Buildings by Type

RSS

A library in China adopts a minimalist design plan and embodies the ideals of the region.

“Bean bag chairs are impossible in Japanese school libraries,” says architect Kenichi Nakamura.

On the surface at least, it is hard to imagine a more incongruous combination of architect and client: the London-based John Pawson, known for his starkly Minimal and elegant temples to material culture, and a community of Cistercian monks whose lives revolve around prayer, study, and physical labor.

Before moving to this surprisingly exposed location in the Old Town area of Pasadena, California, the 10-person advanced-design team, an in-house R&D engine, had been buried deep in Honda’s corporate campus some 25 miles down the freeway, in Torrance.

It’s every architect’s fantasy—getting carte blanche from a client. “It was excellent, and the first time for me,” Gus Wustemann says with evident glee, recalling how a couple contacted him after seeing his work in magazines, and offered complete creative license.

Kengo Kuma wraps a hot springs hotel, Japan's Ginzan Onsen Fujiya, in screens as exquisitely delicate as a cricket cage.

Asymptote's glowingly mist-blue store for Alessi adds drama to New York's SoHo neigborhood.

Even though Jin’s Global Standard occupies a busy corner inside a shopping center near Tokyo, this eyeglass boutique looks nothing like your typical suburban mall shop.

The largest synagogue in the world occupies a prominent corner on New York City’s Fifth Avenue across from Central Park.

In 1982, the Pennsylvania Electric Company abandoned use of the historic Chester Waterside Station on the Delaware River, a 1916 coal-fired electrical power plant.