Magazine

In the midst of typical narrow-walled facades in Berlin, Richter Musikowski has built an exhibition and event building that breaks with this monotony, creates urban spaces through its massing, and stands out from its neighbors through a carefully detailed glass skin. John Hill, Thomas Geuder

A porous skin of copper panels shields the fluid interior of the Louisiana State Museum and Sports Hall of Fame in Natchitoches. Over one thousand cast stone panels, provided by Advanced Architectural Stone, sculpt the multi-level foyer. John Hill

One of the highlights of the 2014 Venice Biennale's Elements of Architecture exhibition is Barkow Leibinger's Kinetic Wall, appropriately found in the Wall Room and signaling the way forward through its moving parts and elastic skin. John Hill

Circles at various scales predominate in the new Fletcher Hotel situated near the A2 highway southeast of central Amsterdam. Octatube worked with Benthem Crouwel Architects to realize the outer glass skin but also its structure and the inner layer, creating an integrated façade system. John Hill

On September 19, 2012, the new Folkwang Library opened on the Essen-Werden campus of the Folkwang University of the Arts. The boxy building, designed in a 2006 competition by Max Dudler, holds a 200,000-strong musicological collection behind a translucent skin that looks like stone but is in fact... John Hill