Collective memory was the driving force behind the latest incarnation of the annual, temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei. To build a kind of manufactured archaeological site based on the previous 11 pavilions, the team created a drawing that fused the foundations of those structures into a single digital rendering, and then carved this form out of the ground.
Along the narrow cobblestone road of Shad Thames, a bit of preserved Victorian-era Britannia on the south bank of London, the adage “What’s old is new again” rings especially true.
But inside, maple wood pews and treelike, steel structural supports (that give the chapel its name) lend an industrial quality to the airy, ceremonial space.
In Copenhagen’s central park of Fælledparken, local architects Mads Lund and Robert Paulsen of MLRP playfully reinterpreted the “house of mirrors” when renovating a 1,400-square-foot, graffiti-covered shed.
Altos de Cazuc', a neighborhood just outside of Bogot', developed organically in the 1970s as peasants fled rural areas plagued by the ongoing armed conflict.
The dome is a marvel, but as an adult, Chesler was more struck by the Mid-Century modern building beneath it, designed by Gropius prot'g' John Terence Kelly.