Articles by Andreas Luco

Renovation and Conversion into a Contemporary Orchestral Hall – The Concert Hall at Kiel Castle exemplifies the challenges faced by many cultural buildings of the post-war modern era, which today require functional and technical renewal while preserving their architectural identity. Between 2019 and 2025, a design team comprising gmp · Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners and bbp: architekten developed the project as a conceptual continuation of the existing building. The aim of the design was to integrate a wide range of new requirements into an existing structure whose quality derives largely from the clarity and formal restraint of its architecture.

Background — The Noon Repose Pavilion is located on the bank of a rural river in Huizhou, a city in southern China, along the scenic route encircling Nankun Mountain and Luofu Mountain. Huizhou was once a place of exile for the Northern Song scholar Su Shi. During his years there, exile did not result in withdrawal from life, but rather intensified his attention to its everyday rhythms. In his writings, he identified what he called the “sixteen pleasures of life,” one of which he described as “resting at noon on a simple rattan pillow.” The pavilion takes its name from this phrase. It is not intended as a nostalgic reference, but as a way of anchoring contemporary experience to a different understanding of time—one that allows for pause, slackening, and repose. What is recalled here is not a historical figure, but a mode of living that remains possible in the present.

On the ruins of Mas Geli, an old farmhouse, of which only two facades with buttresses and a couple of spaces with stone vaults were preserved, this new house rises, which reinterprets values of vernacular architecture without renouncing the contemporaneity of the proposal. The project aims to be coherent with the context, looking for the integration of the new farmhouse in the exceptional landscape of Baix Empordà, a continuum of agricultural spaces with the distant (but constant) presence of ancestral farmhouses perfectly situated in the landscape.

This wooden house is located at the boundary between an extensive green plateau and a coigüe forest that descends steeply towards Lake Ranco, in southern Chile.

TANK has completed the « L’Alliance », a modular school in Dunkerque, France. The new construction includes an agora, a seven-classroom nursery, an eight-classroom elementary school, a cafeteria, a community center, a multipurpose hall divisible into smaller spaces, a cybercenter, offices, a civic hall, and outdoor areas.

When we first visited the site, what struck us the most was that after emerging from a narrow alley, an extraordinary view opened up toward one of the slopes of the Tepozteco mountain range. These rock formations are emblematic of the region, and the land ends precisely at the base of this dramatic topography. From the very beginning, one of our main concerns was to ensure that every room—whether for gathering or resting—could enjoy this privileged view.

Set on a scenic plot in Kościelisko village, this house is both a creative reinterpretation of the Podhale region’s traditional architecture and a tribute to the Tatra Mountains landscape – especially the iconic hiking trail to Giewont Mountain. The design metaphorically reflects a mountain hike, shaping not only the surrounding path and garden, but above all, the home’s core: a vertical circulation layout that culminates in a spectacular view of Giewont.