New Architecture Critic at the Times

Here's a scoop from the Architectural Record web page: art critic Michael Kimmelman will be the new chief  architecture critic at The New York Times starting in the fall. Nicolai Ouroussoff is moving on to a book project, a history of architecture over the past 100 years (source).

It's common in the US to appoint non-architects as newspaper critics, but Kimmelman has some solid experience writing on architecture and urbanism, and he brings a broad cultural perspective to the job. For the past seven years he's been reporting on a wide variety of cultural themes from a base in Berlin.

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.

Mangado in Architectural Record

 

The cover story in this month's Architectural Record is my report on Francisco Mangado's Archaeological Museum of Álava in Vitoria, Spain. 

Like his other projects, the Archaeological Museum exemplifies Mangado’s identification with the Modern movement that many Spanish architects have maintained with great vitality over the last few decades. In all of his work Mangado upholds the ideals of a functional layout and structural logic of 20th-century masters, and applies them to expressive ends chiefly through the sensual qualities of the materials he chooses and the spatial relations he establishes  between them. 

Mangado has been offering for some time what international architecture has just discovered that it needs; 3 or 4 years ago he was a very hard sell in the United States.

Archaeology Museum of Álava
Mangado and Associates
Vitoria, Spain
By David Cohn
Architectural Record, July 2011

Read full story here.

Photo: © Roland Halbe. Used with permission.

More (FAD,Enor) Prize Finalists

The calender spins round and round and years spin by, and now the finalists for the 2011 FAD Awards have been announced. For the full list see the PDF prepared by Arquinfad. Benedetta Tagliabue headed the jury. Winners will be announced in the fall.

The finalists in the category of architecture:

A residence for seniors by the Aires Mateus brothers in Alcácer do Sal, Portugal. Photo © Fernando Guerra  FG + SG

Subsidized housing in Terrassa
Eva Prats and Ricardo Flores

Atrio Hotel, Cáceres
Mansilla + Tuñón.

House for a Photographer, Folgoso do Courel, Province of Lugo, Galicia
Carlos Quintáns
Also a special mention in the XI Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urbanism.

Vigo Headquarters, College of Architects of Galicia
Jesús Irisarri + Guadalupe Piñera
(Subject of my article last year in Speech).

Houses in Santa Isabel, Lisbon
Ricardo Bak Gordon

Water Museum, Palencia
David Serrano Amatriain, Maier Vélez Olabarria  (MID Estudio)

Media-Tic, Barcelona
Enric Ruiz Geli  (Cloud 9)

Houses in Colonias Viladoms, Castellbell ( Barcelona)
Carlos Ferrater, Núria Ayala  (OAB) 

House R, Cabrera de Mar (Barcelona)
Arturo Frediani Sarfati

Childcare Center, Pratdip, Tarragona
David Tapias Monné, Núria Salvadó Aragonès.

Subsidized and Public Housing, El Monte Hacho, Ceuta
José Morales Sánchez, Juan González Mariscal  (Morales de Giles Mariscal)

Nuestra Señora del Rosario Public School, Murcia
Martin Lejarraga.

For diehards there is also a PDF of selected projects (runners-up to finalists).

And while I'm on the subject, the V edition of the biennial Enor Prizes has also  announced 45 finalists, chosen from 350 entries from Spain and Portugal. Winners will be presented in a ceremony next November. Here's the list, from SCALAE news (I was on the jury for Enor's last edition):

