WoW List 2022: impressive architectural projects from around the world according to the editors of AD

For the first time, Architectural Digest editors from all over the world have joined forces to collect the best new projects from around the world. From an experimental house to bold art spaces, these are real miracles. In a word — wow! 

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Adrian Deweerdt

Bourse de Commerce Museum — Pinot Collection

France, Paris

The magnate of the luxury goods market and the founder of the Kering luxury holding, Francois Pinault, together with the Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando, have created some of the most unexpected art spaces in the world. They turned classic European buildings into places to house Pinot’s collection of contemporary art. The architect and the French entrepreneur have already worked on the reconstruction of Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi in Venice, but this time they gave a new life to the building of the Paris Stock Exchange with a glass dome.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Marc Domage

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Marc Domage

The neoclassical-style palace, built in the XVI century for Catherine de’ Medici, was reconstructed for the 1889 World’s Fair, and today, thanks to the delicate reconstruction of Tadao Ando, it has been revived again. Now inside the original rotunda there is a cylindrical gallery lined with cement, modern works on which are combined with frescoes of the XIX century. And there is a Michel Bras restaurant on the roof, offering a panorama of Paris.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Maxime Tétard

Hauser & Wirth Gallery

Menorca, Spain

Hauser & Wirth Gallery, which has branches in London, Zurich, New York, Hong Kong and other cities around the world, has opened a new art center in Spain. The space, as multifaceted and exciting as the gallery itself, is located in the building of the naval hospital of the XVIII century on the almost abandoned island of Isla del Rey near Menorca. Hauser & Wirth turned to the Argentine architect Luis Laplace to delicately transform historic buildings with stone walls and tiled roofs into open and spacious galleries, a training laboratory, a restaurant and a shop. They are surrounded by Mediterranean perennial gardens created by landscape designer Pete Udolf, and an open-air sculpture trail, where the works of such great artists of the XX century as Louise Bourgeois and Joan Miro are presented.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Be Creative

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Daniel Schäfer.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Stefan Altenburger 

«Chapel of Sound”

The «Chapel of Sound», located two hours away from the center of Beijing, looks like a massive balancing boulder that mysteriously appeared in a mountain valley. The Beijing OPEN Architecture Studio, headed by Li Hu and Wenjing Huang, created an impressive structure using concrete together with crushed local mineral rocks, which allowed the building to harmoniously fit into the landscape. The semi-open music halls resemble caves: the openings let in natural light and offer views of the valley dotted with the ruins of the Great Wall. When the chapel is not used for concerts, it functions as a space for quiet contemplation.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jonathan Leijonhufvud

Tecla house, «printed” on a 3D printer

Italy — the birthplace of Vitruvius and Palladio and the epicenter of classical architecture — actively uses advanced construction methods. Recently, the first 3D-printed house was created here. Its authors — architect Mario Cucinella and the company WASP, specializing in 3D printing — named the project Tecla in honor of the fictional city of Tecla from the work of the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The 60 m2 building is made entirely of local clay, its curved walls and vaulted ceilings form a cozy but minimalist bedroom, bathroom and living room. With its simple domed shape and modest materials, the project pays homage to ancient architecture, but at the same time uses advanced technologies of the XXI century. The house also meets modern requirements related to climate change and housing shortage: the Tecla house can be built in just 200 hours, while it is cheap and eco-friendly.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iago Corazza

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iago Corazza

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iago Corazza

Luma Tower in Arles

Arles, France

The tall and glittering building designed by Pritzker Prize winner Frank Gehry, crowning the Luma Arles Cultural Center, at first glance may seem like an alien structure. But on closer inspection, you can see many references to quite earthly buildings in which the architect drew inspiration. For example, the circular atrium made of glass and steel, which serves as the base of the structure, borrows its shape from the two-tiered ancient Roman amphitheater in Arles, and the multifaceted facade echoes limestone cliffs. And as for the silvery surface of the tower, covered with 11,000 stainless steel panels, this is a tribute to the brilliant work of Vincent Van Gogh, who became famous for painting the «Starry Night» in nearby Saint-Remy-de-Provence.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Adrian Deweerdt

