Europe has observed the anniversaries of the beginning and end of a short century with mixed feelings. The centenary of the Great War has given rise to commemorative monuments, promises of atonement, and historical studies which pinpoint responsibili
Crimea is not critical; Ukraine is. On its territory we shall witness a struggle that will shape the future of Russia and of Europe. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia suffered a catastrophic decade of demographic, economic,
Arbitrary inequality puts into question the fundamentals of democracy. This is the angular stone of the colossal work of Thomas Piketty, Le capital au XXIe siècle. Since its publication by Seuil, the book by the French economist has sparked an extrao
Europe today is a landscape without figures, a garden marked out by empty pedestals. The heroes have abandoned their podiums and wander about in the summer, oblivious to the buzz of the crowd. A century ago, Europe’s leaders acted out a grand guignol
In an unusual speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping condemned weird architecture, and many in the West listened in agreement. However, his call for pleasant art (“sunshine in a blue sky and a breeze in spring”), socialist and patriotic, has also spark
Winner in the competition held in 2007, the proposal takes the overall evaluation of the urban fabric as point of departure, including the two historical buildings that harbored the museum up to now – Velarde Palace and Casa Oviedo-Portal –, and prop
Located in the old Daoíz and Velarde barracks, the new cultural center balances past and present adapting the original architecture to current energy systems. The military complex was built at the end of the 19th century next to the Atocha Station ra
The archive is located on María Díaz de Haro street, near Bilbao’s main street, on a plot between party walls measuring 20 meters wide and 70 meters deep, belonging to one of the urban blocks in the expansion areas of the city. Below grade, the build
While on the outside the building echoes the dry surroundings in its skin of ropes and the tone of the concrete, the polycarbonate inside creates a surrealist aquatic atmosphere.
Winner of the competition held in 2008, the project for the cultural center of La Caixa Foundation in Zaragoza stems from a double challenge: in the first place, to create a building that generates city through its uniqueness and because of the publi
The Barceló Market area in Madrid includes public spaces, buildings and temporary installations belonging to one same complex. Its multiple denomination – market/sports center/library – soon speaks of collective engagement and reveals the social cond
Designed as a business incubator, the Incube Building efficiently addresses the economic, social and climate demands of its environment. Located in the trade fair complex of the island, the new building had to wrap up the volume of the urban block an
In an area where other towers of similar height go up, the new headquarters of Grupo Puig goes up in Plaza Europa, midway between El Prat Airport and the city. The tower complies with the urban codes regarding floor plans and height. The purpose that
Monterroso is a small town in the interior of the province of Lugo, famous for the annual fair that has been celebrated annually for over 500 years on All Saints’ Day. The municipality belongs to A Ulloa county and comprises 29 civil parrishes and 10
In the Catalan county of Maresme, the small municipality of Arenys de Munt is located 45 kilometers from the city of Barcelona, in the northeastern end of the province. With an important textile industry and a growing service sector, the population,
Located on the southern border of Las Palmas, the new Departmental Building of Health Sciences Research stands in the university campus as a gateway to the complex. Bearing a significant volumetric presence in a context of urban voids, the new piece
With privileged views of the historic quarter of Baena, this Center for the Elderly is configured as a lookout that opens up to the landscape and directs its views towards the main urban landmarks of the Cordovan municipality. Sitting on a raised pla
On the urban border of the municipality of Haro, a town in La Rioja, the new Las Luces Kindergarten is drawn up as a geological formation that emerges from the ground. The plot, marked by a deep slope, is surrounded along three of its fronts by the r
On the southern border of the city, between a new residential area and the Z-40 beltway, the project addresses the conditions of the place. The plot initially had an area of 60,000 m² for all educational stages, with an unevenness of almost 20 meters
Built by Antoni Gaudí, who took charge of the construction works in 1889, when only the foundations had been built, the school and headquarters of the Orden de las Teresianas was declared a Historical-Artistic Monument of National Interest in 1969. B
The plot where the new School of Fine Arts of the University of La Laguna goes up, to the northeast of the island of Tenerife, is adjacent to the TF-5 highway, and is physically separated from the current university campus of Guajara by an avenue wit
Located by the Alange reservoir, the Rowing Center is configured as a large concrete plinth on which a light roof rests. This roof is built as a structure of metallic trusses that frees up, on its lower level, the main hall of the project: an open-pl
With capacity for two thousand spectators, the new sports center of Alcázar de San Juan aims to become a facility able to operate on a both local and regional level. The project seeks balance between the orthogonal building system, which admits prefa
The peculiarities of the location, a sloping site where several roads converge in various directions, led to designing a proposal with the potential to create an urban landmark in the area. The building goes up as a bold and geometric concrete object
The Jardín de Aclimatación of La Orotava (Botanic Garden) was founded in 1788 by King Charles III of Spain, with the intention of gathering in the island of Tenerife the exotic plants collected in the Spanish colonies of America and Asia. The extensi
Corner buildings are usually organized in a compact block, which entails disadvantages such as the contact with the party walls of the adjacent buildings. However, this project for twenty social housing units and three retail premises in Méndez Álvar
The project is located on the northern end of the historic center of Pamplona, at the edge of the plateau on which it rests, next to Paseo de Ronda, the border of the city wall. It is a project promoted by the public administration aiming to regenera
