They sat down in front of the enormous window, in the only two armchairs in the room. Two white leather and wood armchairs, matching the footrest. The views were spectacular. They had recently moved into the house of their dreams. A moving company took care of everything. In fact, with the move they took the opportunity to clean up and get rid of weight, both physically and emotionally. Neither travel guides nor dictionaries made sense, everything was already on the internet; nor were the books they had already read. Nor the CDs. Suddenly, no dust, no silverfish, no mold. They would live in a space of glass, wood, and concrete. Energy efficiency A.

On a plot between party walls in Sabadell, only six meters wide and very deep, a family has found a way of living that has little to do with excesses and much to do with daily well-being. The house, with 210 square meters over two floors, does not seek to impress. Their idea of luxury is that natural light reigns, that there is cross-ventilation, that silence dominates, and that a tree is present in most rooms.

Continuing with my last article, where I argued that Francoism had dire consequences for our cities, I would like to address the poisoned legacy of the mismanagement of power structures, which reacted late and poorly to the miseries of the post-war period, to the drought in the fields, and to the exodus of thousands of people from the countryside to the cities. It is often argued that Franco built many infrastructures (dams, highways, housing). He was also the driving force behind desarrollismo, with serious setbacks in urban planning. What we do not know is what kind of city we would have if the Republic had won. Surely we would now have decent public housing and neighborhoods with a better balance between housing and services, with schools, health centers, and more generous cultural spaces. But since we cannot invent history, I can only imagine. What we do know is that beyond the large estates driven by public bodies such as the Obra Sindical del Hogar or the Municipal Housing Trust, there are only four large private development estates, such as Bellvitge, Ciutat Meridiana, the Ciutat Cooperativa of Sant Boi, and the Santa Elvira neighborhood in Montcada, which have serious deficiencies in services and facilities. In the sixties and seventies, growth was poorly managed, without thought. Where there were garden cities, suburban areas were allowed to grow, as in the case of Calafell, Platja d’Aro, Roses, and Maresme. On the coast, genuine atrocities were permitted due to tourist pressure, such as in Lloret and Riells. And on old rows of houses, blocks were allowed to grow without any integration into the environment. The public sector forgot the constitutional mandate to redistribute part of the increase in value generated by urban transformation so that it would benefit the community, and often promoters were allowed to cede margins or edges of the land as impossible green areas, while the obligation to urbanize streets was ignored.

Can Gabriel is a house that explains how it is made. Also how the building in the historic center of Palma where it is located is made. The radical intervention carried out by the architects of TEd’A, the team led by Jaume Mayol and Irene Pérez, is explained through an architecture that turns construction processes into part of the daily experience of living. This is a work that claims the beauty of bare materials, of joints, of seams, of textures, and of visible imperfections. And it shows that, sometimes, a good way to transform a space is to start by leaving it to the bones. This project has become one of the most celebrated works of recent Spanish architecture: awarded at the XVII Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism, distinguished with an award by La Casa de la Arquitectura, finalist of the FAD 2025 awards, and selected for the Mies van der Rohe awards.

Amidst the tourist monoculture of Cadaqués, Teresa Madrid and Pau López row against the current, with their sights set on the resilience of the ancestors who inhabited Cap de Creus. Almost a decade ago, they began managing different olive groves to make oil and to manage a flock of guirra sheep, from the area, to preserve soil fertility and clear the dry stone walls that they work manually. From Mas de la Senyora, they reclaim two of the fundamental pillars of Cadaqués' historical identity: agriculture and livestock farming. But also understood as a way of caring for the soil, building landscape, and creating community and culture beyond tourism and environmental protection.

There are houses that are born from a dream and others that are born from a problem. Can Pizzeta has a bit of a dream, but above all it has a lot of having to overcome real difficulties. In fact, it started with a geometry as real as it was impossible: a triangular plot, narrow and sloped, wedged between the street, a neighboring property, and a stream, on the edge of the Collserola Natural Park. The project did not disguise the constraints, but rather turned them into the very shape of the house. That's why it's triangular, almost like a slice of pizza. And that's why the name suits it so well.

New construction single-family homes, renovations and refurbishments in small towns in Empordà, near the Costa Brava. Mostly second homes for families from Barcelona. In keeping with the surroundings and made with local materials. This would be the most representative example of the award-winning architecture currently being produced in the Girona region. This is determined by the projects selected in the latest editions of the Girona Region Architecture Awards, organized by the Girona delegation of the Architects' Association of Catalonia (COAC).

Annalisa Massaro

A group of researchers from the Rovira i Virgili University of Tarragona were on the roof of the Palau Güell, on Carrer Nou de la Rambla in Barcelona, and noticed the twenty chimneys that crown this Antoni Gaudí building, recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. Observing them, the question arose. Do they work or are they just ornamental? "It could be that they were just for show or a way to boast," explains Albert Samper, professor at the Higher Technical School of Architecture, who recalls that chimneys were a status symbol, as it implied that buildings that had them had heating, a luxury that at the end of the 19th century only the wealthy classes could afford. But it could also be that the chimneys responded to their main function and were capable of extracting smoke. Gaudí did not write anywhere whether the original chimneys could actually work.

In the heart of Es Grau, north of Maó, there are narrow streets, terraced houses, and architecture often born out of necessity and common sense. It is an urban landscape partly born from self-construction, where local materials and simple solutions have gradually shaped a unique identity. In this context, Menorcan architect Emma Martí has designed a new 256-square-meter home that fits into the existing fabric with both naturalness and singularity.

