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.
We look to the East with fear, but the East also lies south. We have seen the chaos caused by Daesh in the Near East, but Jihadism has been destabilizing Sahel for a long time now; and we are shocked by the tragedy in Ukraine, but Russia is in Algeri
Ukrainian Urbicide. Spurred by its journalistic spirit, Arquitectura Viva presents recent events and society's reactions to the war being waged on Ukraine through a semi-monographic issue that takes stock of its impact beyond the strictly architectur
Three decades ago the library of Sarajevo, disemboweled by shells, was the symbol of Balkanic urbicide, as documented in the 1993 article reproduced on page 24 of this Arquitectura Viva issue. Now it is a bridge outside Kyiv – blasted by the Ukrainia
Along with the 6,800 Russian professionals who signed a call for peace quickly censored by Putin’s government, architects, artists, and designers from everywhere join hands in expressing their disapproval of armed conflict and their solidarity with U
Authors Outraged
Ucrania es ahora el escenario de la interminable lucha entre las grandes potencias por afianzar el control en sus esferas de influencia.
A recent journey through the principal cities of the country was a stocktaking of Ukraine’s rich heritage, now under threat of Russian bombardments.
Arquitectura Viva came into being when the Berlin Wall still stood, and in the three long decades since, it has given testimony of the seismic upheavals that the geopolitical architecture of the planet has suffered. From the first project of the Jewi
The devastation of Ukrainian cities like Kharkov, also seen in the dramatic sieges of Kiev or Mariupol, brings to mind the Balkan urbicides or the later destructions of Grozny in Chechnya or Aleppo in Syria. The tanks of February
This issue has had three consecutive presentations, and none in the end, because this text barely explains a process. After the optimism of January, looking up in awe to imagine the James Webb telescope deploying in space, the gaze had to be brought
The paralysis of Ukraine on account of the war has an echo in Russia itself, thanks to the sanctions interrupting its urban and cultural boom.
To think up the future we have to imagine a different past. With the Ukraine war we have irreversibly entered a new world, but cannot help wondering about alternative events that might have prevented this fatal denouement. The reconstruction of histo
The crisis of Ukraine reproduces the sleepwalking carnival of the political elites that did not manage to prevent the outbreak of the Great War. Barbara Tuchman published in 1962 a masterly account of the 31 days that led to tragedy in 1914, The Guns
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
From snow to lava, in Spain this has been a year of extreme events. Nothing relates the Filomena storm with the eruption of Cumbre Vieja, but both scares happen when we try to recover from a historic pandemic that has halted the life of the planet. T
Humanity faces three tragic transits: the geopolitical transit, from the hegemony of the West to the struggle between the United States and China; the energy transit, from fossil fuels to renewable sources, to mitigate the impact of climate change; a
The chaotic exit from Afghanistan is a cultural drama, as well as a geopolitical failure that questions the leadership of the United States.
The contest between the United States and China traces the outlines of the second Cold War. Both Xi Jinping’s assertive expansionism and Joe Biden’s determined policy of containment paint an oft-repeated historical fresco, that of a power on the rise
We are at the threshold of something, but do not know what exactly. Ortega y Gasset’s diagnosis – “We do not know what is happening to us, and this is precisely what is happening to us” – also applies to the current moment of transition between decad
No commercial war is bloodless. The current clash between the United States and China, which reaches the technological and space fields, encumbers the circulation of ideas, capitals, and goods, and questions the international institutions that establ
Conceived as an alternative to the conventional circuits of art, Manifiesta, Europe’s premier itinerant biennial contemporary art festival, holds its 2018 event in Palermo, Sicily, from June to September. Curated by Bregtje van der Haak, Andrés Jaque
Digital technology promised us the dissolution of space. We would no longer need to venture out into the street to see and be seen, nor hie over to the supermarket for a loaf of bread, nor march to the battlefront to confront the enemy: submerged in
