Architecture Road-Tripping: Marseille

Earlier this August, I went on a roadtrip through southern France and spent two nights in l’Unité d’Habitation in Marseille, … More

La Grande Motte Revisited

I first saw La Grande Motte in the summer of 1978, more than a decade before I would graduate from … More

The Forest Metaphor

The Drassanes Reials (royal shipyard) of Barcelona has recently reopened after a lengthy renovation by architects Robert and Esteve Terradas. … 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

Provocative Architecture?

In “Little Frank and his Carp”, a 2001 video of a performance by artist Andrea Fraser, architecture, replete with its … 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

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