madrid: The Latest Architecture and News

The exhibition Wellbeing in the City, at the Casa de la Arquitectura and curated by Izaskun Chinchilla, is conceived as a critical device that reconsiders the foundations upon which urban wellbeing has historically been constructed. Rather than defining wellbeing as a set of indicators (life expectancy, obesity or diabetes rates) or the provision of services, the exhibition approaches it as a relational condition, dependent on the quality of interactions between bodies, communities, and environments. At the core of its conceptual framework lies the Quechua term Sumak Kawsay — Buen Vivir or Good Living — which integrates material, biological, social, and ecological dimensions within a single plane.

IE School of Architecture & Design will host, as part of its RE_SOLUTION public series, a lecture by Lord Marvin Rees OBE, Mayor of Bristol from 2016 to 2024, followed by a conversation with Santiago Íñiguez de Onzoño, Executive President of IE University.

Raymond Johansen was Governing Mayor of Oslo from 2015 to 2023, a period in which the city advanced policies linking climate objectives with urban management and development. During his mandate, Oslo incorporated environmental criteria into mobility planning, public space design, and municipal procurement, influencing how the city plans and builds. In his lecture within the series "Re_Solution" at IE School of Architecture&Design, Johansen will address his role in developing clean construction policies and the introduction of zero-emission construction sites within this broader framework. His experience provides insight into how municipal governance can affect the built environment through regulatory, technical, and administrative decisions.

This year’s lecture series CRAFT&CARE at IE School of Architecture and Design, curated by Grazielle Bruscato, invites students to reflect on how making, maintaining and repairing—across architecture, fashion and design—can be a transformative practice of attention, commitment and responsibility. The series highlights the resurgence of craft as both contemporary practices and cultural heritage, celebrating voices from across the globe, embracing diverse material traditions and design processes, and affirming care as a transversal force that fosters well-being, social cohesion and ecological sustainability.

Lecture by Alice Rawsthorn, an award-winning design critic and author, whose books include "Design as an Attitude", "Hello World: Where Design Meets Life" and, most recently, "Design Emergency: Building a Better Future", co-written with Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design at MoMA, New York. Alice's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and her weekly design column for The New York Times was syndicated worldwide for over a decade. In all her work, she champions design's potential as a social, political and ecological tool to foster positive change.