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

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

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

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

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

Experimental Bamboo

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

Pop Architecture

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

Ugh Canada

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

Learning from CajaGranada

Morning Delivery

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

BMW Welter

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

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

Designer Façadism

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