The Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra (born 1892 in Vienna, died 1970 in Wuppertal), one of the most important ex ponents of "Classical Modernism", rose to fame primarily due to his houses in southern California. In his designs, he combined variable spatial configurations with large glass fronts to create light, diaphanous ensembles, which he embedded with great sensitivity in carefully laid out gardens and landscapes.

All the stakeholders in the European precast-concrete industry – manufacturers, suppliers, specifiers, customers, users, etc. – will be gathering at Cannes, on the French Riviera, on 16th and 17th June. The BIBM Congress is organized every three years and is held in a different country each time: this year it will be hosted by France and the country's national representative FIB (Fédération de l'Industrie du Béton).

Spanish architect and engineer Felix Candela (1910-1997), who emigrated to Mexico in 1939, designed and built sensational, pioneering structures with thin concrete shells especially in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, Morelos.

The Palazetto dello Sport in Rome made him world-famous in 1960. Only a stone's throw away, the work of this engineer architect is now being celebrated in an exhibition spectacle. Pier Luigi Nervi (1891-1979) is one of the major protagonists of Italian architecture and art in civil engineering of the past century.

Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura is the winner of this year's Pritzker Prize. The annual prize, which goes to a living architect, is endowed by the wealthy Pritzker family, majority owners of Hyatt Hotels and other businesses. It was first bestowed on American architect Philip Johnson in 1979, and has since been awarded to architects from around the world including Souto de Moura's former teacher Alvaro Siza in 1992.

Now for the third time, the interior architecture course at the Mainz University of Applied Sciences, Germany, has organised a semester project
going by the name of "Material as Design Impetus". This year, under the leadership of Prof. Bernd Benninghoff, the project is all about the substance of concrete. The material itself should inspire the design. Sixteen aspiring designers started their work, full of dedication and enthusiasm. The project relied on a close collaboration with a network of businesses in order to demonstrate how concrete can be used in an experimental and conceptual manner for developing new furniture products and interior design elements.

Two first prizes were awarded this time to year 2010 students for design masterpieces by the sponsorship association of the federal academy for concreters (FBB). Bernd Abert, with his heatable relaxing chair, and Jörg Bayer, with his mobile partition walls, were both able to win over the jury. Thomas Meier received a commendation for his curvilinear bar counter.

The original Neues Museum was erected according to plans by Friedrich August Stüler in the mid-19th century. During the Second World War, it was seriously damaged. Reconstruction began in 2003 with the aim of restoring the building to its former glory. David Chipperfield, who worked on this project with fellow British architect Julian Harrap, chose a dynamic approach in his restoration. Instead of concealing the differences between old and new elements, the past and present have been combined in a wonderful way to create a unique, multilayered building. The Neues Museum in Berlin has now been honoured with the Mies van der Rohe award – the EU prize for con temporary architecture.

His most well-known building structure is a stadium. Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura (58) will be presented with the renowned Pritzker Prize in this year. The award is considered to be the Nobel prize of architecture and is endowed with US-$100,000 (about € 70,000). He created many of his works out of concrete.

Infrastructure buildings have shaped the image of Switzerland; they are of central significance in creating a kind of cohesion throughout the entire country. Inscribed in the landscape with the ambition of architecture the Albula Railway, Susten Pass or bridges by Hans-Ulrich Grubenmann & Robert Moser, Robert Maillart, Alexandre Sarrasin and Christian Menn are con sidered as masterpieces of civil engineering. At the same time there are also countless other such structures – bridges, footbridges, tunnels, retaining walls, roads – that are hardly ever noticed and at most are only briefly perceived in passing. The photographs presented in this exhibition are the result of various joint forays made by the engineer Jürg Conzett and the photo grapher Martin Linsi through out Switzerland. From the urban agglomeration areas around Basel and Zurich the journey leads through Graubünden, over the Susten Pass and finally into the cantons of Ticino and Wallis. Deliberately visited along the way are structures ranging from the incunabula of civil engineering to unspectacular facilities. The subjective viewpoint of a prominent engineer was decisive in the selection of works and definitive examples, which in any case served as inspiration for his own work. In this respect photos of Conzettʼs own bridges are provided alongside his historical sources of inspiration. One of these bridges is shown in this issue of opus C: the Aaresteg in Brugg. Originally presented in Venice the exhibi tion has been adapted by S AM Swiss Architecture Museum to its own exhibition space in Basel. The exhibition will end on 21 August 2011.