Operating from Paris and Nice since 2009, NP2F has worked on the most varied themes, among which a special interest in sports spaces stands out. As architects of Cartesian method, the firm’s members tackle their projects from a deduction process grou

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Blinded by the war flashes in Ukraine and the Middle East, we fail to see the agony of Sudan. The outcome of the conflict in Ukraine is very important for Europeans, and uncertain due to cracks in the support of the country in the East of the contine

François Chas, Nicolas Guérin, Fabrice Long, and Paul Maitre Devallon are architects of Cartesian method: their projects stem from a deduction process grounded on the drawing, “the first act of building,” which helps them take on the complexities of

NP2F, Marion Bernard, Point Supreme, Seyler & Lucan   France   The higher studies of architecture, landscape design, and planning are now concentrated in a new urban campus: L’Institut Méditerranéen de la Ville et des Territoires. Although the concrete structure of light color tones has the effect of unifying th

NP2F, CENTRAL   Belgium   In the vibrant Molenbeek district, an art space linked to a laboratory for computer-aided manufacturing has been renovated with the idea of opening up to the city and bringing in the public. The state-of-the-art facilities of the workshops are preced

NP2F   France   Located at the entrance to the Brazza area of Bordeaux, this sports center has built area exceeding 15,700 square meters and rises 20 meters. The exterior spaces are superimposed like urban squares and streets protected against wind. The building’s m

NP2F, SCAU Architecture   France   In the context of the Olympic Games, a pavilion rose on the Boulevard Périphérique that can accommodate large numbers of spectators while serving as a hub of activity for the community. On a plinth providing facilities for local associations emerge t

Juan Villoro   Victor Hugo estableció en Nuestra Señora de París una sugerente tensión entre la arquitectura y el texto. Escrita en el siglo XIX, la novela se ubica en el XV, que asiste a la invención de la imprenta. Hugo compara esta transformación cultural con el

Marina Otero   Antes de ser moldeados en una experiencia tridimensional mercantilizada, los bits se almacenan en arquitecturas de habitaciones climatizadas. Filas de servidores zumban incesantemente, mientras que tuberías regulan las temperaturas para evitar su fun

Luis Fernández-Galiano   These two very large books document monumental buildings. The Complete Works of Herzog & de Meuron, by Gerhard Mack, released its fifth volume (presenting projects completed between 2002 and 2004) two years after the publication of the sixth (which I

Eduardo Prieto   Children take two years to learn to read, and many take a lifetime to have a voice. Especially a writer, who uses such abstract mediums as words, sometimes to inform us, other times to move us, but always to draw us into a special ‘I-me’ from which g

Alberto Ballesteros   Gong Dong raises buildings to stir emotions. Many architects are able to, but few make this the purpose of their practice, let alone so explicitly; it may be an effect of intellectualism to want to unearth the most emotive words from discourses. The

Enrique Morillo   For anyone unfamiliar with Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, this publication is useful. If it is true that architects think with eyes, one need not have crossed paths with these Swiss to see that their gaze is inquisitive and sharp. Marking 2

Iñaki Alday   The relationship between cities and their rivers has been tense and conflictive since time inmemorial. Rivers – access to fresh water to drink or to irrigate the fields with – are the primary raison d’être of human settlements. But while an essential

PRÁCTICA   Romania   The Spanish firm Práctica – Jaime Daroca, José Mayoral, José Ramón Sierra – was commissioned to regenerate 15 kilometers of the banks of the Sommer River that lie within the Rumanian municipality of Cluj-Napoca. An outcome of a 2017 competition, the

Entorno y Contexto   Mexico   A comprehensive plan has cut short the city’s alienation from its river course, formerly a polluted and unsafe environment where other attempts to fix it had failed for lack of an all-round view. At a comfortable distance from the river’s course, a s

Turenscape, Arsomsilp   Thailand   The environs of a dismantled tobacco factory have been reconditioned as a green expanse of land that serves as much to accumulate rainwater during the typhoon season as to curb flooding. The pattern of paths and resting spots is based on traditional

Topia landskapsarkitekter   Sweden   A composition of six concatenated swamps form a recreational space that also functions as a natural cleanser of the waters of an urban stream before they flow into a large lake. In what until recently was a field of single crop farming, the water cur

