Jorge Sainz   There are times when one is tempted to believe in suprahistorical categories. The announced return to architectural abstraction – proclaimed with great fanfare from the very navel of the elitist culture of our time – makes one think of a repeated and

Christian Norberg-Schulz   Las reacciones contra la corriente posmoderna demuestran que realmente ha dado en el clavo. En efecto, lo que no significa nada no suscita ni entusiasmo ni censura. Detrás de los ataques se halla siempre el temor a aquello que puede poner en peligro

William Curtis   Macaronic classicism The difference between authentic synthesis and superficial pastiche is something to keep in mind when dealing with the subject of postmodern classicism, about which so much has been said and written in recent years. Charles Jenck

Martínez Lapeña & Elías Torres, Salvador Roig   Spain   The geometry of the storefronts transforms the trapezoidal interior of the store into a rectangle. Their position organizes a covered outdoor space, while flanking and leading to the entrance. The exterior metal doors, when closed, appear, because of

Bofill Taller de Arquitectura   Spain   The Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, a building of obvious necessity and great social and cultural importance, has already had two opposing proposals made by the Taller de Arquitectura. The reason for this diversity can be seen in the total change of lo

Léon Krier   Spain   "The most important thing in life is to never make compromises (...) because accepting compromises means losing. I have seen it in all my friends who build." We have to thank Léon Krier for setting the record straight from the beginning: being, as he

Rafael Moneo   Spain   The paleomodern spirit is evident in the interchange created by Moneo for the new Atocha station in Madrid. The great cylinder of brick pillars, turned 45 degrees, as in the La Previsión building in Seville, is both temple and take-off base, monument

Cruz y Ortiz Arquitectos   Spain   The beautiful stations of Plaza de Armas and San Bernardo will be used for other purposes, while near the latter, to the east, on the grounds of Porta Coeli, the new central station of Seville will be built, according to a project by the architects A

José Ramos, Antonio García Vereda   Spain   The Senate opted to commission the architects José Ramos and Antonio García Vereda, together with the curator of the Senate, Salvador Gayarre. In this case, the extension was easier and also more risky. The proximity of the Reloj barracks provided a

Josep Parcerisa, María Rubert de Ventós, Oriol Clos   Spain   Neither the project selected by María Rubert de Ventós, Oriol Clos and Josep Parcerisa, nor several of those that passed to the restricted phase of the competition solved the possibility of a new hemicycle. In the project that will be built, this is

Alberto Fernández Torres   A couple makes love in a train carriage that takes them to Rome. The frenetic rattling is interrupted by the still images of a cemetery; crosses, tombstones, that greet the train's entry into Italian territory with evident premonitory eagerness. Life

Liane Lefaivre   About forty years ago Emil Kaufmann, in his study of late eighteenth-century architecture (Three Revolutionary Architects – 1952 – , Gili, Barcelona, 1980) puts an end to all clichés by presenting Jean Jacques Lequeu (1757-1825?) – the distinguished

José Manuel López Peláez   The current interest in the figure of Erik Gunnar Asplund is produced, in addition to the intrinsic value of his work, by the multiplicity of readings that it admits. It is a fact that critics and architects of different tendencies find a point of ag

Alfonso Muñoz Cosme   Contemplating from a distance of sixty years this collection of drawings, paintings, photomontages, collages, class exercises, designs and typographies, is an obligatory return to a more or less forgotten roots of our modern culture, to a more or les

Franziska Bollerey   On February 21, 1988, Cornelis Van Eesteren passed away at his home in Amsterdam. I am devastated. Not only because my avid questions will no longer find an answer, but also because those encounters came to move me. Cornelis van Eesteren's involvemen

Juan Daniel Fullaondo   In 1960, Reyner Banham published Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Following Zevi's (1954), Banham's is another history of modern architecture in which the possible novelty centers on the importance given to two movements: Italian Futurism

Coop Himmelb(l)au   Austria   The angel of sound is the breath in stone of the singer, the melody made building of the musician, the materialized speech of the actor on stage. The fragile workmanship of architecture is the fragility of the singer. Above him, the protective divini

Iñaki Ábalos, Juan Herreros   Some architectures have evolved from an epithelial valuation of language to a literal reproposition of traditional techniques as support, which gives greater thickness to the initial decision to break with modern tradition. We thus find ourselves wit

Ateliers Jean Nouvel   France   The Institute of the Arab World (IMA), by Jean Nouvel, is a work that continues the line of the so-called high-tech buildings, whose links do not remain only in those aspects that embrace the good and perfect art of building of an era, but find their

Guillermo Pérez Villalta, Juan Antonio Ramírez   Guillermo Pérez Villalta No he tenido el ánimo de entrar en polémica al escribir el comentario que se me pidió sobre El estilo del relax; no es precisamente el enredo de las palabras mi ámbito. Tampoco he tomado el hábito trágico «del artista persegu