Luis Fernández-Galiano   Life is an office, but the office is not life. Western adults spend half of their conscious existence in administrative environments of a hardly stimulating quality: if initiative is numbed in homogeneous space, the senses are dulled under the light

James S. Russell   Architects see themselves as pragmatic artists and talk about transforming the mundane necessities of factory life or office work to a higher cultural plane. To business clients, architects present their art as a powerful means to enhance business ef

Ignacio Paricio   Architects love commissions to build representative buildings. A museum is the paradigm of a program that is not too demanding and a budget that is not too restrictive. In the field of private development, the equivalent would be the office building.

Fermín Vázquez   The office is already the working environment of over half of the population in developed countries. Their economy, based on services related to varied forms of knowledge and with workers who depend on computers connected to the Internet, emerges in

Justo Isasi   One of the towns close to Madrid, Boadilla del Monte, is the site chosen by the Santander Central Hispano to regroup its offices, currently scattered around the capital. Characterized by the housing developments that spread around the wooded basin of

Cynthia Davidson   As for what should be built in place of the [World Trade Center] towers, the problem is insoluble. Quite simply because one can imagine nothing equivalent that would be worthy of being destroyed. One cannot say the same of many architectural works. M

Arup Associates   United Kingdom   To practice what one preaches is the message of this building, built by and for the company Ove Arup: an engineering consultancy firm with headquarters all over the world that has decided to gather its branches of Coventry and Birmingham under one sa

Meyer & Van Schooten   Holanda   On the outskirts of Amsterdam, far away from the canals that characterize its quaint urban center, the landscape next to the freeway around the city bears much resemblance to the edges of many other European metropolis. The headquarter offices of the

Koen Van Velsen   Holanda   A side from its exceptional urban layout – a result of the work of Willem M. Dudok as city architect during many years of the 20th century – the municipal area of Hilversum concentrates numerous radio and television broadcast stations. Searching to b

Sauerbruch Hutton   Germany   In the town of Biberach, in southwest Germany, the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim has gradually taken up an industrial polygon on the outskirts of town with a anonimous complex of production laboratories and storage warehouses. In order

KPF, Rafael de La Hoz   Spain   The proximity to the airport and to the fairground area have made of the northeast stretch of the M-40 – Madrid’s second beltway –one of the most coveted sites for the construction of corporate headquarters from the capital. Attracted by the characte

Henning Larsen   Denmark   Presided by the small baroque church after which it is named, the historic quarter of Christianshavn looks over the main canal of Copenhagen combining in a small distance the alternative area of Christiania with new buildings that have emerged attrac

Baumschlager Eberle Architekten   Germany   Established since 1913 in the Schwabing area, the insurance company Münchener Rückversicherung has expanded steadily in Munich’s center with buildings whose architectures bear witness to the consecutive phases in which this institution has grown. One

Gabriel Allende   Spain   Traditional showcase of the industrial and economic activity of the capital, the highway of Barcelona is flanked on Madrid’s periphery by plots that crowd together pursuing the visibility offered by their proximity to the airport. In one of these pl

Chaix & Morel   France   Less than a hundred meters from the park of La Villette, the Compagnie des Entrepôts et Magasins Généraux of Paris owns a terrain of 5 hectares known as the Espace Pont de Flandre which houses a whole series of industrial constructions raised during

Kees Christiaanse, ASTOC Architects   Germany   Hamburg’s extense fluvial port is perhaps its least elegant side, but also its most attractive one. From its historic position on the north bank of the Elbe river, this vast commercial interchange has gradually taken up the endless branches into whic

De Architekten Cie   Holanda   The Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal – the canal which links the course of the Rhine with the sea – is the most characteristic feature of the landscape which extends on the outskirts of Utrecht, until recently an agricultural plain that is now gradually being co

Morger & Degelo, Daniele Marques   Switzerland   Thanks to its good communications, the Basel Fair has managed to maintain itscentral position in the city, but it inevitably had to undergo a major renovation of its installations in order to keep its competitiveness at level with other European capi

Batlle i Roig   Spain   Symbol of the Sabadell of the eighties decade, Maciá avenue makes up the commercial and residential axis which structures the new economic and urban model of the city. Closely controlled by regulations, the mixed volumetry which shapes this street in

Behnisch y Behnisch   Germany   Aside from the gardens of Herrenhausen and the activity of its fairground, the city of Hannover has very few distinctive features. The historic architecture of its urban center, destroyed like in the case of many other German cities during the Second

Foster + Partners   United Kingdom   In the heart of London’s financial centre, on the site of the former Baltic Exchange, the Swiss Re building at 30 St Mary Axe, rising 180 metres high, overlooks London’s profile. Its distinctive shape and circular plan on ground floor allow to open u

Joan Sabaté   A skyscraper is always singular. It does not matter if it stands alone, in a numerous group, or in pairs, like New York’s disappeared Twin Towers; this essential piece of contemporary culture still aims to become an urban landmark and symbol of techn