IDENTITY. Could we say that there is a new tendency in Chinese architecture orientated to the recovery of its original identity?
WANG LU. Shortly to say in China we cannot escape from style. After the Cultural Revolution the whole China started to reconsider how to build the...
In architecture, designing and constructing mean implementing a way of thinking with a view to action in an active relation with the changing conditions of the contemporary world. From our position in academia, in terms of our pedagogical practice (the place where Architectural Papers are produced),...
Read moreTradition in the Beijing urban development
ZHU WENYI: From the viewpoint of urban space or urban design, a lot of things are related to tradition; they have not disappeared and still alive. The Chinese architecture and city, as same as the Chinese food, is a part of Chinese culture...
There is a certain romantic aspect to the Middle East, very hard to avoid when we look at it from a European (“Western”) perspective: mythical place from books where anything can happen. How does the contemporary Middle East look like when seen from inside, related to architectural project...
Read moreArchitecture and product design are closely related. Matharoo Associates deal with both. For this reason they have structural engineers in their team. The interest in product design shows up not only in there projects, where they often design the complete building from the external shell to the door...
Read moreNot Vital was born in 1948 in Sent, Graubünden (CH) and has been living and working between the USA, Africa, Chile, Italy and Switzerland.
In 2008...
The PREVI competition established a theoretical framework that revised the functionalist urbanism established by the former CIAM according to new urban principles. Could you define those principles?
The PREVI built project itself define the new urban principles. It is a more comprehensive...
DEFINITION
Yaşar Adanali: Defining the Middle East, its boundaries, different meanings, layers is by itself a very difficult, value-bounded and mainly a political challenge. Especially, when one looks at the region from the perspective of its “western” neighbors, many...
Public space in a Middle Eastern city
MOHAMMAD AL ASAD: this is a very difficult subject to address because there is always the talk of the fact that there are no true public spaces in this part of the world, but then you have Cairo and “Tahrir square” which shows how a public space...
A Robinson Crusoe-like spirit of adventurousness and desire to mark out human territory permeates the work of Angelo Bucci. In both a historical perspective considering the voyages of the classical navigators and their conquest of a primordial American wilderness, but also in terms of an...
Read moreWhen the PREVI competition was announced in 1969, there was an intense debate in Europe in relation to the former CIAM approach to the city leaded by the young members of the Team10 and some of them were invited to participate in the competition. How did that debate influence the work of the...
Read moreWhy are questions of identity and authenticity so central to the discourse on architecture in the Arab world?
Bechir Kenzari : As far as I am concerned, I think it is a wrong question, it is a false problem. In time of crises the issue of identity becomes a refuge. Eventually it...
AMUNT architects martenson und nagel thiessen were founded in 2005 as an architecture cooperation in Aachen and Stuttgart. Together they realised several small projects. Each project is approached with a critical examination. Topics such as energy efficiency or societal changes concerning habitation...
Read moreHow in your opinnion the strong physical and geographical conditions of Bregaglia influence the architecture of the valley?
There are some very strong elements, as the mountains and the shapes, these very stiff shapes. I live in Soglio, where the strong presence of the mountains is always...
You worked on the PREVI competition in 1969 with Kisho Kurokawa and Kiyonori Kikutake as members of the Metabolism movement. Did you consider the PREVI as a chance to develop some of the Metabolism principles?
In a retrospect, my answer is yes. But when we were approached by Peter Land...