More for Less in Print

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Arquitectura Viva has published some of the debates of the International Congress Architectue: More for Less organized last June in Pamplona by the Foundation Architecture and Society (see my post from June 20th). The book publishes "interviews conducted by five prominent critics with the participants, which cover a broad generational and geographic spectrum, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of our time", according to an AV press release. Texts in English and Spanish.

Manuel Vicent on the Sagrada Familia

The legendary columnist of El País (who is by no means an architectural philistine), has this to say about the consecration of Gaudi's nearly-completed Sagrada Familia by the Pope on his recent visit to Spain:

One of the worst nightmares imaginable would be to dream that all of Barcelona had been designed entirely by Gaudí.... Fortunately he only built a few significant buildings and for this reason he is considered  a genius....  The only saving grace, if any, of the Temple of the Sagrada Familia, was the fact that it was unfinished, the dream of a genius driven crazy by mystic reveries. Now it will be completed with the money of tourism, and when its walls are finally enclosed, there will be no one inside but Japanese tourists.

Manuel VIcent
El Templo
El Pais, Sunday, November 14, 2010, last page.
Web version (in Spanish)

Photo of the completed nave
from the Sagrada Familia web page.

Quoted text translated by DC.

Mathias Goeritz

Works on Paper, Models & Sculpture. A rare show on a fascinating figure in Mexican art and architecture at the Caja Negra Gallery in Madrid through January 7, 2011. Goeritz was born in Danzig (today Gdansk) in 1915 and grew up in Berlin, where he studied art, philosophy and art history. He escaped from Germany during the War, traveling through Morocco (1941), Granada (1945) and Santilla del Mar, Spain (1948), where he participated in founding one of the first resuscitations of contemporary art in post-Civil War Spain, the Escuela de Altamira, a group that included Ángel Ferrant, Eduardo Westerdahl and Joan Miró. He was invited to teach architecture at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico in 1949, and settled there permanently. Among the works he created there are monumental sculptures designed with Luis Barragán, the Museo del Eco, restored and reopened in 2005, and the 1953 Manifiesto de la Arquitectura Emocional.

Mathias Goeritz
Works on Paper, Models & Sculpture
November 11, 2010  - January 7, 2011
La Caja Negra
Fernando VI 17, 2º l
28004 Madrid

Image from the Caja Negra web page.
News source: Tectónica Blog

Francisco Mangado & John Pawson in the Glossies

Two of my articles have come out in glossy Spanish magazines this past week. The first focuses on Francisco (Patxi) Mangado's Centro Hípico in Ultzama, built for his daughter, a champion horseback rider, and for the retreats and seminars organized by his Architecture and Society Foundation. The article appears in the weekend color supplement Fuera de Serie of the business newspaper Expansión (no web page version yet, but stay posted). The editors used the oversize newspaper format to great effect with a double-page spread of the Olympic-size covered training track. It was an opportunity to present Patxi's arguments for a more restrained and disciplined architecture to a wider audience.

Incluso en sus obras más pequeñas, se nota su sello característico, lo que él mismo describe como una cierta "mineralización" de sus formas. "La arquitectura más que nunca requiere un tiempo de reflexión que se traduce en densidad, en intensidad," mantiene, una actitud que contrapone a las "caligrafías superficiales" que ve en las obras de muchos arquitectos de moda. Lo que Mangado está buscando, y lo que encontramos en el Valle de Ultzama, entre las líneas de los robles y el río, es una arquitectura intemporal, sin fecha de caducidad. 

The second article is a brief introduction to John Pawson in the November issue of Gentleman, which you can still find on Spanish newsstands. Pawson has a show, Plain Space, at London's Design Museum through January, that is accompanied by a new monograph by Phaidon.

"Es muy complicado hacer que algo parezca sencillo." John Pawson

Minimalismo al servicio de la hípica
Ultzama Equestrian Center by Francisco Mangado.
Fuera de Serie, No. 304, Expansión, October 29, 2010m pages 18 -20.

El arquitecto nómada
Introduction to John Pawson interview
Genleman 79, November 2010, pages 68 - 72.


Photo 1:
Centro Hípico, Ultzama by Francisco Mangado
© Pedro Pegenaute

Photo 2:
John Pawson, Ceramic Goblet 
Available in the Design Museum gift shop. 

Gunnar Birkerts' National Library in Riga, Latvia

My story on Gunnar Birkert's Latvian National Library ran in the news section of Architectural Record's web page this week, and appears in the October issue. Mr. Birkerts is 85, and this may well be his most original and compelling design yet. It is set for completion in time for Riga's date as European Cultural Capital in 2014.

A Decades-Old Project Finally Gets Built
Architectural Record, October 2010, page 30.
Web page news section, October 18, 2010

Image from the National Library of Latvia web page.

A new monograph on Birkert's career is available:
Gunnar Birkerts--Metaphoric Modernist
Edition Axel Menges, Stuttagrt, 2009.

FAD Winners 2010

As I announced in July, the winners of the annual FAD Awards were presented this month in Barcelona.

