MARK

We showcase significant examples of the firm's investigation, which in its totality, analyses 193 spaces of political assembly around the world.

We then take a glimpse into a long hidden gem, an Antwerp penthouse, designed by Paul De Meyer in the early 1970s. The structure has recently been photographed for the very first time. During De Meyer's personal house hunt within the city, the director of the city's urban planning department complained: 'On the roofs of all those new residential towers was nothing but junk'. Viewing the statement as a challenge to overcome, De Meyer donned his architect hat and seized the opportune moment to conceive his very own hidden home on the top of a residential block. Completed in 1972, the tower then received a roof top penthouse which De Meyer would call home for the rest of his life.

Next we stop off in the picturesque Czech mountains where Fránek Architects' Sky Walk is less about the view and more about upstaging the dramatic mountain range. In recent years, there have been signs that the heyday of the traditional viewing tower had subsided. Instead, a whole new typology has started to emerge, replacing the tower with a kind of artificial landscape-within-a-landscape. Sky Walk propels visitors through many twists and turns, giving them the intense sensation of walking in the clouds and experiencing space far above the countryside.

Cross Section:
Gonzalo Mardones, Drake / Director X, Front Office Tokyo, Bethesda Game Studios, Von M, Encore Heureux, Koizumi Sekkei, Orange, TNA, Theo Deutinger, Staab, Donis, Mjölk, A-cero, Suppose, XML / Jurgen Bey

Perspective: Parliaments

• XML has been conducting an international research project on spaces of political congregation. 

Long Section:

• Fernando Menis's cultural complex in Toruń echoes both the local medieval architecture and the rugged volcanic landscape of his own Canarian homeland.
• Rudy Ricciotti's Rivesaltes Memorial Museum is an eloquent epitaph on the darker episodes of modern history.
• Mass Design Group helps to reduce Malawi's maternal mortality rate.
• Ken Takahashi’s two new houses illustrate his concept of 'smallness'.
• Marc Koehler conjures up a pair of spatially adventurous houses.
• Paul De Meyer designed an Antwerp penthouse in the early 1970s that has recently been photographed for the very first time.
• L3P ingeniously fits three apartments into an old half-timbered house.
• Fránek Architects' Sky Walk is less about the view and more about upstaging the dramatic mountain landscape.
• Ghilardi+Hellsten realized a floating pedestrian path that snakes over a Norwegian island.
• Stig L. Andersson's book collection inspires the concepts and methods on which he bases his studio.