Lys Villalba   Japan   Fifteen years after the publication of Made in Tokyo, a book-guide by the Japanese studio Atelier Bow-Wow that reflected the hybrid and changing quality of Japan’s capital, the Madrid architect Lys Villalba proposes a new research that brings that wo

Alberto Ballesteros   Peter Zumthor makes little noise. The Swiss architect has for over a half-century produced his serious, transcendental work barely leaving the Grison Alps, making anyone wanting to see him pilgrim to his remote refuge, with the result that he is vene

Enrique Morillo   Ignasi Aballí’s project for the Venice Art Biennale seeks to correct two errors: one having to do with space, the other with time. The first is in the Spanish Pavilion, which he rotates ten degrees to align it with the Belgian and Dutch Pavilions. Th

Eduardo Prieto   Faced with the highly personal, exquisite, or rare, it’s best to take the position medieval theologians took when defining the divine: to describe not what it is, but what it is not. This book is not an essay; it follows no line of discourse but fork

Eduardo Prieto   Normality is of ill repute, in architecture too, perhaps for two reasons: romantic tradition, which transformed artistic into creative activity, and the artist into a demigod going less by the laws of tradition than by its own; and consumerist societ

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Swedish historian Johan Norberg devotes a chapter of his new book to ‘open minds,’ and this is precisely what Steven Pinker, whom he so admires, advocates in his own latest work, a vibrant defense of rational thinking which the eminent Canadian p

Bill Gates   The great epidemiologist Larry Brilliant once said that “outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are optional.” I thought about this quote and what it reveals about the COVID-19 pandemic often while I was working on my new book. On the one hand, it’s

The Guardian   Ashifa Kassam   For nearly two decades Andrés Rubio pored over photos of Spain’s magnificent cathedrals, delicate Moorish architecture and quaint cobblestone streets. But as the editor of newspaper El País’ travel supplement, what often caught his eye was what was h

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The simultaneous release in 2021 of translations of books by Colin St John Wilson and Kenneth Frampton, both on dissident modernities, is reason to revise the architectural canons of the past century, and a coinciding volume by José Ignacio Linazasor

Eduardo Prieto   The most radical modernity aspired not so much to revamp architecture as to destroy it. The project was at first undertaken by futurists obsessed with turning buildings into atmospheres of air and energy. Having failed, this utopia of dissolution rem

Urban palimpsests help us understand the cities we live in. These evanescent traces, from the diachronic superpositions of buildings or streets to the faded remains of a sign or writing on a party wall, tell stories about the lifestyles and concerns

David Escudero   At one of the last tributes to Frank Lloyd Wright in Italy, he was asked about the country’s modern architecture and he replied: “But does modern architecture exist in Italy?” Fulvio Irace gave a satisfactory retort in 1996 with the first edition of

Abel Fernández   From the time that Sigfried Giedion established his generational theory of Modernity – that major bang on the table that was determined to be a tabula rasa – the idea of heritage was ready to put in an appearance. As the discourse of Modernity over t

Alejandro Bernabeu   Vancouver is on territory that is hard to get to. That part of British Columbia is one of North America’s roughest regions. The city lies in the Fraser River delta, protected by Vancouver Island, the Strait of Georgia, and the abrupt Pacific coast. F

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The memoirs of Ai Weiwei are an extraordinary political and artistic document. His 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows incorporate the biographical journey of his father, the great poet Ai Qing (1910-1995), into his own; and throw light on the creative pr

The Guardian   David Annand   It may only rarely get built, but imaginary architecture is a crucial support for many stories, from Jane Austen’s Pemberley to Kafka’s Castle and Ballard’s High-Rise. Rather as everybody supposedly thinks they have a book in them, I wonder if every

Alberto Ballesteros   Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? The greatest metaphysical question is the opening line of one of rock’s most famous hymns, and the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody rings as one leafs through this book: between the oneiric forms of the photos

Emilio Tuñón   Running one of the most prestigious architecture firms in the world, David Chipperfield is particularly appreciated in Spain, not only by virtue of his beautifully balanced work but also because of the warmth that radiates from one who spends long pe

Eduardo Prieto   Mastership too comes in tones. Although our late-romantic upbringing makes us prefer major masters, minor masters are more interesting when it is times, not so much persons, that we wish to comprehend. Lacking ego, minor masters are better at strikin

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Ukrainian crisis has to be tackled with perspective. This is precisely what Daniel Yergin does in The New Map, subtitled ‘Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations’ because the confrontation between nations is explained from the angle of its ener

Justo Isasi   Two hundred pages for 12 essays and a prologue, and almost as many for projects, drawings, and biographical notes, celebrate the oeuvre of the Madrid architect Luis Cubillo. This profuse anthology and tribute covers the works carried out by his prac

Eduardo Prieto   Some architects build from nothing, raising objects on a tabula rasa; others prefer to transform what already exists, in such a way that it is seen differently. Julio Cano Lasso is definitely in the second group. The sensitivity for human and natural

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the cafés of fin-de-siècle Vienna brewed a hundred intellectual circles. Two recent books document the history of the Austrian School and the Vienna Circle, two illustrious representatives of a sparkling crucible of ideas whose expansive waves rea

Abel Fernández   “Fixity is always momentary.” The line from Octavio Paz’s The Monkey Grammarian, a poetic pilgrimage to Galta, in the heart of Rajasthan, could serve as an introduction to this book by the architect and Harvard GSD professor Rahul Mehrotra, a compila