ARQUITECTURA-G en Casadecor
El próximo 12 de Noviembre un nuevo certamen del conocido CASADECOR abrirá sus puertas en Barcelona en uno de los edificios más emblemáticos del Eixample Barcelonés, la Casa Llorens.
ARQUITECTURA-G, junto a los despachos H Arquitectes, Hidalgo-Hartman, Josep Muñoz Pérez y Alcolea+Tárrago, expondrá parte de sus trabajos dentro de la exposición organizada por la Asociación de Jóvenes Arquitectos de Cataluña (AJAC). La exposición permanecerá en la Calle Corsega 261 hasta el 13 de Diciembre.
294 Viviendas de Protección Oficial en Bilbao
ARQIUTECTURA-G ha presentado una propuesta en concurso abierto para la construcción de 294 viviendas en Bilbao.
Obra: Promción de 124 viviendas de proteción oficial, anejos y urbanización vinculada + 170 alojamientos dotacionales, anejos y urbanización + locales comerciales + aparcamiento + depósito municipal vehículos y oficinas.
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G + FIARK
Promotores: Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao y VISESA
Ubicación: Bilbao, Euskadi
Año proyecto: 2009
Superficie: 45000m2
Presupuesto: 25.000.000€
Memoria
Descripción del programa habitacional:
124 Viviendas de Protección Oficial; 6 uds. de 60m2, 63 uds. de 70m2 y 55 uds. de 90m2. Una vivienda adaptada a personas con movilidad reducida por planta.
170 Alojamientos Dotacionales en régimen de Alquiler Social; Unidades idénticas de 35m2. Una vivienda adaptada a personas con movilidad reducida por planta, pudiendo ser adaptadas la totalidad con gran facilidad.
Se ha adecuado el proyecto a la normativa de promoción de viviendas respecto a las ordenanzas de diseño de viviendas de protección oficial, Ley 20/1997 para la Promoción de la accesibilidad así como todos aquellos aspectos recogidos en el Código Técnico de la edificación que afectan directamente al diseño arquitectónico y las previsiones necesarias para su cumplimiento en el resto de parámetros.
Adecuación al entorno:
El edificio responde adecuadamente al entorno presentando una volumetría que, desde el reconocimiento al nudo viario que preside, se quiebra propiciando que su escala se torne más amable. Si bien en la práctica se trata de dos edificios independientes, se ha concebido como una sola operación. El retranqueo planteado por el Estudio de Detalle en las VPO ha dado la pista para que, haciéndose más menudo a medida que se acerca a la calle Antonio Trueba constituya el elemento que da unidad a la fachada. La curvatura de la fachada se insinúa de esta manera, aportando distintas mejorías que más tarde mencionaremos. El Estudio de Detalle, sin embargo, no unificaba la manzana en cuanto a perfiles, por lo que hemos optado por añadir una planta ático a la promoción de VVMM. Al hacerlo, además de proporcionar viviendas de mayor calidad evitando alojamientos en planta baja, damos un carácter más unitario a toda la intervención. Este aumento de altura es fácilmente justificable por este motivo, y más aún al tratarse de un remate de esquina frente a un nudo viario. Este nuevo ático respeta los retranqueos que el ED marca para la parcela de VPO y los continúa.
En lo que respecta al frente de la calle Andrés Isasi, planteamos una intervención urbanística que abra la esquina de manzana a sur, conectándose de una manera espacialmente más rica tanto con la calle Antonio Trueba como con el sistema de espacios abiertos cercanos.
Interés de la propuesta:
La orientación norte-sur de las parcelas condiciona fuertemente las viviendas. Frente a esto, y en coherencia con la fachada norte de nuestra propuesta, planteamos quebrar su cara sur para abrirla al sol. En el caso de las VPO, un retranqueo análogo al efectuado en la fachada norte aumenta el patio y permite una buena ventilación. En el caso de los Alojamientos Dotacionales, los quiebros del frente a la glorieta permiten una orientación a oeste. Al mismo tiempo, tanto la apertura de manzana como el patio interior, favorecen tanto el asoleo como la ventilación. En los Alojamientos se ha primado el carácter social debido al ocupante tipo de los mismos. Así, las pasarelas de acceso exteriores y los espacios urbanos y comunitarios de planta baja y cubierta propician el intercambio social de una manera adecuada.