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan for LUMA Arles

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan for LUMA Arles 

A campus to support startups in Kenya

Insect habitats are not the most obvious thing for inspiration. But Berlin-based studio Kéré Architecture has built a campus to support startups in Kenya, based on the construction of termite mounds. The School of Information and Communication Technologies designed by architect Dibedo Francis Kere is located on the shores of Lake Turkana in the Rift Valley and provides free training, accommodation, and networking opportunities for 200 young entrepreneurs. The two-level terracotta buildings have many terraces and shaded gazebos, as well as three tall towers resembling chimneys. They borrowed from the earth termite mounds not only the appearance, but the thermodynamic properties. Their angular shape allows you to push out hot air from above and draw in cold air through the holes from below.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Startup Lions

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Kere Architecture

Shanghai Astronomy Museum

Shanghai, China

Ennead Architects left an indelible mark on the world of astronomy two decades ago by installing a planetarium in the form of a snow-white sphere in a luminous glass cube at the New York Museum of Natural History. And now architects have built the world’s largest museum dedicated to astronomy, with an area of almost 40,000 m2. Partner of the bureau Thomas J. Wong conceived the idea of making the silvery arches of the building and ribbon-like elements look like the trajectories of celestial bodies in the sky. But the oculus at the entrance, the planetarium in the form of a sphere, as well as an inverted dome embedded in the building, have become not just decorations, but real astronomical devices that allow visitors to track the Sun, Moon and stars and observe the sky.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: ArchExists

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Museum of Cinema of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences

Los Angeles, USA

The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences needed to build a new museum in Los Angeles, and the Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano turned out to be the ideal architect. After all, he is known not only as the author of many cultural projects, such as the Menil Collection Museum in Houston or the Whitney Museum in New York, but also as an unsurpassed moviegoer. To create the Academy museum with an area of 27,870 m2 and a cost of $ 482 million, Piano used the historic 1939 department store building owned by May, which now houses galleries. The architect connected them with a sphere of concrete and glass, inspired by the airships of the early XX century (but it reminded many of the «Death Star» from «Star Wars»). Renzo Piano connected the domed theater and the exhibition spaces in the usual way — with a pair of elegant bridges and branded external stairs in the industrial style, first developed for the Pompidou Center in Paris.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan

The New National Gallery of Berlin

Berlin, Germany

The New National Gallery of Berlin is both an art museum and a monument of modernism, which has received the status of an icon. And one of the last significant works in the career of Mies van der Rohe and the only building in Europe that he designed after emigrating to the USA. Now, after a decade of painstaking renovation designed by British architect David Chipperfield, the building has reopened with barely noticeable changes. The intervention, which the bureau calls “surgical», included new glazing, an updated steel canopy and a converted lower level located inside a granite-faced basement. There is a cloakroom, a cafe, a shop and other technical premises. In general, for this restoration, the architects had to dismantle about 35,000 building elements, and then return them to their places.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Konrad Menges

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Konrad Menges

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Konrad Menges

Museum of the Future in Dubai

Dubai, UAE

The new museum of the future stands out even in Dubai, the city of modern architectural and engineering wonders. The local firm Killa Design managed to design a vertical ring structure with an area of almost 30,000 m2 without a single column. Thanks to the stainless steel facade decorated with Arabic calligraphy with illumination made by artist Mattar bin Lahej, this structure will instantly become a landmark place for the city, and also a popular platform for Instagram photos. But it’s not just about its aesthetics: the museum runs on passive solar energy and uses low-energy technologies. In fact, the museum is so eco-friendly that it will be one of the first buildings of its kind in the Middle East to receive a platinum LEED certificate.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

