form: square

For more than fifteen years Maike van Stiphout and her office DS landschapsarchitecten have been working on a wide range of landscape commissions. Her portfolio comprises all scales in both urban and rural areas. She has worked on such projects as th…

Istanbul is, indeed, the place for identifying with the beauties and stupidities of different worlds simultaneously. A timeless cliché, but true: Istanbul is a cradle of dualities. Here, not only East and West but also informal and formal, tolerance …

First of all, Colombia is a festive country. No matter where you order a drink or a juice, it’ll always be served with a straw – even in expensive restaurants and even as a handy stirring implement with tea or coffee. What’s more, a daily dose of Sal…

Barking Town Square, designed by muf architecture/art, has been declared winner of the 5th European Prize for Urban Public Space, making it the first project in Britain to receive the prestigious prize. Barking Town Square is part of the Mayor’s 100 …

The Architectural Association Design Research Lab celebrates its 10th anniversary with a temporary pavilion by Alan Dempsey and Alvin Huang, situated on Bedford Square in London. The two architects created a shell structure made of Fibre-C, that rema…

The Chanel Contemporary Art Container, unmistakably designed by Zaha Hadid, opened at the end of February 2008 in Hong Kong, the first venue among 8 cities. Following the idea of Chanel-designer Karl Lagerfeld, the temporary museum building “Mobile A…

Steven Holl is currently establishing a major presence in China, considering four grand projects that are planned to open between 2008-2010. “Linked Hybrid” is a mixed used building in Beijing, as well as “Chengdu Project” and “Vanke Center” in Shenz…

The UK’s leading architectural firm Foster + Partners is planning to build the world’s largest single building in Moscow. The ambitious project called Crystal Island is meant to become a self-contained city within a city, including a rich mix of buil…

Tuesday October 17‘Noodles or Magnum?’ What a choice I think half sleepily as I hear the stewardess in the distance. Slurping my noodles, I’m impressed by the seemingly endless cinnamon coloured Gobi Desert down below. Having stu…

‘Located right in the international business centre of Daqing,’ I remember as my taxi races away from the only city district that could even remotely be considered a city centre and speeds towards the Daqing Petroleum Hotel. Small patch…

Urbanisation, water retention capacity, and agricultural changes are all putting pressure on the ancient Dutch landscape of polders. Is the landscape architecture of the polders so interesting that it merits preservation? Or is there much to be gaine…

Employment agency Alescon, operating in six municipalities in the province of Drente, is attempting to change the prevailing view of the sheltered workshop as a place to be pitied into an active company that puts people first. The agency's building d…

Spain is currently in the midst of a building boom. An ideas competition was staged early this year on the assumption that some 400,000 dwellings will be needed in the Barcelona region over the next twenty years. Madrid, meanwhile, is spreading out f…

The assignment set last June for five offices (Architectuurstudio Herman Hertzberger, Claus en Kaan, Diederen Dirrix Van Wylick, Henket & partners, Benthem Crouwel) contained not only a programme of requirements but also a preamble. In it we read…

Now that it's the holiday season, a large portion of the population voluntarily resides in conditions that fall well short of standards that normally apply to housing. Crammed together in minimal, poorly isolated 'dwellings' of cotton or thin plastic…