RCR's Les Cols Restaurant

Main dining room, Les Cols. Photo © Hisao Suzuki

In 2003 I visited Les Cols, the restaurant in Olot, Spain designed by Pritzker Prize winners RCR Architects, for Architectural Record. Well established then, the restaurant has lately earned two Michelin stars.

As part of my research I was treated by the chef to the 12-course "Menu de Degustación", together with the architects. We were seated in the long golden banquet hall, in the middle of its long golden table (custom designed by the architects, like the chairs, of thick, heavy folded steel plate with a baked enamel finish, and with 22 place settings to a side). The architects were grouped one side, and I was alone on the other, as troops of waiters filed round and round the table with each course, whisking away each dirty plate and serving each new one with a flourish of explanations and instructions. Everyone was very interested in my reactions to each of the twelve little plates - the architects, the waiters, and the hosts, chef Fina Puigdeval, and her husband, who appeared from the kitchens from time to time. I got through the experience as best I could. As I've said before, this can be a tough job.

The food was along the lines of the contemporary experiments of Fernan Adriá at El Bulli, with globules of liquid stuff that exploded on the tongue, edgy contrasts of sweet and salt, and so on. Not really my thing, I'm afraid, but certainly an experience.

The one course that lingers most in my memory (besides the third or fourth entry, which included a bit of tocino that lingered on my palette disagreeably through several more courses), was the post-desert cheese board, with rustic breads and a host of creamy, unpasteurized cheeses from nearby farms in the Pyrenees. Other ingredients too were local, as seen in the lush gardens on the grounds, complete with chickens other fowl, as well as (am I making this up?) rabbit hutches and a fish pond.

In following years, the architects added a suite of guest pavilions under the trees in the garden, made entirely of glass, thus extending the unique sensorial experience of dining at Les Cols into the night and the morning, and into far more personal corporeal rites involving the bed and the bath, as well as bringing the garden into the total experience more thoroughly. More recently, the added a semi.enclosed banqueting pavilion, spanned by a tensile structure of catenary arches infilled with sheets of polycarbonate.
 

© Hisao Suzuki

Below is my original text from Record Interiors (not elsewhere on line), and excerpts from other texts about the later additions.

 I. A daring menu meets its match with interiors served up by RCR Arquitectes

Like its adventurous menu, the interiors of the restaurant Les Cols are designed to provoke "strong sensations" in their users, engaging all of the senses to create a "unique interior world," as Ramón Vilalta of RCR Architects explains. The project is built almost entirely of thick plates of steel, including walls, floors, tables and chairs. In much the same spirit as the culinary creations of chef-owner Fina Puigdeval, the architects' aim was to see how many different qualities they could draw out of the material and the spaces it gives shape to, pushing beyond its normal sensorial limits to approach effects more proper to earth, wood, vegetation, liquid water or shimmering, evanescent light.

Located on the outskirts of Olot, a small city in the north of Catalonia, Spain, the restaurant occupies the former ground floor stables of an old stone masia or farmhouse dating at least to 1784, and a one-story pavilion added when Puigdeval opened the restaurant in 1990. In 2001, she asked Vilalta and his associates Carme Pigem and Rafael Aranda to transform the dark spaces of the former stables and the outdated pavilion into a memorable setting for her signature 12-course meals.

The architects streamlined the confused amalgam of existing spaces into a clear axial organization in the shape of a "T". Following a garden path of rusted steel plates, guests first approach the altered 1990 pavilion that forms the head of the T, and enter the restaurant at the crossing point of its axes. The spaces opening around this point offer contrasting environments, like "independent worlds," as Vilalta says. To the right, a pair of vertical openings reveal the machined precision of the kitchen, completely finished in stainless steel, and arranged around a patio walled in frameless sheets of glass, with a bubbling pond that extends into the entry garden below a screen of ivy. To the left of the entry, the dark, earthy enclosure of the main dining room is bathed in natural light from the garden, with oxidized steel walls, screens of twisted vertical steel ribbons along the windows, whose graphite-finished silhouettes recall the climbing ivy, and floors of raw steel planks, lightly waxed, that mix natural colors from different mills: deep blues, purples, reds and browns. These somber hues set off the brilliant reflective finish of the tables and chairs, painted in a hard-baked enamel of pale gold, the tabletops mirroring the brilliant sheen of light from the garden.

Kitchen, left; main dining room, right. © Hisao Suzuki

Straight ahead, the long trunk of the "T" plunges through the body of the masía in the form of a dazzling banquet room finished entirely in gold, with a continuous table seating 44. This space occupies the central structural bay of the house, and gives access to private dining rooms on either side, where the dark steel floors and gold furnishings are set under the original masonry vaults. At the end of the hall, doors open to a stone portico and enclosed garden for receptions on the opposite side of the masía.

