Current Issue: Domus 982

In this issue

Urbanicide in all good faith

A serial killer of cities is wandering about the planet. Its name is UNESCO, and its lethal weapon is the label “World Heritage”, with which it drains the lifeblood from glorious villages and ancient metropolises, embalming them in a brand-name time warp.

Cover

Sketch taken from a study of the latomies at Syracuse
in Sicily by Francesco Venezia in preparation of his design for the hypogea of the Caserta Cathedral.

Editorial: For architecture’s sake

Paolo Veronese: the painter as an architectural innovator

On the occasion of a large exhibition dedicated to this Renaissance painter, currently underway in Verona, we asked the well-known scholar Howard Burns to highlight the spatial and architectural aspects of Veronese’s work – a request that he honoured by including the amazing result of a study he conducted with Simone Baldassini.

Students take the floor

Domus is continuing its collaboration with students. This time, they visited the Venice Architecture Biennale, taking stock of what met with their approval and what they found lacking. Their report offers a slant that complements other more academic viewpoints. We are looking forward to publishing future contributions from them and other students.

A pragmatic approach

At the Industrial Design Department of ECAL, the young Slovenian designer’s teaching practice aims to develop concrete ideas in collaboration with international companies and institutions. His approach is exemplified by the process of revisiting a classic Cassina design, which led to an exhibition during the 2014 Milan Furniture Fair.

The Porto School of Architecture

The FAUP – a school where masters such as Távora and Siza find continuity with exponents of more recent generations – is committed to engaging the challenges posed by a world in transformation. Exercise in design constitutes the backbone of the teaching programme, with an ethical perspective and the conviction that architecture is an art, a service and a product with a social and cultural character.

Conceptions of space

The MoMA Department of Architecture and Design is displaying its latest acquisitions. The architect Pedro Gadanho, curator of the Department, presents to Domus readers his special viewpoint of this new material, which centres on the concept of space and its recent evolution.

Housing ideas, landscape settlement

Against the dispiriting qualities of contemporary suburban housing estates, the British architect Jonathan Sergison airs his thoughts on the ongoing speculation in the development business. Mindful that a house fulfils an utterly basic human need, he proposes design strategies aimed at improving our living conditions.

Submerged worlds

The exhibition on the Sicilian architect provides an opportunity to expand our knowledge of her work. An installation and a book conceived for the occasion become tools for visitors, who encounter new interpretative experiences as they move freely through the exhibition space.

The density of sound

Delicately balancing technological research and the desire to propose new functions and visual languages, the innovative Snowsound sound-conditioning panels by Caimi Brevetti have a differentiated-density structure that absorbs sound in a selective way, optimising indoor acoustics.

A new piece of city

Two new instalments, seemingly secondary, but essential to the configuration of the whole, have been added to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, outside Basel: the Álvaro Siza Promenade and the Slide Tower by Carsten Höller. The tenacious man who is building the Campus as an actual part of the city, Rolf Fehlbaum, tells us about the extraordinary and ongoing adventure behind it.

Cúpula del vino, Valbuena de Duero

For this Spanish architect, building more with less and refusing hyper-consumerism is the most nonconformist way of working possible in the first half of the 21st century – a strategy with enormous potential for architects, as demonstrated by his project for a wine museum in the Ribera del Duero region.

Open kitchen, shared project

With the aim of exploring concrete alternatives to typical models of research, development and production, Valcucine organised a workshop with an innovative formula, involving 12 designers for some days in the interest of collaboration and the sharing of knowledge.

The hypogea of Caserta Cathedral

With this work, Francesco Venezia returns to one of the design themes closest to his heart and to his city, Naples: that of revealing and defining an obscure subterranean world of spaces as a constituent part of human life.

Cidade das Arte, Rio de Janeiro

In Barra da Tijuca – the newly created district in the metropolitan area of Rio – the French architect has built a cultural citadel as a public gathering space that introduces a formal landmark into its architecturally anonymous context.

Residence in Colorado

Captivated by this site and its extraordinary landscape, Renzo Piano decided to accept his first commission to design a private residence, building a home whose architectural composition resembles a small village.

Matters of architecture

There are many important issues raised by the 14. International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale directed by Rem Koolhaas. In the days of the preview, we asked curators, architects and critics for their opinions on what they had seen.

Design and lightness

The latest creation from the British designer, the Diatom chair exemplifies a design concept founded on a trinity of elements: organic essentialism, technology and materials science. Lovegrove describes this approach and traces out the evolutionary path that led him to embrace parametric design.