Japan

Atelier Bow-Wow's work in Tokyo defines new urban and architectural typologies. It shuns any particular style, instead developing a kind of accidental urban vernacular.

They have been described as urban detectives, scouring the urban fabric, seeking out examples of buildings that occupy the spaces that are left when the economic tide goes out.

The result of their research is a kind of architectural sampling in which buildings that they make can serve many different functions, such as sewage disposal and a sports hall.

The investigations, which began in 1991 and identified 70 examples of 'da-me' or 'no good' architecture, were published in 2001 in Made in Tokyo, which was a T-shirt as well as a catalogue and an exhibition.

Their 1999 Mini House was built on land set aside for the new Kan-8 Loop Road, which cut across the grid and created lots of leftover spaces, which they theoretically populated with examples of 'pet architecture' - the idea of small, ad hoc, customisable buildings. This strategy has given rise to built projects such as Gae House (2001), with its tiny footprint, but cantilevering roof whose glass underside gets the only light into the house and their house and atelier (2005) with its permeable interiors and its mingling of public and private spaces.

Made in Tokyo can be read as a guidebook to the demotic architecture of the post-bubble city. But it has a resonance for the rest of the world in that it suggests ways in which we can all begin to deal with our shrinking cities.

Atelier Bow-Wow was founded in 1992 by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima. The firm's name refers to a pack of dogs running, barking and sniffing around their city in search of new encounters and adventures.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto was born in Kanagawa in 1965 and obtained his PhD in 1994 from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, after studying in France at the Paris-Belleville School of Architecture.

Momoyo Kaijima was born in Tokyo in 1969 and graduated in 1991 from the Japan Women's University, after which she attended the Tokyo Institute of Technology, where she obtained her Master's degree. Both are currently professors, at the top of their game as architects.  

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© Atelier Bow-Wow 

Spain

Carlos Ferrater's firm, the Office of Architecture in Barcelona, is a partnership of experience and youth. Set up in 2006 and led by the renowned and innovative Catalan architect Carlos Ferrater, the aim was to bring in the youthful ideas of Xavier Martí, Lucía Ferrater, Borja Ferrater and Núria Ayala (who is projects director). The firm is not only concerned with construction projects, but its work is complemented and enriched by teaching and academic research.

Carlos was born in Barcelona in 1944, has a doctorate in architecture and is teacher of Architectural Design at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. His portfolio begins in 1971 with Instant City, his intricately interlinked inflatable tented structures in Ibiza.

He is the author of three city blocks in the Olympic Village of Barcelona at Parc de Mar and the Olympic Village on the edge of the city at Vall d'Hebron. Their creation not only regenerated two post-industrial parts of the city, but they are among the best examples of post Olympic legacy anywhere in the world.

His Botanical Garden in Barcelona (1999), which was designed by a team that included architect Josep Lluís Canos and landscape architect Bet Figueras, takes species from the world's five Mediterranean climate regions and recreates the landscapes found in nature.

Other recent projects are the Aquileia Tower (2008), a residential and commercial project that reunites two previously disjointed piazzas in Venice, and the Roca Gallery in Barcelona (2009), an exhibition space and learning centre about the history of water, with a façade of blades of glass strokes rhythmically illuminated by LED lights. West Beach Promenade in Benidorm, completed in 2010, recreates in white concrete the shapes of cliffs and waves creating a series of organic convex and concave spaces full of light and shadow for play or contemplation.

Ferrater was awarded the 2001 National Spanish Architecture Award and the 2009 National Architecture Award by the Spanish Ministry of Housing for his overall career. He has twice been a finalist for the Mies van der Rohe Award. His work has been exhibited in both the International Pavilion and the Spanish Pavilion at the 2004 Venice Biennale, and at MoMA, New York.

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© Alejo Bagué  

Japan

Sou Fujimoto's architectural design is always in search of new forms and new spaces. After graduating in architecture from Tokyo University, his first built work was for Seidai Hospital, for which he designed an occupational therapy building in 1996, adding a new ward in 1999.

He founded Sou Fujimoto Architects in 2000 when he was just 29. A lot of his work continued to be in the healthcare field, particularly in that of mental health. Like many young architects, he was gaining housing commissions: his T house (2005) with its radial walls creating a series of alcoves, the House at Tateyama (2007) with its limbs laid out to define specific views, and House N (2009), with its nest of boxes creating layers of privacy.

In 2005 he started to gain visibility not least in the west, when he was highly commended for a residential care unit in Hokkaido in the AR Award for Emerging Architects, a much-coveted international award among young architects run by The Architectural Review. In the following year he won the Grand Prize for his Treatment Center for Mentally Disturbed Children, again in Hokkaido, taking yet a third AR Award in 2007 with his house in Chiba. As a result he was invited to serve on the jury in 2008.

His first large-scale institutional project was the Musashino Art University Library, which he describes as a forest of books. Although he has had to simplify his competition-winning design, which jumbled up the books' classification, he has developed instead a spiral plan that allows for the linear, as well as the random discovery of books.

His work was again celebrated by The Architectural Review in August 2011 when it published his project for an art museum in Aix-en-Provence: a series of buildings that exploit the functional, spatial and aesthetic potential of repetition, with a series of three-cubic-metre modules set in a one-square-kilometre domain, each containing one work of art.

In 2008 Sou Fujimoto published Primitive Future, which became the year's best-selling architecture book. He has lectured at Kyoto university since 2007.

