BAU
85 Metres of Cooperative: The ABZ Tower Where Every Party Wall Does Two Jobs
Read the ABZ cooperative tower in Zürich from its 25 m piles to its 1,700 m² roof, and see how load-bearing party walls help keep rents at CHF 19–21/m².
Pull, Don't Draw: The Control Polygon Under Every Rhino Curve
How one idea, cutting each leg of a control polygon at the same ratio, became the Bézier curve and the NURBS geometry behind every Rhino control point.
Hotel Leo, St. Gallen: concrete carries the load, borrowed earth makes the rooms
Boltshauser's Hotel Leo won Mendelsohn Award Gold: a precast concrete frame with 50 kg unfired earth-block partitions pressed from nearby excavation spoil.
Bones for a Roof: Fisac's Hollow Concrete Beam That Spans, Lights and Drains
Fisac's hollow post-tensioned bone beam spans 22 m, lights and drains a Madrid hall. Now on show in Newcastle: ask what every void in your roof does.
The Tower That Was Already There: TITLIS Turns a 1980s Antenna Into a Swiss Cross
At 3,020 m, Herzog & de Meuron kept a 1980s PTT antenna's rock anchorage, steel frame and tunnel, then added two glazed volumes in a Swiss cross.
The Bauhaus Vorkurs: The Six-Month Training Set That Taught Architects to See Before They Build
How the Bauhaus Vorkurs of Itten, Moholy-Nagy and Albers worked as a curriculum-first training set, and what it teaches Swiss offices adopting AI today.
The flight path drew the skyline: Kowloon Walled City, cyberpunk's real prototype
About 350 self-built towers, 33,000 people, no architect: how the Kai Tak flight path drew Kowloon Walled City, and what Swiss offices can learn.
Nine Centimetres Over the A1: Heinz Isler's Cloth-Found Shells at Deitingen Süd
Heinz Isler's 1968 shells at Deitingen Süd span 31 m with 9 cm of concrete, their form found with hanging cloth. A Solothurn monument since 2000.
Evolutionary Architecture: Whoever Writes the Fitness Function Designs the Building
From Frazer's 1995 manifesto to Galapagos and NSGA-II: how design by breeding works, where the fitness function holds the power, and how to audit it.
Miguel Fisac's Pagoda: A 16-Metre Square, Rotated, and the Straight Lines That Made Concrete Curve
How Miguel Fisac rotated a 16 m square into hyperbolic paraboloids, why his Madrid Pagoda still teaches, and a Grasshopper snippet to rebuild one face.
