Ludwig Godefroy   Mexico   In the historic center of Mérida, capital of the Mexican state of Yucatán, stands this house which is a modern take on elements of vernacular architecture. The proportions of the plot – a rectangle 80 meters long and 8 wide –generate a longitudinal p

estudioHerreros   Spain   Standing on a small rocky hillock that offers panoramic views of the valley, the mountains, and the town of Artá, this second residence becomes a privileged observatory of sunrises, sunsets, and storms. The project consists of adapting the traditiona

Mesura   Spain   “Una casa come me” was the instruction that Curzio Malaparte gave Adalberto Libera when he contracted him to build the villa in Capri that Brigitte Bardot would immortalize walking down its stepped roof, wrapped in a bathrobe, in the Godard film. Equ

LLLab   China   Near the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China, in Beigou Village, within the boundaries of the city of Beijing, is this hotel conceived as a small village by LLLab., a firm running offices in Shanghai, Stuttgart, and Porto, headed by Hanxiao L

Toshiko Mori   Senegal   The New York practice of architect Toshiko Mori was commissioned by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and the non-profit organization American Friends of Le Korsa (AFLK) to give the remote Senegalese town of Fass a school that can serve 300 childr

TEd’A arquitectes   Spain   Located on the outskirts of Palma de Mallorca, the building pursues two fundamental objectives: on the one hand to go unnoticed, and on the other to tie up with the island’s vernacular architectures. The first addresses the topography of the site, wh

Vo Trong Nghia Architects   Vietnam   Located close to the center of Son La City and surrounded by mountains covered with dense tropical vegetation, this series of pavilions inspired in traditional Vietnamese architecture completes a touristic resort with a new multipurpose space. The pr

Harquitectes   Spain   The stone wall that marked out the boundaries of the estate went around the whole site, revealing just the tops of the trees inside. The materiality and the irregularity of the geometry of the wall endowed it with a special character and presence, bu

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   United Kingdom   Every year the Serpentine Gallery in London chooses an international architect to build a temporary pavilion in Kensington Gardens. The pavilion of 2017, designed by Francis Kéré, is conceived as a microcosm: a community structure that fuses cultural

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Sudan   In a semi-desert landscape between the Nile and Atbara rivers, the remains of the city of the Kushites in Meroe – a powerful dynasty that reigned from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD – were declared a UNESCO Heritage Site in 2011. Located ab

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mozambique   Located at the point where the Revuboe and Zambezi rivers converge, the project aims to create a new type of neighborhood to address the increasing demand for housing in Tete, Mozambique. The community will be able to test a new planning method that

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Kenya   Located in the Kenyan village of Kogelo, where Barack Obama’s father was born, the Mama Sarah Obama Legacy Campus will be an educational enclave for a thousand students and preschool-age children in danger of being marginalized. The project presents

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Situated in the rural countryside of Boulkiemdé province, the Noomdo Orphanage lies approximately 2 kilometers outside Koudougou, and is home to more than fifty children between the ages of six and seventeen. Mimicking the nearby residential compound

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The success of the primary school in Gando and its positive impact on the community encouraged to build a secondary school to offer opportunities to those students who wanted to continue their studies. Inspired in the distribution of the surrounding

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Developed to establish an exchange between local craftsmen, builders, architects, students, and visitors, Atelier Gando was initiated under the organization of Francis Kéré with the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio in Switzerland. The Atelier w

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The Songtaaba Women’s Association is made up of approximately 300 members from the village of Gando and the surrounding province of Boulgou. The association provides a venue for the local women to form a strong social and economic union, in order to

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The construction of a health center as part of the Opera Village project followed the aim of improving basic health assistance for the local population. The CSPS, acronym for Centre de Santè et de Promotion Sociale, is fit out with the necessary inst

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Two years before his death, artist, filmmaker, and playwright Christoph Schlingensief managed to embark Kéré on his dream of building an opera house in the heart of Africa. While traveling through Burkina Faso in search of the adequate site, the coun

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mali   Located where the Niger and Bani rivers meet, Mopti is Mali’s fourth largest city and its main commercial port. After the restoration of the Great Mosque of Mopti, commonly known as the Mosque of Komoguel, The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) turned

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Mali   Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the country’s independence, the National Park of Mali, located in Bamako, the capital, reopened. Several new accesses were built, aside from a restaurant and a sports center. Clad in locally sourced stone, the

