Álvaro Siza   Portugal   Although Portugal is mainly a maritime country, its inland is traversed by mighty mountains, largely unknown of but whose beauty will not be unfamiliar to those who have read authors like Eça de Queirós or Miguel Torga. In one of those ranges, on a m

Studio Moto   Belgium   The Ghent-based practice Studio Moto has completed this viewpoint on a beach in De Panne, alongside the promenade that connects the Belgian municipality to Dunkirk (France), beside the North Sea. The structure offers a dynamic stop along the beackwal

ICD ITKE   Germany   Since the 1980s the German state of Baden-Württemberg has held Landesgartenschau, an annual festival later exported to other Länder, which through gardening endeavors to enhance the quality of life and the natural wealth of the host town. This year’s

Luis Machuca   Spain   The route acknowledges the writer Antonio Muñoz Molina’s close ties to the city of his birth, Úbeda, which in 2003 was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It goes through architectural pieces and outdoor places that form a backdrop for his literat

Arenas & Asociados AM2 Arquitectos NOARQ | José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira   Spain   The elevator tower Halo Vigo is crowned with a ring that can be seen from different parts of Vigo. Located on Calle Serafín Avendaño, the new urban lift connects the Galician city’s intermodal station – a project of the firm Morphosis, led by Thom Ma

MONO Architekten    Germany   This ensemble of constructions with perforated facades made of sedimentary layers of red-tinted rammed earth is situated in the city of Neuenburg am Rhein, close to the German, French, and Swiss borders. Connecting the urban center to the green zones

Santiago Martínez Emiliano Domínguez   Mexico   This 21-square-meter construction without an indeterminate program rises on an uneven landscape, providing shade and views of the horizon. It has a concrete base, a lightweight pitched roof, and a metal framework that acts as a spinal column, delimit

Kengo Kuma Javier Villar Ruiz   Spain   The building takes advantage of its location in Logroño, at the point where the pilgrim route to Santiago enters the city, to create a public staircase connecting the street to a garden roof that serves as a deck for views of La Rioja's capital and t

Antonio López Díaz Ana López Sánchez-Vegazo Carmen López Sánchez-Vegazo   Spain   An undertaking of the foundation that sees to the care of Castilla y León region's natural heritage, the new Peñas Llanas viewing point replaces one which was already much deteriorated. Perched on a high rock overlooking a valley, within the recreati

Rafael de La Hoz   Spain   Guided both by tradition and common sense, over the centuries the people of Los Pedroches Valley – a protected area between Extremadura, Andalucía, and Castille – have cherished the holm oaks that cover the valley’s meadows as if they were sacred tre

Taller architects LOLA Landscape Architects L+CC   China   Faced with the unrelenting growth of Shenzhen – half a century ago a simple fishing village but now a cutting-edge megalopolis – a rigorous environmental policy was implemented, unprecedented in the country, to regulate the proliferating industrial a

BIG Bjarke Ingels Group   Denmark   In the Wadden Sea National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located to the south of the peninsula of Jutland, this sculptural observation tower stands 25 meters tall and is a tourist attraction. With an elevator tucked into the core, it was built w

Alberto Campo Baeza   Spain   The project ‘Between Cathedrals’ sought to carry out an intervention worthy of the most significant location in the history of Cadiz, the oldest city of the West: the empty space between the Old and New Cathedrals, facing the sea. The objectives were

noa*   Italy   At the top of the Schnals Valley glacier, at an elevation of more than 3,000 meters, an observation deck invites excursionists to climb and take in some breathtaking views of the Tyrolean Alps and abrupt landscape. Following the natural topography of

Heatherwick Studio   United States   The commission involved designing a public centerpiece for Hudson Yards, a new 11-hectare development on Manhattan’s west side being constructed above a huge rail yard. To create something memorable, the studio decided to build a structure that visit

Studio Doarchi   China   Rising over sunflowers to a height of 15 meters, this viewing point combines perforated panels of metal mesh with white PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene) surfaces, and encircles a pool used to irrigate the fields around.

