The deceased architect designed the covers of ‘AV’ during its first decade and a half, and in his honor we present one of each of those fifteen years. These covers, which together contributed to forging the visual identity of the monographs, show the
The architect and critic François Chaslin passed away on 7 August in Lanildut, a small commune on the coast of the French deparment of Finistère, where he lived in a house he had renovated himself, far from the Parisian maelstrom where the bulk of hi
The architect and professor Javier Alau Massa died on 10 August after a long illness, leaving behind a trajectory that ties in with this magazine’s and mine. Friends since the Madrid School of Architecture and summers spent in the military service, i
I first visited the country in 1978, invited by the Chinese Communist Party. It was a moment of transition, Mao having died two years before and with Deng Xiaoping in the process of consolidating his power. In a snowy Beijing we walked through the Fo
China’s transformation in the 21st century can be felt on a visit there, as chronicled in ‘Six Watercolors’ (AV Proyectos 130), but is also documented through its cinema, which since the dazzling appearance of Zhang Yimou with Red Sorghum (1987) has
Two iconic museums in New York and London opened anew in May. The Frick Collection returned to its original home on Fifth Avenue, after expansion works that lasted five years, carried out by Anabelle Selldorf, and the same architect remodeled the Sai
During his long career Le Corbusier (1887-1965) worked in several distinct architectural styles: - vernacular and classical, from 1910;- nautical, 1920 onwards;- steel and glass, 1930 onwards;- béton brut, 1944 onwards. The specific nautical style w
An imprudence it may be on my part to declare that the Greek Doric temple has corners of objectionable design, but I am taking the risk, in the hope that the learned reader will not take offense. It is known that the shape of the temple comes from th
The Architecture Schools of Madrid and Barcelona have always carried on a certain degree of rivalry. However, in the 1960s two of their most promising graduates, Antonio Miró (1931-2011) and Fernando Higueras (1930-2008), discovered an affinity that
Just two days before the inauguration of the nineteenth Venice Architecture Biennale, the Milan Triennale kicked off its twenty-fourth Esposizione Internazionale, titled ‘Inequalities.’ Following ‘Broken Nature’ in 2019 and ‘Unknown Unknowns’ in 2022
The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale has sparked a considerable degree of interest, thanks to its innovative approach and its commitment to the cause of addressing today’s challenges. Does this mean anything to you? Is it not the description of all
The Island and the Ring Inaugurated last 13 April, the World Expo of 2025 is being held on the artificial island of Yumeshima, ‘Island of Dreams,’ a tract reclaimed from the sea on Osaka Bay that until recently was an infrastructural void, one which
If he had persevered in his longevity, Robert Venturi would have turned a hundred in 2025, and the centenary would perhaps have been observed with the unsettling kind of devotion that legends bent on continuing to live beyond their time stir up. But
On several occasions, the architect and researcher Frei Otto urged his colleagues in the profession to once and for all stop building in a way that was contrary to nature. Paradoxically, he also declared that he did not conceive of anything existing
Let’s return to that precise moment that Estrella de Diego evokes in her discourse; to the Salon Carré in the Louvre and Christopher Newman lying on the divan, exhausted, having seen everything, every painting marked with an asterisk in the Baedeker
“Occasionally, though, you’ll see young girls. For there are lots of young girls in the museums, girls from somewhere or other who have left homes that no longer hold on to anything; they find themselves in front of these tapestries and for a short w
In this series, Manuel Álvarez Diestro covers some of the driest places on the planet, journeying through countries likes Egypt, Oman, and Iran. Here the Cantabrian photographer explores the relationship between architecture and geological formations
It is hard to sum up in a brief text our experience of building outside Spain over the years. Each work, each client, and each country is a distinct experience, and each case is unique, so it is not easy to draw up conclusions or synthesize clearly t
It was in the 1970s that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari formulated their theorem on the “image of thought,” based on the botanical term ‘rhizome.’ Any teaching can be connected to another. All are communicative vessels. In a way, architecture toda
Successive crises in the course of this first quarter of the 21st century have awakened us to the need to make contemporary housing resilient. We try to adapt to the diversity of lifestyles and models of cohabitation by rearranging the conventional d
The magazine AV Monographs has for over three decades been putting together an annual almanac with a rigorous selection of twenty-four building works completed by Spanish practices during the given period. To leaf through any single one of these regu
The British Museum has announced which teams will be competing in the next stage of the international competition to renovate its Western Range galleries, an ambitious project of reimagining over a third of the London institution’s gallery space. The
Koyo Kouoh has been appointed with the specific task of curating the 61st International Art Exhibition to be held in 2026. Koyo Kouoh (Camerun / Switzerland) is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeit
