Articles by Pilar Caballero

This project is to renovate 19-year-old apartment in Minami-Ikebukuro. The building is located in very convenient and busy neighborhood, which is a few minutes walk from one of biggest terminal station in Tokyo.

Located next to an expressway, the Technical Center of Blagnac was built in the middle of a neighborhood characterized by a highly industrialized program. Nevertheless, a classified forest and a cemetery are located just next to the site. These elements constitute the principal specificity of this program. The architectural and urban will aim to constitute a real urban piece, able to create a strong entrance to this area and able to dialogue with its environment. The idea is to establish a visual identity while answering the main objectives of the program.

Skorba is a small village in the vicinity of Ptuj, Slovenia’s oldest town. Once a typical village with a clustered settlement pattern, the passage of years and the proximity of the city caused it to grow out of turn, transforming it into a commuter suburb without a clear structure. The organic growth resulted in a markedly heterogeneous development organised along the access roads, with no public surface layout and without a clearly legible village centre.

Skorba is a small village in the vicinity of Ptuj, Slovenia’s oldest town. Once a typical village with a clustered settlement pattern, the passage of years and the proximity of the city caused it to grow out of turn, transforming it into a commuter suburb without a clear structure. The organic growth resulted in a markedly heterogeneous development organised along the access roads, with no public surface layout and without a clearly legible village centre.

Perched on the banks of the Buffels River, close to its mouth in Pringle Bay – a small coastal town less than 100km from Cape Town, South Africa – this house has an easy living permanence that shakes off the salty winds and lets in the sun and the natural beauty of the surrounding indigenous vegetation and mountain valley.

This house is located within a forest in the south of Chile in a place of boundless natural beauty. Its dense surrounding forest and rocks from the last glaciation compose a unique landscape.

Attics comprise a peculiar urban geography. As the tops of buildings, they can reveal surprising singularities that are hard to imagine when one is strolling through a city at ground level. Cupolas, pavilions, terraces and towers share the space with leafy plantations, delusions in textile, illegal transparent enclosures and sloping tiled roofs. This project is linked to this world of fantasy, which it exploits through the restoration of the site’s stunning original features and the invention of architectural operations close to woodwork and gardening.

On the small Danish rocky island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea lies Hammershus, the largest castle ruin in Northern Europe. Here, a new Visitor Centre has been built into the rocks opposite the ruin, which has been a popular tourist destination in Denmark for decades. After nearly five years of construction work, visitors can now sit in a café and enjoy the views of Hammershus, the surrounding landscape and the sea, or they can take a walk on the roof and be in the midst of nature. The centre is intended as a discreet building which does not draw too much attention to itself in relation to the surrounding protected forest and the best known tourist attraction on the island. Precisely the requirement for a discreet location in relation to the surroundings made it necessary for the architects to design a well-conceived piece of architecture with high aesthetic value.

The C building was designed for the current elementary school and in the future will be utilized for Ayb Middle School. The building is situated in front of the A and B buildings with a total area of 4200 sq.m. and a capacity to accommodate 240 students. Just as in the first two buildings, the C building’s architectural philosophy lies in creating an open and collaborative educational environment that is multifunctional and allows for learning to take place in multiple ways.

Around 600 B.C., King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon made a garden for his wife Amitis of Media Kingdom in the midst of desert, noticing she got homesick longing for her country’s forest. It is said that the garden was a “hanging garden,” that was built not on the ground but on a structure like terraced balconies. The garden was designed so well it felt like walking on regular ground. It is also said that water was drown from the far Euphrates River through water pipes, to continuously feed the plants in its garden. Probably all the advanced techniques of the time were used. Power of love created a garden hanging over the sky in the middle of the desert. It is regrettable that nothing remains, but still it is such a romantic story. This story became starting point.