Luis Fernández-Galiano   The clash of civilizations predicted by Huntington is becoming a standard measure to interpret the cracks of the globe: the agitation of the Slav world within its blurred perimeter, the rivalry between China and the United States or, above all, the v

Luis Fernández-Galiano   We live in bubbles, the vulnerability of which reminds us how delicate the mechanisms that maintain the balance of the world are. Enclosed in soap suds like characters of a Bosch painting, we know that our western garden of delight floats on economic

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Architectural deconstruction was formulated in opposition to the postmodern style. Ironically, literary and philosophical deconstruction were unequivocal manifestations of postmodernity. This is only one of many misunderstandings that blur the lines

Estudio Lamela, Richard Rogers   Spain   Aside from the construction of three new runways and an intricate network of public and private transportation, the enlargement of Barajas Airport – a commission won in a competition held in 1997 and initiated in the year 2000 – comprises three volum

Herzog & de Meuron   Spain   The celebration of the Universal Forum of Cultures meant for Barcelona the opportunity to redesign and merge into the built fabric a vast extension of industrial terrains and port facilities that were no longer in use in the northern coastal edge of

b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, Jean Nouvel   Spain   At the intersection of three large avenues of Barcelona’s urban expansion area – Gran Vía, Diagonal and Meridiana – is the Plaza de Las Glorias, a large roundabout with an elevated ring that was built more than ten years ago, but that has not manag

Blanca Lleó, MVRDV   Spain   Sanchinarro is a large and relatively new residential area on the outskirts of Madrid. Its urban tissue is configured as closed blocks rising six to eight stories high, except for the main roundabout, where the Mirador was developed as a reference po

Miralles Tagliabue EMBT   Spain   One of the main charms of the old Santa Caterina market, a neoclassical building with a metallic roof and structure, was the way its surface developed in one single floor and with a height of six meters, so managing to open up the dense urban fabric

Mansilla + Tuñón   Spain   The MUSAC (Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León) takes up a flat and large surface in the center of León, not too far away from the Plaza de San Marcos and the Ciudad de León Auditorium, and not too far from its emblematic cathedral. The bui

Paredes Pedrosa Arquitectos   Spain   The Olympia Theater is a vertex on Lavapiés square. Leaning on party walls, the concrete volumes into which it is fragmented adapt to the site’s triangular geometry and retract from the square, enlarging it. The glazed facades are transparent towards

Carlos Ferrater, Jaime Sanahuja, Carlos Escura, Carlos Martín González   Spain   Located within the boundaries of a new park of 90,000 square meters east of the city (in a residential area between the urban core and the harbor area of El Grau, within the limits marked by the beltway), the Auditorium and Congress Center has become

Martínez Lapeña & Elías Torres   Spain   All the urban activity that Avenida Diagonal concentrates in its long itinerary through Barcelona’s Ensanche was trapped, transformed and outstretched towards the sea by (as it was tagged during the celebration of the Forum of Cultures) the‘esplanade

Juan Navarro Baldeweg   Spain   In an area that is particularly close to the center, right next to the meander that surrounds the stadium, the Balcón del Guadalquivir project restores the blurred banks of the river, builds a park in the areas that are cleared with the intervention,

Eduardo de Miguel , Vicente Corell Farinós   Spain   The old bed of the River Turia had become a waste site and the final destination for uncontrolled spills. Along a borderline zone of over one kilometer between the capital and the fertile region of Valencia, a new public park takes up the central are

Francesc Torres, Francisco Mangado   Spain   Salvador Dalí square became part of the city history in 1857 as ‘secondary street’, according to the ‘Draft for the Expansion, Location and Distribution of the New Housing’, by José P. Morales. In 1878 it was already conceived as a ‘broad avenue’, wi

AMP Arquitectos   Spain   Forty kilometers from Santa Cruz, the municipality of La Orotava contains the valley by the same name through which one ascends to the top of the Teide and to a villa with a long history, known for its architecture of large houses and gardens dotting

Vaillo + Irigaray    Spain   The european forum was founded in the past decade to provide workers with further training and so correct the deficiencies that some local companies had noticed. Years later the Forum has become an established institution, encouraging the constructio

Clotet & Paricio   Spain   With the purpose of establishing a physical connection between the self-built settlement that emerged in the sixties (today a neighborhood known as Las Roquetas) with the more recent expansion of Sant Pere de Ribas, the municipality decided to genera

Juan Luis Trillo de Leyva, Antonio Martínez García   Spain   In the 17th century, the Augustinian order occupied a block outside the San Miguel quarter, that up to then had accommodated the hospital Nuestra Señora de Santa María. This change from a sanitary to a religious use was repeated at the beginning of t

RCR Arquitectes   Spain   Playing with a wooden piece set for kids one can obtain varied compositions, which transferred to the field of architecture, somehow match the distribution of volumes and spaces during the creation process of a building. Each one of the colors covers

Irisarri + Piñera   Spain   The urban space in which the new health center was to be built was still changing at the time its design was undertaken. While some of the adjoining plots had constructions that were to be demolished and others whose height would foreseeably increase

