Óscar Miguel Ares, Town Hall en Valverde de Campos (Valladolid)

Although the emptying of the countryside is now a matter of importance on a state level, it is still those close to rural environments who are most active in ensuring that the wrongly understood idea of progress responsible for vacating that world does not become the remedy to reinhabit it. Óscar Miguel Ares has harnessed the profilts yielded by wind farms in small towns of his native Valladolid to strengthen their network of facilities, through buildings rooted to the place that create community ties, a selection of which is featured in the latest Arquitectura Viva.

This time the magazine’s ‘dossier’ presents three interventions on heritage pieces, specifically Portuguese convents. Each has been carried out by a master architect of Spain’s neighbor on the Iberian Peninsula: the renovation of the Leça do Balio Monastery in Matosinhos, by Álvaro Siza; the reconversion of the Rachalouro Cloister in Alcobaça into a hotel, by Eduardo Souto de Moura; and the recovery of the Monastery of Jesús in Setúbal as a museum, by João Luís Carrilho da Graça.

In the Art/Culture section, Shiromi Pinto draws attention to the work of Minnette de Silva, redeeming from oblivion a key figure of modernity in the Global South; Iñaki Bergera analyzes the career of the architectural photographer Iwan Baan in line with his exhibition at Museo ICO in Madrid; and Jorge Bernabeu remembers the recently deceased engineer Javier Manterola through his innovative bridges. All this with the the usual News and Books sections plus an article where Alejandro Valdivieso recounts the editorial adventure of the magazine Arquitecturas Bis, fifty years after its first issue.