It's sort of 2 and a half buildings in one.  A functional envelope that might remind one of the Eames' house, if the Eame's house were 4 stories and all glazed.  Outside of that are the overlapped panels of glass that come all the way down to the sidewalk.

Inside is concrete - interior walls and stairs of the same finish.  The brightest finish of concrete is reserved for the floor.  The ceilings are also glass, clipped together - the clips showing, of course.  

The ceiling brings in a filtered light from fixtures far enough away that the light becomes diffused.  This is probably the most decadent aspect of the project - it's what enables us to read the stairs and floors through the envelope.  It's the sort of ultimate 'reveal' - a gap between floors that functionally provides an amazing lighting effect.

Urbanistically, the building basically participates in the dominant pattern of the city blocks near the lake.   That means facing away from the lake.  (There's rail and a major vehicular street between the lake and the streetwall.) This creates odd problems, such as this position for trash pick up.  Below is what one walks past on the sidewalk between the lake and the building, attempting to get a view of the Kunsthaus and Lake Constance at the same time. 

This may seem tangential to the question of the architecture, but I think it's actually another iteration of the logic of the reveal.  At some scale it closes in on itself.

There is not much I could add to Herzog + de Meuron's own description of their Messeplatz Basel project, which is quoted in length here on Dezeen, along with photos.  Often in our field a project description can sound a bit like an artist statement, heavy on intent and concept, but maybe...

[Not Luxury] concept furniture line, on view with exhibition design for chessmaster Vera Nebolsina's performance next Saturday for Lange Nacht der Museen 2013 (Long Night of the Museums) at Römerstasse 2 gallery space, Stuttgart.  The furniture is based not only on affordable recyclable...

A month ago already in this blog I mentioned a collaboration I had started with a chessmaster.  Here's a video of her visit to the workshop I led at Stuttgart's Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste.  Presented in the context of a workshop that I directed at ABK Stuttgart...

A friend of mine, a colleague who also manages a practice in Brooklyn, asked me to contribute to his collection of manifestos and influences for a presentation.  Here are the instructions, followed by my own manifesto below.  What would yours be?     (1) Write a theory...

Photo by Vera Nebolsina, Grandmaster As I've alluded to before (Brunelleschi = BIM), I tend not to see digital design methods - such as Building Information Modeling or parametric design - as paradigmatic ruptures within architecture and its history.  The capacity of parametric modeling as a...

The Tanks at Tate Modern opened this past summer.  They are spaces dedicated to performance that also launch the next phase of the Herzog & de Meuron expansion.  As Herzog & de Meuron explain one aspect of this connection to the expansion " A row of new and inclined...

Am I the only person who mistakenly thought Coop Himmelb(l)au had designed both the BMW Museum and the Porsche Museum?  I saw Wolf Prix present the BMW Museum project 7 or 8 years ago.  Maybe it's because some of the structural feats are similar that I got them mixed up.  (UN...

Last week I had the great fortune to go to Pisa, Italy, for the first time and Florence for the second time.  I am struck by many parallels between the era of the early 14th century and our own time, more than I can go into in this brief post. I am not talking about the...

Is there any more concise record of globalization and its various militaristic and managerial operations than the Coordinate Reference System options in your standard GIS software?  For a project sited in Detroit, I have started building a Geographical Information Systems (GIS) map focused...

On November 23rd, a biologist, an economist, a media theorist, a composer and a few other academics came here to Akademie Schloss Solitude to make a symposium on RhythmAnalysis.  The title references Henri Lefebvre's Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, but the presenters talked...

Before coming to Stuttgart I didn't know anything about the Weißenhofsiedlung (residential development curated by Mies van der Rohe in a collaboration between Deutscher Werkbund and the state).   It's a fascinating predecessor to the Case Study Houses, as well...

1927 in Stuttgart, Germany.  I'll give the answer in my next real post.

For the past few weeks I have been thinking mostly about modernity and ideology.  We talk often in architecture about the relationship between theory and practice.  Like the opposition of public/private or political/autonomous, the duality of theory and practice feels both important and...