Luis Fernández-Galiano   This is an anomalous spring. Anomalous in health, with a pandemic that has reached tragic levels in India; anomalous in climate, with the multiplication of extreme phenomena that make the crisis visible; and anomalous in geopolitics, with an increasi

It is hard not to succumb to cliché when describing – like the suites of Grieg –the romantic beauty of northern landscapes and the depth of their impact on the identity of Nordic peoples. But in truth, even in the arenas of globalization, the Scandin

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter - RRA   Norway   A new building harbors the collection of one of Norway’s oldest and largest museums of local culture, and endeavors to be a new landmark in the area through its jagged silhouette. The angular roof makes references to the morphology of traditional str

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter - RRA   Denmark   In the fields of North Jutland, a food education center open to townspeople and visitors alike seeks to celebrate the region’s farming tradition and promote its rich cereal-based culture. Intended as a laboratory for experimentation in the processes

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter - RRA, ASP Architecture   France   Raised high over the Swiss village of Breitenbach, near the German border, this hotel is designed as a reinterpretation of a traditional Scandinavian place of retreat in nature. Wooden volumes dot the hillside and are diluted in the Alsatian landscap

Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter - RRA   Norway   In a peaceful spot close to the southern coast of Norway, a close-set group of three cottages forms a holiday residence for different generations of one same family. Three simple volumes with pitched roofs, access to one of which is differentiated so

Eduardo Prieto   Touched by the wand of historians, Jean Prouvé went from workshop activity to becoming one of the greatest designers of the 20th century. He had everything it took for the goddess of critical fortune to grant him his gifts, albeit post-mortem: a chil

Marina Otero   Consistent with its trajectory, the work of OMA tries to capture the moment, the instant we happen to have right before us, which we contribute to giving form to but are ashamed to take on as our own, as happened with congestion, “mall-ification,” ju

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We do not want to forget Aldo Rossi. This month of May he would have turned 90, but he died after a car accident at the absurd age of 66, and his figure has faded in the perception of recent generations. For mine, however, he was the giant who is now

Eduardo Prieto   This book starts and ends with full-page photos deliberately out of focus. The buildings seem to be moving and leaving a trail of matter in their wake, like Boccioni sculptures. But it’s hard to find architectures with such a degree of precision as D

Andrés Jaque   Iñaki Ábalos belongs to a small set of Spanish architects who pursue an intellectual project where design takes on a critical dimension. His practice cannot be separated from his theoretical contributions to typological analysis and eco-technological

Alberto Ballesteros   “Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place where nature had done more... To be mistress of Pemberley might be something.” So did Jane Austen imagine the incarnation, in manor houses of the English countryside, of a productive, social, and a

Luis Fernández-Galiano, Peter Eisenman   To America came my great-great-grandfather in 1848. There’s a huge difference between people that came in the middle of the 19th century and people who came in the middle of the 20th century, especially among Jewish families in the States. There’s a

One of the features of the modern legacy – the legacy that nourishes our architecture and which we have yet to regard with the necessary impartiality – was the vituperation of rhetoric. In other words: the search for a ‘minor’ tone to apply to the so

NP2F, Caractère spécial   France   On land cultivated by a rural cooperative, a new building hosts an internationally known circus training school in volumes that use the language of agricultural sheds. An enclosure made of corrugated fiber cement panels results in a unitary image tha

Christophe Hutin   France   In a pleasant atmosphere around a garden, a facility on the outskirts of Toulouse provides research and meeting spaces for archeologists working in nearby excavations. A simple porticoed structure harbors a series of flexible spaces with generous ope

Bruther   France   A tower containing unobstructed spaces is the solution adopted on a small plot from which a ‘fab lab’ seeks to take part in revitalizing the port area of the city of Caen. The brief left the program largely undefined, which gave rise to a series of s

Studio Muoto   France   Auxiliary services and recreation amenities are stacked within a distinctive structure that provides users of the outlying Saclay campus with a new space for meetings and activities. The different programs are organized floor by floor, from the publi

Florian Busch   Japan   Not far from Niseko, the winter destination famous for its world-class ski slopes, in the same league as Aspen or St. Moritz, a home for a large family rises in the middle of a three-hectare land of virgin forest, safe from the bustle of the tourist

Dominique Perrault Architecture   France   The planning frenzy that Baron Haussman breathed into the Paris of 1850 led to an ambitious succession of urbanistic operations of an imperial grandeur that continued even after the establishment of the Third Republic twenty years later. It was in th

LLLab   China   The uniformity of globalized China has not altogether marked the region of Guanxi, home to an ethnic group – the Zhuang people – of deep-rooted customs, isolated amid steep karst mountains. Against this imposing backdrop, in 2004 the film director Z

“How will we live together?” This is the title of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, which opens with 61 participating countries. The motto reflects a turn toward social, even political concerns that has been taking place in the biennial since ov

The German Helmut Jahn died on 9 May in a cycling accident near his home in St. Charles, a suburb of his adopted Chicago. Having attended the Technical University of Munich, Jahn moved to the midwestern city in 1966 for further studies at the Illinoi

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

MAPAA   Chile   On a steep hillside overlooking the fertile Maipo River Valley, the Chilean firm MAPAA – Cristián Larraín and Matías Madsen – has for a family enterprise completed small offices within three bays raised on supports over the slope and covered with bar

Colectivo C733    Mexico   In the framework of a national effort to revitalize vulnerable urban areas, a market raised by means of a low-cost building system aspires to become a neighborhood’s nerve center. The edifice takes on the solid but permeable character of traditional

Christ & Gantenbein, Harquitectes   Spain   The new volume is placed opposite the current venue, the Meier building, with the purpose of including the convent and chapel on Plaça dels Angels, which will become the MACBA’s new center of gravity and a symbolic axis connecting the whole public s

Ayllón Paradela De Andrés   Spain   With their ‘Three Strategies’ scheme Javier Alejo Hernández Ayllón, Verónica Paradela Pernas, and Javier de Andrés de Vicente have won the ideas competition called by the Consell de Mallorca’s Sustainability and Environment Department, in collaborati

The municipal government house of Foios, located in the region of Valencia, will be renovated by Madrid-based NULA.STUDIO, in collaboration with A Coruña firm Fernández Carballada Arquitectos. Organized around an inner courtyard that serves as an ext

Jean Nouvel   China   The sinuous forms of the four auditoriums establish a connection with the sea, evoking the history of the city as a fishing village. Inside, the use of a pearlescent material generates reflections as a symbolic fusion of water, music, and light. 

SANAA   China   The Japanese firm SANAA, founded by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, has won the competition to build the Maritime Museum in the Dapeng area of the city of Shenzhen. Its scheme, titled ‘The Cloud on the Ocean,’ was one of 88 entries that came from 2

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT   China   The firm headed by Benedetta Tagliabue has placed first in the competition to build the Conservatory of Music on the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) campus, in the Longgang District of Shenzhen. With a built area of 129,700 square meters, the

Dominique Perrault Architecture   China   The French firm headed by Dominique Perrault, in collaboration with the Chinese office Zhubo Design, has won the competition to build a new campus – accommodating 4,000 students – for the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in She

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the ephemeral Glasraum of the Werkbund’s 1927 exhibition in Stuttgart, the dynamic Wrightian space flows between glazed walls that reconcile the expressionist reflections with the transparency of the Sachlichkeit to expose universal truths at the