Not so long ago hotel Topazz, a new spatial structure that reflects feelings and the atmosphere of its surroundings, enriched the city of Vienna, the capital of Austria. This sculptural form is a combination of bold ideas of BWM Architekten und Partner and interior designer Michael Manzenreiter.

Situated in the very center of the city, the design hotel Topazz is far from something ordinary. This urban corner situated in HoherMarkt, Vienna’s oldest plaza, is presented to its public in a completely new form. By discarding the limitations of creation, this space presents a completely new architectural vision that instantly attracts and overpowers.

The façade, mosaic made of tiny specs, becomes a scene of borrowed impressions by reflecting the mood of the city while shaping the reactions of the observers. By displaying the near surroundings, this glamour form becomes a stage of life passing by. The façade, being a witness of a constant movement, seems alive while melting into the flow of the city.

The fluid surface of the façade is intercepted by oval windows shaped in a form of massive frames that capture a moment in which interior and exterior complement each other. During the day, these windows take a bit of the outside atmosphere and lend the sensation to the guests inside, while at night they become a scene of the inside silhouettes passing by. Glowing with amber light, they seem like sparkling gems. This resemblance is just what named the hotel Topazz (topaz is an elegant gem of wide color spectrum).

Carefully positioned, windows appear to be complementing the vertical dynamic of nearby roof tops. Observed from the inside, these oval structures become a spatial escape meant to slow down and relax. The natural curve of these window sill divans, shaped by the contour of the body, make you feel embraced within this spectacular form.

The specific gallery-like geometry of interior space enables interweaving of different activity. The floating geometry of the foyer, pierced by vertical voids, is a creative combination of style and vision enriched by luminous details and harmonic earthly color scheme.Shaped like an interior terrace, this foyer covers the restaurant on the floor below. These vertical pockets of air exchange the sounds and impressions of two areas of different activities. The very harmony of interior scene is highlighted by this embrace.

Specific by its visual appearance, hotel Topazz is more than just an impressive sight. Being packed on the city’s smallest building siteof only 153 square meters, building is also designed with the environment in mind. This structure of contemporary design approach, besides the combination of elegance, style and comfort, also fulfills the energy efficiency standards by achieving a CO2 savings of nearly 50%. But its green initiative is not only displayed within its form and used materials, but in a wide range of organic delicacies as a synonym of a quality life.

Text and photos: Milena Vučković

Superkilen urban park by Danish architecture studio BIG, Berlin-based landscape architecture studio TOPOTEK1 and artists group SUPERFLEX from Copenhagen, conceived as a giant exhibition of urban best practice by incorporating everyday objects from more than 60 different cultures, constitutes a rare fusion of architecture, landscape and art.

The kilometer long urban park wedges through the Norrebro area just north of the Copenhagen city center, creating a different yet unifying space in one of the most ethnically diverse and socially challenged neighborhoods in Denmark. The aim of the invited competition initiated by the City of Copenhagen and Realdania Foundation back in 2005 was to create a truly unique urban space with a strong identity on a local and global scale. The 13.4 million euro development started construction in 2009 and opened to the public in June 2012.

Superkilen is divided into three color-coded areas, each with a distinct atmospheric and functional condition: the large and expansive red square which serves as an extension of the adjacent sports hall offering a range of recreational and cultural activities; the black square as the heart of the Superkilen where locals can meet by the Moroccan fountain or a game of chess; and a linear green stretch as a natural meeting place for large-scale sports activities providing vantage points over the surroundings. The three areas form the backdrop to the surrealist collection of global urban diversity of more than 100 objects from 60 cultures which reflect the true nature of the local neighborhood. The objects were selected through an intensive curatorial process in close collaboration with the local population.

“Rather than a public outreach process towards the lowest common denominator or a politically correct post rationalization of preconceived ideas navigated around any potential public resistance – we proposed public participation as the driving force of the design leading towards the maximum freedom of expression. By transforming public procedure into proactive proposition we curated a park for the people by the people – peer to peer design – literally implemented”, says Bjarke Ingels, Founding Partner of  BIG.

