When the famous Bauhaus school of architecture and design first opened in Weimar, Germany in 1919, the majority of students were women. That wasn’t by design, though founder Water Gropius took the unusual stance of declaring equality among genders; it was simply that more women than men applied the first year. The school’s focus on ushering the world into a new era attracted all manner of radicals, which would later make it a target of the Nazis.

Talk about the Bauhaus movement tends to focus on its most famous figures – Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kandinsky. But women like Marianne Brandt, Anni Albers, Florence Henri and Ilse Fehling played key roles in Bauhaus, too, roles that don’t get enough attention. A new film called “Lotte am Bauhaus” fictionalizes their stories, focusing on a character named Lotte Brendel who draws inspiration from Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.

“Although their names were condemned to a footnote, the Bauhaus also trained women. In the hundredth anniversary of its foundation, this historical drama roams the Staatliche Bauhaus classrooms from the point of view of one of its artists, Lotte Brendel, character inspired by the great Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.”

For now, at least, the German-language film appears to only be streaming on the European service Film-in, and translations into English don’t seem to be available. Directed by Gregor Schnitzler, Lotte am Bauhaus premiered in Germany this year and stars Alicia von Rittberg.

You can learn more of the stories of the Women of Bauhaus, including sculptor Alma Siedhoff-Buscher, in a detailed profile at Curbed.

Legendary Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill may be most widely known for his dystopian-looking postmodern housing estate Le Palacio d’Abraxas as well as his own reclaimed cement factory home, but his body of work is much more colorful and diverse than these examples would suggest. Celebrated for modernizing historic and regional architectural attributes in his own distinctive style, Bofill counts a number of iconic structures among his oeuvre, including the vivid La Muralla Roja (The Red Wall, 1972), a vision in pastel hues set against the Mediterranean Sea.

Bofill founded his architectural and urban design practice Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura in 1963, and nearly sixty years later, after completing over 1,000 projects in over 50 countries, he’s still working. Born and raised in Catalonia, he’s credited with helping to revive the signature craftsmanship of Catalan architecture.

A period of time spent working in North Africa in the early 1970s, where he completed such works as the Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique in Morocco (above), seems to have infused Bofill’s sensibilities with a kind of color palette not often seen in Western architecture and enhanced his fondness for abstracting traditional patterns and manipulating classic forms. These elements, melded with a certain idealism and controlled theatricality, make Bofill’s work over the decades truly unmistakable.

Bofill’s planning skills are evident in such large projects as Walden 7 (1975), a terracotta-colored apartment building in the town of Sant Just Desvern near Barcelona. Even with a minuscule budget, Bofill produced a wonder of a tower full of intricate geometries. Its name is derived from the sci-fi novel ‘Walden Two’ by B.F. Skinner, referring to a utopia, and the attention to detail afforded to its every nook and cranny gives us a sense of how Bofill saw the project at the time. Walden 7 is an illustration of Bofill’s theory of “The City in Space,” a formal approach to architecture that envisions collective housing serving all the necessities of people and communities through design.

It’s monumental by nature, more than a little radical, incorporating elements of Bofill’s then-Communist politics. Looking at this building and others Bofill designed around the same time, one sees strict geometric order enforced through cubic volumes, grids, courtyards and arcades, all arranged very precisely to make maximum use of the space. This is also clear in one of his earlier works, Kafka Castle (1968), an apartment complex consisting of 90 units, restaurants, a pool, a sauna and a bar. However, a series of designs that would remain unbuilt would ultimately lead him to abandon this theory.

Where other postmodern architects of the time took a far more minimalist approach, Bofill clearly enjoyed bringing a touch of the Baroque into his projects, a tendency exemplified in Les Espaces d’Abraxas, an otherworldly housing estate in Seine-Saint-Denis, France. Designed as a direct rebuttal to Le Corbusier’s utopian visions of the 1950s, which Bofill saw as lacking style, the Espaces Abraxes in Noisy-le-Grand was meant to represent an ideal city. In practice, to the residents who have lived in it over the decades, it’s said to have felt closed-off, lacking in community spirit – the opposite of what Bofill intended.

