North of Venice, Carlo Scarpa built a private mausoleum for the Brion family, a synthesis of his architectural work and his capacity for constructive invention. A manifesto project where concrete allows the sculpting of forms and decorative elements conducive to meditation.
Lina Bo Bardi, Casa sul Mare di Sicilia
La Casa sul Mare di Sicilia is a theoretical project by Lina Bo Bardi designed in 1940 for the magazine Domus. She designed a Mediterranean house, integrated in the landscape, and built using the collective cultural imaginary.
Hassan Fathy, Building in the Desert in New Baris
With the New Baris project, Hassan Fathy experimented for a new community a project combining urban planning, social organization, natural passive cooling and vernacular architecture.
Hassan Fathy, Building With the People in New Gourna
With the New Gourna project, Hassan Fathy experimented for traditional communities a project combining urban planning, citizen participation and vernacular architecture.
André Ravéreau, Musée d’Art Musulman d’Alger
André Ravéreau was a French architect, emigrated to Algeria, who knew how to inscribe his projects in the entirety of a culture, its climate, its location, its constructive knowledge.
La Maison au Bord de l’Eau, a Project for the Right to Leisure
Charlotte Perriand left her mark on modern architecture. Although she was erased from history, her activism for the recognition of women in society or her projects claiming the right to leisure and rest, make her a key figure of the 20th century.
La Maison de la Publicité, an High Tech Architecture Ahead of its Time
La Maison de la Publicité is a project designed by Oscar Nitzchke in 1936. The building, a kind of media machine, presents a façade with a fine metallic structure, covered with changing advertisements, long before the first examples of high-tech architecture.
Musée International d’horlogerie, a Troglodyte Architecture
The Musée International d’horlogerie (International Watchmaking Museum) in La-Chaux-de-Fonds could well be the first European experiment in contemporary troglodyte architecture as it was defined by Pierre Zoelly and Georges-Jacques Haefeli. It’s a buried building with remarkable spatial qualities supported by an efficient structure, constructed under a park in 1974.
Pierre Zoelly, a House for a Sculptor
At the end of the 1960s, the Swiss architect Pierre Zoelly designed a house for the sculptor Peter Hächler. He built a concrete structure, the organic heart of the house, which will be the perfect interlocutor for the sculptures it houses.
The Higüey Basilica, a Brutalist Cathedral in the Caribbean
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.