1. Centro de Saúde 
   Oleiros, A Coruña
   Ábalo Alonso arquitectos
2. Hotel Moure
   Santiago, A Coruña
   Ábalo Alonso arquitectos
3. Casa A5
   Oleiros, A Coruña
   Carlos Seoane
4. Hotel Pazo de Altamira
   Santiago, A Coruña
   Creus e  Carrasco arquitectos
5. PAAR. Parque arqueológico del arte rupestre
   Campo Lameiro, Pontevedra
   rvr arquitectos
6. Reintegración urbana do patrimonio cultural da ribeira do Traba
   A Pedra Chan, Noia, A Coruña
   Salgado e Liñares arquitectos enxeñeiros
7. College of Architects of Galicia
   Vigo, Pontevedra
   Irisarri+Piñera arquitectos
8. Casa da Maxia
   Ourense
   Trespes arquitectos
9. Centro Cívico Municipal
   Boecillo, Valladolid
   José Manuel Martinez, Inés Escudero y Fernando Nieto
10. Colegio de arquitectos y Fundación cultural del COAL
    Salamanca
    Carmen Martínez y Rodrigo Pemjean
11. Museo del agua [Also a FAD Finalist]
    Palencia
    MID estudio
12. Espacio para una sociedad Gastronómica
    Medina de Pomar, Burgos
    Carlos Pereda y Óscar Pérez
13. Centro Cultural: Biblioteca y Teatro
    Simancas, Valladolid
    Gabriel Gallegos
14. Aulario ABC Facultad de Bilogía. Universidad de León
    León
    DMG arquitectura
15. 22 viviendas sociales en alquiler para jóvenes
    Madrid [X! Biennial too]
    Mónica Alberola, Luis Díaz-Mauriño y Consuelo Martorell
16. Nave 8B. Matadero
    Madrid
    Arturo Franco Díaz
17. Oficinas Inmobiliaria Chamartín
    Madrid
    Burgos & Garrido arquitectos y Isasi & Pieltáin arquitectos
18. Auditorio y escuela de música
    Madrid
    Milla, Mira y Navarro arquitectos
19. Edificio de laboratorios y almacenes químicos en la Universidad de Alcalá
    Madrid
    Héctor Fernández Elorza
20. 132 viviendas promoción pública. Parcela 5.16. Ensanche de Vallecas
    Madrid
    Estudio Entresitio
21. Bar no jardim 9 de abril
    Lisboa
    J. Mª. Magalhaes Pavia y Nuno Sousa. ASPA
22. Casa das Caldeiras
    Coimbra
    João Mendes Ribeiro y Cristina Guedes
23. Pavilhão do Acolhimento. Escola francesa do Porto
    Porto
    Nuno Valentim y Frederico Eça
24. 12 habitaçoes unifamiliares em banda – L286
    Bom Sucesso. Óbidos
    Nuno da Graça Moura
25. 24 habitaçoes unifamiliares em banda – L158
    Bom Sucesso. Óbidos
    Nuno da Graça Moura
26. Casa em Melides
    Melides. Grándola
    Pedro Julio Guerreiro
27. Recuperación del Palacio de San Telmo para Presidencia de la Junta de Andalucía
    Sevilla
    Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra
28. Hotel y restaurante Atrio [FAD too]
    Cáceres
    Mansilla+Tuñon arquitectos
29. Valle urbano. Piscina municipal en un valle artificial
    Granada
    Diego Jiménez y Juana Sánchez
30. Reforma y ampliación de la escuela Sant Gregori
    Barcelona
    Coll-Lecrec arquitectos
31. Museo de arte contemporáneo
    Alicante
    Sancho-Madridejos Architecture Office
32. Cap Progres Raval
    Badalona, Barcelona
    Bass Jordi Badía
33. Parque empresarial del Arte Sacro
    Sevilla
    Suárez Santas arquitectos
34. Vivazz. 131 viviendas protegidas  [XI Biennial First Prize Winner]
    Mieres, Asturias
    Zig Zag arquitectura
35. Escuela porche
    San Feliu de Guixols, Girona
    Bosch.Capdeferro
36. Casa Collage
    Girona
    Bosch.Capdeferro
37. 80 viviendas protección oficial [Also XI Biennial]
    Salou, Tarragona
    Toni Gironés
38. Pasarela peatonal y urbanización
    Pamplona [Also FAD Finalist]
    Carlos Pereda, Oscar Pérez e Ignacio Olite
39. Centro Cultural Cap Vermell
    Cala Ratjada, Mallorca
    Barceló-Balanzó arquitectes
40. Piscina Cubierta
    Barbate, Cádiz
    EDDEA arquitectos
41. Teatro municipal de Zafra
    Zafra, Badajoz
    Enrique Krahe
42. Museo del agua [Also XI Biennial]
    Lanjarón, Granada
    Juan Domingo Santos
43. Gimnasio 704
    Barberá del Vallés, Barcelona
    H arquitectes
44. Centro de remo y piragüismo
    Alange, Badajoz
    José Mª Sánchez
45. Centro de día y actividades comunitarias
    Palma de Mallorca
    Flexo arquitectos