Along with similar structures built at the same time in the area, onlookers typically compare it to a prison or a fortress. Fittingly enough, it has since been used as the setting for such films as Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ and ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay.’ Photographed here by Laurent Kronental as part of his series ‘Souvenir d’un Futur’ (Memory of a Future,) the Espaces Abraxas is still in use today, its residents having fought off several attempts to demolish it. Clearly, whether or not it’s your architectural cup of tea, it has significant value.

Many of the individual elements that can be identified among all of these works can be found unified in La Fabrica, Bofill’s own residence and the headquarters of his eponymous firm. Post-Modernism, Catalonian vernacular, industrial architecture, Brutalism and other styles converge in a project Bofill first began more than forty years ago, and which he says will never be officially complete.

Formerly a cement factory built in the 19th century, La Fabrica now looks like a lush reclaimed castle covered in grass and vines and packed with surrealist features, like staircases that lead nowhere. It’s a fitting home for one of the world’s greatest living architects, imbued with his spirit and his vision of what urbanism could look like.

Based in Basel, Switzerland, the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron is known for dramatic, monumental Modernist structures free of frivolity, expanding over the years from simple geometric silhouettes to more complex and dynamic shapes. Each of their buildings is almost like an oversized sculpture, some rising high above street level or cantilevering at striking angles while others, like their recent Berggruen campus, lie low and flat. These 10 projects represent some of the firm’s most iconic and memorable works.

Berggruen Institute, Los Angeles, California

The firm conceived this new campus for the Berggruen Institute overlooking Los Angeles as a “landscape vision,” building on only a small area of the 447-acre site to keep 90% of it open and natural. Built along a mountain ridge in the Santa Monica mountains, the campus includes an elevated ‘frame’ surrounding a large courtyard garden and spherical lecture hall. It will act as a private educational forum for scholars and leaders in various fields working to “provide critical analysis and new ideas that will shape political, economic and social institutions.”

56 Leonard Street Skyscraper, New York City

Construction of Herzog & de Meuron’s latest New York City skyscraper is complete, and the firm has released a stunning time lapse of the building process. This structure is envisioned as a stack of individual houses arranged in a Jenga-like formation, giving it a pixelated appearance. This arrangement also creates a series of terraces and projecting balconies on every level.

Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany

At $900 million, the price tag for Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg is undeniably astronomical, but many in the city – and the international architecture community – say it’s worthwhile. Positioned on top of a 19th-century warehouse, the new structure glitters in a series of buoyant waves, echoing the water of the adjacent Elbe River. The 26-floor, 700,000-square-foot complex features a sweeping 269-foot escalator, performance halls, a main auditorium and a rooftop terrace.

1111 Lincoln Road, Miami, Florida

Helping to popularize a trend of high-design parking garages, 1111 Lincoln Road is a stunning, angular concrete structure positioned in one of Miami’s most active pedestrian areas, overlooking the city’s iconic Art Deco architecture. “Jacques Herzog stated that this building will reinterpret the essence of Tropical Modernism, and it somehow reminds me of the modern movement in Brazil, with raw structures providing shade, while containing smaller enclosing sub-elements,” the architects explain. “The slabs stand over a set of irregular columns, giving a sense of a precarious equilibrium. These columns also cast different shadows, giving more character to the facade.”

M.H. De Young Museum, San Francisco, California

Reviving an 1895 museum that was destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco dramatically departs from the visuals of its predecessor, keeping only historic elements like sphinxes and original palm trees and taking on a monumental silhouette. Its inverted pyramid-shaped tower twists atop its ground-level roof, making it a landmark from a distance. Materials like stone, copper and wood help merge it with its park-like environment.

Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain

For the TEA cultural center in Spain, Herzog and de Meuron wanted to interfuse and interflow various activities and spaces within the center, cutting a new public path diagonally through the complex connected to the top of the General Serrador Bridge. The triangular space at the center is a new public plaza open and accessible to everyone in the city, featuring a cafe and restaurant along with the capability to become an open-air cinema. “The spatial interplay between inside and outside integrates rather than separates the very diverse urban landscapes which are so fascinating in Santa Cruz. The new cultural centre is therefore not only a place of encounter for people but also a place of intersection for the landscape of the contemporary city, the old city with its skyline along the Barranco and the archaic topography of the Barranco itself.”

