AD Classics: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library / Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill | ArchDaily – The rare book library at Yale is an excellent example of modernism done right. While the building is largely self contained and self referential like most classic modernism, the library's carefully crafted spaces and exquisite materiality of the translucent marble facade, give it a sense of progression and reverence for the functionality of the library.

While the seriousness and sincerity that the library takes for its function seems out of date compared to the irony filled and clever architectural programs that spill out architecture schools and magazines, it is also its greatest asset. While so much modern architecture has lost its ability to affect and instead comes across empty or naive, this library still carries with it a sense self and purpose that is rare.

Hsiangshan Visitor Center / Norihiko Dan | ArchDaily – The Hsiangshan Visitor Center is spectacular in the way it engages and separates with the earth around it. Like a rock face, pushing up out of the ground, the Hsiangshan Visitor Center has a certain inevitability to it, without falling into banality. With long sweeps of concrete, that twist into openings or sweep out to form vistas to the landscape, the building has a unquestionably contemporary form, yet it doesn't fall into the all to typical foreign object perched in the landscape.

The building is like a continuous field of variation that extends the landscape and focuses it into a building. With its green roofs, the blur between landscape and architecture is further intensified.

Overall, the building is a study in extending the ordinary field and though using the formalisms of the singular, it actually critiques the approach that so many today favor, one of explosive expressionism that favors the object over the field.

Santo Stefano Cemetery in Italy / Amoretti + Calvi + Ranalli | Arch Daily – The expansion of the Santo Stefano Cemetery in Italy is set between the old cemetery and a waterfront way.  It consists of a series of cubic crypts each freestanding and set in two rows along a curving line with a path set between.  The project’s success comes from its use of such a simple object as the cubic crypt which is then subverted by arraying it into a field, breaking down the idea that architecture is about a singular object, continuous or discrete.  The crypts themselves are proportioned to meet the requirements of an interned human body giving an empathic quality to the crypts.  Each crypt like the body of the people inside.  Though it is a long standing tradition in Architecture for funeral monuments to be an expression of some idea of the person life, it is modern take to make the crypt emphatically relate to the human experience rather than express or represent it.

Ningbo Historic Museum / Wang Shu, Amateur Architecture Studio-Arch Daily – The Ningbo Historic Museum is a strange combination of local Chinese construction methods and contemporary formal logic. Made of board formed concrete, stone masonry and clay tiles mixed into patches, the walls of the building splay and tilt as they rise form the ground. Like a material collage, the building challenges one’s understanding of design as the hands of the workers can clearly be seen in the patches of material. Windows are sprinkled throughout the walls with little apparent logic. The interior courtyards are floored with gray wood decking from which the walls seeming to float above. The interiors are more refined and have a feel of many contemporary buildings while not giving up on a distinctly crafted feel.

It is difficult to come to a conclusion on the Ningbo Historic Mueseum as it seems to defy any kind of clear reading, but whatever the building is, it is definitely intriguing.

Villanueva’s Public Library / Meza + Piñol + Ramírez + Torres | Arch Daily – Villanueva’s Public Library is a study in spatial layering and materiality. The simple rectangular form of the main building is clad in stone gabions while the public loggia like space in front is clad with crisscrossing wood pallets which shade but still let diffuse light into the building. The two story structures houses a library as well a community theater and with its large loggia in the front, the building opens itself to the community.

The Villanueva’s Public Library is an excellent example of architecture working for its community, becoming something more without the need for expressive forms that lack anything beyond their singular expressive concept.