Issue 4.2022

Natural stone and perforated bricks, cast-in-place concrete, and rammed earth in prefabricated ele­ments – these are just a few of the diverse materials used in solid construction, and their use is often regionally motivated. On the edge of Palma, capital of the Balearic island of Mallorca, a social housing development takes up the local building tradition: its solid walls and vaulted ceilings are made of locally quarried sandstone in reddish beige. In the English county of Devonshire, solid limestone walls have characterized the landscape for centuries; the con­version of the Red Hill barn into a home continues this tradition. In Brixen, South Tyrol, a music school building similarly mediates between the archaic and the present. Its reddish solid concrete walls are offset with porphyry and mark the entrance to the historic city centre. At the Romanticism Museum in Frankfurt am Main, solid construction with in-situ and aerated concrete has been used to create a spatial experience that adeptly conveys the art movement’s spirit, symbol­ized by the “Blue Flower”. Discover the advantages of prefabricated clay elements in the essay of our April issue, which precedes the project documenta­tion section. Happy reading! Sandra Hofmeister