has led to the creation of
40,000 kitchens over a period of 24 months. Yasmeen Lari is UNESCO
consultant and has been included in the list of 60 women who have
contributed the most towards the organization’s objectives.
Valentina Croci

Zero Carbon Cultural Center, Thatta Sindh, Pakistan, 2018 (© Heritage Foundation of Pakistan) Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku, Azerbaijan, 2012 (photo Hélène Binet)

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Domus is proud to present its first 100+ Best architecture firms, the result
of a complex operation worthy of 90 years of architecture and design
exploration. Our approach follows a new paradigm of associated life,
where architecture is a central if not crucial point of discussion.
But Best architecture firms 2019 is more. It is the latest phase in the
metamorphosis of Domus, a magazine that is evolving into an ecosystem
of contemporary knowledge and competencies, an open workshop where
the critical review of architecture and design is expressed in diverse and
complementary learning experiences – magazine, website, social media,
focus topics, themed forums and data analysis – in a word, investigation.
Our intent is to make Best architecture firms 2019 the first of a yearly
outline of the state of the art of a field that has never been as important
as now. The compilation aims to be a well-honed tool, indispensable to
the different communities that have always formed the Domus mainstay:
architecture and design professionals, public officials, elites and
enthusiasts (not in order of importance).
When we began conceptualising the guide, we were aware of the risks
of the undertaking. We did not want a consumer product undistinguishable
from the many offerings of the “culture industry”. In order to construct an
authoritative source of reference, we adhered to the unique formula that has
been serving us as an elevated standard. We asked the last ten editors-in-
chief – plus the current one – to compile a selection of architecture firms
known for cultural innovation. In exchange, we promised them anonymity.
The result is a rich array. Of course some names are missing, mainly
the above-mentioned Domus editors. That’s a question of style, an
omission we wish to reward by stating here that they fully belong to our
Best Architecture Firms. Otherwise, they would not have been chosen
to conceptually lead Domus.

Walter Mariotti, editorial director

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