The building, the construction of which began in 1548 per commission of the Constable of the Kingdom of Navarre, belonged to the House of Alba and was the episcopal residence for a time. The owner who bought it at the end of the 19th century undertoo
Like palimpsests, buildings that outlive their inhabitants or users preserve the traces of different presences. The possible examples are legion but I would mention ancient temples successively occupied by people of new creeds and cultures, or cities
The castle of Garcimuñoz is located in the municipality of the same name, southwest of the province of Cuenca – some 70 kilometers from the capital, at kilometer 156 of the A-3 highway. It goes up on the southern side of a hill, which is not too tall
Outside the city’s old quarter, integrated into the landscape of the Guadalquivir River, the San Telmo Palace is an outstanding civic example of Spanish Baroque. Built in 1682-1796 as a university college-seminary, it was transformed in the second ha
Designed in 1717 by Pedro de Ribera to accommodate the 600 soldiers and 400 horses forming the Royal Guard, the complex has maintained its old structure despite major fires that left it in a state of ruin in the second half of the 19th century. The s
Cartagena’s designation as a military base led to a major spurt of urban transformation in the 18th century. Economic growth and the development of industry connected to the port brought a huge flow of people into a city in expansion, doubling the po
Located in the historic center of Cáceres, facing the square of San Mateo and the church of the same name, the Relais-Chateux Hotel and Restaurant gathers the maximum respect for urban context and the existing buildings with a completely contemporary
If I were to reembrace Catholicism, I would surely end up dressed as a Catalan Jesuit and transported to Andalusia. And, like the Cordobese, bent on religion at any price, I would hear mass on Sundays in the mosque. “Mass is held in the mosque!” The
Madrid’s Old Slaughterhouse is now a hub of contemporary creation, thanks to competitions organized over the years to give new life to its 148,000 square meters. The Reading Center arose from one of them, held in 2006 to renovate warehouses 13, 14, 1
A production engine of Barcelona, Poble Nou consisted of on the whole unremarkable industrial precincts. The exceptions marked out for preservation give a wrong idea of how the place was. Buildings were mostly precarious, of no other interest than th
Casa Mediterráneo is a public consortium, promoted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the AECI (Spanish Agency for International Cooperation), with the collaboration of the Valencian government and the city councils of Alicante and Benidorm. The
Not without irony, diverse intentions come together in the conversion of an old sawmill of Serrería Belga into the Medialab-Prado. One coexistence arises from institutional schizophrenia. While the ‘Paseo del Arte’ promenade became Madrid City Hall’s
The exploitation of the iron deposits of Lucainena de las Torres, in Almería province, began late in the 19th century, and a railway reaching the bay of Agua Amarga was built to support it. Eventually the appearance of iron-poor carbonate, which requ
The Aldea Moret neighborhood of Cáceres, built in the mid-20th century by the mining company Riotinto, comprised differently sized industrial constructions with quarters for employees annexed to them. In time the facilities were vacated, leaving rail
Because of the scarce means available, this project in a town of Granada consists in recycling and reusing elements from the environment. The slaughterhouse sheds become a museum, and the water courses have been kept with a system of interconnected l
“Amazed, the old Dersu Uzala discovers Russian soldiers shooting at a bottle hanging from a rope: –Why smash bottle? In Taiga, where find bottle? Waste bullets bad. –Go ahead, old man. Try it yourself. Dersu shoots the rope from over ten meters aw
The Collage House is the result of a project to refurbish a small cluster of old buildings in the historic center of Gerona. The large stone shell of the old house, wisely designed to establish an optimum relationship with the site and the climate,
This single-family house belongs to the hotel complex located in the old tannery by the River Sarela, forming part of an operation to recover its banks. The Fábrica de Curtidos La Ribera de San Lourenzo (a tanning factory), built in 1790, is an indus
In Algueña, a small town in the province and an economy based on agriculture and the marble industry, a new public building will gather all the town’s activities related to music and culture. Music bands have a long tradition in the region of Valenci
The Catalan word ‘seca’ (in Spanish ‘ceca’) comes from the Arab word sekka and means ‘place where coins are made’. In Barcelona, La Seca was the name given to the Real Casa de la Moneda (Royal Mint) of Aragón, where coins were minted from the 15th to
The plaza of Santiago is located in the historic center of Carmona, on a plot of 248 meters in height that lords over the River Corbones valley, filling up one of the edges of the old walled precinct. The 1,300 square meter site included a series of
An ethical and sociocultural focus defines the work of Alan Colquhoun, one of the most influential historians of the second half of the 20th century.
Author of a single constructed building but of a vast body of graphic works, Lebbeus Woods was perhaps one of the last of the visionary architects.
Motionless architectures move a lot. Nothing seems as static as buildings, firmly rooted in a place in the world, and yet nothing moves as swiftly as the people and the ideas that shape them. From the megalithic cultures all the way to the contempora
Norman Foster reflects upon globalisation as a unique opportunity to reduce the existing inequalities between rich and poor countries.
“Civilization is measured by the shape of your ceiling.” This quote from Louis I. Kahn in English, along with another from Le Corbusier in French (which relates the lower side of slabs to the principle of the open plan), kicks off this volume on the
The exhibition ‘Las otras Pedreras’ and its catalog, both subtitled ‘Arquitectura y diseño en el mundo a principios del siglo XX’, commemorate the 100 years since the opening of Antoni Gaudí’s La Pedrera building. Along the lines of Pevsner, they rel
Bernard Bevan continues to be a mystery. He first published his book in 1938, but it has been impossible to find a portrait of him. His contacts with the British Foreign Service during World War II and his correspondence with Kim Philby (the famous s
In a world where being aware of issues is a civic duty, truthful information ought to be the most basic of our rights. Ecological awareness is no exception, so works like the recently published For Climate’s Sake!: A Visual Reader for Climate Change
“Go and multiply, fill the Earth, and subdue it!” Uncoincidentally, civilization began with this Biblical mandate. The way man exploits nature reflects his behavior as a species, and the way he builds, his moral and cultural imagination. To analyze h
The complex renovation of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum includes a new foyer to give access to the facilities, the expansion of the exhibition space and the restoration of antique ornaments.
Although it is more and more present in the architectural field, the language of sustainability is used with scant rigor. This brief dictionary collects some of its terms.
That reinforced concrete can become an ecological material is not a trivial matter, bearing in mind that, today, its use delivers 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GGE). This impact is further increased by that of the construction of buildi
Located in a small town in Palencia, the El Castillo Winery is an unfinished project. It is so, at least, because time has been essential in this case, not only because of the way in which the project intervenes in a centennial winery, but also becau
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