Guardian Glass    Thanks, among other things, to Guardian’s SunGuard SN 79/41 low-emission glass product, the renovation of the building at Castellana 77 in Madrid, carried out by Luis Vidal, has obtained Leed Platinum certification.

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Belgium   The expansion of a nineteenth-century townhouse in the heart of Ghent resulted in a second house – a ‘summer house’ marked out by a precise modular frame of steel sections, overgrown with grapevines, that sits in the irregular outdoor space alongside

Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei   Germany   In an artery opened in the 1950s to decongest the historic center, the extension of the local savings bank dialogues with the medieval fabric without sacrificing its contemporary essence. The use of recycled bricks echoes the solid walls of the build

SANAA   France   Fifteen years and 280 French companies have taken part in the reconstruction, reshaping, and renovation of La Samaritaine in Paris. The history of this department store dates back to 1870, when Ernest Cognacq opened at the junction of Pont-Neuf and M

Renzo Piano   United States   The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) of the United States, which year after year extols Hollywood movies with its Oscar awards, intends – the pandemic permitting – to inaugurate its much awaited Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on

Steven Holl   United States   Presenting undulating facades and roofs, the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building adds gallery space for the collection of one of the largest museum institutions in the United States. The building consolidates the campus formed by the original edifice, the

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Netherlands   Upon its completion in 1992, Rijnstraat 8 represented both an innovative office typology – its atriums served as conservatories – and a leading example of sustainability. Over time, the building no longer offered the flexibility required of a contemp

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Canada   The extension of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec sits amid the other three existing institutional buildings creating a complex on the edge of the park. The project tries to establish new relationships between the green areas and the adjac

OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture   Netherlands   The nhow RAI Hotel rises in the rapidly developing Zuidas business district, in the south of Amsterdam. The 91-meter building contains a mixed program with workspaces as well as entertainment. The main part is the hotel, which occupies nineteen of th

SANAA   France   Fifteen years and 280 French companies have taken part in the reconstruction, reshaping, and renovation of La Samaritaine in Paris. The history of this department store dates back to 1870, when Ernest Cognacq opened at the junction of Pont-Neuf and M

Snøhetta   France   The Norwegian firm Snøhetta – headed by Craig Dykers and Kjetil Traedal Thorsen – in collaboration with the French office SRA designed new headquarters for the Le Monde Group in Paris. The 23,000-square-meter building brings the media company’s 1,600

b720 Fermín Vázquez   Spain   As part of a sensitive programme of urban regeneration, the project refurbishes and adapts the emblematic Telefónica building, in the center of Madrid. The intervention covers everything from the reconfiguration of interior spaces, circulation cores,

Facing the arcaded gallery at Nuevos Ministerios on Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, the firms totem arquitectos and BETA.Ø have together come up with an efficient alternative to the conventional office building. The faceted volume has been expressl

The practice headed by the architect Enrique Álvarez-Sala recently completed the renovation of the General Insurance Directorate headquarters, an intervention which has involved consolidating the administrative building’s structure of post-tensioned

The Spaces   Emma Tucker   A series of stepped glass volumes form the roof of Louis Vuitton’s new flagship store in Seoul, designed by Frank Gehry as a miniature take on his Fondation Louis Vuitton. According to the architect, the stacked design is inspired by both the Paris m

From the great greenhouses of the 19th century to the ‘climatops’ proposed by Richard Buckminster Fuller in the mid-20th century, taming nature to reproduce it in artificial environments has been one of the major impulses of modernity. So has it been

Libraries have been one of the symbols of bourgeois society. Originally confined to monasterios and palaces, distant havens of elitist knowledge, libraries eventually became quintessential public spaces in the capitalist and increasingly democratic c

François Chaslin   The Cité Judiciaire serves to centralize a vast network of courthouses in a tiered tower that rises a hundred and sixty meters, and is already an icon of the new neighborhoods of Paris. 

The Roman practice Labics is the author of the Città del Sole urban regeneration project, which emptied some old bus depots next to Rome’s Tiburtina railway station and raised beside them a new building for mixed uses: offices, commercial spaces, res

Rosa Urbano  

Ignacio Paricio   Glass was the material of the 20th century and will probably also be that of the 21st. The success of glass is said to lie in its transparency and consequent immateriality, but I would say it is gloss, the shine, that captivates us. A glass building

In 2009 the Swabian studio Wittfoht Architekten won the international competition for the extension of the William Rappard Center in Geneva. Located across from Lake Leman, the building, which has just been inaugurated, addresses its environment by o

Norman Foster ha ganado el concurso para construir un nuevo rascacielos en el corazón de Manhattan, con una propuesta que se ha impuesto finalmente a las de los otros tres finalistas: Richard Rogers, Rem Koolhaas y Zaha Hadid, en una convocatoria a l