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

Moneo and the Limits of Contextualism

All photos © Duccio Malagamba

 Rafael Moneo's controversial Congress Center in Toledo is the subject of my article in the May issue of Architectural Record (available in full here).  The project has found few supporters in the Spanish architectural community, as it manages neither to blend in with its historic surroundings nor to successfully stand out.

Built on-and-off for over 12 years due to budget problems, it was quietly opened last December under the management of a private company, and is struggling to find business; the region is one of the hardest hit by the current economic crisis in Spain.

From the article:

"To what degree does Toledo's memorable cityscape depend on the quality of each of its individual buildings? Zeroing in with a critical eye on any one of the anonymous structures that make up most of the urban fabric, you may find it lacking in one way or another—a dubious modernization, a drab exterior finish. Likewise, the crude workmanship, jarring color, and busy entry structure of Moneo's design may strike a discordant note at first sight. But take a step back, and everything blends into a harmonious whole. Given time and familiarity, Moneo's convention center will certainly join in Toledo's forgiving accumulation of historical periods. As the architect explains, 'The building is there, but it is inconspicuous. It contributes to the life of the city, but it doesn't declare its presence' But had he chosen to make it more decidedly of its own period, perhaps its contribution to Toledo's image would have been more positive—one of dialogue and encounter."

Climbing the Wall
El Greco Congress Center, Toledo Spain by Rafael Moneo
Architectural Record, May 2013

The restaurant terrace, where the building meets Toledo's old rubble walls

Alan Colquhoun 1921 - 2012

BD Online reports today the death of British architect and critic Alan Colquhoun at the age of 91 (free registration required).

While known in the US mainly as a critic -he taught at Princeton in the 1970's and published in Oppositions- in Britain he is also known for his architecture, as Owen Hatherley recounted in the same magazine last November:

"As a historian and theorist of architecture, Colquhoun’s rigorous and often harsh, pessimistic writing put him closer to the neo-Marxist history of Manfredo Tafuri than the alternately guilt-ridden or coldly technocratic literature of British post-modernism."

"As an architect ... Colquhoun was behind some of the most interesting housing in post-war Britain, favouring an austere idiom equally hostile to the picturesque, tamed modernism of the Festival of Britain as it was to the concrete gymnastics of much Brutalism."

All this means he tilted horns with the New Brutalists, Reynar Banham, Rogers, Foster, and his pet peeves, Buckminster Fuller and the Pompidou Center. In the United States, Hatherley maintains,

"It could be argued that the neo-avant-garde formalism of Eisenman and the New York Five, and their pessimistic assessment of any possibility of “political” architecture, owed much to Colquhoun."

And in his last book, a history of modern architecture, Hatherley reports,

"....Colquhoun wrote a final, darkly funny attack on the Fun Palaces and New Babylons of the 1968 generation, seeing the end result as little more than “boredom and claustrophobia”. And looking at much 21st century architecture, who could disagree?"

 Not much fun is he, not much fun at all.

Update
December 21, 2012
DD Online has now published testimonials to Colquhoun by several colleagues, as well as  Kenneth Frampton's tribute , which puts into sharper focus his work as an architect and thinker than the comments cited above.

My favorite testimonial is by Robert Maxwell, former Dean of the Princeton architectural department and another expat Brit in the States, who first met Colquhoun "in 1946 when we were both in the Bengal Sappers and Miners, at Roorkee, India."

His report includes these gems:

"Alan enjoyed a large bungalow with high clerestory windows, and my memory is of us lying on camp beds a few inches off the ground listening to Mozart’s piano quartet while a grave old gentleman called a punkah-wallah pulled a hanging sail to and fro to make a draught."

"At Rookee, after dinner in the mess we would lie on low wooden chairs waiting for sunset. As soon as the sun went down a beautiful fragrance from the flowering shrubs wafted over us, renewing our hopes for tomorrow. But by then Colquhoun had already left."

Frampton praises Colquhoun's work and nuanced thinking, but nevertheless ruefully notes his rough spots:

"Considerate, gracious and gallant, Alan as a lifelong bachelor was a romantic who remained categorically anti-romantic. He was unfailingly an outspoken critic who did not suffer fools gladly, which no doubt accounts for our occasional exchanges as to merits and demerits of regionalism, critical or otherwise."

No folks, I am not making this up, this is not a Monty Python skit: Colquhoun knew very well how not to have a good time.

In the sharper focus department, Frampton is worth quoting at length:

"Trained in Edinburgh and the AA, Alan would remain as removed from the technocratic euphoria of Banham and the British hi-tech movement, as from the neo-vernacular Swedish welfare state style adopted by the left-wing architects of the LCC ([London County Council]. Within this line-up his affinities lay with his Corbusian colleagues at the LCC, as we may judge from his contribution to what was then a typical LCC unité duplex block, completed in the London borough of Hackney around 1958."

"Influenced by the Warburg generation of Germanic émigré intellectuals, by Gombrich, Cassirer, Wittkower et al, Alan was committed to continuing the rational humanism of the pre-war Modern Movement, to which the early work of Colquhoun and Miller bears ample testament; above all their Stratford Secondary School in the East End of London of 1962 and the chemistry laboratories that they designed and realized for the Royal Holloway College, Egham in 1970."