Hotel Cheval Blanc

Paris, France

Many of the famous brands of the French luxury goods manufacturer LVMH (for example, Louis Vuitton, Celine and Dior) are inextricably linked with Paris, but the Cheval Blanc hotel brand has never had a hotel in the French capital. Only in the autumn of this year, architect Peter Marino, who was included in the international AD 100 list, presented the result of his work: he transformed one of the buildings of the famous department store, built by Henri Sauvage in the Art Deco style in 1928, into a hotel. ”We set out to transform the iconic Parisian building without neglecting its design heritage,» says Marino. He updated expensive stone floors, marquetry walls, elevators covered with leather and decorated with light installations from Thierry Dreyfus, and supplemented this with bronze panels from sculptor Ingrid Donat, a reception desk made of wood and patinated brass from artist and decorator Thierry Leprust and a spiral staircase made of bronze and brass from Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne. To complete the look, Marino carefully placed many almost priceless vintage pieces of furniture in the interior, including works by Maria Perge, Charlotte Perrian and Jean Lurse.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Alexandre Tabaste

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Alexandre Tabaste

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Alexandre Tabaste

Frick Madison Museum

New York, USA

While Frick’s Beaux-Arts mansion on the Upper East Side is being renovated by AD 100 designer Annabel Selldorf, the collection of European art has moved to an equally iconic architectural masterpiece nearby, on Madison Avenue. The brutalist structure, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1966 as the Whitney Museum of American Art, more recently served as an addition to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now this space, also reinterpreted by Selldorf, has become a temporary home for works by artists such as Bellini, Fragonard, Holbein and Vermeer, as well as contemporary creations by Doron Langberg and Salman Toor. Now Breuer’s coffered concrete ceilings, cement walls and slate floors reveal the Henry Frick collection in a whole new light.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Joseph Coscia Jr.

Ca’n Terra House

Menorca, Spain

Architects Anton Garcia-Abril and Deborah Mesa from Ensamble Studio in Boston have taken adaptive reuse to a new level. Their new residence Ca’n Terra (which translates from Catalan as “House belonging to the Land”) is literally carved into an abandoned quarry of the XIX century, where sandstone was previously mined. The house, located on the Mediterranean island of Menorca, resembles Egyptian tombs or Native American dwellings in the rocks. An unusual space blurs the boundaries between interior and exterior, organic and industrial, natural and domestic. The authors of the project, who also teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, started with 3D laser scanning of mazes. Then the surfaces were cleaned of decades-old dirt and mold and skylights were cut out in the darkest places. In addition, they installed transparent plastic walls and windows and put soft beds and armchairs on stone pedestals and in niches. Anton and Deborah turned the grotto into a swimming pool, and the kitchen sink was placed on two roughly hewn stone blocks.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: James Florio

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Iwan Baan

Mercado Público Matamoros Market

This angular brick structure, located near the border of Mexico with the United States, serves as a prototype of future public buildings designed for vulnerable areas of the country. The project was created as part of a competition sponsored by one of the leading universities in Mexico. The authors were the architectural group C733, which includes Gabriela Carrillo, Carlos Facio, Eric Valdez, Israel Espin and Jose Amozurrutia. They designed a rectangular semi-open structure surrounded by trees and accommodating about forty shopping kiosks. The market is topped with metal trapezoidal structures that provide shade and allow heat to be removed. In addition, the structure is passively cooled and collects rainwater through drains, and because of the prefabricated elements, it can easily be disassembled or duplicated elsewhere.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Gabriela Carrillo

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Rafael Gamo

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Rafael Gamo

House of Culture “HES-2”

Moscow, Russia

This is the first project of the Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano in Russia. The architect turned the 1907 power plant on Bolotnaya Embankment into a 20,000 m2 cultural campus for the V-A–C Foundation for Contemporary Art (founded by Russian magnate Leonid Mikhelson and Italian art critic Teresa Mavica; the organization has had an exhibition space in Venice since 2017). Now the high, open spaces of the plant, once occupied by steam turbines and other equipment, accommodate many flexible exhibition and concert halls, a library, a shop, a restaurant, classrooms, workshops and art residences for artists. Piano installed panoramic windows and also made a glass roof to let maximum light into the building. In addition, the architect emphasized the original industrial elements of the station (the structural frame of the roof, ducts, columns and beams) and organically integrated the structure into the urban landscape and nature. On one side of HPP-2 there is a wide stepped embankment, and on the other — a birch grove.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Yuri Palmin