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Following the strategies applied at the Primary School in Gando, the main aim of the project was to design a sustainable school that would adapt to the extreme conditions of Burkina Faso. Its construction was carried out with the help of workers who

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   Two years after the opening of the primary school in Gando, demand continued to increase, which encouraged to add an extension for more than 120 students. The extension was designed following the same principles that inspired the first school. The wa

Diébédo Francis Kéré Kéré Architecture   Burkina Faso   The teachers’ houses were designed to attract teachers out to the countryside, as well as to promote the use of earth as a sustainable and durable building material. The houses were realized as a series of adaptable modules, each of size comparable t

Eduardo Prieto   Hassan Fathy is Egypt’s most famous architect, barring Imhotep, but is still rather unknown in Spain, where his projects are treated with the paternalism that critics tend to apply on anything exotic, or the exaggerated admiration of those professing

Nirmal Kishnani   In a context of rapid urban growth, Vo Trong Nghia defends an architecture based on local knowledge, communion with nature, and social commitment. 

Enrique Sobejano   Considering that Jørn Utzon’s architecture is based on a phenomenological and empirical experience that gravitates essentially around perceptive aspects like light, movement, topography, and materials, it may seem illogical to talk about projects whi

Vikram Bhatt   Balkrishna Doschi, a master of modernity and teacher of several generations of Indian architects, is the latest receipient of the Pritzker Prize. 

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Diébédo Francis Kéré appeared on our screen with the Aga Khan Award in 2004. I wrote about him in the newspaper El País in December of that year, and the Yearbook released shortly after (AV 111-112) covered prominently the now mythical school in Gand

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In the beginning was the tree. If Gottfried Semper had extended his archaeological and ethnographic explorations to the African Savannah, he would there have found confirmation of many of his theses, and he would have modified others to enrich his na

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Francis Kéré commences a third century for our monographs, and there are good reasons for this. The most evident refer to his leading role in a new generation of architects determined to build a better world working for those in need, for whom the Bu

Richard Sennett   When they are misused, digital media can come to separate human knowledge from the manual, direct, and repetition-based learning on which the crafts have always been founded.

Li Xiangning   In the past decade, the tabula rasa of Chinese economic development has given way to a generation of architects seeking in tradition the motifs for constructing a new national language.

Juhani Pallasmaa   The works and projects of these three builders of the necessary stand for a return to reality and to the material, social, and cultural roots of architecture.

CoCoon Berlin   It is said that nothing is as practical as good theory. But it’s also true that nothing is as intellectually formative as good practical experience, so university programs that lead to actual constructions are always memorable for students and teache

In their particular responses to climate, reinterpretations of local materials, and rapport with the landscape, the hotels featured in this section reflect the genius of place.

Jesús San Vicente   Work in underprivileged contexts is a field for experimenting with new ways of conceiving architecture which are more open, participatory, and distanced from global ‘show business’. 

M. Centellas   P. García   J.P. Sanz   A promoter of the avant-gardes and a key figure in architecture, Fernández del Amo combined rationalist language with vernacular types.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Matter is today very spiritual. In a world swamped with digital images, the return to the physical, tactile humility of primary materials becomes a pilgrimage to the essential sources of construction, a path of knowledge that drains the superfluous a

Luis Maldonado   Compressed Earth Block (CEB) is a building material that is habitually used to raise walls using conventional construction techniques. It can come it different sizes, but the most common one is 15x15x30 centimeters. The most unusual aspect of the CEB

Luis Maldonado   Thanks to its environmental benefits and also to its aesthetic qualities, the different techniques applied to construction with mud still have a future in architecture. 

Llátzer Moix   Burkinés de origen, Kéré se formó como arquitecto en Alemania y su primera obra fue una escuela para su aldea; su lema ‘ayuda para ayudarte’ resume la esencia de la solidaridad africana.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Bernard Rudofsky quiso ser espartano y sibarita. El arquitecto vienés está hoy casi olvidado, pero su empeño en reconciliar laconismo y sensualidad es más pertinente que nunca. En un planeta consciente de sus límites físicos, la voluntad de hacer com

Setting himself apart from the abstraction of the Modern Movement, Fisac combined constructional rationality with the traditions of Castilla La Mancha in his buildings of tile and whitewashed load-bearing walls... [+]

William Curtis   Louis Kahn can be considered one of the few architects of the 20th century to have been able to address with dignity the problem of the monument, and perhaps the most enlightening example of this is the Capitol in Dhaka. William Curtis analyzes it in