Around 180 kilometres of track are replaced every year on the Swiss rail network. Until now, all this scrap metal has been melted down. However, the first building with a steel framework made from recycled rails will soon be constructed in western Zurich.
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Facades made from waste wool, recycled steel from decommissioned ships, housing rather than investment property: Line Ramstad, chief curator of the Oslo Triennale, shows what happens when nature takes precedence.
Lava architecten transformed an old mission building in Leuven into a place where circus arts, music, theatre, and dance coexist under one shared roof. Effective soundproofing is the precondition for the shared use of the facility.
At every Architecture Biennale, the curators face the same obstacles: a lack of funding, a great deal of red tape, and an organisation that ignores collective achievements. Why do they put themselves through this? We speak to Albena Yaneva, who spent a year observing the development process of the 2025 Biennale.
In its current form, concrete recycling does little to help climate protection. The CO₂-intensive cement is lost irretrievably in the process. Boltshauser Architekten are working with a consortium from the Netherlands, Switzerland and Spain on the Respira research project to investigate how this can be avoided.
Concrete floor slabs have the largest carbon footprint of all building elements. In the past, the material was lost irretrievably during demolition. A Swiss consortium is now cutting standard square slabs from buildings due for demolition and using them to manufacture prestressed segmental concrete elements with a higher structural performance than new reinforced concrete.
Sergio Sebastián discusses the restoration of the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Sijena. How does he recreate the atmosphere without idealising a particular era?
Diezinger Architekten has transformed Nuremberg's Dreieinigkeitskirche (Trinity Church) into the GoHo Cultural Church. It is not only church services, christenings, and classical concerts that happen here; metal gigs are also welcome.
Seen from the air, the Brusk exhibition building looks like a spaceship that has made a stopover in Bruges' Old Town. From a pedestrian's perspective, it barely stands out in the cityscape. Paul Robbrecht explains why the building was constructed at this location and how its design relates to the neighbourhood.
A staircase in a private garden in Genoa demonstrates just how simple grand gestures in architecture can be sometimes. Fabrizio Polimone of Caarpa on the Scala San Filippo.
The Jewish Museum in Šeduva commemorates the culture of Eastern European towns before World War II. With their building, Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects from Finland reimagine the small-scale structure of one such village. Its residents were murdered in 1941 by Nazis and their local collaborators.
The Friedland transit camp on the former inter-German border remains a point of contact for asylum seekers to this day. The new building for the local museum makes the experience of crossing the border tangible in a physical sense.
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