Pritzker Prize 2025. Our magazines had barely published flashes of the exquisite and silent work of Liu Jiakun, an architect who at the outset was keener on persevering in his career as a novelist than on mastering the art of building. But in the hea

Luis Fernández-Galiano   appeasement  The imperial presidency of Trump was inaugurated with a sequence of executive orders orchestrated like coups de théâtre, signed off with the bold strokes of a hyperbolic signature and exposed in performances worthy of an art biennia

A country where private practice of the architectural profession was prohibited until the 1980s can congratulate itself for having already landed two Pritzkers. Like the 2012 winner Wang Shu, Liu Jiakun represents a China much at odds with that of ge

Liu Jiakun   China   When, after a period of meditation and reflection, prince Siddhartha decided to extend his doctrine to the rest of humankind, he preached his first sermon in Deer Park near Benares. In Chinese, the word ‘luye’ literally means ‘a field with deer’ and,

Liu Jiakun   China   New additions to the Jianchuan museums, which house the country’s largest private collection, are three interconnected pavilions harboring the memory of the Cultural Revolution. Like temples in bustling areas, the galleries showing historical items a

Liu Jiakun   China   The facilities of the oldest Chinese distillery still in operation are surrounded by new production buildings with pitched roofs, where traditional fermenting and liquor-making practices are perpetuated. A courtyard connects the various volumes, whos

Liu Jiakun   China   The paving stones that were used in the Forbidden City in Beijing came from a manufacturing plant whose centenary history is presented by premises that explore the poetics of baked brick. The museum features a marshy park, fenced in like traditional

Liu Jiakun   China   The declining environs of two temples have been revitalized through the insertion of new community programs, which punctuate a picturesque succession of courtyards and covered galleries. A museum, a hotel, a café, and a bookstore fit themselves into

Liu Jiakun   China   Located at the foot of some old caverns used for the storage of liquors, a new facility makes it possible to immerse oneself in the mountainous site and get close to them. Thought out to establish a connection with both the slope and the views of the

Estrella de Diego   “Occasionally, though, you’ll see young girls. For there are lots of young girls in the museums, girls from somewhere or other who have left homes that no longer hold on to anything; they find themselves in front of these tapestries and for a short w

Beatriz Colomina   Let’s return to that precise moment that Estrella de Diego evokes in her discourse; to the Salon Carré in the Louvre and Christopher Newman lying on the divan, exhausted, having seen everything, every painting marked with an asterisk in the Baedeker

Juan Miró Sardá   The encounter of Europe and America since 1492 can be considered one of the most significant events in universal history. Europeans perceived it as a ‘discovery’ and claimed authority to colonize the vast territories, but the colonists were immediate

Luis Fernández-Galiano   These two histories of history give narratives an influence on architecture, so we could perhaps call them operative historiographies. The book by Crison and Williams, which calls for a reencounter between architectural history and art history, claim

Alejandro Bernabeu   The region of New England is located in the Appalachian Highlands, on the Atlantic coast of the United States: a territory divided by the Connecticut River and dotted with lakes, mountains, marshes, and sandy beaches; gentle landscapes of woods and w

Alberto Pieltain   “Travel is discovery, travel is life. When you set out on your travels, you look for one thing and find another. A journey is a bit like going to some big library and looking for a book. It’s true that you’re looking for one book, but while you’re se

Jacobo García-Germán   In cultural terms, architectural activity involves permanent revising, updating, and redescribing, and the fresh look offered by this presentation of Jaume Bach’s fifty-year practice demonstrates this. Leading the renewal of programs, types, and lexi

Ángela García de Paredes   This book on Navarro Baldeweg is more than a monograph. Nineteen chapters describe both his architectural career and his work as a painter and sculptor, and recurring themes (intersections and confluences, balances and tensions...) are explained thro