The objects ranging from exercise gear, including muscle beach LA to sewage drains from Israel, palm trees from China and neon signs from Qatar and Russia are all accompanied by a small stainless plate inlaid in the ground describing each of the objects and their origin.

Nanna Gyldholm Moller, project leader from BIG, says: “When our team was invited to propose a project in this neighborhood we realized that we had to do more than just urban design. Rather than plastering the urban area with Danish designs we decided to gather the local intelligence and global experience to create a display of global urban best practice comprising the best that each of the 60 different cultures and countries have to offer when it comes to urban furniture.”

The Copenhagen-based art group Superflex took the public participation further into the extreme by handpicking five groups of people and travelling to the country of their origin to document the process of selection. “Our mission was to find the big picture in the extreme detail of a personal memory or story, which on the surface might appear insignificant, but once hunted down and enlarged became super big. A glass of palestinian soil in a living room in Norrebro serving as a memory of a lost land, enlarged to a small mountain of palestinian soil in the park. A distant Mediterranean flirt in the seventies symbolised by a great iron bull, hunted down and raised on a hill in the park.“, explains the group SUPERFLEX

Throughout the Superkilen red maple, Japanese cherry trees, larix, palm trees from China and Lebanese cedar trees are planted to offer more shade and vegetative interest, augmenting the existing trees. The diversity in tree and plant species complements the diversity of the site furniture. “While the Romantic Gardens of the 19^th Century attempted to give the visitors an exotic experience of the world that was still big and hard to travel around – allowing people to witness a Chinese pagoda or a Greek temple – the Super Park in Copenhagen does the opposite. Rather than perpetuating a perception of Denmark as a mono-ethnic people, the Super Park portrays a true sample of the cultural diversity of contemporary Copenhagen”, explains Martin-Rein Cano from Topotek1.

A bike path runs through the entire park improving the infrastructure locally in the area while integrating it into the broader, citywide context.

Photos and drawings: © Bjarke Ingels Group

This summer a new design hotel was open in Ljubljana - Hotel Vander, whose design is the work of the famous Slovenian architecural office Sadar+Vuga. The hotel is located in the historic centre of Ljubljana, right next to the Ljubljanica river and on one of the busiest pedestrian paths in the town.

The hotel is constructed within the interior space of four historic adjacent buildings. Because of this specific location and conditions, the design of the building plan is spread vertically, with a ground floor space that serves as the main public part of the building and contains the reception, restaurant and bar/lounge areas. The next three levels are organised around a vertical atrium with stairs and contain 16 rooms. The top floor of the hotel includes a glasshouse with a large open terrace and pool.

The exterior facade of the building remains untouched and preserved. Conversely, upon entrance to the hotel you enter a new identifiable area that is the innovative space of Hotel Vander. The design of the hotel was based upon the kaleidoscopic play of 3D patterns in different materials, and reflections that extend the borders of the constructed space. The space created inside appears almost endless. Due to the reflections created inside the building, the visitor becomes a part of the interior.

The rooms inside the hotel are designed with light colours, textile floors and contain glass partition walls to the bathrooms. Inovative interior design and detailing allowed for maximum use of relatively small surface areas. Rooms appear to be more like homely living rooms, due to custom designed furniture pieces such as the black tables and mirrored wish box with mini bar.

A special feature of the hotel is the long terrace with wooden decking and swimming pool. Intended for the relaxation od guest, the wooden deck allows spectacular view of the picturesque roofs of old Ljubljana. Here also the space appears to extend, mostly thanks to the "endless" pool that seems to overflow over the terrace edge. This whole ambient presents an oasis of peace and tranquility right above the busy and buzzing pedestrian zone of old Ljubljana.

All the floors inside the building are interconnected with a vertical hall that also serves as a light shaft. In addition the northern wall of the atrium is cladded with a hanging metal curtain which allows light to diffuse inside the core of the building.

