Magazine
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, opens to the public on September 30. The project is the renovation of an old department store and the addition of a spherical building.
Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi will expand the Cisternerne in Copenhagen, adding a fourth underground chamber for art. The Fourth Chamber displays the architect's interest in traditional Japanese ways of building and his ability to merge art, architecture, and nature.
The 15th International Alvar Aalto Symposium took place online on August 12th and 13th with the theme "Future of Industry" approached from perspectives of art, industry, and technology. Ulf Meyer attended the two days of talks to see how the participants responded to the theme, filing this...
Harvard University’s new Science and Engineering Complex in Boston, designed by Behnisch Architekten, has a LEED Platinum certified from the USGBC and a Living Building Challenge Petal certification from the International Living Future Institute, making it one of the healthiest laboratory...
For a small town like Arles, not far away from the Cote d’Azur, Frank O. Gehry’s tower is a landmark because of its height and twisted shape; yet even without its shininess, the building at the heart of the new art campus in France would stand out. The 11,000 stainless steel panels that cover...
Contested Modernities consists of symposia, an exhibition, and a publication focused on postcolonial architecture in Southeast Asia as part of the long-term program Encounters with Southeast Asian Modernism. Ulf Meyer watched Contested Modernities’ second symposium, “The...
In April the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design in Atlanta earned Living Building Challenge certification, making it one of just 28 buildings that can boast of meeting the world's most stringent green building standard. The building by Miller Hull Partnership and Lord Aeck...
New details have been released for the Sydney Modern Project, SANAA’s expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales that will be the Japanese architecture firm’s first building in the Southern Hemisphere when it is inaugurated next year.
Aldo Rossi: The Architect and the Cities is a major retrospective opening on March 10 at MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome. The exhibition explores the architecture and theories of Italy’s “unusual architect.”
Architect Junya Ishigami's design for Restaurant Noel in Yamaguchi, at the western end of Japan’s main island of Honshu, is a series of cave-like spaces seemingly carved into the earth. Construction photos of the project hint at the special qualities that will be on display when the restaurant...
In Japan: Nation Building Nature, Joachim Nijs searches for an “alternative interpretation of Japanese architectural history” through a matrix of four ecological phenomena. Ulf Meyer — a fellow European as enthralled with Japan as Nijs is — read the recently published book and sent us...
Blending into the trees of Tokyo’s only major public park, Kengo Kuma and Associates' new museum for the Meiji Jingu is a testimony to Japan’s current architectural soul searching.
A new pavilion, made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL), acts as an architectural ambassador of Finland in Japan. The new Metsä Pavilion, designed by Helin & Co Architects from Helsinki, stands on the grounds of the Finnish Embassy in Tokyo's Roppongi district.
OMA’s long-anticipated Taipei Performing Arts Centre, nearing completion in the capital of Taiwan, aims to be a theatre for everybody and everything. Ulf Meyer explores how the novel-looking building follows from an idea born a century ago.
The Japanese Center in Berlin (JDZB) is hosting a presentation on Japan’s planned contribution to the 17th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia that is scheduled to open in May 2021. The livestream lecture and discussion are scheduled for November 19, when curator Kozo...
A new exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, explores Anupama Kundoo’s "handmade houses" and other projects that "just take time." Ulf Meyer visited Anupama Kundoo – Taking Time, the fourth installation in the museum’s “The Architect’s Studio” series,...
The new Deichman Library opens to the public in Oslo’s Bjørvika district on June 18. The building, known as Deichman Bjørvika and designed by Lund Hagem Arkitekter and Atelier Oslo, reveals its true qualities on the inside. Ulf Meyer visited the building ahead of its opening.
Two of Paris's most iconic buildings have been transformed by two of Japan's most famous architects: Tadao Ando has redesigned the Bourse de Commerce and SANAA has reworked the La Samaritaine department store. The projects, both commissioned by French billionaires, were nearing completion but...
One year ago Vista Tower topped off at 363 meters (1,191 feet), making it the third tallest building in Chicago. Vista towers over the nearby Aqua Tower, which ten years ago brought fame to Studio Gang and its founder, Jeanne Gang. Ulf Meyer looks at Vista in the context of Gang's earlier work...
When the Munch Museum in Oslo opens to the public in the fall of 2020, it will be one of the world's largest museums dedicated to a single artist. Ulf Meyer got an early peek at the building designed by Estudio Herreros.
"Journalism is chatting in the corridor." This bon mot by publisher Henri Nannen from Hamburg has been translated into architecture at the new Axel-Springer-AG building in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
A remarkable exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark – the latest in its “The Architect’s Studio” series – portrays the aspiring architect Tatiana Bilbao: the only woman in the mega-city of Mexico City running her own architectural practice.
The Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg (National Library of Luxembourg) opened the doors to its new building on the first day of October — 16 years after Bolles+Wilson won a competition to design it. Ulf Meyer delves into the library's design and what it means for the area of Luxembourg in...
Two new buildings in East Asia — the School of Design and Environment at the National University of Singapore and Sanken's Branch Office in Sapporo, Japan — take very different approaches to finding an answer.
The Erimtan Museum in Ankara, Turkey, designed by Ayşen Savaş with Can Aker and Onur Yüncü, is, in the words of Ulf Meyer, a well-kept secret on the same level with some of Carlo Scarpa's finest works.
The Irish-born American architect Kevin Roche, recipient of the 1982 Pritzker Architecture Prize, has died at the age of 96.
Europe has a new center: Istanbul Airport. In the 19th century major train stations were celebrated as "cathedrals of traffic." Thus the new mega-airports in the Middle East could be called "mosques of...
Helsinki Central Library Oodi was inaugurated on December 5th, twenty years after it was first proposed. Oodi, as its known, was the subject of the Finnish Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and has been
Amos Rex opened recently in Helsinki as a new type of art museum. Occupying a building from the 1930s and sitting below a well-known plaza, the private art museum makes a statement above ground through five sculpted skylights. Ulf Meyer visited Amos Rex around its August opening and sent us his...
Kengo Kuma's V&A Dundee, opening to the public on 15 September 2018, is one of the most anticipated openings of the year. A branch of London's Victoria & Albert Museum, V&A Dundee is also the first design museum in Scotland and a key component in Dundee's urban...
Famed Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto founded the Odawara Art Foundation in 2009 to "foster the advancement of Japanese culture while adopting an international perspective." He sited the Foundation's Enoura Observatory overlooking Sagami Bay and designed the buildings and...
The exhibition Kengo Kuma: a LAB for materials in Tokyo reveals the goals and failures of contemporary Japanese avant-garde architecture.
Oslo's Skatehall, designed by DARK Arkitekter, opened to the public last month. Ulf Meyer visited and sent us his take on the building.
In Ulf Meyer's previous article, "Architecture of a Thousand Pinpricks," the tone was deliberately polemical. So does Germany really have reason to envy other countries...