Beijing ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic Stadium, China

Completed in 2008, the national stadium in Beijing sits in the center of the Olympic complex, and like many Olympic structures once the Games are over, it has reportedly fallen into disuse and disrepair. In its prime, it was one of the most complex stadiums ever built, and it was especially impressive at night, when illuminated from within. Taking inspiration from Chinese ceramics, it integrates criss-crossing steel beams to hide the supports for the retractible roof, which was later removed from the design. Still, those beams remain its most striking and notable feature.

Feltrinelli Porta Volta

A long, gabled volume with a gridded exterior stretches down a Milan street, hosting a research center and offices for Fondazione Giangiacamo Feltrinelli. Situated within the city’s Ports Volta district, the elongated building is all white and glass, with glazing continuing right up its 5-story facade onto its roof. A strip of greenery stretches from the boulevard to its rear entrance. “The new buildings are inspired by the simplicity and generous scale of historic Milanese architecture such as the Ospedale Maggiore, the Rotunda della Besana the Lazzaretto and Sfrozesco Castle,” says Herzog & de Meuron.

VitraHaus

Another instant Herzog & de Meuron classic utilizing gabled typologies is VitraHaus, commissioned by home design company Vitra to present their home collection on their campus in Weil am Rhein, between the border of Switzerland and Germany. 12 ‘houses’ are stacked together into a five-story structure, with five houses at the base and seven more stacked on top of them. Some are cantilevered up to 49 feet, and all of them feature glazed ends to show off Vitra’s interiors.

The Tanks at the Tate Modern, London

‘The Tanks’ are a series of underground gallery and performance spaces beneath the Tate Modern Museum in London, converted from former oil storage spaces by Herzog and de Meuron. In a previous life, the space the gallery occupies was a power station. The architecture firm transformed the raw industrial spaces without disguising their origins, giving them a vague dystopian feel.

Tadao Ando’s work consists of more than just the tangible architectural materials making up each structure, masterfully utilizing reflection, simple palettes and negative space to incorporate wind, water and light into the carefully designed compositions. The self-taught yet Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect infuses these elements – most notably in the form of reflecting pools and ponds – into almost all of his creations, yet it always seems fresh, each structure standing firm in its own identity.

Water Temple, Awaji, Japan, 1991

Serving as the residence for the oldest sect of Tantric Buddhism in Japan, the Water Temple is considered one of Tadao Ando’s most striking achievements. An oval of concrete encloses a lake of lotus flowers, which are symbols of heaven, with a set of stairs leading to its reflective surface. The journey from the gravel path outside up to this pinnacle symbolizes successive places of initiation.

The Oval at Benesse Art Museum Naoshima, Japan, 2004

Says the architect of this space serving as a museum for the town of Naoshima and his own work, “In the ANDO MUSEUM, I nestled a concrete box within the old mink house. The box has a gently curved ceiling. One of its walls aligns with the main axis of the house and is tilted towards the ridge-beam to generate a feeling of openness that extends dynamically into the space above. Sunlight descends down through the deep space from a skylight opening at the top of the wooden roof. My aim was to create a space that conjures a rich sense of depth despite its small size, where oppositional elements such as the past and present, wood and concrete, and light and shadow clash intensely as they are superimposed against each other.”

Casa Monterrey, Mexico, 2011

Nestled into a hillside in Mexico, Casa Monterrey’s defining feature is the swimming pool that cantilevers out over the slope, punctuated with concrete walls that strategically frame views of the rocky Cumbres de Monterrey National Park. Designed to accommodate a family, the three-story house is built around a double-height library. A rooftop terrace provides gorgeous views of the landscape as well as that pool, which seems to extend the sky right into the yard.

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, 2002

One of Ando’s most iconic structures, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth incorporates Y-shaped concrete supports that are doubled by the 1.5-acre reflecting pool that comes right up to the building’s exterior walls. Five flat-roofed pavilions seem to rise up out of the water, constructed in a limited palette of simple materials that make the landscape and the art inside the main focus but still come together into an elegant whole. “By using glass as a wall, physically there is a barrier, protection from the outside, but visually there is no boundary between outside and inside,” says Ando. “There is also the light that comes off the water through the glass that indicates a lack of boundary an can make its presence felt on the wall.”