Photos: David Lotrič and Miran Kambič

All photos and drawings courtesy of Sadar+Vuga

For their fifth consecutive participation at the Venice Biennale, Luxembourg chose the authors of their pavilion through an open competition entitled Futura Bold – a term that illustrates the aim of this small European coutry to position itself through a project that analyzes and discusses the contemporary built environment on a national, european and global scale.

The chosen project is Post-City by Yi-der Chou, Radim Louda and Philippe Nathan. This young team assumed a sensitive approach to analysis of existing forces of Luxembourg’s built environment. They define their project as an attitude towards the city rather than an urban proposal.

Post—City proposes to link five specific environments of contemporary Luxembourg. Considered by the authors to be equally important, Belval, Berchem, Ingeldorf, Kirchberg and Schengen are connected by a dense corridor of urban scenes. Made of an extremely pragmatic infrastructure and an accumulation of existing and fictional built situations, Post-City acts as a visual concentration of urban realities and potentials. As a natural consequence of the process, a triangular urban fabric with a connected heart cuts through Luxembourg, creating, as a leftover, an undefined landscape, a territory of all possibilities.

The contribution, which is staged at an apartment at the Ca’ del Duca on the Grand Canal in the city centre, is composed of a plaster model installation which is being produced in collaboration with Vincent de Rijk (Rotterdam), five artworks/illustrations in DIN A0 format drawn by Eva le Roi (Brussels) and a book, for which Manuela Dechamps Otamendi (Brussels) did the layout and graphic design and Maxime Delvaux (Brussels) the photography. The latter does not only serve as a guidebook for the exhibition, but does also and foremost illustrate and open up new questions and discussions, and this through the intervention of writers, critics, researchers and architects.

We talked to Radim Louda, one of the pavilion's authors. This young Belgium architect with an international experience answered several questions regarding the project and the exhibition concepts.

 CAB: We've read about the project in the Press release. We especially like the 7 situations and their illustrations. They present interesting futuristic ways of creating synergies of seemingly disparate spaces and programs. How much have you drawn from the actual urban reality of Luxembourg to create these scenarios? Are some of these synergies already present on site?

RL: First of all, Post-City should be consider as an attempt to investigate the potentials of the already present forces of the environment through a sensitive approach. We started by choosing 5 specific places that seemed to us to be representative of a certain reality of the country. With a photographer (Maxime Delvaux/354 photographers) we went to investigate the places 'in-situ'. Some of the tensions or synergies that you can find in the scenarios are actually a blow-up or exageration of the reality. Luxembourg could be considered as a so-called 'In-between city' (confer. Thomas Sieverts), a place that doesn't have either a straight urban or rural condition. This unplanned (r)urban state of the country leads to situations that are too often unconsidered or neglected by architects, for us it was important to explore them and consider them as our primary working material.

From those 5 existing situations, we have chosen 19 building typologies (the pavilion, the gas station, the office tower...) that compose those built environments. The scenarios are the consequence of a shift of those typologies in order to create new potential (r)urban dynamics.

CAB: Post-City proposes a network of connections between 5 locations in Luxembourg that each have their own specific character and importance for the country's development. If we assume these connections are an infrastructure for future development, what do you think would happen to the left-over space, this 'territory of all possibilities'?

RL: We decided to concentrate our energy in 'an infrastructure for future development' for two reasons. The first one is simply a practical one. If you want to approach the complexity of a territory you have to use simplified means. By concentrating the potentialities and realities of Luxembourg in this strip we were able to accentuate the narrative and to point out specific conditions and most of all the rough and direct connections between them. The second point leads us to the consideration of the leftover space, the 'territory of all possibilities'. As young architects we have learned the failure of big urban gestures and planifications. At the same time we can not imagine to leave the the (r)urban developments without any directions or considerations about their future. In this sense, we wanted to develop a double discourse. The situations that we show in the Post-city strip are coming from specific Luxembourgish conditions but at the same time are totally retransposable in other european countries. The european map with the triangular net drawn by Eva le Roi, tries to show the repetition and the generic condition of such territories in the globalized Europe. The leftover or negative space created acts as a necessary space for everything that wants, should or have to escape from the condition of the contemporary global 'city'. It's upon to you to decide what you want to put in it, we prefer to leave it as it is, 'a territory of all possibilities'.

