ZARCH. Journal of interdisciplinary studies in Architecture and Urbanism
ZARCH. Journal of interdisciplinary studies in Architecture and Urbanism is a biannual scientific publication, published in digital and paper versions, which presents, around successive monographic themes, original research work not previously published in other journals, books, congresses, seminars and other similar formats. It is aimed at a wide academic and professional public: architects and engineers, students and researchers of Architecture, Urban Planning and Engineering, and those interested in their projects and constructions. ISSN 2341-0531 ISSNe 2387-0346 DOI: 10.26754/ojs_zarch/23410531
Laudatory speeches for "Fernando de Terán and Joan Busquets" - Medalla de Oro de la Arquitectura 2025
The Higher Council of Spanish Architects' Associations (CSCAE) awarded the GOLD MEDAL FOR ARCHITECTURE 2025, ex aequo, to architects FERNANDO DE TERÁN (Madrid, 1941) and JOAN BUSQUETS (Barcelona, 1946). At the ARCHITECTURE AWARDS 2025 gala, held at the Fernán Gómez Theater in Madrid on July 3rd, the architects and urban planners José María Ezquiaga and José González-Cebrián prepared and read the respective Laudatory speeches for the two awardees. In fair recognition of the professional and academic careers of architects Fernando de Terán and Joan Busquets, we present on these pages the full texts of these presentations.
Copyright (c) 2025 José María Ezquiaga, José González Cebrián https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
SANDRA BARCLAY - Atlas sensible. Tiempo, memoria y recorrido en la construcción del paisaje
SANDRA BARCLAY Atlas sensible. Tiempo, memoria y recorrido en la construcción del paisaje Publicaciones Arquitectura PUCP, Fondo Editorial PUCP. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Perú, 2023, 292 pp. Tapa blanda. 145,00 S/. PEN Idioma: español ISBN/ISSN: 978-612-49156-6-6
Copyright (c) 2025 Ginés Garrido https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
In the context of the desertification of the Iberian Peninsula resulting from climate change, an economic boom is serving as an historic opportunity to implement a multidisciplinary deliberative forum capable of coming to agreement regarding a Spanish Regenerative Territorial and Urban Model (MUTRE) that is set for implementation before 2100. The MUTRE would serve as a legal framework for promoting and financing strategic projects involving adaptation, mitigation and regeneration, both in the contexts of Spanish compact cities and of the empty territory of Spain. For compact cities, known adaptation, mitigation and regeneration strategies are proposed. For the empty territory, land reconquest strategies and ways of inhabiting that are better aligned with local resources are speculated. Positioning water and energy cycles as the focus, regenerative strategic projects could be critical of mass tourism, water engineering systems, intensive and irrigation agriculture, and modern infrastructures such as water treatment plants, desalination plants, data centres and large-scale renewables.
Copyright (c) 2025 Margarita Jover https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Regenerative Urbanism and Proximity: Designing Cities for People
The article is presented as a general overview of issue 25 of ZARCH magazine, dedicated to Regenerative Urbanism. It reviews the main theoretical contributions that make up the theoretical framework that redefines the purpose of contemporary urban planning: it is not enough to minimise urban damage, but it is necessary to regenerate life in all its dimensions—ecological, social, cultural, and spiritual—placing the city as an active agent of planetary regeneration. It reviews various areas of particular importance in this field, such as public value and the common good; the transformation of the existing city and the opportunity presented by brownfields; and urban entropy and socio-environmental rebalancing, for example. The connection between the concept of Regenerative Urbanism and the “15-minute city” approach is analysed in detail, finding clear links when it is considered that proximity cannot be achieved without prior regeneration. In conclusion, the article ends with a “Manifesto for a Proximity-Based, Just, and Culturally Vibrant City”.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carlos Moreno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Safe and Just Space for our Territories. Interview with Kate Raworth and Leonora Grcheva on Doughnut Economics in Urban Planning
The Doughnut Economics model, created by Kate Raworth, has become one of the most influential frameworks for rethinking how cities and societies can thrive within both social and ecological boundaries. Through the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), Kate Raworth, Carlota Sanz and their team have translated this vision into practice, supporting cities, regions, and communities around the world in adopting new approaches to living within planetary limits. Among those promoting this transition is Leonora Grcheva, Cities and Regions Lead at DEAL, who works directly with local governments to adapt the Doughnut to their contexts, helping shape a new generation of urban strategies grounded in regeneration and distributive design.
