Perspective is Everything

Neon duty-free stores selling discounted liquor and cigarettes to ski bums already high on oxygen and speed, causing interminable traffic … More

Calatrava May Bleed You Dry, But Who is Ultimately Responsible?

Several Spanish media (such as El Diario and El País) are reporting that Santiago Calatrava is suing Esquerra Unida País Valencià … More

Everything is Art

In September 2012, the fiscally and socially retrograde People’s Party governing Spain raised the value-added tax on most items to 21%, … More

How Much Does Your Conscience Weigh, Mr. Koolhaas?

Mr. Koolhaas, you designed a daring and ambitious building for CCTV, China’s state-controlled television broadcaster. But it is from this … More

Bullshit Island

“Barcelona Island will be an out of this world experience for all guests of ‘Mobilona Space Hotel’ who wish they … More

Making Bullshit Mountains out of Buildings

“If architecture is landscape, buildings are mountains.”  -Vicente Guallart, chief architect of the city of Barcelona and general director of Urban … More

NO a la LSP

Spanish architecture is respected the world over, if the number of exhibitions, publications, Gaudí fans, and archi-tourists who visit this … More

Architects’ Struggle

Today, I ran into a small protest: a squadron (herd? platoon? pack?) of young architects protesting dismal working conditions. Other … More

Fashion Victim

You know green walls have become trendy when a designer fashion label puts one up that’s made of plastic. Kinda … More

Get Smart

A façade design in which photovoltaic panels end up casting shadows upon other photovoltaic panels does not seem to me … More

Strange Bedfellows

The image at left shows the construction of the “Instant City” during the congress of the International Council of Societies … More

Villa Nurbs: a Sad Spectacle

It is June 2012, and  after a decade of construction Villa Nurbs is still incomplete. In fact, construction has now seemingly come … More

Architourism

Tourism is the only ‘industry’ in Spain that is not downsizing in the current (well, actually it’s been five years … More

Pool Typology

We’ve all seen that famous aerial photograph of an American Southwest suburb in which each and every house has a … More

Collective Intelligence or Collective Stupidity?

The above image is circulating on the internet representing all sorts of cities on all sorts of continents, showing us … More

Calatravaland

El País reported recently that the government of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, when it was presided by Francisco Camps (the … 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

Ugh Canada

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

Morning Delivery

The maintenance of buildings is somewhat of a taboo subject in architectural discourse, which actually says a great deal about … More

Disseny Hype

“Disseny Hub” is a new cultural institution in Barcelona dedicated to design; or, to put it more correctly, to promoting … More