Leopold Banchini Architects, Sana Nabaha   Morocco   Two parallel walls of rammed earth form a linear succession that forms a rural house in Al Haouz, Morocco. Redefining the traditional house-courtyard typology, Dar El Farina breaks up its sequenced domestic spaces by means of pivot doors. The sun shi

One Plus Partnership   China   Just as Chillida paid tribute to the sea with geometrical shapes carved in alabaster, a moviehouse in Haikou alludes to the island’s coastal nature with similar abstraction and a heavy material presence: ceramic waves that form floors and ceiling vau

BEAR   Spain   Located on the left bank of the Zubitegi stream, in the south zone of the Basque municipality of Mallabia, this sports park is the result of transforming an area damaged by the operations of an old water-treatment plant. The outdoor facilities optimi

Paredes Pedrosa, National Award

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda has distinguished Ángela García de Paredes and Ignacio García Pedrosa with the 2023 National Award for Architecture. This accolade comes with a prize of 60,000 euros. Both born in Madrid in 1958, they graduate

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named 85 Social Housing in Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona), an 85-unit timber-framed social housing development designed by Peris + Toral Arquitectes, as the winner of the RIBA International Priz

The Elizabeth Line in London, designed by Grimshaw, Maynard, Equation, and AtkinsRéalis, has been named the 2024 winner of the Stirling Prize, which the Royal Institute of British Architects gives for best building completed in the United Kingdom. Pr

Kengo Kuma   France   Through a series of stairs and ramps that follow a spiral formation, Saint-Denis Station expands public space and connects with the urban scheme of the Pleyel district in northern Paris. A work of the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, the complex includ

RCR Arquitectes   United Arab Emirates   A collaboration between the Catalonia-based firm RCR Arquitectes and the property developer Muraba, the Veil residential skyscraper – 380 meters tall – stands next to Dubai’s main transport artery, Shekh Zayed Road. The slender 73-story tower contain

Selgascano   China   The Spanish firm Selgascano has won the competition to build a cultural center in Beijing that will redefine the cityscape of Beijing’s Xicheng district. At ground level, a grand public exhibition space with transparent facades invites the community

Baile Menduiña, del medio atelier, Luis Manuel Pereira   Portugal   The team formed by the Spanish firm Baile Menduiña and two Portuguese practices – del medio atelier and Luis Manuel Pereira – has won the competition to refurbish and extend the National Museum of Contemporary Art (MNAC), in Lisbon’s Chaido district.

Carmen Maurice   France   Sarzeau, in the French department of Brittany, has after a 70-year hiatus seen a relaunch of wine production, an activity that had flourished in the area for centuries until the 1950s. The winegrowers Guillaume Hagner and Marie Devigne planted 25,000

Rojkind Arquitectos, Amasa Estudio   Mexico   The Guadalupe Valley is a winemaking region located in Ensenada, in the Mexican state of Baja California. Here, within the Banyan Tree Veya hotel complex, the Pictograma winery presents twelve radial walls and 22 vaults arranged around a central cour

PL-T Architecture   China   In the small Tibetan village of Quzkika, in Markam County, this enological complex with a gross built area of 8,334 square meters is embedded into terraces. At the foot of Dameiyong Snow Mountain, near Lancang River, the winery blends into the natura

Esta exposición es la primera retrospectiva completa dedicada a Saul Steinberg (Râmnicu Sărat, Rumania, 1914 - Nueva York, 1999) en España. Steinberg es considerado como uno de los artistas más destacados del arte de posguerra, y su trabajo se resist

“In the stirred night air / the moon sways her arms.” With these opening verses of Federico García Lorca’s Romancero gitano (often translated as Gypsy Ballads), Didi-Huberman has at the Reina Sofía Museum woven a deep, intimate reflection on the powe

Taking up 1,700 square meters, this exhibition of 44 works by the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei (Beihing, 1957) opened on 9 November at MUSAC in León, to run until 18 May 2025. ‘Ai Weiwei: Don Quixote’ shows creations of the past twenty years

Dolores Hayden   I am delighted my book from 1984, updated in 2002, is appearing in Spain in 2024. The questions I first raised in the United States forty years ago remain urgent ones. Cities planned around the old idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” have beco