Alberto Campo Baeza: Body and Soul

All photos © Javier Callejas

Sports Pavilion
University of Francisco de Vitoria, Madrid
db - deutsche bauzeitung
April 2018, pages 24 - 31; cover

Excerpts

Alberto Campo Baeza describes his gymnasium, built for the Legionaries of Christ's Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, as a "container of light," and he has submitted every detail of its design to the realization of this idea.

Large planes of translucent glass, which make up the upper sections of two of its enclosing walls, facing northwest and northeast respectively, flood the interior with indirect skylight.

Campo Baeza has muted all possible visual distractions in the interior, and finished every surface in white, in order to cede protagonism to the play of light across them. They receive and scatter the light, converting it into a spatial presence as palpable as the air itself. When we visited the building on a cloudy winter day, the interior seemed brighter than outside, as Campo Baeza proudly pointed out. The space collected and concentrated the light in a way that nothing around it could match.

The general massing forms a striking duality, in which the gymnasium and the narrow slab of the classrooms rise to the same height from either end of a common base.

This singular massing recalls the relation between Campo Baeza's Caja de Granada bank headquarters in Granada (2001), another "container of light", and his adjacent  Museum for the Memory of Andalucía (2010), where the low base ends in a spectacular, extenuated vertical slab at one end, which rises to the height of the bank on the other side, creating a conceptual spatial containment between them, although the two buildings are actually misaligned. Here the compositional idea is more condensed and conclusively realized.

Drawings courtesy of Albeto Campo Baeza

If there was something of the formal extremism of Boullée in the Museum in Granada, Campo Baeza also displayed a skillful use of stripped-down Beaux-Arts spatial organization in the plan, bringing to mind as well the compositional strategies of Post Modern proto-minimalists such as Aldo Rossi. We find these strategies here as well.

The Brick at Bankinter

Photo: DC

Rafael Moneo with Ramón Bescós, Bankinter bank headquarters, Paseo de la Castellana, Madrid, 1972-76

I am a brick fan, and look at these!

Machine-pressed brick, a technological throwback from the 19th century. I think it was Emilio Tuñón who told me years ago that they came from an old factory discovered somewhere in Valencia or Sevilla that still had one of the old presses running - I wonder if it was running on steam!

The press produces those sharp crisp edges and smooth faces. The bricks have "frogs" or indents on the top and bottom to receive the mortar, so they can fit tightly together and hardly show mortar at all on the facade. The bricks match those of the palacete that Moneo preserved on the site, although on the older building, with its heavy stone trim everywhere, there's not much brick in evidence.

Moneo here runs a thin line of tinted mortar into the horizontal joints, and leaves the vertical joints empty – the opposite of Frank Lloyd Wright at the Robie House in Chicago, where he rakes the horizontal lines deep to catch shadows, and fills the vertical joints flush to the face of the brick, and tinted the same color, which breaks the brickwork into continuous horizontal bands, like the overall composition of the house itself.

Francisco de Asis Cabrero and Rafael Aburto do something similar with the Roman brick of the National Trade Union Building (1949-56) on the Paseo del Prado in Madrid, one of the references for Moneo when he designed Bankinter.

Here Moneo shows off the thickness of the wall with those staggered jambs, like the window openings in a Romanesque apse, but then he adds those refined, modern bronze lintels and sills -- like the thin concrete slabs that slide through the openings in thick brick walls of his Roman Museum in Mérida.

Moneo used the same brick for the Atocha Train Station, with all the joints morterless, if I recall. I'll have to take another look at the Roman Museum. I remember being disappointed that the bricks of the arches weren't filed down into wedges calculated to match the circumference of the arch, as would have been the case in the United States in the 1880s, but that was perhaps too much to expect.

This is "dressed" brick, designed specifically for facades. It's not the brick you find when you take down the plaster in the kitchen of your old brownstone. It's a veneer that doesn't carry any structural load. In the 1970s, many of these beautiful dressed-brick facades were marred by sand-blasting and re-pointing in botched restorations. I'm not up on the techniques used today in restoring them, but I suspect that things have gotten better.