The Architecture Prize went to the Grupo Aranea (Francisco Leiva and Marta García) for their High School in Rafal, Alicante (featured in a photo in my July post).

José María Sánchez received a Special Mention for his Sports Center in Guijo de Granadilla, Cáceres, a project I have published several times.

The prize for Public Spaces was awarded to Carlos Ferrater and Xaxier Marti for their Beachfront Promenade in Benidorm, also in the province of Alicante.

In the category of Interior Design, a bar in Oviedo, Spain, I+DRINK. by Merche Alcalá and Marion Dönneweg,was recognized, and in the category of Ephemeral Spaces, Weltliteratur, an exhibition in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon designed by Francisco and Manuel Aires Mateus.

Among the Prizes of Opinion awarded by the public attending the ceremony, Jordi Baas received two, one in the category of Architecture for his Museum Can Framis in Barcelona, which I published earlier this year, and another for his CP House in the category of Interiors.

Photo: Beachfront Promenade, Benidorm by Carlos Ferrater and Xavier Marti. Photo © Alejo Bagué/Ascer.

Bucky Lands in Madrid

Norman Foster and Luis Fernández-Galiano have organized a show in Madrid titled "Bucky Fuller & Spaceship Earth" that includes a full-size replica of the Dymaxion Car -- only three prototypes of the original vehicle were made in 1933-34.

The show is at Ivory Press & Books, a bookstore and publisher housed in a space designed by Foster and run by his wife, Elena Ochoa. They've also edited a handsome book on the vehicle. I've found some of the previous ventures by the Press a bit precious, but this is something else, a luxury in every sense of the word.

Foster's interest in Fuller goes back to his student days at Yale, and he collaborated with him on projects in the 1970s. His comments on the show are on the Foster and Partners' press office web page.

The show is open through this month.

Ivorypress Art+Books
Ivorypress Ltd.
Comandante Zorita, 48
28020 Madrid

In coordination with the show, AV Monográfías 143 is dedicated enitely to Fuller,with texts by Foster, Fenández-Galiano, Allegra Fuller Snyder and many others, in Spanish and English. See Table of Contents.

Record Interiors Cover Story

Record Interiors, Architectural Record's September issue dedicated to interior design, features my cover story on the Crusch Alba loft in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter by Swiss architect Gus Wüstemann. The full text is on Record's web page.

Swiss architect Gus Wüstemann defines his design approach as “program-free architecture,” in which “everything that contaminates the space with a program disappears"....

Vallecas goes Pop

Today I renew my collaboration with the cultural supplement Babelia of the Spanish daily El País. The story is a report on the latest public housing in the new Madrid district of Vallecas. The development has given a new generation of Madrid architects the opportunity to build, many for the first time. Mid-decade trends (when the projects were first awarded in competition) are seen in a new, post-crisis light.

The full story appears on their web page:

Vallecas será pop
Babelia, Number 978, pages 18-19.
El País, Saturday, August 21, 2010.

Los "árboles de aire", plazas de sombra envueltas en mallas verdes de vegetación, ocupan los cruces del bulevar, cerrando vistas que en el resto del ensanche son demasiado abiertas. Son los únicos lugares en la zona donde se oye el canto de los pájaros. Alrededor se sitúan algunos de los proyectos más atrevidos de la EMVS, con acabados de planchas metálicas galvanizadas, texturas corrugadas y colores de una intensidad pop. Es una auténtica utopía de la joven arquitectura madrileña, apenas un cruce de calles, como las utopías suelen ser.

Above: Housing by Paredes Pino Architects.
Photo: DC

The Panoramic Eye

David Cohn
The Panoramic Eye
Llotja Theater and Convention Center, Lleida (Lérida), Spain.
Mecanoo Architects, Delft.
architektur.aktuell 34, 2010-07-08, July 2010.
Table of contents    Order issue

Mecanoo's design for Lleida is frequently compared to the auditorium built in 1966 by Van der Broek and Bakema at the Delft Technical University. But by setting the Llotja building on a paved plaza stocked with urban amenities, Francine Houben has given the project a solid Spanish pedigree. And by converting Van de Broek and Bakema's frontal, hovering design, expressive in its time of a new degree of freedom from gravity, into a three-dimensional form, she has created a thoroughly contemporary architectural object. Like a spinning top or an alien spacecraft, it incongruously meets the ground with slanting walls, while its continuous window scrutinizes the surroundings like a panoramic eye.

Photo courtesy of the architects.

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.

José Antonio Corrales, 1921-2010

Arquitectura Viva reports the death of José Antonio Corrales, 88, one of the pioneers of postwar Modernism in Spain (in Spanish). I was lucky enough to interview him a couple of years ago in his Madrid studio in Bretón de los Hereros, where he was still working at his vertical drafting table with a parallelogram, full of energy and ideas.

Years ago Manuel Gallego took me to see Corrales' School of Arts and Trades in A Coruña (Escuela de Artes y Oficios Artísticos), then recently completed, and he remarked that in the boldness of its forms it looked like the work of a youngster, and yet the detailing was obviously the work of a master.