Promoted by the Instituto Valenciano de Vivienda (Valencian housing institute), the social housing building goes up in a newly developed area located between the most recent constructions in the municipality of San Vicente del Raspeig and the campus
Setting a contrast with the typical design of closed housing blocks found in the Vallecas Ensanche (urban expansion areas), and guided by the unequal conditions of the environment and by the orientation of the plot, the project proposes building two
Joseph Rykwert The architecture historian and theorist Joseph Rykwert received the Gold Medal that, since 1848, the Royal Institute of British Architects gives yearly in recognition of the career of professionals who have had a meaningful influence i
Shigeru Ban The announcement of the Pritzker Prize concession to Shigeru Ban (Tokyo, 1957) took place a few days before the commemoration of the genocide in Rwanda, a quite meaningful coincidence, because it was precisely in 1994 that Ban stepped int
Steven Holl The Imperial House of Japan and the Japan Art Association give yearly since 1989 the Praemium Imperiale to five artists in the categories of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music, and Cinema or Theater. In 2014 the awards – endowed wit
Julia Morgan For the first time in its history, and posthumously, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), has given its Gold Medal to a woman, Julia Morgan, acknowledging in this way the work of a pioneer who was influenced by the eclecticisms of
Ieoh Ming Pei The Gold Medal of the International Union of Architects (UIA) has been awarded to Ieoh Ming Pei. Born in Canton in 1917, the son of a Chinese banker travelled to the United States in 1935 to fulfill his dream of becoming an architect. I
Selected among 27 candidates from 16 countries, José María Sánchez García is the fourth architect – the first European – to take home the BSI Swiss Architectural Award, after Solano Benítez of Paraguay, Diébédo Francis Kéré of Burkina Faso and Studio
Phyllis Lambert The 14th International Architecture Exhibition, directed by Rem Koolhaas and centered on the Elements of Architecture, has given the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Phyllis Lambert. As Koolhaas said: “Not as an architect, but
João Pedro Falcão In the spirit of returning to the disciplinary values of the profession, the FAD Award in the category of Architecture went in its 56th edition to the ‘Assisted pedestrian route from the center to Saint George’s Castle’ by João Pedr
Frank Gehry At 85 years of age, Frank Gehry has picked up the Prince of Asturias Award in the Arts Category. With this decision, the jury presided by the businessman and patron José Lladó – the members of which included Benedetta Tagliabue, Patricia
Norman Foster Norman Foster received the inaugural BIA Award, presented, per initiative of the Basque-Navarre Institute of Architects (COAVN), by the new Bilbao Bizkaia Architecture platform, whose objective is to “face the challenges of the professi
Juan Navarro Baldeweg Given in the three previous editions to Lluís Clotet, Carlos Ferrater, and Oriol Bohigas, the National Architecture Award – the latest edition of which was in 2010 – went in 2014 to Juan Navarro Baldeweg. Awarded, among others,
Antonio Cruz y Antonio Ortiz The Spanish Association of Architecture Institutes (CSCAE) has given its Gold Medal of 2014 to Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz. This annual prize goes to individuals and institutions whose paths have done much to highlight
1953-2014 After graduating from the Architectural Association in London, Kathryn Findlay moved to Japan and there she started working with Arata Isozaki, whose style had then veered towards the postmodern. This trip would change her life, because the
1932-2014 Urbanist and geographer Sir Peter Hall passed away in his city, London, at the age of 82, one year after the publication of his last book, Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism, in which he defended urban
1934-2014 The death of the Milanese architect Bernardo Secchi has left a void in the field of urban theory. Chair professor at the Istituto Universitario de Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) and dean of the Faculty of Architecture between 1972 and 1982
1937-2014 The French landscape architect Michel Corajoud was born in 1937 in Annecy, a commune in the Haute-Savoie. After studying at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris he began working at the studio of Bernard Rousseau – former collaborator of L
He wasn’t as well-known worldwide as Niemeyer and wasn’t an intellectual referent like Costa; he didn’t have disciples like Artigas, or the international prestige of Mendes da Rocha or Bo Bardi, but João Filgueiras Lima, nicknamed Lelé, was admired b
1934-2014 With the death of Hans Hollein Vienna bids farewell to the last representative of a design tradition that goes back to Hoffmann and Loos. Eclectic and non-conforming, the first works of Hollein were teapots, jewels and eyeglasses, aside fro
1913-2014 The death of the centenarian Aburto marks the extinction, biologically and symbolically, of a generation of masters that introduced modernity in Spanish architecture. Born in 1913, the ninth son of a middle-class family of Vizcaya travelled
1940-2014 Born in 1940 in Talavera de la Reina, where he built his very first work after graduating in 1964, De las Casas developed a fertile career in the professional, academic and administrative fields. As an architect, he designed important colle
1933-2014 Albert Viaplana is the author of some of the main landmarks of contemporary Barcelona, though this is probably not so well known to those unrelated to the field. His career – with Helio Piñón between 1974 and 1997, and later on his own – le
1925-2014 Sculptor, painter and referent of modern Cuban architecture, Ricardo Porro passed away at the age of 89 in Paris – city to which he moved in 1966 due to his differences with Castro’s regime. Born in Camagüey, Porro studied in Havana, and gr
1938-2014 Antonio Díaz del Bo, ‘Tony’ Díaz, passed away at the age of 76 in Madrid, where he lived since 1988. Born in Buenos Aires, Tony Díaz graduated at the UBA in 1964, and furthered his studies in Italy and London, where he specialized in urban
1933-2014 Born in Eastbourne (England) in 1933, David Mackay passed away 81 years later in Barcelona, city were he settled for good in 1958 after a journey around different countries, which would forge his ironic and cosmopolite character. His long a
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