Los núcleos de comunicación serán los mínimos posibles; 2 para los Alojamientos dotacionales y 4 para las VPO.
Las plantas bajas, aparte de su programa habitacional propio, acogen las oficinas del Depósito Municipal de Vehículos, directamente comunicadas con sus plazas sin interferir en los núcleos de las viviendas. En el caso de la promoción de Visesa, se facilita un único, amplio y diáfano local para futuro uso terciario en. Ambas promociones alojan un acceso peatonal al parking de Bilbao Ría 2000, colindante con los sótanos a realizar.
Otro punto aparte lo constituyen los garajes. La complejidad del programa y accesos requiere una propuesta arriesgada pero no por ello poco sensata; Proponemos una primera planta de sótano que ocupe ambas parcelas. Sus 4 metros de altura libre y sus dimensiones permiten alojar íntegramente el Depósito Municipal de Vehículos, los accesos y servidumbres de paso a los garajes de Bilbao Ría 2000, así como los accesos rodados desde ambas promociones que conducen a la planta -2. Las plantas restantes alojan el programa propio de ambas promociones. En caso de necesitar plazas adicionales, se podría extender la rampa de la grúa a la planta -2.
Ventajas de esta decisión:
-Se facilita y abarata la construcción de los garajes al ser todos los forjados comunes y coplanarios.
-Dada la diferencia de cota entre la avenida y la parcela, todos los forjados coincidirían con el garaje de Bilbao Ría 2000
-Se flexibiliza el uso de los garajes de cara a eventuales cambios.
-Se minimizan las rampas de grúa a un solo nivel con lo que se gana superficie de aparcamiento.
-Se aísla el Depósito municipal del resto de los garajes, ganando en seguridad y se evita el cruce de las personas que van a retirar su vehículo con usuarios de plazas de aparcamiento particulares.
Siendo esto así, creemos firmemente que por el bien del proyecto común, tanto en su ejecución como en el posterior desarrollo de su actividad, Viviendas Municipales de Bilbao y Visesa deberían establecer un acuerdo que posibilite la fórmula que proponemos.
Valores medioambientales y criterios de sostenibilidad:
-Se ha establecido, especialmente en los Alojamientos Dotacionales, un criterio de estandarización que aporta beneficios objetivos tanto desde el punto de vista económico como desde el medioambiental. Las células habitacionales, orientadas en el mismo eje y de tamaño idéntico, implican repetición y claridad estructural y por tanto un ahorro de coste material y energético. Su disposición favorece además el flujo de aire y por lo tanto el ahorro de gastos en climatización. En las VPO se ha perseguido la máxima repetición de tipologías de vivienda dentro de la variedad exigida por el programa.
Se propone para ambas promociones:
-La utilización de materiales industrializados y de sistemas constructivos de bajo consumo energético tanto en su fabricación como en su puesta en obra y posterior reciclaje.
-Materiales de alta durabilidad y poco mantenimiento.
-Placas colectoras solares para la obtención de ACS en cubierta no transitable, válvulas termostáticas reguladoras.
-Ventilación natural cruzada
-Depósitos de recogida de aguas pluviales y grises para cisternas de WC
-Instalaciones centralizadas y separativas en la recogida de aguas pluviales, grises y negras.
-Separación entre zona diurna y nocturna para reducir el área a climatizar simultáneamente
-Limitación de los puentes térmicos mediante la separación de las estructuras exteriores e interiores y la utilización de rotura de puente térmico en carpinterías.
-Instalación de luminarias de bajo consumo.
-Reductores de consumo en grifería y aparatos sanitarios.
-Sensores de presencia para el encendido de la iluminación artificial.
