PMMT Arquitectes   Spain   In the wake of research conducted in collaboration with Catalonia’s health system, the Barcelona firm PMMT was commissioned to design a prototype to be built close to hospitals as reinforcement for the regional medical network, in response to the pan

Arquitectura Chile 15   Spain   With the health crisis that broke out last spring, the government of the Community of Madrid, through its regional health service, took several measures to try to curb the pandemic and provide urgent attention to the ill. The IFEMA field hospital mad

Studio Precht   With open-air public spaces around the world closed during the pandemic, the Austria firm of Chris Precht and Fei Tang Precht imagined a park in the form of a maze where social distancing can be observed and the coronavirus kept from spreading. In a

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The eruption of a volcano in the Canary Islands was the most dramatic image of a year of geopolitical mutations and pandemic recovery through vaccines.

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

Norman Foster   From 6 to 8 October the Palais des Nations in Geneva was the venue of a meeting of ministers from states belonging to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The member states agreed to endorse Regional Action Plan 2030, which seek

Sergio del Molino   The coronavirus is said to be emptying cities. Myriad news items and articles took this exodus for granted. There is no province that has no record of a town to which two or three families have relocated, fleeing the city, and some places have seen a

LSE   Ricky Burdett   Jean-Louis Missika   The media has been quick to predict the premature demise of New York, London or Paris. Yet it is difficult to learn lessons about the impact of the pandemic on major cities, because it is not over. Surveys and statistics are very popular, but often m

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   In a desperate attempt to lure employees back to their offices, companies are laying on all manner of novelty treats, from monogrammed water bottles to personalised notebooks. It is hoped that these perks might convince people to leave the house, get

The Economist   From the outside, it resembles an army base, an expanse the size of 45 football pitches filled with rows of austere, grey, three-storey buildings. The facility (pictured) on the outskirts of the southern city of Guangzhou is China’s first purpose-bui

The Economist   As economies reopen, activity is spreading outward from city centres. The economic recovery from the covid-19 pandemic is lopsided in many ways. Vaccinations have allowed some countries to bounce back rapidly, even as others struggle. Demand is surgi

Fernanda Canales   The Venice Architecture Biennale, perhaps the most important architectural celebration in the world, focuses this year on the consequences of construction. It tries to encompass buildings and destruction in equal measure, and also the needs of commun

The Economist   In 1842 edwin chadwick, a British social reformer, published his “Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population”. By documenting evidence of social and geographic inequalities in health, Chadwick showed that poor sanitation was associa

Luis Fernández-Galiano   From virus to vaccine, 2020 has been a year on pause. From the detection of the first cases of covid-19 in Wuhan to the announcement of the efficacy of vaccines, we have lived a period of virtual life, locked up in domesticity and our contact with ot

The Economist   On january 24th 2020 three families, together numbering 21 people, came independently to eat lunch at a restaurant in Guangzhou. It was the eve of the Chinese New Year. Extra seating had been squeezed in to accommodate more patrons than usual, and th

The Guardian   Arundhati Roy   It’s hard to convey the full depth and range of the trauma, the chaos and the indignity that people are being subjected to. Meanwhile, Modi and his allies are telling us not to complain. During a particularly polarising election campaign in the state

The New York Times   Thomas Kaplan   Sheryl Gay Stolberg   The Biden administration came out in support of waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, a breakthrough for international efforts to suspend patent rules as the pandemic rages in India and South America. The United States had

The Economist   On a sunny afternoon in Kingsmere, a new suburb of Bicester, a town 50 miles (80km) north of London, the streets are abuzz with people strolling and children playing. In ten years 1,600 homes have been built on the site, and another 900 are soon to f

1932-2020 In the same Ticino canton of his birth to which he was ever bound, Luigi Snozzi fell prey to Covid-19 on 29 December. A master of contemporary Swiss architecture, Snozzi was born in Mendrisio in 1932 and attended ETH Zurich, after which he

The Economist   Convergent evolution may make travel restrictions redundant. The genetic mutations that cause evolution may arise at random. But natural selection often produces creatures that are similar, despite living in different environments. For example birds,

Manuel Arias-Maldonado   What does the Covid-19 pandemic tell us? In what way does it affect our perception of reality and how we relate with it? What lessons can be learned from this extraordinary episode? I will simply extract two teachings of the pandemic, and by distill

The New York Times   Matthew Haag   Dana Rubinstein   The largest private development in U.S. history has attracted marquee companies, but is struggling with unsold luxury condos and a mall barren of shoppers. When Hudson Yards opened in 2019 as the largest private development in American history, it as

The Economist   Half of the world’s supply has been reserved for just 15% of its population. Covid-19 has spread at a formidable clip of late, but the vaccines designed to stop it are spreading even faster. In the two months since mass vaccination began, at least 14

Ignacio Nieto de la Cal   The astonishing ease with which an imported microscopic virus is bringing our current wellbeing and the global economy down on their knees is making us rethink our way of living and reconsider our priorities. It is starting to look less like just a s

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The year 2021 begins with three black swans, sounding like drum beats after the Christmas truce: the assault on the United States Capitol by a mob devoted to still-President Trump, the historic snowstorm that has paralyzed Spain, and the sudden spike