Dizzying Inequality

Ben Wheatley’s film High Rise, a multi-story about decadence and class war in a Brutalist housing estate in London, brought plenty … More

Architecture that Only an Artist can Get Away With

New York’s Guggenheim Museum has just announced plans to install a new artwork by Maurizio Cattelan consisting of a toilet made … More

Love-You Architecture

“The envy and hostility of Wall Street leads many to a common goal: to amass enough money so as to … More

Avoid the Void

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #60] In recent decades, architecture commemorating violent death has typically relied on a dark, austere and … More

Farewell Zaha

Zaha Hadid left us yesterday. She won’t be forgotten for a long time, as she was an architect who actually changed architecture. … More

Revisiting Casa Bloc

The architecture of housing differs fundamentally from the architecture of other building types in that it is never a purely qualitative … More

Inteligencia empresarial / Corporate Intelligence

[English text follows below] Ya sabemos que hoy en día está muy de moda llamar ‘inteligente’ o ‘smart’ a todo … More

Dis-fru-tar

[Originally published in Azure, November-December 2015] Disfrutar means “to enjoy” in Spanish. It’s an appropriate name for a restaurant that encapsulates … More

La crítica arquitectónica y la imagen del arquitecto / Architectural Criticism and the Public Image of the Architect

[English text follows below] [una versión previa de este texto ha sido presentada en un simposio de la ETSAB y publicada … More

New Year’s Greetings

Spa in Panticosa by MoneoBrock

But is it Architecture?

The recent adjudication of Britain’s Turner Prize to some Liverpool houses regenerated through neighborhood participation by a young collective known as Assemble speaks … More

Plus ça change…

This is a screengrab of what appeared on my laptop recently while I was trying to read a New York Times article … More

A conversation with Ricardo Devesa

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #58] Ricardo Devesa is editor in chief of Actar, a Barcelona-based publisher known for books … More

Cycling Barcelona versus Copenhagen: an Experiential Comparison

The other day I read an interesting critique of Barcelona’s cycling infrastructure titled “The Arrogance of Space”, by the Copenhagenize … More

Twisted Logic: Turning Torso as ‘Innovative’ Housing?

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Malmö, Sweden; best known –in terms of contemporary architecture– for its Santiago Caltrava-designed … More

Why is BP sponsoring an architecture biennial?

Why is BP sponsoring an architecture biennial; specifically the Chicago Architecture Biennial, titled “The State of the Art of Architecture”, … More

Still Nurbing Along

Enric Ruiz Geli’s Villa Nurbs is still incomplete after 13 years. The good news is, however, that it does not appear to … More

Size Isn’t Everything

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #57] It’s been said that the most difficult thing to design in architecture is a … More

Design and Decadence in Sabiñanigo

The land-scars of Spain’s construction boom-gone-bust have been documented photographically to great extent. More typically than not, these images portray a landscape of newly built … More

The Art Studio-Museum

[Originally published in Oris Magazine #92] Situated on the distant side of the forested hillcrest that overlooks Barcelona, the Arranz-Bravo Studio … More