-Optimización de los residuos, con espacio de recogida separativo que maximice el reciclaje.
-Optimización de los sistemas de transporte no contaminantes, con espacios para el aparcamiento y alquiler de bicicletas.
ARQUITECTURA-G en la selección de NEO2
La revista Neo2 incluye el último proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G en su selección de los mejores interiorismos del 2009.
Nueva incorporación en ARQUITECTURA-G
Albert de Anguera, estudiante de Arquitectura de la ETSAB, se incorpora al equipo de ARQUITECTURA-G en periodo de prácticas.
ARQUITECTURA-G en arquimaster
Arquimaster, sitio web de arquitectura, diseño y construcción, ha publicado el último proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G.
ARQUITECTURA-G en PulsoBcn
PulsoBcn publica un artículo sobre ARQUITECTURA-G.
Nueva incorporación en ARQUITECTURA-G
Isabel Francoy Albert, Arquitecta Superior por la ETSAB y estudiante de Arte y Diseño de la Escuela Massana, se incorpora al equipo de ARQUITECTURA-G en periodo de prácticas.
Análisis de Formas 09-10
Aitor Fuentes Mendizabal, miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G, formará parte del equipo de profesores de Análisis de Formas de primer curso de la Escuela Superior de Arquitectura de la Universitat Internacional de Catalunya durante el curso 2009-10, junto a Manel Arenas y Miquel Lacasta.
“Under the Sky” by ARQUITECTURA-G (Last Part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN TATIANA BILBAO, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G ABOUT THE “CASA OBSERVATORIO PARA GABRIEL OROZCO“, BUILT BY TATIANA BILBAO.
(See part 1) (See part 2) (See part 3)
Published at Apartamento Magazine #4
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
Translation: Débora Antscherl and Miriam Gerace
Photography: Iwan Baan
EKHI LOPETEGI:
Many questions have been raised. They are difficult to resolve but rich in content. First, we have the question of the “aura” and how it is juggled within Casa Observatorio. Now, I will get a bit theoretical as I focus on the interplay between repetition and difference.
I believe that the issue of the replaceability of something lies at the gleaming core of the aura conundrum. We say that something has an aura when it is irreplaceable, that is, when it cannot be substituted by its analog version and it is not equal to something else. And so, as Benjamin says, an aura will always surround itself by ritual and thus it will dissolve when the totality of things occur in the form of their general equivalency. Within the Marxist theory that Benjamin uses as springboard, money is the commodity that renders the rest of the commodities more or less equivalent to each other. When the totality of things composing reality (whether people or houses or resources) appears to us in the shape of commodity, this general equivalence principle could be extended to said totality. To be singular and irreplaceable, that is, to be endowed with this aura in principle comes into direct conflict with the capitalist mode of interchange. Within the work and production fronts, the serial production of an object is the translation of this equivalence principle that snubs a priori the irreplaceable nature of things.
What happens in Casa Observatorio? I believe we sensed it when someone mentioned the “superimposition of auras”. No repetition generated anything analogous or equivalent to an original observatory. Some people say that repeating a stroke is pretty much unproductive because it does not engage novelty. In this sense, the repetition of the original observatory is productive in that it conveys novelty. It is not an analogous or equivalent repetition nor is it the repetition of a gesture or replaceable object, but rather stands a unique production and reproduction. Why? Because under no circumstances is Casa Observatorio a mere equivalent of the Jaipur observatory. In this sense, the original/copy duality bursts into new and inconspicuous meanings within Benjamin’s text. For Benjamin, such a burst brings us closer to a world where reproductions are would-be copies that do not recognize the originals whence they came. However, the resulting Casa Observatorio is not the repetition of two originals, that is, of two singular and irreplaceable objects. For Nietzsche, repetition is active rather than reactive and it implies a future (here, a re-signifying process) that newness produces in a radical sense. In short, it is a repetition that creates new conditions. Herein resides the entirety of its richness.
