The design of the Philharmonic is clearly a 21st century project that would have been inconceivable before. Rising vertically almost like a tent, the concert hall seats 2150 people to enjoy the pleasures of making and listening to music. As a landmark visible from afar, the Elbphilharmonie will lend the horizontally oriented city an entirely new accent, symbolizing Hamburg's foray into the new territory of the harbor area along the shores of the Elbe.

The high-rise tower is an important ingredient within the contemporary city. However, towers have come to be defined solely by their height and, as a type, they have become anonymous. Typical residential towers, while successful in aggregating the living unit, often fail to improve upon the living environment. The multiplication of units within simple extruded shapes produces repetitive, anonymous structures with no extra benefits or architectural qualities despite the incredible densities they achieve.

We designed three shacks, archaic, almost primitive wood structures that define the triangular space of an interior courtyard or market place. These shacks are long and slender buildings remindful of the Lombardian farm house the «Cascina». After the Expo they will be dismounted and reassembled as garden sheds in school gardens all over Italy mentored by Slow Food with their initiative «Orto in condotta» as the principal national scholastic program for alimentary and environmental education.

The façade has neither logo nor pomp; a polished, mirror-smooth surface, as if one single giant brushstroke had swept smooth the ordinarily matte surface of the steel panelled façade. This surface attracts the gaze and curiosity of passing pedestrians. But instead of affording a view inside, as in a shop window, the gaze is inverted; instead of the anticipated see-through window, viewers encounter self-reflection. The building is a gesture that extends an invitation to come inside and stay a while.

Mãe Luiza is not a typical «Favela» – its identity and character have been formed both by the unique natural setting and the creativity of the people of this strong community. Our urban study identifies the missing urban activities in the neighbourhood, and distributes new activities within the areas potentially available for development. The proposal includes a spine of new buildings that will form a sequence of public activities perpendicular to the main street and extending all the way to the ocean.

The Kräuterzentrum is built largely out of locally sourced earth; it is like a geometrical segment of landscape with its dimensions and archaic impact heightened by the radical choice of material. Herbs and earth define the purpose-built, distinctive character of the center, following in the footsteps of Ricola's other buildings: the fully automated storage building of 1987, the production and storage building of 1993 in Mulhouse-Brunstatt and the glazed marketing headquarters of 1999 in Laufen.

Due to its proximity to the water, the museum is lifted off the ground for the art to be placed above storm surge level. We use the space underneath the building for open-air parking, exposed to light and fresh air that can also handle storm-water runoff. Rising from the parking level, the stilts supporting the museum platform become columns supporting a shading canopy, which covers the entire site creating a veranda-like public space that welcomes visitors to the museum and the park.

Viewed from the outside, exhibition halls are actually nothing more than a stack of big boxes. They require very few windows and architectural distinctions are deemed as impractical restrictions on interior flexibility. The architectural results are generally composed of vast, monotonous facades of brick as in Hall 2 or glass for Hall 1. To avoid this repetitive sameness, we took a different approach for the New Hall.

Every year since 2000, a different architect has been responsible for creating the Serpentine Gallery's Summer Pavilion for Kensington Gardens. That makes eleven Pavilions so far, our contribution is the twelfth. So many Pavilions in so many different shapes and out of so many different materials have been conceived and built that we tried instinctively to sidestep the unavoidable problem of creating an object, a concrete shape. ...

The starting point for the new museum is the artist's studio in the East End of Long Island. We set the basic parameters for a single gallery space by distilling the studio's proportions and adopting its simple house section with north-facing skylights. The size and proportion of the galleries can be easily adapted by re-arranging partition walls within the given structural grid. To the east of the gallery core are located the back of house functions of administration, storage, workshops and loading dock

The open public space that marks the approach from the Diagonal is now diversified and activated, engaging with the life of the city. The corner addressing the city centre retains its function as the main public approach. The interior of the elevated triangular building, which is like a vast interior landscape, structured by patios, creates a specific space well suited to an exhibition of Natural science and to the Museum's demand for growth.

Our intervention aims to revitalize the diversity of this location which is so important to the life of Basel, while at the same time restoring its architectural identity. The extent of our intervention will vary from room to room, determined by the indiv requirements of each space and based on detailed analysis of its current status. Based on the original architecture of 1925, the Volkshaus will be preserved in all its diversity and complexity and will reflect the spirit of its own history.

