As she does with her academic work, Fernanda Canales roots her practice in a thorough knowledge of the environment, its resources, and its people, thanks to which she has made it possible for projects conceived in the spirit of mending inequality in her native Mexico to be veritable agents of change and sources of pride for their users. Arquitectura Viva features five of them in a journey from the the capital to two cities in Sonora, close to the United States border.

The issue’s dossier presents two libraries recently completed in Asia by international firms: the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem by Herzog & de Meuron, and the Beijing City Library by Snøhetta.

In Art and Culture, Vanessa Graell goes through the tributes being held this year to commemorate the centenary of surrealism, while Antonio Lucas recounts the ride to fame of the impressionist painters 150 years after the first exhibition that gathered this then-alternative group. The usual News and Books sections are complemented with a eulogy for Antonio Fernández Alba and another text where Luis Fernández-Galiano bids a final farewell to the master from Salamanca, who passed away on 7 May.