LIVING

Dear Readers,

we had almost forgotten how to do it: booking flights, reserving hotel rooms, packing suitcases – none of that had happened in the last few months – until the Biennale Architettura summoned the press to Venice for the preview days in May (picture above). Having been postponed twice due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 17th Architecture Biennale, curated by architect Hashim Sarkis, is open until 21 November, presenting 114 contributions from 46 countries. Besides impressions on the AIT Editors Blog on Facebook, we also present a small excerpt at the beginning of our Forum (pp. 10 – 11). You will see: A trip to Venice is definitely worthwhile! And it was also worth waiting for the new Berlin Capital Airport BER, which – barely opened on a modest scale in late October 2020 – has already been forced back into a slumber due to the second lockdown. When I travelled to the “Woman in architecture journalism” panel discussion (p. 14) in June and landed in Berlin-Schönefeld, I was able to see for myself that the airport is now completed and working – and also really good. Gerkan Marg und Partner have succeeded in creating an elegant, timeless interior, with varied catering and shopping facilities. In case you want to indulge your wanderlust soon, we can be of help. In the article “A weekend in …” (p. 30), architect and bag designer Esther Tsatsas takes you on a tour of Frankfurt. The series “Three…” (p. 34) features holiday homes in Mexico, on the Danish coast and in Bad Hindelang. The rest of our AIT issue on the subject of living is, of course, taken up by residential projects (from p. 68), which we have selected because they are refreshingly different and unconventional. The tiny flats in Stuttgart, Mantua, London and Singapore are real space miracles. The flats in Hamburg, Girona, Murcia, Madrid and Prague boast unusual interiors and floor plan solutions, and the apartment buildings in Basel and Vaduz do not cater to any single-family house cliché. We wish you a wonderful summer – on tour and at home!

Best wishes
Petra Stephan, Dipl.-Ing.
Chief Editor
Architect