As an architect who is blessed with having double citizenship–Spanish as well as Canadian– I was quite amused, while on … More
Tag: landscape
Overarching Craft
[Originally published in The Architectural Review July/August 2018] Matola, a hamlet in the semi-desert of the southeastern Spanish province of … More
Disappearing Act
[Originally published in Baumeister 9/2017] As the place where Ancient Greeks first set foot on the Iberian peninsula, the archaeological … More
Everyday Camouflage in the Countryside
The building above looks like a military installation of some sort, right? After all, it’s got a camouflage pattern on … More
Design and Decadence in Sabiñanigo
The land-scars of Spain’s construction boom-gone-bust have been documented photographically to great extent. More typically than not, these images portray a landscape of newly built … More
Seeing Things
Mountain architecture is very different from its flatland counterpart. This may be stating the obvious, but I’m referring here to … More
Pure Shit (II)
This building in the Catalan Pyrenees is a perfect example of the kind of “pure shit” that, according to Frank … More
Barcelona’s Disappearing Green Façades
Barcelona’s ‘green façades’ are disappearing at an alarming rate. A part of this city’s vernacular tradition, the small balconies typically used by apartment … More
Destination: Barcelona’s Renaissance Fira Hotel
[Originally published in Azure, May 2014] The elevator soars up the Hotel Renaissance Fira Barcelona, and my knees buckle beneath … More
Perspective is Everything
Same place seen from different viewpoints (Pas de la Casa, Andorra). Neon duty-free stores selling discounted liquor and cigarettes to … 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
Fashion Victim
You know green walls have become trendy when a designer fashion label puts one up that’s made of plastic. Kinda … 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
Going Slowly: Cadaval and Solà-Morales
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #39] “Young architects” is a culturally loaded term, often conjuring notions of rebellion, utopian idealism, … More
City as Landscape
[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27] Library Is the pleasure of architecture intellectual or sensual? Of the mind or … More
Criticalista 