Heritage

The installation was part of the 24th annual Architecture and Decoration exhibition, CASACOR Minas, which took place in the city of Belo Horizonte, MG-Brazil, between August and September of 2018. The event happened in a building listed by the Historical Heritage where the former headquarters of the Belo Horizonte Railway Network was located.

The three pre-existing buildings around a mediterranean courtyard are located Coimbra, in the city’s UNESCO World Heritage Protection Zone.

This article was originally published on August 2, 2014. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Hidden in the middle of the forests surrounding Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains, Thorncrown Chapel rests amongst the oaks, pines and maples. The humble chapel, designed by Euine Fay Jones, is less than 35 years old – yet it’s on the U.S. Historic register, has been named one of the AIA’s top ten buildings of the 20th century, and has even been called the best American building since 1980.

This article was originally published on May 25, 2015. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Before the impossibly “super-thin” tower became ubiquitous on the Midtown Manhattan skyline, Raimund Abraham’s Austrian Cultural Forum challenged the limits of what could be built on the slenderest of urban lots. Working with a footprint no bigger than a townhouse (indeed, one occupied the site before the present tower), Abraham erected a daring twenty-four story high-rise only twenty-five feet across. Instantly recognizable by its profile, a symmetrical, blade-like curtain wall cascading violently toward the sidewalk, ACFNY was heralded by Kenneth Frampton as “the most significant modern piece of architecture to be realized in Manhattan since the Seagram Building and the Guggenheim Museum of 1959.” [1]

This article was originally published on November 9, 2015. To read the stories behind other celebrated architecture projects, visit our AD Classics section.

Angkor Wat is just one of dozens of extant Khmer temples in the Angkor area of present-day Cambodia, but it represents the apex of a building tradition that spanned five centuries, and the height of Khmer power and influence in the region. It is the largest temple complex at Angkor, and intricate bas-relief sculptures line the sandstone structures exemplify the apex of Khmer artistry. Although it has been in continuous use since its construction in the twelfth century, aspects of its history remain unknown. As archaeologist and anthropologist Charles Higham explains, “Curiously, there are no direct references to it in the epigraphic record, so we do not know its original name and controversy remains over its function and aspects of its symbolic status.”[1] Originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, the complex was later converted to Buddhist use (the word “wat” typically refers to Buddhist monasteries[2]), and continues to be a site of religious pilgrimage today.