The Cantilever Race

The skyscraper race is over. It’s been won hands down by an absurdly high building in Dubai which doesn’t look … More

Quaderns #262: A Gut Reaction

[Originally published in Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme online] Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme #262 is provocatively titled “Parainfrastructures”, an invented word that … More

Experimenting in Public is not a Crime

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #33] Seville’s public squares come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large and officious, others small … More

Strike a Pose

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #32] What is it that makes these architectural images so seductive? To be sure, there … More

Context is Still Everything

The building visible in the photo above is a soon-to-be-completed design museum by the veteran firm MBM (Martorell, Bohigas, MacKay). … More

Experimental Bamboo

Bamboo is an ancient building material that fell largely out of favor in the twentieth century, only to be used … More

Blackwashing

You wouldn’t know it from looking at photographs such as these. You wouldn’t even know it if you were standing … More

Pop Architecture

Ordinary, everyday objects — that’s what most popular nicknames for buildings refer to. A gherkin, a paperclip, a typewriter, a … More

Power to the People

[originally published in Mark Magazine #29] The office of Andrés Jaque Arquitectos Still on the shy side of 40, Andrés … More

Interview with Peter Eisenman

[This is an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Peter Eisenman in Santiago de Compostela in May 2010. The … More

Top-Down Tower

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27] Social housing is among the most regulated–and least glamorous–areas of architecture. While all housing … More

City as Landscape

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27] Library Is the pleasure of architecture intellectual or sensual? Of the mind or … More

Triumph of the Shell

[originally published in Mark Magazine #26] In cinema, there is a common type of architectural scene: a building … More

Building as Research

Truss space Two facades with different pillow systems: ETFE fog configuration and ETFE diaphragm configuration. The range of building … More

Ugh Canada

An architect is, by definition, a designer of buildings, right? Well, the government of Canada, a nation whose credo is … More

Jurisprudence

Courts of justice are steeped in protocol and decorum, not merely because of tradition, but in order to establish and … More

Holiday greetings

Vienna, 2009

Optimization Takes Command

Angelo Roventa’s Elastic Dwelling applies a principle—and a mechanism—that is borrowed from a commercially available pre-manufactured industrial product: the high-density … More