Magazine

UNStudio recently completed the renovation of a facade on P.C. Hoofstraat, the exclusive shopping street lined with dozens of Dutch and international fashion boutiques. The Looking Glass, as the architect's call it, features glass boxes that flow like fabric. John Hill

Architect Joan Miquel Seguí's design for the new entrance to the Intermodal Station in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, is appropriately the winner of a 2018 Tile of Spain Award: the ceramic latticework filters sunlight during the day and glows like a beacon at night. John Hill

Like other architecture fairs, the World Architecture Festival (WAF) has its share of manufacturer booths, in this case accompanying the crit rooms where architects presented their projects to juries. A standout was the MaterialDistrict pop-up; here we present a slideshow of it and some material... John Hill

Mario Botta grew up at the base of Monte Generoso and used to climb to the summit, camping there overnight to watch the sunrise. Some six decades later, the world-famous architect has capped the summit with a restaurant, a flower-like design that alternates stone and glass. John Hill

The Mainzer Landstraße, a major roadway in Frankfurt am Main, has been characterized by some pretty sober commercial architecture. A new eight-story office building designed by TEK TO NIK Architekten features a complex natural stone façade that adds some movement to the street. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

As part of its renovation of the bathing hall at Obermain Therme in Bad Staffelstein, Germany, Krieger Architekten Ingenieure designed a cave-like space whose form was inspired by salt crystals. Two layers of LUCEM light-emitting concrete panels give the enclosure its colorful glow. John Hill

An area of 45 square meters is not much for the planning of a house. Nevertheless L3P Architekten managed to make room for a family of four in Dielsdorf near Zurich – using the logic of the surrounding grapevines to articulate the structure. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

In London's Shepherd's Bush area, Henning Stummel Architects has built a house whose rooms are arranged like monks' cells around a courtyard. The roofs and walls are clad in standing seam metal panels covered with a unique bio-based coating. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

Stuttgart-based architects h4a have completed the new sports hall for the Kepler- and Humboldt-Gymnasiums in Ulm, a boxy building stacked with three gyms one above the other. The interior is elegantly blurred by a sculptural facade of twisting aluminum fins. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

Buenos Aires's new Centro Cultural Kirchner is commonly known as Ballena Azul (Blue Whale) due to its whale-like concert hall designed by B4FS Arquitectos that is covered in metallic fabric from GKD. John Hill

The sophisticated, multi-layered glass façade of Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer's Würth House in Rorschach, Switzerland, appears rippling; fitting for its setting on Lake Constance. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

From a distance Bierman Henke Architects' egg-shaped "Art Cloud" at the Museum de Fundatie resembles a stucco-like surface, but up close one can see that it is made up of ceramic tiles, over 50,000 of them in fact. Ceramic manufacturer Royal Tichelaar Makkum produced two sizes of... John Hill

Situated between the busy Bahnhofstrasse and the new railway station in the center of Aarau, Switzerland, is a cushioned canopy that seems to float like a cloud. Designed by Vehovar & Jauslin Architektur, the bus terminal's ETFE membrane creates a striking entry to the region. John Hill

On September 19, 2012, the new Folkwang Library opened on the Essen-Werden campus of the Folkwang University of the Arts. The boxy building, designed in a 2006 competition by Max Dudler, holds a 200,000-strong musicological collection behind a translucent skin that looks like stone but is in fact... John Hill

Ziba's Portland, Oregon, office may be blessed with a 200-seat auditorium, but it one that is too compact for traditional folding chairs. So like any decent design and innovation consultancy, Ziba designed their own seats, the slender and aptly named JumpSeat, now manufactured by Sedia... John Hill