I hope to go back when the light is right (in the morning) to take a picture of the building as a whole, although it is rather impossible to get a good angle. It appears to be in pretty good shape, looking a little staid from today's perspective but still quite elegant. And so tiny! It is really crammed in there behind the old house, a very tight fit, like an overgrown garden addition.

Foto: Francesc Català.Roca, from Arquitecturas Bis 23/24, July-Sept. 1978, p. 16

This is the work that made Corrales and Molezun's Bankunión instantly out of date. It's Spain's version of the Post Modern, which Moneo practically invented. It's contextual and provocatively historical –those brick walls and bronze bas-reliefs in the upper spandrels, by Francisco López Hernández– without renouncing the modern.

DC

Rogers to Plan revised Distrito Castellano Norte in Madrid

Model and rendering from El País, May 22, 2017

Rogers Stirk Harbour+Partners will design the urban plan for a major new expansion of Madrid known as Distrito Castellana Norte.

There is still very little information on this move, the latest in the long history of the proposal to cover the tracks of the Chamartín Train Station with a massive development of housing and offices.  But El País interviews Richard Rogers and his associated Simon Smithson on their basic ideas for their plan, still in an early stage (Smithson is son of Peter and Alison Smithson, and Project Architect for Madrid's Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport).

An earlier plan for the area by urban designer José María Ezquiaga was commissioned by the city of Madrid under former mayors of the conservative Popular Party (PP). This plan was on hold for many years due in large part to the economic crisis of 2008. But now the Madrid real estate market is returning to life, particularly in the area of prime office space, and the city wants to position itself to cash in on the fallout of Brexit, and make itself attractive to London financial institutions looking to relocate business inside the European Union.

The current city government, under a coalition of new left-wing parties, rejected the high density of the Ezquiaga plan. But it is under considerable pressure to get the project moving, and it is now in negotiations with the regional government of Madrid (PP) and the BBVA Bank, which controls the development rights for the project, for its revision. And this is the point where Rogers comes in.

Pablo Guimón
"El arquitecto Richard Rogers y su socio Simon Smithson, al frente del plan Distrito Castellana Norte, dialogan sobre la ambiciosa intervención urbanística en la capital"
El País, May 22, 2017

Comments received

Juan Manuel Fernández Alonso
May 31 at 5:44pm
David Cohn, la historia es bastante más extensa y con más actores. La densidad cuestionada no proviene del plan parcial Ezquiaga 2011 sino de la modificación del plan general en 2002, definida tras un primer máster plan de Bofill, destinada a sufragar infraestructuras urbanas adicionales a cargo de la operación. Entre medias hubo otro plan parcial 2004 sin tramitar. En 2015 no llegó a termino el plan parcial elaborado por RH arquitectos. Los tres tienen la misma intensidad edificatoria: 3'2 millones de m2 edificables con cerca de 17.000 viviendas. Entre medias algunas sentencias judiciales. Hoy se debate la intensidad que puede soportar el ámbito; las cargas infraestructurales asociadas a aquella y las que deben asumir los presupuestos de las distintas administraciones - autonómica, estatal y local- no los tejidos urbanos; la inconveniencia de prolongar la Castellana en el borde del casco histórico de Fuencarral; la posición del nuevo CBD en torno a la estación de Chamartín; la cualidad del nuevo tejido urbano y el modelo de gestión para una actuación de esa envergadura y duración. Veremos.

David Cohn
May 31 at 9:15pm
Gracias por tu explicación tan extendida. La verdad es que la entrevista no explica nada de nada. ¡Había olvidadao del primer plan de Bofill! El asunto merece un seguimiento más serio en los medios.

Juan Manuel Fernández Alonso
May 31 at 9:20pm
Es cierto. Es una operación muy compleja, con fuertes intereses cruzados actuando sobre la definición de nuevos tejidos urbanos en un contexto difícil. El largo tiempo empleado por todos los agentes participantes hasta ahora impide una mirada abierta para encontrar una buena solución de largo alcance temporal y territorial.

A Coderch Tear-Down in Madrid?