Harald Schöenegger, Ignacio Laguillo   Spain   A terrain of 13,000 square meters in the northern area of Lepe and within a residential area expanding the urban center, was designated by the city council as an area for sports uses. This measure entails the construction of facilities for outdoor sp

Andrés Cánovas, Atxu Amann, Martín Lejarraga, Amann Cánovas & Maruri - Temperaturas Extremas, Nicolás Maruri   Spain   The foothills of Monte de la Concepción – one of the five mountains protecting the city of Cartagena – were opened in 1878 to allow Gisbert street to run through, and so connect the interior valley with the Mediterranean. During the excavation works

Ábalos & Herreros   Spain   The isthmus of Santa Catalina, in the northeast end of the island of Gran Canaria, connects the built area of the city of Las Palmas in the south with the empty peninsula of La Isleta in the north. Extremely sensitive on account of its location betwe

Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra   Spain   In the area of enlargement west of the urban center of Rota – on the road leading to the Puerto de Santa María –, this building of state-subsidized housing goes up adjusting its alignments to the edges of an orthogonal plot. But in front of this clo

Joan Nogué, Txema Onzain   Spain   The urban plan ‘Sud de Sales’ defined for this block of the city center of Viladecans the building depth, overhangs, roofs and the finishing materials for the facade, aside from establishing a U-shaped layout with a longer side towards Bertrán and Mu

José María Fernández-Isla, David Chipperfield Architects   Spain   In the Villaverde district of southern Madrid, a new social housing scheme traces an orthogonal pattern presided by a large boulevard, in an area occupied until just recently by a large factory. This part of the city is still under development, but t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The four planes of 11 September were four trains on 11 March. Whereas in Manhattan two crafts successfully destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, in Madrid the chance factor of timers behaved in such a way that the two convoys meant to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Tradition without folklore, emotion without tears, and ornament without pastiche: these are the wickers with which Herzog & de Meuron have braided the project for the City of Flamenco of Jerez. At once cultivated and popular, the proposal of the Swis

Luis Fernández-Galiano   A syncopated frieze and a topographic profile, is how one might sum up the new works in Baracaldo and Basel. The football stadium built by Eduardo Arroyo on the left bank of the Nervión estuary traces its at once regular and turbulent geometry with t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   An airport evoking flight is almost inevitable. From Saarinen’s TWA to Calatrava’s Sondica stretches a long tradition of bird-shaped terminals. But the profile of the new Barajas resembling a flock of gulls seems so timely that it will be hard not to

Luis Fernández-Galiano   White architecture for blackshirts: such has been the formulaic judgment of the work of Giuseppe Terragni, who after short of fifteen years of professional life left behind a tight bundle of masterful buildings that were at once modern and fascist. I

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Monarchy and the Church will survive Kiko Argüello’s frescoes in the Almudena cathedral. At the perspective of the crown prince’s wedding beneath colorful cartoons that feed on icons and codices to manufacture a populist, childish Romanesque, aes

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The new Reina Sofía is a grand building, but not a great work. A B-product of Nouvel’s factory, its lightweight aesthetic combines all the futuristic features that have made the French architect so popular: the industrial atmosphere of steel-and-glas

Luis Fernández-Galiano   In Europe, ballots have lost to football. The European Parliament elections coinciding with the start of the 2004 Eurocup in Portugal has shown, at least as far as television audiences are concerned, how politics cannot compete with sports. Surely th

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Jacob will never forget the day Rem Koolhaas introduced him to the pleasures of meat. The son of the director of the Seattle Public Library had decided to give up his vegetarian diet and the architect treated him to dinner at Wild Ginger, ordering al

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Osama Bin Laden’s house is the cell of an ascetic. Reconstructed by the British artists Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell as an interactive digital model – after documenting the latest known dwelling of Al Qaeda’s leader with photographs and videos – the

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Lord Fraser differs from Bismarck. Whereas the German chancellor deemed it best not to know how sausages and laws are made, the British Parliament, in the tradition of democratic transparency, has conducted a survey to shed light on the construction

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Tuesday’s vote is between the airport and the village. The United States will elect a president, but they will also be choosing between two ways of life and two urban models. The most divided American electorate of the past quarter-century will decid

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Architecture’s most generous prize is also the warmest. Including a US$500,000 endowment and handed out every three years, the Aga Khan Award is not bestowed on the authors of projects, but on the projects themselves, thereby placing the attention on

Luis Fernández-Galiano   With the exhibition and book Content, Rem Dutch architect sums up the past seven years of his career with a show in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie that scatters 300 objects and models in the interior of Mies van der Rohe’s monumental temple, and a fan

Luis Fernández-Galiano   More an artist than an architect, and more a personality than an artist, Zaha Hadid is the rotund embodiment of the diva. Temperamental, overwhelming, her voluminous figure wrapped in pleated Issey Miyake tunics is a physical presence irradiating ap