"Alan’s subsequent involvement with the School of Architecture, Princeton University at the end of the 60’s brought him into contact with Tomas Maldonado who, along with the Spanish aesthetician Tomas Llorens exiled in Portsmouth, would have introduced him to the Neo-Marxist thought of the Frankfurt School with which his writing was subtly infused throughout the remainder of his career."

Note the link to Tomás Llorens: the point man it would seem for Rafael Moneo's entry into the Oppositions circle; the two were colleagues at the Barcelona journal Arquitectura Bis.

Bibliography
Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change
Oppositions Books, 1981.

Modernity and the Classical Tradition: Architectural Essays 1980-1987
The MIT Press, 1991. Spanish edition available.

Collected Essays in Architectural Criticism
 Black Dog Publishing, 2008.

Modern Architecture (Oxford History of Art)
Oxford University Press, 2002. 

Available in Spanish as:
 La arquitectura moderna: Una historia desapasionada
 Gustavo GIli, 2005


Oase 87 - Alan Colquhoun. Architect, Historian, Critic
Articles by Tom Avermaete, Kenneth Frampton, Francoise Fromonot, Christoph Grafe, Owen Hatherley, Christian Kieckens
 NAI, 2012

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

Moneo Museum in Pamplona

News brief
Another private project perks up the gloomy panorama in Spanish architecture. This time it's a museum designed by Rafael Moneo for the University of Navarra in Pamplona, which is owned and operated by the Opus Dei. Situated between the university campus and the edge of the city, the project will begin construction next month.

Among other collections, the museum will house a major donation of works by María Josefa Huarte, 87, member of the Huarte family, the great patrons of the arts in Spain in the 1950s and 60s, and the archives of José Ortiz-Echagüe, author of posed, painterly photographs on popular Spanish themes in the early 20th century. Huarte's donation, some 50 works, includes paintings by Tapies, Picasso, Rothko, Palazuelo, Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida.

Ortiz-Echagüe was one of the founders of the Spanish aviation industry in the 1920's, the first director of the state-owned SEAT automobile corporation in the 1950s, and the father of the noted 1950s architect César Ortiz-Echagüe, who built a series of memorable Miesian buildings for SEAT before cutting off his career and retiring at an early age into the Opus Dei.

Source: El País, October 19, 2011 and my own research.

Amman Cánovas + Maruri in Carabanchel

One of the more interesting projects in Madrid's excellent public housing program of the last decade is the subject of my latest article. It appears in Oris, a handsome Zagreb-based journal, together with an interview with Rafael Moneo, a report on Eisenman's City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, and Housing for the Elderly by Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus, among other features.

The private terraces ... bring a much-needed permeability to the central courtyard [of the patio-block typology]. They can also be seen as a modern interpretation of the traditional Madrid street balcony, and in this sense are actually quite Baroque and theatrical in their essential role of giving individual privacy a public face.

The Public Face of Privacy
Carabanchel 17 Public Housing, Ensanche de Carabanchel, Madrid.
Amann, Cánovas + Maruri, Architects.
Oris (Zagreb, Croatia), No. 69, Year XIII, July 2011, pages 54 -61.

Photo © Miguel de Guzmán

Winery Tour

On the newstands in Spain: in the February issue of Arquitectura y Diseño, I publish an article on six Spanish wineries. In addition to the well-known Chivite Winery in Navarra by Rafael Moneo and Richard Rogers' Protos Winery in Peñafiel, it includes RCR's underground Bell-lloc Winery in Girona (left), Paredes + Pedrososa's Bodegas Real near Valdepeñas (below) and Madridejos + Sancho's Bodegas Casalobos in Picón, Ciudad Real. It also introduces the new Portia Winery near Aranda del Duero by Foster and Partners, which opened last fall.

Bodegas: Los Nuevos Santuarios
Arquitectura y Diseño
February 2011, pages 72 - 82.

Above, Bodegas Bell-lloc. Photo © Eugeni Pons
Below, Bodegas Real. Photo © Roland Halbe

Toledo Meets its River

The Madrid studio of Francisco Burgos and Ginés Garrido has won a competition to rehabilitate the banks of the Tajo River and connect the area to the historic city. The project includes a riverfront walk, pedestrian bridges and a cable tramway that will descend 50 meters from the city to the riverbank. The firm was one of six finalists in a n international competition. Source: El País, February 4, 2010 (in Spanish).

The project is part of a larger urban plan by Barcelona planner Joan Busquets. Other elements include the outdoor mechanical stairs by Elías Torres and José .Antonio Martínez Lapeña, inaugurated about ten years ago, and a Congress Center on the northern slopes of the city by Rafael Moneo, which is currently under construction. All three projects involve operations designed to ease access between the original fortified acropolis of the city and its surroundings.

Burgos and Garrido also lead the team that has redesigned the banks of Madrid's Manzanares River. The new riverside park, partially opened this year, replaces a highway that the city buried in a pharaonic engineering project in 2007.

Photo: Mikel Ortega, Creative Commons License, May 2007 (detail)

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.