Cultural

Guangzhou Opera House, China, Zaha Hadid Architects

Guangzhou Opera House

Text description provided by the architects. The Guangzhou Opera House sits in perfect harmony with its riverside location, reminding of pebbles in a stream smoothed by erosion. The Opera House is located at the centre of Guangzhou’s cultural development. The city is enhanced by its unique twin-boulder design with the […]

VitraHaus, Weil am Rhein, Germany, Herzog & de Meuron

VitraHaus

An architecture museum that features the work of the most renowned architects is what Vitra Campus has become over the years. Some of these architects are Frank Ghery, Zaha Hadid, Alvaro Siza, Tadao Ando, Jean Pruvé, Nicholas Grimshaw, Buckminster Fuller and SANAA. VitraHaus building, a series of stacked pitched-roof boxed, […]

Vitra Fire Station, Weil am Rhein, Germany, Zaha Hadid Architects

Vitra Fire Station

A study of the overall factory site was the initiation of this design. Placing the elements of the commission in such a way that they would not be lost between the enormous factory sheds was the intention of the architect. These elements were also used to structure the whole site, […]

Tower of Winds, Yokohama, Japan, Toyo Ito & Associates

Tower of Winds

The formal solutions and use of technology on this project reveal all the contemporaneity of 21st century architecture, making it a highly innovative form of architecture. It is one of Toyo Ito’s best-known projects that earned him the 1987 Edwin Guth Memorial Award of Excellence from […]

Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall, Bilbao, Spain, Soriano y Asociados Arquitectos

Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall

The Euskalduna Conference Centre and Concert Hall was inaugurated on February 19th, 1999 and it is a very unique building. It is one of the flagships of the new Bilbao of the 21st century. The Conference Centre was designed by architects Federico Soriano and Dolores Palacios to look like a […]

Osaka Culturarium at Tempozan, Osaka, Japan, Tadao Ando

Osaka Culturarium at Tempozan

Tadao Ando has succesfully expressed in the Osaka Culturarium at Tempozan (previously The Suntory Museum) his favourite theme: the relationship between man, water and architecture. A gallery of art and design, a 3D IMAX cinema, a series of shops and a restaurant are incorporated in this cultural complex that was […]

Kunsthal, Rotterdam, Netherlands, OMA

Kunsthal

Text description provided by the architects. Exhibition space of 3300 square meters, an auditorium and restaurant are the combination of Kunsthal into one compact design. Sloping floor planes and a series of tightly organized ramps provide seamless connection between the three large exhibition halls and two intimate galleries. The building […]

The Tate Modern, London, UK, Herzog & de Meuron

The Tate Modern

Tate Modern is a remarkable combination of old and new, Tate Modern sits where Bankside Power station was built in two phases between 1947 and 1963 and designed by Gilbert Scott. The same architect also designed Battersea Power Station and Waterloo Bridge. An interior steel structure supports its construction of […]

Kyoto International Conference Center, Japan, Sachio Otani

Kyoto International Conference Centre

The Kyoto International Conference Centre, abbreviated as ICC Kyoto and previously called the Kyoto International Conference Hall, is a large conference facility located at Takaragaike, Kyoto, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in this hall. Sachio Otani designed the centre to have […]

Tokyo International Forum, Japan, Affonso Eduardo Reidy

Tokyo International Forum

Squeezed onto a 21,000-square-meter site in the heart of Marunouchi, the Tokyo International Forum stands as a lasting reminder of Japan’s boom years which abruptly came to an end in the early 1990’s. New York architect Rafael Vinoli designed the TIF which was commissioned during the last years of the […]

Museum of Modern Art (MAM), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Affonso Eduardo Reidy

Museum of Modern Art (MAM)

Rio’s Museum of Modern Art was founded in 1948 by a group of art enthusiasts headed by Raimundo Castro Maia (see Museu do Açude and Chácara do Céu). In 1958 the Museum was transferred to another building that made its permanent headquarters. It is impossible to miss the impressive main […]

Gavroche Centre for Children, Saint-Ouen, France, SOA Architectes

Gavroche Centre for Children

Text description provided by the architects. A cultural and educational facility situated in the heart of the Victor Hugo development has been realized with the completion of the Gavroche Centre for Children. The latter is part of a large urban renewal scheme consisting principally of housing, offices and commercial buildings […]

Hans Otto Theatre, Potsdam, Germany, Gottfried Böhm

Hans Otto Theatre

Architect and Pritzker Prize winner Gottfried Böhm sketched a 5-storey theatrical building with bowl-shaped, cantilevered roofs. Concrete and glass are the prevailing materials. A listed gasometre was integrated into the construction body. On the side of the deep lake an also listed former chicory […]

