On 4 October 1914, barely two months after the outbreak of World War I, ninety-three German intellectuals issued a proclamation ‘To the Civilized World.’ “As representatives of German Science and Art… as heralds of truth we raise our voices… It is no
The war warning of European elites has feet of clay. Robert Kagan coined in 2003 a metaphor that stuck: “On major international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” This was the opening line of his Of Paradise and P
That we Europeans profess a profound, historical ignorance of Albania is proven by the fact that when referring to the Balkan country, we always go to that adjective, ‘Balkan.’ As a good tailor’s box, Balkan serves to combine topics – mountains, reli
The World Health Organization, constituted in 1946, defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This approach invites us to understand the term in a holistic ma
The increase in the frequency and intensity of fires in different parts ofthe world has prompted experts to suggest that we may have entered a new epoch. In ancient Greek the element Pyro meant ‘fire,’ hence words like ‘pyromaniac’ or ‘pyroclast,’ th
Do you know who wrote this? On 7 August 2021, Renzo Piano sends me a picture of the laconic interior of his refuge in the Alps, another of the bucolic view from his window, and a third of a yellowish press cutting with lots of underlines. Can it be a
The exquisite exhibition of Renzo Piano in London’s Royal Academy was more oriented towards the cognoscente than the layperson. Architects already familiar with the work of the Genoa master enjoyed the sober presentation of sixteen essential building
At the venerable age of masters, Renzo Piano continues to sail over the waves of a success that has hardly any equal in the history of contemporary architecture, both in the last century and this one, once again proving Picasso’s paradox true: “It ta
The complete oeuvre of Renzo Piano is clustered in a magic island. He has often dreamed of sailing the seas in search of Atlantis, but while that day comes he has gathered more than a hundred of his works on an island that we celebrate here borrowing
If the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik on 4 October 1957 set off the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that of the generative artificial intelligence DeepSeek’s R1 model on 27 January 2025 sparked the cyberspace ra
The encounter of Europe and America since 1492 can be considered one of the most significant events in universal history. Europeans perceived it as a ‘discovery’ and claimed authority to colonize the vast territories, but the colonists were immediate
appeasement The imperial presidency of Trump was inaugurated with a sequence of executive orders orchestrated like coups de théâtre, signed off with the bold strokes of a hyperbolic signature and exposed in performances worthy of an art biennia
Architecture has undergone an intense critical revision over the last two decades – a period during which paradigms such as the respect for the environment, energy efficiency, and attention to sustainability have gained strength. All of this has made
The AV/Arquitectura Viva project turns 40 in 2025, and this is a good time to look back on our DNA. What was initially called Monografías de Arquitectura y Vivienda was a quarterly magazine edited by a public housing company, and of the four issues p
Dear Luis Fernández-Galiano, By way of wishing you a happy New Year, I simply wanted to express how much I appreciate your faithful contribution to architectural culture world-wide and particularly to Spain, so much so that one has the feeling that y
Under the impact of climate change and the acid rain of political polarization, architecture needs resistant redoubts in which to take shelter to prepare for the disorder that is coming. This selection of Spanish buildings documents a series of preci
Valencia’s ‘dana’ and Trump’s triumph set the coordinates of the year in Spain and the world. Just a week apart, the catastrophic flash floods of Tuesday 29 October and the landslide presidential election of Tuesday 5 November marked an inflection po
The cathedral, “the soul of France” finally resurrected following a meticulous five-year, €700m restoration. “The area around Notre Dame has changed so much throughout history,” says Bas Smets, the Belgian landscape architect who won an open competit
Figuration and abstraction have been opposite poles of a debate which in the field of architecture has often been confused with the tension between tradition and modernity. In fact, the postmodern movement of the 1980s reclaimed the figurative, espec
The relationship between cities and their rivers has been tense and conflictive since time inmemorial. Rivers – access to fresh water to drink or to irrigate the fields with – are the primary raison d’être of human settlements. But while an essential
I am delighted my book from 1984, updated in 2002, is appearing in Spain in 2024. The questions I first raised in the United States forty years ago remain urgent ones. Cities planned around the old idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” have beco
Blinded by the war flashes in Ukraine and the Middle East, we fail to see the agony of Sudan. The outcome of the conflict in Ukraine is very important for Europeans, and uncertain due to cracks in the support of the country in the East of the contine
Basel, for many, is pharmaceutical industry and finance; for others, museums and the art market; and for not a few, the city of Herzog & de Meuron, the gold standard of architecture, and it is good to retrace the journey that has led them to wield su
