Souto de Moura, Architect of the Year

Could it have been anyone else? My selection for Architect of the Year in the Ladies and Gentlemen section of the December Gentleman (Spanish edition) is Eduardo Souto de Moura, winner of this year's Pritzker Prize. (Sorry, no web version available).

"...en la última década ha encontrado su propia voz, caracterizada por rotondas formas geométricas y una contención formal que envuelve sus obras en un silencio altamente expresivo. Frente a la demanda por una austeridad más pragmática y funcional, la obra de Souto de Moura revindica valores esenciales de la arquitectura para un futuro incierto."

Runners up: Oscar Niemeyer, José María Sánchez García and
Jürgen Mayer H.

Present Crisis and Glories Past

Articles for readers in both Spanish and English appear this week: The Architectural Review publishes my pundit piece (they asked for something "pithy") on the effect of the crisis on Spanish architecture (The Death of the Icon, it's alarmingly called; love the Brit's apocalyptic journalistic headline craft), and a review of the show on Jean Prouvé in Madrid, which appeared in the cultural supplement of El País this Saturday (Visionario y Pragmático).

On the crisis, I make a quick survey of the debris accumulated so far to conclude, among other things, that "the profession is clearly preparing itself for a period of contained, functionalist remorse, although it remains to be seen if politicians and voters will be capable of capturing the change in sensibility."

On the Prouvé show, organized by Norman Foster for his wife's Madrid gallery, I plot the interesting connections between Prouvé and Foster himself, as captured in "the photo of an older Prouvé heading the jury for the competition of the Pompidou Center in Paris, won by Foster's former associate Richard Rogers together with Renzo Piano. The photo seems intended to mark the changing of the guard between Prouvé, one of the original masters of the Modern Movement, and the High Tech generation to which Foster himself belongs, a generation that with this project took its first steps into the limelight."


Top photo: The Niemeyer Foundation in the northern post-industrial city of Avilés, yet another Guggenheimesque cultural center that will close after just six months of operation, due to local political squabbling. Photo from The Architectural Review.

Second photo: Construction shot of the Aeroclub Roland Garros in Bac, 1936, by Jean Prouvé and the architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcels Lods, High Tech avant la lettre. Photo courtesy of Ivory Press Art + Books, © Fonds Jean Prouvé.

Architectural Record Visits Spain

The July issue of Architectural Record is dedicated to new museum buildings. In addition to my article on the Archaeological Museum by Francisco Mangado that appears on the cover, the magazine's web page features two additional museums in Spain that I presented to the editors, both recognized in the XI Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urbanism, as reported in my blog entry of April 19th.

The two museum are:

The Water Museum
Juan Domingo Santos, Architect

Lanjarón (Granada)

Photo © Fernando Alda

Can Framis Museum
Jordi Badia, Eatudio BAAS

Barcelona

(See also my blog on Feb. 17, 2010)

Followers of Spanish architecture shouldn't miss Suzanne Stephen's review of Peter Eisenman's City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela in Record's June issue. Her article concludes:

"Although it is too early to fully evaluate a complex still very much under construction, already it has become a lightning rod for debate regarding its high cost, excessive space, and ambiguous program.... As it ages, it will no doubt lose its rawness, but probably keep its brute energy. The gesture is so defiant. Its brazen monumentality and unsettling scale ravenously explore the difference between artifice and nature. Time will reveal its significance."

Added July 11, 2011: More Spanish features in Record:

Record has just published a web featurette on Oscar Niemeyer's Cultural Center in Áviles, on the northern Spanish coast (also featured in my blog entry of December 11, 2010).

And the web section of last April's Record Houses has a featurette on Antón García Abril's Truffle House, including the amusing construction video. It was also a Snapshot in the April issue (also featured in my blog entry of March 26, 2011).

All are projects I pitched to Record; the web is adding variety to architectural coverage but has managed to put us all to work for free.

Added August 15, 2011:
Suzanne Stephens reports on John Hejduk's little-known Trisca Center in Santiago de Compostela, completed in 2003, on the Record web page this month, while the August Snapshot page is dedicated to Jürgen Mayer H's Metropoli Pergola in Seville.

Niemeyer Preview in Avilés

The Niemeyer Cultural Center speeds towards completion in the northern port city of Avilés, in Asturias. To celebrate Niemeyer's 103rd birthday last Wednesday (December 15th), the Center inaugurated its dome, made of concrete sprayed over an inflated membrane of PVC. The dome will house exhibition spaces. Other elements include an auditorium, a multi-use building with a cinema, classrooms and meeting rooms, a lookout tower and a large plaza. The project is the centerpiece of an urban revitalization effort. Niemeyer donated the design to the city in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Prince of Asturias Prizes, which honored him with its Arts Prize in 1989.

For Roberto Alonso, one of the architects overseeing construction, the work stands out for its tranquility and silence, as he told a local newspaper (in Spanish). For others, Niemeyer brings the sensual pleasures of Copacabana to this tired industrial center. In its startling abstraction, I see the shorthand of the aged master, like Merce Cunningham before arthritis forced him to retire completely from the stage, who with a raised arm and a flick of his wrist could sketch a life's worth of experience in movement. Next to him, younger dancers were simply jumping around.

Photo: Vulka.es
Niemeyer Center web page