Luis Fernández-Galiano   Urban confusion reflects the disorder of the planet: both the ungovernable growth of cities and the increasing decay of the environment are symptoms of global anarchy, at a historic moment that witnesses at once the blurring of boundaries and the fad

Luis Fernández-Galiano   There is no ecology without economy. Beyond the etymological relationship, which places both sciences on a common ground, transfering its logos and its nomos to the shared oikos of our residence on earth, the green science is inconceivable without th

Rafael Moneo   Spain   The project for the extension of the Prado Museum must be understood as a new chapter of its already long life. A chapter that considers the impact on the Museum of the occupation of a new site containing the Jerónimos Cloister, the perimeter surroun

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   Spain   This project is the most recent intervention Tcarried out in the old school of San Gregorio of Valladolid, a structure that is a good example of the Elizabethan Gothic of the late 15th century (1484-1496).  A building that also shows the steps of evo

AMP Arquitectos   Spain   The new athletics Center goes up in a newly developed area, southwest of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, characterized by the nearby presence of the boundaries marked by the mountains and the highway. With its crater shape, the struc

Francisco Mangado   Spain   The new municipal stadium La Balastera goes up near the Palencia fair grounds. The sports complex is designed to serve not only as a soccer field, and takes on new tasks on two differentiated scales. The most unique feature o

Rafael de La Hoz   Spain   Instead of maintaining several centers indifferent locations of a same city, an habitual organization for many multinational companies, Telefónica has opened this new business campus that brings together all its centers on a single plot in the urban

Luis Machuca   Spain   Facing málaga’s waterfront area, the new Provincial Government Headquarters wraps around the old Civic Center, whose previous name, Casa de la Misericordia, was borrowed by the adjacent beaches..

Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra   Spain   In the southern area of Ciudad Real, beyond the ring roads that delimit the urban center, rises the new Courthouse, an official building in an environment that lacks readily recognizable elements with the exception of the Plaza del Trillo and the Ort

Alberto Martínez Castillo, Beatriz Matos Castaño, Matos Castillo   Spain   Located in a new peripheral neighborhood east of Albacete, the building meekly adjusts to the alignments of the trapeze that delimits the plot on the ground floor perimeter, with the exception of the five-meter setback of the facade onto Buen Pastor

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT   Spain   Located at one of the ends of the centralarea of the campus, west of the lecture hall, the construction of the Rector’s building is part of the third phase of the Special Plan for the new development of the As Lagunas-Marcosende University Campus in

Carme Pinós   Spain   The plot is located inside a trapezoidal urban block within the residential fabricof Castelldefels, a town of Barcelona’s Bajo Llobregat region. One of the sides of the plot is bound by railway tracks. This physical and sound barrier, along with the

Helio Piñón, Nicanor García   Spain   The city of Morella is a symbolic landmark Tin the precipitous region of Els Ports, Castellón, spreading over a mountainous land carpeted with terraces formerly used for agricultural purposes; the abandonment of this activity has favored an image tha

MGM Arquitectos   Spain   This new high school comes to complete the amenities of Galisteo, a small town close to Plasencia, in Cáceres. Both the topography and the surroundings of the plot significantly determined the development of this work, organized in two floors that fo

Nicolás Carbajal, Gabriel Verd, Simone Solinas   Spain   After the colonization of the Campo de Dalías by greenhouses, whose translucent plastic covers compose the image of a compact mosaic that recalls an artificial sea, the next step was the construction of facilities for the towns in the western area of

RCR Arquitectes   Spain   This mixed-use structure is included in the plan – promoted by the City Council – for the recovery of the interiors of the urban blocks of the Ensanche of Cerdá in Barcelona, and goes up in the last plot available on Conde Borrell street, in the San

Martín Lejarraga   Spain   The new municipal library of Torre Pacheco, a town in the region of Murcia, goes upon a plot located in the southwest of the historic center, in an area of strategic growth with several schools and sports facilities. The site allotted for the library

estudio_entresitio   Spain   Close to the M-40 beltway, in an area with few urban references within the Madrid district of San Blas, rises this new health center. It is lined up with Pobladura del Valle street, where the two entrances to the building are located. The pedestrian

José Ramón Garitaonaidía   Spain   The new canoeing center goes up in an área of extraordinary topographical conditions and landscape features, by the Portillón de Castro reservoir, in the town of Verducido, located just some kilometers from the city of Pontevedra. This facility, for

DL+A arquitectos   Spain   In corduente, a small town close to Molina Ide Aragón, in Castilla La Mancha, rises the visitors’ center of the Parque Natural del Alto Tajo. In a natural environment totally devoid of urban references, the vegetation and the streams become the deter

Virginia Daroca, María Viñé   Spain   In the very heart of the fields of vineyards Iof Ribera del Duero rises this new building, constituting the first stage of the project to erect three volumes encircling the old warehouse of the Martín Berdugo Winery, forming a courtyard between them.

