A Technical Aesthetic. Fernando Rodríguez and Pablo Oriol share an infrastructural way of tackling projects, not so much in relation to mechanistic logic as in terms of an organizational capacity to take on complex contexts and programs. With a diffe

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Trade unites, and its paths weave a web that holds the world together. Faced with shrinking globalization, with many countries preferring geographical or ideological proximity in their exchanges, to defend the links created by commercial traffic is t

Ever since they crossed paths as students, Fernando Rodríguez (Albacete, 1977) and Pablo Oriol (Madrid, 1977) have shared an infrastructural way of tackling projects, not so much in relation to mechanical logic as in terms of an organizational capaci

FRPO   Mexico   Right in the heart of the city, a building conceived as an infrastructure concentrating a number of different uses seeks to create a hub of activity on a local and a metropolitan level alike. Public programs are accommodated within a grid of screen s

FRPO   Spain   The operations center of a manufacturer of medical products tries to combine efficient industrial formulas with a corporate image grounded on volumetric and material refinement. Laboratories and loading docks are closed with a mini-wave corrugated sh

FRPO   Spain   A work of the Madrid practice led by Fernando Rodríguez and Pablo Oriol, FRPO, this thermal power plant supplies hot water to thousands of homes in the city of Palencia. It uses no fossil fuels, only locally-sourced forest biomass, as its main raw ma

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

Fernando Lara   The premiere of ‘The Boy and the Heron’ inspires a recap of the moving filmography of an animator who creates lyrical fusions of the real and imagined.

Jorge Gorostiza   The Bilbao-born director has adapted a graphic novel for the big screen and masterfully set the action in the Manhattan of part of his youth…

Andrés Trapiello   Stores in 50 Spanish provinces are used to paint a graphic and literary portrait of an urban landscape of traditional charm that deserves to be saved from oblivion.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Both praised by Bill Gates, the Czech-Canadian scientist and political analyst Vaclav Smil and the Danish economist and political scientist Bjørn Lomborg propose a reality check: Smil’s How the World Really Works and Lomborg’s Best Things First invit

Ginés Garrido   This is a personal exploration of gardens that the author is drawn to, and her aim is to grasp the meaning of these somehow ‘unreal’ places without which “architecture feels incomplete.” She follows no clear order, preferring an erratic round of visi

Iñaki Bergera   From childhood we want to climb trees, reach the top of a tower, or stand on a cliff’s edge for thrilling views. Since the 19th century the modern city has been associated with verticality, the dream of ever taller buildings in defiance of structural

Eduardo Prieto   Taxonomy by generations and the observance of centenaries are superstitions of statistical thought, but keep our memory and sense of justice awake, especially when honoring figures whom fashions consign to limbo. This is not fully the case of José Ma

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Kenneth Frampton has the handwriting of an architect: an elegant and regular calligraphy that shows the visual culture of a disciplined education. When awarded the Golden Lion at the 2018 Venice Biennale, the British historian and critic said of his

Equipo de Arquitectura    Paraguay   The design of this home for a young couple reduces architecture to the minimum elements, concisely and efficiently, through the scale of the project, the proportions of the pieces, and the materials used. With a built area of 195 square meters, the

Pablo Millán   Spain   When Saint Teresa of Ávila, also called Teresa of Jesus, reached Beas de Segura and founded one of her “dovecots of the Virgin” with which she would reform the Carmelite order, this town of Jaén already had a community of nuns: the Poor Clares whose

Studio di Architettura Zermani Associati   Italy   Saint Matthew left word in the Gospel that the gate to life is small. And that is how visitors may feel as they complete their rounds of the Medici chapels in Florence’s Basilica di San Lorenzo: a walk – separate from the actual temple’s – which used

Ever since people began to live in cities, conserving surplus food – whether as grain or as wine – has been one of the fundamental tasks of society, and this is likely to turn wineries – overriding the snobberies that nowadays want to make them sophi

Herzog & de Meuron   France   Combining spaces for production and promotional activities, the viticulture facilities of a historic estate seek to formally and conceptually blend into a World Heritage Site. Much like the product embodies the vineyards’ mineral and climatic charact

Foster + Partners   France   The design unveiled by the British architect Norman Foster shows a desire for it to respectfully blend in with the gently rolling hills around. The tarracotta-tiled vaulted roof presents a timber structure with a 40-meter...

RCR Arquitectes   Spain   As a result of the close collaboration between the architects and the owners – the Suqué-Mateu family –, the project to build the new winery, by fields of vineyards and a country estate, started to take shape a decade ago. The relationship with the l

The Year of Chillida

The transgressive spirit of the avant-gardes gave rise to a peculiar process of contamination: architecture began to tend to go artsy, and art to aspire to become architecture. While buildings have embraced abstraction and even become sculptures, the

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Ellen van Loon   United Kingdom   The new headquarters of Factory International, organizer of the Manchester International Festival (MIF), has been completed. A work of OMA / Ellen van Loon, it responds to an eclectic environment – amid industrial brick constructions, towers, housing

If there is something we are still learning from Las Vegas, it is the fact that there are no limits to creativity in the search for publicity ploys and gimmicks. To its kitch imitation of Italy’s City of Canals, the casino and hotel The Venetian has

On the campus of Brown University, the New York studio REX – with Joshua Ramus, a former partner at OMA, at the helm – has completed a versatile performing arts center that addresses the requirements of a renowned full student symphony orchestra and

Foster + Partners   Saudi Arabia   Foster + Partners has won the competition to design a new terminal for the airport of Abha, the capital of Saudi Arabia’s Asser Region. Taking inspiration from the nearby village of Rijal Almaa, the winning scheme presents a series of interconnected

Henning Larsen   Czech Republic   The Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects, in collaboration with the engineers of the Ramboll group, has won the competition to transform the main railway station of the city of Prague. The project reconnects the historic station with the Vrchlického

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Bhutan   Drawn up by BIG in collaboration with Arup and Cistri, the ‘Mindfulness City’ masterplan for a new economic hub in Gelephu, on the Bhutan-India border, includes an airport and a hydroelectric plant incorporating a temple. Covering 1,000 square kilom

System Arquitectura   Spain   The new logistical center of Mayoral, a children’s clothing brand, rises on its corporate campus, on the site of the old company Interhorce (Industrial Textiles del Guadalhorce) in the city of Málaga, beside the listed building by Ramón Vázquez Molez

Thirty years after its creation, the Technology Park of Andalusia – now simply called Málaga TechPark to satisfy the whims of marketing – is a concentration of half a thousand companies, including many of the promising startup firms that have been tu

The expansion of its Teatinos Campus has enabled the University of Málaga to equip itself with cutting-edge facilities and greatly improve its offer of academic programs. One of the beneficiaries of this is the Faculty of Psychology and Speech Therap

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Balancing on the diving board of his pool while addressing Getty Center scholars during a farewell dinner in the summer of 1990. That is how I wish to remember Kurt Walter Forster, the great Swiss architectural historian who died on 6 January in his