[Originally published in The Architectural Review July-August 2021] It has now been more than 20 years since Enric Miralles died…
Hide and Seek
[Originally published in The Architectural Review May 2021] One of the first alterations that pupils of the Imagine Montessori Primary…
Grit and Glam
[Originally published in DETAIL magazine 5.2021] There is no mistaking old from new in this adaptive reuse project by Baas…
Urbicide Rebellion Slaughterhouse Reno
[Originally published in Bauwelt 8.2021] The adaptive reuse of L’Escorxador del Cabanyal, a former slaughterhouse in Valencia, Spain, as a…
UNStudio’s Plagiarism of Elastic Living by Angelo Roventa
In the field of research, plagiarism is unacceptable. This is a post denouncing UNStudio’s shameless plagiarism of over a decade’s…
Dear Ben van Berkel
Dear Ben, To have a design idea copied by you, a global starchitect with offices all over the world, is…
Home is Where the Pathologies Are
Here we are, in the ninth month of coronavirus crisis, eagerly awaiting the birth, any day now, of a new…
Dear Mayor Ada Colau:
Dear Ms Colau, internationally esteemed mayor of Barcelona. I write this letter in English because many citizens of Barcelona are…
Barcelona, posa’t guarra (get dirty)
Welcome to Carrer Príncep de Viana in the Raval neighbourhood of Barcelona, a small, normally quiet street lined with trees…
Canadà Park: Barcelona’s Maple Leaf Themed Suburb
As an architect who is blessed with having double citizenship –Spanish as well as Canadian– I was quite amused, while…
Pop (-Up) Urbanism in the City of Design
Barcelona is known around the world today as a city of design. Its urban grid, buildings, parks, squares, streets, benches,…
Reassessing the Street-in-the-Sky in Times of Coronavirus
As Covid 19 spreads its way around the world, a fear of urban density is similarly catching on, with suburbs,…
Circular Container Housing
Does the sight of absurd architectural projects containing shipping containers make you cringe? Do you break into a cold sweat…
110 Rooms, 22 Flats, and One Good Idea
[Originally published in Baumeister 3/2020] The number of rooms contained in a building is not the way most young architects…
Cocooning in Balconville
With lockdown in effect in many parts of the world, and urban streets and squares largely empty, residential balconies have…
It's Now or Never
The whole world is grinding to a halt right now in what is surely the biggest crisis in several generations,…
Traces of the Past
[Originally published in Baumeister January 2020] Vilanova de la Barca is a small town located on the eastern bank of…
Circle of Life
[Originally published in The Architectural Review December 2019/January 2020] Article 12 of the 1964 Venice Charter of the International Council on…
The Politics of Architecture
Why is supposedly “advanced” architecture appreciated by so many of today’s dictatorial rulers, and what does this tell us about…
The Phenomenology of Solar Energy
I recently installed a thermo-solar water heater on my rooftop, and it has profoundly changed the way I live, making…
Criticalista 