Ecosistema urbano   Spain   The frenzied building processes that take Tplace in the new urban developments of major cities contrast with the slow pace of growth of the vegetation, which helps to condition their open spaces. To counteract this time lapse in the case of the new u

Carlos Ferrater   Spain   Located in the agricultural terrains thatspread along the road joining Torroella with Palafrugell, in the Ampurdán region of Gerona, the new hotel completes the facilities of the Empordà Golf Club. The flatness of the land is only interrupted by the

Coll-Leclerc   Spain   Building on one of the scarce lots available Bin Barcelona’s Ensanche entails an added commitment: making the most of the possibilities offered by the urban plan of Cerdá to complete the block. Alejándose de la organización sugeridas por el concurso

Ábalos & Herreros   Spain   Both the verticality of the tower building type and the way in which the volumes rest on the plot address the priorities of the project: wrapping up the articulating axis of the new urban expansion area of Salburúa, in Vitoria, and establishing a dia

FOA | Foreign Office Architects   Spain   This residential block goes up in a new urban expansion area in the southwest of Carabanchel, and is built within the context of the social housing program developed by government of the municipality, the objective of which is to attend to the increa

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Spain builds; but not Spanish architecture. Unlike the mythical Brazil Builds, that in 1943 presented at the Museum of Modern Art the tropical and sensual reinterpretation of modernity as an unmistakably Brazilian architecture, On-Site  places the la

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Between fitur and sicur, coinciding with International Fashion Week, ARCO celebrates its 25th anniversary. The fairs preceding and following the art fair at IFEMA serve to mark its boundaries. The International Tourism Fair describes the consumerizat

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Modern architecture and the automobile were born at the same time, and they may well disappear together. Both shaped the 20th century, and both are to a fair extent responsible for the consumption of fossil fuels that has given rise to the insomniac

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Marbella has undergone an exorcism. With Mthe dissolution of the City Council and the imprisonment of those responsible, political and judicial Spain tries to drive away the all too familiar demons of speculation and corruption, expel the evil spirit

Luis Fernández-Galiano   He had prepared it for years. Miguel Fisac orchestrated the farewell ceremony like a final project. He had gone about relinquishing his things and created his foundation, transferred his archives to Ciudad Real, given final instructions, and even wri

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The city is not a tree. This was the title of the 1965 article in which Christopher Alexander explained that urban design cannot come about in a simple process of successive decisions that fork out like branches. The city is a semi-lattice, he said,

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Valencia lived a summer of ups and downs: from the winds on the sails to the victims in the trains, and from there to the visit from the Vatican. In a matter of days it moved from the euphoria of nautical triumphs to the sense of total defeat caused

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Architecture loves cinema, but rarely is this love reciprocated. Though the moving eye of the camera has often fed on contemporary buildings, cinema has seldom sought to unravel the mechanisms of the creation of spaces, preferring as it does to stick

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Chicago skyline with the tower designed by Calatrava; opposite, Shanghai with the ‘opener’ skyscraper by KPF and, below, a view of the Burj Dubai, which will be the world’s tallest building, in progress. The 20th century ended

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Rather dead than plain: the headquarters of Gas Natural is a provocatively affected work, what with its random interlockings, implausible projections, and decomposed volumes. Everything about it is forced and excessive, with that mood of irresponsibi

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Chile is having days of wine and roses. Neither the regular Mapuche protests nor the cases of corruption that have tainted the Concertación government, nor the judicial vicissitudes of a dictator lost in his own labyrinth of solitude have managed to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Ireland rides on the back of a tiger. The sleepy dragon of the Emerald Isle has become a feline as ferocious and flexible as its fellow kind from the Pacific, and the fairy-land of Yeats has turned into an Atlantic athlete that displays its financial

Luis Fernández-Galiano   It is harder to go unnoticed than to attract attention. And at the Plaza de Cibeles, at the symbolic heart of the Spanish capital, little less than impossible. Yet few of Madrid’s people will notice Rafael Moneo’s recent enlargement of the Bank of Sp

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Mendes da Rocha is Paulo twice over. As a colleague and conversationalist, Paulo is an ironic and sweet personality, of an elegant and reflexive modesty, warmly ambushed behind a smile and a thick mustache as he lets himself be misunderstood in three

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In munich, spectacle without memory; in Berlin, memory without spectacle. The two main venues of the World Cup of Germany, where the championship opens and closes, are architectures so opposed one would think them deliberately orchestrated to reveal

