Revista de Arquitectura

The transference of desire: the greenhouse as contemporary architectural paradigm

Eva Luque García — 2025-06-27

This article addresses the convergence between architectural materialisation and theoretical construction. Through inferential criticism and the analysis of thought representation, it examines the greenhouse as a tensegrity-spatial paradigm, taking the Almerian case as its central focus through a sports pavilion and doctoral research. The findings identify specific intentional patterns: a dynamic structural equilibrium that minimises material to generate weightless spaces; the creation of uniform luminous atmospheres through translucent envelopes; and spatial continuity free from hierarchies. The study reveals four evolutionary models of spatial thought, ranging from landscape framing to architecture as mediated landscape. It concludes that the greenhouse anticipates key aspirations of contemporary architecture by establishing active exchanges between materiality and perception, thus redefining the relationship between technique and experience.

Redefining a building. Metamorphosis of a house in Rota

Luisa Alarcón González — 2025-06-27

The architectural work designed by Antonio Jiménez Torrecilla and analyzed in this paper shows an innovative way of facing what is built, by converting, through a spatial reversal, a small anonymous and conventional isolated house located in a peripheral urbanization in Rota Cadiz municipality, into the starting point of a singular work of contemporary architecture through a spatial inversion. A pre-existence, the found, is preserved, but altering its spatial conception, and is added to the new so that inextricably together they make up a new way of living, resignifying what was found in a manner equivalent to those carried out by the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century. Authors such us Picasso or Duchamp opened the way for appropriations and alterations of everyday objects to subvert the principles of sculpture. A hermeneutic method is used to get a deep comprehension of the house that deconstructs the previous place to resignify the current one.

Places in motion: the experience of digital nomads in Lisbon

Fernanda Freitas — 2025-06-27

Architecture creates places by merging subjective experience and physical space. Digital nomadism challenges the static notion of place, as its practitioners temporarily inhabit different cities thanks to remote work. This article explores the notions of place and belonging within this mobile context, reflecting on how architecture and cities respond to new temporary forms of habitation. Through participant observations and interviews conducted in Lisbon, the role of both digital and in-person communities in the construction of belonging and their interactions with urban space is analyzed, using the concepts of “Architectural Place” and “Third Places.” The results show that these transient inhabitants reconfigure spatialities and intensify inequalities, while generating senses of place linked to mobility. Based on these findings, the article proposes reconsidering the role of architecture in emerging forms of habitation.

Ruinas de Aarhus: lugares que aspiran al tiempo

Rafael Ferreira de Souza — 2025-06-27

Este artículo propone un enfoque fenomenológico para la investigación urbana de las arquitecturas en ruinas de la ciudad de Aarhus, Dinamarca, con miras a explorar la capa del tiempo en la interpretación de arquitecturas que alguna vez formaron un cuerpo material, pero que ahora enfrentan la incertidumbre de su significado para las ciudades. La investigación busca presentar un medio para la reconstrucción de la esfera imaginaria de los espacios urbanos abandonados, a través de la interacción de la experiencia corporal y la fotografía. Para lograrlo, la investigación se mueve a través de metodologías basadas en la antropología visual y modelos fenomenológicos de aprehensión multisensorial, revelando finalmente aspectos intersubjetivos de los elementos materiales e inmateriales del ambiente que componen algunas arquitecturas en ruinas de la ciudad de Aarhus que crean lugares de experiencia.

Architectural caesuras. Mental explorations into the interior of matter

Maria del Pilar Canterla-Rufino — 2025-06-27

This is a research to see that architectural manifestations do not occur on the physical surface of things, but in the mind of those who observe their indentations. The aim is to vindicate the cut as a tool for design and research: a cesura that opens up, delimits and allow spaces to appear. Through a methodology that links architecture, literature and art, ut is as the main tool to give rise to places, we imagine Souto, passing over and over again obsessively over that piece of white cork; or Matta-Clark, for whom the cut was a primitive and violent caesura that allowed him to travel mentally into the interior of matter; or Gopegui producing literary cuts to give thickness to the everyday. Through these three cases we analyse the potential of the section as a form of knowledge and search; as a projective tool. If the Latin root caesūra means cut, this paper is an article on some architectural caesuras.

Cromlech space. Jorge Oteiza’s contribution to the concept of place

Jorge Ramos Jular — 2025-06-27

This article examines the significance of the concept of place in the artistic research conducted by Jorge Oteiza. Drawing on the study of Neolithic cromlechs found in his native region, Oteiza develops an aesthetic theory that serves as the foundation for the justification of his sculptural discoveries, which are closely tied to his Experimental Purpose. The aim is to explore in depth the concept of cromlech space and the ways in which Oteiza employs it through various parameters in selected architectural projects in which he collaborated. The methodology focuses on evaluating the relevance of his research in this area and critically analyzing his conclusions as applied to the architectural works that implicitly referencen the studied concept. Ultimately, the article seeks to demonstrate how the notion of crómlech space—seemingly distant from the architectural discipline—can contribute meaningfully to contemporary debates on the conceptualization of place within architecture

