Hegger Hegger Schleiff / HHS Architekten   Germany   The thick walls of a World War II bunker now shelter public facilities and a plant for the production of energy by cogeneration that is to supply power to the surrounding district.

Gigon Guyer Architects   Germany   The moorland which witnessed the battle of Varus – where the Teutonic warriors set a trap for the Roman troops – is today an important archaeological research center whose collection had to be made known to the public. With the purpose of framing the

Luis Fernández-Galiano   At the end of the past century, a world without walls seemed feasible; in the first decades of this one, walls spread without control. Many are physical, fragmenting the territory with inaccessible precincts; others are judicial, segmenting the popul

The Art Newspaper   Anny Shaw   Lisson Gallery has indefinitely put on hold an exhibition of new works by the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, which had been due to open in London this week, following a statement posted by Ai on social media relating to the Israel-Hamas war.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Like Samson in his captivity, Israel is eyeless in Gaza. Captured and blinded, the Israeli hero regained his phenomenal strength to tear down the columns that held up the temple and make his enemies perish with him. The Biblical story inspired a poem

Luis Fernández-Galiano   After the worst part of the pandemic, the Ukraine war shook the world tracing an ominous geopolitical scenario, which only science advances seem to alleviate.  

Like the Titanic but with no Viennese waltzes. In its Winterreise, this year Europe sails more to the beat of the Schubert cycle that with melancholy sings of isolation and cold. Isolation because of the disunity it is demonstrating to a world where

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Spain’s current debate on historical memory prompts us to transcribe a speech given on 29 October 2004 in Madrid, at a ceremony organized by the government and the Institute of Architects to remember professionals purged in the wake of the Civil War.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   While we discuss the price of electricity, the ghost of famine hovers over the world. It is energy we are talking about in both cases, but while exosomatic energy depends on social organization, endosomatic energy has biological boundaries. Alfred Lo

The Economist   Photogrammetry and 3D scanning will aid future rebuilding efforts. They will also help tell the story of the war. Outside the Dominican Church in Lviv’s historical centre, Yuriy Prepodobnyi carefully positions a laser scanner on a tripod, lining up i

The Telegraph   Josie Ensor   Joe Barnes   The renowned British architect wants to contribute to the Ukrainian city's reconstruction and is focused on developing a master blueprint. The British architect Lord Foster is drawing up plans for the “high-tech” post-war revival of Ukraine’s second

Ukrainian Urbicide. Spurred by its journalistic spirit, Arquitectura Viva presents recent events and society's reactions to the war being waged on Ukraine through a semi-monographic issue that takes stock of its impact beyond the strictly architectur

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Three decades ago the library of Sarajevo, disemboweled by shells, was the symbol of Balkanic urbicide, as documented in the 1993 article reproduced on page 24 of this Arquitectura Viva issue. Now it is a bridge outside Kyiv – blasted by the Ukrainia

Along with the 6,800 Russian professionals who signed a call for peace quickly censored by Putin’s government, architects, artists, and designers from everywhere join hands in expressing their disapproval of armed conflict and their solidarity with U

Authors Outraged

Slavoj Žižek   Ucrania es ahora el escenario de la interminable lucha entre las grandes potencias por afianzar el control en sus esferas de influencia.

Jean-Louis Cohen   A recent journey through the principal cities of the country was a stocktaking of Ukraine’s rich heritage, now under threat of Russian bombardments.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The devastation of Ukrainian cities like Kharkov, also seen in the dramatic sieges of Kiev or Mariupol, brings to mind the Balkan urbicides or the later destructions of Grozny in Chechnya or Aleppo in Syria. The tanks of February

Luis Fernández-Galiano   This issue has had three consecutive presentations, and none in the end, because this text barely explains a process. After the optimism of January, looking up in awe to imagine the James Webb telescope deploying in space, the gaze had to be brought

Vladimir Belogolovsky   The paralysis of Ukraine on account of the war has an echo in Russia itself, thanks to the sanctions interrupting its urban and cultural boom.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The tragic development of the war, with the urban destruction, the flood of refugees, and the nuclear threats, brings up alternative pasts that may have prevented the drama.

The target of the air strike carried out on 1 March was a telecommunications tower outside Kyiv. At least five people died and another five were injured. Ruslan Kavatsiuk of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center informed The New York Times that the

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The crisis of Ukraine reproduces the sleepwalking carnival of the political elites that did not manage to prevent the outbreak of the Great War. Barbara Tuchman published in 1962 a masterly account of the 31 days that led to tragedy in 1914, The Guns

Luis Fernández-Galiano   No commercial war is bloodless. The current clash between the United States and China, which reaches the technological and space fields, encumbers the circulation of ideas, capitals, and goods, and questions the international institutions that establ

Luis Fernández-Galiano   War damage leaves resilient ruins. We use the term ‘urbicide’ to refer to the deliberate destruction of cities to wreck the physical resources and the morale of the opponent, but contemporary metropolises seldom perish. Many ancient cities were unabl

W. G. Sebald   Nueva York  2003  
Random House   - 202 Pages 

Peter Sloterdijk   En las fuentes del terror