Phaidon Atlas

A global survey of the most outstanding works of contemporary world architecture.

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Cut Paw Paw | Andrew Maynard Architects 

"Cut Paw Paw is a structure that is deliberately incomplete. Derek and Michelle, the owners, asked that the house be “ridiculously inside-out”. To accomplish this we not only employed tested and successful ideas such as sliding walls, bifold doors and decks, we also left the building incomplete. The central space, between the dining area and the studio, is an unclad frame within and surrounded by garden. It is both inside and outside. It is both a new building and an old ruin. It is both garden and home."

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Saw Swee Hock Student Centre | O'Donnell + Tuomey Architects

"The public space at the threshold of the Student Union on axis with St Clement’s Lane, creates a place of exchange; a spatial bowtie that intertwines circulation routes, splices visual connections between internal and external movement, and pulls pedestrian street life into and up the building."

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Luker House | Jamie Fobert Architects

"A British stock brick mimics the facing material of neighbouring houses. The use of concrete, both at sunken ground floor level and in the form of an in-situ stair, makes reference to the previous industrial nature of the site. Complementing the brick and concrete, bronze is used sparingly throughout the house."

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Casa V | Dosis

"A multilayered wall defined by a single construction detail, which serves both as structure and as thermal and environmental overcoat, meanders in order to embrace the multiplicity of events that occur in the house. Spaces are defined by the unfolding of matter in space-time, which topologically adapts itself to what happens inside. The new house is formalized by the continuous flow of a completely neutral wrap – no edges, no color, no texture - and, within this wrapping, life, action, is the protagonist."

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House in Nagohara | doubleNegatives Architecture

"The MAS system "Corpora" is collection of viewpoints which we define the “Super Eye,” a metaphorical all-angle viewpoint. Super Eye captures the space in polar coordinates, sensing directions, site's undulations, tree and rock positions. We also consider this Super Eye as a structural node. Various local conditions are programmed as intentions of the architectural plan, working autonomously as agents of the planner"

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Guna House - Pezo von Ellrichshausen

"Hemmed in between a steeply sloping hillside and a wood of eucalyptus trees, the narrow plot of land compels one to cross the garden to arrive, descending, at the small bay of a lagoon. Overlooking the landscape, a monolithic prism of concrete attempts to articulate the contradictions of the topography."

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Warren Woods Ecological Field Station - Go Logic

"The site harbors several types of habitat currently under ecological restoration, including lowland hardwood forest, climax beech-maple forest and remnant-wet prairie. The field station allows research on biodiversity, evolutionary trajectories, genetic characterization and ecological interactions between species in this habitat as well as botanical experiments in fenced test plots."

[phaidonatlas]

Cheering Restaurant - H&P Architects

"The life on sidewalk, where many daily activities of Hanoi people, especially cuisine happen from daytime to nighttime, inspired the designers to create a space that recalls ancient trees - a familiar image in streets of this thousand-year-old city."

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Box House I - Massive Order

"Box House I houses three families in three different volumes within one box. The idea is to give each family a unique and private spatial experience."

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 Place of Remembrance - Barclay & Crousse Architects

"The building emerges from an open esplanade that is freely accessible to citizens, which was designed as an echo of the pre-Columbian system of terraces and fields to deal with sloped geography. These terraces connect the entrances to the various elements of the center, which can be used independently."

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Long Museum West Bund - Atelier Deshaus 

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Frog Queen - SPLITTERWERK

"Working with the effects of dimension, distance, and time, the building’s skin was designed to generate shifting perceptions of the volume and texture. As one approaches the building, the cubic proportions of the volume become apparent, as does the finer grain of surface articulation on each panel, comprised not of a single grey tone but rather a tight grid of abstract pictorial figures."

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Pinar House - MO+G Taller de Arquitectura

"The project is located within a subdivision adjacent to one of the most important lungs of the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, the forest of La Primavera. With an area of 2.578m2 and dense vegetation consisting mainly of pine and oak trees, the site hosted a series of abandoned structures about 30 years old"

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Philharmonic Hall - Barozzi Veiga

"The building is configured by a synthetic, but at the same time complex volume, which is resolved through a continuous promenade, which connects all these functions along a single public path through all the levels of the building. Externally, as in the adjacent pre-existence, the verticality and geometry of the roof prevail. These characteristics identify the Philharmonic Hall with its surrounding context."

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Eco-Tourism and Rangers Resort - Khammash Architects

"The building design was based on the quarry cliff cut-line that a bulldozer driver once drew in the land some twenty years ago, never knowing that this line will be the base of a building elevation. The building follows the quarry line very accurately creating a linear addition of constructed stone to the bedrock."

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Triburg Headquarters - S.P.A. Design

"The project recreates the transparencies of the Adalaj stepwell and the terraces of the mythical hanging gardens of Babylon in a contemporary manner for an office building."

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Mikve Rajel - Pascal Arquitectos

"The Mikve is the ritual bath of purification in the Jewish religion, fed by rainwater that must be collected, stored and communicated to the vessel that is called a Mikve. All this must be made under a very strict set of rules related to the degree of purity of water. These rules also include the use of materials, architectural measures and water treatment."