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
Architecture and Landscape in the Hydrosocial Heritage of Iberian Dam Settlements
In the mid-20th century, the construction of dams became central to national development strategies in Spain and Portugal, which often presented them as symbols of modernity, industrial progress and self-sufficiency. These infrastructures are often represented as monuments of technical innovation, arising from prolonged experimentation with architectural and engineering techniques adapted to territorial conditions. At the same time, they embodied complex processes of public policy implementation. This article examines the construction of three dams in remote areas – Los Bermejales, Miranda do Douro and Picote – which required the development of new settlements. It uses architecture, landscape and heritage as analytical lenses through which to produce a diachronic reading of the development and transformation of these spaces throughout the last 70 years. The study draws from primary historical sources – such as architectural projects, official records, and first-person texts -, secondary sources, and the analytical use of photographs and aerial imagery to trace a history of the new settlements from the 1950s to today. In this way, it seeks to examine the role of these dams in the profound transformation of existing landscapes and in the processes of modernisation and social change in peripheral regions of the Iberian Peninsula.
Copyright (c) 2026 Catarina Ruivo Pereira, Sheila Palomares Alarcón, Ivonne Herrera-Pineda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The cultural landscape of the Pas valleys in Burgos: memory, construction, and project
The Pas valleys, located in northern Spain between Burgos and Cantabria, are a landscape of high cultural and environmental value. While the Cantabrian side is better known and has been more developed for tourism, the Burgos side has barely experienced this, which has kept it in a more pristine state until now. To make its preservation viable and sustainable, it is necessary to understand its features and design with a vision of the future. This place must be analyzed taking into consideration its “landscape unity”, meaning from a multidisciplinary perspective that encompasses geography, ethnography, culture, society, infrastructures, and architecture. This landscape is the dynamic result of an evolving way of life, characterized by the combination of bovine breeding with an herbal optimization system based on the successive exploitation of farms located at different altitudes, among which the family-productive unit moved throughout the year (transterminance). This modus vivendi, where the cow is the fundamental pillar, is different today from the past, with the resulting impact on the landscape. The solution lies in finding a territorial economic system that balances the traditional stockbreeding with the arrival of new residents who understand and respect its essence and memory. Currently, the state of conservation is good at all scales, from the plots of land to the cabins or the walls. It is necessary to protect it by establishing frameworks for new occupation and construction systems, so that the economic activity is not paralyzed and the opportunities for revitalization are not hindered, while ensuring the preservation of a cultural landscape whose exceptional heritage quality is the main driver for its own conservation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Enrique Jerez Abajo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
The construction of memory: Architecture and the city
This text examines the role of memory as a creative foundation of architecture and the city, understood not as a mere evocation of the past but as an active, selective, and transformative process. Drawing on the reflections of Aldo Rossi, Maurice Halbwachs, Aby Warburg, and Michel de Certeau, it explores the notion of collective memory as it relates to places, monuments, and urban form, as well as its tension with history understood as a chronological narrative. The study addresses the concept of damnatio memoriae as applied to post-war Europe, analysing different strategies of reconstruction and reinterpretation of the past in Italian architecture, from Neorealism to Neoliberty. It further investigates the “work of quotation” (A. Compagnon) as a creative mechanism in three projects by Le Corbusier—the Villa Favre-Jacot, the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Ronchamp, and the Convent of Saint-Marie de la Tourette—in which immediate and remote memories are transformed into new spatial configurations. Finally, the text explores the domestic dimension of memory, understanding the house as a vital repository of experiences, objects, and meanings, where architecture, biography, and imagination are intertwined. Memory thus emerges as an essential material of the architectural project, capable of articulating past and present through an active construction of meaning.
Copyright (c) 2026 Jorge Torres Cueco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
To Nuno Portas and Stephen Ramos, in memoriam
Copyright (c) 2026 Carmen Díez Medina, Javier Monclús https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Architect Smiljan Radić's (Santiago, Chile, 1965) interest in the accumulation of ruins is a long-standing manifesto. In one of his first published texts, "Frágil fortuna [Fragile fortune]“ (1998), he thus titles the "sowing of dust" that makes up the "world as remains" he claims we inhabit. "Fragile" refers to the "state of physical calamity, a widespread infection of memory" of the buildings cited in the text, and "fortune" seems to allude to Georges Perec's famous work Espèces d'espaces [Species of Spaces] (1974), in which the author notes a "placid small thought" in which he calls "my fortune" the collection of ordinary objects accumulated by the passage of time in its own history. This article takes as its fortune the collection Radić amassed in Vilches since the beginning of the 1990s — the houses Chica (1995-96), A (2007), for the Poem of the Right Angle (2010-12), and Transparente (2010-12), Heidegger's Cabin, and the Corral Studio (2014-15). The following text chronicles the appearance and disappearance of the pieces that comprise this fortune, their processes of construction, demolition, or renovation, and explores the different relationships that each of the works establishes with the topography and landscape. Furthermore, it seeks to show how this collection of works, which tells the story of Radić's production, also records his intentions and design recurrences, in addition to serving as a kind of experimental field for his architecture.
