The 'Retratos' collection from Arquitectura Viva is a series of biographical sketches of the leading exponents of contemporary architecture. They contain in-depth interviews, reviews and analyses of major building works, accompanied by drawings by the architects themselves.
About the Surrealist Koolhaas volume from the publisher:
The sheaf of articles on the work and person of Rem Koolhaas introduces the architect from Rotterdam under the title ‘An Exquisite Corpse,’ in simultaneous reference to his surrealist impulses and the disjointed nature of a career in which books and exhibitions mark intellectual and formal turning points. Hence, commentaries on the publications – from the pioneering Delirious New York or the blockbuster S, M, L, XL to Pearl River Delta, Content, or Elements – are interspersed with critiques on the buildings and projects (the Casa da Música in Porto, the Guggenheims of Las Vegas, the Prada stores, the Seattle library, and the proposals for the city of Córdoba or New York’s Ground Zero), and one does not really know in the end which are more important in defining his conceptual and aesthetic trajectory. His retour à l’ordre with the curatorship of the Venice Biennale suggests a new swerve in his dazzling, provocative, and paradoxical itinerary, and the book closes with a detailed analysis of this latest veer.
Over the course of a fruitful career as critic of the newspaper El País and visible head of the magazines AV and Arquitectura Viva, Luis Fernández-Galiano has written on architecture and many other things. A rich sampling of his articles has now been grouped by themes in four series of nine booklets, together offering a vivid chronicle of architecture in the past decades.
Arquitectura Viva, 96pp, paperback, English text, 2023