Public Housing Gets the Prize

The awards of the XI Biennial of Spanish Architecture and Urbanism were announced early this month.

The event is organized by the central government's housing office, architects' professional associations and other sponsors. A jury headed by the architects Félix Arranz and Joaquín Sabaté chose 40 finalists and prize winners in several categories from among 734 entries, over twice the number of previous editions and an all-time record.

Jury members included Lluis Clotet, the urban planner José María Ezquiaga, Manuel Gallego, Belinda Tato of Ecosistema Urbana, and Llàtzer Moix, architecture critic for La Vanguardia newspaper in Barcelona, among others.

Prize for Architecture
Subsidized housing, Mieres (Region of Asturias)
Zigzag Arquitectura (Bernardo Angelini + David Casino)
(Pictured above)

Mentions:
Residential development in Caramoñina, Santiago de Compostela
Víctor López Cotelo

 House in Paderne (Province of Lugo)
Carlos Quintáns Eiras
(Pictured above)


Special Recognition:
Álava Archeological Museum, Vitoria (Province of Álava)
Francisco Mangado

Museum of Water, Lanjarón (Province of Granada)
Juan Domingo Santos
(Pictured above)

Can Framis Museum, Barcelona
Jordi Badía
  

Young Architects' Prize
Rowing Center, Alange (Province of Badajoz)
José María Sánchez García 
(Pictured above)

Mentions:
Mercat de Ferreríes Civic Center, Tortosa (Province of Tarragona)
Josep Camps + Olga Felip

Municipal Environmente Services Headquarters, Zaragoza
Jaime Magén + Francisco Javier Magén

Prize for Subsidized Public Housing
22 Apartments for renters under 35, El Rastro, Madrid
Mónica Alberola, Luis Díaz-Mauriño + Consuelo Martorell
(Pictured above)

Mentions:
Housing block in Salou (Province of Tarragona)
Toni Gironés

Student housing, Bellaterra Campus, Autonomous University of Barcelona
Eduard Bru

Prize for Urbanism
Municipal Plan, Montmeló (Province of Barcelona)
Jornet, Llop + Pastor

Mentions:
Port of Malpica (Province of A Coruña)
Juan Creus + Covadonga Carrasco

The Munch Area, Oslo, Norway
Juan Herreros Architects

Special Recognition:
Waterfront Promenade, Poniente Beach, Benidorm (Province of Alicante)
Carlos Ferrater

Prize for Research
Ex Aequo
Media-TIC Building, Barcelona
Enric Ruíz Geli

Territorial Plan for Housing in Cataluña
Josep María Vilanova +Ricard Pie

Mentions:
"Esto no es un solar" Program, Zaragoza
Patrizia di Monte + Ignacio Grávalos

Font de la Mina Library, Sant Adrià del Besós (Barcelona
Alfonso Soldevila

For pictures of more winners,
see the Arquitectura Viva web page

Geometric Abstraction in Latin America

A landmark show, still on view through May 15: América Fría: Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934–1973) at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid.