In contrast to the densely built-up surroundings with rigidly defined shapes, the building is an open structure comprising beam-like elements, stacked on top of one another, which change their appearance depending on the angle from which they are viewed. The apparently random arrangement not only provides unusual views within and to the outside, but also generates terraces and courtyards in many different sizes and qualities for employees to work, take breaks, and gather to meet formally or informally.

By stacking, extruding and pressing – mechanical procedures used in industrial production – simply shaped houses become complex configurations in space, where outside and inside merge. The landscape in all its variety – the idyllic Tüllinger Hills, the broad expanse of the railroad tracks, and the urbanized plane of the Rhine – was the incentive to design a building that concentrates on the vertical.

To create another standard parking structure on a retail base, with a façade that hides the ugliness of what is being stored inside, and a recessed penthouse on top would not have answered the urban requirements of this place. Seeing the potential of the project, Miami Beach authorities courageously approved more height on this corner, but not more FAR. The additional height granted is used for higher ceilings, more air, panoramic views and better looks at the structure.

Extending the building horizontally would have meant decreasing the size of the courtyard, the Schürhof. Instead the Vischer building of 1917 has been given a new roof. Consisting of irregular folds clad in blackish green ceramic tiles, the roof resonates with the medieval roofscape in which it is embedded while functioning at the same time as a clear sign of renewal in the heart of the neighborhood.

Architektonisch bezieht sich das Gebäude auf die umgebenden Bauten. Kennzeichnend sind die klaren Linien, die schlichte Eleganz, die nüchterne Sachlichkeit, der städtebauliche Bezug und vor allem auch ein Höchstmass an Transparenz und Flexibilität. Durch die Konzentration von Erschliessungs- und Strukturelementen im Innern des Gebäudes werden die Arbeitsflächen ideal mit Tageslicht versorgt und sind sehr flexibel nutzbar. ...

This new address for the arts is located in an area occupied until now by unspectacular urban structures, the Central Eléctrica Power Station, and a gas station. The surprising sculptural aspect of the CaixaForum's silhouette is no mere architectural fancy, but reflects the roofscape of the surrounding buildings.

The building typology of our design for the TEA is based on courtyards. The elongated courtyards are important in many ways, providing daylight, views and orientation for the visitors and users of the museum spaces and the library. We operated with courtyards also because we wanted to connect the new TEA typologically with its existing neighbor building, the Antiguo Hospital Civil which has recently been transformed into the Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre.

Our most important principle throughout has been to develop an architecture that will continue to be functional following the Games in 2008, in other words, to create a new kind of urban site that will attract and generate public life in this part of Beij Significantly, the Chinese themselves nicknamed the stadium «Bird's Nest» in the very early stages of the project, thereby essentially assimilating it as their own, before it had even left the drawing board. ...

The St. Jakob Tower scheme provides its setting with a vibrant urbanistic focus. In the manner of a «gateway building» it marks a key entrance point into Basel and is particularly eye-catching for drivers on the nearby motorway. The Mercedes-Benz facility is designed as an open, transparent structure, whose walls and roof slab grow out of the platform. The showroom spaces for new and second-hand cars span three levels linked by ramps. ...

The site, which occupies five typical narrow New York lots, is located on Bond Street, a relatively wide street with cobblestones in the heart of NoHo. It is embedded in brownstones, warehouses and lofts, which vary significantly in scale and proportion. Our idea was to stack two distinct typologies for living – townhouse and apartment block. The five townhouses reintroduce the scale of the original lots. Each townhouse has a recessed entrance porch across its street frontage and a garden to the rear.

From the main entrance to the campus, the library appears as an impressive body anchored in the park. When one approaches the building from downtown or from the north, it looks entirely different – more slender, almost like a free-standing tower. Although it seems to be organic and explicitly self-referential, its design also derives from the express intention of lending the site a new and distinctive topographic quality within its urban context.

The M.H. de Young Memorial Museum houses numerous collections, representing a variety of cultures from all over the world. The works of art in these collections go from the present day all the way back to the beginnings of human history. The museum is therefore not a homotopical site, defined by a homogeneous, self-contained approach to art, but rather a heterotypical site that is open and receptive to the artistic diversity of our planet.

The client did not aim simply to increase the exhibition area, like so many other museums did in the nineties, but primarily to give the public more room, more room for urban living inspired by the variety and richness of contemporary art. We wanted to blend of urban energies on the street level. Here the walls are completely glazed, which will allow direct eye contact between the busy thoroughfare of Hennepin Avenue, the new interior of the WAC, and the new enlarged Sculpture Garden.

