London 2012. Lights and shadows of a recyclable Games

For this reason, the event has prioritized urban and environmental issues over exclusively mediatic ones, a circumstance that is reflected in two articles that open this issue, analyzing the Games from opposite perspectives, illustrated with five uniques non-olympic buildings that have recently gone up in London.

This issue devoted to the Games shown in this first section the following buildings: Rothschild Bank, by OMA; The Walbrook, by N. Foster; One New Change, by J. Nouvel; One Hyde Park, by R. Rogers; Central St. Giles, by R. Piano and King's Cross Station, by J. McAslan.

From the list of Olympic facilities located in three different sites of the British capital, this section includes six structures whose characteristic is their environmental sensibility and the way in which they address recycling after the Games, constitutying the Works and Projects section of the magazine.

The Olympic Stadium, by Populous; the Velodrome, by Hopkins Architects; the Aquatics Center, by Zaha Hadid Architects; the Olympic Shooting Venues, by Magma Architecture; the Handball  Pavilion, by Make and the Basketball Pavilion, by Wilkinson Eyre Architects.

As is customary in Arquitectura Viva, a section of Art and Culture is included, in wich various authors expose current issues. The work of Wang Shu, Pritzker 2012, the career of the deceased Manuel de Solà-Morales, the exhibition of Antoni Muntadas, the multifaceted oeuvre of Gerhard Ritchter and a valuable analysis on Le Corbusier's late work are the topics listed.

The new tran station of Logroño, by Ábalos and Sentkiewicz, opens the section devoted to innovation, which also includes the second article in the Filters series, a text on biomimicry in architecture and a variety of innovative products organized by theme. To close, Stanislaus von Moos sparks a discussion with Vittorio M. Lampugnani related with the article "Inane Gestures", published in other issue.