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, Gehry Partners

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The museum of Guugenheim in Bilbao had already begun to make news long before it opened its doors on October 19, 1997. The previous four years of its construction, the museum was visited by numerous artists, architects, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and historians that […]

Walker Art Centre Expansion, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, Herzog & de Meuron

Walker Art Centre Expansion

With chunky massing and silvery, lightly crumpled aluminum cladding, Herzog & de Meuron’s Walker Art Center expansion hovers over the sidewalk. It acts as a striking counterpoint to its adjoining neighbor, the center’s original brick-clad structure, decisively grounded, by Edward Larrabee Barnes. The 1971 […]

Winnipeg Library Addition, Winnipeg, Canada, Patkau Architects, LM Architectural Group

Winnipeg Library Addition

Winnipeg Centennial Library was originally constructed in 1976 as a three-story building occupying a city block and an adjacent public park. The existing library, constructed of reinforced concrete exposed to the interior and pre-cast panel exterior, felt very disconnected from its surroundings including […]

Watha T. Daniel-Shaw Library, Washington, United States, Davis Brody Bond

Watha T. Daniel-Shaw Library

The new Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Library is part of DC Public Library’s Building Program and came from a series of new libraries in Washington that are designed to be flexible and open in order to meet the needs of the community now and in the future. This $12 million facility […]

Garden of Fine Arts, Kyoto, Japan, Tadao Ando Architects & Associates

Garden of Fine Arts

This project was designed by Tadao Ando and completed in 1994. It is a museum presenting near-life sized reproductions of famous masterpieces on porcelain panels. The Garden of Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan is considered to be a unique creation of European taste amidst the chaos of Japan’s ancient capital […]

Heidi Weber Museum, Zurich, Switzerland, Le Corbusier

Heidi Weber Museum

The Heidi Weber Museum, also known as the Centre Le Corbusier, was completed after Le Corbusier died and it now works as a museum and gallery. The structure of the building was designed to have two parts. The first one is two cubes that have sides of enameled steel panels […]

Macau Science Centre, Pei Partnership Architects

Macau Science Centre

Text description provided by the architects. The Macau Science Centre is an educational and cultural facility considered to be a state-of-the-art that is located at the gateway of Macau situated along the Pearl River Delta within an hour of Hong Kong by ferry. The centre was completed in December 2009 […]

Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana, United States, Eskew+Dumez+Ripple

Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum

Text description provided by the architects. The new Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum that is part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is located at the gateway to the main campus. From the campus it faces a sculpture garden and a Louisiana Plantation House reproduction that is […]

Zagreb Dance Centre, Croatia, 3LHD

Zagreb Dance Centre

When big movieplex cinemas opened in Zagreb that led to the dying out of old cinema theatres in the city centre. The City of Zagreb as the owner of the old cinema Lika made a decision then to reuse the space for new cultural facilities. In that scenario, the city transformed the old cinema Lika into a new […]

Youth Centre Amsterdam-Osdorp, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Atelier Kempe Thill

Youth Centre Amsterdam-Osdorp

The final building is consisted of the simple stacking of two – diametrically opposed – concepts of space. The ground floor level is designed to have a flat sandwich-space that opens up completely to the surroundings thanks to the glazing on all sides. The public green and its dominated tree […]

Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, Germany, Frank Gehry

Vitra Design Museum

Vitra Design Museum’s inception dates back to the early 1980s. Vitra’s CEO Rolf Fehlbaum began to collect the furniture of designers who had an influence at the company’s development, aiming to document the history of the Vitra Company, including people such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Alvar Aalto, […]

Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France, Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Institut du Monde Arabe

Institut du Monde Arabe was established in 1980 in Paris, when an agreement with France was concluded from 18 countries 18 Arab countries concluded an agreement with France to establish the Institute with information about the Arab world and to start research to cover Arabic and the Arab world’s cultural […]

MUMUTH Music Theatre, Graz, Austria, UNStudio

MUMUTH Music Theatre

MUMUTH that means the House of Music and Theatre of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz is combining a university building with a public theatre. The private faculty rooms are organised on one side of the building, and an open foyer on the other side guides the […]

Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, Stephan Braunfels

Pinakothek der Moderne

Pinakothek der Moderne is a museum designed by the German architect Stephan Braunfels that was inaugurated in September 2002 after it took seven years to be completed. The museum’s rectilinear façade is dominated by white and grey concrete and interrupted by large windows and high rising […]