His social housing development of the 1960's in Elviña, A Coruña (Unidad Vecinal No. 3, Barrio de las Flores), like many of the works he realized with Ramón Vázquez Molezún, matches the compositional pyrotechnics of British or American Brutalism but with forms that appear to have been machine-tooled rather than poured-in-place.

Corrales remembered by Rafael Moneo en El País (in Spanish).

FAD is Coming!

Barcelona's annual FAD Awards, promoted by the Foment de les Arts Decoratives Association, aka Arquinfad, have announced their finalists, with winners to be presented in the fall. Here's the list of nine finalists in the category of architecture:

• Luis Rojo + Begoña Fernández-Shaw, public housing, Ciudad Real
  
• MVRDV + Blanca Lleó, for their second public housing block in Sanchinarro, Madrid
• Grupo Aranea, High School in Rafal, Alicante
• Brullet + Luna, Elisabeth School, Salou, Tarragona
• Carnicero, Vidal + Virseda, Single family house, Torrelodones, Madrid
  
• Andrés Jaque, Never Never Land House, Ibiza
• Francisco Mangado, Archeological Museum, Vitoria
  
• Jordi Badia, Museum Can Framis, Barcelona
• José María Sánchez, Sports Center, Guijo de Granadilla, Cáceres

Finalists for public spaces:

• Carlos Ferrater, Beachfront Promenade, Benidorm
• Alberto Campo Baeza, Esplanade between the Cathedrals, Cádiz
• Batlle + Roig, Restoration of the Banks of the Llobregat River, Province of Barcelona
• Francisco J. Castellano, Rubén Cortes + Noelia Martínez, Magdalena Fountain, Jaén
  

The prizes also cover interior design and ephemeral projects (exhibitions, fair pavilions, etc). The full list with pictures (in Spanish and Catalan) on the Arquinfad website.

Photo: High School in Rafal, Alicante by Grupo Aranea (Franciso Leiva Ivorra, Architect. © Duccio Malagamba

Summer Shows in Madrid

DOCOMOMO
Public Places and New Programs
La Arqueria - Nuevos Ministerios
Paseo de la Castellana, 67
Tues. - Sat. 10-2, 5-9
Sundays, h0lidays, 10-2
Through September 5

The public buildings of the Modern Movement (1925-1965) are the subject of the latest DOCOMOMO show at Madrid's public architecture exhibition space, La Arquería. DOCOMOMO Ibérico is the official register of the modern buildings of Spain and Portugal, and has been systematically cataloging them since the 1990s. Its website has a full list of registered buildings to date.

Laboratorio Gran Vía
Fundación Telefónica
Gran Vía 28, 3rd Floor (Access from Valverde 2)
Through October 6

As part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of Madrid's Gran Vía, Iñaki Ábalos has invited a group of Madrid architects to speculate on an "imaginable future" for the avenue. The participants make up a Who's Who of up-and-coming (and already-arrived) Madrid architects: Izaskun Chinchilla, Manuel Ocaña, Acebo + Alonso, Andrés Jaque, Ecosistema Urbano, Carlos Arroyo, S & Aa, Abalos + Sentkjewicz, AMID.cero9, Gálvez + Wieczorek and José Miguel Iribas.

Solar Decathlon Madrid

This June Madrid was the site for the European edition of the Solar Decathlon, a competition between teams from 17 universities to design and build the best-performing solar house (consuming only solar energy). The houses were erected in a new park on the banks of the Manzanares River. The event was sponsored by the Polytechnic University of Madrid with the support of Spain's Ministry of Housing and the US Department of Energy (previous editions have been held in the United States).
Projects were judged in 10 different categories. The top prize for overall performance went to the Lumenhaus, designed by students of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Second and third prizes went to the Universities of Applied Science of Rosenheim and Stuttgart, respectively.
The 17 houses were open to the public for 10 days during judging and received 190,000 visitors. For more information in English, visit the Decathlon website.

Full list of participants:

Spain

• Universidad CEU Cardinal Herrera, Valencia. Industrialization and Market Viability Award
• Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluña
• Universidad de Sevilla
• Universidad de Valladolid
• Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña. Architecture and Architectural Innovation Award (1 of 3)
  

Germany

• University of Applied Sciences Rosenheim. Second Prize, Electrical Energy Balance Award, Appliances and Functioning Award, Comfort Conditions Award
• University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart. Third Prize, Innovation Award
• Bergische Universität Wuppertal
• Fachhochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin. Solar Systems Award
  

France

• Arts et Métiers Paris Tech. Sustainability Award
• Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Architecture, Grenoble
  

United States

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. First Prize, Architecture and Architectural Innovation Award (1 of 3)
• University of Florida. Communication and Social Awareness Award
  

China

• Tianjin University
• Tongji University
  

Great Britain

• University of Nottingham

Finland

• Aalto University. Architecture and Architectural Innovation Award (1 of 3)