David Cohn is a Madrid-based architecture critic and international correspondent for Architectural Record. His latest book, Spain: Modern Architectures in History, was released in 2025.
Using raw primary materials such as concrete and galvanized steel, simple forms, and an adroit manipulation of scale, the Madrid-based architect Héctor Fernández Elorza gives even small projects a monumental authority.
The theme of circling, flowing movement runs through every project by Grupo Aranea. Based in the coastal city of Alicante in southeastern Spain, the studio is led by architect Francisco Leiva Ivorra and his wife, landscape architect Marta García Chico, who draw inspiration from curving natural forms.
For the Relojería Alemana, a watch and jewelry boutique in Majorca’s new Puerto Adriano marina, the Madrid-based studio OHLAB redefines the traditional jewelry store, dissolving barriers between inside and out, as well as between customers and sales staff, to create a gleaming glass-walled salon.
Social Network: A trio of young architects enlivens a housing block for seniors by cleverly manipulating its facades and creating a series of community spaces.
For the Renaissance Barcelona Fira Hotel, sited near a convention center on the highway to the city's airport, Jean Nouvel took on the challenge of making meaningful architecture out of what Rem Koolhaas famously defined as “junkspace“—the anonymous, generic sprawl that rings cities everywhere.
The design for a convention center in central Spain's historic city of Toledo presented Rafael Moneo with a fascinating problem: how to insert a modern, 400,000-square-foot building into a city that has scarcely changed since El Greco painted it in the 16th century.
With his design for the Atrium House, 36-year-old architect Fran Silvestre takes a fresh look at 20th-century Modernist formulas, from the courtyard houses of Mies van der Rohe of the 1920s and '30s to the Case Study Houses in Los Angeles of the 1950s and '60s.
Behind the eye-catching design of the 969,000-square-foot Rey Juan Carlos Hospital in the Madrid suburb of M'stoles, Spanish architect Rafael de La-Hoz has created a therapeutic atmosphere, organizing the building around accessible atria that help orient patients and immerse them in a protective, inward-looking environment.
The Maspalomas Oasis Hotel on the island of Gran Canaria, in 1968-1971. The hotel, designed by José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún, may be demolished. On the island of Gran Canaria, a last-minute battle wages to save the Maspalomas Oasis Hotel, designed by the Madrid architects José Antonio Corrales and Ramón Vázquez Molezún and completed in 1971. Weaving together pavilions, gardens, and courtyards, and preserving a virgin grove of palms, the project is a model for harmonious intervention in the unique volcanic landscape of the Canary Islands. The owners, the hotel chain RIU, plan to close the hotel and
When approaching a design problem, Madrid-based architects Fernando Rodr'guez and Pablo Oriol of the firm FRPO try to find a method of attack rather than jumping right in with a solution.