Photographer: Zooey Braun | ArchDaily

Rethinking Prefabrication From Standardization to Design Freedom

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 07:30:00 +0000

Once synonymous with monotony, “prefabricated” buildings often bring to mind the gray, repetitive housing blocks of the postwar era. But that image no longer fits today’s reality. Powered by digital design, robotics, and advanced materials, prefabrication has evolved into a language of innovation and precision. Far from uniform, it now enables flexible, efficient, and sustainable spaces that reflect the individuality of contemporary architecture.

12 Cultural Spaces That Owe Their Power to Adaptive Reuse

Claire Brodka — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0000

When approaching the design of cultural spaces such as museums, performance venues, or places of research and study, architecture and design professionals often have to assemble pieces of a uniquely challenging puzzle in order to make the structure resonate with a variety of visitors and occupants. Hitting the right chord can be difficult, especially when trying to combine forms into a whole that pays respect to a building's intended use while being timeless in its universality.

SAP Labs Munich Campus / SCOPE Architekten

Hadir Al Koshta — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Located at the heart of Science City Garching, one of Europe's leading hubs for research and teaching, the new SAP Labs Munich Campus represents a forward-thinking model for contemporary office architecture and interdisciplinary collaboration. As a gateway to the "Science Loop" – a pedestrian spine that connects all major research clusters – the building plays a central role in shaping a vibrant and future-oriented academic and corporate environment. The campus brings together about 600 SAP employees and 120 researchers and students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), fostering a shared environment where science and business work side by side.

Guesthouse Floating Connection / Ippolito Fleitz Group

Pilar Caballero — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

A private gym for the homeowners, and a guesthouse for their visitors. Our unique architecture is perfectly tailored to the family’s needs: a garden pavilion that floats above the lawn. The building takes a soft and curved form – an architectural gesture that establishes a dialogue with the main house. A glass façade lets the boundaries between interior and exterior dissolve while closing itself off protectively towards the road at the rear. Natural stone flooring and oak ceilings run throughout, forming two continuous surfaces that circumscribe the pavilion from above and below, spanning a space that flows from the outside to the inside. Making an independent and permeable statement, the pavilion demarcates the end of the garden and forms an extension of the living space.

Fuchshof Primary School / VON M

Hadir Al Koshta — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 02:00:00 +0000

In the west of Ludwigsburg, the new 5.5-track primary school building stretches northwards along the new development area of Fuchshofstrasse. Based on the design image of a filled bookshelf on a playground, this ideal of school learning between knowledge transfer and social interaction was translated into a timber hybrid building. The three ceiling panels cantilever outwards like shelves and offer the school community space for appropriation and individual filling in the middle of a flowing outdoor area. A covered area cut into the building cubature on the first floor welcomes the children and runs parallel to the administration area, alongside the rooms for the school staff, thus promoting contact between students and teachers. As you enter the building, you find yourself in the actual heart of the building - the large stair hall.

Creating Vertical Gardens and Green Facades with Steel Cables

Eduardo Souza — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 04:00:00 +0000

With the high population density of cities and voracious appetite of the market for every square meter, it is not uncommon for urban vegetation to be forgotten. For this reason, forests, vegetable gardens, and vertical gardens have aroused much interest and figured into a variety of different innovative proposals. Using the vertical plane to maintain plants in an urban setting is a coherent and common-sense solution, especially when there is little possibility of bringing green to the level of the people on the streets.

Kronbühl Residence / Oppenheim Architecture

Paula Pintos — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Nestled in a quiet neighborhood, overlooking the German part of Lake Constence, the intimate Kronbühl residence site sits between a beautiful sunflower plantation, and an apple orchard extending along the whole back of the plot. The compact plot was optimized through the design of a three-story home for our clients.

HS77 Stuttgart Apartments / VON M

Paula Pintos — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Text by David Kasparek. The land we live on is a non-replicable commodity. In many cities and communities, space for housing is becoming scarce. This is because, despite the correct statement that our cities are largely built, i.e. on average in Germany there is enough living and working space available, this existing space is often not in the right place. Especially in economically prospering settlements, living space is needed. Due to the local economic system, the available land is subject to constant speculation and the associated price driving. Since 1962, the Federal Statistical Office has been recording the development of building land prices in this country: by 2017, there was an increase of 2,308 percent. Land prices are getting more expensive, and with them construction costs.

Hölderlinhaus / VON M

Valeria Silva — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 03:00:00 +0000

To mark the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth, the aim was to transform the 18th-century birthplace of the city‘s best-known son into a museum dedicated to him, which would also provide space for local events.

