Cool Shades

© María Ramos

My latest article in the bi-annual Russian journal Speech features a pair of entry canopies for metro stations on the periphery of Valencia, Spain that could be described as nifty sunglasses.

"The chief attraction of the stations are their spectacular glazed tubular pavilions... The glazing has a layer of acetate between two panes of 10mm glass, which provides solar protection, lowering thermal loads. The film also refracts light in different colors depending on the angle of incidence, viewpoint, reflections and other factors."

© María Ramos

Unfortunately, the park they form part of, which was to have been created along the right-of-way of the former surface line (it now runs underground) has not materialized, another victim of cuts in public spending due to the crisis. So the stations stand in a no-mans- land.

"These effects are further multiplied by the many panes of shattered glass, the result of vandals throwing rocks at them – the pavilions make for an inviting target amid their abandoned surroundings. These smashed panels are held in place by the lamination and covered with a dense crazy-quilt patterns of cracks, which catch brilliant nets of light. The result is actually quite attractive...." 

Photo: DC

"The stations stand as another vivid symbol (as if another were needed) of the current state of Spanish architecture, once much in demand by politicians who actually understood it little, and now abandoned, another piece of refuse left over from the disaster of overbuilding in Spain. But in this premature decadence they assume a new role that is the fate of any building that survives into a time beyond the era of its conception and usefulness (in this case their usefulness as a political symbols of largess and grandiosity), becoming a fascinating relic,  like a magnificent peacock strutting amid the rubble of a once Eden-like park."

East of Eden
Carolines and Benimàmet metro stations, Valencia, by Luis Ferrer
Speech 13, January 2015, pages 128 - 137, cover

© María Ramos

Photo: DC

Irina Shipova, 1968 - 2014

 

Working for magazines from everywhere, I often never actually meet face-to-face the people I work with. I've been collaborating with Speech, the Russian journal that comes out two times a year, since it´s fourth issue, in 2009, thanks to a recommendation by Roland Halbe, but I never actually met Irina, its founding editor, or Jan Skuratowski, who worked beside her on every issue. Now as I am preparing my contribution to the first issue of Speech without her, I found this memorial written by another collaborator, Bernhard Schulz:

April 26, 2014 after a long illness passed away the chief editor of speech: Irina Shipova.

Getting ready for the latest issue of the Architectural journal speech:, released under the direction of Irina Shipova. This is the last issue of speech: to be delivered by Irina Chipova.

Altogether, there have now been 12 issues of speech: (you could call them ‘magazines’, but a better word would be ‘books’). The first was published in the middle of 2008; the new architecture journal quickly acquired a knowledgeable readership. Like all previous issues of speech: the current, 12th, issue is devoted to a single overarching theme.
 
Irina Chipova was born on October 26th 1968 in Moscow, where she went to school before going on to study at the History Faculty at Moscow State University. She submitted her diploma work in 1991. Meanwhile she had spent a year working at a children’s library and then another at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture. This was a time of preparation for the independent path that she was to follow subsequently. But first she worked for three years at the Central House of Architects in Moscow. Then, in 1997, she took an important step – deciding to leave Russia and move to Germany with her husband and son. She learnt German in Rostock before coming to Berlin in 1998, where her second son was born. 

Working as an architecture critic, she started gathering around her the circle of fellow-thinkers who would subsequently prove so invaluable to her. In 2004 Irina started working for nps tchoban voss, where, as head of the PR department, she was instrumental in helping present and explain the firm’s architectural ideas and projects. 

That same year, Irina took part in preparing Moscow-Berlin, an exhibition at the Shchusev Museum of Architecture in Moscow, and in 2007 she wrote ‘Moscow. Art and Design’, a handy guide to contemporary architecture and interior design in Moscow.

Irina’s work for other publications gradually gave way to the idea of creating a new journal dedicated to the state of contemporary architecture. The concept developed by Irina Chipova involved taking a single theme, a single building type, or a single architectural objective and subjecting it to comprehensive examination, beginning with an excursion into history and continuing with numerous examples of buildings from countries all over the world, accompanied by interviews with leading architects and comments from authoritative experts. Underlying the publication was a graphic concept in which text and images were to be of equal importance as sources of information, with equal weight being given to two languages, Russian and English.
 
