7-8/2010 Timber
In the debate about resource efficiency wood naturally plays a central role. The last twenty to thirty years of the development of architecture in Europe have produced sufficient proof that this renewable material can be used for practically any kind of building commission.
6/2010 Education
Slowly things are beginning to stir in the area of education: after the wave of new universities of applied sciences in the 1990s, now, finally, 19th century concepts in the area of primary education which had remained valid until recently are being discarded. Pre-school formation, all-day care, integration of migrants and new subject matter are only some of the many initiatives required by the transformation of nursery schools, primary schools and children’s care centres.
5/2010 Tourism
What is tourism today? It is certainly more than just a trip to a hotel and back varying in cost and quality. The constantly increasing availability of logistics and natural resources has fed the expectation of being able consume the pleasant aspects of the regions in question at short notice and at any time.
4/2010 The Second Nature
“Folding” is one of the after-effects of the deconstructivism of the 1980s. Back then Zaha Hadid caused something of a sensation with a new kind of tectonics which was able to transform, apparently effortlessly, buildings and terrain previously seen as massive into a foldable aggregate state. Since then almost all young architects have examined this design strategy of peeling out, folding open and bending.
3/2010 Splendid Isolation #4
Right on time at the start of the gardening season we again turn a focussed gaze on what is happening in the area of single-family housing construction. Once again we ask about the economic and social function and effect of this, the largest of all categories of construction.
1-2/2010 Culture
The cultural endeavours of a society cause far more than just a few positive psycho-therapeutic effects. In the last few decades the culture industry has grown into a massive business worth billions. Prosperity and leisure generate a demand for cultural events of all kinds that the cultural institutions can scarcely satisfy.
12/2009 Turkey
How modern Turkey can be today is shown, above all, by its architects. Our December issue proves that “European” standard building types are solved there in a surprisingly innovative way. And that, fortunately, good architecture is no longer tied to national boundaries that have long since become obsolete.
11/2009 Spirit & Space
The diffuse spiritual longings of our secularised civilisation are a popular subject of study by sociologists, but also a hunting ground for those in the pursuit of souls. Built faith has been a central theme of architecture since time immemorial – indeed many see it as the very first theme. Churches and church facilities, sacred spaces of different religions – these remain important building tasks, and we present the most interest recent examples.
10/2009 Movement
When the British architects group Archigram designed their “Walking Cities” in the heady days of the 1960s, many people still believed in the imminent victory of aerospace technology over the resistance to change presented by the sedate building industry. Unfortunately, up to the present day our cities and buildings have not yet learnt how to walk – reason enough to present as a topic for discussion architecture that at least allows movement.
9/2009 Stahl & Alu
The visions of modernism were always in steel: from Tatlin’s Tower to El Lissitzky’s Wolkenbügel (horizontal skyscrapers) and Mies van der Rohe’s Berlin glass high-rise buildings. Steel was the material that made it seem possible to construct these utopias. That they had to remain just utopias is another story. Today, while this material may have lost some hype, the construction industry would be inconceivable without high performance metals.
7-8/2009 Urban Housing
Housing construction always also means town planning – whether it be of the rather dangerous kind as with single-family houses, or with great opportunities for upgrading as in high-density housing. We present very different projects in this area from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, all of which have one thing in common: thanks to innovative technology and creative design they all raise the quality of life to a considerable extent and in a way that is hopefully also sustainable.
6/2009 Industry
The contrast could hardly be more drastic. In recent decades a large part of the creative potential of our economy was placed in the finance and automobile industries. We know the results. Now we have the chance to deal once more with the real material foundations of the economy.
5/2009 The Social Agenda
As regards the question of the architect's social responsibility we tend to think automatically of economic housing for less privileged groups of society – retired people on a minimum pension, students and large families. Naturally we show successful built examples of this type.
4/2009 Engineering
An artificial separation between the engineers and architects has been cultivated in the construction business for far too long. But clearly no architect can restrict his creativity to external forms and no civil engineer can allow himself be satisfied with purely technical solutions.
3/2009 Splendid Isolation #3
As in years gone by we again present in the March issue an accentuated selection of single-family houses. The enormous urban planning, social and ecological problems of this widespread building commission have been widely known for a long time. A collection of individually built passions as a survey of the current conditio humana.
1-2/2009 Shopping
When an architect like Daniel Libeskind turns his attention to the theme of shopping, then one thing is clear: the flashy bazaar has long since lost its odium of vulgarity. The modern shopping mall became a stylised, clinically purged image of traditional open air markets in old city centres, today the entire setting must, in terms of comfort, achieve the standard of living rooms.
12/2008 Tourism
The present financial crisis presents a number of rather surprising effects (surprising for laypersons, that is). For example oil is becoming cheaper. Will this give global mobility back some of its drive? Pessimists had already envisaged the collapse of tourism – but it is an essential part of highly developed national economies – in all imaginable forms and shades.
11/2008 Hi-Rise
The history of man's striving upwards is as old as building itself. Today, however, it is evident that it is no longer just height alone that has led to the current renaissance of the high-rise building. In "old" centres of high density such as New York or Vienna, indeed even in smaller towns such as Porto or St. Gallen in Switzerland, towers are increasingly serving the purposes of urban conversion.
10/2008 Building Latino
Alongside the spacy objects by the 100-year old Oscar Niemeyer and the misery of the favelas in South America there is also something resembling architectural normality. A normality of quality that in aesthetic, economic and ecological terms hardly lags behind European standards.
9/2008 The Cultural Agenda
What is culture? Is architecture a part of it, or does it merely provide a framework for cultural functions from time to time. We investigate these questions in our September issue – guided, naturally, by the conviction that architecture is the culture of building.
7-8/2008 Ökologie Technologie
Today the goal of responsible conduct in the building industry is to demonstrate a consciousness of limited resources in the areas of planning, building construction, use and subsequent use/disposal – and is indeed already a standard against which all building work should be measured.
6/2008 Sports
Between the football European championships and the Olympic Games sport plays a main role in public debates. In architecture, too, it has a number of effects ranging from stadium buildings to ancillary and back-up facilities for large sporting events.
5/2008 Urbanism
Urbanism today is first and foremost the question about the status of the social and public realms. Urbanism is the most political of all architecture's essentially political tasks.
4/2008 Working Environments
Ambitious architecture must now be employed to demonstrate where the future of the European world of work lies: in creativity, precision and humanity.
3/2008 Splendid Isolation #2
As is widely known the no. 1 dream of the consumer is a house in a verdant setting. But in every respect this explodes the usual dimensions of the architecture business.
1-2/2008 Health
The architecture theme "health" is better suited than perhaps any other to demonstrate a number of fundamental social developments.
