The above image is circulating on the internet representing all sorts of cities on all sorts of continents, showing us…
Calatravaland
El País reported recently that the government of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, when it was presided by Francisco Camps (the…
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…
Quaderns #262: A Gut Reaction
[Originally published in Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme online] Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme #262 is provocatively titled “Parainfrastructures”, an invented word that…
Experimenting in Public is not a Crime
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #33] Seville’s public squares come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large and officious, others small…
Strike a Pose
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #32] What is it that makes these architectural images so seductive? To be sure, there…
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).…
Experimental Bamboo
Bamboo is an ancient building material that fell largely out of favor in the twentieth century, only to be used…
Blackwashing
You wouldn’t know it from looking at photographs such as these. You wouldn’t even know it if you were standing…
Pop Architecture
Ordinary, everyday objects — that’s what most popular nicknames for buildings refer to. A gherkin, a paperclip, a typewriter, a…
Power to the People
[originally published in Mark Magazine #29] The office of Andrés Jaque Arquitectos Still on the shy side of 40, Andrés…
Interview with Peter Eisenman
[This is an excerpt of an interview I conducted with Peter Eisenman in Santiago de Compostela in May 2010. The…
Top-Down Tower
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27] Social housing is among the most regulated–and least glamorous–areas of architecture. While all housing…
City as Landscape
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27] Library Is the pleasure of architecture intellectual or sensual? Of the mind or…
Triumph of the Shell
[originally published in Mark Magazine #26] In cinema, there is a common type of architectural scene: a building…
Building as Research
Truss space Two facades with different pillow systems: ETFE fog configuration and ETFE diaphragm configuration. The range of building…
Ugh Canada
An architect is, by definition, a designer of buildings, right? Well, the government of Canada, a nation whose credo is…
Jurisprudence
Courts of justice are steeped in protocol and decorum, not merely because of tradition, but in order to establish and…
Holiday greetings
Vienna, 2009
Optimization Takes Command
Angelo Roventa’s Elastic Dwelling applies a principle—and a mechanism—that is borrowed from a commercially available pre-manufactured industrial product: the high-density…
Criticalista 