From the Ideal City to the Domestic Dream. Arquitectura Viva celebrates its 250th issue with a special edition that presents utopias as an optimistic alternative to the dim panorama marked by economic decline, epidemic threats, and the devastation of

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The dream of Utopia gets enmeshed with the shadow of the Apocalypse. Arriving at this point of our journey, reaching issue 250, we wish to throw the light of useful utopias on a landscape dimmed by economic decline, epidemic threats, and the devastat

Luis Fernández-Galiano   From Antiquity to the avant-gardes, the imagined or dreamed cities of the West have drawn from biblical narratives, as explained in a seminar held at the Prado Museum.

Julia Ramírez Blanco   During the 19th century, many creative individuals shared their aesthetic and social visions in communal projects that laid the foundations of contemporary artistic collectives.

Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara, Daniele Ceragno   The right to the city and the issue of housing can nowadays be tackled through an emphasis on the communal, for which urban villas offer a plausible model.

Bradford DeLong   The economic history of the last century portrays a period which was more marvelous than terrible, and throws light on humanity’s path toward individual freedom and material prosperity.

Marta Sequeira   Half a century after her early death, a book rescues the work of Maria Antónia Leite Siza: the catalogue of the exhibition on view till March 2023 at the Serralves Museum in Porto, presenting a hundred drawings recently donated to the institution by

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Moshe Safdie (Haifa, 1938) and Robert Stern (New York, 1939) are almost the same age, come from middle-class Jewish families that originated in Europe, and run major practices on the U.S. East Coast, but no modern Plutarch would describe their profes

Arquia’s new base in Madrid officially opened with an encounter where eight architects, in person and in writing, reflected on the profession.

Jacques Herzog   ¿Qué podemos hacer los arquitectos en este tiempo ensombrecido por la guerra en Europa, la desigualdad social y las crisis climáticas que amenazan de lleno la vida en gran parte del planeta? Hay que abordar estos temas con urgencia, buscar respuestas

Fuensanta Nieto   La inauguración de su nueva sede es una muy buena oportunidad para recordar la labor que la Fundación Arquia ha venido realizando en la promoción de la cultura arquitectónica y la formación de los jóvenes arquitectos. Y esto me ha hecho reflexionar s

Rafael Moneo   In the past, reason made it possible to build. Only that which was grounded on reason could be built, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that the history of architecture has been written from the springboard of reason. Things have changed, howe

Juan Navarro Baldeweg   Uno de mis mayores intereses creativos radica en considerar el arte, la práctica de las distintas artes, como fuentes primarias de signos. Fuentes: en el sentido de favorecer o potenciar el surgir de apariciones en gran medida inesperadas y al marge

Carme Pinós   No puedo decir que sean malos tiempos para la arquitectura, ni que no haya buenos ejemplos con los que animarse. Pero la aceleración de acontecimientos, una crisis detrás de otra y el miedo que esto ha generado me llevan a preocuparme por el mundo de

Antonio Ortiz   Se me hace un poco raro que me leas. Siempre te leo yo a ti, Luis. Se hará lo que se pueda. Sobre el tema que me pides: me resulta difícil y un tanto cansino hablar sobre el momento actual de la arquitectura, y no te digo nada sobre hacia dónde podrí

Emilio Tuñón   Conscientes de que la vida se basa en una continua mutación, a mi modo de ver, el pensamiento sobre la arquitectura, y sobre la vida, ya no trata de asentarse sobre un conjunto de verdades inmutables, fruto de una incansable búsqueda de perfección qu

Eduardo Souto de Moura   ¿Cómo se plantean los proyectos? Primero hay que hacer el diagnóstico con croquis, con maquetas del terreno, para saber cuál es el problema. Yo empiezo siempre como si fuera un servicio que necesita una respuesta. Intento alejar desde el principio cu

Tham & Videgård   Sweden   The external image is given by the superposition of three levels in a cross-shaped plan and rotated 45º from the previous one, generating a sequence of opaque surfaces combined with large terraces open to the landscape.

Snøhetta   United States   “The non-building of the year.” That is how the grand dame of architectural criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable, dubbed the skyscraper – crowned like a piece of English furniture – that Philip Johnson raised in Midtown Manhattan in the 1980s, and which de

Sol89   Spain   Since pre-Roman times, the Gulf of Cádiz has been a center for Almadraba tuna fishing, in accordance with a technique that has barely changed since then. To oversee exploitation in the waters of the mouth of the river Piedras, from 1929 to 1963 there

250+250 Issues

La revista AV alcanza su número 250 con una monografía dedicada a la obra completa de Moneo, y Arquitectura Viva celebra el mismo hito con una exploración de las ‘utopías útiles’ que Focho ha representado amalgamando el diálogo filosófico entre Plató

Belgium   Images of the project that has won the international competition, organized by the European Parliament, to renovate the Paul-Henri SPAAK Building in Brussels have been unveiled. Officially announced in July 2022, the winner is Europarc, a collective

b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, Luis Machuca, DJ arquitectura   Spain   The team formed by b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, Luis Machica Arquitectos, and DJ Arquitectura has won the competition to design Málaga’s new Plaza de la Marina and connect Parque de Málaga to the seafront. This park and the palm-lined port promen

Fernando Menis   Spain   Fernando Menis won the 2019 competition to restore a neo-Gothic building and fit it out for exhibitions in flexible spaces that can be easily adapted to use changes within the cultural typology. Named in honor of the botanist José Viera y Clavijo,

On 10 October, with King Felipe VI presiding, the Royal Academies of the Institute of Spain (IdeE) commenced the 2022/2023 course with a ceremony held at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, It fell upon Luis Fernández-Galiano, a full-fledged

In line with the opening of the new Arquia headquarters at Tutor 16 in Madrid, a forum was held there on 30 November, titled ‘Sharing Experience,’ in which prominent architecture figures, with Luis Fernández-Galiano as moderator, voiced their reflect

In his adopted city, Seville, the architect Jaime López de Asiaín passed away on 12 September. He was born in Madrid but the setting of his influential teachings was the Andalusian capital, whose school he helped to get going, and stayed ever connect

The firm that now styles itself as Ennead Architects lost its visible head, James Stewart Polshek, on 9 September, shortly before its sixtieth anniversary. After starting out working for I. M. Pei and others, this Ohioan set up his own practice, whic

Rallies in support of civil rights aroused in a young beatnik a keen awareness of the fight against the establishment, but they also soon made him see that more than direct actions, it was important to build a critical political thinking that would l

“I write and design from the inside of a medieval town block, distanced from the street, illuminated by the light of a cyclopean courtyard… a void shared by rain, plants, the sun, shadows, classical music aired by Spanish National Radio, and me.” Jua

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Institute of Spain, comprising the country’s ten Royal Academies, officially opened its 2022 cycle at the Fine Arts seat with a lecture on the late style of writers and artists.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   My most archaic convictions make me prone to believe that, just as there is a reasonable anatomical and physiological continuity in the human species, there must exist a stubborn nucleus of mental continuity that allows us to find common intellectual