After the Second World War an international competition was launched to build a basilica in the city of Higüey in the Dominican Republic. This city, which then had barely 10,000 inhabitants, saw the emergence of a monumental concrete cathedral at a time when its growing economic importance was just beginning.
Freddy Mamani’s Neo-Andean architecture
Freddy Mamani is a Bolivian architect coming from an Aymara family. His neo-Andean constructions are mainly located in the city of El Alto, above La Paz. Inspired by the Aymara culture, he has developed a unique, colourful, highly ornamented architecture and a new typology, the cholet.
Anastasis Church, Álvaro Siza
The Anastasis church, is a white concrete monolith designed by Alvaro Siza, built in the heart of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande in France. The sacred building is the first church built in the 21st century in Brittany, but it is also a modular place open to the life of the neighbourhood.
The Delta Works, The Oosterscheldekering
The Oosterscheldekering is the largest of the Delta Works dams and sturge barriers. This 9km long barrier was built between 1976 and 1986 to limit marine flooding following the North Sea Flood of 1953. It is the most famous work of the Delta Works because of its monumental size but also its innovative hydraulic technology and its complex and unique construction.
Kenzo Tange, Kagawa Prefectural Gymnasium
For the 1964 Olympic Games, Japan invested huge amounts of capital in the construction of sports infrastructures. The architecture of the sports buildings gave the image of a modern nation, developed and more powerful than ever. The gymnasium architecture of Kenzo Tange can be considered as a manifesto of the modern Japanese architecture that revealed itself to the world during the Olympic Games.
The Architecture of Parliaments Around the World
The study Parliament explores through 5 typologies the relation between architecture and politics. These typologies are often inspired by ancient influences and most of them have not changed since the 19th century. But the question remaining is how could architecture shape political culture ?
Ghost-Town, the Abandoned Hotel Resorts in Sinai
Between 2002 and 2005, Haubitz + Zoche travelled the Sinai and documented abandoned hotel resorts. These ghost-towns are filled with unfinished hotel structures, isolated in the middle of the desert. Due to the instability of the region and dubious investments, these hotel sites were never completed. They are photographed as the sad consequence of a tourism policy of uncontrolled urban development. This series depicts a form of new archaeology, showing a bygone era, wich is the opposite of the pharaohs architecture.
Centraal Beheer Office Building, Dutch Structuralism
Herman Hertzberger is a Dutch architect born in 1932 in Amsterdam. As a disciple of Aldo van Eyck, he was one of the main influences behind the Dutch structuralism movement. The project considered to be one of the most inspiring examples of the movement is the Centraal Beheer office building in Apeldoorn. It was designed as a sixty cubes workspace forming a single articulated unit.
Another Rome: EUR District
EUR is a residential and business area of Rome. The initial project was developped for the 1942 World Fair. It was supposed to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of PNF’s March on Rome, but the exhibition never took place due to World War II. The architecture is the execution of Italian fascist ideology, widely inspired by Roman Imperial Town Planning mixing it with Italian rationalism.
Brick by brick, 36 dwellings in Ciudad Pegaso
The architectural proposal of Luis Martínez Santa-María was thought to follow the identity of the neighborhood of Ciudad Pegaso. In order to do so, he used brick as the main and almost exclusive material. The project stages the exploitation of this single material, to get its full expression.