As she does with her academic work, Fernanda Canales roots her practice in a thorough knowledge of the environment, its resources, and its people, thanks to which she has made it possible for projects conceived in the spirit of mending inequality in

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The 1914 sleepwalking elites are warmongers in 2024: Europe rearms in haste guided by leaders with no biographical experience of conflict. Those born after 1945 have lived on a continent that judged war on its grounds inconceivable, even if the disma

In trying to grasp the concept of national identity, Octavio Paz found that Mexico was not a reality delivered to the one contemplating it, but to whoever is able to immerse in it. This is perhaps well understood by Fernanda Canales (Mexico City, 197

Fernanda Canales   Mexico   As part of a program to improve the capital’s most disadvantaged areas, a small facility provides training and meeting spaces close to what is one of the largest penitenciaries in the country. Without shutting out the street, with which it engages th

Fernanda Canales   Mexico   The rough vicinity of a frontier checkpoint has been transformed, for the first time offering crossers a safe waiting place shielded from the harsh sun and equipped with lavatories. In unprecedented proximity to the security line, the modest facility

Fernanda Canales   Mexico   These premises are permeable to the city, seeking to use physical exercise and social interactions as a means of awakening in people a sense of belonging to the community. A simple sawtooth roof like those of nearby industries and a skin of perforate

Fernanda Canales   Mexico   A pro bono facility gathers medical clinics, lounges, and recreational amenities around a curved courtyard conceived as yet another space intended for the benefit of elderly people. The building maintains a domestic scale through a single level that

Fernanda Canales   Mexico   Volumes of different dimensions are interspersed with patios and platforms set at varying levels to accommodate activities for small groups and large assemblies alike. From an auditorium to a daycare, a cafeteria, toilets, and playgrounds, the buildi

Vanessa Graell   Surrealism is the longest-living ism, the only avant-garde movement that has withstood the turn into the 21st century. Surrealist today are Björk’s videos (with explicit references to Man Ray), fashion (such as the collections of Rei Kawakubo, the Ja

Antonio Lucas   They had no way of knowing it, but somehow they cut adrift from the 19th century by capsizing painting altogether, defying their contemporaries as in a boycott, turning their backs on the Academy and on all the canons. They did not actually baptize t

Among all architectural groups, the family of libraries is one of those that have most undergone transformation, thanks to the double – and almost always complementary – action of globalization and digital change. At least from the Enlightenment on,

Herzog & de Meuron   Israel   The new library is located west of the historic part of town, between the Museum and the parliament of Israel, adapting its shape to the triangular plot and its height to the scale of the surrounding buildings.

Snøhetta   China   The new center is a quiet oasis of culture in the district where the Chinese capital’s local administration has been concentrating, a ‘sub-center’ that seeks to slow down the crowding of the heart of the metropolis. Protected by a flat roof with larg

Harquitectes   Spain   So exacerbated by the romantic imagination of modernisme, the medieval character of Barcelona’s old quarter is less attributable to ogee arches and flamboyant traceries than to the relationship between the alleys within the confines of the old walls

TAKK Architecture   France   Plato imagined the cave as an allegory of a sensual world that is just appearance, and this feigned background seems to materialize in the dazzling mise-en-scène that during this fashion season dresses the storefronts of the Parisian house of luxury

Colectivo C733    Mexico   The Mexican firm Colectivo C733 – Carlos Facio, Eric Valdez, Israel Espín, Gabriela Carrillo, José Amozurrutia – were commissioned to design the Bacalar Eco-Park, which covers 1,900 square meters in an area of 70,000. The main objective was to minimi

Election Year

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and his mythical Mnemosyne Atlas are essential references in the histories of art and visual studies. His influence on our work is evident in publications we have produced, from ‘Casa, cuerpo, crisis’ (AV 104, 2003) to ‘Pensar

Alberto Ballesteros   After a catchy tune, the screen fades to black and on comes a familiar scene: Carrie writing her column by the window, Michael sipping coffee at a desk full of trinkets, Homer on his couch watching TV… All series build make-believe worlds with recurr

Enrique Morillo   Few texts reflect the partnership of architecture and columns than the above lyrics of the Spanish electronic-music duo Las Bistecs. Though vilified by modernity, columns are a fundamental part of history. And beyond their unavoidable structural func

Eduardo Prieto   Nowadays drawing tends to be thought of as an artistic discipline of its own accord, but for a long time it was little more than a tool in the service of art, and it was in technology and science that drawings were considered useful and of value. The

In a year of major elections around the world, Mexico’s on 2 June is among the most important. Its 128 million people will be choosing 500 deputies, 128 senators, and a new president to serve a six-year term, a post for which Claudia Sheinbaum and Xó

The winners of the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award for 2024 have been announced in Brussels. The Study Pavilion on the campus of the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany), by Gustav Düsing and Max

Gustav Düsing, Max Hacke   Germany   The organizational principle behind this project was based on the idea of a superstructure allowing for constant reconfiguration of the floor plan. The two-level, glass-clad building raised for the Technical University of Braunschweig, in the German

allmannwappner, Menges Scheffler Architekten   Germany   The teaching, research and innovation centre for specialised technologies in the textile industry, known as Texoversum, is part of the campus extension of the Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences. The textile construction is the theme of the des

Beaudouin Architectes, MGM Arquitectos   France   Located between the main campus avenue and the university’s residential area, the project seeks an open and permeable building, which invites students to a space for collaboration, research, and work that is easy to use and get around. The position a

Bizet set Les Pêcheurs de perles in Ceylon, but could have chosen another island in the Indian Ocean to situate the story of its two fishermen: Bahrain, thub of an ancestral pearl market – mentioned in Assyrian texts – that was the pillar of the loca

Barozzi Veiga, Hermansson Hiller Lundberg    Sweden   The Spain-based practice of Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga – in collaboration with the Swedish architects Hermansson Hiller Lundberg and the landscape architect Peter Korn – has won the competition to revamp the Göteborgs Konstmuseum. A half-bu

COBE Architects, Arcgency, Drachmann Arkitekter    Denmark   A Danish team comprising the architects Cobe, Arcgency, and Drachmann, in collaboration with engineers from Sweco, has won the competition to design the future Danish Parliament in Copenhagen. The project includes a visitor center and an underground

The brutalist Grieg Hall with which the Norwegian city of Bergen honored its most universal musician will soon have another auditorium to show for, designed by the Danish firm Henning Larsen as a sinuous building next to the original. In addition to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Today I sing of your profile and grace. Of the maturity of your understanding. (Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, Federico García Lorca) Antonio Fernández Alba would have deserved a poet to be present in this sad ceremony of farewells, because his b

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Antonio Fernández Alba recibió la Medalla de Honor de la Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo el 31 de julio de 2001, y aquí se transcribe la laudatio de Luis Fernández-Galiano, que al no haber sido redactada previamente conserva un tono coloqui