Peter Kulka
Meschede, Germany

Asceticism and monasticism form an innate coupling in most minds: we equate sparseness with the solitude and silence of deep meditation. Purity, serenity, austerity and severity are the hallmarks of Peter Kulka’s Haus der Stille (House of Silence) for the Benedictine Order in Meschede, Germany, a structure monolithically dedicated to mindful introspection.

Massimiliano Fuksas
Milan, Italy

The Milan Trade Fair complex is one of the major achievements of European architecture in the last decade. For a time it was the largest private worksite on the continent and the largest civic building project in the world, employing a multi-ethnic construction workforce of three thousand staged in teams along its kilometre-long central axis. A permanent location for international exhibitions, the Trade Fair was planned to extend over two million square metres, and needed to be completed within thirty months.

Candalepas Associates
Randwick, Sydney

Apartment living is one of the great challenges of the twenty-first century. In an era marked by growing populations, diminishing space and mounting environmental anxiety, apartments are increasingly becoming an urban planning necessity. But in a country where home ownership remains the dream and a house is still the mark of success and stability, it is a necessity that we hesitate to embrace.

Marc Newson
Sydney International Airport

Airports are the sort of establishments we tend to steer clear of, except in the event of necessity. They are transfer points, to be visited only as a passing incident to arrival or departure. Restless queues, crowded bank seating and a cup of cold instant coffee have, in the past, dictated our desire to spend as little time in transit as possible. “Get in and get out” has been the modern-day airport ethos.

Ingo Maurer is a Munich-based lighting designer who claims the status of artist, though in no way takes himself seriously. He finds design magazines and “good taste” a little dull, preferring strange, whimsical, and sometimes impractical installations, like his “Lucellino” table lamp (1992), made from a bare bulb with little white wings that illuminates when the wings are touched.

Energy Architecture
Aldinga Arts Eco Villages, Adelaide

Along the southern road out of Adelaide is a string of coastal towns and newer, rapidly expanding subdivisions. This is Adelaide’s sprawl, and it reached the quiet fishing and resort town of Aldinga Beach in a big way in 2003, with a proposal for a 700-block subdivision beside the Aldinga Scrub Conservation Park. The deal, which would have increased the town’s population by a third, was seemingly stitched up between council, the developer, and the state government before the public could comment on it.

Information Based Architecture, Arup
Guangzhou, China

Historically a most insular of countries, China is turning outwards, opening itself to the world as an image of technology, modernity and progress. It positions itself as an emerging superpower, oriented towards the future, promoting a kind of controlled transparency, an economic openness that paradoxically emphasises the country’s sparkling façade. This porous surface, the subtle interplay of invitation and illusion, is not exclusively a Chinese phenomenon. It might, in fact, be the mode of modernity, an image that is as appropriate to television’s illusory intrusions into our homes as it is to globalisation’s re-evaluation of national boundaries.

DesignInc Tasmania
Glenorchy, Hobart

Over four years ago Dominic College lost its 1950s Chapel through arson. For Elvio Brianese, a former student of the coeducational Catholic school in Glenorchy, northern Hobart, rebuilding the Chapel was a project of passion. Brianese is a Director of DesignInc Tasmania, and he has a great deal of experience in local and international educational projects. He focussed squarely on imparting some modernity, some living symbolism, to the structure.

Taylor Robinson
Highgate, Perth

Pub renovations are the most controversial of building work. As the regulars’ nostalgic affection for beer-soaked carpets and cigarette burns on the bar competes with the owner’s hope for a glitzy renewal and a trendier crowd, the debate seems to expose a faultline in our idea of the local pub. History and tradition comes up against fashion and polish; the old and dirty claims precedence over the new and soulless. And everywhere, the debate becomes about whom the pub is there for, and how the building will reflect their claims on its soul.