Cultural

National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City, Mexico, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez

National Museum of Anthropology

National Museum of Anthropology that is located at the centre of Mexico City has the world’s largest collection of ancient Mexican art. Ethnographic exhibits about Mexico’s present-day indigenous groups are also included in the museum. Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, along with Jorge Campuzano […]

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York, United States, Allied Works Architecture

Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) explores the blur zone between art, design, and craft today. Since 1991, the museum has been accredited by the American Association of Museums and focuses on contemporary creativity. It explores the ways in which artists and designers from around the world transform materials […]

National Library of China, Beijing, China, KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten

National Library of China

The award among contestants taking part in the bidding competition in 2003 was given to KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten. The task to be fulfilled was to expand the existing library by adding a second tract to the building with a total space of 77,000sqm that was to house 12 million […]

UNAM Library, Mexico, Mexico City, Juan O'Gorman

UNAM Library

Central University City Campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) encloses the Olympic Stadium, about 40 faculties and institutes, the Cultural Center, an ecological reserve, the Central Library, and a few museums. Mario Pani and Enrique del Moral […]

Rivington Place, London, United Kingdom, Adjaye Associates

Rivington Place

London’s first new virtual arts venue backed by public funding in forty years, Rivington Place is a space dedicated to the practitioners of contemporary art from culturally diverse background. As well as containing galleries, a lecture theatre and cafe it also houses the Stuart Hall Library and provides a permanent […]

Porsche Museum, Stuttgart, Germany, Delugan Meissl Associated Architects

Porsche Museum

The translation of the versatile and vivid brand into the language of architecture was the central draft concept. Specific conditions which the Porsche brand conveys both spatially and sensually to visitors are featured to the museum. Driving and speed, statics and logjams can be experienced both in the building’s configuration […]

Museum of Milk Conversion, Mese, Italy, ES-ARCH Enrico Scaramellini

Museum of Milk Conversion

Text description provided by the architects. The old social dairy in Mese (SO) was decided to be refurbished by its municipality, to realize in its spaces a museum of milk and a civic centre. The intervention, in addition to the rehabilitation of the existing building, includes an addition in the […]

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 […]