The challenges presented by the banquet hall carried the architects beyond the influences of traditional Japanese architecture and minimalist sculpture evident in the main dining room. Vilalta explains, "the original space was windowless and disagreeable. The big decision was to open it to the exterior and convert it into a destination." The architects exaggerated its awkward length for dramatic effect, and covered its surfaces in gold to maximize the sense of light and splendor. Twisted golden ribbons of 5 mm steel along the long walls vibrate under the light of continuous fluorescent tubes at floor and ceiling; they screen air diffusers and acoustically-absorbent walls. The long table, also used for regular dining, is bolted to the floor, and was welded and finished in place. Like the rest of the furnishings, its design is vegetal in inspiration, with two continuous 8 mm thick steel plates that fold symmetrically from a central stem to produce twin cantilevered leaves (elsewhere, dining tables repeat this design with oval, round or rectangular tops). Tall serving tables ceremoniously line the walls; their small bisecting tops recall the leaves of an open book, or a pair of hands proffering a serving platter. The chairs are built of two symmetrical 5 mm plates, folded like origami around a diagonal cut that runs across the seat, with casters and thin cushions. The steel ingeniously opens below the seat to produce the curving back and single side arm, inviting diners to assume a relaxed, almost reclining posture, as if at a Roman feast.

The length of the room adds to the sense of hushed religious ceremony (as does the background music, including Gregorian chant, Baroque viols, and a Balinesian gamelan). Couples separate like partners in a line dance to find their seats on either side of the table, while the waiters whisk round and round announcing courses. Despite the drama of the room, its overall effect is of amplitude and ease, combining the free horizontal flow of modern space with the masía's slow, thick density. The banquet hall gives radical form to the architects' concept of an interior world, a space which, instead of seeking light and warmth from the exterior, burns with a gentle inner fire.

At Restaurante Les Cols, a daring menu meets its match with interiors served up by RCR Arquitectos and featuring steel as the key ingredient
Architectural Record, Record Interiors, September 2003, pages 136 - 141

Publicity image, author not listed

II. Guest Pavilions 

RCR has realized another experiment in the limits of transparency, understood as a form of nudity, or a stripping down to essentials, in a group of guest pavilions in the garden of Les Cols Restaurant in Olot. With the exception of an interior closet housing mechanical equipment, all the surfaces of each pavilion consist entirely of transparent glass: walls, ceiling and floor, this last suspended over the ground of the patio in which each pavilion is set. The patios are enclosed in turn in walls rent with gaps and reflections, composed of stainless steel tubes and vertical strips of translucent glass installed at different angles, producing an effect of visual veiling, like that of a falling sheet of water.

There are no televisions in the rooms, nor enough artificial light to read, nor any furniture other than the bed. In the minibar you will find only volcanic mineral water. Only the pale light of the firmament entering through the roof might distract you, or the rustle of the wind in the trees. Alternatively, you can pull all the black-out curtains across the walls, creating an enveloping cocoon within the cold glass capsule, or take refuge in the deep bath, with its floor of rounded river pebbles laid on edge, and its views into its own little patio. After a lengthy and sumptuous dinner in the restaurant (also designed by RCR, and with a Michelin star), the architects offer a re-encounter with nature and our own corporeality, in a moment of isolation and curative repose from the stresses of contemporary life. Together with the Museum of Glass in Toledo, Ohio by Sejima and Nishizawa, this is one of the few projects [in this article] that approaches technical innovation as a tool for exploring new frontiers of experience.


Translated from Spanish by DC.

Source:
Edificios transparentes 
Fuera de Serie No. 205
Expansión, September 19, 2008, pages 20 - 23

III: New Banquet Pavilion

For their part, the Spanish architects of RCR have produced a serene, Arcadian arbor for a banqueting pavilion at Les Cols, the two-star Michelin restaurant in Olot. The partially sunken structure is entirely enclosed in the polycarbonate sheeting used in greenhouses. Its roof is supported by steel rods slung in a long catenary arch, while the floor is a rustic pebble paving (canto rodado). The architects' previous interventions at Les Cols include the main dining rooms, with finishes and furnishings of heavy steel plate, and hotel rooms entirely enclosed in glass. Here they offer diners the immediate sensorial thrill of the rippling, blurred transparencies and reflections of the plastic sheet amid the earthy garden setting, and the ambiguous play between enclosure and openness, in which the limits of materiality are overcome by technical prowess. The Emperor here is both with and without clothes.

