Luis Fernández-Galiano   Millenary China celebrates a centenary. Founded in Shanghai on 1 July 1921, the Chinese Communist Party reaches the anniversary after having led a historic transformation that has turned the country into a political, economic, and technological super

When the eyes of the world see the Olympic flame in the cauldron of the Japan National Stadium, many will look at the sophisticated branches of its timber trusses and the soothing foliage of its galleries, and recognize the material discipline and lo

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Located between the gardens of the Meiji Shrine – a Shinto sanctuary – and the Imperial Palace, in the heart of Tokyo, the new National Stadium contributes to preserving the natural environment of this historical area through restraint in size and th

Kengo Kuma   Japan   Situated next to Yoyogi Park in the Tokyo ward Shibuya, the Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto temple dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji (1852-1912) and his consort, Emperor Shôken (1849-1914). Blending with the surrounding trees, the new

Kengo Kuma   Japan   A temporary space for open-air events in a residential area of central Tokyo features a vibrant lattice executed with oblong panels of cross-laminated cedarwood. Beneath its translucent skin of plastic resin fins, the pavilion features a recreation a

Kengo Kuma   Japan   At the foot of the ancestral castle of Oka, a small information center tells the history of the enclave beneath an expressive play of roofs clad in a lattice of smoked bamboo. A bamboo gallery marks the garden’s boundary, leading to an elevator that

Kengo Kuma   Japan   The unobstructed space inside a shed with a striking roof is home to a school for environmental studies that uses the building itself as a lesson on sustainability. Exemplifying restrained use of forest resources, the structure of V-forming pillars w

Kengo Kuma   Spain   To enrich the experience of visitors to the iconic building, an emergency staircase is walled with undulating aluminum link curtains, in what is a new take on sensual Modernisme lines. Paying tribute to the decoration of Gaudí’s light well, the insta

Fulvio Irace   With the monograph on Gio Ponti just published by Taschen in a large format (36.5 x 36.5 cm), so far rivaled only by Phaidon with its impressive Le Corbusier Le Grand (33.34 x 43.82 cm), the fortunes of this Milanese architect seem to have reached (f

Fulvio Irace   On the 4th of September of 1997, the architect Aldo Rossi died in Milan following a road accident. Aged 66, he was at the peak of his career: in 1990 he had been awarded the Pritzker Prize, he had construction sites running around the world, and impo

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Carlo Piano calls his father Renzo ‘the Explorer’ and has imagined an eight-month journey with him on an Italian Navy ship, doing port of call in many of the cities where Piano has built, and both take the adventure as a search for Plato’s mythical A

José María Ezquiaga   This book on urban planning, despite its seductive erudition and lucid reasoning, does not lead to a solid conclusion in the way that texts by Rose or Glaeser do. Sometimes it sounds more like the inspired uncertainty of the most recent Sennett or th

Eduardo Prieto   In his book Four Walls and a Roof, Reinier de Graaf —an OMA partner— described the current architecture scene in the conviction that ideals are always eventually dissolved by the corrosive action of forces bigger than architecture: markets and politi

José Ignacio Linazasoro   Exceptional but unknown to many (although this magazine devoted an extensive article to him in 1998), the Dutch architect-monk Hans van der Laan is now the theme of a monograph edited by Nicola Panzini that complements those put together by Richard P

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The architect and theorist Adolf Loos was the subject of reviews published in this magazine in 2018, with write-ups on the book about his trial for pedophilia, on the facsimile of Das Andere, and on the exhibition held at the CaixaForum centers of Ba

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Hace veinticinco años, en julio de 1996, se celebró en Barcelona el XIX Congreso de la Unión Internacional de Arquitectos, que ante el desbordamiento de asistentes tuvo que celebrar alguna de sus sesiones al aire libre. Luis Fernández-Galiano redactó

ARCHITECTURE in capital letters, architecture conceived to last long, was mostly sacred architecture. The origins of the discipline are confused with religious rituals. In fact, the first architect of history, Imhotep – who built the pyramid of Saqqa

Carlos Jiménez   United States   Won Buddhism is a modern and reformed type of Buddhism established in Korea in 1916. Its primary goal is to teach how to use the mind well toward enlightenment and equilibrium. There are several congregations around the world and a few of them in the

ArchStudio    China   A sanctuary is buried under a mound, preserving the beautiful riverside scenery around it and creating an intimate atmosphere conducive to meditating in harmony with nature. With the objective of not felling any of the trees on the site, the project

Bevk Perović arhitekti   Slovenia   Besides a new place of worship, an ensemble of buildings provides a Sunni community with spaces for leisure and gathering, and seeks to trigger an entire regeneration of the zone. The language used avoids historicism and reinterprets traditional icon

John Pawson   Germany   A wooden prism stands on the edge of a cycling lane that stretches through a Bavarian forest, providing a place to stop and rest in that also encourages meditation and recollection. On a base of concrete, solid trunks are stacked and flattened vertic

Mesura   Spain   “Una casa come me” was the instruction that Curzio Malaparte gave Adalberto Libera when he contracted him to build the villa in Capri that Brigitte Bardot would immortalize walking down its stepped roof, wrapped in a bathrobe, in the Godard film. Equ

Tadao Ando   France   The old grain exchange in Paris, built by Nicolas Le Camus de Mézières between 1763 and 1766, was crowned with an iron dome of 60 meters in diameter in the 19th century, when the building became the stock exchange by Henri Blondel’ s renovation and c

AGI Architects   Spain   Based in Madrid and (Safat) Kuwait, the firm headed by Joaquín Pérez-Goicoechea and Nasser B. Abulhasan AGi Architects won a public competition organized by the Spanish Ministry of Transport, Mobility, and Urban Agenda to find designers for projects

The opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo has taken place in the Japan National Stadium, a work of Kengo Kuma, which presents a sophisticated composition of timber trusses and vegetation in its galleries. Sport events mark our everyday

David Chipperfield Architects   Germany   The firm of the British architect David Chipperfield has finished refurbishing the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and it will reopen to the public on 22 August 2021. One of the icons of 20th-century architecture, the museum is the only building buil

At the mercy of gales and waves, boats entering the Concha Bay have been guided by the lighthouse of Santa Clara Island since late in the 19th century, and although it figures prominently in the everyday scenery of the people of San Sebastián, it has

The ubiquitous Swiss gallery Hauser & Wirth sets 17 July as the day to open a new outpost in a former naval hospital on Isla del Rey in the Menorcan city of Mahon, its second landing in Spain after reopening Chillida Leku. The Paris-based Argentinian

Jaime Lerner, architect, urban planner, former president of the International Union of Architects (UIA), has died of complications triggered by a chronic kidney disease. He was 83. Born in 1937 in Curitiba (Brazil), Lerner was twice governor of the s

At the venerable age of 101, the German Gottfried Böhm passed away on 9 June. Belonging to a veritable lineage of Cologne architects – he was the grandson, son, and later husband and father of professionals in the field – Böhm began his career follow

A key figure in the past four decades of Spain’s museum world, the art historian and critic Tomás Llorens Serra, born in Castellón province, died on 10 June, bequeathing to memory his efficient management of three of the country’s most important cult

Luis Fernández-Galiano   A single week in May has taken away two American friends: Terence Riley at 66 on Monday the 17th, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha at 92 on Sunday the 23rd. Our paths crossed fifteen years ago, with one and the other, and now we bid them farewell at the sam