Outrage: MACBA goes massive and public space suffers

[Originally published in The Architectural Review online. Versión en castellano sigue a continuación.] The multicultural working-class neighbourhood of El Raval, … More

Which Way, Barcelona?

Gaudí must be rolling over in his grave. A Formula 1 race car burning rubber and making noise before one … More

The Post-Olympic Transformation of Barcelona

[Originally published in Heide Wessely and Sandra Hofmeister, editors: Barcelona: Urban Architecture and Community Since 2010. Munich: Edition DETAIL, 2023] … More

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, … More

Small City Architecture: Walden 7 as a Social Network

[Originally published in RocaGallery.com. Versión en castellano sigue a continuación] “The city is like a great house, and the house … More

Housing Thinking

[Originally published in HOUSE US, eds. Jae Sung Chon and Kent Mundle (Winnipeg: OCDI Press, 2018)] In comparison to the … More

Spongifying the City

Esponjamiento urbano, a Spanish term that literally translates as “urban spongification”, refers to the process of aerating dense, historical urban … More

Destination Architecture

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #68] Barcelona may be well known today as an urban tourism destination, but it was … More

Interview with Daniel Mòdol, Architect and Politician

[Originally published in Mark Magazine #68] In Barcelona, architect and independent politician Daniel Mòdol was recently appointed city councillor for … More

The Definitive Solution to All Gentrification Everywhere

Gentrification is like cancer: everything seems to cause it, and there’s no cure; there’s no answer. We all know by now that … More

Super-Islands

The city block is a fundamental element of urbanism. The Ancient Romans called a city block an insula, or “island”, which is … More

Built-In Obsolescence

The other day, out of the blue, my printer suddenly stalled, even though it had been working perfectly for once. Strange warning … More

Revisiting Casa Bloc

The architecture of housing differs fundamentally from the architecture of other building types in that it is never a purely qualitative … More

Cycling Barcelona versus Copenhagen: an Experiential Comparison

The other day I read an interesting critique of Barcelona’s cycling infrastructure titled “The Arrogance of Space”, by the Copenhagenize … 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

How to become a “public space” benefactor in 6 easy steps:

Pssst. Nouveau-riche and dying to go down in philanthropic history? Why not build a “public space” vanity project? It’s easy. Here’s how you do … More

Perspective is Everything

Neon duty-free stores selling discounted liquor and cigarettes to ski bums already high on oxygen and speed, causing interminable traffic … More

Power, Corruption and Architecture

Transparency International released its annual report some weeks ago, and this year’s corruption perception index, which ranks 177 countries from least to most … More