Luis Fernández-Galiano   Monuments molt: they change skin, change image, and change meaning. As living heritage, they renew their renders and their walls, transform their outer appearance, and modify their symbolic content; and as vulnerable heritage, they experience decaden

With over forty built works in different parts of the planet – and more than twice that number in projects, including one outside our orbit – the practice established in 2001 by Bjarke Ingels (Copenhagen, 1974) lives up to its name. From four offices

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Denmark   The circular shape of the Panda House solves the problems arising from the complex conditions of the site, at the intersection of walkways between Copenhagen Zoo’s elephant, monkey, and Nordic fauna sections. At the same time, the circularity present

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Switzerland   The Musée Atelier Audemars Piguet is located within the famous luxury watch manufacturer’s historical complex of workshops and factories. It reflects the innovative spirit of the firm – which has successfully maintained its autonomy as a family enter

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Sweden   The residential development 79th& Park Hillside is next to Gärdet, a treasured national park east of central Stockholm. This area is part of the Royal National City Park, which is a protected green belt with woods, lakes, and open fields of approxima

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Denmark   The Amager Resource Center (ARC) is located in a port and industrial area of Copenhagen which has undergone several reconversion plans over the past years. The port area has turned into an extreme sport destination for thrill seekers. Different sport

Luis Fernández-Galiano, Rafael Moneo   If I am an architect, it is largely owing to my father. When I finished secondary school, I was especially drawn to the humanities, and seeing me waver, it was he who steered me toward architecture. It was difficult to get into the School at that tim

Norman Foster   Speaking before a gathering of mayors from 41 cities, Norman Foster shared his optimistic view of the pandemic as an uplifting opportunity.

Jacques Herzog   In this open letter addressed to David Chipperfield, Jacques Herzog reflects on the active role that architects ought to play in post-Covid society.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   What do we talk about when we talk about beauty? Peter Sloterdijk and Byung-Chul Han are perhaps the two leading philosophers in the current German scene, and the translation into Spanish of The Aesthetic Imperative, a collection of writings on art t

Alberto Ballesteros   A Rosetta Stone of sorts on the cover shows a graphic evolution of a word: ‘formgiving,’ an English verbal combination calqued on the Danish term for design. The transition from archaic glyphs to the galactic typography of rockets augurs the incommen

Josean Ruiz Esquíroz   This book redefines ‘lateness’ through a formal analysis of works by Adolf Loos (Villa Karma, Villa Müller), Aldo Rossi (Gallaratese, San Cataldo), and John Hejduk (Texas Houses, Wall Houses). All six works can be said to have been carried out when t

Eduardo Prieto   Sometimes criticism twirls around itself, as in going from judging buildings to questioning its tools, even its essence. When this happens, it is through cover-up, on the pretext of a conventional theme, or plain opportunity. The collection of texts

Planeta en peligro

The youngest generations of architects have demonstrated that Catalan architecture can well pursue courses deviating from the cosmopolitanism of disseny and Barcelona. It is true that the teaching and practice of the profession in Catalonia has to a

Carles Enrich   Spain   The Barcelona practice of Carles Enrich undertook the restoration of one of the two faces of the defense tower at the castle of Merola, the only remnants of the 13th-century construction in Puig-reig, a municipality of the comarca of Berguedà. The 20

Josep M. Julià i Capdevila   Spain   Since its birth in 1878, the Can Batlló compound and La Bordeta quarter share a long history of growth and transformation with Barcelona. The city’s industrial heyday saw the complex expand and new buildings rise. Over time, however, these fell into

Twobo arquitectura, Luis Twose   Spain   The town of Vilajuïga is in a privileged location, between Serra de Verdera and Cap de Creus natural park, and is well connected to the rest of the region. With a population slightly over 1,000 inhabitants, Vilajuïga has a long food and wine traditio

Vicente Guallart   Spain   The project involved renovating two constructions raised late in the 19th century in the Rec neighborhood of Igualada, near Barcelona, that contained a small textile factory and a residence. The area, once industrial, is undergoing an urban transform

Idearch Studio   Spain   “I want a studio to live in, not a house to work in,” said the owner, a painter returning to his native land after a long stay in North America. The result is a neutral, versatile space with echoes of the New York industrial architecture that welcome

Arquitectura-G   Sweden   A former banking office in the Swedish capital – an anonymous institutional building located in the city center – became world-famous in 1973 thanks to an armed heist and hostage crisis that triggered in the victims a psychological reaction later cal

Wutopia Lab   China   Compared with the gray stain that China’s megalopoli have become, dehumanized and tediously uniform, the new entrance to a sales center in Huzhou is a garden of radical imagination, and thus a veritable manifesto against the generic city. A forest of

Peter Sloterdijk used the metaphor in formulating his take on our times. His postmodern, disturbing statement about us “living in bubbles” keeps proving true, yet remains hard to predict. What are today’s bubbles? The first and most pressing, urgent

The Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the highest distinction that can be given to a professional in the field in the United Kingdom, went to David Adjaye, one of the leading African architects in the international scene. Born

For a city planned ex novo as a paradigm of radical speculation, the firm AZPML has won the competition for the Korean Museum of Urbanism and Architecture (KMUA). Its scheme seeks to rethink the role of the discipline in this day and age, in the proc

Pinearq - Albert de Pineda   Romania   A scheme drawn up by Albert de Pineda’s Barcelona firm Pinearq – in collaboration with the local office Dico si Tiganas – is the winning entry in the competition to build a hospital specialized in transplants within the heterogeneous historical quart

Albeit decimated during the Shoah and attacked on several occasions in recent times, the Jewish community of Belgium asserts its presence and importance in the country’s history by means of a small museum which in the wake of an international competi

The residential building that the Madrid-based trio Arenas Basabe Palacios has raised in the Spanish capital’s Salamanca neighborhood has two different faces: towards the street it presents a classical tripartite composition soberly regulated by pref

The practice headed by the architect Enrique Álvarez-Sala recently completed the renovation of the General Insurance Directorate headquarters, an intervention which has involved consolidating the administrative building’s structure of post-tensioned

Facing the arcaded gallery at Nuevos Ministerios on Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, the firms totem arquitectos and BETA.Ø have together come up with an efficient alternative to the conventional office building. The faceted volume has been expressl

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Patience is the sister of hope. The philosopher Ernst Bloch, who wrote the three volumes of The Principle of Hope while exiled in the United States from 1938 to 1947, often spoke of the importance of optimism. Now, while everyone from The Economist t