Tree Houses

Over the years, talented architects have occasionally indulged themselves with the challenge of designing small but perfectly formed buildings. Today, with reduced budgets, many architects have turned in a more focused way to creating works that may be diminutive in their dimensions, but are definitely big when it comes to trendsetting ideas. Whether in Japanese cities, where large sites are hard to come by, or at the frontier between art and architecture, small buildings present many...

Once synonymous with eyesore highway bridges and crumbling, unloved walls, concrete has been reborn as adventurous and sexy. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition considers the elaborate feats and prodigious engineering of contemporary concrete architecture, from stars such as Tadao Ando and Herzog & de Meuron, to fresh new studios like the Russian SPEECH. Multilingual Edition: English, French, German

The wooden structures of the 21st century Not so very long ago, some might have considered wood a material of the past, long since replaced by more modern components such as concrete and steel. The truth is radically different. Bolstered by new manufacturing techniques and ecological benefits, wood has seen a fabulous resurgence in contemporary construction. This Bibliotheca Universalis edition explores how architects around the world have created and invented with this elementary material....

While some architects have a signature style, Renzo Piano seeks to apply coherent ideas to extraordinarily different projects. His buildings impress as much for their individual impact as for their diversity of scale, material, and form. Piano rose to international prominence with his codesign of the Pompidou Center in Paris, described by The New York Times as a building that "turned the architecture world upside down." Since then, he has continued to craft many high-profile cultural spaces,...

Feats of design and engineering: The work of an unparalleled architectural engineer Santiago Calatravais not only one of the world s most prominent architects, but is also an engineer, sculptor, and painter. His reputation as an unparalleled architectural engineer was cemented with hisnumerous bridges for cities around the world. With more recent projects such as the stadium for the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and the railway station in Liege, Belgium, he has unarguably made his name in Europe and...

Humans have been climbing into trees since before they were humans, but not until recently has been possible to spend thousands of dollars to sleep in specialty tree houses. Ancient and medieval cultures documented kinds of tree houses and it seems everywhere there were trees, people would sleep and live in them. In modern times, craftsmen and architects have built a variety of arboreal architecture, including hotels, restaurants, teahouses, and a theater for children's plays. As culturally we...