Heritage Settings. In the decade that has elapsed since Luis Moreno Mansilla passed away, Emilio Tuñón has undertaken a professional shift of scale, alongside Carlos Martínez Albornoz, towards smaller works, of the kind which nevertheless continue to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The China of Xi Jinping, reelected for a new mandate in time with the centenary of the Communist Party, challenges the West with its own set of values. 

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   Built over different periods starting in the 15th century, the Paredes-Saavedra House is a small-size urban fortress within the walled area of the city of Cáceres. The building is organized on three floors around a small asymmetrical interior atrium

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   The house is a simple prismatic volume with a square floor plan of 16-meter sides, and each of the four facades is perforated by three windows. The stretches of wall have been constructed with local quartzite stone, and the windows are framed with Ex

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   The brick house is built on a plot qualified by a group of tall pine trees, located at its northeast corner, and by the silent proximity of Monte del Pardo, along its north face. The complex is organized around three independent volumes: the cubic v

In the decade that has elapsed since Mansilla died, Emilio Tuñon has seen the grand commissions of times of plenty giving way to smaller works, a professional shift of scale that he is now undertaking alongside Carlos Martínez Albornoz. In this perio

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   A refined cottage for excursionists helps itself to the local building tradition of solid stonework walls and tiled roofs to blend into a beautiful natural spot in the province of Soria. Clad in panels of black bakelite, a space unfolding around a fi

Tuñón y Albornoz Arquitectos   Spain   Behind the listed facade of an industrial building raised early in the 20th century, the new spaces of a bank are terraced on top so as not to alter the current engagement with the street. The lower levels are organized in relation with a foyer that

Estrella de Diego   A universal artist, widely admired, Pablo Picasso left a legacy that remains alive half a century after his death, but which also casts certain shadows. 

Justo Isasi   Through a major graphic presentation a retrospective shows the prolific work of the Belgian cartoonist and the influence of his most famous creature.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The critic Antoine Compagnon is one of the great living humanists, and after the death of Bloom, Steiner, and Fumaroli, remains as one of those who have most eloquently explored and reinvigorated the heritage of Western culture. In a review of a book

Eduardo Prieto   When dealing out its gifts, fortune tends to be arbitrary, even irascible, especially when dealt out by critics, who are tainted by subjectivity, or by historians, who are obsessed with taxonomy. Subjectivity and taxonomy are to blame for the fact th

Alberto Ballesteros   Lie back in an armchair, open one of those thick monographs architects like to publish, and you are likely to find what you expect: plans, sketches, photographs, and notes the firm in question has put together in the process of designing and raising

Enrique Morillo   The medium is the message. Marshall McLuhan was saying that the mode through which information is transmitted influences how it is received. This may be why many monographs on architects, at a time when publishing and advertising overlap, are an unre

Among all the Latin expressions that keep giving form to our languages, there is one in particular that has not lost an iota of applicability: panem et circenses. Coined by the poet Juvenal in referring to the peculiar political system of ancient Rom

Foster + Partners, Norman Foster   Qatar   Lusail Stadium, centerpiece of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, officially opened on 9 September with the Lusail Super Cup final between the winners of the professional leagues of Saudi Arabia and Egypt – Al Hilal SFC and Zamalek, respectively. Designed by F

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   Since their invention and standardization in the mid-20th century, metallic containers have optimized shipping transportation, ushering in a new era of global logistics and commercial exchange. Later on, new approaches to architectural seriation and

Fenwick Iribarren Architects   Qatar   With its facade showing Islamic patterns and a form that makes one think of a garment commonly worn by young Qataris, the new sport arena oozes with vernacular culture. The rhombic pieces of fiberglass that form the facade and roof create translucent

Zaha Hadid Architects   Qatar   The coastal city of Al Wakrah, 20 kilometers south of Doha, has inaugurated the building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects – in collaboration with the engineering firm Aecom – which will be one of the venues of the FIFA World Cup of 2022. Among the n

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   “Majorca is paradise, if you can stand it!” This warning pronounced by Gertrude Stein, directed at Robert Graves when he told her about his plans of leaving cold England, echoes in a house that harnesses traditional wisdom to create an agreeable redo

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   France   As Loos would say, you can’t build a house with carpets alone. He was talking about the architect’s task having to start out with a skeleton for the enclosure, a conviction which a very young fashion house has now playfully set out to refute in one o

Picharchitects/Pich-Aguilera   Spain   In 1889 Antoni Gaudí was commissioned to build a school pavilion in Barcelona for the Teresian Religious Community of Ganduxer. Over the years …

Tuñón Celebrated

Spain’s latest National Award for Architecture amounts to recognition of a career that began in the studio of Rafael Moneo, crystallized with overwhelming creativity in tandem with Luis Moreno Mansilla, and continues to bear fruit today with equal ri

It is hard to fathom that a professional who was active up to quite recently was a student of the first generation of modern Mexican architects, and a pioneer in enriching the teachings of International Style with vernacular features. But the career

MMX   Mexico   This seaside cultural complex generates a new public space in Progreso, a city on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The volumes varying in height are arranged in a grid on a square. The square presents a multi-level transitable roof that can be crosse

Taller | Mauricio Rocha   Mexico   The story of the Anahuacalli Museum begins in the early 1940s, when the painter Diego Rivera thought of erecting a depot for his collection of pre-Hispanic pieces that would be an artwork in and of itself, habitable and capable of generating a contin

Para hacer prosperar las áreas con menos recursos de la Ciudad de México, el gobierno regional ha puesto en marcha una red de centros educativos para personas analfabetas o que han abandonado los estudios. En el de la colonia Presidentes, una de las

From a spider to a sun, from a crack on the floor to a sea of sunflower seeds, the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern has since the year 2000 hosted spectacular installations of the kind that can take on gigantic dimensions – a rare opportunity – and which

As if to mark the absolute center that Cerdá had in mind for his Eixample, the tower built by Jean Nouvel on the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes has become one of the icons of Barcelona. An observation deck at the top has now opened to the public in w

Hanging on strings from ceilings at the Botín Centre facing the Bay of Santander, up to 26 February, are nine of Damián Ortega’s most emblematic mobiles: sculptures suspended in mid-air in which the artist from Mexico City deconstructs everyday objec

Francis Fukuyama   Human beings are not free-floating agents capable of reshaping themselves in any way they choose; this only happens in online virtual worlds. We are limited in the first instance by our physical bodies. Technology has done a lot to free people from t