A falta de una fórmula mágica para hacer frente a la crisis habitacional, la construcción de viviendas de alquiler social se ha convertido en una de las claves de la intervención pública y ha producido algunos de los edificios más notables de los últ
Near the San Juan reservoir in the mountains of Madrid stands Casa Montesa, a work of the firm headed by Cristina Domínguez Lucas and Fernando Hernández-Gil. Beside this small bungalow, in the garden, the Madrid practice has raised a flexible, multip
Located in the Puente de Vallecas district, the SFJ6 residential complex commissioned by EMVS (Madrid’s municipal housing and land corporation) counts 102 social-housing units, four commerical spaces at ground level, and 109 garage slots. With a tota
Built in 1929, the Mas de Miquel residential building was designed by Doménec Sugrañes, a disciple of Antoni Gaudí. A fully decorated nine-story atrium gives access to all the dwellings. Metronom architecture was commissioned to renovate it and trans
An old construction on the premises of the agricultural cooperative of Flix – a municipality in Ribera de Ebro, a comarca of the province of Tarragona – has been turned into a cultural center. Counting a built area of 524 square meters, the new spac
The commission consisted in transforming a traditional Catalan country house in the Empordà region. The ensemble was made up of a main building to which, over the years, auxiliary constructions had been added, creating a fragmented and dark interior
The changing landscape of the Ebro Delta is shaped by the rice production cycles, from being a plain of land to a mirror of water during the flooding season of the fields, to then transform into an intense green prairie with the growth of rice plants
El encargo consistió en una intervención sobre una situación urbana poco habitual: una vivienda pareada en el interior de una manzana del Ensanche de Barcelona. Como punto de partida, se buscó enfatizar las peculiaridades del volumen, caracterizado p
The first floor of a glass-enclosed building, on a main street in the commercial area of Nagoya, harbors the retail store of the Swedish fashion brand Acne Studios. The commission from the new creative direction of the company asked, on one hand, to
Due to peculiar urban circumstances, this dwelling does not have a facade as it is confined within the block, bordering on other buildings along its entire perimeter, with the exception of the reduced entrance courtyard. There are no possible views t
Following her desire to live in a garden, the client found what she was looking for in the center of the Spanish capital, and set out to build her first home there. The garden was hidden to the street behind an apartment block, and had a small volume
The client – Nacho, a good friend of the architects – wanted to transform his photography studio, which had a backyard, into a home. It was a simple commission which had to address the essential needs of a dwelling: a place for sleeping, a place for
With Itziar Lafuente and Adrián Talens at the helm, LLOC arquitectes were commissioned to build 48 subsidized housing units and an underground parking garage in the Magaluf area of the municipality of Calviá. Located in the southwestern coast of the
‘Three Landscape Essays’ is a pilot project that tests strategies to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis in Southern Europe’s public spaces. They are on display in the main courtyard of the Conde Duque Center for Contemporary Culture in Madrid
This interdepartmental building of the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), on its campus in Palma de Mallorca, is conceived as an efficient container of teaching spaces, with classrooms and laboratories. A compact floor plan, a systematized env
Plato imagined the cave as an allegory of a sensual world that is just appearance, and this feigned background seems to materialize in the dazzling mise-en-scène that during this fashion season dresses the storefronts of the Parisian house of luxury
This shelter in Barcelona’s Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district can take in a hundred homeless women. A work of the firm VIVAS Arquitectos (César Vivas and Cristian Vivas), it has a day center and a night center seeking to assist and accompany its residents
These semi-detached houses are located in a neighborhood on the outskirts of a town near the city of Girona. Each dwelling faces two opposite sides and is joined back-to-back to its partner, in the manner of Janus the two-faced god. The union comes a
Located at the highest point of an agricultural property given over to the growing of olive and almond trees, near the Monastery of Santes Creus in Tarragona province’s comarca of Alt Camp, a small stone shelter is part of an ensemble of isolated roo
For the purpose of mitigating its visual impact, a building raised in the historical quarter of the town maintains the scale of neighboring constructions and uses traditional materials. Connected by an open gallery, two volumes are composed in terrac
An open block presents a low volume and a tower connected by a bioclimatic atrium thanks to which all the apartment units, meant to be rented out, face two directions. The artisanal bricks baked with biomass provide inertia to the inner void – which
