Architects’ Struggle

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

A Whimsical Water Tower in…Barcelona?

I spotted this fantastic water tower the other day while walking around Poble Nou, Barcelona’s industrial graveyard. Claes Oldenburg and … 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

Construction as Spectacle: Mercat dels Encants

The construction of the new Mercat dels Encants / Fira de Bellcaire (Barcelona’s flea market), by b720 Arquitectos, is not only spectacular … More

Get Smart

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

Pseudo-Choice

Potato chips, or crisps, come in a fantastic panoply of artificial flavors. BBQ, Ketchup, or “regular” are standards the world … More

Invisible Architecture

Why is it that, in places where nothing is needed, there is often nevertheless a nagging architectural compulsion to add something … More

Garden and Gaffe

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

Strange Bedfellows

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

Gaudí’s hanging chain models: parametric design avant la lettre?

It is known that Gaudí preferred modelling architecture over drawing it; especially models made of chains hung from a ceiling, or strings … 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

A Reminder to Urban Planners

Given the choice, most children would rather play in a terrain vague than a playground. They would rather make mud … More

Not So Different

“Spain is Different” was a tourism campaign slogan coined in the mid-1960s by dictator Francisco Franco’s Ministry of Information and Tourism (!), … More

Architectural Art

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

Architourism

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

Paragraphs on Architectural Criticism

Architectural criticism is what distinguishes architecture from building, inasmuch as those two terms are distinguishable. Buildings exist perfectly well without … 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

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