Photo: Colegio Oficial de Arqutectos de Madrid (COAM) / El País

A story from last month's El País that I have been hearing echoes of:  the owners of one of the three works by José Antonio Coderch in Madrid have applied for a demolition permit: the Vallet de Goytisolo house of 1956 in Arturo Soria's Ciudad Lineal (Linear City).

Private houses from the 60s and 70s are in critical danger now, as they pass from original clients to new owners or heirs and require major renovations. Given changes in living programs and  high land values, the pressure to demolish is strong. The market is picking up again after years of paralysis. And preservation measures are way behind.

Architects raise the cry in favor of these works, but does anyone else really care? 

Architecture is valued among architects, and only among a very few, who are as rare and irrelevant to general society as butterfly collectors. And we want to tell people that they can't tear down that old house.

Coderch was one of the pioneers in reviving modern architecture under Franco, after the hiatus of the Civil War and the monumental national styles of the regime's early years.  The house looks like a gem.  Collectors in the US would be all over it. But no one collects contemporary art in Spain, not to mention contemporary architecture. You have to slip architecture in on the sly, as Alejandro de la Sota advocated – "Dar liebre por gato",  reversing the old saying of how to trick clients with the ingredients of a stew. It's one of those elegant, pithy expressions that you can't really translate. In De la Sota's version, the clients ask for cat meat and you serve them hare. But then they treat it like cat meat anyway.  And there you are, getting your architectural jollies at the clients' expense. And indifference.

Philip Johnson once said something rather similar: he never talked about design issues with the client. If his AT&T Tower on Madison Avenue had a Chippendale top, it was to let out hot air.

Anatxu Zabalbeascoa
"Amenaza de derribo para una obra madrileña de Coderch"
El País, March 17, 2017

Upholstered in Skay, or The Moncloa Complex

On the representation of power: how much can we infer about Spain's political structure in the size and decoration of the Presidential compound at Moncloa?

Office of President Rahoy in Moncloa in 2013. Source ABC

In a column in El País yesterday (Feb. 4, 2017), the historian Guillermo Cortázar analyzes the Palace of Moncloa, an estate on the northern edges of Madrid that has housed the residence and offices of the Spanish Presidency since 1977. He sees the compound reflecting the character of the state that has emerged with the new Spanish democracy following the Franco dictatorship, comparing it to 10 Downing Street. Moncloa has about 2500 employees, he notes, compared to the 70 at home of the Bitish Prime Minister. With its 20 hectares of grounds and 58,000 square meters of built area, he sees it as "demonstrating a prepotency, status and visualization very superior even to those of the Zarazuela", the current official residence of the kings of Spain.

"In contrast, 10 Downing Street is a discrete, temporary residence and office for the Prime Minister. In parliamentary monarchies, it is understood that the Crown is the permanent representation of the nation as a whole, while the president of the government is only the temporary head of one of the three powers of state."

He goes on to assert that this size reflects the concentration of power in Spain in self-serving party structures, in which voters are poorly represented –in Spain one votes for a party in block, not for particular candidates– and in which the separation of powers and other controls are compromised.

But the comparison seems to me rather unfair, as Downing Street is a typically British idiosyncrasy. Though they are not constitutional monarchies, a truer comparison would be with the White House, the German Chancellery or the Elysée Palace, which I would guess are comparable in size and staff, if not much larger. It is also seems unreasonable to infer a structure of political power in size alone.

Gordon Brown receives Barak Obama at 10 Downing Street, 2009. Photo: Pete Souza / Official White House Photostream / Wikikedia Commons

 Cortázar goes on to note the striking differences in decor between Downing Street and Moncloa. He cites the memoirs of Margaret Thatcher as to the furnishing in the London residence, noting the Henry Moore and the paintings of Wellington, George II and other "heroes of Great Britain's history". He quotes her as saying, "in these works the continuity of history can be perceived. It seemed to me of great importance that when foreign visitors came to Downing Street they could contemplate part of Great Britain's cultural legacy." (DC translation from Spanish).

