Museu deth Haro El Museo del Haro, situado en el centro histórico de Les (Val d’Aran, Pirineos), es el espacio encargado de que siga viva la llama de la tradición de la “crema deth Haro”, la fiesta del solsticio de verano, patrimonio inmaterial de la humanidad desde 2015. La rehabilitación del edificio fue un proyecto con una fuerte carga de historia y simbolismo. Nuestra idea consistió en respetar al máximo el edificio original, construido a finales de los años 20 como escuela rural. Con el paso de las generaciones esta modesta edificación se ha convertido en un símbolo para el pueblo, y eso hizo que quisiéramos mantener toda la piel exterior intacta al mismo tiempo que vaciamos los muros interiores para conseguir una gran sala diáfana que sirviera como espacio museístico. Además, eliminamos la entrada con escalones de la plaza y la movimos al extremo plano del edificio, construyendo así un acceso practicable para todos. Quisimos que el nuevo edificio actuase como un brasero donde se conservara vivo, durante todo el año, el fuego que la noche del 23 de junio prende en el tronco del Haro. Construimos un lugar al que ese fuego pudiera volver al amanecer casi ahogado en cenizas para reposar hasta el año siguiente. —————————— The Haro Museum, located in the historic centre of Les (Val d'Aran, Pyrenees), is the space responsible for keeping alive the flame of the tradition of the "crema deth Haro", the summer solstice festival, intangible heritage of humanity since 2015. The renovation of the building was a project steeped in history and symbolism. Our idea was to respect the original building, constructed in the late 1920s as a rural school, as much as possible. Over the generations, this modest building has become a symbol of the village. This meant we wanted to keep the entire exterior skin intact while emptying the interior walls to create a large open-plan room that would serve as a museum space. In addition, we removed the stepped entrance from the square and moved it to the flat end of the building, thus constructing accessible access for everyone. We wanted the new building to act as a brazier to keep alive the fire that, on the night of 23 June, is lit in the trunk of the Haro tree throughout the year. We built a place where the fire could return at dawn, almost drowned in ashes, to rest until the following year. OLA

Designed by architect Carme Pinós,who won Spain’s National Architecture Prize in 2010, the seventh CaixaForum cultural center built by the charitable foundation of Spanish bank La Caixa is a unique building in which the severity of its basic materials combines with both natural and artificial light coming in through 1,600 perforated aluminum sheets that cover the three-story, 7,000-square-meter structure. The cubes host the center’s two halls dedicated to temporary exhibitions, one 780 square meters and the other 438 square meters. La Caixa has chosen a double exhibition of contemporary art, almost all of it from its own collection, to inaugurate the new building. Planos sensibles traces informalism in Spanish painting, while Narrativas de la imagen offers videos and photos taken in the last few years. Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura, Pablo Palazuelo, Manuel Millares, Miquel Barceló, Eduardo Chillida, José Manuel Broto, Jeff Wall, Javier Peñafiel, Ignasi Aballó, Sophie Calle, Willie Doherty and Eve Sussman are some of the names whose works feature. The two big cubes are suspended at different levels. At the topmost part sit the cafeteria and a restaurant affording panoramic views over the Expo 2008 site. On the ground floor, a feeling of space predominates, achieved through open areas and glass walls. Through a garden you then go down into a spectacular 252-seater auditorium in which the architect has played with wood to cover ceilings and walls with the same sheets that visitors will go on finding scattered around the building, creating a unifying effect.

The Centro Botín is an arts centre designed by Pritzker Prize-winner architect Renzo Piano, in co-authorship with luis vidal + architects. It is located in a privileged part of Santander and uses a broader urban intervention to integrate the city centre and the historic Pereda Gardens with the Bay. The building has a total built-up area spanning 8,739 m², which is made up of two blocks, connected by a structure of squares and the walkways known as – “the pachinko”. The west block is dedicated to art, with two exhibition rooms measuring a total of 2,500 m2; and the east block is for cultural and educational activities, boasting an auditorium for 300 people, classrooms, work spaces, and a rooftop terrace to enjoy the breathtaking views of Santander and its Bay.

‘This building does not resemble any recognisable shape because it is an evocation of the soul of wine between the river and the city.’ A strong architectural statement, La Cité du Vin stands out with its bold curves and shape. An iconic building, this golden frame hosts a Cité within the city, a living space with experiences to discover. The initial aim of the building’s architecture was genuinely to create a link between La Cité du Vin and the spaces surrounding it through perpetual movement. Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazières, the architects from XTU, designed a space shaped by symbols of identity: gnarled vine stock, wine swirling in a glass, eddies on the Garonne. Every detail of the architecture evokes wine’s soul and liquid nature: ‘seamless roundness, intangible and sensual’ (XTU Architects). Atelier 16 - Architectures led by Laurent Karst were responsible for the interior and furniture design of the Lattitude 20 global wine cellar, the boutique ,the gift shop and the snack bar on the ground floor, and the panoramic restaurant located on the seventh floor Le 7.

