After over two decades in the making, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened to the public on September 19, 2023. The luminous cube-shaped building was designed by the architecture firm REX, led by Joshua Ramus, to become one of New York City’s cultural keystones and the final piece in the 2023 Master Plan for the rebuilding of the 16-acre World Trade Center site. The inaugural season will feature commissions, world premieres, co-productions, and collaborative work across theater, dance, music, opera, film, and more. While only eight stories high, the venue stands out due to its monolithic façade composed of translucent veined Portuguese marble.
What does architectural restoration, transformation, or renovation entail? What factors are involved in their processes? When delving into the interiors of Spanish homes, we set out to discover the various methodologies, tools, and technical and construction strategies that are often employed, with stone as the main protagonist.
From the pre-Columbian period of the Americas –during which cultures such as the Olmec, Maya, Purepecha, and Mexica (Aztec) thrived– to the modern era where architecture has been influenced by social movements and even natural disasters, Mexican architecture showcases a valuable architectural expression, with its own unique voice and distinctive characteristics. Nobel Literature Laureate Octavio Paz argued that architecture is an incorruptible witness to history. Likewise, the materials used to shape it have acted as protagonists of that history, enduring in many cases over time and evolving thanks to the generations of architects who have contributed to it, from different perspectives.
To trace a timeline, it is possible to take as a starting point pre-Hispanic architecture, which exhibited a diversity of nuances due to Mexico's vast territorial extension. This allowed diverse cultures to find their niche and develop their characteristic architectural styles. Subsequently, the era of Spanish colonization, which itself drew influence from Islamic architecture, represented a noteworthy turning point in architectural development. This phase endured until the advent of Mexican Independence in the 19th century. In turn, this marked the initiation of social and cultural movements, both during and after the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century.
https://www.archdaily.com/1005554/materials-that-define-the-contemporary-mexican-architectural-aestheticEnrique Tovar
Materiality is a determining factor in shaping the character and experience of a building. Playing with the aesthetic and tactile qualities of materials, the design process encompasses their analysis, selection, and arrangement to create purposeful and sensory-rich spaces. Alongside textures and patterns, exploring materiality also involves the study of color possibilities. The versatile role of color in architectural materials extends beyond mere aesthetics, as it can broaden design opportunities and influence emotional responses, functionality, cultural relevance, and environmental performance.
Even though each material has its distinctive inherent color, the addition of artificial or natural pigments can modify them in favor of the project’s identity. Delving into the debate on maintaining raw aesthetics or changing a material’s natural hues, we showcase various projects to study the differences between using natural versus artificial pigmentation of glass, concrete, brick, stone and wood.
In the competitive world of restaurants – particularly at a time when influencers are gaining more and more control over the sphere of fine dining –, creating a memorable meal experience is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. While factors like food quality and service certainly play pivotal roles in making diners return to their eatery of choice, the impact that restaurant interiors can have on an establishment's longevity should not be overlooked. Among the various elements contributing to a memorable ambiance, color takes center stage. We delve into the significance of striking the right tone in restaurant design through 20 projects from our ArchDaily database.
Polish History Museum . Image Courtesy of WXCA Architects
In the capital city of Poland, WXCA won a competition to design one of the largest museums completed in Europe today. The museum is now under construction at the Warsaw Citadel. The development is a combination of the Polish History Museum and the Polish Army Museum. Located on the site of a former fortification, the complex will become a culture hub rooted in remembrance.
The skin absorbs matter, and the world is contemplated, touched, heard, and measured through our bodily existence. Juhani Pallasmaa, a Finnish architect known for propagating sensory architecture, defends the notion that, unlike vision, touch is the sense of proximity, becoming a main axis by covering the entire body. It is a fact that, when speaking of touch, the first image that comes to mind is usually contact with hands. However, there are other ways to feel architecture that can be developed in projects, such as the touch of bare feet on a particular surface.
Near the center of Helsinki, Finland, in the Töölö neighborhood, one can find the Temppeliaukio Church, an unusual-looking Lutheran church nestled between granite rocks. Approaching the square from Fredrikinkatu street, the church appears subtly, a flat dome barely rising above its surrounding landscape. An unassuming entrance, flanked by concrete walls, leads visitors through a dark hallway, and into the light-filled sanctuary carved directly into the bedrock. The exposed rock walls earned it the alternative name “The Church of the Rock.” To contrast the heaviness of the materials, skylights surrounding the dome create a play of light and shadows and a feeling of airiness.
