Luis Fernández-Galiano   Buildings have many lives, because their functional erosion is often faster than their physical ruin. The stubborn persistence of their shells, where the materials, energy and knowledge used in their construction are deposited – what we now would cal

Alfonso Muñoz Cosme   The second centenary of the birth of Eugène Viollet-le-Duc is an opportunity for us to find new relevance in his theories of restoration, and also in those of his ‘rival,’ John Ruskin.

Francisco Mangado   Spain   Winner in the competition held in 2007, the proposal takes the overall evaluation of the urban fabric as point of departure, including the two historical buildings that harbored the museum up to now – Velarde Palace and Casa Oviedo-Portal –, and prop

Terradas Arquitectos   Spain   With a very limited palette of materials and using natural light, the intervention has involved eliminating additions and bringing out all the splendor of the interior sheds.

Rafael de La Hoz   Spain   The project gives a glass fifth facade to one of the few works that modern rationalism left in the city of Córdoba, the interiors of which have been renovated completely.

Víctor López Cotelo   Spain   Located in Realejo, on the southeast end of Granada’s historic quarter, the new School of Architecture goes up in an architectural complex that was once a Military Hospital. This large block, which took shape throughout a long period of urban transfo

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   Spain   Listed as Historic Artistic Monument in 1941, the castle is now a museum and houses the headquarters of the Fundación de Arte y Pensamiento Martín Chirino, devoted to the legacy of the Gran Canaria-born sculptor.  The Castillo de la Luz is for the ci

Spain   Conceived with forms and materials that suggest the idea of timelessness, this square is a poetic restructuring of an urban void created by bombardments during the Spanish Civil War.

Alejandro Bernabeu   Gone at the age of 89, the latest Pritzker laureate designed and built structures which were as light as they were beautiful, inspired in natural forms.

Jorge Sainz   A great draftsman, prolific architect, and industrial designer, Michael Graves was the most successful but also the most criticized master of postmodernity.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We have had to wait a long time to be able to read Gottfried Semper in Spanish, but this cultural delay has suddenly been rectified twofold. A monumental version of Der Stil prepared by Juan Ignacio Azpiazu (reviewed in Arquitectura Viva 152) was pub

Xavier Ferrés   Twenty years ago now, the MoMA in New York – and later the MACBA in Barcelona – hosted a magnificent architecture exhibition titled ‘Light Construction.’ Architects of the caliber of Nouvel, Herzog & de Meuron, Tschumi, Zumthor, Holl, Ito, Sejima

Annette Rudolph, Günter Pfeifer   Germany   In the wake of World War II, Germany had to reconstruct its cities. The huge task was undertaken with the resources available at the time, and everywhere arose the so-called Schuettbeton, buildings raised with the rubble of brick constructions destro

Tato architects   Japan   Designed for a couple and their two children, this house in Hyogo Prefecture rises on a small square opening on to views of the sky, which is most of the time overcast in the region, and the mountains. The location determined the shape of the buildin

Casos de Casas   Spain   This house is located in Vinaroz, a tourist spot on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, in the province of Castellón. The architectural landscape here is fundamentally defined by two types of constructions: on one hand, high-rise apartment blocks, and on th

GPY Arquitectos   Spain   This new university research center rises on a plot of land with crops growing around it, arranged in patches of the kind which are traditional in the Canary Islands. This organization in terraced platforms also inspired the shape of the building. Th

This year the announcement of the winner of the Pritzker Prize is a double surprise: first, the trophy is not going to any of the names that have been in the running for a long time now, year after year, but to a rather forgotten master, the German F

Michael Graves, a leading exponent of postmodernity and also one of its last followers, passed away in Princeton at the age of 80. Born in Indianapolis, Graves became famous as one of the influential New York Five, with Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, R

Using architecture as an emblem, sometimes as a technological lure, is nothing new. Suffice it to remember the recurring association of avant-garde buildings with automobiles, a link forged in times of Le Corbusier and continuing to this day. But aft

The myth that Silicon Valley was born in the garages of some brilliant young individuals is the myth that explains the origin of what today are huge and all-powerful multinational corporations. And these technological enterprises now seek to have hea

It is often said that politics makes unexpected travel companions; an aphorism all the more true for architects in the shadow of power, especially when they aspire to meaty State commissions. For their part, politicians demonstrate an innate preferen

Of course the Count de Buffon would not have had such a strange subject in mind when he wrote that “style is the man himself.” But the statement could well apply to Peter Marino, the New York designer who, a graduate of Cornell University, worked in

Eduardo Mangada   Urbanistic and political condemnation of Operation Chamartín is more justified and necessary now than when it was first put forward, in 1993. In a city, Madrid, of huge pockets of land, the so-called PAUs, with infrastructures already partly built an