Luis Fernández-Galiano   This has been a year of natural catastrophes and social cataclysms. From the echoes of the tsunami of the Indian Ocean to the Kashmir earthquake or the Caribbean hurricane which devastated New Orleans, the violence of the elements made us discuss cl

Luis Fernández-Galiano   It will be a good thing, I am told at the newspaper, to do something on the Puerta América, a Madrid hotel that has commissioned the decoration of each of its floors to a different architect, and that was presented to the public on 19 January with mu

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the 17th century, Arcangelo Corelli rescued music from the arbitrary contrasts and surprise effects of the stylus phantasticus. In the 21st century, after the scenographic excesses of a ‘fantastic style’ that mixes science fiction with animation,

Luis Fernández-Galiano   There may be signature cities, but democracy is anonymous. The space of the polis and the space of politics have close links, and the growing drift of the urban toward artistic gesture-making corresponds with a shift of the collective toward media re

Fernando Menis, José María Rodríguez Pastrana   Spain   gh On the coast of Adeje, south of Tenerife, in a touristic site currently under development and marked by the presence of the sea and the nearby mountains, stands the new Congress and Exhibition Center, baptized Magma The project emerges from the

Santiago Calatrava   Spain   A lo largo de un eje de casi dos kilómetros en el antiguo cauce del Turia, la Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias de Valencia se ha consolidado con el paso del tiempo como un parque cultural y de ocio no sólo para sus vecinos, sino para los miles de v

Selgascano   Spain   The pentagon-shaped fortress of San Roque, part of the 17th century wall upon which the bullring was inserted in 1859, for its part raised over the ashes of an old wood enclosure, is the place chosen for the construction of the new Congress Center of

Picado - De Blas Arquitectos, Enrique Delgado   Spain   Altering the regal image of the Monastery of El Escorial with a large-scale project demands a throrough study of the landscape and the history of the place. If inserting a theater in any given urban center always requires an effort, in this particula

b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, Jean Nouvel, Alberto Medem   Spain   The project for the extension of the Reina Sofía museum dates back to 1999, year  which this proposal was chosen over those of eleven other teams. The program comprised an auditorium, a library, several exhibition halls and auxiliary areas (offices,

Spain   The new building of the Fundación Caixa Galicia goes up in the last gap that was stillavailable within the constrained urban fabric of the historical center of La Coruña. The new piece fills up a void on a street lined with facades of glazed galerías

Mansilla + Tuñón   Spain   The barrié de la Maza Foundation takes up the courtyard and the small bay, parallel to the street, of a building designed by the architect Manuel Gómez Román in 1919. The reduced dimensions of the site, a rectangle measuring 25x15 meters, have been c

Rafael Moneo   Spain   Convinced that painting a landscape is a way of making space one’s own, José Beulas, a genuine representative of Huesca painting, dedicated most of his life to reflecting the sobriety of Aragón’s countryside on canvas. This landscape becomes the most

Rafael Moneo   Spain   After several enlargements since its construction in 1891, the Bank of Spain called a competition in 1978 for the design of the last piece to wrap up its monumental headquarters. At that time the winning project was denied the license from the City C

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT   Spain   With the desire of recovering its historical roots, the company Gas Natural has builtits new headquarters in the Barceloneta, on the same site where the first gas factory in Spain used to stand 160 years ago. As a living creature that reacts to exte

Harald Schöenegger, Ignacio Laguillo   Spain   The new courthouse of the town of Antequera, in Málaga, goes up in a recently developed residential neighborhood. Because it was very difficult to establish a dialogue with the surroundings, the new scheme proposes a contained and compact architectur

César Ruiz-Larrea, Antonio Gómez, Gonzalo Ortega   Spain   An old house on Recoletas street was chosen to accommodate the new headquarters of theInstitute of Architects (‘colegio’), in Gijón. Among the main asssets of the old building was its thick perimetral wall, which effectively spans the unevenness of t

David Chipperfield Architects   Spain   The America’s Cup Building ‘Veles e Vents’ and accompanying park were the social focal point for the 2007 America’s Cup – the world’s premier offshore racing competition, staged in Europe for the first time in over 150 years.

Álvaro Siza   Spain   A small tribute to the quality of life in Cornellá”. That is how the project for the new sports center is defined, conceived not only for its adequacy to achieve the desired balance between housing, retail areas, green spaces and other facilities so

Frank Gehry   Spain   The guggenheim of Bilbao served as a catalyst to invigorate the ria of the Nervióand to position the capital of Vizcaya in the cultural map of Europe. And now, only 125 kilometers from the museum, another explosion of steel and titanium opens up a ne

RCR Arquitectes   Spain   If the restaurant Les Cols already served as an example of how glass and steel can transform the interior of an old farmhouse into a chimeric space, somewhere between the rural world and cosmopolitan sophistication, the project for the construction o