CAB: The Biennale exhibition contains a physical model, 5 illustrations and a book. Could you explain how each of these are connected to the project and why are they important?

RL: With Post-city we try to 'approach' our contemporary built environment. We try to raise questions more than give answers. In this sense, we found important to surround the complexity of the territory by different means. Even though they are considered as of the same importance they propose different approaches to the territory. The physical condition of the model shows in a direct way the connections between the typologies, a new reality is shown. The illustrations made by Eva le Roi insist on the relations between the different scales, a zoom-out serie shows the approach that we had. We considered the territory as well in its domestic character as in its relationship to the global scale. The book is made in 3 parts, one shows the typologies and the pictures of the exisiting environments, the second one explain the scenarios that we created. For the third part we asked to different contributors to write about Post-city, a compilation of texts from renowned architects as from young ones creates a corpus that shows different points of views and creates in itself its own narration about the subject. Each 'piece' should be considered as well as a 'tool' during the process as the 'final product' of it.

CAB: How much did the site itself - the apartment at the Ca’ del Duca - inform the exhibition content and setup?

RL: The Ca' Del Duca apartment is a very specific site. Situated in front of the Grande Canale, the apartment has a real historical and at the same time domestic feeling. Introducing an installation that talks about the country scale in an apartment created really unexpected but powerfull relations. The model 'cuts through' five rooms. Each of the 5 existing situations has its own room, its own specific condition. The impact of the context on a installation that tries to show the potential of the generic and existing conditions appeared to us as really exciting.

CAB: Did u get any feedback from the visitors of the Biennale? What was their reaction to the exhibition and the Post-City project?

RL: The aim of Post-city was to raise questions on different levels to different people. The Biennale has the chance to get the visitor 'lambda' as well as specialized people from the field. For now on we had a really good feedback from both. The installation works on different levels. We've seen people getting really excited by the 'beauty' or 'sharpness' of the model, the illustrations and the book and then, by taking time, getting really in to the depth and start to debate. I have to say that we are pretty glad with people reactions. We got proposals to exhibit the project in other cities in Europe, which actually is interesting in the sense that we consider Post-city not only as a specific project for Luxembourg but also as a broader reflexion about the contemporary city conditions.

Photo: 354photographers, Philippe Nathan, Manuela Dechamps Otamendi

Illustrations: Eva le Roi

© Fondation de l' Architecture et de l Ingenierie, Luxembourg 2012 www.fondarch.lu

