The magazine AV Monographs has for over three decades been putting together an annual almanac with a rigorous selection of twenty-four building works completed by Spanish practices during the given period. To leaf through any single one of these regular double issues is to reexperience the first sight of buildings that would then become part of our everyday life, as well as to revisit the professional concerns that marked each particular moment, some by now obsolete and some still in force. Whether by way of contrast or through similarity, this helps us situate ourselves in our own time.

On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the AV/Arquitectura Viva project, the latest yearbook has offered the opportunity to launch, in collaboration with Fundación Arquia and also with the intention of regularity, a gathering of the sector to appraise the state of the discipline, with the participation of some of each year’s leading architects. The first of this new series of encounters, held at the foundation’s Madrid site on 23 January, revolved around three of the themes that have been fodder for public debate in the past twelve months: housing, the depopulation of the countryside, and the exportation of talent.

Marta Peris, Living in a Shared World

Óscar Miguel Ares, Interior Geographies

Alberto Veiga, Building Abroad