Product Description

Arquitectura Viva 213 COBE

Arquitectura Viva 213 COBE

Ice cracks, and so does our future. The polar regions control the planet’s weather system, and the gradual loss of marine or glacial ice is altering significantly the global dynamics of climate. To the lower reflection of solar radiation we must add the greater amount of freshwater in oceans, whose system of currents is affected by changes in temperature or salinity, while the thawing of the permafrost releases methane, which joins the CO2 from the burning of coal, oil, and gas in intensifying the greenhouse effect, in the end the key factor in climate change. The Arctic – even more than the Antarctic, protected by a circumpolar current that isolates it from warm tropical air – is our Achilles heel, and in it the temperature has risen up to 4°C, in contrast with the average 1°C of the planet; the photographs of Tom Hegen document dramatically the fracture and the fusion of its ice sheet.
Both international organizations and scientific meetings warn about the effects of climate change on water, food, and energy resources, with the resulting increase in poverty, migrations, and conflicts, but these are voices that cry out in the wilderness, moving the young students of ‘Fridays for Future’ to demand the corrective measures that adults seem unable to apply. But the political, economic, and media power of energy giants like Exxon Mobil tilt the scale in favor of fossil fuels, and not even the fires, droughts, and floods that devastated many regions last year, from California to Australia – not to mention Chicago, which has experienced temperatures as low as those in parts of Mars –, change the collision course of the climate crisis, with the ever-increasing emissions to an atmosphere that has reached the greatest concentration of CO2 in three million years.
The transition to renewable energies, profitable even without subsidies, is moving forward swiftly, and the experience of other mutations – from horses to cars, from sails to steam, and from landlines to cell phones – suggests that the maximum in the use of fossil fuels (what we know as ‘peak oil’) could be reached sooner than forecasted, alleviating the payment balance of importing countries and altering the geopolitical equilibrium at the expense of producing petro-states. But the current melting pace of polar ice caps was not expected until the end of the century, so the innovations in the field of renewable energy cannot guarantee making it on time to prevent the worst, and many recommend studying the strategies of countries like Israel to face the certainties of an arid Spain. The carbon tax and government action against climate change are essential, but that crack in the ice might never close.

Arquitectura Viva 213 COBE
Dossier: Material Libraries

Actualidad / News
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Grietas en el hielo Cracks in the Ice Sheet
Focho: Premio Pritzker  Arata Isozaki
Experimentos escultóricos  Heatherwick, Snøhetta
Despedidas  Roche, Mendini, Chirino
Formas futuras  Google, Robotics

COBE

Ampliación de la sede de la Cruz Roja
Red Cross Volunteer House Extension

Reconversión de un silo
Transformation of a Silo

Jardín de infancia
Frederiksvej Kindergarten

Tres edificios residenciales
Housing and Retail

Arte y Cultura / Art and Culture

Joaquín Medina Warmburg
Celebración total  Bauhaus, a Hundred Years Later

Fernando Gómez Aguilera
Prehistoria futurista  Manrique, a Centenary Master

Iñaki Bergera
El arte de la exuberancia  Higueras at Museo ICO

Libros / Books

Entre dos culturas  Giedion and America
Historia desde el mito  Bauhaus Monograph
Estricta estructura  Labics, Works and Theory
Receso complaciente  Dahl Rocha, Twenty Years

Dossier: Bibliotecas materiales / Material Libraries

OMA + Barcode Architects
Biblioteca Alexis de Tocqueville en Caen
Alexis de Tocqueville Library in Caen

Max Dudler
Biblioteca municipal en Heidenheim
City Library in Heidenheim

Sebastián Irarrázaval
Biblioteca municipal en Constitución
Public Library in Constitución

Vector Architects
Bibliteca frente al mar en Beidaihe
Seashore Library in Beidaihe

Productos / Products

Niall Ferguson
La plaza y la torre
Networks, Hierarchies, and Global Power