Ljubljana-based architectural studio OFIS architects has recently successfully completed a student housing complex in Paris. This was a rare opportunity for architects from this region to work in one of the most important world centers. OFIS architects won first prize at the invited competition for this location in 2008, and building started in 2009. The building is located on a long and very narrow site, on the edge of Parc La Vilette in Paris’s 19th district, within an urban development done by Reichen & Robert architects. On the northeast, new Paris tram route is passing along the site. The site is bordering with tram garage on the southwest, above which is a football field. The first 3 floors of the housing will inevitably share the wall with the tram garage. The parcel has a very particular configuration; 11m in width and extending approximately 200m north-south. This foreshadows the importance of processing the eastern facade overlooking the extension of the street Des Petits Ponts which hosts the tram and both cyclist and pedestrian walkways. The long volume of the building is divided into two parts connected with a narrow bridge. Between two volumes there is a garden. The building has 11 floors: a technical space in the basement, shared programs in the ground floor, and student apartments in the upper nine floors. The layout is very rational and modular. The major objective of the project was to provide students with a healthy environment for studying, learning and meeting. The ground floor houses common spaces, dining area and  living space. Along the length of the football field is an open corridor and gallery that overlooks the field and creates a view to the city and the Eiffel tower. This gallery is an access to the apartments providing students with a common place. The dormitory has 192 studios, all of the same size and containing the same elements to optimize design and construction: an entrance, bathroom, wardrobe, kitchenette, working space and a bed. Each apartment has a balcony overlooking the street. Narrow length of the plot with 10 floors gives to site a significant presence. Each volume contains two different faces according to the function and program: The elevation towards the street des Petits Ponts contains studio balconies-baskets of different sizes made from HPL timber stripes. They are randomly oriented to diversify the views and rhythm of the façade. Shifted baskets create a dynamic surface while also breaking down the scale and proportion of the building. The elevation towards the football field has an open passage walkway with studio entrances enclosed with a 3D metal mesh. Both volumes are connected on the first floor with a narrow bridge which is also an open common space for students. The building is energy efficient to accommodate the desires of Paris' sustainable development efforts. The Plan Climates goal is that future housing will consume 50KW-h.m.² or less. The objectives of energy performance and the construction timetable were met by focusing on a simple, well insulated and ventilated object that functions at its best year round. Accommodations are cross ventilating and allow abundant day lighting throughout the apartment. External corridors and glass staircases also promote natural lighting in the common circulation, affording energy while also creating comfortable and well lit social spaces. The building is insulated from the outside with an insulation thickness of 20 cm. Thermal bridge breakers are used on corridor floors and balconies to avoid thermal bridges. Ventilation is controlled by double flow mechanical ventilation, providing clean air in every apartment with an optimum temperature throughout the year. The roof is covered with 300m² of photovoltaic panels to generate electricity. Rainwater is harvested on site in a basin pool used for watering outdoor green spaces. Photo: © Tomaz Gregoric

Singapore's Gardens by the Bay has won the top prize, World Building of the Year, at the World Architecture Festival that was also held in Singapore this year. Officially the prize went to Wilkinson Eyre Architects from London, but jury represented by such names as: Ben Van Berkel, Moshe Safdie, Jϋrgen Mayer H, Yvonne Farrell, insisted that the whole design team should have recognition (Grant Associates, Atelier One i Atelier Ten) for this magnificent team effort. Located in Marina Bay, Gardens by the Bay is a key project in delivering the Singapore Government’s vision of transforming Singapore into a ‘City in a Garden’. At a total of 101 hectares, the Gardens by the Bay project comprises three distinct waterfront gardens. At the heart of Bay South Garden is the Cooled Conservatory Complex which is the focal point of the Gardens. The two main Conservatories cover an area in excess of 20,000sq m and are among the largest climate-controlled glasshouses in the world. They provide a spectacular, all-weather attraction and comprise a cool dry conservatory (the ‘Flower Dome’) and a cool moist conservatory (the ‘Cloud Forest’). Each has its own distinct character, but both explore the horticulture of those environments most likely to be affected by climate change. The Flower Dome tells the story of plants and people in the Mediterranean climate zone, aims to bring alive the experience of seasonal change for visitors more used to Singapore’s eternally tropical climate and lush green vegetation. Even the landform of the conservatories draws inspiration from Mediterranean landscapes and evokes the language of dry, sun-baked hillsides punctuated with rocky terraces and stony outcrops, and the intimate bond between land, geology, vegetation and cultivation. The Cloud Forest highlights the relationship between plants and the planet, showing how the warming of the cool tropical cloud forests will threaten biodiversity. With a smaller footprint but greater height than Flower Dome, it has at its heart a planted ‘Mountain’ from which a 35m high waterfall drops. Visitors can experience the forest at different levels, but most interesting is a Cloud Walk between tree crowns. Gardens by the Bay are open for visitors from June 2012 and during August 1.000.000th visitor is registered. Photo: © Gardens by the Bay

