Typologically Rooted and Thermodynamically Tuned

Contemporary Art Museum, Zhuhai, China, 2013 -

I kick off August with an introduction to an issue of the Spanish magazine AV Monografías dedicated to the firm of Ábalos + Sentkiewicz. 

"In the new, thermodynamically-tuned practice of Iñaki Ábalos and Renata Sentkiewicz, the aloof, prismatic volumes of the Ábalos and Herreros era, heirs of Alejandro de la Sota in their technical directness and formal austerity, have evolved into buildings that grow like organic tubers, mushrooms and trees, or emerge as eccentric landforms at a macro-urban scale, while inhaling cooling downdrafts and exhaling ascending columns of heated air."

The couple is now in Boston, where Ábalos is head of the architecture department at Harvard, and their portfolio of projects has become international.

Project Highlights:

Solar Tower (Subsidized Housing), Sociopolis, Valencia

High Speed Train Station, Logroño, Spain, 2013

Contemporary Art Museum, Zhuhai, China, 2013-

Performing Arts Center, Taipei

Tour Port de la Chapelle, Paris (project)

My 2500-word essay explores the dialectic in the firm's concept of "thermodynamic beauty":

"The firm has taken on the current mantra of sustainability ... not as a call for formal restraint, nor as merely a set of technical standards unrelated to the theory and methodology of design. Instead, they are treating the issues raised by sustainability as something of a paradigm shift in the way that architecture is conceived. They refer to this new paradigm under the general theme of the thermodynamic..."

"A second critical concept, which Ábalos makes reference to with terms such as "beauty" and "the picturesque", also underlies this new work. The firm adapts these 18th century aesthetic categories as a dialectical position, which they counterpose to the merely rational management of the quantified data that largely comprises what was formerly known as the design problem. Beauty, and the search for new forms of beauty, represents the dimension of subjective cultural and experiential values that the architect brings to the table, to begin the process in which the design solution is wrestled from the multiple and sometimes conflicting parameters of the design problem."

Una sostenibilidad alternativa
An Alternative Sustainability
 Introduction to issue
AV Monografías 169, 2012, pages 6 - 13.

Tour Porte de la Chapelle

Highlights of the XII Biennial

B Congress Center, Cartagena by selgascano. Photo: Iwan Baan

Announced last May, we present highlights from the 15 winning projects and 27 finalists of the XII Biennial of Spanish Architecture, for works completed between 2011 and 2012.

The jury was led by Fuensanto Nieto and Enrique Sobejano, and included Andrés Jaque, Sol Madridejos, Rafael Aranda (of RCR), Matthias Sauerbruch and Wilfred Wang.

All photos from the Biennial web page (visit it here).

Lalín City Hall by Mansilla + Tuñón

Campo de la Cebada, Madrid

This public garden on an empty lot owned by the city has been developed by an open, non-hierarchical collective of architects, neighbors, neighborhood associations and cultural groups. It is one of several such projects in the city's center.

Subsidized housing, San Vicente del Raspeig, Alicante, by Aldredo Payá. Photo: David Frutos

Restoration, Hippodrome de la Zarzuela, Madrid by Junquera Architects

Eduardo Torroja's great thin-shell vaults, from 1936, part of Carlos Arniches and Martín Domínguez's design for the racetrack, restored by the firm that has restored other works by the architects in Madrid. The project is a functioning racetrack.

Pilgrimage Museum, Santiago de Compostela, by Manuel Gallego

Gallego: 

"The building is not indifferent to its proximity to the Cathedral." 

"The route through the exhibition also leads towards a vision of the city and the Cathedral..." 

"Intensity is the necessary precondition for architecture."

Consolidation of Roman remains at Can Tacó, by Toni Gironés

The archeological site dates from the II Century BC and is located in a natural reserve in Montornès del Vallès, Barcelona.

School for Infants, Pamplona, by Pereda Pérez Architects. Photo: Pedro Pegenaute

Cineteca, Matadero, Madrid, by Churtichaga+Quadra-Salcedo Architects

Medialab-Prado, Madrid, by Langarita-Navarro Architects

Like the Matadero complex above, this is another restoration of an old factory in Madrid's center. And like many new cultural facilities around Spain, the project lacks funding to go into operation due to the crisis. Victor Navarro is the son of architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg (see next project).

Hertzian Library, Rome, by Juan Navarro Baldeweg

Built in the former gardens of the Palacio Zuccari, which were orignally part of the terraced gardens of Lúculo, a Roman villa, a circumstance that Navarro took into account in his design.

Local government offices, Zamora, by a team lead by Alberto Campo-Baeza

I've left out some urban projects in the above listings. 

From the finalists, the following projects looked interesting:

Recreation Center, Azuqueca de Henares, Madrid, by Ábalos+Sentkiewicz

 Iñaki Ábalos is the new Chair of the architecture department at Harvard's GSD.

Susidized housing, Coslada, Madrid, by Amann, Canovas + Maruri

Lounge Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico, by Cadaval & Solà-Morales

Youth Factory, Mérida, by selgascano

Subsidized housing, Sa Pobla, by José Ripoll + Juan Miguel Tizón

Restoration, Goián fort and river beach, Tomiño, Pontevedra, by Pablo Galleo Picard

Pedro is the son of architect Manuel Gallego (see above).

Dreamhamar, Norway, by Ecosistema Urbano

FAD Winners 2011

Update on the FAD Prizes, whose finalists were announced in my May 14th blog entry:

The top architecture prize was given ex aequo to Mansilla + Tuñón's Atrio Hotel in medieval Cáceres, and to a pair of houses by Portuguese architect Ricardo Bak Gordon in Lisbon (photo above), as reported in El País on July 15th.

Iñaki Ábalos' renovation of the Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona won the prize for interiors, and the Aigües de les Hortes de Vilabertran Park in Figueres, by Michèle Orliacq + Miquel Batlle, won the urbanism and landscaping prize. The head of the jury was Benedetta Tagliabue.

Photo by Fernando Guerra
Courtesy of ArquinFad