Carlos Arroyo Arquitectos is a Madrid based architecture and planning office of international scope, with built work and projects in Spain, France, Belgium, Argentina, Colombia and Rwanda. Carlos Arroyo has developed protocols for innovation on all scales, from building technology to landscape management, developing new types of public building, or researching into new forms of housing. His work, described by critics as “sustainable exuberance”, claims to set the frame for a new architectural culture, language and aesthetics, through the ethics, technology and parameters of sustainability.

For more information on Carlos Arroyo’s works, please visit his website.

Appropriately titled “The Competition”, the film is an intensely fascinating account of how some of the best architects in the world -Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Dominique Perrault, Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster- toil, struggle and strategize to beat the competition, namely the 2008 competition for a new National Museum of Art in Andorra, a small town in the Spanish Pyrenees.

Check out the video!

Úrculo studied architecture at the ETSAM Technical School of Architecture in Madrid, at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and at the Institute of Design in Chicago. In 2006 he established his own studio. Since then, Urculo’s videos have become well known and highly respected throughout the architecture industry.

He develops a work of small and indefinite architecture in an opened format. “I no longer know what architecture is and what an architect should do”, says Úrculo. “I am interested in the peripheral side to architecture, the processes, developments and approaches that can be manipulated, sampled and translated into other scales, adapting to the composition of the project, creating new scenes/ experiences / expectations not contemplated previously.”

He completed projects of diverse format among others for Philippe Starck, Absolut, Renault, Saffron, Redbull, Zara, Fabrica, Domus, Davidelfin, Mansilla & Tuñón, La Casa Encendida, Matadero, Rolling Stone, X Bienal of Architecture and Urbanism. All projects where the boundaries between graphics, architecture, design are questioned.

For more information on Luis Úrculo’s production, please visit his website.

Rafael Moneo, whose office is based in Madrid, is the author of a series of architectural masterpieces, among which: the Museum of Roman Art in Mérida (1985), the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation in Palma de Mallorca (1992), the Kursaal Congress Center and Auditorium in San Sebastián (1999), Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles (2002). For more info, here’s an article (in English) from “El Pais” newspaper.

On the last day of their excursion to Madrid the TU Delft students visited El Campo de Cebada, conceived by Zuloark. In the words of Denis Kolesnikov: “After several days of critical discussions relating to the negative impact of the economic crisis on the city, this refreshing encounter with a citizen-initiated project that speaks critically against the indifference of the top-down urban planning tactics of property developers, gave us an opportunity to reflect on what positive implications the economic crisis may have had for the architectural profession and showed us new ways in which we can all shape our own urban environment.”

See this post for more insights on El Campo de Cebada.

“The architects used recycled industrial materials such as plastic, greenhouse fabric, and rubber tires to construct the air trees. And the structures aren’t only made of sustainable materials; each pavilion is itself sustainable as well. A crown of photovoltaic panels supplies energy for water fountains as well as power outlets for computers, concerts, and other activities. Excess electricity produced by the solar panels is sold to the municipality and pays for maintenance of the boulevard.”

For more information, read the article on Architizer.

On Thursday, November 14, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg planted the final tree in Liggett Terrace, marking the completion of the first 30 acres of new park on Governors Island. This ceremony represented a major milestone in the transformation of Governors Island into a lively destination with extraordinary public park space and a dynamic mix of commercial, educational, and not-for-profit uses.

For more information, see this post on West8′s website.