Three themes define our architectural and urban concept for the world championship football stadium in Munich (the Allianz Arena): The presence of the stadium as an illuminated body that can change its appearance and is situated in an open landscape, the procession-like arrival of fans in a landscaped area and the crater-like interior of the stadium itself. ...

Typical materials from the railways are used in the design of the immediate environs to link this newly created urban space with the railway territory beyond it. Railway ballast is rolled into the asphalt. Plant beds are filled with the same ballast and enclosed within railway rails. The birches and false acacias planted in the ballast beds are typical first colonisers of disused railway lines.

Even after months of planning, we still did not know how the house would look from the outside. We designed everything from the inside out, starting with a courtyard around which the different types of day and night-time living would be organized. These spaces then began to penetrate – vertically and horizontally. The inner courtyard was to be both an interior and an exterior space. Conversely, we wanted to bring the outside space right into the house.

Deptford's St.Paul's Church becomes an point of reference for the new complex. The large, embracing gesture of the Laban building volume gives the effect of creating a spatial limitation as well as a melting together of Laban Garden and Laban Centre. The topographically shaped structure of the garden – simultaneously serving as an entrance yard for the Laban Centre and a place for walking, playing or leisure – finds corresponding qualities in the interior gestalt of the building.

What is the point of a Schaulager, of a building in which art is stored but still accessible for the public to view? What ideas about art and a collection strategy are involved, and what is the best architectural and urban development concept for it? We were not aware of any comparable building type that could address and express all the problems posed, so of course we felt fascinated and challenged, and had an equally rigorous dialogue with the clients.

Two salient urban features define the space in the immediate environs of the Aargauer Kunsthaus: the historical ensemble of government buildings with their expansive staircases and terraces, and the spacious, wooded park. Now that the extension is complete the park continues down to the Bahnhofstrasse and the Kunsthaus reaches into the park, thus park and museum form a whole, where the park has become part of the museum and the museum part of the park.

The grid on the façade is not simply an optical illusion; it is actively incorporated in the structural engineering and, in conjunction with the vertical cores of the building, it supports the ceilings. The horizontal tubing stiffens the structure and also provides more private areas for the changing rooms and the checkout on the otherwise open, light-flooded floors of the building.

The client's express wish, from the beginning, was not to have the new REHAB centre look or feel like a hospital. A rehabilitation centre is a place where people live for up to 18 months, usually after an accident. It is a place where they learn to cope with their changed lives in order to become as independent as possible again. During the day they work with therapists and doctors; they live there and spend their free time there, meet their families and friends.

The spatial variety is considerable; almost all of the rooms are different in size and proportion. In addition, walls can be added or removed at certain places, allowing dimensions and scale to be tailored to the needs of special installations. Lighting is a decisive factor in the perception of art works. Slightly different in every room, it alternates between daylight, artificial illumination and a mixture of both.

The architects were consulted only after a preliminary project by the general contractor had been submitted which determined the volumetric expansion and the commercially usable areas within the framework of the law for this location. They were attracted by the opportunity to participate in the design of this large-scale project with a soccer arena and stores; however, they had no wish to retain control over each and every detail.

In collaboration with the artists Rémy Zaugg, Thomas Ruff and Olafur Eliasson, the courts have been given a distinctive appearance so that strolling through the complex becomes a lively and diversified urban experience. Olafur Eliasson complements the character of the architecture with his suspended spiral sphere. Rémy Zaugg's text pictures and color designs are placed on the walls and the floor throughout the arcades and lead to a variety of associations and encounters.

The different uses are visible through differences in depth and lighting, but also through the distinctive nature of the shades. They play an important role in the design of the building, lending its otherwise crystalline appearance a softness of contour. Unlike the conventional parallel arrangement, which almost slavishly follows the shape of the façade, the shades follow an irregular outline that reflects the arrangement of the rooms inside.

The structural glazing flows around the volume like a tightly fitting skin that has solidified into glass. Once, the glass is an especially reflecting mirror, once, it forms its own spatial layer with windows that are placed at an angle into the parapets. Then the parapet and window strips reunite and profile the building in an urban sense with sharp edges. Interior and exterior space seem to intersperse and restrict each other in multiple ways.

Durch die Stellung der Sonnenstoren wird das Erscheinungsbild des Gebäudes je nach Tageszeit und Witterung verändert. Auf dem Dach ein intimes hölzernes Penthouse. Die Parkgarage ist über einen Autolift erreichbar.