In the Palace of Moncloa, he continues, an aseptic modernity reigns, of giant glass tables, faux white leather furniture ("skay" synthetic leather, very 70s), white walls and abstract art –Miro, Tàpies, Guerrero, Barceló– a legacy of Felipe González's presidency (1982-1996).

His main source for this description is the author Antonio Muñoz Molina, who visited Moncloa during the presidency of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2004 – 2011). In contemporary photos, under the current president, the conservative Mariano Rahoy, the decor tends to a more traditional wood and black leather, although it is equally bland and anonymous.

Conference room, Moncloa, no date given. Source: Intra Arquitec

 "It's a very 20th century, very modern language, as if trying to not signify anything in particular, nothing that could be susceptible to criticism, no narrative, no references to history. With absolutely no aesthetic ties to the past, the presidents of the government in Moncloa have inaugurated a new era, that of the Party State, initiated in 1977."

Pardo Palacce, residence of Franco and his wife, Carmen Polo, Palm Sunday, late in the regime. Source: Juan Cobos, Xavier Casals

Franco's last speech on the balcony of the Palacio del Oriente, no date given. Source: http://www.libertaddigital.com/cultura/historia/2015-11-21/jorge-vilches-y-al-tercer-dia-resucito-juan-carlos-77294/

I'm not sure the decoration of Moncloa says too much about the current structure of power in Spain either, but it does point to the chasm separating the representation of state power in comparison with the dictatorship, which wrapped itself in the "glorious" "imperial" history of Spain as an ideological self-justification.

This is not to say, however, that this supposedly "neutral" style does not end up signifying its own era, as Cortázar suggests – a condition that will become clear as soon as something else comes along.

As he points out, the role of making historical connections falls now to the monarchy and its structures of self-representation, the palaces and art and museums of the National Patrimony, including the Prado Museum, home of the former royal collections. The monarchy too was a victim of Franco, and thus can safely reclaim history and reinterpret the "glorious" "Imperial" past in its own manner, as seen in the controversy over the installations of the upcoming Museum of the Royal Collections (see below).

Audience Hall, Zarzuela Palalce, residence of the King of Spain. Photo: the swearing.in of a new government in 2010. Source: http://www.wikiwand.com/es/Palacio_de_la_Zarzuela

Speaking in another context, about the vogue for museums of contemporary art in Spain, the art historian María Dolores Jiménez-Blanco said in El País last October, "For a long time we only wanted to look ahead, and culture is a perfect emblem of that. And especially contemporary art. But now we've left behind Francoism and we see ourselves with greater serenity."

The passion among Spanish politicians for commissioning iconic works of architecture over the past 25 years is a perfect reflection of this condition – shall we call it something like an architectural / representational PTSD (Post-Traumaitc Stress Disorder)?  -- It's a variation on Walter Benjamin's Angel of History: our backs to the past, our revulsion propels us blindly forward into the unknown. I had thought at the time that I was witnessing the construction of a new present, but that seems hopelessly optimistic now.

Note 

The Moncloa Palace was entirely rebuilt and transformed after its destruction in the Civil War. In the early 20th century, the presidential residence was located in a palace on the Paseo de la Castellana near the Plaza de Colón. President Suárez moved it to Moncloa ostensibly for security reasons, due to the political instability of the transition period and the threat of Basque terrorism.

Sources

Guillermo Gortázar
"El complejo de La Moncloa"
El País, February 4, 2017

Javier Rodríguez Marcos, Ferran Bono
"Una conversación en el Museo del Prado"  
El País, Section Bableia, October 29, 2016, p 16-19.

Javier Arnald
"Involución en la museología: El Museo de Colecciones Reales, que tardará en abrirse al menos dos años, hará un discurso sobre el legado de la monarquía"
El País, December 12, 2016

Representing the Crown

On this last source, I wrote in Facebook on January 18 the following:

Museum of the Royal Collections, Madrid. Source: BEAU 2016

El País announces that Mansilla and Tuñón's Museum of the Royal Collections, completed last year, will not open for another two years as its owner, Patrimonio Nacional, put together its program and collections.

