Garden and Gaffe

Leon Battista Alberti famously wrote: “The city is like some large house and the house in turn like some small … More

Ill-Fitting: The Balenciaga Museum

  Fashion, Architecture, Politics: Image is Everything The inauguration of a cultural institution is normally a cause for widespread celebration; even … More

Park, Shop, and Pray

Churches are architecture whereas supermarkets and parking garages are not. At least, that’s what we’ve been taught by Nikolaus Pevsner. What, then, … 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

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

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

Jurisprudence

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

Monument Ahead

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #22] Granada, the medieval seat of the Nasrid dynasty, whose rulers built the Alhambra, is … More

Team Play

As any sports fan can confirm, the architecture of elite sporting venues is the forefront of technologically inventive design these … More

BMW Welter

Luxury automobiles are fetish items par excellence. The advertising, branding and merchandising of this kind of consumer good is designed … More

Integrated Highrise

Barcelona is a city without very many tall buildings. Not only that: the few tall buildings that do exist are … More

Architecture Beyond Talk

“Out There: Architecture Beyond Building” is the title of this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated by Aaron Betsky. The … More

Water Tower and Bridge Pavilion

[originally published in Mark Magazine #16] Water TowerOne of the ironies of world expositions is that while they apparently act … More

Punch and Play

Any voyage from an airport to a city centre proves that urban peripheries the world over relate more to each … More