The New Museum of Madrid. Two decades have been necessary to complete the great center called to collect the treasures of the Spanish crown. The project was already considered during the Second Republic, but it did not start to take shape until the change of century with a controversial call for ideas. Over these years, the vast construction works and the organization of the vast royal collections have had to adapt to the already slow ceremonial pace of the Administration, delayed on top of it all by a tough recession, a pandemic, and multiple political ups and downs. A witness of this hectic process from the beginning, Arquitectura Viva now celebrates the inauguration and wraps up the story in the voice of three of its protagonists: Pedro Moleón, director of Architecture at Patrimonio Nacional during the competition and member of its jury; Emilio Tuñón, author of the building with Luis Moreno Mansilla; and Manuel Blanco, in charge of museography.

The dossier in the issue presents five public buildings in Mexico constructed with five materials: the Anahuacalli Museum extension by Taller Mauricio Rocha raised with basaltic stone; the Culture House completed by Colectivo C733 in Nacajuca and made of brick; the Pilares Presidentes Social Center by Rozana Montiel using striated concrete blocks; Los Cabos Tennis Center, the solid walls of which are built with rammed earth; and El Jardín Anatole by Dellekamp+Schleich, the country’s first structural timber building.

In the Art and Culture section, Deyan Sudjic visits the major exhibition that Norman Foster has organized at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, while Isabelle Regnier documents Africa’s central role in the current edition of the Venice Architecture Biennale. All this is accompanied by the usual pages of News and Books, as well as by Luis Fernández-Galiano’s chronicle of two recent trips. 

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