Now we can
A reflection on the last two decades. Starting from an idea of a constantly expanding and evolving progress, to wonder about the needs of our times and the meaning of a new cultural movement.
This month: Domus 1018
Charles & Ray Eames at the Vitra Design Museum, Nicola Coropulis on Poltrona Frau, Giuseppe Zampieri: a way of working, Dom Hans van der Laan, Louvre Abu Dhabi by Jean Nouvel, Office and shop building in Zurich by Baukontor Architekten, Vijversburg Park by Junya Ishigami and Studio Maks, House in Ostuni by Danilo Parisio, Michael Anastassiades
In this issue
Domus 1018
Cover: graphic interpretation of the overall plan of the Louvre Abu Dhabi designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel. Right: the project’s two constitutive elements, a dome with underlying pavilions. © Jean Nouvel Architecte
The Eames’ wonder-filled workshop
The Vitra Design Museum has catalogued and attentively studied 100 pieces in its collection, exploring Charles and Ray Eames’ most experimental work. See the prototypes, models, technical inventions and developments behind their many iconic furnishings. Text Jolanthe Kugler, Tanja Cunz
The education of an architect in the United States and beyond
After Italy and Europe, our analysis of architectural training takes a look at the situation in the USA with a heartfelt essay by the German architect Wilfried Wang, who teaches in Texas. He drafted a five-point manifesto for us, explaining what and how schools of architecture should teach. Text Wilfried Wang
My Taranto: a critical walk
To the eyes of all the world, Taranto is a city in a tragic state of degradation and abandon. Michael Jakob sees “over-planning” as the cause of this decline and believes an act of love is required for the good and the ugly, applying landscape architecture to heal its living spaces. Text Michael Jakob
Ars Aevi: the weapon of culture
Conceived during the siege of Sarajevo, with the city under bombardment, Ars Aevi contemporary art museum is the outcome of an extraordinary story. By involving the world’s most important artists, it became the emblem of the city’s cultural resistance and the will to foster multicultural values. Text Stefania Gruosso, Lejla Odobasic Novo
I wanted to be a historian
From industrial 20th-century Turin to industrious, craft-based Tolentino in the 1950s, from Northern to Central Italy, the director general of Poltrona Frau tells Domus the story of the company’s century-long trip, which includes being listed on the Milan stock exchange and acquired by the Haworth family, with the continuous ambition of representing the elite drawing room of Italian furniture. Text Nicola Coropulis
A way of working
When David Chipperfield embraced the challenge of opening an architectural office in Milan, his assistant and pupil Giuseppe Zampieri had a chance to rethink the studio concept. Convinced of the need to build new places with a different approach to working together, he founded an atelier and explains this innovation to Domus . Text Giuseppe Zampieri
A house for the mind
An exhibition at the deSingel International Arts Campus in Antwerp returns the focus to the extraordinary work of Dom Hans van der Laan. This Dutch monk-architect, who died in 1991, used his theory of the “plastic number” to develop a rigorous and original formal language that gives rise to spatially crystalline buildings. Text Caroline Voet
Milan’s Teatro Lirico reopens
Conceived as a transformation process from urban inconvenience to an opportunity for learning, appreciation and popularisation, the “eventful construction site” formula is a way to turn the building phase into a laboratory-workshop of listening and communication that invites direct participation by local inhabitants and creates a bridge between design, execution and future management. Text Gianfranco Dioguardi
Charles Baudelaire and modernity in Paris
Antonio Pizza’s recently published book explores the French writer’s interest in modernity as it developed in the place of its quintessential expression, the Paris of the second half of the 19th century. On the same topic, see Paul Valery in Domus 994, September 2015. Text Antonio Pizza
Ateliers Jean Nouvel: Louvre Abu Dhabi
A new museum conceived not as a building but as an actual piece of city is the extraordinary project given to us by Jean Nouvel in Abu Dhabi. Hosting the story of humanity, this small citadel constructed with buildings, squares and alleys is umbrellaed for comfort by a magnificent dome that forms and creates a layer of artificial nature on top.
Baukontor Architekten: Office and shop building on Schiffbauplatz, Zurich
An archetypal building in the heart of the former industrial zone of Zürich-West showcases the architects’ ability to forge a good relationship with the urban context. Materials, volume development and windows are cleverly composed to mediate and dialogue with their surroundings.
junya.ishigami + associates, Studio Maks: Vijversburg Park, The Netherlands
A decade of research into the boundary line between rarefaction and architecture fell perfectly into place with this brief. Intervening carefully on a protected park allowed the Japanese architect to renew his reflection on space and structure – the true substance of architecture.
Danilo Parisio: House in Ostuni, Puglia
A villa in the countryside of Puglia shows how the tectonics of walls and a robust base can transform the relation between architectural form and the landscape.
Michael Anastassiades: Designing is a kind of constant search
Free from external impositions and interested in the more experimental side of design, this Cypriot designer opens the doors of his new London studio for Domus. He speaks of his love for materials that show themselves for what they are, age well and change over time, which brings him to his ultimate aim in design: timelessness.
Christoph Mäckler’s Frankfurt
Text Christoph Mäckler
Elzeviro: Home and roots
Living in a house means entering into the soul of the walls, listening to everything that comes to us in the form of smells, voices, sounds and memories. Then we move and put down roots elsewhere but nothing is lost because everything has been absorbed by our skin. Text Giuseppe Lupo
Rassegna: Outdoor
Edited by Centro Studi Domus