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.
The Navigation Manual of Jacques de Vaulx
Jacques de Vaulx (1557-1997) was a French cosmographer and navigator. He is mainly known for his handwritten navigation manual, as well as for his explorations in America. He is one of the emblematic Norman navigators of the 16th century.
Building Megalopolis, Benjamin Bardou
Benjamin Bardou is a French artist and filmmaker working on visual experiments in urban environments. He has made a series of short films in which different spatial components are displayed. These urban atmospheres are part of the Megalopolis project, an urban area developed in the aftermath of the World Wars
If We Enter a World War and Lose, a 1937 Map
This hypothetical map illustrated by Howard Burke is deliberately provocative in its violent depiction of the end of the United States, two years before the Second World War. It represents a bleak future for the United States : if it were to lose the war that was about to begin, its territory would be divided among the victors.
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 Abandoned Gávea Tourist Hotel
The Gávea Tourist Hotel also known locally as Hotel Esqueleto (Skeleton Hotel) is located in the heights of Rio de Janeiro, between the districts of Gávea and São Conrado. It is a ruined hotel, abandoned and never completed, located near the Casa das Canoas de Niemeyer, almost lost in the forest between the mountains.