DomusWeb Best of Architecture 2011

As the year comes to a close, Domus recaps the top stories that captured the imaginations of readers and pointed toward possible futures of architectural practice.

Teshima art museum
Nishizawa designed the Ryue Teshima Art Museum in Japan's Inland Sea, in association with the artist Rei Naito, cognisant of her methodologies and of her interests in natural phenomena. Nishizawa has laid out a mysterious white structure on the ground that is reminiscent of the shape of a water droplet. The concrete enclosure is lit by two openings and seems to inflate and deflate like a living organism. It is a shell that flows out into nature with a free span of 60 metres. The Teshima Art Museum catches its visitors off guard. It calls itself a museum, but its exhibition space is very far from the traditional view of architecture for museums, with their masses of jumbled objects and works of art. In fact, on Teshima Island visitors are left alone to contemplate an experience with nature made of light, water and air.
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The tower of David
Twenty years ago, Venezuelan financier David Brillembourg dreamed of a shimmering, glass-clad financial centre in downtown Caracas to symbolise the nation's economic prowess. The destiny of Torre Confinanzas was another—to become home to an informal community of 2,500 homeless people who are gradually colonising, and completing, the unfinished 45-storey building. Two Venezuelan artists, Ángela Bonadies and Juan José Olavarría, document the story of a contemporary heterotopia. Their research is outlined in this interview conducted by Jesús Fuenmayor, director of the Caracas Periférico art centre, who asks them about the resulting work, La Torre por dentro y por fuera.
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Ryue Nishizawa, Teshima Art Museum
Ryue Nishizawa, Teshima Art Museum
Ring around a tree
The most recent project by Yui and Takaharu Tezuka is disarmingly simple: a ring around a tree. This structure becomes an entry that connects the south entrance to the Fuji Kindergarten with the elliptical central space inside the school itself, a playground onto which all classrooms face. "Ring Around a Tree" offers an architecture where there are no measures taken to constrain space, in order to liberate the body. The compressed spaces, which can only be reached by crawling, further the freedom of movement and ability to use the body as a means of learning. The project consists of a wood and transparent glass volume spiraling upward, enveloping a Japanese Zelkova tree. Built between the existing main building and the street, the new construction creates spaces for play, foreign language instruction, and provides an area for the children to wait for the school bus.
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The Confinanzas Tower (The tower of David)
The Confinanzas Tower (The tower of David)
The Giant Interactive Group Campus
The Giant Interactive Group headquarters is a big, complicated Morphosis building plopped down in the middle of a big, empty field. It is long and lean and low-rise, equal parts opaque and transparent, with an undulating green roof that provides welcome topographical variety to its flat, former swampland site. The headquarters is located in Songjiang, an ancient town now incorporated into greater Shanghai. Giant Group's campus is to be the centrepiece of Songjiang's new "civilized industrial area," but at the moment it stands largely alone.
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Yui and Takaharu Tezuka, Ring around a tree
Yui and Takaharu Tezuka, Ring around a tree
Waffle Urbanism
Mayer's parasols generate an artificial landscape that sets out to retrieve the emblematic value of architecture, placing it in a context in which the symbolic is an inherent part of social and cultural history. Mayer refers to Metropol Paraasol as a "cathedral without walls", an architectural promenade above the rooftops of Seville. In order not to spoil a Roman archaeological site, the waffle frame of the new complex, built in reinforced, concrete, wood laminate and steel, touches the ground at only six points. The "mushroom-shaped" structure is set on a base that accomodates a new market, an archaeological museum, bars and restaurants. The project is designed to create areas of shade that are vital to the use of public spaces in a sun-baked city like Seville.
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Morphosis, the Giant Interactive Group's campus
Morphosis, the Giant Interactive Group's campus
Jürgen Mayer H., Metropol Parasol
Jürgen Mayer H., Metropol Parasol

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