The courtyard house may be ancient, but it is still contemporary and modern. This became apparent to me on a…
A Barcelona Hotel gets Graphic
[Originally published in Azure, September 2013] For Pau, its new hotel in Barcelona, the Room Mate group sought an interior…
Learned from Las Vegas: DHUB Design Museum, Barcelona, by MBM
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #45] This building is important. It occupies a prominent site at the intersection of three of…
Step Right Up. Architectural Monumentality. Three Boxer Shorts for Only 6€.
Flea markets are normally found under bridges, in empty parking lots, or in old industrial sheds. This flea market (which…
Remembering Marshall Berman
I think it was in 1985. I would have been in my second year of study at University of Waterloo’s…
Product Placement / Emplazamiento publicitario
Product Placement [Originally published in Arquitectura Viva #153 under the title “Marcas y contextos”. Translation: Eduardo Prieto] “Designed by Apple…
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,…
La Grande Motte Revisited
I first saw La Grande Motte in the summer of 1978, more than a decade before I would graduate from…
The Forest Metaphor
The Drassanes Reials (royal shipyard) of Barcelona has recently reopened after a lengthy renovation by architects Robert and Esteve Terradas.…
Bullshit Island
“Barcelona Island will be an out of this world experience for all guests of ‘Mobilona Space Hotel’ who wish they…
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…
Provocative Architecture?
In “Little Frank and his Carp”, a 2001 video of a performance by artist Andrea Fraser, architecture, replete with its…
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…
Architects’ Struggle
Today, I ran into a small protest: a squadron (herd? platoon? pack?) of young architects protesting dismal working conditions. Other…
The Vancouver Model versus El Modelo Barcelona: Trevor Boddy talks, Francesc Muñoz responds.
The Canadian port city of Vancouver has entered centre stage of the global debate about future directions for cities in the sustainability…
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…
Fashion Victim
You know green walls have become trendy when a designer fashion label puts one up that’s made of plastic. Kinda…
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…
Get Smart
A façade design in which photovoltaic panels end up casting shadows upon other photovoltaic panels does not seem to me…
Pseudo-Choice
Potato chips, or crisps, come in a fantastic panoply of artificial flavors. BBQ, Ketchup, or “regular” are standards the world…
Criticalista 