Haldenstrasse Daycare / se\arch architekten

Andreas Luco — Sun, 03 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

The 6-group "Kita Haldenstraße" is located in a grown residential area in Schorndorf, Germany, at the interface to a park-like area. The property is characterized by impressive tree population. The cubature of the daycare center has been kept very compact in order to allow for a continuous play area in the west of the property and to include the vegetation as an identity-forming factor.

Elementary and Comprehensive School Hausach / Schatzler Architekten

Andreas Luco — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 12:00:00 +0000

The starting point for the expansion / new construction of the elementary and comprehensive school was a closed architectural design competition in 2016, which was won by Schätzler Architekten. In 2017 Schätzler Architekten was commissioned with the overall planning for the new construction with a total of five building components. The expansion of the school campus in the heart of the municipality of Hausach required sensitive handling of the inner-city structures, as well as the nearby historic church and the castle ruins overlooking the city.

What to Consider When Choosing a Window

Eduardo Souza — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 04:30:00 +0000

"And a window that looks out on Corcovado. Oh, how lovely." Tom Jobim's lyrics, immortalized by João Gilberto and Astrud Gilberto's voices and a soft guitar, was one of the early songs that introduced the world to the idea of a paradisaical Rio de Janeiro and a promising Brazil, with an increasingly urban population and a modern capital being built from nothing. Almost 60 years later, Paulo Mendes da Rocha casually quotes this song in an interview and points out that for him, in this scene, the most important element is the window, not Corcovado or Christ the Redeemer. That's because it frames the view and directs our eyes to what matters. It is a phrase that goes almost unnoticed, but that carries enormous poetic and artistic significance to the craft of architecture.

KiTa im Park Daycare Center / Birk Heilmeyer und Frenzel Architekten

Paula Pintos — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The property of the KiTa Parkstrasse is located in the vicinity of the Berg Cultural Park in the east of Stuttgart. The new two-storey building of the four-group nursery school is part of the green corridor with historic trees on the site of the previous building. The positioning, building dimensions, construction and materials of the building are based on the special characteristics of the premises: The local building code specifies a building depth of twelve metres. Its position and orientation result from the construction line and the terrain sloping from west to east. The foundation on an existing underground bunker makes a lightweight timber construction the only alternative.

Housing and Workshop Weilerstraße / CAPE, Prof. Markus Binder & Schleicher ragaller architekten

Andreas Luco — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 22:00:00 +0000

The client followed an inherited custodial intention to construct a new building with a strong presence in the centre of the rural town of Schwaikheim, close to Stuttgart. The materiality of wood was an obvious starting point, not only in terms of sustainability and natural resources, but also as a reference to the original training of the client as a carpenter. Out of this came a brief for 6 contemporary apartments and a workshop for the continuing practice as a craftsman.

Church St. Fidelis in Stuttgart / Schleicher ragaller architekten

Pilar Caballero — Thu, 24 Sep 2020 03:00:00 +0000

More and more people are leaving the church, more and more are in search of spirituality. St Fidelis in Stuttgart reacts to this with an open programme. Since December 2019, the almost 100 years old Catholic church has also been a centre of spirituality and church music. schleicher.ragaller architekten designed a place of silence for believers and those looking for life’s meaning.

Towards a Common Practice of Material Recycling

Andreea Cutieru — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 04:00:00 +0000

Making material recycling commonplace within the architectural field would require a top-down approach in adapting the industry’s processes and standards to create a suitable framework for the task. However, individual endeavours are bringing about change within the profession, pushing for a reconsideration of architecture’s relationship to waste. This article looks at some of the initiatives that are spearheading the transition towards a common practice of material recycling.

Museum Luthers Sterbehaus / VON M

Daniel Sánchez — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 20:00:00 +0000

The building, which is one of the UNESCO’s WORLD HERITAGE SITES, was extensively renovated and through a new building completed into a museum showing a permanent exhibition as well as exhibitions presenting diverse and specific aspects and topics.

House G16 / Markus Mucha Architekt

Andreas Luco — Sat, 13 Jul 2019 12:00:00 +0000

The location of the building on a small hill of the outskirts made it possible to create a 360° view of the rural surroundings and the village buildings near Heidelberg. The 2-storey building devides the hillside property into a courtyard open to the street in front of the ground floor and a private, secluded garden area behind the building. On the ground floor are the house access, garages and two offices, which are oriented to the courtyard. On the slope side storage and technical rooms are housed.