The DDP has been designed as a cultural hub at the centre of Dongdaemun, an historic district of Seoul that is now renowned for its 24-hour shopping and cafes. DDP is a place for people of all ages; a catalyst for the instigation and exchange of ideas and for new technologies and media to be explored. The variety of public spaces within DDP include Exhibition Halls, Convention Halls, Design Museum, Lab and Archives, Children’s Education Centre, Media Centre, Seminar Rooms and Sky Lounge; enabling DDP to present the widest diversity of exhibitions and events that feed the cultural vitality of the city. 
The DDP is an architectural landscape that revolves around the ancient city wall and cultural artefacts discovered during archaeological excavations preceding DDP’s construction. These historic features form the central element of DDP’s composition; linking the park, plaza and city together. The design is the very specific result of how the context, local culture, programmatic requirements and innovative engineering come together - allowing the architecture, city and landscape to combine in both form and spatial experience – creating a whole new civic space for the city. DDP’s design and construction sets many new standards of innovation. DDP is the first public project in Korea to implement advanced 3-dimensional digital construction services that ensure the highest quality and cost controls. These include 3-dimensional Building Information Modelling (BIM) for construction management and engineering coordination, enabling the design process to adapt with the evolving client brief and integrate all engineering requirements. These innovations have enabled the team building DDP to control the construction with much greater precision than conventional processes and improve efficiencies. Implementing such construction technologies make DDP one of Korea’s most innovative and technological advanced constructions to date. 
DDP opened to the public on 21 March 2014 by hosting Seoul Fashion Week. DDP will also host five separate design and art exhibitions featuring works by modern designers as well as the prized collection of traditional Korean art of the Kansong Art Museum.

Szczecin Philharmonic (full name in Polish: Filharmonia im. Mieczysława Karłowicza w Szczecinie), or the Mieczysław Karłowicz Philharmonic Orchestra founded in 1948, is a philharmonic of the city of Szczecin, Poland.In 2015, the new building of the philharmonic was awarded the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture.The European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award is a Prize given biennially by the European Union and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona,to acknowledge and reward quality architectural production in Europe'. The Prize was created in 1987 as equal partnerships between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Fundació Mies van der Rohe. The award is open to all the works completed in Europe within the two-year period before the granting of the Prize. These works are submitted by independent experts, the national architecture associations and the advisory committee of the Prize and then evaluated by a Jury which is defined for each edition. The five finalist works are visited by the Jury who chooses a Prize Winner and an Emerging Architect Winner. The building emerges from its urban context, influenced by the steeply pitched roofs and the verticality of the city’s buildings, by the monumentality of the upright ornaments of its neo-Gothic churches. With an expressionist mindset, we have aimed to use geometry to give shape to a new rhythmic composition that conveys feelings by balancing massiveness and verticality. The use of glass as the exterior cladding material highlights how the building contrasts with the conditions of its surrounding environment. It creates a bright, transparent and upstanding object. The building’s interiors are simple. The symphonic hall differs from these in that it is a sculpted object embedded into a barely outlined mineral-like space.

The Seat of the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra (NOSPR) is a part of the so-called Axis of Culture in Katowice which is the revival of the post-mining area. It is a combination of modernity and tradition, of which the facades are the perfect reflection: crafts made brick walls burned using old Silesian recipes and the skin that wraps the concrete prefabricated pillars which hide all the noisy infrastructure without negative effects on the acoustic qualities inside. The entire building is full of crafts, hand-made elements in concrete, wood, brick and stone, yet sophisticated technologies and contemporary designs. The outer building forms a white ring made of stone and marble - the space for musicians. The atrium is the space for music lovers, while the black core - the concert hall in the inner building is the place of a meeting of both - musicians and music lovers. The unique instrument-like shape provides extraordinary acoustics. The best practices of music halls from around the world, including historical ones, have gained a new contemporary dimension here.

This modern culture and leisure centre opened its doors on 18th May 2010. Thus the city recovered one of its most emblematic buildings, namely the old wine warehouse, with a project set in the socio-economic and urban transformation which left behind its industrial past. On 16th March 2015 AlhóndigaBilbao changed its name to Azkuna Zentroa. This is a tribute of the city to the person who was the “emotional” architect of this new Bilbao. It is the acknowledgement of Azkuna’s vision of a building which had been neglected for over 30 years. To quote Iñaki Azkuna’s own words: “It will be the meeting point of Culture in Bilbao and a catalyser of co-existence in the City". A vision which materialises day by day. Azkuna Zentroa has become the new driving force of daily life in the city since its doors opened in May 2010. A different kind of space with a contemporary multicultural programme designed to offer experiences to all the target publics. Azkuna Zentroa treats both the local and global as equals, supporting the consolidation of Bilbao as an international destination.

