Pleasures of the Fold. In the fertile formal laboratory of Juan Carlos Sancho and Sol Madridejos, the fold is an instrument with great potential in their quest to attain structural, spatial, and material coherence in a single sweeping gesture. Arquit

Luis Fernández-Galiano   If the 2020 Christmas gift were the vaccines, a year later science invites us on a journey to the origin of the universe. On 25 December 2021, the James Webb telescope started a journey that will take it 3.5 million kilometers from Earth, from where

Taking over the baton from their mentor and friend Eduardo Chillida, the architects Juan Carlos Sancho (San Sebastián, 1957) and Sol Madridejos (Madrid, 1958) have pursued a sensitive dialectic between matter and void that lies at the foundations of

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   A small space for prayer rises amid hundred-year-old oak trees and becomes a visual reference in the expansive Manchegan landscape where a large rural estate is located. Situated not far from the new residence of its owners, the chapel is the result

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   As an amenity within a housing development located in one of the driest regions of Europe, a small pavilion seeks to provide the residents with a shaded communal space. At the end of the development’s main street, a sweeping concrete fold forms a cov

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   A facility for research on new technologies is the first of a series of complexes intended to consolidate a business development hub on the outskirts of the city of Segovia. A concave form at the corner, generated by a biconic dome, alters a longitud

Sancho-Madridejos   Spain   A Madrid business school has expanded its facilities with the construction of new teaching spaces that together have the effect of consolidating the entire campus around a pine grove. A stone vault built with 777 pieces parameterized and fitted toget

Sancho-Madridejos   Egypt   In the pharaonic city that is going up to decongest chaotic Cairo, different performance spaces are arranged around a public square with the intention of creating a new cultural hub. Wrapped in a skin of translucent onyx, the Grand Theater building i

Patrick Templeton   The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image. (Guy Debord) As designer Thomas Heatherwick’s second privately commissioned folly opened in New York City in the summer of 2021, his first closed. The city’s newest g

Javier Escalonilla   The Centre Pompidou has organized the first monographic exhibition on the American-turned-French architect Paul Nelson, the cue being the centenary of his arrival in Paris. In this way it continues the multifaceted view of the Modern Movement that it

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Ukrainian crisis has to be tackled with perspective. This is precisely what Daniel Yergin does in The New Map, subtitled ‘Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’ because the confrontation between nations is explained from the angle of its ener

Eduardo Prieto   Mastership too comes in tones. Although our late-romantic upbringing makes us prefer major masters, minor masters are more interesting when it is times, not so much persons, that we wish to comprehend. Lacking ego, minor masters are better at strikin

Emilio Tuñón   Running one of the most prestigious architecture firms in the world, David Chipperfield is particularly appreciated in Spain, not only by virtue of his beautifully balanced work but also because of the warmth that radiates from one who spends long pe

Alberto Ballesteros   Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? The greatest metaphysical question is the opening line of one of rock’s most famous hymns, and the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody rings as one leafs through this book: between the oneiric forms of the photos

Luis Fernández-Galiano   La desaparición del arquitecto mueve a recordarlo con un texto publicado en El País el 3 de diciembre de 1988. Ricardo Bofill ha prestado su rostro a la tarjeta American Express y su nombre al Renault 25; con una nueva ‘Spanish Tower’ que promueve el

Before they became the property of liberal states – that is, before they became ‘modern’ – museums were simply collections: clutters of artistic objects which sometimes reflected the exquisite tastes of a prince, lord, or dilettante, but always had a

Foster + Partners   France   Located close to the Canal de la Robine, a museum rises like a temple consecrated to the Roman heritage of a city which was an important node in the network of roads of Gaul. The main spaces are organized in a single level on a plinth, under the prot

MVRDV   Netherlands   Storing over 151,000 artworks, Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen opens to the public in Rotterdam (6 November 2021), a work of the Dutch firm MVRDV. The outcome of a competition held in 2014, the 15,000-square-meter construction rises in the north part of

Barkow Leibinger   United States   The vast expanse of land around Bozeman – a city in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, not far from Yellowstone National Park – has been seen by many, and even more so with the pandemic, as an ideal place to escape from the madding crowd and enjoy

Wutopia Lab   China   Any self-respecting young person of the 18th century – and who had the means to – returned from his Grand Tour loaded with objects to display at home as mementos of his travels, a rite of passage so vital to his education and aesthetic sensibility. S

Zaha Hadid Architects   Cyprus   Adjacent to the Venetian Walls of the Cypriot capital and taking up part of the dry moat surrounding the city’s old sector is Eleftheria Square, a public park that transforms the zone with tree-lined promenades, green spaces, fountains, and paved are

Piano in LA

If every epoch has its own idea of history and thus builds its own museums, ours already has one which exemplarily captures the aspirations of the 20th century: the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which Renzo Piano has just completed in Hollywood

The Cáceres-born Dionisio Hernández Gil died on 21 December. After his years at the Madrid School of Architecture and the Academy of Spain in Rome, he was given the opportunity to restore the San Benito monastery in Alcántara. This baptismal experien

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   China   Construction of this cultural building kicked off in 2012, in accordance with a project led by Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten that constituted a typological revision of traditional auditoriums. It is programmed to officially open to the public in t

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Hungary   Inspired in the worlds of nature and of music, the Japanese studio won in 2014 the competition to build the House of Hungarian Music, to be built in Budapest’s largest park. An undulated disc, pierced by random openings, is elevated on slender suppor

Junya Ishigami + associates   Japan   The pavilion casts shade on the garden of an old house built in 1927 by Mankichi Yamaguchi and Tacchu Naito – designer of the plans of Tokyo Tower. The timber structure is charred using the yakisugi technique, making holes that filter sunlight throug

gruppa2020   Russia   Logs, also serving as wood to light the fire, are situated on the steel bars, constantly transforming the appearance of this pavilion for the Signal outdoor music festival. The studio participated in the whole process from its design to its construct

Olsson Lyckefors    Estonia   Observance of the 100th anniversary of Estonia’s declaration of indepedence included an international competition to revamp the central square of the city of Kärdla, on Dagö Island. Bornstein Lyckefors Arkitekter and Mareld Landscape together worked

William Matthews Associates   United Kingdom   A fruit of collaboration between the engineering firm Ney & Partners and the architecture practice William Matthews Associates, this footbridge over a 58-meter drop between cliffs recreates the structure that in the past connected the two sides of th

Onda Arquitectura, Checa Arquitectura    Spain   With a total length of 283 meters, the footbridge designed by Onda Arquitectura and Checa Arquitectura presents three 63-meter stretches between supports, and the effect is an unexpected impression of lightness. The wavy form, initially a response t

Wilkinson+Eyre   Denmark   This 160-meter-long bridge for cyclists and pedestrians falls under a plan to revitalize part of the Danish capital’s harbor, which has been underused for decades. Built next to OMA’s BLOX building, it allows water traffic through two rotating sectio

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The passing of Ricardo Bofill on 14 January ends a journey of creativity and charisma. His death in the Barcelona of his 1939 birth, owing to a kidney cancer complicated by Covid-19, adds a fatal date to the architecture dictionaries and histories he