Current Issue: Domus 1003

In this issue

Permasteelisa in Manhattan

Six Manhattan buildings selected from hundreds of constructions around the world whose envelope was designed and realised in conjunction with Permasteelisa. With Domus 1003 a special report with 23 buildings signed by outstanding architects.

Domus 1003

Cover: graphic interpretation of a sketch for Tower 5 in the recent residential high-rise development in Antwerp, Belgium. © Tony Fretton

Editorial: Time to act

We have long maintained in this magazine that everybody’s priority is to be as contemporary as possible. Firstly, so that they can live their lives fully and with the keenest awareness. Secondly, in order not to continue to pursue facile nostalgias for this or that past, or to become useless prophets of this or that future. This is a civil necessity, to live the time allotted to us in the best possible way. Depending on the job we each do, it is also a disciplinary necessity. If, moreover, the job happens to be that of an architect, then what we have said is true to the umpteenth power. For this reason many of our reflections have been mainly focused on the conditions attached to our time.

Making design public

The famous collection of Rolf Fehlbaum, the founding nucleus of the Vitra Design Museum at Weil am Rhein, has finally found a new home in a pavilion designed for it by Herzog & de Meuron, which aims to become a new centre for international design. We asked the museum director to tell Domus about the project and the goals of the whole operation.

Collaborative practice

Over the course of his lengthy teaching experience, Pierre d’Avoine has developed a methodology based on research and collaborative practice, aimed at socially motivated outcomes. He applies his approach in master’sdegree architecture studios at the Kingston and Cass Schools of Architecture, London.

Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb

With a tendency towards a “Renaissance” approach, the Croatian university encourages its students to engage with other departments. Focusing on current economic and social questions, it aims both to connect with the rest of the world and safeguard its own identity.

My magazines

After Alessandro Mendini’s fascinating account of his magazines in Domus 998, we asked another Italian maestro to continue the narration by telling us of his own experience. The resulting portrait of Paolo Portoghesi fully represents his being first and foremost an architect, in addition to an excellent historian and refined, curious intellectual. Working on and founding magazines has seen him record and often anticipate the big themes of his times – from a civic as well as disciplinary point of view.

Terrae Motus: art on hold

Vanvitelli’s beautiful Palace of Caserta seeks cultural rebirth by opening the entire Terrae Motus collection to the public. The extraordinary legacy left by Gianni Amelio – his most important project ever – was defined by him as an act of hope, something which today still proves to be necessary.

The space in between

On the occasion of the personal exhibition which the Holon Design Museum has dedicated to the prolific activity of the Japanese studio nendo, the founder, Oki Sato, speaks about his method of design which has made him famous throughout the world, and which seeks to find the perfect balance between experience and intuition, and between ability and creativity.

Marco Zanuso: seven factory halls

To learn about specific construction types, students in the department headed by Marianne Burkhalter and Christian Sumi at the Academy of Architecture in Mendrisio, Switzerland conduct a comparison, study and replication of great projects from the past, in a training approach that emphasises the importance of doing.

Banco Português de Investimento Headquarters and cultural centre, Lisbon

With his renewal of a building that takes up an entire block in Lisbon’s seafront district of Baixa pombalina, the Portuguese architect Carrilho puts into practice his vision of a project that is thoroughly integrated with the soul of the city’s constructions and materials, in harmony with its topography.

Independent and responsible

In conjunction with the opening of the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, we invited its President to explain the reasons for a public institution and the quality of its work to Domus readers. His clear and detailed reply outlines a precise approach that can make public institutions operate with a spirit of research and for the greater circulation of knowledge once again.

Salerno Maritime Terminal

After a very lengthy design process, the last project to be built in Italy by this celebrated, recently deceased architect has come to completion. It is a fine testimony to her strong poetics composed of fluid forms and advanced technology, unconventional spatiality and bold geometry, all masterfully controlled

Zaha Hadid

Residential towers, Antwerp, Belgium

Three leading European architecture firms and one landscape architect participated in the city’s renewal plan for a defunct docking zone of Antwerp, each with the task of designing two tall apartment buildings on the water. The recently completed result forms the reconstitution of a swathe of urban fabric aiming to be a continuation of the historic city.

Walsh Street House, Melbourne

With the design of his own house in the 1950s, the Australian maestro Robin Boyd created an authentic manifesto of his way of seeing architecture. The large draped roof that covers the entire building protects a portion of the internal court and imparts sublime domesticity to all of the dwelling. Being the property of the Robin Boyd Foundation, the house maintains its spatial quality still today.

Interior questions

Two timely interventions, one in a private space and the other in a public institution, allow us to examine the theme of interior architecture from the point of view of its specificity and capacity to adapt spaces.

Merging design and architecture

Starting from his new projects for Molteni&C, where he has just become art director, and for Flos, the Belgian architect Vincent Van Duysen explains to Domus his approach to design. This takes architecture and design as a single discipline focused on human needs – it starts from the design of the place and continues to the furniture and the objects which surround us and which we need for a satisfactory life.

Wang Weijen’s Hong Kong

Elzeviro: Hope in beauty

Before our very eyes, like a trauma in mutation, an enigma is embodied with passages and transformations that myth guides back to the poetic veracity of memory. The flux of its forms is regulated by the secret rhythm of universal life.