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© D Vintiner 

Germany/Austria

Anna Heringer was born in 1977 in Rosenheim, Germany, studied at the University of Linz and practices in Salzburg and regularly in Bangladesh, which she has visited annually ever since she took a voluntary year out as a development learner for social services in 1997.

She sums up the philosophy of her practice thus:
'Architecture is a tool to improve lives. The vision behind, and motivation for my work is to explore and use architecture as a medium to strengthen cultural and individual confidence, to support local economies and to foster the ecological balance.'

In 2008 she developed the DESI building and HOMEmade project on rural housing in Bangladesh, running three months' of workshops for architecture students from Bangladesh and Austria in cooperation with the NGOs Dipshikha and Shanti. The project won an Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award.

Between 2005 and 2006, working with Eike Roswag, she fundraised for, organised, planned and implemented the METI handmade school project in Bangladesh, which won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. The jury said of the project: 'This joyous and elegant two-storey primary school in rural Bangladesh has emerged from a deep understanding of local materials and a heart-felt connection to the local community. Its innovation lies in the adaptation of traditional methods and materials of construction to create light-filled celebratory spaces, as well as informal spaces for children.'

The school also won and Emerging Architecture Award from the Architectural Review in 2006.

She has been visiting professor at the University of Art and Design in Linz since 2008, during which time she has also held the Gertrud Luise Goldschmidt Professorship at the University of Stuttgart. She has acted as a consultant to the Aga Khan Foundation in Mozambique.

Her doctorate at the Technischen Universität Munich was entitled: Homemade: Practical strategies for sustainable building in the rural regions of northern Bangladesh making use of indigenous potential. She lectures in universities and at international conferences, and still gets her hands dirty helping to build the projects that she has designed. She also finds time to illustrate children's books. 

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© Doug Cogger 

Switzerland

Christian Kerez's work is distinguished by constant formal and architectural research. Indeed, Kerez considers architecture to be the result of an ongoing study of space and the pathways that lead through it, generating alternative approaches.

His preferred tools are models, which he moulds and then constantly questions the results - Kerez incessantly explores numerous design possibilities.

He was born in 1962 in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and was educated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. He received a Masters in Architecture in 1988 and has taught there since 2001. He was a design architect in the office of Rudolf Fontana from 1991 to 1993.

After extensive published work in the field of architectural photography, he opened his own architectural office in Zurich in 1993. Despite his background in architectural photography and the quality of the imagery on his website, he is critical of the profession's reliance on the architectural image and computer-generated images in particular.

The Kunstmuseum in the Liechtenstein capital Vaduz (2000) was designed by Christian Kerez, with Meinrad Morger and Heinrich Degelo. The mysterious, highly tactile black box form is of tinted concrete and black basalt stone embedded with pebbles from the Rhine. Inside, the black box becomes a white cube. Arranged around two staircases, the galleries have a precise clarity, while the plan enables diagonal views through the building.

Kerez's 2003 Forsterstrasse apartment project is spread over five levels. The internal planning is reminiscent of Mies's brick wall houses: a series of orthogonal perpendicular walls defining individual spaces that flow from one to the other.

His 2007 Single Wall House in Zurich is an apparently simple project, but is in fact sophisticated both structurally and spatially. It is two houses in a single structure where the volume has been split both vertically and horizontally. The party wall zig-zags, taking a different line on each of the three floors, add to the interest.

Leutschenbach School in Zurich (2009) breaks new ground in the school design, bringing together all functions under one roof: classrooms, cafeteria, music rooms, meeting rooms and gym. Unusually, the gym hall is on the top floor instead of being submerged underground.

In the course of his career Kerez has exhibited all over the world, including in New York, Paris and Shanghai.

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© Karin Hofer

Spain

Born in Navarre in 1957, Francisco Mangado gained a degree in architecture in 1982 from the University of Navarre School of Architecture, where he has since taught. He has also held professorships at Harvard, Yale and Lausanne. He combines his academic and foundation work with his architectural practice at his studio in Pamplona.

Mangado's award-winning work includes convention centres in Pamplona, Palenica and Navarre, and a museum of archaeology in Vitoria. His latest works are the extension of the Fine Arts Museum of Asturias in Oviedo, and an office tower in Buenos Aires. His works of urbanism include squares in Bordeaux, Olite, Estella and Madrid. His work is also recognised abroad. In Goa he has built a monastery, church and an aid centre, while in Japan he built a library for Kansai.

The new Congress Centre in Palma de Mallorca (2004) is close to the walls of the historical centre and features an 11-metre-high canopy that covers a sequence of volumes, creating an urban continuum, which is embellished by a small raised garden.

He was commissioned to design the Spanish Pavilion for the 2008 International Exposition in Zaragoza. The intricate ephemeral structure was composed of 750 clay columns with metallic cores, reminiscent both of a bamboo grove and a Graeco-Roman temple, which appeared to float in shallow pools of water. The clay drew up the water to cool the building - a gesture so beautiful and simple that visitors wondered why all eco-solutions could not be like this.

By contrast, the football stadium in Palencia (2007) is simplicity itself: a straightforward ribbed metal box with four of the sturdiest yet most elegant pylons supporting the floodlights ever seen in a sports arena.

The white cubes of his Municipal Exhibition and Congress Centre in Ávila, completed in 2009, form a dynamic contrast with the flowing drums of the honey-coloured city walls of the ancient town. Seen from the walls, the roof planes appear as a piece of sculpture hewn from the landscape.

The Auditorium and Congress Centre in Pamplona and the Exhibition and Congress Centre in Ávila were included in the exhibition on Spanish architecture held at the MoMA in New York City in 2006.

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© Manuel Castells