Buildings worth changing direction for. Eight places where façades, materials, proportion and the surrounding city are part of the reason to go.
Architecture is rarely just the building
Architecture changes depending on where you encounter it. A house on a residential street in Barcelona has a different presence from a concert hall on Hamburg’s waterfront, or a cultural centre built into the landscape of Athens. Sometimes the first thing you notice is scale. Elsewhere it might be a staircase, a tiled façade, the weight of concrete, or the way a building meets the street.
Architecture Walks brings together eight places across eight cities: Casa Batlló in Barcelona, the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Ace Hotel Kyoto, Torres Blancas in Madrid, Casa Barragán in Mexico City, Wat Umong in Chiang Mai, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre in Athens.
They come from different periods and were built for very different purposes. Some are immediately recognisable; others become more interesting once you begin looking at their materials, proportions and surroundings. What connects them here is simply that the architecture deserves time of its own, whether or not you eventually go inside.
Walking around these places also says something about the cities themselves. Buildings change how streets are approached, how neighbourhoods are remembered, and where attention naturally settles. Looking closely at architecture becomes another way of reading a city, one façade, threshold, courtyard or structural detail at a time.