I first visited the country in 1978, invited by the Chinese Communist Party. It was a moment of transition, Mao having died two years before and with Deng Xiaoping in the process of consolidating his power. In a snowy Beijing we walked through the Fo
2020 marked a symbolic milestone in the Anthropocene era: for the first time, the anthropogenic mass – that is, the whole set of the solid materials manufactured or modified by humans – exceeded the overall biomass of the planet, which includes all l
China’s transformation in the 21st century can be felt on a visit there, as chronicled in ‘Six Watercolors’ (AV Proyectos 130), but is also documented through its cinema, which since the dazzling appearance of Zhang Yimou with Red Sorghum (1987) has
There is no better architecture exhibition this summer than that of Veronese at the Prado. The great painter created the myth of rich and opulent Venice with his crowded compositions of exquisitely dressed characters participating in lavish dinners i
The Luxembourg-born architect, writer, and draftsman Léon Krier, one of the key drivers of the postmodern movement, passed away on 17 June in Palma de Mallorca, where he had been living since 2013 with his partner Irene P. Stillman, in a house near t
The escalation of the war in the Middle East opens Pandora’s Box, Israel bombarded Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, killing nuclear scientists and military leaders, and Tehran responded launching ballistic missiles over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
Desde la implementación del Plan Cerdá, Barcelona ha sabido crecer a varias velocidades. Por una parte, con el desarrollo del planeamiento; por otra, con intervenciones puntuales, convertidas después en piezas esenciales de cada barrio; y en tercer l
With the big blackout of 28 April, Spaniards had a Monday in the sun, using the title of a film that described the drama of unemployment as resigned idleness. The interruption of activity, transport, and even telecommunications awakened us to the fra
On May 7, 2025, ballet teacher Elna Matamoros joined the Royal Academy of Doctors of Spain, marking a pioneering incorporation of dance into the world of academia. In response to her inaugural speech, Luis Fernández-Galiano praised the dancer and cho
Liberation Day was the day that disorder began. Donald Trump chose 2 April to present the new tables of Law, but his tariff commandments unleashed economic chaos and, like Moses upon descending from Mount Sinai, he was soon forced to break the tablet
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
