Four Works in Africa. With no other aspiration than to serve people in the most efficient and economical way possible, Francis Kéré has been able to connect the best of his Western training with the traditions of his native culture, anchored in the e

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The historic swerve of 24 February supplied an iconic image four months later in Madrid. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a geopolitical commotion that has been labeled Zeitenwende, and the leaders participating in the NATO summit gathered arou

Amid the grandiloquence that architecture of success sometimes seems to don as proof thereof, this year’s Pritzker is the definitive anointing of a practice that stands out for humility and commitment to serve people in the most efficient and economi

Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   A group of modular pavilions houses an educational center that provides high school graduates in the country’s third most populous city with the opportunity to obtain further studies. The location being a flood plain, landscaping work was needed to p

Kéré Architecture   Kenya   On the shores of one of the African Great Lakes, a center devoted to new technologies offers training and job opportunities, endeavoring to put a halt to the exodus of young entrepreneurs. Finding inspiration in the region’s abundance of mounds built

Kéré Architecture   Senegal   For the very first time in the history of the prestigious German institution, one of its centers scattered all over the world will occupy a building expressly designed for the purpose. Rising behind a wall that keeps out traffic noise, the building e

Kéré Architecture   Benin   The scheme drawn up by the Berlin firm of Francis Kéré for Porto-Novo, the capital of Benin, takes inspiration from the ‘word tree,’ the western African tradition by which the community gathers under a tree to make collective decisions. Facing the

José Luis García del Busto   As much in his incursions into architecture as in his music scores, Iannis Xenakis put mathematics at the center of his composition process.

Joaquín Medina Warmburg   Author of some of the emblems of West Germany, Günter Behnisch was free of formal biases and produced an oeuvre that was resolutely democratic in mood.

María Teresa Muñoz   With his colleague and associate John Dinkeloo, Kevin Roche set an eclectic style that revolutionized corporate architecture in the United States.

Eduardo Prieto   With his prolific writings, Reyner Banham was a formidable teacher who knew how to pass on his passion for technology to an entire generation.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   From Hypatia to María Zambrano, the history of thought is glazed with eminent women. Two recent books deal with some of the 20th century’s most notable ones through narratives braiding the life and work of four. Wolfram Eilenberger, who applied the

Ginés Garrido   The use of algorithms and big data, triggered by an increase in the potential of computers and the hyperconnectivity of terminals, has spread to the sciences traditionally seen as ‘soft,’ including those related to the city. In supply infrastructures

Eduardo Prieto   Perhaps no human construction is more complex than the city, so there are as many ways to think of it as there are of planning, building, or living it. Some wanted to see it as a problem of creating rhetorical and political order, a matter of symboli

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Architecture is not so much ‘frozen music’ as ‘crystallized politics.’ While Goethe understood that it has a mathematical internal order, as music does, its origin and purpose link it to politics inextricably. Organizing the ‘polis’ requires social n

Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos   Spain   The Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, built by order of King Philip II, was not only a political and religious utopia, but also an environmental one that shaped the mountainous woody landscape around. Precisely in a special enclave of this lan

Scapelab   Slovenia   Buildings can have many lives: someone builds them with a purpose, but time eventually imposes others, even though the forms stubbornly tend to persist. This is the case of an old construction in Ljubljana, which was a sugar refinery before a devasta

Atelier Daniel Flórez   Brazil   Paradise has taken many forms over the course of time, but of late tends to be associated with the picture of white-sand beaches and lush forests that look like they have never been stepped on. This is a cliché exploited by the hotel industry, and al

Nothing is timeless, still less in architecture, but if one had to look for a material to represent the notion of permanence, it would be brick. Wood was perhaps the first ever to be used by humans, and will perhaps continue to be the one most widely

AIS, BAAS Arquitectura   Spain   The project is based on a reflection on the excessive technification and dehumanization of health centers and, as a consequence, the desire to qualify the interior space, endowing it with adequate architectural conditions based on the section, natura

Colectivo C733    Mexico   In the framework of a national effort to revitalize vulnerable urban areas, a market raised by means of a low-cost building system aspires to become a neighborhood’s nerve center. The edifice takes on the solid but permeable character of traditional

Localworks   Uganda   A monastic complex located on the shore of Lake Victoria gives shelter to a community of Cistercian Trappist monks that was forced to leave Kenya on account of political unrest in the country. The complex – including a church, a novitiate, and a gues

Roarc Renew   China   In marshy land on the outskirts of Shanghai, a new exhibition gallery takes up two granaries that were in disuse. Added corridors form wings arranged in radical symmetry. The auxiliary spaces take up two volumes that stretch parallel to the preexisti

Pritzker 2022

In a ceremony which at least symbolically has anointed him as the African master of contemporary architecture, Francis Kéré was handed the Pritzker Prize in the Marshall Building of the London School of Economics, a civic-brutalist work of Grafton Ar

We have quite frequently seen an architect being handed by the Prince – or Princess – of Asturias one of the accolades named in their honor. In the wake of Niemeyer, Oíza, Calatrava, Foster, Moneo, and Gehry, this October comes the turn of Tokyo-born

Herzog & de Meuron   United Kingdom   The Royal College of Art has officially opened its new campus in the Battersea district of southwest London, beside its old premises. The Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron won the 2016 competition through a flexible scheme that would adapt to the constan

Diller Scofidio + Renfro   United States   Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with FXCollaborative, Henry R. Kravis Hall and David Geffen Hall – standing 11 and 8 floors, respectively – are two new facilities in the Manhattanville Campus of Columbia University Business Scho

FRPO, Walk Architecture & Landscape , SD Partners Architettura e Ingegneria   Italy   The Italian-Spanish team formed by FRPO Rodríguez y Oriol Arquitectos (Pablo Oriol, Fernando Rodríguez), Walk Architecture & Landscape (Juan Tur Mc Glone), and SD Partners (Massimo, Giuliani, Alessandro Viganò, Beatrice Meroni) placed first in the Ma

Jesús Aparicio, Donaire Milans Arquitectos   Italy   The proejct ‘Futuro Precedent’ (Future Precedent) – drawn up by the Spanish practices of Jesús Aparicio and Donaire Milans, in collaboration with the local architects and heritage experts Francesco Cellini and María Margarita Segarra with the restore

Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra   Italy   The Magazzino 26 building in the Porto Vecchio of Trieste is to be refurbished for a new cultural use. Striking a dialogue between historical and modern elements, an element will be added on the roof, in the central volume and along the vertical axis

Fed up perhaps with all the artsy airs that architects sometimes take on, the Serpentine Gallery in London has this year decided to assign its summer pavilion directly to a conceptual artist. Eclectically trained in urban planning and ceramics throug

Isla architects   Switzerland   The Mallorca firm isla architects (Marta Colón de Carvajal & Juan Palencia de Sarriá) won the bid to build the Basel Pavilion in the inaugural edition of Architekturwoche Basel, held from 9 to 15 May. It is located in the old Dreispitz industrial are

MVRDV   Germany   At the center of the observance of the 500th anniversary of the Fuggerei social housing complex in Augsburg rises this pavilion built with cross-laminated timber (CLT), a work of MVRDV. It harbors the exhibition ‘Fuggerei of the Future,’ which propos

Jean-Louis Cohen   Does history serve architects? Often. If we assume that no architect who has made a significant contribution has ever been an analphabet, history has irrigated everyone’s thinking, being the object of literal interpretations, instrumental readings, o