Copyright (c) 2025 Miriam García, Iñaki Romero-Larrea https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
From Sitopia to Regenerative Urbanism: Designing Cities through Dood. A Conversation with Carolyn Steel
This conversation with Carolyn Steel examines how sitopian thinking and food-centred economics can act as structuring frameworks for regenerative urbanism. Taking food as a material, cultural and political lens, the interview addresses key issues such as redefining the “good life” in the 21st century, reconnecting cities with their territories, the question of scale in food systems, the role of small-scale initiatives as transitional infrastructures, and the potential of planning to foster more relational, territorial and ecologically integrated urban models. Rather than proposing technocratic fixes, Steel articulates a regenerative vision grounded in the social value of food, the renewed proximity between nature and society, and the capacity of cities and regions to imagine desirable post-growth futures.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jon Aguirre-Such, Pablo de la Cal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The text addresses the profound environmental and social crises generated by the extractive urban model that emerged from the Industrial Revolution, which has produced highly unsustainable cities and exceeded the planet’s regenerative capacity. Contemporary urbanism, largely focused on productivity and technological innovation, has often neglected domestic, social and ecological dimensions, resulting in fragmented, car-dependent and socially unequal urban fabrics. In this context of global systemic crisis, existing urban planning tools are insufficient to respond to interconnected challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and social inequality. The text proposes regenerative urbanism as a necessary paradigm shift that goes beyond sustainability, aiming not only to reduce impacts but to actively repair and revitalize urban ecosystems. Rooted in ecological thinking and traditions of cooperation and mutual aid, regenerative urbanism emphasizes symbiosis between human and non-human systems, resilience, biodiversity and adaptive capacity. It draws on historical and contemporary practices that prioritize human-scale environments, active mobility, inclusive neighborhoods, circular economies and efficient management of water, energy and materials. The call invites critical, historical and applied contributions that explore regenerative strategies across scales, from public space to territorial planning, as well as methodologies, governance models and educational experiences capable of shaping a resilient and cooperative urban future.
Ecological transition and decarbonisation
Copyright (c) 2025 Miriam García, Jon Aguirre-Such, Iñaki Romero-Larrea, Pablo de la Cal https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
LUIS PANCORBO CRESPO, INÉS MARTÍN ROBLES - A. Lawrence Kocher. American Architect
LUIS PANCORBO CRESPO, INÉS MARTÍN ROBLES A. Lawrence Kocher. American Architect Applied Research + Design, San Francisco-USA, 2025, 380 pp. Tapa dura. $60.00 Idioma: inglés ISBN: 978-1-961856-61-5
Copyright (c) 2025 Eduardo Delgado Orusco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
RICHARD HARRIS How Cities Matter Cambridge Elements in Global Urban History, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2021, 88 pp. Tapa blanda. 21 € Idioma: inglés ISBN 978-1-108-74926-8
Copyright (c) 2025 José Luis Oyón https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
ELISA GALLEGO PICARD - Lectura de un territorio atlántico en Galicia
ELISA GALLEGO PICARD Lectura de un territorio atlántico en Galicia Arquia, Barcelona, 2025, 216 pp. Tapa dura. 35 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-129670-1-2
Copyright (c) 2025 Fernando Quesada López https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
DAVE LÜTHI - Cousins Germains. Les architectes suisses formés en Allemagne, 1800-1920
DAVE LÜTHI Cousins Germains. Les architectes suisses formés en Allemagne, 1800-1920 EPFL Press, Lausanne, 2023, 438 pp. Tapa blanda. 52 € Idioma: francés ISBN: 978-2-88915-472-2
Copyright (c) 2025 Andrés Ávila Gomez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
VICTORIANO SAINZ GUTIÉRREZ - Cartografía poética. Ecos ibéricos de Aldo Rossi
VICTORIANO SAINZ GUTIÉRREZ Cartografía poética. Ecos ibéricos de Aldo Rossi Asimétricas, Madrid, 2025, 140 pp. Tapa blanda, 24 € Idioma: Español ISBN: 978-84-10065-86-4
Copyright (c) 2025 José Ignacio Linazaroso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
FERNANDA CANALES - Vivienda colectiva en México. El derecho a la arquitectura
FERNANDA CANALES Vivienda colectiva en México. El derecho a la arquitectura Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2023 [2017], 271 páginas. Tapa blanda. 35 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-252-3903-5