The church is the result of an architectural competition won by the architect brothers Timo and Tuomo Suomalainen in 1961. Their original solution was recognized not only for its creativity but also for the respect it showed to the competition’s goal: “to include the organization plan for the whole Temppeliaukio Square, taking into attention that as great part as possible of the rock outcrop of the square to be preserved.” The winning proposal achieves this by embedding the church inside the rock and placing parish facilities on the edges of the hillock. This article explores the story behind the Temppeliaukio Church both narratively and visually, through the lens of Aleksandra Kostadinovska, a professional photographer from Skopje.
Inherited from ancestral techniques, dealing with natural stone as a building material is, historically, linked more to the structure of a building than to the finishing stage. With the development of construction, natural stones as a structure were replaced by more efficient and cheaper systems, such as reinforced concrete or even metallic structures and structural masonry, opening space for the use of stones as finishes and coatings.
Whether to mark a change of direction, to highlight its first steps or its own presence in a room, stairs that combine two or more materials tend to draw attention by establishing dialogs between particular characteristics of each material. Concrete, steel and wood are some of the most common choices to compose the structure of stairs due to their high strength and versatility. But, when combined, these different materials expand their individual possibilities and reveal how the design can be tailored to their peculiarities and connections.
The combination of textures, colors, and finishes among materials can provide a number of creative solutions for these elements used for vertical circulation, as shown in LÂM’s Home, by AD+studio and House 9A, by 23o5Studio, characterized by stairs with a sturdy and rough base that meets a light and sleek structure of steps. The opposite composition order, a lighter base that meets a robust set of steps, thrives ingeniously in Luis Carbonell's Casa Chulavista and messina | rivas' Angatuba House, where the light wooden stairs' base is followed by raw concrete steps.
A rock like marble is usually light in color when formed through a process involving the heat and pressure of limestone. Carrara marble, for example, became famous for having good workability for sculptures, but also for its extremely uniform appearance. Under skillful hands, rough stone could become works of art such as Michelangelo's Pietá or David, among many others. But if during the rock formation process there are impurities such as clay minerals and iron oxides, the resulting stone may acquire bluish, gray, pink and black hues. Something that would make its use in a sculpture unfeasible can be seen as the real beauty of the piece, and how the passage of time was printed on it. Likewise, it is very difficult to predict exactly how zinc or copper will oxidize over time, and its patina effect takes on beautiful greenish, reddish or grayish tones, depending on the conditions to which they were exposed.
Admiring the unpredictability of materials and observing the beauty of the unexpected can bring surprising results to architectural projects. Through constant research, Apavisa has been able to develop modular ceramic pieces that combine strength and versatility, reproducing in detail the materials that our environment gives us. The strength of stone and metal with their oxidative processes, the roughness and timelessness of cement or the beauty of marble with its different veins, shades and patterns.
The study of rocks allows us to understand the formation of our earth. Its types, the formed designs, the layers, all reveal the story. Along with the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, the lithosphere is one of the great pieces of the earth system, supporting the biosphere. This outermost solid layer of the planet is made up of rocks and soils; as for rocks, there are several ways to classify them. The most common is to separate them according to their formation processes, such as igneous, sedimentary, or metamorphic. While sedimentary rocks constitute about 5% of the earth's crust, the remaining 95% are igneous or metamorphic rocks.
Because of their durability and strength, along with their varied designs and colors, stones have been used as building and cladding materials for hundreds of years. For floors, stone remains a noble and elegant option, which in addition to having high thermal inertia and structural stability, has a pleasant texture to the touch.
Having been invited to participate in the 17th International Venice Architecture Biennale, architecture and design practice AAU ANASTAS presents the exhibition All-Purpose, which translates the craftmanship of stone into a new form of contemporary architecture. Exhibited within the Giardini, the structure featuring an undulating parametrised stone slab supported by thin, slender columns is a material exploration that builds on the Palestinian construction tradition to create a new architectural discourse around stone.
Historically, "cyclopean" referred to a building technique that superimposed large stone blocks together without any mortar. This allowed for a diverse array of structures across various civilizations, including defensive walls, talayots, navetas, nuraghes, temples, tombs, and forts. Nowadays, the term applies to any ancient structure consisting of large stones superimposed to form a polygonal shape.
The Chilean organization Ruta Pais Foundation has invited international architects and local artisans to design a series of architectural interventions in order to create 3 artisan routes in the Chilean Central Valley: Wicker Route in Chimbarongo, Clay Route in Pomaire, and Stone Route in Pelequén.
While stone has been used in construction since time immemorial, it's maintained its place in architecture thanks to its design capabilities, durability, and efficiency.