Source:
Adam's House in Paradise Revisited 
Arquitectura Viva 151, April 2013, pages 7 - 13, cover

 

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?

Barozzi Veiga: A Question of Character

Szczecin Philharmonic. Images courtesy Barozzi Veiga

New architectural talent tends to erupt quite suddenly on the international scene. Some may remember, back in 1983, when an unknown architect won an international competition with a design of impossibly abstract, sweeping volumes inspired in the revolutionary proposals of the Russian Suprematists. The project was The Peak, in Hong Kong, and the young architect was Zaha Hadid. Studying her painterly renderings at the time, one realized that nothing would ever be quite the same again in architecture.

This sense of generational renewal accompanied the news last year that the young, unknown Barcelona-based practice of Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga had won the prestigious European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, also known as the Mies van der Rohe Award, for their Philharmonic Hall in Szczecin, Poland. The commission is only their third finished building to date. But with its translucent profile of jagged glass gables, an expressive but hauntingly subdued echo of the steep peaked roofs of the city, the work announced a new voice in architecture, a new sensibility: intensely poetic, high-minded rather than playful, and with strains of a lofty, melancholy romanticism.

In the wake of the world-wide recession of 2008, the exuberant inventiveness of architects such as Hadid, Santiago Calatrava or Frank Gehry has come to seem dated and excessive, while new concerns such as sustainability and energy conservation have proved insufficient in themselves to inspire architectural renewal. Coming of age during the crisis –they founded their practice in 2004– Barozzi and Veiga have stepped in to fill this void at precisely the right moment.

Speaking from the partners' studio in Barcelona, Alberto Veiga explains their design method: "Fabrizio and I try to synthesize all the problems that come up in the design process and condense them to as much as possible. But we're not minimalists. Often we are quite expressive. But we try to be very clear about the ideas we wish to materialize. The best way to confront the complexity of things is often not to respond with more complexity, but rather by trying to resolve them simply. To reduce them to their essence."

This approach is reflected in the exquisite renderings the two prepare for each project. They earn their commissions entirely through competitions, and spend weeks elaborating these presentations, seeking to convey not only the essential idea of a design but a particular mood and atmosphere.

Rendering, Tanzhaus, Zürich

Veiga and Barozzi met in Seville, while working in the studio of the architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra. Barozzi, who is 39, is from northern Italy, and had arrived from the University of Venice on an Erasmus Scholarship. Born in Galicia, in northwestern Spain, 42 years ago, Veiga had studied in Pamplona, followed by a stint with local architect Francisco Mangado, before moving on to Seville. The two began collaborating on the side, and after winning a competition they decided to set up shop on their own. They moved to Barcelona –roughly halfway between Italy and Galicia, Veiga points out– and found a modest flat on a leafy street in the heart of L'Eixample, Ildefons Cerdà's magnificent 19th century expansion of the city, where they work with 13 architects and interns.

Águilas Congress Center

One of the first competitions they won was for an auditorium beside the sea in the town of Águilas, in the southern province of Murcia, Spain. A compact, monolithic cube finished in white stucco, it is subtly modeled like a sculpted piece of stone. "The building is intersected by two spheres and a cone," Veiga comments. "Being by the sea, its appearance changes constantly with the light, and its dynamic – your perception of the volume changes as you approach it."

Denomination Ribera de Duero Headqyarters, Roa, Spain

Their third built project to date focuses mainly on making public space rather than on the sculptural objecthood of the building itself. Located in the small rural town of Roa, Spain, and housing the headquarters for administering the "Ribera de Duero" wine denomination, the design is broken down into fragments, finished in stone like other important buildings of the town, and grouped around a small plaza framing a view of the countryside. A similar strategy informs the much larger Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, where the two architects have designed the building as a background to the new public space they make beside it. Projects currently under construction include a dance school in Zürich and a music conservatory in Brunico, Italy.

Rendering, Cantonal Museum, Lausanne

  Veiga maintains that what matters most in all these works is the question of character. "To be bigger or taller or use more colors or materials doesn't make a design stronger," he observes. "Buildings can be simpler, but what they have to emit is a certain attitude or character. What we bring to a project is to identify the character of its context, what matters most, and try to make it more intense, more potent."


Concepts: Barrozi - Veiga
Gaggenau New Spaces
Spring 2016, pages 14 - 21

Other blog entries on Barozzi Veiga:
Barozzi - Veiga: Building the Void
Dec. 3, 2014

New Kids on the Block: Estudio Barozzi Veiga
May 1, 2013