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 Art of Herzog & de Meuron volume from the publisher:
The extraordinary career of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron is presented here through a series of essays that begins with a critical appraisal of their first twenty years working together from their native Basel under the formative influence of the architect Aldo Rossi and the artist Joseph Beuys; a trajectory driven by a spirit of constant research that made every project a fresh experience. Some of their essential works – including the Signal Box railway utility building, the Dominus winery, Tate Modern, stadiums ranging from Allianz Arena to the Beijing ‘bird’s nest,’ and Madrid’s Caixa Forum – are described in detail, but there is also commentary on unbuilt projects and stage sets for operas, a new cataloguing of the architects’ stylistic traits in dictionary form, and an exploration of their intellectual roots through texts published by the duo. Wrapping it all up is an article that syntactically abbreviates their biography as they turn 70 years of age, and ventures to explain why they have become the ‘gold standard’ of architecture
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
