Six to watch in '98.

As in all creative professions, new talent is the lifeblood of architecture. Yet it is often hard for young practices to develop and sustain a credible body of work. Here, we survey the careers and future prospects of six emerging architects from around the world, whose work holds great promise for the coming year and beyond.

Seth Stein

Trained at the Architectural Association, Seth Stein has worked for both Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, setting up his own practice in London in 1989. As a graduate from the Foster/Rogers proving ground, his work has a material refinement and expresses a Modernist pleasure in the manipulation of space and light. The courtyard house he designed for himself and his family in Kensington (AR October 1996) makes ingenious use of a Victorian stableyard; similarly the little mews house in this issue is both jewel-like and inventive. Like many young practices, he has built up a reputation with a series of small but beautifully executed domestic and commercial projects. Current work includes private houses in Toronto and on Osterskoven Island, Finland; the latter based on the dimensional module of a standard photovoltaic panel which will supply power to the house for eight months of the year. In London, Stein has also just completed the Interim Art Gallery for Maureen Paley, who represents recent Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing.

Carl-Viggo Holmebakk

Carl-Viggo Holmebakk is one of a younger generation of Norwegian architects continuing that country's scrupulous, clear-sighted approach to design. Holmebakk trained at the Oslo School of Architecture and at the Cooper Union in New York before returning to work in private practice in Oslo. He set up his own practice in 1986. Projects such as a garden workshop (AR October 1997), private library, various small houses and prototypes for bus shelters, epitomise the functional traditions of the workshop and a Scandinavian regard for material honesty. Each is the product of sophisticated tectonic intuition, coupled with a forensic attention to detail. Holmebakk's modest workload includes a new summerhouse at Risor and various projects and prototypes for the Norwegian State road service, building on his earlier experience of working for Norwegian State Railways.

Studio Granda 

Based in Reykjavik since the late 1980s, Studio Granda was founded by Margret Hardardottir and Steve Christer, who met while studying at the Architectural Association. Their radical, competition-winning scheme for Reykjavik City Hall (AR October 1992) attracted much attention, yet displayed a maturity and sophistication in the elegant way in which it responded to Iceland's distinctive topography and climate. Christer and Hardardottir balance architecture and design, cosmopolitan and local associations with an assured handling of space, light and materials. Their Supreme Court of Iceland (to be featured later this year) extends their repertoire of major public buildings, as does their competition-winning proposal for the Reykjavik Art Museum, but they have also concentrated their attention on modest private houses, interiors and even product design. They formed the Icelandic component in the impressive 'New Generation of the North' exhibition organised by the Finnish Museum of Architecture at the 1996 Venice Biennale.

Wendell Burnette

Wendell Burnette's slightly unconventional route through architectural training involved a combination of travelling, study, observation, apprenticeship and a three year period at Taliesin West. He worked in William Bruder's office for 11 years, and was job architect on the New Phoenix Central Library (AR March 1996). In 1996 he set up his own practice in Phoenix, and as for many newly independent architects, his first project was his own house and studio (AR November 1997). Like his mentor Will Bruder, Burnette's architecture is grounded in an understanding of place; particularly the desert climate and landscape of the America's south-western states. Burnette is also resourceful in making buildings on limited budgets that are both functional and poetic; his own house is a testbed for formal and material experimentation that convincingly reinterprets Modernist tenets of transparency, structural expression and spatial interpenetration. Construction is just about to start on the Nichols Residence in Paradise Valley Arizona, a new dwelling for private clients who wanted their house to be like a piece of modern sculpture.

Erick van Egeraat

Having studied at Delft University, Erick van Egeraat founded Mecanoo Architects in Rotterdam in 1983. His work with the partnership had a sense of youthful self-confidence and a sense of lightness that has evolved into a more complex sensibility. In 1995 he left Mecanoo to set up his own practice and has since completed a range of projects, including a Laboratory for Physics and Astronomy in Leiden, an extension to the Museum of Natural History in Rotterdam and proposals for new housing in Bijlmermeer outside Amsterdam. One of Egeraat's earliest solo ventures was an extension to the ING Bank in Budapest (AR July 1995) where he placed a sinuously pulsating organic conference room within a historic Neo-Classical building to achieve what might be described as 'modern Baroque'. Current work includes Ichthus College in Rotterdam, which draws on the industrial character of the port architecture, and an extension to the eighteenth-century Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, consisting of undulating brickwork planes. Egeraat has an acute feeling for the spatial and textural richness of architecture and his work consistently surprises and delights.

Shigeru Ban

Shigeru Ban studied architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the Cooper Union in New York. After a short spell working for Arata Isozaki, he established his own practice in Tokyo in 1985. Ban's work encompasses a range of housing, cultural and educational buildings, but he is perhaps best known for developing a technology of low cost 'paper' architecture, made from cardboard tubes. His experiments with paper architecture conducted over the last 10 years or so have encompassed exhibition stands, a house for himself and a gallery of exquisite simplicity in Tokyo (AR August 1995). Most recently he has made his paper architecture serve the needs of refugees and victims of disasters, providing housing and a church for the victims of the 1995 Kobe earthquake (AR September 1996). Ban has also worked with the architecture school at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, on the development of semi-permanent housing for Sudanese refugees combining paper tube construction with traditional mud walls.