The spread of humans on Earth recalls the invasion of a powerful bacterium that has proliferated on the planet’s crust. Just as bacteria contaminate and are equally contaminated, humans are subjected to a continual transfer of information, knowledge, hypotheses and convictions. This is particularly evident in the creative professions and especially in architecture, where ideas originate, mature and perish in a constant flurry of hybridisations.

Among the published projects: British studio Caruso St John Architects has adopted a contemporary style to reinterpret the essence of the Swiss chalet’s traditional iconography; a combined shop and gallery, Issey Miyake’s new space is a hybrid that blends old and new, modern demands and the tradition of machiya; A institution devoted to contemporary Russian art has commissioned the Renzo Piano Building Workshop to convert a two-hectare urban site in Moscow into a cultural centre; the Hill of Hermes, a wing-shaped garden by Attilio Stocchi, is a project with mythological and astronomical allusions that restores to Milan the green spaces of the renewed Palazzo Citterio, the last phase of the Grande Brera project.

Among the many colums: “Institution” analyses if an art institution can suggest alternatives to both gentrification and a country’s focus on financial assets; “Meteorology” focuses on light, which, once abstract and inorganic, has gained biological and medical implications, prompting a rethink of its design by architects and urban planners. This month’s Rassegna is about Cladding Materials.

Image on top: illustration by The Blue Chemist