Constructing with words: theoretical reflections on the architectural project between pictorial and written language

Camilo Álvarez-Gómez — 2025-06-27

This article explores the use of pictorial works as methodological tools in contemporary architectural design. The research was conducted within the framework of a university course conceived as an experimental laboratory. Through a qualitative, design-based methodology —combining visual analysis, argumentative reflection, and graphic elaboration— four paintings (by Vermeer, Friedrich, Escher, and Jan van Eyck) were studied for their potential to activate complex spatial processes. Exercises were developed to explore key concepts such as void, reflection, and perception. The results demonstrate that pictorial representation, far from being merely illustrative, can serve as a catalyst for new ways of imagining, representing, and constructing architectural space. The proposal highlights the relevance of design-based research as a valid form of architectural knowledge in academic contexts, integrating symbolic, narrative, and perceptual dimensions into the design process.

Dan Graham’s spatial strategies to construct places: instalations, models and pavilions

Daniel Barba-Rodríguez — 2025-06-27

This paper analyses Dan Graham’s spatial strategies through a comparative study of his entire artistic production, resulting in three recurrent formats in his artwork: installations, models and pavilions. It is based on a theoretical framework that considers his artistic production in the context of contemporary visual culture, characterised by the spectacle, the image and the gaze; thereby, it is proposed a notion of place linked to the visual and relational experience of space. From the analysis of his more than fifty works –by systematically comparing their chronology, elements, project strategies, intentionality and the role of the public–, three operational categories are identified that provide an understanding of how Graham constructs diferente notions of place. These spatial strategies are not limited to arranging forms in space, but define perceptual situations that activate relationships between individuals, visual devices and the environment. Taken together, his work reveals an architecture that not only accommodates bodies, but also configures identities, establishes roles and induces forms of social interaction through seeing and being seen.

Tunga: the production of sensory places through poetry, art and architecture

Julia Cavalcante — 2025-06-27

The Brazilian artist Tunga (1952–2016), who was also an architect, is a key figure in contemporary art, with a body of work that merges poetry, art, and architecture. This study focuses on the sensory places created by the artist, exemplified through his work True Rouge (1997). Through a reading that is not necessarily chronological, the analysis covers different versions of the piece over the decades—such as the performative activation of the work in 2016, in a posthumous tribute to the artist, going back to its creation in 1997—and includes other important presentations and activations through instaurations. The objective is to investigate how these various iterations of True Rouge gave rise to unique sensory environments, shaped by the experiences of both the artist and the audience. This analysis is grounded in a theoretical dialogue with the notions of Juhani Pallasmaa (2016) and Michel Serres (2001), with emphasis on passages underlined by Tunga himself in a copy of this latter author, consulted in his personal library. By exploring intersections between diferente fields of knowledge, this work highlights how Tunga’s sensory environments establish transversal connections across disciplines, bringing art and poetry into the architectural discourse.

The theoretical transition of Kenneth Frampton: critical regionalism, tectonics and transcultural form

Thaís Piffano-Oliveira — 2025-06-27

This article investigates Kenneth Frampton’s theoretical trajectory, with particular attention to the transition between the concepts of “critical regionalism” and “tectonics.” Drawing on texts published throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the expanded fourth edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History, the study seeks to understand how Frampton reworks his conceptual vocabulary in response to the cultural, social, and political tensions and critiques of his time. Rather than signaling a rupture, this shift is interpreted as part of a continuous theoretical project — a critical agenda in transformation, yet committed to defending a modern architecture attentive to material and cultural specificities, in contrast to the logics of homogenization. The proposed reading articulates the theoretical-methodological frameworks of conceptual history and intellectual biography, in order to observe how certain terms and notions are mobilized, displaced, and resignified throughout the author’s work. The article is thus engaged in a mode of historical writing attentive to the textual construction of terms, words, and notions that are simultaneously implicated in the course of a lived life. By analyzing the frictions between language, critique, and context in Frampton’s writings, the article argues that his change in vocabulary may also be read as a form of self-critique and as a response to the demands of a more contextually aware architectural thought in the contemporary world.

Architecture and domesticity in the postwar United States: formation and reproduction of the white American identity

Ana Helena Leichtweis — 2025-06-27

Little White Houses is relevant to history, as it integrates architecture into the cultural formation and social structure of the United States. In addition, it stands out among architectural historiographies for examining the expression of racial identities and differences in domestic space. Its reflections present a unique vision of architecture as an agent in the construction of identities, as well as in the reproduction of discourses of power and rhetorics of dominance, in a context not so far from the present. In the contemporary scenario, its value lies in its paradoxical and interdisciplinary vision, which can contribute to studies aimed at revising culturally constructed racial conceptions, as well as dismantling the system of social injustices that persists in our society.

Editorial: El lugar de la arquitectura

José Joaquín Parra-Bañón — 2025-06-27