For the past three years, the Spain Yearbook has been complemented by a special edition of AV Monographs that is an invitation to travel the world through twelve foreign works presented by Luis Fernández-Galiano, who reflects on the uncertain contemp

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The year, initiated with the return of Donald Trump to the White House and with a key episode in the AI race between US-China was especially dark in a Europe lacking technological companies, unable to defend itself, and with barely any geopolitical i

Luis Fernández-Galiano   If the launch of the artificial satellite Sputnik on 4 October 1957 set off the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, that of the generative artificial intelligence DeepSeek’s R1 model on 27 January 2025 sparked the cyberspace ra

Luis Fernández-Galiano   appeasement  The imperial presidency of Trump was inaugurated with a sequence of executive orders orchestrated like coups de théâtre, signed off with the bold strokes of a hyperbolic signature and exposed in performances worthy of an art biennia

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The war warning of European elites has feet of clay. Robert Kagan coined in 2003 a metaphor that stuck: “On major international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.” This was the opening line of his Of Paradise and P

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Liberation Day was the day that disorder began. Donald Trump chose 2 April to present the new tables of Law, but his tariff commandments unleashed economic chaos and, like Moses upon descending from Mount Sinai, he was soon forced to break the tablet

Luis Fernández-Galiano   With the big blackout of 28 April, Spaniards had a Monday in the sun, using the title of a film that described the drama of unemployment as resigned idleness. The interruption of activity, transport, and even telecommunications awakened us to the fra

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The escalation of the war in the Middle East opens Pandora’s Box, Israel bombarded Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities, killing nuclear scientists and military leaders, and Tehran responded launching ballistic missiles over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Luis Fernández-Galiano   There is no better architecture exhibition this summer than that of Veronese at the Prado. The great painter created the myth of rich and opulent Venice with his crowded compositions of exquisitely dressed characters participating in lavish dinners i

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The torrid temperatures of August came with flames and ashes: devastating wildfires that also inflamed impotent spirits and the intimate desolation of losing two friends essential to our history. These material flames and those emotional ashes are mi

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Summer has not been a sleepy pause, but an accelerated time in the transformation of the world. After the United States’ attack on Iran in the last week of June, July saw Ursula von der Leyen at a Scottish golf course meekly accepting the tariffs imp

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Shocked by the urbicides in Ukraine and Gaza, and helpless in the whirlwind of conflicts that is changing the world, perhaps it is time to take a step back and celebrate the civilizing capacity of architecture by turning attention to its origins. The

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Two days after hosting the planet’s biggest marathon, New York elected a 34-year-old Muslim socialist as mayor. On that same day, 4 November, the country that is the cultural center of the Islamic world inaugurated the Grand Egyptian Museum, a contro

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The two superpowers are already digital autocracies. The Chinese authoritarian model, which avoids the electoral cycles of liberal democracies, and which builds safe cities by multiplying facial recognition cameras, offers the countries of the Global

Sou Fujimoto Architects   Japan   Designed and built for Expo 2025 Osaka, the huge wooden structure in the shape of a ring is conceived as a symbolic piece that represents the unity of all the participating countries. It also marks a clear boundary in the diffuse territory of the art

Heneghan Peng Architects   Egypt   After more than three decades of waiting and numerous postponements, 1 November 2025 sees the long-awaited official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM). The full opening of this colossal complex, located just two kilometres from the Pyramids o

Foster + Partners   United States   The new headquarters of the financial company JPMorganChase in Manhattan at 270 Park Avenue has had its grand opening. Rising 423 meters and 60 floors, it is now New York City’s sixth-tallest edifice, adding to the Big Apple’s architectural history.

Herzog & de Meuron   United States   In the heart of Philadelphia, a new cultural space devoted to the sculptor Alexander Calder – born in the Pennsylanian city – opened on 21 September. Far from being a conventional museum, it provides an encounter with his work through an interplay of

Diller Scofidio + Renfro   United Kingdom   V&A East Storehouse has opened in London, offering an experience that breaks away from the traditional concept of a museum. Located in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, within the East Bank cultural quarter, this publicly accessible storage facility fuse

OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen   Switzerland   Situated in the heart of the university campus of EPFL and UNIL, the new building for RTS (Swiss Radio and Television) functions as a hinge not just between the two institutions, but between fields of education and research, between classical radiobr

MAD Architects   Netherlands   Rotterdam has opened Fenix, a new international art museum devoted to migration, in a 16,000-square-meter old warehouse on the Katendrecht peninsula. Built in 1923 and known as the San Francisco Warehouse, this space was originally used by the Hollan

Ateliers Jean Nouvel   France   On 25 October 2025, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain begins a new chapter with the public opening of its new location at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, in the heart of Paris, across the Musée du Louvre. The inside of the historic Haussmann-sty

pihlmann architects   Denmark   Formerly a factory and later a civic center for people with disabilities, the building has now been transformed into a multifunctional space. The project centers on self-recycling, and up to 95% of its original elements have been reused or repurposed

Grafton Architects, Modus Studio   United States   The Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, which recently opened in Fayetteville (Arkansas), is a facility for timber-construction research and training. Part of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design of the Universi

Vector Architects   China   In the heart of the city of Jingdezhen, known for its porcelain production, stands this hotel designed with the idea of preserving the constructions of an old industrial complex, including the existing camphor trees. The entire program is organized a

Aidia Studio   Mexico   An initiative of Mexico’s Secretariat for Agrarian, Territorial, and Urban Development (SEDATU), the market in Nicolás Bravo is part of a government-funded program for urban improvement, aimed at addressing scarcities in the country’s less developed

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Three months before turning a hundred, Françoise Choay died on 8 January, and her intellectual legacy makes it inexcusable not to publish an obituary, no matter the delay. The French historian, who situated the origin of architectural theory in Leon

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The Luxembourg-born architect, writer, and draftsman Léon Krier, one of the key drivers of the postmodern movement, passed away on 17 June in Palma de Mallorca, where he had been living since 2013 with his partner Irene P. Stillman, in a house near t

Luis Fernández-Galiano   The architect and critic François Chaslin passed away on 7 August in Lanildut, a small commune on the coast of the French deparment of Finistère, where he lived in a house he had renovated himself, far from the Parisian maelstrom where the bulk of hi

Luis Fernández-Galiano   Holding a vodka martini and playing the gracious host in his loft on Chapel Street during his eighteen years as dean of the Yale School of Architecture: this is the best possible portrait of the architect who on 27 November died in his Manhattan home

Luis Fernández-Galiano   At the age of 96, Frank Owen Gehry died at home in Santa Monica on Friday 5 December. The most popular American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, who marked a turning point in the art of building with his Guggenheim Bilbao, has been eulogized in th