Buk-Chon, where Songwon Art Center is located, is one of the few areas that were less affected by the heavy wave of development has been sweeping through) Korea since the fifties. The townscape is based on an irregular network of streets that weave through the area, where Han-Ok is the dominating architectural typology.
During the past 10 years Buk-Chon has seen lots of buzz primarily caused by the newfound interest of the public on the traditional townscapes. Han-Oks(traditional Korean houses) have become a subject of admiration again, and many commercial/ cultural businesses have been brought into the area to take advantage of this setup. In this social context, it is consensual that any new development in the area intrinsically faces the challenge to simultaneously conserve existing values, and contribute in a new way to what already is.
The design is a result of optimizing the parameters, sensitively reacting to the surrounding and simultaneously developing a rigorous logic. The site is an irregularly shaped piece of land, roughly 297㎡ in size. The resulting building is three floors below ground level and two floors above. The bottom two floors are used as an exhibition space, the semi-underground B1 level as parking, and the top two floors house a commercial restaurant and other social functions. In section, the building can be seen as two programs separated by the parking area – the social function of the restaurant above, and exhibition spaces below. As the sharp corner of the site is approached by pedestrians, one encounters two acrylic windows each revealing one of these two spaces – a curved, seamless window to the top, revealing the 7-11m high space to the above, and a triangular window within the base of the pyramid reveals the 8m space below, resulting in a sudden unexpected moment of vertigo as the entire height of the building (some 19 meters) suddenly presents itself.

The Cité de l'Océan et du Surf, which opened in Biarritz, France in June 2011, is a museum designed by Steven Holl Architects in collaboration with Solange Fabião. The design was the winning scheme of an international competition held in 2005. Based on the concept "under the sky" and "under the sea," the building features a strongly curving roof, which also shapes the space of the public plaza, tilted towards the horizon and the ocean. The 3800sm building, which houses gallery spaces, an auditorium, a restaurant, cafeteria and administrative offices, is part of a larger site, with a public landscape that flows seamlessly from the museum's plaza to the water. For the Cité de l'Océan et du Surf, Steven Holl has received several awards, including the 2011 Emirates Glass LEAF Award, the 2012 American Architecture Award, and an Annual Design Review prize.

The building of MGA introduced new spatial order to the old backyards and ruined buildings in Rajska and Szujskiego streets in Krakow. The starting point was a multifunctional hall, which was entered into the outline of the old, 19th-century horse-riding arena, used in the last years of its history as workshops and storage space for the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków. Architect Krzysztof Ingarden (collaborating with Jacek Ewý), claims that the form of the building is a contextual game between “mimesis and the abstraction”. In practice, this means that the building is by no means a simulacrum of the context, but rather draws inspiration from the code of contextual forms by making references to the geometry of the roofs and tissue of the neighbouring structures applied for the abstract geometrical compositions of the façades. The building fits the scale of its environment perfectly by maintaining the lines of the roof and divisions of the façades in line with the composition and linear solutions of the neighbouring buildings. The Małopolska Garden of Arts is a cross between two institutions: the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre and the Malopolska Voivodeship Library. The wing on Szujskiego Street holds a modern art and media library, with multimedia books and music, while the section standing on ul. Rajska has been developed by the theatre, and is equipped with a multifunctional events hall. The new hall – operating, as a studio theatre, conference room, concert hall, and venue for banquets and exhibitions – holds retractable stages for 300 people. State-of-the-art stage technology is present overhead: fixed on hoists and cranes to the steel ceiling girders. This allows dramas and concerts to be performed, and exhibitions, film screenings, symposiums, conferences, art auctions, fashion shows, and many more events to be held. Altogether, the space of about 4300 sq.m houses a theatre together with a cosy cinema with 98 seats, a café, and premises for the organisation of educational, art-related activities.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews opened its doors to the public in April 2013. It currently functions as a cultural and educational center with a rich cultural program, including temporary exhibitions, films, debates, workshops, performances, concerts, lectures and much more. The opening of the Core Exhibition, presenting the thousand-year history of Polish Jews, is scheduled for the beginning of 2014. The Museum stands in what was once the heart of Jewish Warsaw – an area which the Nazis turned into the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. This significant location, coupled with the Museum’s proximity to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, demanded extreme thoughtfulness on the part of the building’s designers, who carefully crafted a structure that has become a symbol of the new face of Warsaw. The design by the Finnish studio Lahdelma & Mahlamaeki was selected in an international competition.