Copyright (c) 2026 Suelen Camerin, Carlos Eduardo Binato de Castro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Memory, design and landscape construction
This issue of the journal brings together research addressing diverse themes and disciplines in landscape construction through the lens of memory. The scales covered are equally varied, ranging from the territorial and urban to the specific of the architectural project. The broad participation of researchers has allowed for the compilation of an index with examples from different countries and regions, creating a highly engaging international perspective. The two thematic axes—landscape construction and the contribution of the architectural project to it—guide the corresponding conversations with two leading academic and professional authorities in the field: Joan Nogué and José Ignacio Linazasoro. Nogué delves into the landscape as the face of the territory and the necessary balance between individual perception and collective action, between subject and object. Linazasoro addresses the theme of memory as a material for the architectural project, associating it with terms such as continuity, maintenance, and permanence.
Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Labarta Aizpún, Ascensión Hernández Martínez, Alegría Colón Mur https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
GIANPAOLA SPIRITO – Verso un’architettura essenziale. Processi, metodi e temi di quattro studi di architettura spagnoli: Flores & Prats, Elisa Valero Ramos, Harquitectes, Ted’A arquitectes
GIANPAOLA SPIRITO Verso un’architettura essenziale. Processi, metodi e temi di quattro studi di architettura spagnoli: Flores & Prats, Elisa Valero Ramos, Harquitectes, Ted’A arquitectes. Libria, Melfi (Italia), 2024, 224 pp. Tapa dura. 26,00 € Idioma: italiano ISBN: 9788867644100
Copyright (c) 2026 Jorge Ramos Jular https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
BERTA BARDÍ-MILÀ – Arne Jacobsen: la arquitectura de la casa. El patio y el pabellón
BERTA BARDÍ-MILÀ Arne Jacobsen: la arquitectura de la casa. El patio y el pabellón Fundacion Arquia, Madrid, 2023, 260 pp. Tapa dura. 38 € Idioma: Español ISBN: 978-84-125906-0-9
Copyright (c) 2026 Jairo Rodríguez-Andrés https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
GIULIO BARAZZETTA – Architettura e paesaggio. I luoghi e le case di Bruno Morassutti
GIULIO BARAZZETTA. Architettura e paesaggio. I luoghi e le case di Bruno Morassutti Pendragon, Bolonia, 2025, 151 pp. Tapa blanda. 30 € Idioma: italiano ISBN 13: 9791257180546
Copyright (c) 2026 Carmen Díez Medina https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Granularity, consistency and scalability in morphological studies. On some recent Works by Dani Arribas-Bel and Martin Fleischmann
Some recent work by Martin Fleischmann and Dani Arribas-Bel offers a chance to talk with them about data analysis applied to the study of the form and behaviour of our cities. Their reflections, from an academic perspective, suggest some valuable ideas about the opportunities of working with data, about the use of artificial intelligence in the study of urban fabrics and about the sense of responsibility of their work.
Copyright (c) 2022 ZARCH https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
From modelling to the model. A conversation with Laia Grau Balagueró
To close this thematic exploration of the use of data and methodologies that help us to describe, discover, predict, or simulate our urban environment, we interviewed Laia Grau Balagueró. Her vision, as urban planning manager of the city of Barcelona and with a broad experience linked to public administration and freelance professional activity as an architect, allows us to recognise the challenges and opportunities that the discipline of urban planning has regarding the transfer of this knowledge to the public policies that will define the urban model of our cities.
