Essencial Geometries. Mauricio Pezo and Sofía von Ellrichshausen steer their practice with rigid frames out of which a profoundly lyrical architecture comes forth: works where pure geometries and matrix order help them make a link between artistic im

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Fortress-Europe lodges migrants at sea. The Bibby Stockholm, a residential barge built in 1976 to be used as alternative accommodation, has become a symbol of the migratory crisis upon docking at a British port, coinciding with the approval by the go

Knowing that the beauty of a sonnet partly comes from its contraintes, Mauricio Pezo (Renaico, 1973) and Sofía von Ellrichshausen (Bariloche, 1976) have steered their practice, based in the city of Concepción, with rigid frames out of which a profoun

Pezo von Ellrichshausen   Chile   A residence located on gently sloping land in a narrow valley faces the landscape in the manner of a pedestal that stands out on account of its strict geometry and straw-like color tone.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen   Australia   A building formed by 36 concrete columns set against the sky and a circular ramp that leads up to a viewing point help to give character to what is otherwise a dull suburban commercial area.

Pezo von Ellrichshausen   Chile   We were told that when resources are scarce, intensity compensates for high performance (because there seems to be a deep gap between ingeniousness and intelligence). Any project is a reaction to its circumstances. This is an apparently simple and re

Pezo von Ellrichshausen   Chile   The village of Santa Lucía Alto, in the region of Yungay, is surrounded by fertile plains and high peaks. One of its lush forests in the foothills of the Andes Mountains becomes the site for his house-studio, an ambitious project of over 2,400m² that

Luis Fernández-Galiano   After two decades, the Swiss partners again exhibit in London, a city that saw their first international success with the opening of Tate Modern.

María Marco   The Japanese artist has created a body of work that may look innocent but is loaded with a complex universe of obsessions, fears, and traumas.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   August was more cruel than April. The suffocating heat and the fires burned up media covers, but the heart of architecture froze at the news of the death of Jean-Louis Cohen and Peter Buchanan, a Frenchman and a Briton who contributed to the discipli

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Xenophon came to be highly popular among students of classical Greece because the simplicity of his language was perfect for translation exercises, perhaps in the same way that Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic wars helped many of us learn t

Pablo Canga   Spain takes an ugly turn. The systemic corruption and intellectual anemia of the Franco dictatorship sowed the seed of a story of ambition and abandon that was only reinforced, when the regime ended, by a mediocre political class, and which has led t

Enrique Morillo   “Our cities are ill.” From Mesopotamian settlements to the medieval city, and especially after the Industrial Revolution, urban cores have altered to accommodate demographic growth and adapt to social advances. But with the exacerbated neoliberal mod

Eduardo Prieto   Lumpen people wander the streets of the Quartiere Tuscolano; bicycles wheel from the borgate to the new working-class districts; a helicopter flies over the empty grounds of the Aqua Claudia transporting a Christ statue to St. Peter’s… Such scenes fr

Alberto Ballesteros   There are marvels to be found in the corners of maps. “Here be dragons” was the warning on a Renaissance globe regarding the Pacific’s still unexplored coasts, in line with early cartographers’ custom of filling their maps with fantastic creatures ex

It is highly probable that wood was the first material ever to be used by humans to build their shelters and dwellings. Being easy to obtain and manipulate as well as highly resistant, and because small pieces of it can be joined to form larger eleme

Snøhetta, Werk Arkitekter   Denmark   In addition to promoting the practice of water activities and bringing different sports clubs into one building, the new facilities of a marina are meant to serve as a social hub for the locality.

Florian Nagler Architekten   Germany   An open-air enclave that preserves old rural constructions of Bavaria has been completed with an entrance pavilion that adopts the silent presence of a granary. The orderly geometry and the simple larch cladding of the building’s exterior belie the s

GRAAM architecture   France   The offices of a regional savings bank have been transferred to a building with a half-timbering structure that is a reinterpretation of the vernacular system of exoskeletons.

