Berlin: The Latest Architecture and News

From Architecture Forum Aedes. The exhibition "Building in the Metropolis MX" presents selected works from the Mexican studio Gaeta-Springall Architects. In their working process right through to realisation, architectural elements such as form, material and function serve a larger and more complex system: the City. Julio Gaeta, Luby Springall and their team take great care over designing the envelope in order to generate possible interactions through the porosity of the exterior skin. Here they set particular store by intelligent systems and technologies as the longevity and durability of the building lies in its efficiency and sustainability. Gaeta-Springall Architects dedicate themselves to space as an entirety, which they see as the “true stage of life”. For them, "Building in the Metropolis MX" means the linking of architectural, urban and social elements. It is here that they see their everyday work. After curating this year’s Mexican pavilion “Condemned to be modern” at the Venice Biennale, the presentation at Aedes is the second exhibition in Europe for Gaeta-Springall architects, already highly regarded in their home country.

The Museum for Architectural Drawing presents Lebbeus Woods, ON-line, an exhibition of the finest works of architectural theorist, draftsman, educator and architect, Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012). Curated by his longtime friend and partner Christoph a. Kumpusch, the exhibition brings together a collection of Woods’ visionary works that have never been exhibited before. The intensely rendered architectural and urban environments produced early on in Woods’ career are exhibited together for the first time. These ink and pencil drawings cover a wide range of Woods’ research and re-imagination of cities both real and fictive and support Woods’ longstanding desire to show the capacity of architecture as a transformative and eloquent force.

Only 5 more days on the exhibition 2D:3D, an installation by Barkow Leibinger at the BDA Berlin Gallery. Covering the wall surfaces of the small gallery space with “tapete” or wallpaper the façade of the storefront gallery frames what Leon Battista Alberti described as a fenestra aperta. In this configuration the space of the gallery is a projection/ extension of the streetscape in the bourgeois residential historical Mommsenstrasse neighborhood.

A new series of international architecture competitions are characterizing a clear change in the current urban planning strategy of Moscow. The initiator of these developments is the incumbent chief architect of the Russian capital, Sergey Kuznetsov. Together with his team, he has breathed new life into Moscow’s urban development since taking office in mid 2012. The exhibition New Moscow – Новая Москва presents two international competitions – from the fields of landscape planning (1st prize Diller Scofidio + Renfro, New York) and cultural building (1st prize Heneghan Peng, Dublin) – and through these demonstrates the great gains for the city’s urban planning that are being drawn from this open, global approach.