Copyright (c) 2025 Javier Monclús https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
HARALD BODENSCHATZ, VICTORIA GRAU, CHIRTIANE POST, MAX WELCH GUERRA (eds.) - Urban Planning in Nazi Germany. Attack, triumph, terror, in the European context 1933-1945
HARALD BODENSCHATZ, VICTORIA GRAU, CHIRTIANE POST, MAX WELCH GUERRA (eds.) Urban Planning in Nazi Germany. Attack, triumph, terror, in the European context 1933-1945 Dom publishers, Berlín, 2025, 623 pp. 52 € Idioma: inglés, alemán ISBN: 978-2-88915-472-2
Copyright (c) 2025 Carmen Díez Medina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
GIANCARLO DE CARLO - El público de la arquitectura
GIANCARLO DE CARLO El público de la arquitectura Bartlebooth, Lugo, 2023, 118 pp. Prólogo: Ethel Baraona Pohl. Traducción: Antonio Giráldez López y Pablo Ibañez Ferrera. Tapa blanda. 15 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-124970-9-0
Copyright (c) 2025 Landa Hernández Martínez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
COL·LECTIU PUNT 6 - Urbanismo feminista. Por una transformación radical de los espacios de vida
COL·LECTIU PUNT 6 Urbanismo feminista. Por una transformación radical de los espacios de vida Virus Editorial, Barcelona, 2023 (segunda edición), 240 pp. Tapa blanda. 16 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-17870-26-3
Copyright (c) 2025 Jon Aguirre-Such https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
ADOL SOTOCA GARCÍA (ed.) - Barcelona Besòs: current ecologies
ADOLF SOTOCA GARCÍA (ed.) Barcelona Besòs: current ecologies Ajuntament de Barcelona / Iniciativa Digital Politècnica. Oficina de Publicacions Acadèmiques Digitals de la UPC, Barcelona, 2024, 285 pp. Tapa dura. Acceso abierto Idioma: Catalán / Inglés ISBN: 978-84-10008-55-7 Doi: 10.5821/ebook-9788410008564
Copyright (c) 2025 Sergio García-Pérez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
DANIEL KNOWLES - Carmageddon (Autocalipsis). Cómo nos perjudican los automóviles y qué podemos hacer al respecto
DANIEL KNOWLES Carmageddon (Autocalipsis). Cómo nos perjudican los automóviles y qué podemos hacer al respecto Capitán Swing, Madrid, 2024, 287 pp. Traducción del inglés: María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia. 23 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-8412953213
Copyright (c) 2025 Ander Gortazar Balerdi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
KATE RAWORTH - Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
KATE RAWORTH Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist Random House International, London, 2018, 384 pp. Tapa blanda. 16 € Idioma: inglés ISBN: 9781847941398 Economía rosquilla: 7 maneras de pensar la economía del siglo XXI Ediciones Paidós. Traductor: Francisco J. Ramos, 2018, 384 pp. Tapa blanda. 20 € Idioma: español ISBN: 9788449334030
Copyright (c) 2025 Iñaki Romero-Larrea https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
CARLOS MORENO - La revolución de la proximidad: de la "ciudad mundo" a la "ciudad de los quince minutos"
CARLOS MORENO La revolución de la proximidad: de la “ciudad mundo” a la “ciudad de los quince minutos” Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2023, 200 pp. Tapa blanda. 18.95 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-1148-200-4
Copyright (c) 2025 Mikel Azkona Uribe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Safe Trails. Meeting Spaces for Civic Coexistence in Quito-Ecuador
The year 2022 was the most violent in Ecuador's history, with an 82% increase in violent deaths compared to 2021. In Quito, crimes rose by 46.3%, affecting the perception of security and quality of life. The lack of adequate infrastructure contributes to exclusion and inequality in access to public space. The mayor of Quito’s plan proposes the creation of gathering spaces to improve security and strengthen urban identity. It suggests that citizen security can be enhanced through the social construction of public space, promoting walkability, social cohesion, and interculturality. The Safe Pathways project aims to reclaim public space to encourage safe pedestrian mobility and improve social well-being. It is based on interventions such as lighting, traffic calming, and urban environment improvements, with a focus on socio-spatial equity, gender, security, sustainability, social capital, and transportation. Territorial analysis identified patterns for implementing these pathways, achieving a 30% reduction in crimes in the intervened areas and an increase in the perception of security. Additionally, infrastructure improvements have encouraged walkability and public space use, strengthening community life.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diego Vinicio Salgado https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Territorial co-existence and archipelagos. Paipa: between rural and urban.
