Our tour around the world starts in Vietnam, where Vo Trong Nghia designed some gigantic bamboo domes immersed in the forest. Productora designed a complex cultural center that intersects the whole historical center of a tiny town in Southern Mexico, and a photographer depicted the other face of Beirut, eluding Hezbollah control system. Students in Germany created a welcoming, well-designed center for refugees, while in Kent traditional country houses get a total twist. We went to Eindhoven and Dubai to see where design is leading to, and to Bucharest and Tokyo where we found a refreshing art scene. Selected for you, last mont’s best articles.
November’s ten best stories
Floating saunas, museums that blend with the surroundings, spectacular public spaces made of bamboo. Don’t miss November’s selected stories.
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- Marianna Guernieri
- 02 December 2017
– The Estonian Academy of Arts promoted a students’ workshop to design a floating wooden-sauna in the Soomaa National Park. – Social architecture. Students of the TU Kaiserslautern faculty have realised a wooden community centre in Mannheim for refugees. – With a digital camera, hidden in the back of a car, Armando Perna managed to elude the widespread control system that the parastatal Hezbollah military exercises over Dahiye, in Beirut.
– The latest project by Vo Trong Nghia in Vietnam uses bamboo and straw to make five dome structures, aiming to create a qualified public space in the city. – Using locally-sourced materials, Productora designed a new cultural center for the small town of Teotitlán del Valle, near Oaxaca, Mexico. – English architects James Macdonald Wright and Niall Maxwell have completed a country house in Kent, with four pronounced volumes that rotate around an inner courtyard. – From Kuwait, Palestine and the Emirates, three young women explored their local know-how with contemporary design. Dima Srouji, Kawther Alsaffar and Aljoud Lootah showcased their final pieces at Dubai Design Week 2017.
– At the Dutch Design Week you can find several projects, exhibitions and installations investigating the changing human condition in the digital age. – Travelling to Japan? We have chosen new unmissable destinations for art, photography, design and architecture. Uncovering the most inspiring and unexpected venues that the Japanese capital has to offer this autumn. – Our survey of the contemporary art scene in Bucharest reveals an extraordinarily rich microcosm, where groups working with architecture, design and city planning are present alongside the activities of independent ateliers and galleries.
- Vala, Floating Sauna, Soomaa National Park, Estonia, 2017