Luis Fernández-Galiano   We say Gulf to avoid calling it Persian or Arabian. When that placid world of pearl hunters, camel breeders and date growers became an oil lake, the old enmity between Arabs and Persians was expressed through the geopolitical conflict between Saudi A

The petrodollar-funded construction of huge cultural complexes is a strategy used by Gulf countries to craft themselves a recognizable and influential image.

Jean Nouvel   United Arab Emirates   Oliver Wainwright Hovering above the sandy shores of Saadiyat Island like an upturned colander washed up on the beach, the metal-domed roof of the Louvre Abu Dhabi doesn't give much away from the outside. A cluster of white blocks spreads out from be

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Qatar   Eduardo Prieto The construction boom of countries like Qatar is but the offshoot of another boom, one begun almost a century ago: the oil boom. A trivial statement if thought of abstractly, but intuited firsthand from a plane flying over the Persian

Vikram Bhatt   Balkrishna Doschi, a master of modernity and teacher of several generations of Indian architects, is the latest receipient of the Pritzker Prize. 

Jacobo García-Germán   The ICO museum highlights the monumentality of the work of Vaquero Palacios through projects he carried out for hydroelectric power plants. 

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Loos enigma begins to unravel. A new generation of historians is throwing light on the darkest corners of an architect who half a century ago was famously described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘a mystery.’ The reprinting and translation in English of

Marta Peña   In 2016, the Global Trends Report published by UNHCR – Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – revealed unprecedented levels of displacement: 22.5 million refugees and 65.6 million displaced. These figures justify the work of Cl

Enric Batlle   Here is a renewed ‘manual,’ as intentional as it is flexible, structured into thematic essays on episodes that have been instrumental in shaping the city and urban landscapes. In the foreword Rafael Moneo explains that “the editors’ selection of argu

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Al cumplirse medio siglo del Mayo francés, reproducimos un texto que defiende las arquitecturas de la necesidad suscitadas por la crisis ecológica frente a las arquitecturas del deseo de los jóvenes de mayo. En él se reúnen un artículo publicado hace

RCR Arquitectes, Coussée & Goris architecten   Belgium   The new media library located in Ghent’s historic center presents a stack of horizontal slabs in what is a highly flexible volume. A series of external metal louvers set before the facade of the media library serves to protect the building against su

Zaha Hadid Architects   United States   With its division into several levels and the variety of spaces generated inside it, this sinuous luxury apartment building located at the intersection of the High Line and West 28th Street in New York City evokes the connections at different altitud

Mecanoo   South Korea   Located close to the old south gate into the city of Seoul, the Namdeamun Market is the largest in South Korea and also the oldest, dating back to the 15th century. In the past decades it has become an important commercial destination and a popular t

Tham & Videgård   Sweden   Inserted into the heart of the campus of the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, putting a preexisting courtyard to good use, is this new architecture school building covering a total floor area of 9,140 square meters in six floor level

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   Located on the square of the railway station of the Swiss municipality of Pratteln, this mixed-use building is the result of superposing two constructions differing in form and function: a podium and a tower. The expressivity achieved through the sup

PPA Architectures   France   The demolition of the facilities of the Renault plant in Boulogne Billancourt – a commune in the western suburbs of Paris – freed up space for this project for 79 apartments distributed in the two wings that form the building and gave rise to an unin

Tato architects   Japan   The miyamoto house, located in the city of Osaka, is the result of addressing a highly radical assignment: to give shelter to a family of three without resorting to the usual mechanisms of the conventional house, such as private bedrooms, wall partit

The chairman of Hyatt Foundation, Tom Pritzker, announced the selection of Balkrishna Doshi as Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate of 2018, the accolade’s fortieth anniversary. Born in Pune in 1927, Doshi is one of the leading figures of modern arch

Harvard announced the winner of the 13th Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design: the High Line in New York, a park over an old railway line, a work of the multidisciplinary team formed by James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio Renfro, a

The Tokyo firm founded and headed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, SANAA, recently opened the City of Culture of Tsuruoka, a small city on the northwest coast of Japan’s Honshu Island. Located close to an old samurai school, it is surrounded by g

A work of the British architectural firm Zaha Hadid Architects, the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre (KAPSARC) has opened its doors in Riyadh. It rises in the desert landscape of the Saudi Arabian capital as a modular structure for

The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has inaugurated the tower that wraps up the Fondazione Prada in Milan. Intended to house the institution’s permanent collection of contemporary works of art, this building rises 60 meters and nine stories, cutting a f

The Milanese firm Piuarch has transformed the final assembly plant of an abandoned Caproni aircraft factory in Milan into a new headquarters for the fashion brand Gucci. Exceeding 35,000 square meters in floor area, the complex restores the original

The Roman practice Labics is the author of the Città del Sole urban regeneration project, which emptied some old bus depots next to Rome’s Tiburtina railway station and raised beside them a new building for mixed uses: offices, commercial spaces, res

Construction work on Bjarke Ingels Group’s new tower in New York City, to be named The Eleventh and located between the Hudson River and the High Line, is coming to an end. The project has in fact involved erecting two towers: one towards the west, r

The tower 277 Fifth, a work of Rafael Viñoly Architects, has reached its maximum height, all of 202 meters, and thus becomes one of the tallest in that relatively low-lying stretch of Manhattan. Located at the corner of 5th Avenue and 30th Street, th

130 William is the name of David Adjaye’s first skyscraper in New York City. The location is William Street, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. It is one of the oldest streets on the island. The project thus takes inspiration from the Big

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The title of the poem by Rubén Darío, ‘The Optimist’s Greeting,’ is a good way to introduce two recent works by prominent ‘new optimists’: Enlightenment Now, the latest book of the media-savvy Harvard professor Steven Pinker, explains the thesis that