MGM Morales De Giles Arquitectos   Spain   The strength of the landscape of Níjar, the desert, the topography and the horizon were the key elements in the origin of the project. The objective was to seize the environment not only with the eyes but with space. Plasticine models served at a fir

Josep Llinàs   Spain   The plaza of lesseps is a wide open surface in the Gracia neighborhood, with a dense and established urban fabric. Surrounded by tall residential buildings, this space will be the point of departure – or of arrival – of the future green corridor stre

BmasC arquitectos   Spain   In the same plot of land where the old vegetable gardens of the Real Monasterio of Santo Tomás used to be, in an area of recent development south of Ávila, several projects for educational purposes have been carried to term over the course of the las

Clotet & Paricio   Spain   The new building goes up amid the new city and the old periphery, there where the Diagonal avenue disappears along its path towards the sea, in a complex site marked by the disorderly crossing of the Plan Cerdá grid and the old road towards the Frenc

Eustaquio Martínez García, Virgilio Gutiérrez   Spain   This residential development gave the opportunity to develop a new design for an existing project, with municipal approval and that includes the construction of 18 apartments by the sea, south of the island of Tenerife and close to the airport. The

Javier García-Solera   Spain   Bordering on the city center of San Vicente del Raspeig is a triangular plot with a gentle drop, presided by a pine forest that closes up its north front like a stage curtain. The urban plan for this block proposed its division into two halves, each

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   This building in the Madrid district of Carabanchel goes up on a plot that fills and wraps up the city fabric in a zone close to the M-40 ringroad. The essential guidelines of the project were determined by the characteristics of the site, a hinge-sh

Carlos Martí Aris, Eduard Gascón   Spain   The fast-paced urban development of the city of Gerona over the last decades has prompted the recovery of part of its industrial grounds for residential uses. This was the destiny of the old factory of tartaric acid known as ‘Els Quimics’, out of ser

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The earthquake of Lisbon brought on Pombal’s Baixa and the Jesuit decline. Once the tears and the streets dry up, the coasts devastated by the seaquake of Aceh will surface again with reconstructed huts for tattooed surfers and theme villages for sex

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Algae, vin chaud, and tangerine are among the ingredients of Rotterdam, the perfume produced by Herzog & de Meuron to celebrate the exhibition of their work in the Dutch city. The Olfactory Object, as the architects call it, contains hashish, patch

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The genius was Hitler. Albert Speer, his architect and confidante, was only or above all anefficient technocrat who with models and buildings managed to give shape to the Führer’s visionary dreams. The well-to-do, cultured young man who converted to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Porto now has an icon. The Casa da Música of Rem Koolhaas will soon appear in tourist brochures and attract the usual flux of architecture-savvy visitors. The enthusiasm for emblematic constructions that the ‘Guggenheim effect’ has awakened in polit

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The German pope’s first message was for the rabbi of Rome. Like Wojtyla, Ratzinger has referred to the Jews as “our older brothers”. This historic mutation from militant catholicism – which leaves behind the ambiguous or cautious shadows of Pacelli’

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Hindus and Arabs fight to beat the Chinese, who are now ahead of the Malays: for some time now, the world height record will be an Asian league. The 452 meters of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur were overtaken last year by the 508 of Taipei 101,

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Madrid’s bronze tasted like ash, but other metals will be minted in the embers of disappointment. Exhausted by the struggle, the Spanish capital is not face down on the canvas, but at rest in that brief pause that allows one to inhale for the next as

He gets hundreds of offers a year, but accepts only three or four. “A project lasts an average of five years, and it is impossible to personally tackle more than twenty at a time”. In his Genoa studio at Punta Nave, each one of the twenty works is he

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We can’t pretend to understand Japan. Anyone visiting this empire of signs empathizes with the perplexity of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Sofia Coppola’s film. Like them, we know that the essential is lost in translation, and that we are lef

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The people of León claim to bask in the sun. Against the frozen image of the Castilian-Leonese winter, the inhabitants of the city founded by the 7th Roman Legion remind the visitor that it is among the Spanish capitals that boast the most hours of s

Luis Fernández-Galiano   There is more vinegar than wine in celebrity architecture. Borrowing Ratzinger’s evangelical metaphors, the European city is a vineyard devastated by wild boars, a cultivated construction destroyed by economic and mediatic forces that have imposed t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We do not expect fog in the desert. Nevertheless, we western critics and our counterparts of the Muslim world who have been summoned together in Kuwait by the Aga Khan Foundation are met by a mist that is denser than the mythical British split-pea so

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Philip’s dead.” Peter Eisenman need not say the surname. We both know whom he is talking about. For half a century Philip Johnson has been so big in the New York architectural scene that everyone simply calls him Philip. I am surprised when Peter cal

Luis Fernández-Galiano   An appropriate coincidence with the centenary of Ayn Rand, the jury of the Pritzker Prize haselected a Howard Roark of a model architect. The main character of The Fountainhead – played by Gary Cooper in King Vidor’s movie version – is an intransigen

