Our continent has gone to the polls at a critical time, and architecture cannot be indifferent to the great dilemmas of the moment, for its own future is essentially tied to climate change, to the protagonism of existing constructions, and to demogra
The magazine The Economist devotes its cover of 1 June to the European elections, with the headline 'The three women who will shape Europe.' Ursula von der Leyen seeks a new term as President of the European Commission, with the predictable support o
A Winter of Discontent
Like the Titanic but with no Viennese waltzes. In its Winterreise, this year Europe sails more to the beat of the Schubert cycle that with melancholy sings of isolation and cold. Isolation because of the disunity it is demonstrating to a world where
Around 83% of global energy is generated by burning fossil fuels. So, the transition from our predominantly dirty production of energy to one which is clean is at the very heart of our combating global warming. There is also a moral dimension to the
Helen Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, and Disorder gives a history of the 21st century where both the terms of her chair are interpreted from the prism of energy. As in her work of 2017, Oil and the Western Economi
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
Norman Foster developed sketches to illustrate the regional action plan for the UNECE region “Place and Life in the UNECE – A Regional Action Plan 2030: Tackling challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, climate and housing emergencies in region, city,
Bauhaus and Brussels are an uneasy mix. Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus art school, which shaped design in the 20th century, declared that a building “must be true to itself...
Regulations, policies, and bureaucratic hurdles imposed by the EU prevent immigrants from arriving in Europe by safe means of transport.
The outer borders of the EU, erected to control migratory flows from the African continent, have taken on a hypertechnological, highly refined nature.
“The suburbs are the place where energy is in the city—in the good, in the bad,” said Renzo Piano in 2015. Old left-right distinctions are fading as class identities break down. The big-tent party families, the social democrats and Christian de
The endeavor to improve the typology and energy properties of obsolete buildings, whilst preserving their formal virutes, defines an altogether new way of regarding heritage.
Architecture is center, life is periphery. We associate the European city with the medieval quarters and the extensions of the 19th century, but most of the population lives in the peripheries. The political and social will to improve the everyday li
Victor Hugo said that the history of a civilization is not written in monuments, but in its sewers. Nowadays, these sewers are borders between nations, boundaries heated up by friction between unequal economies and cultures, which end up igniting. Eu
Summer arrives with storms. A telegraphic chronicle of three days in June presents Europe’s fits and starts at a moment of tribulation that awakens old phantoms. In the first volume of his masterly history of the continent (To Hell and Back: Europe 1
Europe today is a landscape without figures, a garden marked out by empty pedestals. The heroes have abandoned their podiums and wander about in the summer, oblivious to the buzz of the crowd. A century ago, Europe’s leaders acted out a grand guignol
We commemorate 1914 at the heart of the conflict. A century after the Great War began, we Europeans watch the economic colossus of the continent with precaution, and hope the material giant also becomes a spiritual one. That tragic carnage, started b
Architecture needs industry, but industry does not ask for architects too often. More than a century after the Werkbund’s foundation, the necessary cross fertilization between art and industry is, in many geographical areas, a purpose rather than a p
The economic crisis has been a catalyst for the international projection of emerging Spanish architects, who are seeking new work opportunities in Europe.
We pretend to be citizens of the globe, but in truth we live in a small world. AV/Arquitectura Viva set out, from their birth almost a quarter of a century ago, to cover the architecture of the planet, and the choice of Berlin as theme of the maiden
Helen Thompson Hard Times in the 21st Century
Andrés Cánovas Carmen Espegel José María de Lapuerta European Collective Housing 2000-2021
Orlando Figes Tres vidas y el nacimiento de la cultura cospomolita
Klaus Leuschel
Cologne 2010
Dumont Marta Herford - 240 Pages
Hans Ibelings Kirsten Hannema
Amsterdam 2011
SUN - 157 Pages