The article, by art historian Javier Arnaldo, comes with a very critical analysis of the planned exhibit program, which will be organize around a vindication of the "achievements" of Spain's three monarchic dynasties: the Trastámaras, the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons – in other words, an ideological program in defense of the monarchy as an institution.

"…se propone servirse de las colecciones para establecer un discurso sobre el legado histórico de la monarquía española. Prevé una traza museográfica fija que daría cuenta de los logros de las dinastías de los Trastámara, los Habsburgo y los Borbón, a cuya representación se rendirían las piezas expuestas, en conjuntos cuya composición sería susceptible de cambios para hacer rotar partes de la colección."

"Imaginemos que el Museo del Prado, cuyas principales colecciones, como es bien sabido, pertenecieron, como las de Patrimonio Nacional, en su día a la Corona, buscara inspiración para su plan museológico en la bóveda del Casón, en la Alegoría del Toisón de Oro pintada allí al fresco por Lucas Jordán; la involución y disfuncionalidad de la pinacoteca quedarían garantizadas."

Patrimonio Nacional is a state institution that owns and manages all the former properties of the Spanish Crown, but it's administration is largely controlled by the current King, with input from the government in office and public financing.

It seems to me that the problem is as much about having a monarchy in the first place, and an insecure monarchy at that, and allowing it to remain in charge of these things. Maybe a republic would handle this better. Though an ideological use of the sumptuary trappings of power is hard to evade, one way or the other, from the Imperial Palace in Beijing to the White House in Washington. Arnaldo reminds us of the role these objects played in the "spaces of representation of the Crown", and that role is hard to shake off, whether for the glorification of the present state or the glorification of its conquerors and revolutionary usurpers. Hence the cache of a Louis XIV chair, or am I missing something?

Prado Museum taps Foster for Expansion

Facade, version A, cutting through 19th century facade. All images © Foster & Partners

David Cohn
"Foster + Partners' Winning Proposal for Prado Museum Annex"
Architectural Record web page
December 6, 2016

Full text:

Foster + Partners, together with the Spanish architect Carlos Rubio, have won a competition to rehabilitate a surviving fragment of the former royal palace of Buen Retiro in Madrid as an annex to the nearby Prado Museum. The project will restore the Baroque splendor of the "Salón de Reinos" or Hall of Realms, where King Felipe IV received foreign ambassadors in the 17th century, and will create 27,000 square feet of gallery space for temporary exhibitions. The Salón was preserved as an independent building after French troops sacked the palace during the Peninsular Wars (1808-1814).

The Foster team won the competition over seven other finalists, including teams led by David Chipperfield, Rem Koolhaas and Eduardo Souto de Moura. Other participants were Gluckman Tang of New York with the Madrid studios of Álvarez Sala and Enguita & Lasso de la Vega, and the Spanish offices of Cruz & Ortíz, Nieto Sobejano and Garces De Seta Bonet with Pedro Feduchi.

Foster's proposal raises the existing roof of the building to make way for a large gallery on the top floor, and creates a glazed atrium entry on the south facade, between the two original towers that flank the structure at each end. The atrium allows the architects to peel back later additions to the structure, and restore the Salón de Reinos' original facade and window openings. Foster presented two versions of this glass enclosure, one which opens up the existing neoclassical façade, added in the 19th century, and another that removes it entirely, replacing the structure with a line of monumental bronze columns. In both cases, the atrium roof forms an accessible terrace for the top-floor galleries.

Facade, alternative version with bronze columns

Atrium

While most of the finalists proposed modern additions or enclosures on the southern facade, the jury, headed by Rafael Moneo, singled out Foster's design for its "respect" for the "pre-existing structure", its "intelligent" solution to the "museological requirements," its "skilled integration ... into its surroundings," and its "efficient cost study."

Estimated costs are currently 32 million euros, to be financed in part by private donations.

The Salón is one of two existing fragments of the palace, both now part of the Prado's extended campus. One block to the north, the Casón del Buen Retiro conserves its ballroom, with notable ceiling frescos; it now houses the museum's Research Center. The original Prado building was in fact built as an adjunct to this complex by the neo-classical architect Juan de Villanueva in 1785. Directly behind it, Rafael Moneo's 2007 addition is organized around the ruined cloister of a former monastery, also closely associated with the palace as the site of royal retreats before it was built.