Haz Arquitectura   Spain   The first completed building of a new hub of district facilities takes on a warm wooden cladding that has the effect of mellowing the hostility of the area, close to a very busy traffic locus.

Aires Mateus   Portugal   In the town of Barreiro, in Setúbal, the remains of two old warehouses, unified into a single space, are integrated in the project as the outer enclosure of the house. Outside, the ruin appearance and the traces of the industrial past of this area, b

Ecoproyecta   Spain   Like firewood and pasture, snow and ice have since time immemorial been economic resources of humankind, whether for the conservation of food and medicines or for the luxury of making sherbets and ice-creams. Pliny the Elder mentioned an active trade

Christ & Gantenbein   Switzerland   Crossing a bridge is always an experience, but even more in Switzerland. From the Kappelbrücke in Lucerne with its paintings depicting events of the city’s history to the acrobatic Salginatobel built by Robert Maillart, the country is a fertile field

London Exhibition

It is not only their professional success, but also the wisdom of a creative undertaking they have maintained over the course of four decades, that has given Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron an indisputable spot on the summit of great architects o

Matos Castillo, Néstor Montenegro, Toni Gelabert   Spain   The project to refurbish and convert the Casa de la Cultura de Boadilla del Monte into a new library and municipal theater involved working on a building completed in the 1980s and which housed two uses, but combined in a slightly confused way. The

Níall McLaughlin Architects   Ireland   Located on O'Connell Street, in the heart of the southern Irish city of Limerick, the International Rugby Experience building is respectfully inserted amid historical constructions. Reaching a maximum height close to 34 meters and a total area of 2,1

Tropical Space   Vietnam   This office building, covered by brick walls with a concrete structure, is located on a quiet street in Ho Chi Minh City. The functional areas are divided by a continuous vertical void, favoring the access of natural light and air circulation. The of

Dorte Mandrup   Canada   The Danish architect Dorte Mandrup has won an international competition to build an institution for the preservation and celebration of Inuit culture, linked to the indigenous populations of the Arctic regions of North America. The project for the In

Carme Pinós   Spain   Construction work on the extension of the Bodegas La Horra facilities, in the Ribera del Duero comarca of Burgos province, has begun. Integrated between hills crowned by pines, marjorams, lavender, and rockroses, the half-buried new winery boasts a

Mecanoo, LOLA Landscape Architects, Meng Architects   China   The Dutch firm Mecanoo and the Chinese Meng Architects, in collaboration with LOLA Landscape, are the winners of the international design competition for Shenzhen Guangming Scientist Valley. The ambitious project aims to establish the first comprehen

Parallect Design   China   Southwest of Jiujiang, in Jiangxi Province, China, is this complex consisting of 19 prefabricated cabins, a multifunctional hall, and a 24-meter-tall observation tower. The Chinese firm Parallect Architecture Studio received the commission with no re

Pablo Larroulet   Chile   In Puerto Natales, in the Patagonian region of glaciers, volcanoes, and mountains, the cabins designed by the Chilean architect Pablo Larroulet pursue the idea of a meeting of landscape and architecture, but also a contrast. The complex presents seve

Part of an agritourism project located in the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains, a Nordic horticulture farm has on its premises added four micro-refuges designed by the Quebec-based architecture firm Atelier L’Abri. Shaped like isosceles triangle

An allergic reaction put a sudden end to the life of Jean-Louis Cohen last 7 August, just months after the demise of his wife, the sociologist Monique Eleb. Born in Paris and trained as an architect, he was an expert on the Soviet world, although his

The critic Peter Buchanan passed away on 23 August in London at 81 years of age. He was born in Malawi and graduated as an architect from the University of Cape Town, city where he started in the profession. In the 1970s he moved to London to work at

Luis Alemany   The Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos, author of the political novel Z (on which the Costa-Gavras film of the same title was based), tells of how a few days after the coup d’état he saw that the newspaper Le Monde had published a piece in which sevent