The room-height windows, mounted with a slight twist of their vertical or horizontal axis, reflect the garden, the sky and the neighboring buildings, giving the façade a dynamic, kaleidoscopic appearance. Helvetia in St. Gallen represents the attempt to manipulate an efficient, modernist, «Mies-ian» steel/glass structure in order to create both a more individual, more intimate atmosphere inside and a more complex architectural interaction outside.

Das Seminargebäude folgt in seiner Grundform den bestehenden Strassenzügen und dem Flusslauf der Schwärze. Dadurch ergibt sich ein längs verzogenes Fünfeck. Innerhalb dieser Form sind die unterschiedlichen Nutzungen in Blöcken gestapelt angeordnet. Im Innern wirken diese Kuben raumbildend. Es entsteht ein sich weitender Erschliessungsraum der sich an den Nahtstellen zwischen die verschiedenen Blöcke schiebt und so einen Bezug nach Aussen schafft.

The Küppersmühle is an imposing brickwork building erected by Joseph Weiss and the Kiefer Brothers between 1908 and 1916. Even in today's changed urban landscape, the building in the north of Duisburg still functions as a striking metropolitan landmark. It is the historical structure in the inner harbour and is being remodeled after a master plan by Norman Foster. The Küppersmühle houses a museum with an exhibition area of ca. 4,850sqm, restaurant catering of ca. 920sqm and service areas of 5,480sqm.

On six floors, there is mainly electronic equipment for the control of points and signals to the depot and the related tracks, as well as a few workstations and their ancillary spaces. The building's concrete shell is insulated on the exterior and wrapped with approximately 20 cm-wide copper strips that are twisted at certain places in order to admit daylight.

The shape might be seen as a prototypical house. A sloping roof, a tall chimney and large windows remind one of a child's drawing. The tar-board roof and the unfinished concrete facades flow almost seamlessly into one another without an overhang. The interior of the house is characterized by contrasting spatial qualities and materials, such as concrete, adobe, and colors such as silver and pink. The staircase which reaches up to the roof is especially spectacular.

From within, the building complex is designed as a system of courts, which support interdepartmental orientation and communication. The shape of the building is not formed from outside like a sculpture, but is rather the consequence of inner growth and of the restrictions placed on this growth by the building code and zoning regulations.

Instead of a multistory volume that would dominate the architectural landscape, we chose a low polygonal installation that fits into Ricola's garden area like a pavilion. An architecture in which form and geometry did not immediately reveal themselves. One which, thanks to its turned-back façades, dissolves into single pieces. Each piece has the distinct characteristic of either surrounding, reflecting or projecting far into the building's interior a special view into the garden.

Thanks to its almost spectacular simplicity, the exhibition space acquires a peacefulness and concentration to which we are hardly accustomed in conventional museum spaces with their all-glass ceilings, suspended overhead lighting or ceiling grids. Translucent slabs of glass inserted flush into square openings in the ceiling produce even, bright daylight. The amount of incoming sunlight can be tested on site by the simple means of applying self-sticking film to the overhead domes from above.

The winery is situated on an exceptional location in Napa Valley. Our client, the renowned Bordeaux wine producer, Christian Moueix, 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.

We tried to realize a model for living that is relatively unusual in the centre of Paris, and that would attract an entirely different kind of tenant than the street-front buildings. Instead of competing with the towering fire walls, we settled on a horizontal strategy, that is, we kept the buildings low to ensure that as many flats as possible would be directly and intimately connected with the grounds and the garden.

We tried to realize a model for living that is relatively unusual in the centre of Paris, and that would attract an entirely different kind of tenant than the street-front buildings. Instead of competing with the towering fire walls, we settled on a horizontal strategy, that is, we kept the buildings low to ensure that as many flats as possible would be directly and intimately connected with the grounds and the garden.

The cartoon museum is a tiny museum which has been in operation since 1976 without any government support. It organises exchange exhibitions featuring works from its own collection as well as loans from other museums. The site, which dates back to the Middle Ages, is a narrow, elongated plot measuring 6 x 25 metres. The museum is housed in two different buildings connected by a passage – one of them is several centuries old, the other is a new building.

The structural system is one of cast in-situ reinforced concrete walls with a roof structure of deep, one-storey high square-section steel girders. This roof structure allows for sky lighting to the deep plan space. The girders support a series of quasi-tensile membranes that are covered by grass, protecting the membrane and acting as an ideal insulator for both summer and winter climatic conditions.

