Villa Vals

Villa Vals in Switzerland.

SeARCH & Christian Müller Architects

Photos: Iwan Baan

Swiss Emergency Call Services

Absolutely gorgeous. AND it's an Emergency Call Center. Hurrah for creating beautiful spaces for workers in demanding and intensive services.

The historic merit of the space and surrounding buildings led to it's largely underground placement.

Architect: Santiago Calatrava Valls

Image Source (top): unidentified

Photo Source (bottom): galinsky.com

Underground Helsinki

(Image: Temppeliaukio Church, Helsinki, Credits: Jon Hicks/Corbis, Source: Scandinavia for Design Lovers)

It makes perfect sense that my interest in the underground was born while living in Scandinavia. Stockholm has been referred to as a "swiss cheese" city (due to the plethora of carved out, underground facilities and spaces there) and other Scandinavian cities are host to an impressive range of well designed subsurface spaces.

I have a plethora of articles from the past few decades relating to all things underground...but for here and now, a link to one Finnish based architect posting on "Subterranea Helsinki." The Finnish capital is apparently the first city on the globe to have created an 'underground master plan, so it is one of the most obvious places to look to for pioneering and interesting architectural and planning concepts placed underground.

"Theater in the Rock"

Theater in the Rock, Tadao Ando

"Valkenburg"

I quite unfortunately have no source info for the above image. If and when found I will add it. The sole info I currently have attached to the graphic is "Valkenburg"(and it's not the Valkenburg in NL). I suspect it is from an article for a conceptual design for a building in Norway.