Art over four decades from Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Cuba, and artists such as Joaquín Torres-García, who founded the Asociation of Constructivist Art in Montevideo in 1935; the Madí Group in Buenos Aires, founded in 1946 by Gyula Kosice, Carmelo Arden Quin, Rhod Rothfuss, Martín Blaszko, Diyi Laan); Lucio Fontana, who settled in Argentina in the same years and published the Manifiesto Blanco on spatialist art; Alejandro Otero, Carlos Cruz-Díez and Jesús Rafael Soto in Venezuela; the Brazilian geometric movement, etc. etc.

Also included are interesting cross-currents with artists who spent large periods in South America, including Calder, Josef Albers, Vasarely and  the great Spanish sculptor Jorge Oteiza.

Curated by Osabel Suárez.

Francisco Calvo Serraller reviews the show in El País:
El ardor artístico de la 'América fría'

"For the non-specialist, this exhibition demolishes the common notion that Latin American art stands out only for surrealism, Mexican muralism and the realisms of the inter-war period."

"...the artistic production of this fertile current of geometric art in Latin America was not at all limited to simply following the European vanguard, part of which moved to New York during the Second World War... Rather it made decisive and original contributions that reflect a local sensibility y and an extremely rich cultural tradition."

Translated by DC

Juan March Foundation
Castelló, 77
Madrid

Monday to Saturday 11.00 – 20.00 h.
Sunday and holidays 10.00 – 14.00 h.
CLOSED April 21-24 for Easter

Pictured above:
Lola Soldevilla
Carte Celeste en Amarillo Nº 1
1953
National Museum of Fine Arts, Cuba
From the Juan March Foundation web page

Watch your Step

My article on a house in the small Portuguese city of Leiria by the architects Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus is the cover story in this month's Record Houses 2011, Architectural Record's annual special issue on the single-family house, which publishes six projects from around the world chosen from 250 candidates. The full text and a portfolio of photos are found here.

... the perfect archetype of a house, straight out of a Monopoly game box or a fairytale; an apparently solid volume wrapped completely in white plaster, pitched roof and all...

House in Leiria, Portugal
Manuel and Francisco Aires Mateus, Architects
Architectural Record: Record Houses, April 2011

Photos © Fernando Guerra

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.

Eduardo Souto de Moura

My news story and analysis on Eduardo Souto de Moura, recipient of the 2011 Pritzker Prize, Why Souto de Moura Won the Pritzker, appears today in the news section of the Architectural Record web page.

For background on Souto de Moura, here are three articles I've written on his work over the years:

Beinah Nichtes With a Twist /Almost Nothing with a Twist
Torre Burgo, Porto, Portugal
architekur.aktuell, November 2008, pages 58 - 69.
(Sorry, no web version available at present).

Different Voices
Pousada de Santa María do Bouro

Different versions of this article appeared in:
Architectural Record, November 1998, pages 120 - 123.
Bauwelt 4, January 22, 1999, pages 174 - 179.
World Architecture 73 (London), February 1999, pages 78 - 79.

The Court House Revisited
Court Houses, Matosinhos, Portugal

Published as:
Hofhäuser in Hafenmähe
Bauwelt 33, September 1, 2000, pages 36 - 39.
Holding Court 
World Architecture 86 (London), May 2000, pages 78 - 81.

Photo by Luis Ferreira Alves
Paula Rêgo Museum - Cascais, Portugal 2005-2009 
Courtesy of The Pritzker Architecture Prize

La Trufa

I write on Antón García-Abril's Truffle House, the latest of his experiments in heavy construction, in the March issue of the Viennese journal architektur.aktuell. This small guesthouse on the coast of Galicia is an unreinforced concrete structure, poured in a single day using hay bales and unconsolidated earth as formwork. García-Abril has taught at Cornell and Harvard as well as in Madrid; he is currently teaching at MIT.

