Luis Fernández-Galiano   Robots have been with us for a long time, but only now are they perceived as a planetary threat. The fascination with automata, from Hero to Al-Jazari or from the mannerist devices to the Vaucanson duck, has evolved parallel to its unsettling side, w

Prodigal son of architecture during the 1980s, Jean Nouvel (Fumel, 1945) knew to make the leap to international fame to join the list of star architects. It was a leap linked to the creation of Ateliers Jean Nouvel, a firm of 150 employees working f

Jean Nouvel   Netherlands   Surrounded by an extraordinary landscape of polders, the building rises like a vertical sea vessel whose glass walls engage in a dialogue with the typical changing Dutch atmosphere.

Jean Nouvel   Qatar   The museum, the design of which is inspired by the forms of the desert rose, is part of an ambitious plan for cultural elevation that seeks to bind global modernity to local identity.

Jean Nouvel   Italy   Within the historical area of the city of Rome, three buildings have been turned into a cultural center containing exhibition halls, accommodations for artists, and a rooftop restaurant.

Hans Rosling   Regulations, policies, and bureaucratic hurdles imposed by the EU prevent immigrants from arriving in Europe by safe means of transport.

Sergio del Molino   The outer borders of the EU, erected to control migratory flows from the African continent, have taken on a hypertechnological, highly refined nature.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Coffee table books have bad press, but these two volumes deserve attention. Drawing Architecture gathers almost 300 drawings, from a Sumerian sanctuary floor plan engraved over 4,000 years ago on the sculpture of the architect-king Gudea to H&deM’s E

Notre-Dame de Paris on fire

Miguel Aguiló   Everything fits in the city. There is room for all the dwellings, offices, stores, and parks needed or wanted by citizens. And for people to be able to live, work, shop, and relax in these places, they have to be built in the spirit of city-making. T

Construir sobre lo construido es un problema moderno. Antes de que existiera la perspectiva histórica, los restos del pasado —incluso los más prestigiosos de la Antigüedad clásica— eran tratados como materia muerta que, una vez descompuesta merced al

Herzog & de Meuron   China   The former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison, known to the locals as ‘Tai Kwun’ (or big station), is a walled compound of heritage buildings at the commercial center of Hong Kong Island. Established by the British after 1

Heatherwick Studio   United Kingdom   Within the wider redevelopment of King’s Cross in central London, Heatherwick Studio has restored and transformed a pair of long Victorian warehouses with attached train viaducts to create a new public space and retail destination. The pair of elonga

TAO | Trace Architecture Office   China   Headed by Hua Li, the Beijing firm Trace Architecture Office (TAO) has transformed, renovated, and enlarged a complex of buildings that house a coffee processing plant and a hotel in China’s Yunnan Province, known for its coffee trees. The brick cons

RavetllatRibas arquitectes   Spain   The Sant Antoni Market, completed in 1882 according to the project by the architect Antoni Rovira i Trias and the engineer Josep Maria Cornet i Mas, is one of the most emblematic public buildings in Barcelona’s Ensanche. Since its construction, the s

Enric Ruiz-Geli, Cloud 9   Spain   This experimental house in Aiguablava (Girona) has two principal characteristic features: the sustainable way it engages with its surroundings and the manner in which it is built. The first results from adapting to the topography, respecting the prop

Dominique Perrault   Notre-Dame, the heart of the heart of Paris, treasure of the Île de la Cité, has just suffered one of the most trying moments in its long history. Across all lands and cultures of the world, this drama leaves us speechless, touching the hearts and ar

The revamp of housing estates erected during the developmentalism of the 1950s and 1960s is one of the major problems that European cities are now having to deal with. It is a problem that, if addressed with a combination of talent and common sense,

The jury of the Mies van der Rohe Award decided to give the ‘Emerging Architecture’ prize to the Toulouse-based firm BAST for the school cafeteria that it built in Montbrun-Bocage, a commune in France’s Haute-Garonne department, near the Pyrenees. Th

Located at Hudson Yards in New York, very close to Thomas Heatherwick’s The Vessel (see Arquitectura Viva 213), rises The Shed, another major hybrid of architecture and sculpture, this time by Diller Scofidio + Renfro. While the theme of the ludic mo

Amid ecological pomp the Queen of Denmark, Margrethe II, inaugurated Copenhagen Zoo’s brand new Panda House, a pavilion carried out by Bjarke Ingels at a cost of 24 million euros. Beyond evoking yin and yang, the unique circular indoor-outdoor enclos

Luis Fernández-Galiano   At dusk on Monday, April 15th, just in time for the evening news, the world was treated to the horrendous spectacle of uncontrollable flames licking the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The fire spread from a scaffold that had been installed si