Luis Fernández-Galiano   The dark light of hidden spaces is fascinating and confusing. On one hand, it is hard not to succumb to the oneiric attraction of enigmas, and the descent to the depths of the earth is a symbolic itinerary of initiation that captures us with its mine

Dominique Perrault, Frédéric Migayrou   Our relationship with the ground keeps us continually attached to what is the essence of a truly geographic approach, to our cultural tendency to accept the idea of making a mark, of a foundation, of geography in the literal sense, the one of rootedn

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Denmark   Some time into World War ii, the Germans began to fortify the coasts of continental Europe and Scandinavia as a defence against an anticipated Allied invasion that eventually took place in Normandy. Stretching hundreds of kilometers, this military ba

Studio Anne Holtrop   Netherlands   Fort Vechten is the second largest of 48 fortresses that were erected along the New Dutch Waterline, a military barrier that started to go up back in the 18th century, consisting of an 85-kilometer-long ring that could be flooded to keep the enemy at

David Chipperfield Architects   Italy   Located in the hills close to the city of Vicenza, the Cavea Arcari was the quarry that provided the precious Pietra Bianca di Vicenza that was used to build, among other buildings, the famous villas of Andrea Palladio. The contour of the exploitatio

Werner Tscholl   Italy   Literally carved in the rock, the house nevertheless arises from ecological and sustainable criteria. First: occupy unproductive land, in such a way that the construction continues the local tradition of making the most of available fertile ground. S

Junya Ishigami + associates   Japan   Taking inspiration from the dark and humid atmosphere of wineries, this cave-house evokes the passage of time reflected through the process of sedimentation and erosion; it is also evocative of the world of labyrinthine galleries excavated by worms;

Jorge Sainz   Mid-1960s. The modern ‘masters’ were living their final days of glory. A young Philadelphian was writing his reflections after two years spent at the American Academy in Rome; his name was Robert Venturi and he had studied at Princeton, a school not

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Francis Kéré is Burkinabè and Berliner. His work is deeply rooted in his home country, but he uses universal principles and elements that make it suitable for completely different contexts like that of his adoptive city. These primary elements were d

Luis Fernández-Galiano   American museums engrave the names of benefactors on a ‘donors wall.’ This biography of Dominique and John de Menil begins with thanks to the hundreds who were interviewed and the institutions that granted access to their archives, but also includes

Pablo Canga   Three decades as an architect and professor, an elegant corpus of executed works, and many awards shape the career of one of the masters of contemporary architecture in Switzerland. His works are characterized by the purity and autonomy of forms, sol

Eduardo Prieto   Technique is not neutral. With supposedly objective reasoning the champions of the 20th-century avant-garde used it to justify the new world of forms. Curtain walls, concrete or steel structures, and air conditioning networks were used by some with

‘Francis Kéré. Primary Elements’ at Museo ICO

Ramón Araujo   The use of stone as a building material is being reconsidered completely. Many are the buildings that resort to it, for purposes other than cladding. Moreover, ongoing studies point to a future where stone plays a larger role. The Modern Movement pra

Kengo Kuma   Escocia   The V&A Dundee is the first branch of this prestigious museum of art and design outside London. From the beginning, the project was set forth as an opportunity to reactivate the promenade by Tay River – an industrial area – and blend it with the city

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   The house is a simple prismatic volume with a square floor plan of 16-meter sides, and each of the four facades is perforated by three windows. The stretches of wall have been constructed with local quartzite stone, and the windows are framed with Ex

Harquitectes   Spain   The stone wall that marked out the boundaries of the estate went around the whole site, revealing just the tops of the trees inside. The materiality and the irregularity of the geometry of the wall endowed it with a special character and presence, bu

PROARH   Croatia   On the Croatian island of Vis, in a Mediterranean environment, the Issa Grotto Hill House was conceived as a temporary family retreat that must through a high degree of formal and energetic autonomy deal with the near absence of infrastructures, a si

Four years after the exhibition ‘The Architect is Present,’ which showed the Spanish public the work of five architects marked by a deep social calling and a strong language of sustainability, the ICO Museum in Madrid has just inaugurated a show, aga

In the 1970s, technocratic modernity found in the UK a fertile field that bore fruit in the form, already as high-tech, of works by stars like Foster and Rogers, but also by an outstanding cast of supporting actors, among whom the most gifted was per

The firm of the Madrid architects Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano – one of Spain’s most international practices, with a branch in Berlin – recently opened the Arvo Pärt Center in Laulasmaa, 35 kilometers from Tallin. Named after the composer it

Promoted by the late Antonino Fernández, one of the principal proprietors of the Mexican business group Modelo (distributor of ‘Coronita’), the Fundación Cerezales Antonino y Cinia (FCAYC) has dedicated its new headquarters in the brewer’s native tow

In the heart of Navarre’s Baztán Valley, in a genuine locus amoenus of the town of Lecároz, the architectural firm Vaillo+Irigaray has built a throat lozenge factory for a pharmaceutical company. Without renouncing contemporary language, the building

Carrying the day over more modest buildings, such as the Tate Gallery in Cornwall, the Bushey Jewish Cemetery, and the Storey’s Field Community Center and Nursery in Cambridge, Norman Foster has for the third time landed the RIBA Stirling Prize throu

It has been announced by the College of Architecture of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago that the winner of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) – awarded every two years to the finest works of architecture carried out in t

Famous for his expertise in the design and construction of airports, the Bordeaux-born Paul Andreu passed away in the French capital on 11 October. Educated in the tradition of the École Polytechnique, he ran a highly professional practice that took

Perhaps one of the last of the great French intellectuals of the 20th century, Paul Virilio devoted part of his career to urbanism and architecture, as much on his own (writing about the World War ii bunkers in his native Normandy) and in collaborati

One of the great Spanish artists of the second half of the 20th century has died at the age of 81 in Madrid, the city of his birth. Trained to be a journalist, in the 1950s Arroyo went off into exile in Paris, where he realized that he had an artist

Richard Sennett   The words ‘resilience’ and ‘sustainability’ are clichés which dominate urbanism today. Everyone is for them, whatever they mean: the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the builders of Masdar, indeed most builders, tout the pair to legitimate