WIDN blog

Asian Architecture Friendship (AAF)

School complex
Philim, Nepal

Description: The AAF is a group of volunteer architects set up inside the Takenaka Studio in Tokyo that decided to implement a social project in the Himalaya area. Thanks to the involvement of the local population, it was possible to build a school complex in Philim, a village located at 1,700 metres in the Nepal mountains about 150 km from Kathmandu.

Since the village is very difficult to access, the building used locally available materials: stone for walls and the roofing:, wood for the frontons, beams and fittings. The only deviation from the traditional building rules, that envisage only one door for every room, are the large, full-height windows that ensure more appropriate lighting for a school building.

Main stone materials: Slate and river cobbles Fermìn Vázquez - b720 Restoration and lighting of Plaza del Torico Teruel, Spain

Description: In designing the paving of a square rich in history, Studio b720 conceived a kind of illuminated stone “carpeting” capable of varying the intensity and the colouring of the light. To achieve this, architect Vázquez used modern technology with 1230 LEDs set into slabs of basalt and protected by hardened glass. An innovative work that dialogues with surroundings utterly permeated with the past to ensure even more enjoyable fruition.

Main stone materials: Basalt, Villa limestone

Cino Zucchi Architetti

Offices in the former Alfa Romeo canteen at Portello,
Milan, Italy

Description: The office building developed by Cino Zucchi in the former Alfa Romeo canteen is in the middle of a residential area with towers and bodies in line he also designed. Only the facade of the original building overlooking Via Traiano was retained, while the overall volume was cut diagonally by a crossing route to create a sharp-edged and irregular wedge.

The horizontal ashlars of Cardoso Stone, characterising and identifying the building, and the large flush or recessed windows, give continuity to the facades. The split-level ground floor has a bar overlooking the new square; the last two floors also take light from an inside garden.

Main stone materials: Cardoso Stone

Grafton Architects

Bocconi University Extension
Milan, Italy

Description: The new complex of office buildings, studios for professors and the Auditorium at Bocconi University in Milan was built relatively quickly with innovative techniques. The entire building is clad with Ceppo, a characteristic stone in Milanese architecture, with a colour shade similar to cement.

The offices were designed as floating volumes and are suspended from a bridge structure to create alternating solids and voids continually flowing through the spaces. The visual impact of the large wall is lightened by the broad windows that allow natural light to penetrate even as far as the basements.

Main stone materials: Ceppo di Grè, Marble, Lasa, Serena Stone, Carrara White

Snøhetta

Opera House
Oslo, Norway

Description: The building is set in the fjord like a fragment of polar ice-pack with a new perspective on the surrounding city. The immense terrace is entirely clad with solid pieces of Carrara white marble of different thicknesses.

Four materials characterise the Opera House: Carrara white marble for the “carpeting”, oak wood for the “wave-wall” and large interior staircase, glass for the huge windows and aluminium, with special concave and convex bubble processing, to finish the “factory”, that is the theatre production areas.

Stone materials used: La Facciata Carrara White

Winners will be announced on Saturday, October 3, at an official ceremony at Castelvecchio Museum in Verona during Marmomacc. There are also the ad memoriam award, dedicated to one of the most representative buildings of the Modern Movement in Spain, and the "vernacular architecture" award for rural building tradition in the Atlantic area of the Iberian peninsula.

Ad memoriam award
Alejandro de La Sota (1913-1996)

Civil Government Building
Tarragona, Spain, 1959

Description: An architecture competition was organised in 1956 to build the Civil Government head offices in Tarragona, and Alejandro de la Sota won out of the 15 projects presented. The building has six floors and includes government offices and apartments, differentiated in the facade by a terrace.

The use of traditional materials, such as local limestone for the facades, is joined by other avant-garde materials used for details, making this work one of the landmarks in post-war architecture.

Main stone materials: Piedra de Borriol, Piedra de Saint Vicenç

Vernacular architecture award
Espigueiros & Horreos

Stone granaries in the Iberian Peninsula
Portugal, Spain

Description: The need to protect the harvest against the humidity of the land and rodents meant that as early as Roman times local people built stores raised above ground alongside their country homes. Access is generally through a single door reached by climbing a small, mobile wooden ladder. The roof often has pinnacles and crosses, typical elements in rural traditions.

With the transition from traditional family-run agriculture to intensive and specialised agriculture, many of these buildings have lost their original function and risk seeing their simple and essential beauty compromised.

Main stone materials: Granite