Urban, rural, and environmental requirements must be equivalent transforming the territory, protecting the natural environment and local well-being. This study uses design as a research methodology in Paipa (Colombia). Proposals are compared to analyze variables of infrastructure, morphology, and socioeconomic and environmental conditions, prioritizing solutions between rural and urban areas. The design process is carried out in phases: site diagnosis and analysis, definition of rururban structures, design of integrative plans, and strategic projects applied in a workshop including architecture and regional planning students, resulting in diverse projects. Finally, we verified the functionality of sustainable strategies for the territory as a co-existence. We project scenarios to respond to situations of scarcity, equitable to the needs of people and natural systems, and defining archipelagos as functional units that cohesively foster and integrate rural and urban areas.
Copyright (c) 2025 Tomas Neu, Manuela Guzmán Ramirez, Ximena Samper de Neu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Interferences: New Scenarios for the Architectural Project
The constant evolution of the different ways of practicing architecture has accelerated in recent years due to a series of concomitant factors. Digitization, which was timidly integrated into studios in the early 1980s and has been sweeping in the last decade, has transformed the way we access information, draw, and even think about projects. The exponential increase in laws and regulations has also contributed to this process, with economic repercussions on construction methods, effective floor space, and resource management. The culture of image and the spirit of permanent immediacy that characterize our time have led to an acceleration of project-related processes, giving rise to the construction of discourses with little theoretical content and favoring the use of graphic fetishes as a common subterfuge for solving fundamental problems. At ZARCH 24, we have sought to identify the new working conditions linked to architecture and urban planning, the different plural and varied contexts of action, as well as the new responsibilities of both disciplines. We have also reflected on the formats for practicing the profession, the roles associated with it, and the way in which the project should be organized to respond to all the unknowns and challenges identified.
Copyright (c) 2025 Eduardo Delgado Orusco, Inés Martín-Robles, Luis Burriel Bielza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Interfered Modernity: A Coffee with Adolf Loos
The transition to modernity in medieval city of Vienna took place in the second half of the 19th century through an urban transformation driven by the emperor, as a representation of the future capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Ringstrasse, inspired by Parisian urban plans, was designed as a showcase for the neo-styles of a new era, but also as a platform for establishing the institutional ideological discourse. As an alternative to this linear boulevard within the “hollowed-out wall,” a series of atomized and introspective architectural spaces emerged: the Wiener Kaffeehaus. Within their interiors, alternative paths to the imposed modernity were conceived, such as the Viennese Secession, which promoted the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk—the total work of art—integrating art, architecture, and everyday objects. Between the reproductive continuity of institutional modernity and the evolutionary disjunction of a dissident modernity, an individual emerged—unadapted to the Viennese bourgeois society. Educated in the unprejudiced metropolises of modern America, Adolf Loos became the instigator of an incipient interfered modernity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ricardo Montoro Coso, Franca Alexandra Sonntag https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Architecture and Urban Planning in Contemporary Crises: Deontology and Climate Security
This article examines the role of architecture and urban planning in contemporary crises, from the 2008 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and the current climate emergency. Revisiting Buchanan’s Big Rethink (2011)—a necessary radical revision of architectural and urban principles—the study analyzes regulatory frameworks and urban strategies that have emerged in response to these crises. Based on a corpus of over 500 press articles, the research identifies emerging discourses and proposes legal and deontological tools to strengthen the profession’s strategic role in adapting to and mitigating climate insecurity in urban environments. The study concludes that it is essential to reform architectural and urban planning practices to expand professional responsibility in addressing emerging environmental and social challenges.
