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Criticalista

Rafael Gómez-Moriana's architecture blog

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Tag: landscape

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 on … More

Barcelona, branding, Canada, Catalonia, cultural hybridity, landscape, suburbia, urbanization

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

brick, countryside, garden, house, landscape, Mesura, pavilion, small town, The Architectural Review, vault

Disappearing Act

[Originally published in Baumeister 9/2017] As the place where Ancient Greeks first set foot on the Iberian peninsula, the archaeological … More

archaeology, Baumeister, camouflage, concrete, countryside, Empúries, garden, land art, landscape, ruin, tourism

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

camouflage, countryside, industry, landscape, nature, Spain

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

Bernabad Arquitectura, countryside, crisis, failed development, landscape, mountains, ruin, small town, Spain, tourism, urbanism, urbanization

Seeing Things

Mountain architecture is very different from its flatland counterpart. This may be stating the obvious, but I’m referring here to … More

architecture, art, countryside, hut, landscape, mountains, refuge, shelter, wilderness

Pure Shit (II)

This building in the Catalan Pyrenees is a perfect example of the kind of “pure shit” that, according to Frank … More

architecture, art, crap, ecological design, education, landscape, theory

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

architecture, balcony, Barcelona, crisis, green wall, homelessness, landscape, tourism, vernacular

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

Azure, Barcelona, courtyard, garden, highrise, hotel, Jean Nouvel, landscape

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

architecture, countryside, infrastructure, landscape, mountains, perspective, politics, small town, tax haven, urbanism

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

bullshit, camouflage, Guallart, landscape, metaphor, mountains

Fashion Victim

You know green walls have become trendy when a designer fashion label puts one up that’s made of plastic. Kinda … More

fashion, green wall, landscape, retail, simulacrum

Invisible Architecture

Why is it that, in places where nothing is needed, there is often nevertheless a nagging architectural compulsion to add something … More

AAUP, archaeology, history, Invisible architecture, JDVDP, landscape, memory, park, Turó de la Rovira

Garden and Gaffe

Leon Battista Alberti famously wrote: “The city is like some large house and the house in turn like some small … More

Barcelona, building typology, garden, highrise, hotel, Jean Nouvel, landscape, piranesi, tourism, window

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

Barcelona, Cadaval and Solà-Morales, countryside, landscape, Mark Magazine, Mexico, parametric design, Spain

City as Landscape

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #27]   Library Is the pleasure of architecture intellectual or sensual? Of the mind or … More

cultural identity, fundamentalism, Galicia, landscape, Mark Magazine, Peter Eisenman, politics, Santiago de Compostela, strategy, topographic architecture

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Criticalista collects Rafael Gomez-Moriana's writings on architecture and the built environment. All photographs by the author unless indicated otherwise.

©2014 Rafael Gomez-Moriana. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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