An abandoned house integrated into its environs has been refurbished by occupying the ruin and expanding a series of interwoven interior spaces and gardens. Generating a counterpoint with the tower of the neighboring house, the stone, mud, and concre
On the outskirts of the town of Derio, near Bilbao, the Barcelona firm AV62 – led by Toño Foraster – was commissioned by APNABI (Association of families of people with autism spectrum disorders) to design this day center for young persons diagnosed w
The 60 square meters attic is completely stripped to accommodate a series of interconnected spaces that regulate their levels of intimacy through large dividing elements. Thus, a corridor that serves as both a bedroom and a study is divided by a slid
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has named 85 Social Housing in Cornellà de Llobregat (Barcelona), an 85-unit timber-framed social housing development designed by Peris + Toral Arquitectes, as the winner of the RIBA International Priz
The Transspecies Kitchen experiment transforms pieces of marble discarded as waste during stone extraction into a sustainable kitchen that relies on fermentation as the primary method of preparing food. This harnesses the ecological energy produced b
The winners of this year’s Tile of Spain Awards for Architecture and Interior Design, organized by the Spanish Association of Wall and Floor Tile Manufacturers (ASCER) with the purpose of highlighting works that make good use of Spanish ceramic tiles
Pupils asked for a building without walls that was like a garden and a spaceship. The dazzling result, housed within a living skin for insects and fungi, is one of the most inventive schools ever built. "It looks like a robot made of butter,” was one
¡¡ Collective housing is the essence of urban culture in our country and many others. However, the trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic has made us realize that in the 200-year history of those buildings we call ‘collective,’ managed by homeowner associat
What does it mean to gather together a decade or so of work signed “estudioHerreros” into a monograph? What is it to compact such a diversity of programs, scales, sites, and cultures into a relatively slim volume? The flexible but resilient plastic-c
A sensitive interpretation of the genius loci: this is how one could describe the social housing developent that the studio Oliver, Reina, Martín, Moyà & Garcías has executed in Son Gotleu, one of the poorest, most vulnnerable among the neighborhoods
As the Munch Museum in Olso nears completion, Madrid-based Estudio Herreros – in collaboration with the Norwegian firm MIM-A – has finished a residential block in Sant Boi de Llobregat (Barcelona). Offering a mixture of free-market and price-regulate
Construir sobre lo construido es un problema moderno. Antes de que existiera la perspectiva histórica, los restos del pasado —incluso los más prestigiosos de la Antigüedad clásica— eran tratados como materia muerta que, una vez descompuesta merced al
The jury of the 60th FAD awards, chaired by the architect Anna Bach, has announced the results of its assessment of the 484 works presented. The winner in the Architecture section is the project Life Reusing Posidonia, submitted by Carles Oliver, Ant
The citizen of the 21st century demands to live in an ever more ecological and sustainable environment, where transportation is provided with vehicles that pollute less, where the air that one breathes is cleaner, where large parks and gardens abound
Ever since human beings began to handle metals around 6,000 B.C., the development of metallurgy has been associated with humanity’s revolutions – not only the technological, but also the economic, social, and cultural ones.
La ampliación de una vieja y pesada estructura muraria con un porche nuevo y ligero emplazado donde una vez hubo un cobertizo para el ganado, ha sido la clave del proyecto de rehabilitación de una masía situada en la localidad gerundense de Santa Pau
En el barrio de Pardinyes, situado en una zona de Lérida con un pasado rural cercano, el estudio barcelonés de Jaime Coll y Judith Leclerc ha levantado un edificio de 44 viviendas sociales en régimen de alquiler (ver AV Monografías 147-148). Debido a
El proyecto de rehabilitación de una vivienda en el centro histórico de Gerona —diseñado por Ramón Bosch y Elisabet Capdeferro— ha merecido la Mención Especial Arquitecto Emergente en la última edición de los premios Mies van der Rohe. Concebido por
Después de un proceso largo y complejo que ha durado diez años desde la celebración del concurso, el estudio barcelonés dirigido por Charmaine Lay y Carles Muro ha finalizado la construcción del nuevo mercado municipal cubierto de la localidad mallor
El edificio modernista terminado en 1885 por Lluís Doménech Montaner para la editorial Montaner en el Ensanche de Barcelona renació en 1990 como Fundación Tàpies, rehabilitado por Roser Amadó y Lluís Doménech Girbau. Recientemente ha iniciado su terc
Finalizada la Expo 2008 de Zaragoza, algunos pabellones buscan nuevos usos mientras otros, como la instalación que proporcionaba climatización centralizada a todo el conjunto, los mantienen. Se trata de la central de trigeneración —frío, calor y elec