Carles Enrich   Spain   The Barcelona practice of Carles Enrich undertook the restoration of one of the two faces of the defense tower at the castle of Merola, the only remnants of the 13th-century construction in Puig-reig, a municipality of the comarca of Berguedà. The 20

Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter   Denmark   The structural system is designed like a supporting frame thanks to which the tower can expand gradually as it rises. All individual elements, including handrails, stairs, landings, and balustrades, form a part of the tower’s overall structural syste

ORMA Architettura    France   Three observatories built by artisans from the area using local wood (‘Laricio’ or andemic pine) go up in different spots of Corsica Regional Park. Each tower is designed to adapt to its specific location and context, offering the best views to obser

TAO | Trace Architecture Office   China   At 15.6 meters in height, the tower offers visitors spectacular views of the wetlands and the mountains. The tower is built and wrapped with wood, with a shingle facade of Douglas fir, and a roof skylight that lets light reach the interior spaces...

EFFEKT   Denmark   A work of EFFEKT, the Copenhagen firm headed by Tue Foged and Sinus Lyngeesta, this tower contains a spiral walk of oakwood from which to enjoy views over the treetops of Gisselfeld Klosters Skove, a forest 60 kilometers from the Danish capital. The

Foster + Partners   United Kingdom   The firm of Norman Foster has presented a proposal for a 305-meter tower which, if permission to go ahead with construction is obtained, will be London’s tallest structure, rising beside another Foster work: the building at 30 St Mary Axe, known as ‘

De Gouden Liniaal Architecten   Belgium   The tower goes up in a former gravel extraction area now converted into the nature reserve of RivierPark Maasvallei. The outer walls were built with local materials – 20% gravel, 40% ocher-colored earth, and 40% clay, stabilized with trass – in seven

As if to mark the absolute center that Cerdá had in mind for his Eixample, the tower built by Jean Nouvel on the Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes has become one of the icons of Barcelona. An observation deck at the top has now opened to the public in w

The New York Times   Michael Gold   Visitors to the structure, located in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards complex, will no longer be able to enter alone, but its protective barriers will not be raised. The Vessel, the labyrinth of staircases at Hudson Yards that closed four months ago after s

An interesting phenomenon has been taking place in contemporary art: sculpture tending to appropriate architecture’s resources for itself, in the same way that architecture becomes more and more sculptural, so much that there are cases when one is at

The development of the highways in Norway left the vernacular routes that ran along national roads in disuse. This circumstance is common to the rest of Europe, but was especially dramatic in the Nordic country because of the extraordinary landscapes

The Evening Standard   Jonathan Prynn   The controversial Tulip skyscraper in the City was granted planning approval today despite huge concerns about its impact on historic views of London. The decision paves the way for the 305.3-metre high structure on Bury Street, which will be western

The Guardian   Oliver Wainwright   The Tulip, Foster’s strange proposal for a Mini-Me Gherkin on a stick, is a parody of architectural hubris he’s hoping will get the billionaire owner out of a pickle...

Richard Ingersoll   When the chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp showed its face in 1955, it shocked the architectural world. That Le Corbusier-for many modern architects, the embodiment of the prophet of rationalist architecture-had designed such an aberration was

Tras un largo proceso, después de que las obras se hayan desarrollado a lo largo de seis años en los que el presupuesto original ha sufrido desviaciones constantes —pasando de los 51 millones de euros originalmente presupuestados a un coste final est

La localidad granadina de Huéscar cuenta con una muralla cuya Torre del Homenaje fue revalorizada mediante una intervención de Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas, que la convirtió en espacio público. Poco después se descubrió el antiguo pósito de la ciudad,

After the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, German unification followed, and soon the decision was taken to move the capital back to Berlin. The old Reichstag (a clumsy 19th century building damaged during the war, and scantily used since, associated