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Barcelona is the inventor of the virtuous triangle: the event generates urban development, this in turn boosts economic growth, and prosperity induces the organization of new events. That grand events leave urban fruits is common knowledge. Universa

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The lion of St. Mark is a chimera. It appears that the bronze figure representing Venice’s patron saint is a 4th-century chimera that came from the eastern Mediterranean. The city, then, has in its possession not only the Evangelist’s body, brought i

Óscar Niemeyer Despite being one of the world’s most longevous architects, the work of Niemeyer retains an enormous capacity to seduce that has been acknowledged with a new prize, the one awarded by the Japan Art Association in the category of archi

Zaha Hadid The old city of St. Petersburg, rebaptized by the Bolsheviks in 1924 as Leningrad, name by which it has been known until 1991, seems like the ideal site to celebrate the ceremony awarding the last Pritzker Architecture Prize to the Iraqi

Rem Koolhaas Journalist and screenwriter before architect, author of the texts that have had a greater influence on architectural practice over the last three decades, professor at several British and American universities and author of remarkable b

Gilles Perraudin Created in 1951 in tribute to the German architect of the in-between war period, this award yearly distinguishes the oeuvre of an architect whose work can be considered, to a certain extent, heir to that of Heinrich Tessenow. The aw

Peter Eisenman & SANAA In 1985, after a long and much admired career as teacher and theorist and only five years after establishing his studio in New York, Eisenman received a first prize lion (made of stone at that time) at the Third International

Samuel Mockbee Sambo, the nickname by which the American architect was known, has entered the exclusive club – of which Thomas Jefferson already formed part – of those who have been posthumously distinguished with the Gold Medal of the American Inst

Sede de Swiss Re, Londres Though faced with notable and formally agitated candidates such as the Kunsthaus of Peter Cook and Colin Fournier in Graz or the Imperial War Museum by Daniel Libeskind in Manchester, the skyscraper on 30 St Mary Axe, by No

Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago (Chile) The IV Latin American Biennial of Architecture and Civil Engineering, organized by an assorted group of univeristies, professional associations and government institutions from Spain and Peru, and with hou

Luis Peña Ganchegui Born in 1926 in Oñate (Guipúzcoa) and graduate from Madrid’s School of Architecture in 1959, Peña Ganchegui is the first Basque to receive the prize of the Spanish Council of Architectural Associations, whose list of awardees inc

Antonio Fernández Alba Critical of the “market determinism” and disappointed with the haste and mediocrity which currently characterizes the profession, Fernández Alba received the 2003 National Architecture Award in recognition of his professional c

José Antonio Corrales Forever linked to his inseparable partner Ramón Vázquez Molezún, who passed away in 1993, Corrales is, at the age of 83, a historical figure of Spanish architecture. Friend and collaborator of Alejandro de la Sota – with whom he

(1909-2004)  As soon as they completed their studies at the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, Gian Luigi Banfi, Enrico Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Ludovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso founded in 1932 BBPR, an architectural studio that would b

(1925-2004)  When he was only in his third year at the school of architecture of USC (University of Southern California), Koenig designed his first house, defining a particular way of thinking and building that would continue over the full length of

(1921-2004)  The fact that Prince Charles talked with much admiration of the architectural style of Fay Jones at the awarding ceremony of the American Institute of Architects in the year 1990 should by no means underrate the work of Jones, just

(1908-2004) The strong and corporate America of the Cold War period and of the technological and aerospatial deliria lost on 12 September one of its most significant builders. Abramovitz, whose professional career was linked to that of Wallace K. Ha

(1915-2004) True to the sobriety of the most radical modern orthodoxy spearheaded by Walter Gropius or Marcel Breuer and firmly immune to the fanciful forms of postmodernity, Edward Larrabee Barnes passed away in California at the age of 89. Student

(1930-2004)  Considered the guru of an architectural current strongly inspired by his innovative philosophical line of thought, Derrida fathered the term ‘deconstruction’ that, conveniently manipulated, served rather as a striking slogan for an

(1916-2004)  “Le Corbusier is intense. From a wealth of accumulated, assimilated, thoughtful experience he gives off waves of energy.” Wogenscky so expressed his fascination for an architect who was his mentor since 1936, year in which, after a

(1948-2004)  One of Madrid’s architects with a stronger commitment to teaching, Bellosillo passed away at the early age of 56, after a distressing disease. Graduate in the year 1971 and Roma Prize in 1974, ever since he established his architectural

(1911-2004)  As if he were a devout master builder from the medieval times, the architect and historian Fernando Chueca Goitia, deceased at the age of 93, lies next to his wife in the crypt of Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral, that he himself carried

(1933-2004)  In a Berlin devastated by war and uncontrolled reconstruction, Kleihues spearheaded, in the mid-sixties, a critical uprising against mediocrity and the architectural crimes of a misinterpreted modernity. His efforts, parallel to tha

(1910-2004)  Though he was born and also passed away in Klagenfurt, the sunny capital of the Austrian province of Carinthia, and started his teaching activity in cities like Hannover or Graz, Roland Rainer’s professional practice will always be