Shanghai paradigm. With its babelic chaos and constant mutation, Shanghai is one of the world’s new frontiers, a reality which Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu learn from to produce rigorous works that pursue order without ignoring their urban and cultural

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Republic of Turkey celebrates its centenary on 29 October 2023. Founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, and led for the past two decades by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country in February suffered earthquakes that left

The dystopias that J.G. Ballard imagined could well have been set in the Shanghai where he was born. With its babelic chaos, vertiginous pace, and constant mutation, the economic capital of the Asian giant is one of the world’s new frontiers, a metro

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   In what is an emerging industrial area, a top manufacturer of elevators has provided itself with a headquarters of formidable dimensions, yet is able to integrate the human scale. In what is a campus of workshops, showrooms, and storage interspersed

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   In a resort located on the shore of the Yellow Sea, a modest venue for exhibitions is designed to become a place where residents can socialize and interact with one another. With its solid envelope composed of faceted modules of concrete, interrupted

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   A leading producer of spirits has opened its first distillery on Chinese soil, set in a beautiful landscape with views of Mount Emei, one of the four sacred spots of Buddhism.

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The transformation of a residential tower into a hotel has been completed with a metal skin wrapping the structure of exposed concrete, thus adding a new layer to the building’s history. While the entrance tries not to stand out amid alleys, the vert

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The warehouse of an old cotton textile factory outside the Chinese capital has been refurbished to harbor the main office and the retail concept store of a historical pastry brand. In allusion to their baking-industry uses, the brick buildings were t

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   Amid the tourist boom that the region is undergoing, a young art center has endeavored to relieve its tight installations with an urban landmark that will give it more visibility.

Andrés Jaque   The death of the politician and media tycoon refreshes memories of the real-estate ventures of his beginnings, dealings which sealed his power.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Expert on hybrid structures, honored with the National Engineering Award, and author of twenty-six bridges and an endless list of works with architects like Foster, Isozaki, Ando, Pei, Navarro Baldeweg, García de Paredes, Cruz & Ortiz or Miralles, Ju

Jorge Sainz   “I love books.” What better way to begin. The author proceeds to specify his adoration: “In particular I love architecture books.” Then: “I love illustrated architecture books.” So it is that John Hill took up the tricky challenge indicated in his su

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Norman Foster has published three books which are great works. Their colossal dimensions belie the intimate attention given to every page, because the architect’s hand and gaze is all over. Taschen’s monumental two-tome monograph is signed by Philip

Bayer & Strobel    Germany   A small ceremonial space nestles under a pronounced pitched roof that rises high over the walls of the graveyard but engages in dialogue with their materiality. The spaces create a contemplative mood through the carefully choreographed entrance of li

Markus Schietsch Architekten   Switzerland   Stricter measures to maintain air quality and a decrease in the number of traditional burials led to the building of a new crematory, the design of which gives importance to the surrounding parkland. The facility is organized in concentric layers: fr

Studio di Architettura Zermani Associati   Italy   The major enlargement of a cemetery has combined a grammar of classical references with a bare materiality to give shape to spaces intended for the rites of final farewells. Emerging from the ground as a bold urban symbol honoring the memory of the d

In a society that tends to be in denial about its inevitable finitude, being reminded that architecture is intimately tied to death can be considered unsavory. With our spaces placed at the service of production, our homes, pleasure, education, or th

Creus e Carrasco, r v r arquitectos   Spain   With a built area of 25,843 square meters, this urban reconfiguration in Porto do Son, a town in the province of A Coruña, expresses a direct engagement with the sea and fishing activity, reviving the old port’s identity.

Alberto Campo Baeza, Modesto Sánchez Morales   Spain   When in 1964 Bernard Rudofsky filled the MoMA galleries with ‘Architecture Without Architects,’ among cave houses of Cappadocia and adobe huts of Mali he included two photographs of Mojácar taken by José Ortiz Echagüe, with a short text in which he b

Studio.Noju   Spain   The thorough revamp of a 400-square-meter duplex on the 10th and11th floors of Torres Blancas in Madrid is presented as a dialogue with the apartment building that Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza built. Drawing from texts on the project that the archi

Barbie & Oppenheimer

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The bathroom deserves a revision. We routinely recall inventors like Elisha Otis or Willis Carrier because the elevator or air conditioning transformed architecture, and ritually remember women who, like Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, created the modern

The huge commercial operation that has come with the simultaneous premieres of Barbie and Oppenheimer has even resulted in a tag of its own, ‘Barbenheimer,’ and revived architectures as oneiric as the spaces inhabited by the pink doll and her boyfrie

At the recently renovated Richelieu site of the National Library of France (BnF), on 12 September, the Japanese Imperial House and the Japan Art Association named the winners of the Praemium Imperiale, an accolade awarded every year to five figures f

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   United States   The Madrid practice Nieto Sobejano has won the Reimagining the Dallas Museum of Art International Design Competition, carrying the day over five other finalists: David Chipperfield Architects (London); Diller Scofidio + Renfro (New York); Johnston Ma

Barozzi Veiga   United States   The project is located in the industrial zone of Little Haiti, a Miami neighborhood which has undergone major transformation in recent years. Oolite Arts is an oganization founded three decades ago by Ellie Schneiderman. It provides the city’s visual

ENORME Studio, Néstor Montenegro, Smart and Green Design   Japan   Besides an easterly route from the Philippines to Acapulco, the Augustinian friar Andrés de Urdaneta discovered a north-flowing current towards the Japan Sea. Both phenomena helped Spain create an enriching commercial and cultural channel in the Paci

On 13 September Rafael Moneo presented AV Monographs 250, devoted to his oeuvre, in the course of a relaxed conversation with Luis Fernández-Galiano, after which a number of guests put in a word. Unlike in other encounters in which he has looked back

Six years after the opening of his foundation in Madrid, on 26 September Norman Foster headed a public launch of the Norman Foster Institute, an educational center that will draw from his indefatigable anticipation of the future to focus on cities an

John Francis Charlewood has died at the age of 96. The author of Freedom to Build (1972) and Housing by People (1976), the British architect and theorist is known for his work on self-build housing and urbanism in relation to users.

The emeritus professor and academician of San Fernando and San Quirce has died at the age of 81. He leaves an extensive bibliographical work and an indelible mark on the Castilian city of Segovia.

José Manuel Pérez Latorre has died at the age of 76. The architect from Zaragoza built in his city, among other works, the Zaragoza Auditorium -for which he won the National Architecture Award- the ICCAA Pablo Serrano or the Ámbar brewery.

Zvi Hecker has died at the age of 92. "I am an artist whose profession is architecture." That is how the Israeli architect, painter, and designer defined himself. His built works include the Heinz-Galinski-Schule in Berlin, the Jewish Center in Duisb

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Martin Wolf and Kohei Saito are antithetical figures: the veteran economics commentator of the Financial Times and the young philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo tackle the state of the world from opposite stances but coincide in detecting