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Arquitectura Viva 189 ANTHROPOCENE

In Short. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture winners are announced; Zaha Hadid Architects finishes the Port Authority of Antwerp and Renzo Piano the Stavros Niarchos Center in Athens; Anupama Kundoo builds the Shah Houses in Auroville (India); Llàtzer Moix recounts the rise and fall of Santiago Calatrava.
Architecture and Life. The changes caused by humans on the Earth’s crust are of such magnitude as to have begun a new geological age, the so-called Anthropocene, and this historical mutation is reflected as much in cities as in landscapes and larger territories. Arquitectura Viva cannot fail to join the discussion on this period of transformation marked by questions that affect the building activity of people and have a great bearing on the sustainability agenda. Luis Fernández-Galiano scans this complex, at once anthropic and entropic panorama in an impressionistic essay that under the title ‘Architecture and Life’ unfolds in fifteen essays grouped in three sections. The first, ‘A Manufactured World,’ introduces themes like mankind’s transformation of the world, the challenges of growth, the importance of thermodynamics, the new technologies, and entropy; the second, ‘Horizontal Babel,’ defends compact organization as an efficient way to manage resources, in relation to themes like the dense city, the flows of exchange, the models of territorial occupation, and the virtues of the dense and public; finally, ‘The Age of Spectacle’ interprets Anthropocene in the light of architectural icons, visual fatique, the aesthetics of energy, sobriety, and the footprints of life. All of this comes with powerful images by photographers, artists, and architects that eloquently illustrate the ideas expressed by the author.
Two Triennials. Two important architecture triennial exhibitions were inaugurated within a few weeks of each other: Oslo’s, curated by a Spanish team and titled ‘After Belonging,’ taking stock of contemporary problems like belongings and refugees; and Lisbon’s, with its motto ‘The Form of Form,’ upholding the discipline’s essential aspects.
Humboldt’s Cosmos. Eduardo Prieto reviews The Invention of Nature, the biography of the scientist and romantic traveler Alexander von Humboldt, precursor of ecology and the anthropocene view of the world. Also: architecture as seen by filmmakers, modern photography in Spain, a monograph of Lluís Clotet, and a book of interviews with Peter Eisenman.
Dossier: Technological Glass. The last decades have seen very notable progress in the properties of glass, a material which has become adaptable to the environment. The specialist Rosa Urbano discusses such innovations in a technical article that is then followed by feature of three projects where glass plays a starring role: the Stadskantoor municipal building by OMA in Rotterdam, where the glazed surfaces are equipped with three layers of insulation; the Crystal Houses by MVRDV in Amsterdam, built with solid glass bricks; and The Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in New York, with its glazing of high thermal capacities.
To close, the architect Carlos Jiménez takes stock of the work of Bob Dylan, on the occasion of his being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

ANTHROPOCENE
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Dossier: Technological Glass

News
Aga Khan Award 2016
Hadid/Antwerp, Piano/Athens
Shah Houses, by Kundoo
We Wanted a Calatrava

Luis Fernández-Galiano
Fifteen Theses

A Man-Made World
The Molded Medium
Challenges and Risks
The Science of Heat
Digital Heyday
The Virtual and its Limits

Our Horizontal Babel
An Urban Humanity
Ecosystems and Flows
Space or Territory
Healthy Density
Threatened Common

The Age of Spectacle
Metastasis of Icons
More Visual Fatigue
A Thermal Aesthetic
Less but Better
Ordinary and Mortal

Art / Culture

Miguel Fernández-Galiano 
No Homeland, No Flag
Oslo Architecture Triennale

Maite Pérez Báguena 
In Praise of Discipline
Lisbon Architecture Triennale

Books
A Romantic Anthropocene
Cinema and Architecture
Modern Photography in Spain
Lluís Clotet, a Monograph
Conversations with Eisenman

Technique / Construction

Rosa Urbano Gutiérrez
Other Transparencies

Three Cases

OMA
Stadskantoor, Rotterdam

MVRDV 
Crystal Houses, Amsterdam

Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Educational Center, New York

Products

Carlos Jiménez 
Poetic Landscapes