A long low building with a cantilevered projecting roof is built onto the cube of the glass hall. It serves as the main entrance and houses infrastructures for the sports business (newspaper stand, snack bar, changing rooms and technical installations). A light athletic track for training and rehabilitation, three soccer fields and a covered all-weather field are ordered around the hall. Both hall and outside installations are accessible to wheelchair-users and handicapped.

The cantilevered extending roofs on the two long sides open up both to the landscape and to the entrance and loading areas for fork lifts and transport vehicles, as well they create shade and weather protection. Water from the roof runs down over these black concrete walls and trickles into a deep bed of Alsatian gravel. The water running down the walls forms a fine film of plant life; a natural drawing ensues.

The Antipodes I scheme is a linear configuration consisting of almost identical linear units that are aligned on alternate sides of a circulation spine. At the ends, there are paired linear volumes to give a double-loaded corridor. The linear units are of in-situ, black stained, reinforced concrete. On one side, the in-situ cast structure of the linear unit is closed by prefabricated concrete panels, whose lighter colour corresponds to the aluminium frames.

A similar matt glass strip surrounds the timber volume at the uppermost section, admitting diffuse glare-free daylight from a height of 4 meters into the exhibition spaces. The walls within the exhibition spaces are between 4 and 5.5 meters high. Depending on the daylight conditions, the gallery appears either as a closed, flush volume consisting of related materials (birch plywood, matt glass, untreated aluminum) or as a wooden box, resting on two trowels in the garden.

Taking the site of a former flat agricultural field surrounded by small farmyards and suburban villas, some 200 terraced houses and free-standing units were arranged along a slightly convex central space. The distribution of the low-rise houses and the longitudinal and lateral passages were intended to underline the flatness of the site. The curving external spaces help to give specificity to the terraced houses and emphasizes the unity of the scheme.

Both the attic and the southern end of the building are treated as more independent configurationally elements, marked by slender supports and continuous glazing. The lower two floors are entirely clad with oak panels that form, together with the turned oak columns, a «surface» with varying depth, a kind of timber spatial layer between interior (living room) and exterior (garden).

Set in an undulating landscape of abandoned olive groves, the three-storey house stands on a promontory, engaging part of a former stone terrace. The design concept of the house is based on the fusion of plan, elevation and section. The building is characterized by a cross, made visible in the construction of the side walls where the in-fill dry stone comes in contact with the reinforced concrete frame.

A raised gravelled garden overlooked by open loggias on the west form the public areas. The apartments are reached via a quasi-freed curving access balcony. The main horizontal levels are stressed on the street side by the large curving ledges. The apartments themselves are conventional, with the minor exception of the curving façade section and diagonal wall of the two apartment units, which in this case is used to give an enlarged sense of volume.

The building serves the fully automated storage of herbal sweets. Seen from the outside and from a distance, the building reveals itself as a singular unified whole, as something that one could understand as a storage building. The Eternit panels, larger at the top than at the bottom, make up the cladding and underline the difference between the lower part, where innumerable individual foundations support the façade construction, and the upper part.

The visible volume of the house is a single-storey parallelepiped. It is made of precast concrete panels held in place by pine slats with a double pitched roof of black concrete tiles that come to rest on a perimeter reinforced-concrete wall. The latter is part of an enclosure that defines both the lower entry court as well as the upper grassed garden. Contained within the base are a garage and an exhibition space.

As an addition to a house on a corner site, the new volume has a visible entrance from the street in order to provide public access to the private marionettes theatre. Plywood on the inside is also used to form the shutters. Accordingly, the new building is thought of as a lightweight box, like a musical instrument, sitting on projecting sleepers and consisting of plywood sheets in a balloon-frame construction that recalls the traditional craftsmanship of Japan.

The pitched roof and trapeziodal plan together form an internal space that, with its perspective effects, reiterates the programme's theme. A pair of reinforced concrete beams support the roof structure and the north lights. The office wing ist clad with a horizontal timber boarding. The studio itself is clad, even on the east and south façade, with grained plywood boards. The west façade has bitumen sheeds on the whole surface.

The curvature of the northern concrete block wall appears to give the building more volume and weight; an impression that is, however, revoked by the thin layer of ultramarine paint that allows the brush stroke to remain visible. The impression of fragility is also emphasised by the manifestation of the construction joint on the street facade with its eccentrically placed, prefabricated reinforced-concrete window opening.