Perhaps because there are so many assertive buildings strutting down the runway, I was drawn to a couple of the more modest projects. They are easy to miss. The Portuguese Pritzker Prize winner, Álvaro Siza, has built a small and wonderfully understated apartment and office building in an old part of Granada; it is both modern and contextual—no mean feat. The projected Museum of Andalusia, likewise in Granada, by Madrid-based Alberto Campo Baeza, is another deceptively simple design. The partly underground rectangular building surrounds an ellipsoidal outdoor court. From the court, one sees the facade of a bank building (at right) built by Campo Baeza five years earlier. On the other side, an eight-story administrative slab shelters the museum from a nearby elevated highway. This straightforward composition is enlivened by two ramps that overlap and spiral within the court, providing a sculptural foil to the rigorous rectangular geometry of the building. It's all done without fanfare and with great skill.


Museum of Andalusia (Estudio Arquitectura Campo Baeza). Image courtesy MoMA, New York.


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