With this latest addition, the Prado thus completes an expansion plan that sketches, through this constellation of structures, the ghostly presence of the lost palace and its grounds, as can be seen in an exploded axonometric of the area prepared by the Foster team. To underscore this historical palimpsest, Foster proposes to connect the main building to the Salón and Casón via a pedestrianized street that culminates in the Retiro Park, the site of the palace's pleasure gardens.

The Palace del Buen Retiro and the Prado campus

(End of Record article)

Among the finalists, one of the reported top contenders was this scheme by the Seville-based office of Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortíz:

Proposal by Cruz & Ortíz

Other sources:

Announcing the decision:
Prado Museum Press Release
"Architects Norman Foster and Carlos Rubio winners of the projects competition to remodel the Hall of Realms"
Nov. 24, 2016

On the other entries:
 Anatxu Zabalbeascoa
"El Prado expone durante un mes los distintos proyectos que compitieron por la ampliación del Salón de Reinos que finalmente hará el estudio Foster-Rubio"
El País, December 1, 2016

The building's history:
Rafael Fraguas

"El palacio varado"

El País, October 21, 2013

Complete coverage on all the entries:
"El Concurso del Prado"
Arquitectura Viva 191, No. 1-2, January 2017

Purchase digital version on line here

The current director of the Prado, Miguel Zugaza, announced his departure shortly after the competition results were announced:

"Miguel Zugaza anuncia su decisión de volver el próximo año a la dirección del Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao"
El País, Nov. 30, 2016


Borja Hermoso
"Zugaza: 'En El Prado he estado dimitiendo desde el principio' "
El País, Dec. 1, 2016

Anything You Want

 

Toboggan House, Madrid by Rafael Beneytez.   Phot0s © Miguel de Guzmán

"Beneytez collects the highlights of his architectural and cultural training like a bouquet of exquisite flowers, in order to lay them at the feet of his client, and in order to invoke her in turn in playful fantasy. As in the movies of Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, the house is a fetishized stage set, steeped in desire and seductive, campy wit."

Many architects take on the role of the medium in a séance when designing a work: in their obsessive fascination for certain emblematic works of the architectural canon, as well as other cultural icons, they summon forth their spirits for conceptual re-incarnation. Few however mange to convoke as many of these ghostly apparitions in a single place as Rafael Beneytez and his team at Z4Z4 Architects, with their Toboggan House, located in the northern suburbs of Madrid.  We can cite, for starters, Mies, Corb, Philip Johnson and the California Case Study Houses, and wrap up with contemporaries such as Koolhaas, Moneo, Dan Graham and others.

But fewer still manage to carry off such conjurations with this much originality and aplomb. Beneytez describes the work as a "post-modern exquisite corpse" of citations and set-pieces. Holding the whole thing together is a romantic narrative inspired by and dedicated to the client – or more precisely, to the person who took the leading role for the clients, a childhood friend of the architect who lives in the house with her husband and three children.

In a design process that stretched out over seven years and four different project proposals, Beneytez created the house as a collage of different "cinematic scenarios," inspired in classic movies, in which he imagined the client living out certain fantasies – presumably working with her in playful collusion. He cites, for example, the scenario for "the grand entrance", in which the client, dressed for the evening and arriving fashionably late, descends a spiral stair from her boudoir to receive her guests in the living room (Villa Savoye, Nude Descending a Staircase, etc.). Beneytez collects the highlights of his architectural and cultural training like a bouquet of exquisite flowers, in order to lay them at the feet of his client, and in order to invoke his client in turn in playful fantasy. As in the movies of Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, the house is a fetishized stage set, steeped in desire and seductive, campy wit 

 When we first encounter the Toboggan House, we see the three interconnected cylinders of its upper bedroom level raised above the sloping site on a welter of struts and trusses. As we enter the grounds, we discover the below-grade living level underneath the cylinders. It occupies a trench cut entirely through the site and overlooks sunken gardens at either end.  Between these two levels, the space at grade is almost completely open, with a driveway that passes through the middle of the house (Beneytez copied the drawings of cars on the plans from, guess what, the Villa Savoye).   

