Luis Fernández-Galiano   Confinement is easier to endure than uncertainty. Practicing il mestiere di vivere, private space takes on a different meaning, because the intimate shelter becomes a prison cell, and ‘private’ is translated as ‘deprived’ of contact with others. In H

Among the many peculiarities of SANAA, the most important Japanese studio in the current international scene, one is its confederal structure, thanks to which its two founders work as a team but can also each carry out projects on a solo basis. In th

Office of Ryue Nishizawa   China   Jining, a city in China’s Shandong province, is home to this museum by the Japanese architect Ryue Nishizawa – co-founder, with Kazuyo Sejima, of the firm SANAA. The sinuous one-level volumes blur their boundaries between interior and exterior throug

Office of Ryue Nishizawa   Chile   Spreading like a membrane of concrete that evokes the form of a wave, the house seeks to engage in dialogue, through contrast and metaphor, with the powerful context of the location. The residence is part of an initiative taken in the wake of Chile’s

Office of Ryue Nishizawa   Japan   A large roof with expressive gables and a small inner courtyard serve to form the various spaces of this single-level residence located along Tokyo’s metropolitan beltway. Sculpted by the big roof of laminated timber that rests on pillars of steel, t

Richard Ingersoll   Among the illustrious victims of Covid-19 will be remembered one of Italy’s most influential architects, Vittorio Gregotti, who had been seriously ill for several months. His studio, Gregotti Associati, produced the largest output of any office in It

Carlos Verdaguer   “Every system that does not grant freedom of decision-making to those who must suffer the risks derived from a badly made decision, is an immoral system. Yet this is exactly the process being followed by architects and urban planners: they make the d

Carmen Espegel   It could be said that Anne Tyng was born into public life at the age of 77, in 1997, when, deciding that her existence should not remain hidden nor her freedom jeopardized, she published Louis Kahn to Anne Tyng: The Rome Letters, 1953-1954 – missives

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Two recent books can change the minds of those who do not believe in the power of philosophy to inspire. Zeit der Zauberer intertwines the lives and oeuvres of four legends – Ernst Cassirer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin – du

Aluminum is a complex material whose many virtues do not quite compensate for all its defects. Among its strengths is the capacity to take on a wide diversity of forms, colors, and finishes, and the fact that it lends itself to mechanization in nearl

Herzog & de Meuron   Switzerland   SBB is one of the largest landowners in Switzerland. This national railway company owns land in prime locations of the urban centers across the country. This previously underutilized potential of real estate has been increasingly developed in the las

b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos   Spain   The Lycée Français has two centers in the city: the main campus in Pedralbes and another one for preschool in the Bonanova neighborhood. The renovation of the preschool building – which had undergone several alterations over the years, resulting in t

Neri & Hu Design and Research Office   China   The Shanghai firm headed by Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu were tasked to renovate an old brick building containing two levels of offices, to combine this use with a cultural center including a library, an exhibition hall, and a multipurpose space for 10

Space Popular   Spain   Located in Nueva Santa Bárbara (Valencia), the Brick Vault House was carried out in collaboration with the local architects Alberto Burgos and Javier Cortina. It is the result of combining two fundamental strategies: a spatial grid and a construction

Arquitectura-G   Spain   Located in Barcelona, the Acid House is the outcome of converting a factory into a corporate innovation center. Conceived with an economy of means in mind, the project maintains the original layout in two differentiated zones: the main shed has been

MVRDV   China   The Rotterdam firm MVRDV has turned a shopping mall built in the 1980s into a public space with a swimming pool in Tainan, a city in the south of the island of Taiwan. Tainan Spring, as the faciity is called, is part of a larger plan to regenerate th

May you live in interesting times.” The Chinese curse seems crafted to define our times of crisis. First was the political and ideological crisis provoked by the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001; then came the profound financial crisis t

1948-2020 In New York, complications caused by covid-19 claimed the 71-year-old life of Michael Sorkin, an architect and educator whose polemic voice laid bare the contradictions of contemporary urbanism. After graduating from the University of Chica

1935-2020 On 27 March, a coronavirus-induced case of pneumonia took the life of Michael McKinnell. He was 84. Born in Manchester, McKinnell attended his city’s university, then left to complete his studies at Columbia University. In the USA, he had h

As the Munch Museum in Olso nears completion, Madrid-based Estudio Herreros – in collaboration with the Norwegian firm MIM-A – has finished a residential block in Sant Boi de Llobregat (Barcelona). Offering a mixture of free-market and price-regulate

A rigorous volume breaks up into three parts in order to implant itself on the site with delicacy. This is the residential project that came about through a 2013 competition won by Amann, Cánovas, and Maruri of Temperaturas Extremas – in collaboratio

Four couples who are friends agreed to be the developers and users of a block containing five dwellings and a sequence of spaces for communal use and interaction. This was the story behind the building that Thomas Lussi and Lola Domènech have raised

Opening day is several months away and the London Design District is progressively taking shape. This is a conglomerate of sixteen emblem-buildings commissioned to a miscellaneous crew of architects among which British firms abound – including 6a Arc

Chinese president Xi Jinping a few years ago lambasted the ‘weird architecture’ that international stars were building in his country (see Arquitectura Viva 169), but his denouncement does not seem to have been much heeded. Otherwise there would be n

Soon after the Dublin-based Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara learned that they had come away with the 2010 Pritzker Prize (see Arquitectura Viva 223), it was announced that their firm, Grafton Architects, had carried the day in the competition for

Byung-Chul Han   We have been living without enemies for some time now. The Cold War ended long ago. Of late even Islamic terrorism seems to have moved far away. Exactly ten years ago, in the essay The Burnout Society, I upheld the thesis that our times have invalida

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Norway   Situated in Jevnaker, a small town some 75 kilometers from Oslo, Kistefos is a collection of three landscapes that overlap and intertwine: a natural one of rivers, waterfalls, islands, canyons, and forests; an industrial one of mills, factories, ware