If you think about a typical classroom in a school or high school, it's easy to imagine rows and rows of desks. In front, very close to the blackboard, a larger table for the teacher. An image with which they want to break the pedagogical model of the Barcelona Education Consortium under the premise that spaces are also tools that contribute to improving education. The distribution of classes in a more diaphanous way, the use of colors on the walls or the air conditioning of the classrooms are thus established as essential points for offering quality learning.

Is there an ideal place for music? In Rehearsal Room, Juan de la Rubia, musician and titular organist of the Sagrada Familia Basilica, and Benedetta Tagliabue, architect and designer of auditoriums and concert halls, among other projects, discuss how walls create spaces that allow us to listen to music. The work of Johann Sebastian Bach, Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor 582A cathedral-like work for organ accompanies the debate in the video podcast of the Palau de la Música Catalana: An ideal place for music

"Trying to understand the complexity of the city begins with observing it." This phrase closes the video that concludes the exhibition. Barcelona = (Diversity + Intensity) x Complexity, But it could open. The exhibition, which opens this Thursday at the former headquarters of the Gustavo Gili publishing house and will run until December 13, is an invitation to contemplate the Catalan capital with a fresh perspective, and at the same time an ode to large cities like Barcelona despite the mounting challenges.

In his approach to the true story of the conception and construction of the Grande Arche de la Défense – one of the architectural landmarks of 20th-century Paris –, The architect It adopts a unique perspective, far removed from the usual approaches of cinema that seeks to study artistic forms. Instead of foregrounding the emotional and sentimental drama of the protagonist—the Dane Johan Otto von Spreckelsen, the unexpected winner of the competition to design the Parisian Arc—the film focuses on the artisanal dimension of the pharaonic architectural project. Thus, director and screenwriter Stéphane Demoustier manages to portray, from an almost microscopic perspective, the planning, sketching, and material selection tasks that Spreckelsen undertakes during the process of creating his magnum opus. These sources of pleasure contrast sharply with the anxiety caused to the architect by bureaucratic obstacles and the constant negotiation with political interests.

Pol Casellas (Barcelona, ​​1995) is an architect, but he is best known for his work on social media, where he shares unknown, curious, and surprising stories about Barcelona. His passion for urban planning, architecture, and the city of his birth led him to launch this project with no other aim than to share knowledge, but it has ended up being so successful that it still surprises him and has led him to publish his first book. The impossible Barcelona (Compass Rose).

On March 26, 1938, a bomb dropped by Franco's air force fell in the heart of Reus, in the Plaça del Mercadal, damaging Casa Navàs. The projectile caused damage to the upper part of the building and toppled the turret that crowned one of Reus's most emblematic buildings, a Modernist jewel built at the beginning of the 20th century by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Fortunately, the main floor was not affected, and during the 1940s the upper part of the building was rebuilt, but not the turret. More than eighty years later, the current owner of Casa Navàs, Maser Grup, has decided to reconstruct this distinctive feature. Work on the building began last July, but much preparation was required before the first scaffolding was erected.

Casa Navàs, due to its unique character, is one of the finest examples of Modernisme in Europe. Built between 1901 and 1908 by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner and the decorator Gaspar Homar, it is the only Modernista building in Spain that has survived to this day in its original state. The building was commissioned by Joaquim Navàs, a wealthy textile merchant, during a period of great economic activity in Reus. Navàs and his wife, Pepa Blasco, asked Domènech i Montaner to design a shop-house on one of the corners of Plaça del Mercadal. The commission had a virtually unlimited budget, which explains why it became one of the Barcelona architect's most lavish works.

Lluís Domènech i Montaner (Barcelona, ​​1849-1923) was one of the most important architects of Catalan Modernism. A graduate in architecture in 1873, he designed such imposing buildings as the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona. As a teacher, he mentored such prominent figures of Catalan Modernism as Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and Josep Maria Jujol. Domènech i Montaner also excelled as a type designer, illustrator, and bookbinder. His political involvement was particularly significant. Committed to Catalan political identity, he was a driving force behind the Regionalist League and also served as a member of the Spanish Parliament. He combined his profession with studies in heraldry and Romanesque art.

On a narrow plot of land in Girona's historic center, where party walls stretch endlessly and light inside homes always seems scarce, architect Víctor Bouman—head of the studio Bouman Arquitectura, based in Girona and Llançà—came across one of these properties. What had once been an extremely long and narrow terraced house, over thirty meters deep and only four and a half meters wide, was, when they arrived, a veritable ruin: collapsed roofs, persistent dampness, damaged floors and cladding, and a very real feeling of being in a dark, endless tunnel.

Influenced by his extensive studies of classical and medieval architecture, as well as his passion for heraldry, the work of architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner is distinguished by its use of ornamentation, often exuberant, especially during his Floral period, where ceramics, glass, iron, and wood become works of art. This ornamental richness features elements from real and fantastical bestiaries, which the architect imbued with specific symbolism in each of his projects, allowing for different interpretations depending on the context. To explore this aspect of his work in depth, the Lluís Domènech i Montaner Studies Center (CEDIM) has recently published the book The bestiary of Domènech i MontanerFiguration and Symbolism, by Gemma Martí, is a comprehensive and detailed study that identifies zoomorphic representations in the architect's work and offers a symbolic interpretation.