Copyright (c) 2025 Irene Quintáns-Pintos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Participatory processes, politics and something from the architect. Symmetries or the paradoxes of more is less
The increasingly frequent participation of citizens in the design of public spaces is forcing architects to establish geometric patterns of consensus adaptable to the plurality of demands that arise in these forums. Paradoxically, symmetry as a principle of equivalence and open order, aims to facilitate a space of understanding between the control necessary in these processes and the freedom of action that is demanded. Analyzing both past and present projects of these participatory architectures, we observe the reiteration in these symmetrical organizational schemes as a framework that enables flexibility. This text focuses on one of the latter, the open-air auditorium in Plata and Castañar Park (Villaverde. Madrid), a work that was born from a participatory process where the particularity is that the competition for the drafting of the project had as bases the conclusions of this process. The analysis of the architectural solution adopted based on the results of the dialogue between the different agents allows us to reflect on these productive and operational interferences and the role that the architect must play in achieving flexibility, not only in the work, but also in the project itself. It is the logic of its genesis, the paradox of these times: more is less; more order, more symmetry, less projective rigidity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Francisco Felipe Muñoz Carabias, David García-Asenjo Llana, Enrique Castaño Perea https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
GO.DB. architects. A Different Approach to Architectural Practice in 1970s Valencia
This research analyzes the organizational structure of GO.DB. arquitectos, firm founded by architects Fernando Martínez García-Ordoñez (GO) and Juan María Dexeus Beatty (DB). Their strategy was conceived to approach architectural practice from a business-oriented perspective, as a response to the increasing complexity of the technical design process. García-Ordoñez’s involvement in the Technical Office of the Plan Sur allowed him to establish connections with engineers and large-scale infrastructure projects, an influence that was further enriched by his exposure to the collaborative and multidisciplinary work dynamics characteristic of major American firms. These references resonated with the religious beliefs García-Ordoñez shared with Miguel Fisac, with whom he collaborated at the beginning of his career, awakening his interest in industrialized construction and experimentation. As a result, GO.DB. arquitectos developed a distinctive multidisciplinary organizational model, characterized by a tendency towards specialization and departmentalization, which contributed to the firm’s expansion and diversification.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maite Palomares Figueres, Fernando Usó Martín https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Expanding the forms of visual representation. The First International Festival of Architectural Films at the 8th UIA Congress, Paris 1965
Researching on cinema as a means of creation, diffusion, and propaganda of the image of architecture, as well as the construction of our collective imaginaries and the symbolic appropriation of spaces, is also to work in favor of architecture. Therefore, to approach the relationship between architecture and cinema in international meetings of architects, where ideas were exchanged while architectural cinema was exhibited and awarded, is the general objective of this work in order to recover the knowledge of what existed and has disappeared from memory. The specific objective is to focus it on the event that consecrated the official union between both technical arts: the First International Festival of Architectural Films at the 8th Congress of the International Union of Architects (Union Internationale des Architectes, UIA), held in Paris in 1965. The text responds to a historiographic approach that investigates an archeology of documentary cinema linked to architecture and is a pioneer in identifying and inventorying the qualified filmography as an audiovisual framework in which the professional meetings took place, as well as their influence among the Spanish architects who attended. Recovering this heritage of the re-presentation and re-production of architecture is crucial for the training of students, which in recent times has been inexorably linked to these audiovisual media of communication and dissemination of information.
Copyright (c) 2025 Josefina González Cubero https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The Computer Centre of the University of Madrid. A space of collective experimentation and creative freedom
With the arrival of the first computer at the University of Madrid, the Computer Centre, one of the most significant spaces of creative freedom in pre-democratic Spain, began its activity. The incorporation of the machine into the different creative fields was woven around a series of seminar structures. They favored a formula for creativity based on collective experience, at the crossroads of disciplines. The Seminar on Composition of Architectural Spaces, coordinated by Javier Seguí de la Riva, initiates a reflection on the logical bases and operational foundations of design in architecture for its possible automation. A second line of research is the so-called architecture of regulation, in which the computer is integrated into the architecture itself. Juan Navarro Baldeweg and José Miguel de Prada Poole explore complementary aspects of the architecture of regulation. The theories enunciated by Navarro Baldeweg in Residential Automat, are experimented by Prada Poole in his prototypes of Structures of variable morphology. This study builds bridges between the fields of experimentation in architecture opened up by the pioneers of computation in architecture and the new models of contemporary digital design and production.
collective and interdisciplinary structure
Copyright (c) 2025 Mónica García Martínez https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Presence in architecture: materializing the stimuli
The concept of "presence" is gaining increasing relevance in architecture, particularly since its consideration by Peter Zumthor in Atmospheres (2006). This article examines the elusive concept from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, aiming to explore its potential as a design tool. After reviewing its definition and applications across various disciplines, the discussion delves into its relationship with human emotions, employing models such as Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions and Antonio Damasio’s theory of emotionally competent stimuli. The text addresses the creation of spaces capable of evoking emotions, emphasizing the interaction between architectural stimuli and personal experience. It also explores the impossibility of separating "presence" from cultural and subjective connotations, highlighting the need to understand how architectural attributes can materialize emotional stimuli. Finally, it is proposed that studying "presence" as a stimulus offers a design strategy that is conscious of its emotional impact and its ability to shape the user experience.
Copyright (c) 2025 Javier Sáez Gastearena https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0