Theory & Urban Planning — 8 articles
From Vitruvius's three principles to Haussmann's Paris, from Le Corbusier's urbanism to the Situationist drift, up to the question of sustainability today. A full thematic arc on how architects have thought about the city.
Wood — guide + 6 articles
Solid timber, GLULAM, LVL, CLT and Accoya, how wood burns and decays, the race for timber skyscrapers, and why engineered wood is often harder to reuse than solid wood.
Steel — guide + 7 articles
From cast iron and the Crystal Palace to the Chicago School, from bolted and welded connections to high-tech steel, plus decarbonization, corrosion, fatigue and fire.
Bamboo — guide + 6 articles
Guadua and Moso species, laminated and engineered bamboo, bahareque and Vietnamese and Balinese construction traditions, plus regulation, pathologies, and Vélez versus IBUKU.
Lime — guide + 6 articles
Air lime, natural hydraulic lime and lime putty, marmorino and cocciopesto, why cement plaster harms historic walls, the carbonation chemistry, and lime's return to contemporary building sites.
Concrete — guide + 6 articles
Roman opus caementicium versus Portland, ten structural variants from ordinary to 3D-printed, the ferroconcrete-to-Brutalism story, concrete pathologies and diagnostics, geopolymers and low-carbon cements.
Innovative Materials — guide + 6 articles
Mycelium bricks and self-healing concrete, biomimicry from Gaudí to termite mounds, Neri Oxman's material ecology, and why so few of these materials have a harmonised European standard yet.
Brick — guide + 6 articles
Six thousand years of firing brick, from Hoffmann's ring kiln to the modern tunnel kiln, decarbonizing with electrification and green hydrogen, reclaimed brick's circular economy, and Kahn, Herzog & de Meuron and Aldo Rossi as three languages for the same material.
Stone and Marble — guide + 6 articles
2,500 years from the Parthenon's Pentelic marble to quartz agglomerates, quarrying from wedges to diamond wire, stone pathologies and restoration, spolia and urban mining, and Scarpa, Zumthor and Chipperfield as three languages for the same material.
Copper and Non-Ferrous Metals — guide + 6 articles
Natural and pre-patinated copper, VMZINC zinc-titanium, anodised aluminium and titanium, a history of copper roofing from hand-hammered sheets to the Statue of Liberty, the chemistry of copper's changing patina, the extractive footprint of copper mining, and Herzog & de Meuron's de Young Museum.
Raw Earth — guide + 6 articles
Hassan Fathy's adobe villages, Shibam's eleven-storey mud towers and the Sahel's collective maintenance rituals, raw earth pathologies and modern stabilisation beyond lime and cement, Francis Kéré and Anna Heringer's new language of clay, and the seismic reinforcement systems that save lives.
Glass — guide + 8 articles
From Gothic stained glass to the curtain wall, float, tempered, laminated and structural glass, thermal breakage and delamination, decarbonizing float-glass production, SANAA's language of transparency, Murano blown glass, and photovoltaic and electrochromic smart glazing.
Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Modernism and Contemporary architecture, plus Travel, are published in Italian. If you read Italian — or don't mind a browser translator — the full magazine is one click away.
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