JOAN NOGUÉ (ed.) Yi-Fu Tuan Icaria Editorial S.A., Barcelona, 2018, 262 pp. Tapa blanda. 21,00€ Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-9888-815-7
Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Ávila Calzada https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
PIER PAOLO TAMBURELLI. On Bramante MIT Press, Cambridge, 2022, 348 pp. Tapa dura. 28 € Idioma: inglés ISBN-10: ‎ 0262543427 ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0262543422
Copyright (c) 2026 Isabel Ezquerra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
JOSÉ IGNACIO LINAZASORO - Las paradojas de Sigurd Lewerentz. Del Clasicismo al estilo tardío
JOSÉ IGNACIO LINAZASORO Las paradojas de Sigurd Lewerentz. Del Clasicismo al estilo tardío Ediciones Asimétricas. Madrid, 2024, 88 pp. Tapa blanda. 22 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-10065-08-6
Copyright (c) 2026 Eduardo Delgado Orusco https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
CHRISTIAN NORBERG-SCHULZ - Genius Loci. Paisaje, ambiente y arquitectura
CHRISTIAN NORBERG-SCHULZ Genius Loci. Paisaje, ambiente y arquitectura Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, 2024, 307 páginas. Tapa blanda. 30 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-291-2137-7
Copyright (c) 2026 José Antonio Alfaro Lera https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Landscape construction. Conversation with Joan Nogué
Joan Nogué is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Girona and advisor to the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia, an institution he founded and directed from its creation in 2004 until 2017. He earned his PhD from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and pursued further studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (USA). He is the recipient of the King Jaime I Award for Urbanism, Landscape and Sustainability and a member of the scientific committee of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche (Italy), among many other national and international institutions and organizations. In 2022, Harvard University recognized his contributions to the field of landscape studies.
Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Labarta Aizpún, Alegría Colón Mur https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
Memory as project material. Conversation with José Ignacio Linazasoro
José Ignacio Linazasoro, born in San Sebastián in 1947, qualified as an architect in 1972. He has been Professor at the Universities of Valladolid and Madrid and has served as a visiting professor at numerous universities, including the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Polytechnic University of Milan and the Polytechnic University of Turin. He has received numerous national and international awards for his work, including the Piranesi Prize and, more recently, the Gutiérrez Soto Prize awarded by the Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM) and the Gold Medal for Architecture. He is an Honorary Member of the College of Architects of Cádiz. Some of his works, such as the Central Library of the UNED, the Escuelas Pías Cultural Centre and the Church of Valdemaqueda, are outstanding landmarks of the last decades of Spanish architecture. The Cathedral Square in Reims and the Troyes Convention Centre are two notable works within his international production. He has published several texts, including Permanencias y Arquitectura Urbana and La Memoria del Orden, the latter also published in Italy and France.
LUIS ENRIQUE OTERO CARVAJAL, JAUME CLARET MIRANDA (eds.) – El gran retroceso. El primer franquismo, 1939-1953 / JAUME CLARET MIRANDA, LUIS ENRIQUE OTERO CARVAJAL (eds.) – Una modernización autoritaria. Transformaciones urbanas y ciudadanía en reconstrucción
LUIS ENRIQUE OTERO CARVAJAL Y JAUME CLARET MIRANDA (eds.) El gran retroceso. El primer franquismo, 1939-1953 Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2025, 430 p. 25 € Idioma: español ISBN: 9788410673717 JAUME CLARET MIRANDA Y LUIS ENRIQUE OTERO CARVAJAL (eds.) Una modernización autoritaria. Transformaciones urbanas y ciudadanía en reconstrucción, 1953-1975 Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2025, 340 p. 23,50 € Idioma: español ISBN: 9788410673878
Copyright (c) 2026 Ángel Martín Ramos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
MANTHA ZARMAKOUPI, SIMON RICHARDS (eds.) – The Delos Symposia and Doxiadis
MANTHA ZARMAKOUPI Y SIMON RICHARDS (eds.) The Delos Symposia and Doxiadis Lars Müller Publishers, Zurich, 2025, 504 pp. Tapa blanda. 45 € Co-editado con Evangelos Pistiolis Foundation Idioma: inglés ISBN: 978-3-03778-762-5
JESÚS MARTÍNEZ VERÓN – Fernando García Mercadal. Retrato de un arquitecto con sombrero
JESÚS MARTÍNEZ VERÓN Fernando García Mercadal. Retrato de un arquitecto con sombrero Institución Fernando el Católico, Zaragoza. 2024. 2 tomos, 985 pp. Idioma: español E-book disponible online: https://ifc.dpz.es/publicaciones/ebooks/id/4068
Copyright (c) 2026 Carlos Sambricio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
CHARLES MONTGOMERY – Ciudad feliz. Transformar la vida a través del diseño urbano
CHARLES MONTGOMERY Ciudad feliz. Transformar la vida a través del diseño urbano Capitán Swing, Madrid, 2023 [2015], 407 páginas. Tapa blanda. 23 € Idioma: español ISBN: 978-84-126198-1-2
Copyright (c) 2026 Javier Monclús https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
MARK MONMONIER Cómo mienten los mapas Nola Editores, Madrid, 2023, 281 pp. Tapa blanda. 24,50€ Idioma: español. ISBN: 978-84-18164-19-4
Copyright (c) 2026 Daniel Ballarín Ferrer 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
In between permanence and temporariness. On camps, urbanity and time
The texts that make up this issue of ZARCH are situated in the field of critical speculation, but they are also inscribed in a more practical sphere and study examples that visualise in a concrete way the transfers between temporality and permanence of contemporary urban conditions. They do so from points of view linked to architecture or urban planning, and also from the visual arts. The whole builds up a broad and multifaceted panorama.