Yet another manifestation worthy of our attention, held as part of Vienna Design Week, gave us the extraordinary overall impression and caused an unusual feeling within its audience. The exhibition that says – come, see, feel, touch – is an original presentation of sea elements shaped in a specific and poetic way. Simply said – this is an unusual display guided by indefatigable strength of imagination. This exhibition presented within vast glass walls of Kunsthalle (literally “Space for art”) is a work and vision of multidisciplinary designer Julia Lohmann. Julia Lohmann is a professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg where she restlessly develops a completely new world of magic intended for all. At the same time she is a researcher at the Department of Design Products at the Royal College of Art in London. Her research is currently focused on development of materials and shapes made from kelp. This successful designer of bold ideas constantly explores contemporary issues such as the relationship of man and nature, with an accent on animal world, that guides her work towards exploring her own personality. Constant dilemmas within a human being are turned into an artistic expression and are meant for questioning our own emotions. Sometimes meant to appall, her design is above all surreal. And the exhibition itself presents a mystical scene that will take us away from the real world by moving us into the deep blue sea. The displayed moment of inspiration, that possesses a certain specific strength, is a reinterpretation of her “giving value to leftovers“ motto. Sea weeds are placed by one another in a form of a cover onto the bearing structure made from metal, fiberglass or wood. The process of forming unusual structures by connecting those carefully prepared “sea strings“ might seem as the product of a pure coincidence. But in reality, with a careful study of the very nature of used material, Julia Lohmann has learned how to “listen“ and feel the movement and the behavior of nature thus guiding her work in desired direction. In every moment she possesses the control over the form that gives her unlimited possibilities of form-making. Every design becomes a possibility that erases the line between the reality and imagination. Her sculptures become silent story-tellers of hidden secrets written within the great waves of the sea, making some ordinary things come to life – from luminaires to everyday hats. In the variety of design expressions Julia Lohmann also generated a unique-looking fabric made of kelp that resembles the soft nature of leather by its texture and structure. This revolutionary employment of unusual natural material presents one step further in a constant battle over usage of environment-threatening products. Making us think “green“, Julia Lohmann started her own battle for the well being of our planet. For more information about Julia Lohmann please visit http://www.julialohmann.co.uk/ Text and photos: Milena Vučković

The Vienna design week is being held from September 28th to October 7th, for the fifth consecutive  year.  Yet another exquisite and colourful programme of events awaits the visitors this fall, with the aim to show and enable people to experience the many-faceted creative work in the fields of product, furniture and industrial design as well as experimental design. Design has been and is an important field in the production of culture: it shapes our material culture, our everyday life and our consumer world, it influences our lifestyles and fashions and most fundamentally our aesthetic sense and judgements. The festival’s events are scattered all over the city and organized in cooperation with many partners – from Vienna museums to production and retail companies to designers from all over the world. A large number of shops takes part in the festival by offering their customers special deals on designer furniture and products. The festival aims to reveal creative and production processes and encourage experimental work on the spot. It also presents and promotes design that in the first instance withdraws from the scheme of utility value and functionality in order to create awareness and pose questions or also simply just to have fun. With exhibitions, venue-specific installations, workshops, lectures, discussion events, a programme of films and, of course, enough opportunity to party and network, Vienna design week  is not only an attraction for the international design scene but most explicitly also aims to interest and appeal to a wide public audience of Viennese and visitors to Vienna. One of the main venues of the festival is Jean Nouvel’s Stilwerk building. The events in this space are connected through the common topic od recycling and reusing old and discarded objects to create new products. This weekend Stilwerk was home to the Misfits Revisited workshop, headed by the Viennese design group breadedEscalope. Earlier this year breadedEscalope began an experiment investigating the products, employees and brand of the long established company of Thonet. The cooperation does not work on the basis of a briefing but on the freedom of communicating an analysis of the form, material, tradition and processes involved in inventing a product. The visitors could, within the framework of the workshop, create or re-create their own “Thonet” out of discarded pieces from the Thonet factory, and take their creation home. Zurich designers Atelier Volvox rescued these unloved plush toys and gave them a new lease of life by turning them inside out – eyes and all. Samuel Coendet and Lea Gerber collected the toys from second-hand shops and forgotten corners of nursery schools before cutting them open to reverse the fur. The Outsiders toys received one of the awards at the Vienna design week. For the impressions and photos of the events we hereby thank Milena Vučković