The above concept was established at the very beginning of the journal’s life and it is perhaps the most surprising aspect of Irina Chipova’s work for speech: that the concept never required reworking. The diversity and balance of the various forms of contribution were a strong point of the new publication, as were the involvement of knowledgeable authors from different countries and the high quality of the photographs selected for inclusion.

While working on the journal, Irina was asked, as an experienced publisher, to produce the catalogue for the exhibition at the Russian Pavilion at the 12th Architecture Biennale in Venice in 2010. Irina coordinated this enormous volume of work as a ‘one-woman team’ in Berlin, with help from her colleagues in Moscow. She maintained numerous contacts with her circle of friends back home, and they responded with love and admiration for her kindness, talent, and professionalism.

From the end of the first decade of the 21st century, Irina found herself increasingly hampered by serious illness. Nevertheless, she continued working on speech:, without in any way compromising on the publication’s established standard of quality. Until her final days, she worked in bed on editing texts and captions for the issue which you have in your hands. She was unable to let a single important detail slip through her fingers. Her supreme professionalism, which never let the journal’s authors get away with vague phrasing, and her understanding of layout, which resulted in a substantive relationship between text and photographs, were unfailing. After a protracted illness, Irina Chipova died at home in Berlin on April 26th, 2014, a few days after submitting the final proofs for the 12th issue of speech:. 

She was only 45 years old.

It was her unflagging enthusiasm for her work and her incredible resolve which enabled Irina to see the completion of this 12th issue of ‘her’ journal.

Internal Meltdown and Exile

Floating Structures by Antón García-Abril, Ensamble Studio

My two latest articles chronicle the golden exile of Antón García-Abril, who has found a refuge at MIT, where he is setting up the POP-LAB, a prefabrication research and development lab, and the story of yet another public building project in Spain's ravaged provinces that got built but lacks funds to open.

I interviewed García-Abril for the biannual Russian journal Speech, a more technical version of my interview published in El País last January (in English and Russian, no web version).

And for Bauwelt I reported on the unopened Cultural and Civic Center in the former State Prison of Palencia, in the northern region of Castilla-Leon, after the building was all but rebuilt by the young Madrid studio Exit Architects (German only, no web version) .

Here's García-Abril on his experiments with a Styrofoam house:

"What is the structural language of the Modern Movement? The slab, the column, the wall. I don't want any of that."

"Primitive mass had a predetermined volume. Stone, earth. Contemporary mass has been concentrated in a few highly defined elements, in steel, concrete or glass, that bear an enormous structural demand."

"But in our case, mass is expressed volumetrically, as in the Antique world. What disappears is weight. In the Antique world, mass and weight were very similar. But here weight disappears from a physical point of view, but not from a spatial point of view. It becomes an energy, something perceptive."

"What is our statement in building this? The mass of a body is irrelevant in the weight of space."

Cultural and Civic Center, Palencia. Exit Architects

  In my conclusions about the debacle in Palencia, I return to some of the themes I covered for another finished but unopened project, a creative arts center in Córdoba by Nieto + Sobejano that I wrote on in The Architectural Review this March.

"If new contemporary spaces were required, why not then demolish the prison and start from scratch? ... Another option would have been to carry out a much more modest intervention, simply consolidating the existing pavilions at minimum expense and preserving their raw character. This has been the approach in Madrid's abandoned 18th century tobacco factory, the Tabacalera, which the Ministry of Culture has ceded temporarily to non-hierarchical management by neighborhood associations, who fill its unrestored walls with the kind of social activities that the citizens of Palencia reclaimed for their center, and at a minimal operating cost. This is just one example of how, in the face of the inability of government bodies to supply basic civic services, citizens associations are stepping in to fill the vacuum. Why not do the same with the once and future ruin in Palencia?"

Original state of cell block

Problemfall Palencia: 
Wie aus: einem Gefängnis kein Kultuzrentrum wurde 
Problem in Palencia: The Prison That Didn't Become a Cultural Center
 Bauwelt 13.13, April 5, 2013, pages 14 - 19, cover

Making Gravity Irrelevant 
Interview with Antón García-Abril
Speech 10, January 2013, pages 208 - 228

A New Look at Genius Loci

I've just received issue number 9 of the Russian journal Speech, with my interview with Álvaro Siza and my report on the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building at Columbia University in New York by Rafael Moneo and the Moneo Brock Studio.