Architecture has gone from spectacle to scandal. Whether as individual projects or as mass urban developments, it is tainted with suspicions of bribery, making philosophers revive the old specter of the Faustian pact between architecture and power. S

Paulo Mendes da Rocha The maximum international recognition in the field of architecture has fallen this year to Paulo Mendes da Rocha, a fundamental figure of the Paulist school. A jury composed of Frank Gehry, Balkrishna Doshi and Carlos Jiménez,

Frei Otto Beginning with the RIBA Gold Medal in 2005, the succession of distinctions and acknowledgements bestowed on this 81 year old German architect throughout his career continues this year with the Praemium Imperiale, awarded by the Japan Art As

Toyo Ito Given annually by the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Gold Medal is awarded to those people whose architectural influence has had a worldwide influence. Born in 1941, Toyo Ito received his degree from the University of Tokyo in 19

Antoine Predock This architect from the southwestern United States was honored with the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal in early 2006. The president of the jury, Thomas Howorth, justified the decision by stating “Antoine Predock designs

Sergison Bates The young architecture studio formed by Jonathan Sergison and Stephen Bates, both born in 1964, has made off with this year’s Tessenow Medal, awarded to those architects whose work emphasizes the synthesis between design and functional

Richard Rogers The Golden Lion for lifetime achievement was awarded during this year’s Biennial – an edition that was clearly inclined towards urbanism – to an architect known for his deep concern for the sustainability of cities within the global co

Sea Organ/A8ernA Awarded every two years and organized by the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, together with other European institutions, this award puts emphasis on public space as a necessary element for the vitality of cities, and it p

Barajas Airport Extension The six finalists in the eleventh edition of this award given by the RIBA and AJ magazine to the “building of the year”, show the thriving state of British contemporary architecture. They included a brick house by Adam Carus

Jaume Fuster Library La ganadora del último premio FAD se ubica en la plaza Lesseps, al norte de Barcelona. La biblioteca busca integrarse en la trama urbana del barrio de Gràcia y evocar la forma de las montañas de Collserola a través de los planos

Santiago Calatrava The Spanish Ministry of Housing presented the 2005 award to the most internationally acclaimed Valencian architect, one with offices in his native city as well as Paris and Zurich, where he opened his first studio. With an archite

Francesc Mitjans At the age of 96, just a few months before his death, the Catalan architect was given the XII Antonio Camuñas Award in one of his most representative buildings, the Royal Nautical Club (1958). Founded in 1985, this prize is awarded

Rafael Moneo The only Spaniard to have received the prestigious Pritzker Prize, Moneo was bestowed with this Gold Medal by the Spanish Council of Architectural Associations in the award’s 25th year of existence. After receiving a degree in architectu

(1925-2006) Shinohara’s studies of traditional housing in Japan and his skillfulness at capturing the concepts that have articulated the domestic space for centuries and expressing them in unquestionably modern works are, together with his unique urb

(1912-2006) Born in Alabama, Stubbins received his degree from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1931 and finished his studies at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Years later he returned to this institution as a professor, when Walter Gropius ad

(1930-2006) Retired since 1996, the architect Sheldon Fox passed away at the end of 2006 in Fairfield, New York, after a long illness. In 1972 he co-founded the successful architecture studio Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF), its name reflecting the surnames

(1920-2006) Blake was born in 1920 into a bourgeoisie family in Berlin, and was later forced to immigrate to England during the escalation of Nazism. After completing his primary studies in London, he enrolled in the department of architecture at the

(1912-2006) Jacobs unconditionally loved urban life and revolutionized the way of understanding the city and 20th-century urban planning. A big defender of density and steadfastly against spaces meant for single usage (sleeping, working and spending

(1919-2006) An exemplary disciple of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, Harry Seidler introduced the foundations of the Modern Movement in Australia. Educated at the University of Manitoba, Harvard and Black Mountain College, under the professorship o

(1957-2006) Simon Ungers died on 6 March 2006 in Cologne, after a lengthy illness. His life played out between Germany and the United States, where his father, the architect Oswald Mathias Ungers, was transferred after being named dean of the School

(1919-2006) Castelli was one of the first women ever to obtain a degree in architecture from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, in 1943. A force behind post-war Italian modern design, in 1949 she founded, together with her chemist and engineer husba

(1909-2006) Responsible for the renewal of domestic Catalan architecture during the second half of the 20th century, Francesc Mijans left behind him a rich legacy of notable buildings in the skyline of Barcelona. Born in the city, Mitjans received&nb

(1913-2006) “I have always designed with the criterion to understand the architecture but not the forms; therefore, there is no formal criterion, but rather a conceptual one”. It was with this phrase that the architect, born in Daimiel, summed up his