Church on the Water, Hokkaido, 1988

This classic Tadao Ando work faces seated congregants inside a minimalist church building so they’re gazing out at a cross in the middle of a pond. The church consists of two overlapping cubes, a steel-and-glass entrance structure and the main volume serving as the chapel. The glass wall overlooking the pond can be opened or closed depending on the weather. Unsurprisingly, Church on the Water is one of Japan’s most popular wedding destinations.

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Reflecting On A Master Architect 10 Water Centric Works By Tadao Ando

The world lost a star architect this week, trailblazing Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid, who was the first woman to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Gold Medal. Her striking modern structures are experimental, visionary and bold, never afraid to make a strong statement. These are not buildings designed to blend into their environments, but rather sculptural focal points, every one of them a landmark in its respective city. Attempting to narrow down her best works is as futile as it is subjective, but here are five that stand out as prime examples of her distinctive style.

Glasgow Riverside Museum of Transport

The spiky, jagged front facade of this museum flows into ribbons of reflective zinc, symbolizing the landscape of its setting as the junction of the rivers Clyde and Kelvin. Designed like a linear tunnel bent to one side, its roof mimicking waves in the water, with a column-free, open center for hosting exhibits. Said Hadid of the project, “Through architecture, we can investigate future possibilities yet also explore the cultural foundations that have defined the city. The Riverside Museum is a fantastic and truly unique project where the exhibits and building come together at this prominent and historic location on the Clyde to enthuse and inspire all visitors.”

Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku

The organic form of this cultural center in Azerbaijan gives it the look of a gigantic sea shell nestled among rectilinear Soviet architecture, establishing fluid connections between itself and the surrounding plaza. It’s all vaulted curves and sinuous lines extending over the roof and back to the ground again. Said Hadid, “Elaborate formations such as undulations, bifurcations, folds, and inflection modify this plaza surface into an architectural landscape that performs a multitude of functions: welcoming, embracing, and directing visitors through different levels of the interior. With this gesture, the building blurs the conventional differentiation between architectural object and urban landscape, building envelope and urban plaza, figure and ground, interior and exterior.”

Messner Mountain Museum, Corones

Poking out of a peak within the Italian Alps, the Messner Mountain Museum Corones almost seems to have unearthed itself from the depths of Mount Kronplatz to look out onto South Tyrol. In fact, the overlook visible from outside is only the tip of a structure enabling visitors to explore the mountain’s caverns and grottos. Views from the shard-like lookouts are directed to specific peaks, and the pale exterior panels are informed by the tones of the adjacent limestone.

London Aquatics Center

The undulating swimming venue for the 2012 Olympics in London is inspired by “the fluid geometries of water in motion,” nearly every line within the interior taking its shape from waves. As dynamic and beautiful as it truly is, the design reflects a certain deliberate restraint on Hadid’s part. In contrast to the visually dazzling spaces she’s known for, this interior takes care not to outshine its intended purpose, keeping focus on the pool and its inhabitants. As seen in the aerial photography, controversial ‘wings’ were added to Hadid’s design to accommodate extra seating during the Games, but have since been removed to honor the integrity of her original vision.

MAXXI Museum, Rome

Often referred to as Hadid’s most iconic project, the MAXXI Museum of the Arts of the XXI Century in Rome complements the city’s antiquities while also bringing in a much-needed freshness and fluidity. An historic city full of ruins, without a lot of notable modern architecture, can start to feel static. Hadid injects a sense of vitality without dwarfing the centuries-old architecture in its immediate vicinity. Said Hadid, “Here we are weaving a dense texture of interior and exterior spaces. It’s an intriguing mixture of permanent, temporary and commercial galleries, irrigating large urban field with linear display surfaces. It could be a library; there are so many buildings that are not standing next to, but are intertwined and superimposed over one another. This means that, through the organizational diagram, you could weave other programs into the whole idea of gallery spaces. You can make connections between architecture and art – the bridges can connect them and make them into one exhibition.”