The theme of the issue is Genius Loci, on which Siza had a lot to say, including this:

"AS: It also occurs to me that genius loci has to do with the culture of a country. Let me tell you something very curious about American cities, both Spanish and Portuguese, and the Portuguese cities in India and Macao. Spanish colonial urbanism is based on the Philippine Codices (he sketches a grid plan). A fantastic code. The plaza, the dimensions of the lots, the typology, all articulated in the plan, which produces these marvelous cities of South America, which still work today following the same principle. The Spanish built on a high plain. Large areas that permitted great extensions and growth."
 
"In Portuguese cities, on the other hand, in Macao or Boa, and in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro, Recife or Olinda, the topography is always very abrupt and irregular, and the cities adapt to the topography."

"For me, the principal reason for this difference is the following: when the Spanish arrived in America, they were a country of millions of people, and with enormous power. But in Portugal there were only three million Portuguese when they started exploring and civilizing Africa, Asia and Brazil. A very small country that goes out all over the world – there are clear explanations for this, but the first is that we are crazy."

"The Portuguese couldn't defend cities the size of the Spanish settlements. And so all the Portuguese cities are like fortifications. Nature promotes their defense."

"DC: And the Spanish colonial cities reproduce the Spanish meseta."

"AS: They are numbers and power." 

Moneo's building, designed as a heavily-trussed bridge, 14 stories tall that spans the roof of a preexisting gymnasium, offers an interesting take on the genius loci of Manhattan as I describe it in my introduction: 

"But there is another, more intimate side to this native genius that one discovers inside the city, at street level. This character has been forged in the struggle to submit the geographic incidents of the island to the demands of mobility and density. It can be found in the underground concourses and elevated bridges of its transportation systems –structures of iron, concrete and steel exposed in all their gritty strength– and in the hard asphalt canyons of its endless avenues – spaces of incessant movement, cast in shadow by enormous towers and splattered with moving shards of reflected light. It can be found too in the city's artificial landscapes – the artificial deck of Park Avenue and its towers, built over the rail lines of Grand Central Station, or Central Park's molded hillocks and meandering roads, sculpted to contrast with the city's grid. The original terrain of the island has been leveled, mined, spanned, extended by landfills into its waterways and otherwise transformed."

Álvaro Siza
"There was something in this place that asked for this building here" 
Speech 09, 2012, pages 252 - 275 

The Bridge Building
 Speech 09, 2012, pages 116 - 129

Álvaro Siza photo, DC
Structural sketch of Columbia building, Ove Arup

Sorry, no web version available

The Language of Bronze

The eighth issue of the Russian journal Speech has come out with my article on Francisco Mangado's Archaeological Museum in Vitoria, Spain. The issue is dedicated to the theme of the detail. Altho I have written about the same project in Architectural Record this past July, this is an entirely different article (though it inevitably covers some of the same ground).

Free of Record's thorough editing, for good and for ill, I was able to get in some cherished bits, such as the not-so-far-fetched comparison to  Mies' Seagram Building which, as I was pleased to find, got an article all to itself in the same issue.

Speech is now preparing its ninth issue for this June, with more from this quarter.  

The Language of Bronze
Archaeology Museum of Álava, Vitoria, Spain, by Francisco Mangado
Speech 08/2011, December 2011, pages 80 - 91

Construction photo
Courtesy of Francisco Mangado

Like the bright plumage of a bird

Color in Spanish architecture is the theme of a long article I've written for the latest issue of the Russian biannual journal Speech. It is a theme particularly apt to Spain, for some reason – the most radical experiments anywhere in the use of color in the past six or seven years can be found here. We cover the spectrum, from well-known works by Nouvel, Miralles + Tagliabue and Hadid to virtually unpublished works, such as the medical clinic in St. Martín de la Vega by Pedro Urzáiz and Carlos Pérez-Pla, which uses glass with an inner layer of a prismatic gel that reflects and solarizes the surrounding context in surreal colors (photo top © Miguel de Guzmán) and a secondary school in Las Mesas (Province of Cuenca) by Blanca Rosa and Natalia Gutiérrez of GRG Architects in Madrid (photo below © Roland Halbe).