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was once called "the best artist of the world from amongst Polish artists and the most Polish one from amongst artists of the world". Already during his life, some considered him a genius, and others a master of mystification or a clever imitator only. Today, no one should doubt that this artist, who passed away in 1990, was one of the greatest creators of the art of the twentieth century. Even though it is difficult to explain what the phenomenon of his imagination was based upon. He was a versatile artist; a "total" one as he used to say, thus it is very risky to divide his output into individual "disciplines". Being a painter, stage designer, poet, actor, and happener, he made a name for himself as a man of theatre, but even in the domain of it he remained first of all a painter who thought with images and used actors and props instead of paints. Kantor's greatest achievement was The Cricot 2 Theatre. Its performances, beginning with The Dead Class (1975), attained the level of masterpiece. The unusual formula of his Theatre of Death consisted in creating artistic illustration for mechanisms of memory. Sequences of unreal pictures, snatches of memories, obtrusively returning scenes, and absurd situations: everybody knows this from his own experience. And all of us are confused in a similar way: series of painful resentments, daring longings, remembered fragments of sentences, comical scraps of the past. We are physical, and it appears that our memory and imagination are also physical. We do not exist without form; we think and even feel with images. And Kantor could show it on the stage. He created an unusually suggestive space in which the living and the dead have been mixed, where the shyest desires and most cruel experiences, i.e. war, love and crime, fear, passion and hatred have been revealed. On faded photographs of his family album, the personal biography intertwined with history, where national myths and private obsessions returned with tiresome echoes, like in the distorting mirror.

Like many of the cities in Upper Silesia, the city of Katowice’s history is closely linked to the themes of heavy industry and mining. On the one hand, this has created a cultural heritage that gives the region its identity and its cultural-historical backbone; on the other, it has left behind distinctive artificial landscapes, industrial plants and buildings. These are embedded in the collective consciousness as being distinctive, and so create a sense of identity; however, as constructions in themselves they are challenging to view: they were originally designed with very specific uses in mind, which have become less important within the increasingly globalised service economy and due to their sometimes purely museum-like character they often have to be adapted at considerable expense or else lie completely empty through lack of coherent concepts for re-use. The situation in Katowice is in this respect all the more special as the coalmine is located right next to the city centre. This provided the unique opportunity to adopt a specifically local focus when considering the issues of urban planning, landscape planning and architectural in a central location within one of the future growth regions of Europe. It also represents the chance to initiate an impulse project for a forward-looking, post-industrial re-use of comparable areas – at both a regional and supraregional level. In this regard, the museum project serves as the starting-point for a long-term and definitely sustainable change of use and revitalisation of a large central area in the middle of the city. The basic aim of the concept is to be able to offer a wide variety of museum uses with minimal apparent intervention. Both the museum and the infopoint develop their spatial programme on the basis of their former significance and, in homage to the previous function of the site, are to be entirely underground. From outside in the whole complex appears exclusively through the abstract glass cubes of the administration, utilities and air conditioning, dimensioned in such a way that they blend harmoniously into the ensemble of the existing building. Together with the newly created network of paths, squares and parks, the result is a fine public local recreation centre, a “city park” in the best sense. To this effect the design also provides for a discreet adaptation of the existing building as a café and also as a residential and work building for artists in residence. The existing “Warszawa” tower will likewise be made accessible to visitors thanks to the erection of a lift and stair tower, allowing views over the whole of Katowice. Riegler Riewe

The Niemeyer Center is an open door to culture in all its shapes, forms, traditions and styles. Music, theatre, cinema, expositions, conferences and outdoor and educational news will be the main focus of a multidisciplinary cultural programme.

Museum dedicated to the life and work of the Spanish Couturier Cristobal Balenciaga in the village of Getaria in the Basque Country where the famous fashion designer was born. AV62 Arquitectos won a competition to intervene in the second part of the project curating the permanent exhibition as well as doing the interior design. A detailed memory of the participation by AV62 can be found on their website : "Our involvement with this project came about through winning the open Public Competition for the interior design of the Museo Cristóbal Balenciaga in Guetaria. The scope of the job is in fact significantly broader than previousy announced; it not only involves fitting out a new and finished building, but also involves solving the closures, finishes, interiors and facades which weren’t resolved" AV62

The new Museum of Human Evolution by Spanish architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg is located in the castilian ancient city of Burgos, part of the Atapuerca complex of prehistoric sites, caves and exhibitions exploring the evolution of human kind from prehisto