The New Museum of Madrid. Two decades have been necessary to complete the great center called to collect the treasures of the Spanish crown. The project was already considered during the Second Republic, but it did not start to take shape until the c

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The desert kingdom builds on the sand. Like other petrostates, Saudi Arabia diversifies its economy to prepare a future without oil; like most of them, it tackles this transformation from the dirigisme of an autocratic regime; and unlike practically

Palace matters take time. That is why two decades – practically the same as Philip II with his Escorial – have been necessary to complete the great center called to collect the treasures of the Spanish crown. The project was already considered during

Pedro Moleón   The physical and symbolic magnitude of the work by Mansilla+Tuñón brings to life a long-held yearning of showing an art collection treasured for centuries by the kings of Spain. 

Emilio Tuñón   A linear volume is attached to the slope that historically marked the border of the city, establishing with its rigorous granite facade a formal and material dialogue with the Royal Palace. 

Manuel Blanco   The new museum, one of the largest cultural complexes built in decades, showcases its collections along the two main levels, each devoted to one of the reigning dynasties. 

Mansilla + Tuñón   Spain   On a vantage site of Madrid’s cityscape, by the Royal Palace and overlooking the Campo del Moro from the plaza of the Almudena, the museum is surrounded by heterogeneous and complex heritage. The project is based on two fundamental principles on an u

Deyan Sudjic   On view through 7 August at the Pompidou is the most complete exhibition ever put together on Norman Foster’s work and visionary attitude.

Isabelle Regnier   The African continent is the great protagonist of a Venetian gathering that has its eyes on the future of the planet and is increasingly diverse.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Spain’s 20th century was convulsed. The Penguin History of Modern Spain, which goes from 1898 to the pandemic of 2020-2022, indeed describes an epoch that was troubled, but really not unlike that of other European countries. In what will be a referen

Iñaki Bergera   The enthusiasm of Angelo Maggi, a historian of architectural photography, led the heirs of George Everard Kidder Smith (1913-1997) to move his archive from New York to the Università Iuav di Venezia. A fruit of this donation is this first monograph e

Enrique Morillo   That images are faster than words is a hard-to-refute fact. But it is just as true that, since the classical ekphrasis, visual representations have appeared together with written comments, turning words into usual companions that stress or alter thei

Eduardo Prieto   Fire, nests, dens, trees, primitive huts, machines, babels: architecture has always inspired metaphorical genealogies – discredited for the most part but maintaining their evocative powers, so the ‘origin’ notion remains valid, even fruitful, as the

With its 130 million inhabitants, Mexico is the tenth most populated nation in the world, and among Spanish-speaking countries the one with most demographic weight. Add to this its strategic position, its important economy, and its powerful culture,

Taller | Mauricio Rocha   Mexico   The story of the Anahuacalli Museum begins in the early 1940s, when the painter Diego Rivera thought of erecting a depot for his collection of pre-Hispanic pieces that would be an artwork in and of itself, habitable and capable of generating a contin

Colectivo C733    Mexico   In the city of Nacajuca, in the Mexican state of Tabasco, stands the House of Music designed by Colectivo 733 (Gabriela Carrillo, Eric Valdez, Israel Espín, José Amozurrutia, Carlos Gacio). The community center reuses the foundations of a previous bu

Rozana Montiel | Estudio de Arquitectura   Mexico   As part of a plan instigated by the regional government, a social center serving citizens of limited means and resources has opened in one of the most conflictive areas of the capital…

Taller Héctor Barroso   Mexico   One of the open tournaments of the professional tennis circuit is held on premises where the facilities, presenting a simple wall of rammed earth, blend with the desert landscape. A series of platforms molds the terrain to form playing courts, which

Dellekamp Schleich   Mexico   In the courtyard of a large old house in the Polanco neighborhood rises a slender mixed-use building that is considered the first ever to incorporate a high-rise timber structure. The framework of the upper levels rests on the party wall and a single

Norman Foster   Italy   As part of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which runs until November 26 under the theme ‘Laboratories of the Future,’' the Essential Homes Research Project addresses the debate on universal access to essential housing. The result of a collaboration

Arkpabi   Sweden   With its operatic ending immortalized by Giuseppe Verdi, Gustav III of Sweden made an – indirect – contribution to universal music, though the truth is that this enlightened monarch also supported in life the art of Euterpe, promoting the foundation

Michèle & Miquel, Da Vision   Taiwan   Under debate today as are the colonial experiences of other world powers, the Japanese occupation of Taiwan had nevertheless set out to be a ‘model’ domain, and here lies the seed of its modernization. Though aimed at the greater glory of the metropo

60 Years of Invention

“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.” What the young Jean Cocteau wrote in relation to Les Six may well also apply to Norman Foster: after six decades of raising buildings all over the world, numerous master

On 30 May, ten days after the Venice Architecture Biennale opened its doors for the eighteenth time, Paolo Portoghesi, its first director, passed away at the age of 92. Perhaps because he grew up in the heart of baroque Rome, the architect always fou

Ángel Borrego   Spain   La Carbonería, or Casa Tarragó, is an 1860s apartment building that was taken up by the Okupa Movement from 2004 to 2008, when it was painted on to produce two works of urban art. The 2014 eviction of the squatters was big news and the building becam

Narch Arquitectes, dataAE, Maira Arquitectes   Spain   This social housing block is organized around an atrium-like central void, optimizing energy efficiency while creating opportunities for encounters among neighbors in the same way that the large landings of the stairs do. Undertaken for the Institut

Peris + Toral arquitectes   Spain   Born out of the Cheap Housing Law of 1929, the Bon Pastor neighborhood went up with 784 one-level homes. Impelled by the Barcelona City Hall's IMHAB (Institut Municipal de l'Habitatge i Rehabilitació), the Bon Pastor Redevelopment Plan involves demol

Lina Ghotmeh   United Kingdom   Open to the public from 9 June to 29 October is the temporary pavilion of the popular Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London. For this summer the commission went to the Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh (Beirut, 1980), who designed a round

With great success Logroño’s International Festival of Architecture and Design, aka Concéntrico, has for nine years now filled the northern Spanish city with imaginative ephemeral installations aimed at rethinking the urban environment and public spa

Ever since Napoleon took possession of the Villa Medici, it has been home to the French Academy in Rome, an institution that continues to take in gifted pensionnaires, and in addition to that, has set in motion a festival involving a competition for

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Two British architects who have foundations in Spain were feted in the month of May: Norman Foster inaugurated the largest retrospective ever done on his work at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and David Chipperfield was awarded the Pritzker Prize at t