García-Abril's investigations into the architectural implications of extremely dense materials, into the qualities of gravity, balance, mass and materiality and the choreography of the construction process, are as compelling in their own right as the early theoretical house projects of Peter Eisenman, for example; they are just as frivolous and serious and pathbreaking

Back to Nature
Trufa House, Costa da Morte, Spain by Antón García-Abril.
architektur.aktuell 372, March 2011, pages 52 - 61.

Photo © Roland Halbe

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

Calatrava: Case Update

In a post on January 4th I discussed the court case on Santiago Calatrava's unrealized project for a waterside opera in Palma de Mallorca, where I wrote:

News is still scarce, but ... Santiago Calatrava's ... 1.2 million euro fee for the design of an opera in Palma de Mallorca in 2007 has raised the suspicions of Judge José Castro... The judge is investigating the regional President at the time, Jaume Matas, for 25 cases of illegal bribes, kick-backs and other schemes for robbing public funds.

Here is an update on the case:
Both Calatrava and Matas have been indicted by the judge, and have testified before him since our last post. The major accusations to emerge so far are two.

First, on the part of ex-President Matas, the commission was given to Calatrava without following legal procedures, which require competitions to be organized for all public projects, among other things, and without any preliminary studies justifying the project. According to the accusation, the design was a public relations stunt concieved by Matas during an election campaign. In fact, the public commission overseeing the electoral process at the time halted the execution and publication of the project as a violation of campaign fair play.

Matas is therefore accused of using public funds "for exclusively personal and partisan interests," according to prosecutors. The judge has imposed a bail of 1.6 million euros on Matas for his potential personal liability in the case; this is in addition to the 3 million euros he has already posted for other charges in related cases (El País, 02.13.11; 03.03.11) .

Secondly, Calatrava`s office has been accused of numerous irregularities in billing the project, most flagrantly the failure to pay the required 16% Value Added Tax (VAT) on the 1.2 million fee, or more than 160,000 euros, according to a report presented by the Spanish tax authority to the court (El Mundo 01.17.11).

Calatrava is also accused of being an accomplice and party to the fraud perpetrated by Matas. He presented only two models, a video and a power point presentation of the design, without any other documents or studies, according to the prosecution. The local press in Mallorca has picked up accusations that Calatrava lifted the design directly from a 1989 competition project for a floating structure in the Lake of Lucerne (see for example here), a charge Calatrava has denied in court.

Stay tuned for further developments...

Jean Nouvel in Gentleman

The March issue of Gentleman, now on the newsstands in Spain, has a major feature on upcoming projects by Jean Nouvel. The Louvre in Abu Dhabi (left) and the National Museum in Qatar are his most interesting designs to date, and probably the best two projects to come out of the Emirates' building boom. Special thanks to Gentleman Editor Alessandro Ryker and Director Fernando Rimblas for the chance to publish drawings of unbuilt work in a general circulation magazine.

No debe sorprendernos la renovada fuerza creativa de Nouvel en éstas obras de su madurez. Recordemos que Frank Gehry tenía 68 años cuando se inauguró el Guggenheim de Bilbao, y Le Corbusier terminó su ciudad nueva de Chandigarh en India a la edad de 69. Algunos arquitectos pueden caer en la tentación de repetir sus anteriores éxitos, incluso siendo bastante jóvenes. Pero otros como Nouvel encuentran, con el respaldo de la experiencia y el éxito, la libertad para descubrir nuevos territorios a explorar.

El mejor Nouvel
Gentleman 83, March 2011, p. 32-38.
Rendering © Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Upcoming Lecture

Tomorrow, Tuesday February 8, I will give a talk as part of the Workshop on Architecture and Communications organized by the VII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism. The talk will cover the different approaches to architectural criticism and publishing in the United States and Europe, and my own approach to criticism. In Spanish.

Taller 1. Arquitectura y Comunicación
VII Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo
Casa Encendida, Ronda Valencia, 2 28012 Madrid
February 8, 2011, 6:30 PM
More information
Enroll in the Workshop

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