The interweaving of indoor and outdoor spaces in #house#1.130, by Madrid architect Estudio Entresitio, recalls the condensed landscapes of classical Chinese gardens in Suzhou: tightly framed vistas are crossed in close succession by multiple spatial events–glazed pavilions, light wells, bridges, terraces, beds of vegetation, a covered pathway angling slightly out of view.

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.

One of the challenges in designing housing is finding a middle ground between monotonous repetition and arbitrary variety.

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.