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Criticalista

Rants and reflections on architecture, cities, and politics

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Architectural Art

Art galleries and museums seem to be showing with greater frequency artworks about architecture, many of them by artists who … More

architecture, art, gallery, installation, interdisciplinarity, museum

Architourism

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

Barcelona Pavilion, capitalism, Gaudí, Mies, tourism

Paragraphs on Architectural Criticism

criticism, media, theory

Pool Typology

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

building typology, housing, suburbia, swimming pool, Terrace houses

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

church, mixed-use, Rafael Moneo, retail, sacred-profane, San Sebastian, Spain

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

authenticity, cultural identity, ethics, flexibility, interactive, internet, photography, politics, popular culture, site-specificity, social class, urbanization

Calatravaland

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

Calatrava, sculpture, theming, urbanism, Valencia

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

Barcelona, cantilever, Josep Lluis Mateo, space race, spectacle

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

Barcelona, cantilever, context, infrastructure, MBM, strategy, urbanism

Experimental Bamboo

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

Bali, bamboo, countryside, D.I.Y., ecological design

Pop Architecture

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

architecture, art, Claes Oldenburg, popular culture, semiotics

Ugh Canada

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

Canada, cultural identity, Expo 2010 Shanghai, installation, pavilion, politics, spectacle

Learning from CajaGranada

Alberto Campo Baeza, Granada, Learning from Las Vegas, monument

Morning Delivery

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

Barcelona Pavilion, building maintenance, Mies, pavilion, social class

BMW Welter

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

automobile, branding, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Munich, museum, spectacle

Everyday Camouflage in “The Visitor”

The story told by Tom McCarthy in his highly commendable film The Visitor, which deals, among other things, with the … More

architecture, camouflage, film, popular culture, prison, urbanism

Designer Façadism

A new luxury apartment building for tourists has recently opened on Passeig de Gràcia, across from Antoni Gaudí’s Casa Milà, … More

Barcelona, facadism, strategy, Toyo Ito

Us and Theme

If Venice, the Wild West, or Asia can be themes for parks, casinos, or hotels, then why not contemporary architecture? … More

design, hotel, popular culture, spectacle, theming, total design, tourism, Zaha

Disseny Hype

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

Barcelona, design, installation, museum

Gaudí in Red Alert

“Gaudí en alerta roja” is the title of an online petition currently the source of much debate in Barcelona. Its … More

authenticity, Barcelona, cultural identity, ethics, fundamentalism, Gaudí, heritage, manifesto, monument

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Criticalista collects Rafael Gomez-Moriana's writings on architecture and the built environment. All photographs by the author unless indicated otherwise.

©2014 Rafael Gomez-Moriana. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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