You are browsing the archives of 2008 November.

Unlike many other parts of the world, Africa has comparatively little surviving historical architecture. There are exceptions, like the extraordinary Coptic churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia, which were hewn out of the living rock by 13th-century African Christians. Early travellers from Europe gave accounts of African cities, including a 16th-century description of the splendid palace of [...]

The English colonists in North America were neither adventurers nor the rulers of great and ancient peoples. Unlike various colonizers down the ages, they had no need to impress the native people, nor did they have a strong local tradition to fit into. They were simple, hard-working people, often craftsmen, seeking a better life across [...]

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Cylindrical dwellings with conical thatched roofs are widely spread in Africa, grouped round cattle kraals in the south or scattered in farms in the east. Beautiful examples of mud architecture can be found in the West African savannah. The Kassena of Burkino Faso hand-mould their huts like pottery, linking them with curving walls. Such compounds [...]

The mosque’s location in the center of Kazan’s fortified kreml is symbolic, as its grandiose image and size call into question the dominance of Christian symbolism, represented by the three churches located alongside.
The building is long overdue in Kazan, which has for many decades been the seat of Sunni mufis in Russia. Unusual elements [...]

`Every age has left a sign of itself in an architectural style; why has ours not worked out its own style?’ With these words in 1826 Karl Friedrich Schinkel, returning from a trip to England, stated his aim to make himself the bearer of a new national style, of an architectural culture destined to express [...]

The traditional spa complex is composed of 19th-century villas set in a river valley.
The design concept for the new extension was to settle into the landscape and to create a new context for the whole by highlighting its features. At the same time it is open to the possibilities of future development.
The intention of the [...]

The modern world’s most celebrated architectural monument, the Eiffel Tower is neither a building nor a utilitarian object.

Eiffel Tower, Paris

Its purpose was symbolic: it was designed to advertise and to be the central feature of the Paris World Exposition of 1889 on the Champs de Mars. It remained, at 300 m (1000 ft), the world’s [...]

The art of tea preparation is a time honored tradition in Japanese culture. The mobile ichijyo architecture is dedicated to this procedure. One can dedicate oneself to this meditative procedure in a very small space, to be more precise, in a single transportable room. Toshihiko Suzuki’s design strongly reminds one of a simple paper lantern. [...]

The Netherlands is the European Union’s largest exporter of pig meat. But how can this pork production line be streamlined and modernized? MVRDV, a firm known for their emphasis on intensive research and presentation, created Pig City as a means of demonstrating the high rise’s potential as a tool for solving problems of density, simultaneously [...]

The constant presence of the Austrian archduke’s court in Milan inspired the Milanese aristocracy to update their residences. Piermarini was a leading player in this neo-classical season, creating numerous palaces in which the taste for simple forms, defined by sharp surfaces and sober decoration, was associated with a preference for bare horizontal and vertical strips [...]

Bill Dunster Architects Zedfactory Limited has been successfully demonstrated that the environmentally friendly skyscraper is no longer an oxymoron. Office towers by Ken Yeang and Norman Foster, among others, have shown that building tall can be energy efficient. However, there are currently few, if any, residential equivalents. Bill Dunster, architect of the low-energy BedZed development [...]