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

Luis Fernández-Galiano   While we discuss the price of electricity, the ghost of famine hovers over the world. It is energy we are talking about in both cases, but while exosomatic energy depends on social organization, endosomatic energy has biological boundaries. Alfred Lo

Alberto Ballesteros   Scheherazade told stories in order to survive. The human being has always honed ingenuity at critical moments, and this book proves so. It looks at a refugee camp in the Jordanian desert where Syrian migrants forced to stay put have to harness their

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

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

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

What has perhaps been the worst year in half a century, 2020, comes to a close with a hope-inspiring image: the picture of elderly people and nurses receiving the first doses of the vaccine. Hope-inspiring because it a sign that the thick fog in whic

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

Planeta en peligro

Peter Sloterdijk used the metaphor in formulating his take on our times. His postmodern, disturbing statement about us “living in bubbles” keeps proving true, yet remains hard to predict. What are today’s bubbles? The first and most pressing, urgent

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Patience is the sister of hope. The philosopher Ernst Bloch, who wrote the three volumes of The Principle of Hope while exiled in the United States from 1938 to 1947, often spoke of the importance of optimism. Now, while everyone from The Economist t

Domus   Jacques Herzog   In this open letter addressed to David Chipperfield, Jacques Herzog reflects on the active role that architects ought to play in post-Covid society.

Norman Foster   Speaking before a gathering of mayors from 41 cities, Norman Foster shared his optimistic view of the pandemic as an uplifting opportunity.

Michael J. Sandel   When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, the United States, like many other countries, was unprepared. As the contagion spread, the wealthiest country in the world found itself unable to provide even the medical masks and other protective gear that

Richard Florida    The New Urban Crisis is a historical watershed. How we respond to it will determine whether our cities, suburbs, and nation will successfully forge a new era of sustainable and inclusive prosperity, or fall victim to our growing inequities and divide

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The creative destruction defended by Schumpeter deserves another name: corrosive destruction. The oxymoron popularized by the Austrian economist describes the gales of transformation powered by capitalism as forces of creativity that allow a hatching

Norman Foster   The history of cities and the buildings that comprise them is inextricably linked to the ever-recurring pattern of disease and issues of public health. There are countless examples. The Cholera outbreak of the 1850s, which decimated the population o

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Breathing has become harder to do. Cars deteriorate the air of cities, pandemics contaminate the air of buildings, and racism degrades the air of societies. Urban atmospheres get more toxic and claim countless victims in the world year after year; Co

It is not easy to ponder the real magnitude of the pandemic’s impact on our everyday existence; to find a middle ground between catastrophists convinced that Covid-19 marks a point of no return for societies, and optimists certain that the return to

One way To distinguish liberal democracies from totalitarian regimes is by comparing the aesthetics of their respective popular demonstrations: on the one hand, organic masses whose chaos is an expression of spontaneity or freedom; on the other, crow

Pandemics and Social Distancing