MAG Landscape

​Can architecture pop-up?
A temporary social hub on Governors Island at the Figment arts festival is made of 53,780 recycled bottles – the amount thrown away in New York City every hour.
(Head in the Clouds. Governors Island, New York, United States)

​Can architecture pop-up?
A temporary floating wedding pavilion barely touches the ground, thanks to a balloon canopy filled with helium and draped in diaphanous fabric.
(Floatastic. New Haven, Connecticut, United States)

​Can architecture pop-up?
Designed with emerging chefs and food truck culture in mind, a lightweight, corrugated plastic shell can expand to accommodate dinners for two or fifty.
(PDU (Portable Dining Unit). San Francisco, California, United States)

​Can architecture pop-up?
Off-the-self acrylic tubes are assembled to create a rigid pavilion whose shape is inspired by a rough gemstone.
(Bulgari Art Pavilion. Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates)

Scientists have laboratories? Architects have pop-ups. These temporary structures are tiny experiments in form and space.

​Can a brick become a healing force?
In 2011, Butaro Hospital opened a 150-bed medical facility that serves nearly 350,000 people in this region of Rwanda. The solution came in the form of these charming doctors homes, which give foreign staff a permanent residence just five minutes from the hospital. In building the homes, architects took a truly holistic view of the communitys needs and used the project as an opportunity to teach new skilled trades to the local community. On-site workshops taught local teams to make compressed stabilized earth blocks – bricks that are earthquake-safe and sustainable. These teams also learned to make the hospitals custom furniture and light fixtures, as well as the earth-stabilizing landscaping techniques crucial to bringing agriculture to the region. With a total of nine hundred skilled laborers trained during the construction process, the effort brought better building practices, not to mention better medicine, to Rwanda for generations to come.<br/>(Butaro Doctors Housing. Burato, Rwanda)

Buildings build futures.

​How do you turn a grain silo into an art museum?
An ancient Elevator on the waterfront of Cape Town, consisting of forty-two concrete cylindrical towers-became a Museum. Because this structure did not have an open internal space with which to work, the architects carved it directly in eight Central towers (new technologies cutting in reinforced concrete allows to keep a smooth cut edges and enrich the space with new textures). The result was an oval atrium surrounded on all sides by concrete structures. In the underground tunnels of the Elevator arranged workshops in which artists work.
(Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. Cape Town, South Africa)

The building that used to feed the body now feeds the mind.