Copyright (c) 2024 ZARCH https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
A city is not a static tree: understanding urban areas through the lens of real-time behavioral data
Cities are the main ground on which our society and culture develop today and will develop in the future. Against the traditional understanding of cities as physical spaces mostly around our neighborhoods, recent use of large-scale mobility datasets has enabled the study of our behavior at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales, much beyond our static residential spaces. Here we show how it is possible to use these datasets to investigate the role that human behavior plays in traditional urban problems like segregation, public health, or epidemics. Apart from measuring or monitoring such problems in a more comprehensive way, the analysis of those large datasets using modern machine learning techniques or causality detection permits to unveil of the behavioral roots behind them. As a result, only by incorporating real-time behavioral data can we design more efficient policies or interventions to improve such critical societal issues in our urban areas.
PABLO SENDRA, RICHARD SENNETT - Diseñar el desorden: Experimentos y disrupciones en la ciudad
Pablo Sendra, Richard Sennett Diseñar el desorden: Experimentos y disrupciones en la ciudad Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2021. 232 pp. Softcover. Language: Spanish. 18,50 € ISBN: 978-84-1362-315-3
Urban planning and data: opportunities, risks and limitations
The growing complexity of global urban processes is challenging the capacity of urban planning instruments and historically accumulated knowledge about the city. The need to increase traditional tools in order to review concepts and propose new approaches is ever-growing. This article reflects on how the ability to generate and analyse data on cities and on the processes that shape and modify them using digital technologies opens up a field of endless possibilities and opportunities, not without risks and limitations.
Atlas Reuse. Tools for the architectural reuse in Barcelona
The Atlas of architectural reuse deals with the study of buildings that have changed use over time in Barcelona, ​​including activities for which they had not been designed, as well as possible architectural strategies to program these changes of use successfully in the future. This article explains the functioning of the Atlas Reuse, the methodology used, and the multiple readings on the city that it allows. It also presents new lessons derived from this research up until now. In this way, the Atlas reveals its potential as a versatile and valuable tool that offers a diagnosis of reuse in Barcelona in the present, but at the same time, allows us to extract useful strategies for planning the city of the future.
Letters between Alejandro Herrero and Félix Candela: friendship, architecture, and construction techniques
The architects Alejandro Herrero Ayllón and Félix Candela Outeriño forged a solid friendship as students at the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid (graduating class of 1935); they shared different activities and study trips and jointly authored notes on Strength of Materials. Following the vicissitudes of the Spanish Civil War, they managed to avoid the supposedly strict control of the period and continued this friendship through a lengthy correspondence. Following a study methodology which contrasts primary sources, this article delves into these letters, a wealth of autobiographical information. In these documents, which are preserved at the Municipal Archive of Huelva and Library Archive at Columbia University (New York), the authors described their lives, different examples of architecture, construction techniques, early conferences, and articles, offering each other support. Exiled to Mexico, Candela was working on his first structural projects, which earned him international recognition. Meanwhile, Herrero, based in Huelva, was building his first projects for social housing and villages, incorporated into the settings and adjusted to the harsh reality of the Spanish post-war period. He then went on to design major buildings which were included in the Iberian Docomomo. All these documents expose the historical contexts that conditioned their lives and architectures, providing new perspectives.
Contributions of space syntax to research on the morphological and social history of urban space: the cases of Morella and Montblanc
The principal aim of this article is to explore the contributions of space syntax to historical research on the interactive relationship between the urban form and the social use of space. The article develops this subject and explores the spatial structure of the walled areas of Morella and Montblanc, with an emphasis on the entrance gates. The theory and methods of space syntax are applied to current urban planning and ancient plans of the two cities, and the analytical information extracted is contrasted with ethnographic observations and historical documents to provide context and solve ambiguities. The results of the analysis in Morella show that when one of the city's entrance gates disappears the spatial culture of the place changes completely; nonetheless, the social history is inscribed in the morphological history. In the case of Montblanc, studying the evolution of the urban form provides new information on the cultural significance of the wall's entrance gates in the city of the past. As this work concludes, space syntax is making significant contributions to research on the morphological history and the social history of urban space. These contributions may have direct consequences for design decisions in the recovery and/or management of heritage.