The carport overlooks a double-height atrium, with plants and palm trees, that divides the lower floor in two, and that is shaded by the cylinders overhead. The atrium separates the living area, including a bar, gym and Turkish bath, from the dining area, kitchen and service spaces (the built work differs in many respects from the plans). When the sliding glass walls of the living room are open, the atrium creates a chimney effect for ventilation, while the concrete retaining walls even out temperature changes. With its uninterrupted but articulated spaces and its shaded, fractured, indirect light, this level offers a contemporary update of what critic Luis Fernández Galiano has called "the enchanted forest" of many organicist houses built in the 1960s by Madrid architects such as Fernando Higueras or Javier Carvajal. 
 

Atrium

Beneytez considers the upper level as a completely different realm, like a second house. The cylinders form a series of warm, enclosing spaces, which open into one another via sliding pocket doors. The curving exterior walls are continuously lined with lacquered shelving and cabinets. They are interrupted only by a single window-balcony in each space that overlooks a view of the Madrid skyline. On the exterior, the architects sought to dematerialize the volumes, finishing the heavily-insulated walls with reflective vinyl sheeting ("like a thermos," Beneytez says), and wrapping them, at a considerable distance, with a second, permeable skin of micro-perforated aluminum screens. These extend outwards on an awkward armature of steel struts, like solar shields on a NASA space probe.

The architectural references continue with additional direct citations: the ground floor plan, Beneytez maintains, copies Mies van der Rohe's Morris House (Weston, Connecticut, 1955), and the cylinders invoke the visual ambiguities of Dan Graham's curving Pavilions pieces. At a more basic level, the sectional partí brings us back to Rem Koolhaas' 1998 Maison à Bordeaux, which in turn is a vertical pile-up of different spaces from Philip Johnson's residential compound in New Canaan, Connecticut: the Glass Pavilion, the matching, but windowless, bedroom pavilion, and the underground grotto-gallery.

While Koolhaas emphasized the solidity of the elevated upper volume, Beneytez seeks its dematerialization. Like its layered skin, the "heterogonous" system of support trusses "counterbalances gravity," he maintains. To this observer, however, Mies' Farnsworth House, with its regular white columns, is far lighter in visual impact. To the stately, classical stride of the Farnsworth, Beneytez responds with cacophonous improvisations, and with such unbridled enthusiasm that a column ends up smack in the middle of the main stair, and another in the path of the rear door (the architect attributes these to client changes after construction began).

But within this formal agitation we find yet another ghostly presence, this time in the form of a renunciation. Beneytez worked for seven years in the studio of Rafael Moneo, and wearied of an architecture he found all too "massive" and "material". In reaction, he wrote his doctoral thesis on "The representation of atmosphere in architecture." He professes his fascination for an architecture that, like the work of Dan Graham, "dissolves into transparencies and reflections."  For him, the greatest feat of his design is "to dismount the center of the house, its center of gravity," citing the upper space of the atrium, "where everything happens but nothing is there." 

In this respect, the work reminds me of another gravity-defying tour-de-force of recent years, Antón García-Abril's Hemeroscopium House outside Madrid. Its structure consists of a spiral of giant highway bridge beams of every description, counterbalanced against one another around an enormous spatial void, in which the actual living quarters are something of an anecdote. In comparison, the Toboggan House is quite domestic and nuanced. But Beneytez shares García-Abril's ambition and macho exuberance, his bad-boy transgressive, aggressive defiance of the profession's staid norms of conduct. His Toboggan House confirms the old adage that if you want to be anything in life, including respectable, the first thing you've got to do is grab everyone's attention. After that you can do anything you want.

Toboggan House, Madrid
Rafael Beneytez of Z4Z4 Architects
Mark 64
October - November 2016, pages 112 - 119  

This is the full text of my published article 
© David Cohn