Grafton Architects from Dublin, Ireland, received the Silver Lion award at this year’s Venice architecture Biennale, for their impressive presentation of the project for a university campus in Lima, Peru. The Silver Lion is awarded to emerging architects who raise expectations, and it is the first time a practice from Ireland won this prestigious award. Presenting their architecture as a “new geography”, the Dublin-based office uses this exhibition to explore characteristic historical examples of architecture merging with the landscape, as well as the work of Brazilian architect Paolo Mendes da Rocha, in order to better approach their first project in South America – a university campus in Lima, Peru. The director of this year’s Biennale, David Chipperfield, who chose the topic “Common Ground”, placed the Grafton Architects exhibition as central in the main Giardini pavilion. The jury president, Dutch architect Wiel Arets,  said that this exhibition showcases on various levels the conceptual and spatial qualities and potentials of the way Grafton Architects explore and present the urban landscape. In one part of the exhibition Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, founders of Grafton Architects, explore the surprising similarities between the Skellig Michael convent in Ireland and the Peruvian city of Machu Picchu. Despite the fact that these two places are separated by a huge physical distance and were created in disparate times, there is a common line that connects them. In both examples the intimate man-made spaces are in perfect harmony with their impressive natural surrounding and, as expressed by the exhibition authors, they tell the same tale. The exhibition topic is transfered from the past into the present day, and the comparison of distant (yet very near) worlds is repeated in the second part, through the dialogue McNamara and Farrell started with the Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha for the purpose of this Biennale. Grafton Architects recently won a competition for a university campus in Lima, Peru, when they realized that the analysis of da Rocha’s works will improve their knowledge of building tradition and the cultural context of the local site and climate. The analysis features the Serra Duorada stadium designed by the Pritzker Award winner da Rocha in 1973. Using da Rocha’s idea of architecture as a “new geography” and the idea of the university as a “knowledge arena”, Grafton Architects manage to transform infrastructure into an urban landscape. By not treating the architecture as an isolated building, they show a new quality of the inevitable transformations of urban landscape – its complete remodeling. Probably the biggest importance of this exhibition is the fact that it unequivocally demonstrates how openness to influences is the beginning and pre-requisite to quality architecture. In this sense, Grafton Architects present an excellent answer to the Biennale topic “Common Ground”. Photo: Miloš Mirosavić

This book represents the first comprehensive framing and treatment of the most important new development in Danish architecture of the 2000s. In the first years after 2000, a young generation of architects hit Danish architecture with renewed energy. “The New Wave in Danish Architecture” explores the turn through interviews with architects and key stakeholders, essays and presentations of the architects and their works. The book explores how these young Danish architectural offices gained a foothold on the Danish and the international architectural scene in the 2000s with Danish office PLOT/BIG as first mover. Among the 12 architectural firms portrayed and featured in the book are PLOT, BIG, JDS, COBE, Transform, Nord, EFFEKT, Adept and others. Comprehensive interviews with Bjarke Ingels (BIG), Winy Maas (MVRDV), Shohei Shigematsu (OMA), Julien De Smedt (JDS), Dan Stubbergaard (COBE) and many more. The projects of the young Danish offices share certain key commonalities: a new pragmatism, a new willingness to engage in dialog with the world, and a new freshness and straightforwardness in their general approach and rhetoric. A new turn that has become a wave. This new wave in Danish architecture has been applauded for addressing the time we live in – with globalization, scarce resources, climate issues, the IT revolution, a new media context and, most recently, an economic crisis. But it has also been accused of ignoring certain ideas in the Danish architectural tradition. The book addresses this debate and aims to spark a broader discussion about the future of Danish architecture. “The new wave in Danish architecture” is not aimed exclusively at architects but at anyone with an interest in architecture. It is based on articles in the magazine Arkitektur DK, Nos. 1 and 2/2012, in an expanded and re-designed form. The book is published by The Danish Architectural Press in both English and Danish. To order please use this link http://arkfo.dk/en/shop/product/new-wave-danish-architecture A few pages from the book: