In the 1980s, renowned architect Lina Bo Bardi was invited to join the Special Program for the Recovery of Historic Sites in Salvador, where she developed a visionary project for Ladeira da Misericórdia. This complex, located in the heart of Salvador’s Historic Center, includes three colonial buildings, the Coatí restaurant and the Três Arcos bar. With the collaboration of architects João Filgueiras Lima (Lelé), Marcelo Ferraz and Marcelo Suzuki, Lina envisioned a space for culture, education, commerce and leisure, integrating historical heritage with the daily life of the local population.

Lina Bo Bardi’s project was conceived with the aim of strengthening the connection between education and local culture. In addition, the complex is symbolically located between the Upper and Lower Towns, reinforcing the creation of links between the city’s different socio-cultural contexts, a vision that Lina had from the beginning and which the current project seeks to deepen. However, the planned interventions were not completed, and the architectural complex faced years of abandonment. Today, Salvador City Hall, in partnership with the Pivô Cultural Association and in dialogue with the Bardi Institute, is announcing the resumption of this project, with a commitment to reviving Lina’s vision.

La entrada Coati Restaurant se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

On 100 acres of eucalypt forest at top of 60 m cliffs, 430 m above sea level. Spectacular views over the Hunter Valley wine region. No public services. Extreme bushfire danger. Electricity from photovoltaic solar array. Water from roof to corrugated steel tanks. Water heating from solar panels. ‘Brown’ water to septic tank. ‘Grey’ water irrigates a walled ‘Permaculture’ garden. Wood stoves for heating and baking. Mobile phone and fax. Three buildings – house, garages, stables. House parallel to the cliffs faces 33˚ east of solar north – winter morning sun, cooling summer sea breezes. Walled garden orientated on the points of the compass. Thus generated the courtyard. House, corrugated steel ‘fly roof’ on standard steel agricultural shed frames – large low cost area for rainwater and shade. Beneath are two habitable modules with curved steel sub-roofs either side of an open breezeway with retained existing recycled brick fireplace. Concrete block walls for thermal mass insulated and clad on outside with mini-orb steel and eucalypt planks. Eaves exclude summer sun, winter sun admitted to thermal mass of concrete floors and yellow curved thermal wall. Perforated mini-orb steel shutters for bushfire protection and sun shade. Standard steel shed frames to garages and stables with roof and walls of corrugated steel. Bloodlines from Australian rural sheds. Low cost. Owner built.

La entrada Autonomous House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

At the northern edge of Taitung City, the campus of Kung‑Tung Technical Senior High School rises amid fields—a testament both to the transformative vision of its founder, Father Hilber Jakob, and to the soaring ambition of modernist architecture in Taiwan’s early postwar era. Among the ensemble conceived by Swiss architect Dr. Justus Dahinden, the four‑story Chapel Building, completed in 1960, stands out as a singular fusion of functionality and spirituality, brutalism and symbolism.

From the outside, the structure asserts its presence with an austere clarity: a simple rectangular prism, its walls cast in béton brut—raw, untreated concrete—textured and robust, projecting a sense of solidity. The layered horizontal lines of rainwater outlets on the parapet and the vertical rhythm of shade‑casting concrete fins evoke a rationalist sensibility, while irregular rectangular apertures flank the spiral staircase, puncturing the façade with framed glimpses of the outside world and disrupting the monolithic clarity with surprise and rhythm.

The lower three stories are pragmatically organized, seamlessly integrating workshops, classrooms, dormitories, and even a canteen—spaces conceived through a modernist functionalist lens, where utility, economy, and clarity of plan hold sway. Dahinden, in collaboration with structural engineer Dr. Schubiger, employed a beamless slab (flat-plate) reinforced-concrete system—a bold and innovative move in Taiwan at that time. It streamlined construction, halved the required rebar, and bypassed the limitations posed by the small-size steel reinforcement bars available locally. A colored-glass depiction of the Stations of the Cross punctuates one wall; when bathed in light, the chapel floor and simple wooden pews come alive with patches of colored luminosity—an ephemeral artistry of worship.

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The winery is situated on an exceptional location in Napa Valley. Our client, the renowned Bordeaux wine producer, Christian Moeuix, recognized the potential of this terroir for producing quality grapes in comparison to numerous other vineyards. Early obsidian finds reveal that the vineyard was once an Indian settlement. Moreover, from the vineyard known as Napanook, wines of exceptional quality had already been produced in the mid 20th century. After ten years of replanting, Dominus reached a level of quality which reflected the full potential of the land. Thus, in 1995 Moueix and his wife, Cherise, commissioned Herzog & de Meuron to build a winery.

The building is divided into three functional units: the tank room with huge chrome tanks for the first stage of fermentation, the Barrique cellar where the wine matures in oak vats for two years, and the storeroom where the wine is bottled, packed in wooden cases, and stored until it is sold. We designed to house these three functional units in a linear building some 100m / 333ft long, 25m / 82ft wide, and 9m / 30ft high. The building bridges the main axis, the main path of the winery, and is thus in the midst of the vineyards. Vines in California can grow to a height well over 2m / 6ft, such that the building is completely integrated into the linear, geometric texture of the vineyard.

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Senden is a low-density residential area, consisting of low, isolated houses a short distance from Münster. Here, in 1988, Heinz Bienefeld designed a house for the Holtermann family. In this house, we can recognize some recurring themes of his poetics, which reach a strong personal expression and a clear tectonic declination.

First of all, the courtyard house layout is an interpretation of the Roman house, Bienefeld’s favorite model to indicate his idea of ​​living. In the Holtermann house, we can easily recognize, on the entrance axis, the courtyard-atrium-living room-garden sequence, also adopted in other previous houses, “Roman” and otherwise; the sequence that is also found in the domus, with atrium-tablinium-peristyle-triclinium.

The house consists of three blocks arranged in a “C” shape around the entrance courtyard that has the characteristics of a peristyle, with pillars that form an external portico. On the right is the sleeping area, on the left the kitchen and dining rooms, opposite the atrium, from which you access the living room. The fourth side that closes the courtyard is a simple wall that contains the entrance door. The living room block takes up the entire size of the rear side of the house: it has a double-pitched roof that extends towards the garden and ends in an external portico that rests on slender galvanized metal columns. The shape of the roof confirms the will of the formal system: the independent directional roof of the rear living room – which is very recognizable in the terminal part of the side elevations, with the gabled roof ends – is combined with the continuous roof with four sloping sides towards the internal courtyard. The rigidity of the system is contradicted by the variety of internal spatial solutions. The living area wing extends only on one level (there is also a basement intended for a cellar) with a successive sequence of spaces that ends in the breakfast area, with a glass bay window on the internal courtyard; while the sleeping area wing, much more complex, is divided into two compressed floors, with areas for rest on the upper floor – real niches solved with pass-through furniture – and services on the lower basement floor, and with a study corner obtained in a bay window symmetrical to the previous one.

La entrada Holtermann House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

Between 1959 and 1962, the architects designed and built the low-cost pavilion on their property’s large walled yard. According to the original concept, the Upper Lawn Pavilion intended to be no more than a primitive hut with minimal comfort where the couple could escape from their daily lives and enjoy outdoor activities.

The existing cottage was pulled down and replaced with a new and modest pavilion, answering their needs for a weekend home. Of the original front façade, only one of the old chimneys was left intact to function as the center of the new pavilion.

The earliest sketch by Alison Smithson for Upper Lawn dates from 1958, showing that the ideas were formed before the purchase of the property. The construction intended to act as both a home and a testing site for methods and materials that the Smithsons felt would not yet be accepted in London, such as pitch-fiber drain pipes or polyester water tanks.

It was also to test the performance of materials such as high purity aluminum sheets which, if successful, they would then begin to use in work for clients. They sought to create a ‘climate house’ through the construction materials used and testing what solar gain could be achieved in a building with glazed south, east, and west walls.

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Bruder Klaus Field Chapel all began as a sketch, eventually evolving to become a very elegant yet basic landmark in Germany’s natural landscape. The design was constructed by local farmers who wanted to honor their patron saint, Bruder Klaus of the 15th century.

Arguably the most interesting aspects of the church are found in the methods of construction, beginning with a wigwam made of 112 tree trunks. Upon completion of the frame, layers of concrete were poured and rammed atop the existing surface, each around 50cm thick. When the concrete of all 24 layers had set, the wooden frame was set on fire, leaving behind a hollowed blackened cavity and charred walls.

The unique roofing surface of the interior is balanced by a floor of frozen molten lead. Gaze is pulled up by way of obvious directionality, to the point where the roof is open to the sky and night stars. This controls the weather of the chapel, as rain and sunlight both penetrate the opening and create an ambience or experience very specific to the time of day and year.

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Four freely movable room-boxes on casters in one unique two-storey high room allow three generations of one family to flexibly share a common life as well as individual activities. Diffusing natural light, the two main parallel walls are comprised of two layers of corrugated plastic laid perpendicularly on the outside, an insulation filling of polyethylene strings in clear bubble wrap bags, and a nylon fabric membrane that is velcroed on to the structure on the inside.

Text provided by the architect.

La entrada Naked House se publicó primero en Global Spaces.

With the intentions of designing a transparent cultural media center that is supported by a unique system to allow complete visibility and transparency to the surrounding community, the Sendai Mediatheque by Toyo Ito is revolutionary in it’s engineering and aesthetic.

Six steel-ribbed slabs slabs, each 15-3/4″ thick, appear to float from the street, supported by only thirteen vertical steel lattice columns that stretch from ground plane to the roof. This striking visual quality that is one of the most identifiable characteristics of the project is comprable to large trees in a forest, and function as light shafts as well as storage for all of the utilities, networks and systems.

Each plan is free form, as the structural column lattices are independent of the facade and fluctuate in diameter as they stretch from floor to floor.

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Immerse in one of the exceptional natural spots common to the province of Gerona, the town of Olot is particularly careful when it comes to its expansion on the surrounding areas in order to avoid destroying on its growth that which constitutes one of its most valuable goods, its natural landscapes. In the area knows as Tussols-Basil – situated between the city and the rural green park which runs along the river bed – a series of installations devoted to leisure and sports constitute the municipal project that tries to outline the encounter of the natural park and the urban fabric. To the partially completed path and the initially built swimming pavilion, an athletics track has been added and in a near future a football field will be built: two installations whose large extension set out from the very beginning a series of problems concerning their adequate location.

In two clearings of the woods of white oak, the athletics track and the soccer field align their axis in parallel sliding between one another to reduce their visual impact, separated by a tongue of land of volcanic origin. The recently concluded process of construction of the athletics track was accompanied by the controversy arisen among local ecologists – who wanted to preserve each and every one of the existing vegetal species – and the athletes who considered the trees a visual obstacle for the development of the sports events. The executed proposal pursues an intermediate solution between these positions, keeping the most valuable oak trees at the center of the track in such a way that the circuit advances amidst the light filtered through the branches, transforming the short and medium distance competitions in an experience of immersion into nature, something close to cross-country races.

La entrada Athletics Stadium se publicó primero en Global Spaces.