This was also the year of Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei's Serpentine Pavilion, which we feature in a video by Pedro Kok. In New York, the Via Verde apartment complex prompts a renewed dedication to the unglamorous field of affordable housing, and in Berlin, raumlaborberlin and the Hebbel am Ufer theater organized a DIY world expo in the abandoned fields of Tempelhof. In Brussels, Elii's Jane Fonda Kit House rendered a possible future in which citizens use their own muscles to produce the energy required for their domestic space; and in Tokyo, Hiroshi Nakamura creates a building with a dual identity, featuring a garden rooftop in an ultra-urban setting. Finally, we explore the second lives of past Serpentine Pavilions, observing how real estate and cultural development collide through the symbolic capital of architecture.
Below are our top ten architecture stories of the year.
Best of 2012 #architecture
— The Arco House: where economy dictates concise design
— Concrete Twist
— From Freewayland to the Garage
— Todd Saunders: Forest Stair
— The 2012 Serpentine Pavilion
— Via Verde
— The World is Not Fair
— Elii: JF Kit House
— Fragments of green in the city
— Tales from beyond the grave
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