Luis Fernández-Galiano   Brick is the Esperanto of construction. While a few cultures may ignore its grammar, those that command its vocabulary are legion, expressing physical needs and immaterial yearnings through the essential language of ceramic prisms. Versatile as no ot

Fernando Tabuenca, Jesús Leache   A material used in diverse periods and civilizations, modular and warm at the same time, brick has been discredited by modernity but maintains its place in contemporary architecture.

Witherford Watson Mann Architects   United Kingdom   The recently restored castle in the county of Warwickshire is a placid ‘collage’ of contrasting languages where the brick walls of old continue to be the dominant element.

Peter Barber architects   United Kingdom   Esta ampliación de un edificio victoriano se define por sus potentes volúmenes de ladrillo, aparejados con mortero de cal y caligrafiados con un dibujo de enfáticos huecos.

Ortner & Ortner   Germany   Grafted on to the heart of a silo and attached to a zigzagging volume containing offices, the brick tower of the Duisburg archives cuts a figure in the industrial profile of the city.

LRO Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei   Germany   This museum of modern art engages with its environment through a poetic masonry of bricks left over from the demolition of an old monastery in the vicinity.

Höweler + Yoon Architecture   China   A series of exhibition halls of different sizes, bathed in natural daylight, form a promenade around courtyards hidden behind a large wall raised with filigrees of local brick.

Archi-Union Architects   China   Inspired by classic Chinese gardens, the building was constructed with brick walls whose sinuous, seemingly random bond was the result of applying digital calculation tools.

Ignacio García Pedrosa   Fifty years have passed since Hans Scharoun completed his masterwork, the Philharmonic of Berlin, a milestone in the history of auditorium architecture.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The co-founder of the collective Dogma has in his books explored the political dimension of form, acquiring a critical, resistant voice through architectural theory and history.

Pier Vittorio Aureli   The article upholds an existential asceticism against the austerity imposed by the current crisis, advocating the replacement of Mies’s dictum ‘less is more’ with ‘less is enough’.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   For nationalisms, history can be either vitamin or vaccine: vitamin when a mythical past is made up to exalt the excellence of a people, vaccine when the flimsy consistency of these imaginary tales is put under examination. Although we thought that n

Alba Carballal   Accpting urban planning as a fundamental tool in the struggle for a more unified, more just, and less discriminatory society is the starting point in regarding the city as an inalienable right. In ‘Urban Revolution and Citizens’ Rights’, Jordi Borja

Álvaro Ardura Urquiaga   Many have felt the need to investigate commonplaces dealt with by Jane Jacobs. Sonia Hirt, a Virginia Tech professor whose specialty is post-Soviet Eastern European urban planning, found the pretext to do so in an issue that The Journal of Architectu

Darío Álvarez   In one of the stories of The Secret Gardens of Mogador (where the main character, to be able to sleep with his capricious beloved, has to invent a garden every night), the Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez narrates how different specialists were gat

NO.MAD   Austria   Imposed by local by-laws, the building volume of this business school clad in glass and aluminum is deformed in such a way that the interior spaces look out to views of the surrounding landscape.

Fernando Valderrama   Thanks to BIM tools, complete control of the project is possible, but applying them requires breaking with many atavisms of architects.

First introduced in the 17th century through the master builders of Italy, the timbrel vault became part of the heritage of traditional construction in eastern Spain. Nevertheless, it was in the United States much later on, towards the end of the 19t

In the olden days, when bricks were brought out of the kiln where they were baked, the pieces closest to the focus of heat – and therefore overbaked – were discarded on account of their dark burnt tone and their rough volcanic texture. At the start o

During the late 1980s, the German architect Hans Kollhoff designed and carried out works of great material force, among them Piraeus – a vast flexing brick apartment block located in one of the dockland sites of Amsterdam – and the ascetic mass housi

This brick house in Buenos Aires has two theoretical references. On one hand, Kenneth Frampton’s definition of tectonics, which he considers not only a “mere disclosure of the construction technique, but, rather, its expressive potential.” To Frampto

On show up to 30 March at the Barrié de la Maza Foundation in La Coruña, ‘Rafael Moneo. Una reflexión teórica desde la profesión’ centers on the importance of drawing as a work tool and as a means through which to capture how the mind of the Navarres

The Cineteca at Matadero Madrid was the venue, on 14 November, of the awards ceremony of the 12th Spanish Architecture and Urban Planning Biennial, held under the auspices of Spain’s Public Works Ministry around the theme ‘Inflexión/Turning Point’. 

For the centenary of Miguel Fisac (Daimiel, 1913–Madrid, 2006) and Alejandro de la Sota (Pontevedra, 1913–Madrid, 1996), the ICO Museum in Madrid hosts an exhibition on the life and work of both masters of modern Spanish architecture. Curated by Carl

Eduardo Prieto   The city is the problem; technique, the solution. This slogan could sum up the urban programs that, whether in the consolidated metropolises of the West or in the bustling megalopolises of Asia, go by the version of the modern panopticon that the so-