Luis Fernández-Galiano   We call it Earth, but we could have named it Water. More than two thirds of our planet is covered by oceans, which interact with the earth’s biosphere and the atmosphere to influence climate and intervene in the carbon cycle. The widespread use of fo

Though trained at ETH Zurich during the years of Aldo Rossi’s chair, Valerio Olgiati (Cuera, 1958) has produced an oeuvre to a large extent removed from themes like type and context. Powerful in their schematism, monolithic in their materiality, exq

Valerio Olgiati   Bahrain   Aside from protecting a series of ruins in the Pearling Path, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the building becomes a foyer for the medina and a public space for the people of Muharraq.

Valerio Olgiati   Switzerland   The house is built on a narrow site ninety meters long, presenting two very different end facades: one offers views of the village, and the other one looks towards agricultural land. 

Valerio Olgiati   Portugal   The four concrete walls that surround Villa Além cannot be seen by the passer-by, hidden as they are amid the cork oak trees of a lush forest in a recondite spot of Portugal’s Alentejo region, just ten kilometers inland from the Atlantic coast. The m

Valerio Olgiati   Switzerland   The apartment building is executed with reddish concrete and characterized by a series of elliptical voids that give the volume rhythm, identity, and a monumental image. 

Mathias Schwartz-Clauss   A historic agricultural enclave located in the southwest of France is the setting of one of the most extraordinary centers of artistic creativity in all of Europe.

Olafur Eliasson   The Danish artist reflects on the role of art in the Anthropocene world as his retrospective exhibition titled ‘In Real Life’ views at Tate Modern.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The latest books of Thomas Piketty and Francis Fukuyama address the populist challenge from complementary perspectives. The French economist expands the scope of his studies of income and inheritance inequality in Le capital au XXI siècle to include

Eduardo Prieto   Many adjectives have been used to describe architectures that our contemporary world has built and continues to build, but which histories have excluded: ‘popular,’ ‘realist,’ ‘trivial,’ ‘conventional,’ capitalist,’ even ‘ugly.’ Such adjectives have

Justo Isasi   The Spanish translations of Housing by People and The Timeless Way of Building resurrects two 1970s takes on the political and philosophical aspects of housing, the city, and architecture. These against-the-grain testimonies deserve attention today,

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Enmeshed with microhistories, we yearn for great narratives. The Annales school taught us to look at the longue durée of history under the prism of geography and economics, and there is perhaps no better expression of its method than La Méditerranée

Selgascano   United States   Amid dense vegetation and over the parking garage of a building that was demolished, sixty ovals varying in geometry and size rise to contain coworking spaces. The new Second Home in LA goes up on top of an underground parking and maintains a two-sto

Wherever it is that things go well for you, that’s your country. Building outside Spain has for Spanish architects been both a challenge and a recognition traditionally within the reach of few prestigious names, such as Rafael Moneo, Santiago Calatra

Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos   Estonia   The new center devoted to the Estonian composer preserves the pines in the woods around it, aiming in this way to foster dialogue between architecture, music, and natural environment.

BAAS Arquitectura   Poland   Taking advantage of a preexisting construction in disuse which was supposed to be demolished, the project creates a volume and clads it with an abstract lattice of local ceramic blocks.

Bonell & Gil   Switzerland   The new parliament of the Canton of Vaud melds into a complex historical context, replacing the old building destroyed by fire in 2002 and refurbishing the existing structures. 

IDOM   Senegal   The design of the new university campus, located west of the capital, is conditioned by the extreme climate of the region and by the lack of infrastructures and services in the area. 

Matthew Barnett Howland, CSK   United Kingdom   Resorting to simplicity and sustainability, this residential project is a creative response to the particular complexities and conventions of contemporary housing. Instead of the traditional construction with layers of walls incorporating a variety o

Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation   Spain   Conceived as an ‘urban technofarm,’ Run Run Run is a politically driven infrastructure that seeks to turn the street into a “playing and training field” and provoke human encounters in places and activities traditionally belonging to the realm of the

Foster and BIG, Beyond the Earth

This year we mark a half-century since the first lunar landing, and the allure of this fiftieth anniversary has helped to revive the old excitement surrounding space travel. Almost at the same time that NASA announced that Earth’s satellite would be

New York has just seen the opening of the Museum of Modern Art renovation and expansion, carried out by the local firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Since Goodwin and Stone raised the original building in 1938, this is the fifth enlargement to be carried

Digitalization takes command of the world, and its thinning effects are increasingly felt in architectural types that once upon a time were solid and stable. A case in point is the library, whose mission of being a container of books is steep in cris

Unlike in the past, this year’s Stirling Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects seems to have kindled consensus among critics. For example, Oliver Wainwright of the newspaper The Guardian considers the winning building – Goldsmith Street

It is a sure sign of the times we are living that the most recent editions of the world’s most important biennials of architecture and art have been characterized by an indisguisable political agenda, or at the least by a marked sensitivity to social

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Before becoming the most eloquent propagandist of postmodern architecture, Charles Jencks was a sharp and heretic historian of modernity. The architect and critic passed away on 13 October, leaving behind him 30 books, some gardens, and the exemplary