Throughout its history, Spain has been shaped by a wide range of cultures and civilizations, including Muslim, Phoenician, Roman, Greek, Carthaginian, and Visigothic influences, which are reflected in its architecture and design.
We have deployed several types of cooling systems here, each one used depending on climatic conditions. The system, created millennia ago but updated for the 21st century, works by cooling water underground in the naturally low temperatures at night. To cool water more quickly, some is also sent to the roof via solar-powered pumps and sprayed out of nozzles in a thin layer through a method known as a falling film, before draining back down underground.
A compleat Persian Palace--there are many minor variations and lesser imitations--is distinguished by its exaggerated moldings, numberless layers of cornices, elaborate grillework and columns galore. A Persian Palace brazenly combines motifs and wantonly disregards proportion and scale.
Perched on a steep hillside overlooking Naggar valley in Himachal Pradesh, India, Eila is an art retreat that functions as an extension to the terrain rather than a static object. Designed by MOFA Studio, the project champions fluid architecture through advanced computational design, realizing a structure that mimics the landscape. The site's masterplan adopts a stepped strategy that preserves topsoil and rainwater runways, organizing the resort as a gradual, terraced descent.
Ba-rro: "Our starting point is always the context and what already exists." We are interested in recognizing the value of things simply because they are there, without assuming that everything must be preserved as a matter of principle. The question isn't what can be kept, but what deserves to be kept in each specific project. The decision to preserve, reveal, or remove doesn't stem from universal values or a nostalgic impulse, but from a situated interpretation:
Kulhads, also known as terracotta mud cups, once defined the everyday ritual of tea at railway stations across India. Used briefly and discarded soon after, they accumulated along tracks and coastlines, leaving a quiet record of consumption. For this pavilion, more than 18,000 of these cups were gathered from local communities in Dharavi and reused as a building material with structural purpose.
The poem itself is an allegory: a gathering of birds set out on a spiritual quest, each one embodying a particular human flaw or attachment. Passing through seven symbolic valleys, they face trials and moments of revelation, before realising that the divine presence they seek lies within themselves. That sense of pilgrimage carries into the gallery. You are invited to take your own quiet journey through a wide range of avian-themed artworks inspired by the poem, each offering a different response to its ideas.
An intact mosaic from Late Antiquity discovered during restoration of a historic municipal building in Istanbul is now a floor again, covered in plexiglass and welcoming visitors to the new Zeytinburnu Mosaic Museum. Visitors of Turkey's newest museum move across elevated glass walkways, suspended right above the original floors themselves. The mosaics are not relocated fragments mounted on walls, but surfaces that remain exactly where they were first laid, preserving their context for all to see.
MADRID - The most famous portrait of Maruja Mallo depicts the artist covered from head to toe in seaweed. She is crowned and draped with long, rope-like strands of kelp, her arms raised triumphantly like an all-powerful marine goddess. This unconventional photograph, snapped in 1945 by the poet Pablo Neruda on a Chilean beach, was no doubt carefully orchestrated by the Spanish artist, who viewed herself as an extension of her unique work, where female energy is a conduit for natural and even cosmic forces.
