Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Creation (C3A)

Nieto Sobejano — Fuensanta Nieto with Enrique Sobejano, joint authors of everything the office builds — set the centre on the far bank of the Guadalquivir, across the water from the historic city, on ground that turned up remains of Saqunda, the Umayyad suburb of Córdoba. The building keeps low, four levels including basement and roof, and does its work through a single device: a precast concrete skin moulded into a field of hexagons, some flat, some pressed into deep cells. Where a cell is opened it becomes a window; where it is fitted with lighting and video it becomes a screen facing the river. From a distance the wall reads as an abstract, almost tiled pattern; up close it is a piece of relief casting. Construction began in 2008 and finished at the end of 2013, but a dispute between the city and the regional government over who would build the approach roads delayed the opening until December 2016.