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Gleb Leonov

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Gleb Leonov

Park Union Bridge

Colorado Springs, USA

The new Park Union Bridge connects the Olympic and Paralympic Museum complexes of the USA in the center of Colorado Springs with America the Beautiful National Park. The 76-meter-long structure extends over the current railway station, and its design is designed to emphasize the speed, skill and style of athletes. The authors — architects of the New York firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, including Benjamin Gilmartin, who oversees this project — designed the bridge in the form of two steel arches, which are intertwined in the center. This is not only an aesthetically beautiful design, but also a real engineering feat. In addition, the bridge is prefabricated — it was made in advance, and then assembled on site in just eight hours. Now it is accessible to both pedestrians and cyclists, and is also as convenient as possible for people traveling in a wheelchair.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

Audrey Irmas Pavilion 

Los Angeles, USA

The expansion of such an iconic building as the Jewish temple on Wilshire Boulevard with a copper dome in the Byzantine style is no small feat. But the architects of OMA coped with the task. Under the leadership of Shohei Shigematsu, the New York branch of OMA designed a lighthouse of the XXI century, which at night emits light through rectangular windows carved into hexagonal honeycombs on the facade. The shape of the three-storey building seems to deviate from the temple of 1929 and, conversely, hangs over the boulevard. Inside there are three different dynamic spaces: a large event hall with a vaulted wooden ceiling, the curves of which resemble the original dome, a chapel on the second floor with a terrace and stained glass windows, as well as a community center for the elderly on the third floor, which connects to the garden and roof terrace.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Jason O’Rear Photography

Japan National Stadium

Tokyo, Japan

The National Stadium of Japan was built by architect Kengo Kuma, Taisei Corporation and Azusa Sekkei Co. for the Tokyo Olympic Games. Unfortunately, there were almost no spectators at the stadium during the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as at sports matches. But this does not detract from its significance. The project celebrates the traditions of Japanese wooden architecture — about two thousand cubic meters of cedar wood from 47 prefectures of Japan, as well as pine from Okinawa, were used to decorate the arena. Kengo Kuma also wanted the stadium to blend in with the environment, so he tried to maintain a scale commensurate with the urban environment: he deliberately made the arena low, the roof flat, and planted more than 50,000 plants on the terraces on the facade. At first glance, the stadium is compact, but in fact it holds 68,000 seats.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Getty Images

Humayun’s Tomb Site Museum

Delhi, India

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture Foundation commissioned architects Pankaj Veer Gupta and Christina Muller to build a museum and visitor center on the territory of Humayun’s tomb, a 16th-century mausoleum that resembles the Taj Mahal. Vir Gupta, a professor at the University of Virginia and founder of the Delhi-based company vir.mueller architects, drew inspiration from the medieval stepped wells of India, as well as from the traditional low-lying structures of the Mughals. He developed an original system of skylights, courtyards and light wells, which allows you to direct natural light deep underground. It is impressive that the project will be the very first modern museum built on the territory of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in India.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Ashish Sahi

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Ashish Sahi

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Ashish Sahi

Lal Bagh Palace

Indore, India

The majestic Lal Bagh Palace, built in the late XIX-early XX century in the Renaissance style and belonging to the Holkar dynasty, boasts beautifully preserved interiors in the European style of that era. But since the aristocratic family left the palace, it has fallen into disrepair. Therefore, the World Monuments Fund, in cooperation with Abha Narain Lambah, which specializes in the preservation of historical sites in India, decided to return the building to its former greatness. The team, together with design directors Kruti Garg and Krishna Iyer, brought columns and wall panels made of Italian marble Breccia Violetta, Murano glass chandeliers, decorative plaster and gilding, as well as hundreds of luxurious silk-upholstered chairs. And one of the best rose gardens in India has been restored in the garden.

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Talib Chitalwala

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Talib Chitalwala

WoW List 2022: впечатляющие архитектурные проекты со всего мира по версии редакторов AD

Photo: Talib Chitalwala

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