Whilst in Malta I had a chance to check out the progress on the works being done to the Valletta city gate, Opera House and new Parliament building all designed by Renzo Piano. The project bears some striking similarities to Unit H work!
As you can see from the photo above the parliament building is clad in stone panels that are not too dissimilar to some of your 1:1 elements which you designed in Portugal. Large stone panels have been cut from the local limestone. There are 4 types of panel and these are repeated over the whole facade in what appears to be a random pattern that when viewed from afar resembles the weathered stone found in the bastion walls close-by.
The city gate, see photos below, consists of an infilled section of the old city walls. As you can see the old walls are not built up but cut into the bedrock, the extracted stone used to build parts of the city. So in many ways this resembles the quarry walls in Estremos, except that the stone is of a very different quality - softer and therefore very eroded.
The new infilled stone is clean and smooth, purposely contrasting with the old - with a 'shadow gap' of powder coated grey steel a gesture that further accentuates the contrast between old and new.
Below are photos of the Opera House, originally a neoclassical building that was bombed in WW2 and left as a ruin until this project. Piano has kept the remains of the bombed building and added steel masts, translucent screens, stands and seating so that it is now used as an outdoor theatre.
One of the most loved elements are the public steps shown in the image below, a generous public gesture where previously the public steps that led to an upper level road were creepy and smelly.