Color plays at least four different roles in contemporary Spanish architecture. In the first place, we find it used in a traditional way, as an integral sensual quality of finish materials. Secondly, color is used as a system of coding building elements, although this "functional" approach is often mixed with more sensual intentions. Thirdly, we find works that feature a random rainbow splattering of many different colors over finish surfaces, a manifestation of the current recourse to aleatoric or irregular compositional methods, and a response, it seems, to the sensual pleasures of the simple, unmediated experience of color. Finally, we sometimes find color used to create an experience of total immersion, in which colors flood and stain space itself, making space manifest and transforming the normal perceptual conditions of reality.

Like the bright plumage of a bird
Color in Spanish architecture
Speech 06/2010, December 2010 (received March 2011), pages 208 - 226.
Table of Contents

Projects by the following architects (in order of appearance): 
Nouvel, Miralles - Tagliabue, Mansilla + Tuñón, SelgasCano, Mangado, Rogers - Lamela, Haiku Architecture, Amann, Cánovas + Maruri, Pino - Paredes, Aguinaga, Camacho + Macía, RCR Architects, Hadid, GRG Architects, Urzáiz - Pérez-Pla, MI5 Studio, Estudio Entresitio.

Spatial Viscosity thru Color

Two recent articles in Bauwelt and Speech feature a nursery by Alejandro Muñoz Miranda near Granada where colored glass plays a central role. The issue of the Russian jounral Speech is dedicated to the theme of color in architecture, and Bauwelt to the theme of kindergartens.

From the Speech text:

Contemporary architecture has returned to two of the most radical formal preoccupations of the early Modern Movement: the aspiration to transparency and weightlessness on the one hand, overcoming bounded space, and the Expressionist aspiration, largely unrealized in its time, to an architecture of colored space... Today the qualities of transparency and weightlessness scarcely seem radical to us, but the concept of space expressively altered through color has only recently become a subject of investigation.

Project:        Nursery, El Chapparel, Granada
Architect:    Alejandro Muñoz Miranda, Granada  

Beyond Transparency 
Speech 06/2010 (released March 2011), pages 208-226.

Das Glasscheibenspiel
Bauwelt 5.11, January 28, 2011, pages 12 - 17.

Photos © Javier Callejas

Sustainable Design

In the latest issue of the bi-annual Russian journal Speech, dedicated to the theme of sustainable design and the future, I interview Iñaki Ábalos on his latest projects with current partner Renata Sentkiewicz and former partner Juan Herreros, and on his teaching and experiences in sustainable design. Photo, left: Project Porte de la Chapelle Tower, Paris. Courtesy of Ábalos + Sentkiewicz.

I also write a feature on the Vigo headquarters of the College of Architects of Galicia, by Jesús Irisarri and Guadalupe Piñera. It is an inventive design with complex interior spaces and a translucent plastic skin. I first published Irisarri and Piñera's work in my book Young Spanish Architects ten years ago when they were just starting out. Their approach still features an improvised ease of invention I find very appealing. Among their other recent projects are a fisherman's pier in Cangas, finalist in the 2008 FAD Prizes, and campus buildings for the University of Vigo, included in the exhibition On Site show at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2006. Photo below: College of Architects of Vigo, © Manuel G. Vicente.



Thermodynamic Aesthetics 101:
The Formal Dimensions of Controlled Energy Exchange
Interview with Iñaki Ábalos.
Speech 05/2010, June 2010, pages 210 - 227.

The Greenhouse Effect
College of Architects of Galicia, Vigo,
Jesús Irisarri and Guadalupe Piñera.
Speech 05/2010, June 2010, pages 98 - 108.

Texts in Russian and English; no webpage version.

Menis and Moneo in Speech

The 4th issue of the Russian bi-annual journal Speech, dedicated to the theme of materiality, has just been published. It includes my interview with Fernando Menis (Using what's at hand, pages 220 - 240) and my article Over Carthaginian Stones, on the Museum of the Roman Theater in Cartagena by Rafael Moneo (pages 138 - 152).

Also included in the issue is Estudio Entresitio's Health Clinic in San Blas, Madrid.

Photo: Tunnel under the ruins of the Santa María la Vieja Church, Cartagena, by Rafael Moneo. Photo by DC.