Description: After the death of Franco, Spain experienced a new sense of energy and purpose that expressed itself in a general cultural renaissance. Nowhere was this stronger than in Barcelona, the traditionally liberal and cosmopolitan capital of Catalonia. An architectural new wave was born, in which one of the leading figures is Enric Miralles.

Having grown up in that city and gained his architectural education there, it is hardly surprising that his work has some Catalan flavour, perhaps demonstrating something of the nonconformist verve one might expect in Gaudi's home city. But architects and students of architecture are also inevitably exposed to international influence from the start of their careers, not only being made familiar with the international heroes of the Modern Movement, but also following current developments through the international magazines. In the case of Enric Miralles this exposure was further increased by an influential period of study at Columbia University in New York, which left him also fluent in English.

Thus although his work is regional in the sense of being strongly specific to place, it clearly relates to an international debate, and it is clearly geared to an international audience. In its attitude to context, its experiment with complex intersecting geometries, its concern with body-imagery, its suggestive interaction with landforms and its daring use of materials, it often has more in common with the work of certain architects of the same generation in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands than with that of his Spanish contemporaries.

This is the new regionalism of the 1990s: building at home in celebration of place and in acknowledgement of localvalues, but following ways and means that flash around the world.

Peter Blundell Jones is Professor of Architectural History at Sheffied University and a regular contributor to The Architectural Review. His writings include a recently published comprehensive monograph on Hans Scharoun; in the moment he is preparing a book on Hugo Haring.

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