Alberto Ballesteros   The past is destroyed, not transformed. Despite efforts to manicure the changes it is undergoing, downtown Madrid is becoming generic, a neighborhood sans neighbors where the only memory worth keeping is that which attracts tourists: walking its stre

Enrique Morillo   With the debates on the importance of preserving heritage over and done with, disputes on what was worthy of that pedigree status began. Grand monuments easily made the cut as historical treasures, and then with more effort industrial, modern, and la

Although the version currently in circulation is the one the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted in 1959, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child drew from a text approved by the League of Nations in Geneva almost four decades before, d

Urko Sánchez Architects   Kenya   The Waldorf School in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, was thought out as a small village for children nestled within the woods. With organic shapes to fit in with the natural environment, the buildings had to be constructed quickly and cost-efficiently

Article 25   Niger   Niger’s education system faces huge challenges. The African country currently has the highest birth rate in the world (seven children born to every woman on average), and simultaneously struggles to keep young people in the classroom, particularly be

Architectural Pioneering Consultants, Wolfgang Rossbauer   Tanzania   Ubicada entre el monte Meru y el Kilimanjaro, en la región tanzana de Arusha, esta escuela de la remota aldea de Ngabobo es un encargo de la ONG Africa Amini Alama, a la que asisten…

Zarcola Architetti   Italy   Rustic but refined like the pastoral characters of the eclogues, a small dwelling nestled into a village in the Lessini Mountains emerges from what was an old barn, between the stone walls of which a structure of fine wooden laths, set three centimet

Dominique Perrault Architecture   France   The station beside the Gustave Roussy Hospital in Villejuif, in the south of Paris, is part of the Grand Paris Express, a 200-kilometer system of metropolitan railway lines and 68 new stations which is one of the largest infrastructural projects unde

Rubén Valdez   Mexico   A circular enclosure, semi-buried in the terrain, fuses symbolically with the landscape of Todos Santos, in the South Baja California Desert. This discreet project, commissioned by Paradero Hotels, harbors a 185-square-meter non-religious ceremony sp

Trump's Architecture

Returned to power, Donald Trump has made a point of taking swift measures to put the country back on track after a disastrous interregnum, as he sees it. In this he hastens to halt wars and crises, but also rename gulfs and forbid paper straws. On th

On view through 27 April at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, ‘Dimitris Pikionis: An Aesthetic Topography’ presents the life and work of the architect, painter, sculptor, and editor of the magazine To Trito Mati (The Third Eye), a central figure

On view through 1 September at the César Manrique Foundation in Tahíche (Lanzarote) is an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of Lanzarote. Arquitectura inédita, a book the Canarian artist published in 1974. It has been reprinted many times

Prince Karim Al-Hussaini, the Aga Khan IV, spiritual leader of Ismaeli Muslims, has died at the age of 88 in Lisbon. Born in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1936, throughout his life he did not only carry out programs in key fields like education, healthcare

Emilio Tuñón   In the cold Madrid winter we lost Helga de Alvear, whose life revolved around love and generosity, words not much appreciated in these materialistic times. From her first collection of stones that she would pick up in the River Nahe as a child in Ger

Ricardo Scofidio has died at 89 years of age in Manhattan. In 1981 he and his wife, Elizabeth Diller, opened Diller Scofidio, which Charles Renfro joined as a partner in 2004. Works that the firm DS-R has built in New York City include the High Line,

It is probable that Henning Larsen would not have liked to be remembered for what is his best-known work: the Copenhagen Opera House, the object of a public dispute with his client, the magnate Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, who wanted to have the last word

Marja-Riitta Norri   Aarno Ruusuvuori explained the points of departure of his architecture with the following words: i(Because of Alvar Aalto’s individual architectural thought and his brilliant gifts the field of freeform seemed pretty well full, so I thought it best t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   If the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik on 4 October 1957 set off the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that of the generative artificial intelligence DeepSeek’s R1 model on 27 January 2025 sparked the cyberspace ra