Magazine

Inside Outside has designed a four-story facade of curtains for Moussafir Architectes' renovation of a ten-story concrete building from the 1970s in Paris. A showroom, offices, and apartments sit behind the operable curtains that look face Rue du Vertbois in the 3rd arrondissement. John Hill

Klapster is a space-saving auxiliary staircase that folds up neatly against the wall when not in use. Designed by Frankfurt's raumvonwert, the modular system is ideal for city dwellers living in small spaces.  John Hill

A new building in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood features a parking garage clad in Wall-PF1, Bendheim's patent-pending parking facade system that has generous built-in tolerances and a striking contemporary appearance. John Hill

There are a number of materials that are used primarily indoors. Cork is one of them. It can be out of sight, used as a backing for floor coverings, for instance, or exposed, turned into a tackable wall surface. For a single-family house in Berlin rundzwei Architekten applied cork in an... John Hill, Thomas Geuder

The Eco Brooklyn Show House is a traditional brick rowhouse with a difference: it's fronted by a living wall. Completed late last year, the Eco Brooklyn Living Wall hopes to set a precedent for the facades of residential buildings in the borough of Brooklyn – and beyond.... John Hill

Two recent Swiss buildings ― an apartment building in Winterthur and villas at Bürgenstock Resort in Obbürgen ― use Air-Lux sliding wall systems to open up their interiors to the elements and to views of their surroundings. John Hill

One of the highlights of the 2014 Venice Biennale's Elements of Architecture exhibition is Barkow Leibinger's Kinetic Wall, appropriately found in the Wall Room and signaling the way forward through its moving parts and elastic skin. John Hill

To mark the release of its Dekton "ultra-compact surface," Cosentino is holding an exhibition (until October 31) at the Center for Architecture in New York City. The show highlights Daniel Libeskind's "Beyond the Wall" sculpture being realized at Cosentino's global... John Hill

The first impression upon seeing Behnisch Architekten's John and Frances Angelos Law Center at the University of Baltimore is the way the boxy volumes are covered in different types of glass. There is a checkerboard frit that responds to the library and a rainscreen of structural glass and... John Hill