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Apocalytic and totemic in the face of mass urbanity: following the early Umberto Eco, such could be the dilemma of today’s architects. If the semiologist of our pop youth distinguished between the apocalyptics who fear mass culture and the integrate

I am a suspect. In the course of this fleeting American week I have twice received the four S’s that lead to a particularly rigorous check. From New York to San Francisco, chance or the slightest possibility of danger marks travel documents with the

Thom Mayne   The eighth American to win the Pritzker was born in Connecticut in 1944, but is Californian by choice. His career began in 1972 with Michael Rotondi. Together they set up Morphosis, an interdisciplinary studio with designers, graphic art

Yoshio Taniguchi After the international dimension that his figure has gained as a result of having carried out the expansion of the New York MoMA, Yoshio Taniguchi has been awarded an imperial praemium, being the fourth Japanese architect to receive

Frei Otto A passion for flying and an interest in construction shaped the personality of the German engineer and architect Frei Otto, recipient of the gold medal that the Royal Institute of British Architects grants yearly. The result of this experim

Santiago Calatrava Santiago Calatrava’s winning the gold medal of the American Institute of Architects is just one of many indicators of the passionate idyll that the Valencian is having with the United States, having even moved his residence to New

Tadao Ando  The influence that the Japanese architect Tadao Ando (Osaka, 1941) has had on several generations of architects has been acknowledged through the award that the International Union of Architects gives every three years. Among the fundame

Miroslav Sik There is a way of thinking known as “analogous architecture” that centers on and tries to get the poetic breath out of common and current things. One of the keys to this architectural sensibility is the tradition-modernity binomial, the

Dutch Embassy in Berlin  After considering 242 projects from 30 countries presented by a formidable committee of experts, the jury presided by Zaha Hadid – whose terminal in Strasbourg won the previous edition of this biennial European award – announ

Estadio Municipal de Braga Eduardo Souto de Moura won the 47th FAD Award for Architecture for building the Municipal Stadium of Braga, a unique, monumental structure boxed into an old quarry outside the city. Part of a series of stadiums built or re

Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh Considered the Oscar of British architecture by its promoters, this £20,000 award created in memory of James Stirling marked its 10th anniversary by naming the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh the year’s best work. Des

Scottish Parliament, Baracaldo Stadium For the first time presided by a woman, the Alicante architect Dolores Alonso, the jury of the 7th Biennial of Spanish Architecture selected a posthumous work built outside our frontiers. Designed by the ill-fa

Vigo Seafront Urban planning, architecture, design, and even art come together in the project for refurbishing the coast of Vigo, for which its author, Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, has received the Spanish Architecture Award. The work, whose construc

Matilde Ucelay  The first woman to become an architect in Spain is also the first to win as important a prize as the National Architecture Award. The excellence of her work aside, this assertion of the figure of Matilde Ucelay Maortúa applies to

(1914-2005)  If modernity’s reformist commitment never disappeared altogether, it was thanks to figures like Ralph Erskine, whose work was rooted in the profession’s social dimension. Born in London in 1914, when he finished his studies he moved

(1919-2005) A Team X founding member, Giancarlo de Carlo was against the International Style model of a universal architecture. Born in Genoa in 1919, he earned an engineering degree in Milan in 1943 and an architectural degree in Venice after World

(1923-2005)  Fernando Távora received unanimous acclaim and admiration in his two parallel careers, as a practicing architect and as a professor. Considered a father of and a reference in contemporary Portuguese architecture, his work is a seaml

(1906-2005)  Philip Johnson’s life almost perfectly spanned his century, the 20th, many of whose architectural chapters cannot be discussed without mention of his omnipresent figure. Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906, he studied humanities in Harv

(1930-2005)  On 15 December, the New York office of Ieoh Ming Pei lost one of its partners, James Ingo Freed, connected to the firm since 1956. Born to a Jewish family in Essen, Germany, as a child he was forced to escape Nazi persecution by lea

(1913-2005)  “I am very fortunate to have witnessed Japan’s transformation from the devastation of the postwar to the opulence of today.” Kenzo Tange, who died on 22 March 2005, was no mere witness. He played a leading role in the reconstruction of h

(1920-2005) In its alliance with the arts, modern architecture has had one of its references in New Babylon, a nomadic manifesto in favor of urban life in constant transformation. Its author, Constant Nieuwenhuys, was born in 1920 in Amsterdam, where

(1912-2005)  Having introduced Italian rationalism into Spanish architecture during the difficult years of autocracy, Francisco de Asís Cabrero is one of the most conspicuous representatives of Spanish modernity and the author of some of its mos

(1926-2005)  A son, brother, and father of architects, Javier Feduchi was part of a prolific family saga of modern Spanish architecture. Born in Madrid in 1926, even before earning his degree in 1959 he began to work with his father, Luis Martínez Fe