But not just any reproduction anywhere can do this. Architecture as a discipline is closely connected to technical reproduction. A modern building will not reveal the characteristic unique stroke of an artist’s painted picture. The decision made by Nouvel to preserve some of the remaining debris and the notes of the workers on the concrete is based on wanting to provide some trace of singularity (lacking, a priori, in the building’s actual production). Also through sheer use an ordinary apartment becomes stained by its residents’ tracks and traces and acquires a singularity that renders it unique. However, I believe that a series of semi-detached villas will repeat and not create novelty. Although in Manhattan there are different buildings, they remain analogous or equivalent to each other. Would the reproduction of Villa Savoye yield a new and singular object or no more than a futile cardboard reproduction? Only if said reproduction implies a re-signification (sampling) process yielding a new and singular object. I believe Casa Observatorio to fulfill this condition. We can add to the list of traits of the house that it brings to light the complex relationships between repetition and differentiation, the reproduction and production of novelty and the creation of an “added value” that renders the house a rich and unique object.
ARQUITECTURA-G:
We do appreciate the Malaparte house reference here at the very end, considering it was probably in the back of our minds through the length of the conversation, not to mention the first image we associated to Casa Observatorio the first time we saw it. We believe they share many things. Both of their architectures are remarkably visible, hiding nothing and plotting out landscape a bit arrogantly. As they both adequately follow procedure, aka common sense, they are both equally rooted to their land and they both enrich and give meaning to nature, not unlike a lighthouse or a beachside bar. They are both reference points and provide their site with a reading based on their placement somewhere between the known and infinity. The abstract planarity of all the decks also plays an important role, as this order of things cannot be found elsewhere on the natural landscapes of their surroundings. You climb some steps suddenly you feel in charge of your residence. Both of them are residences that somehow encourage tucked and protected living and exterior life. Also, climbing to the very top of either one of them entails complete exposure to the immensity of the horizon.
Perhaps Koolhaas has essentially already proved with “Casa da Música” that architecture is an intellectual exercise where what counts is the result and the processes are interchangeable. We can endow things with new meanings divorced from anything as originally conceived, as long as somehow this stands addressed, to paraphrase Ekhi’s re-signification or sampling process. See the music of artists like John Talabot. Maybe everything will start to become much clearer to us once our friend gets around constructing the new Villa Savoye…
ARQUITECTURA-G en sólo arquitectura
Sólo Arquitectura publica en su web el último trabajo de ARQUITECTURA-G.
Vivienda Unifamiliar en Capbreton
Vivienda Unifamiliar de 280m2 en Capbreton, Francia. Empieza la fase de Anteproyecto.
“Under the Sky” by ARQUITECTURA-G (3rd Part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN TATIANA BILBAO, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G ABOUT THE “CASA OBSERVATORIO PARA GABRIEL OROZCO“, BUILT BY TATIANA BILBAO.
Published at Apartamento Magazine #4
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
Translation: Débora Antscherl and Miriam Gerace
Photography: Iwan Baan
TATIANA BILBAO:
Although the house has a significant vertical line of interaction I would say that, as opposed to the observatory, it finds its essence interacting with context rather than sky. We oriented the cross by taking the axis of the house and re-placing it on the only two points that define the site: one lone palm tree on a parcel of land (as a curious anecdote, the day we finished our sketch we saw a maguey flower in full bloom and competing with the palm tree) and the centre point of a number of rocks on the more remote parts of the parcel by the sea.
I think that the entrenchment of the house to the site comes from the strategic strokes performed by its compositional elements. As Ekhi said, the house possesses a centrifugal force that expels itself to the outside, however sustaining an important attraction to the center. Because of the great force of the unattainable center, this house gets us closer to the earth than to the heavens. The fact that the bottom areas of the house are destined to be “inhabited” gets us to experience it much like we experience the earth, as it pulls us towards the center and the unknown it represents. This is what it is to be experienced, being marginally surrounded and admired from another place. I would not say that the house is less than residential; as I mentioned before the fact that it allows the family enjoy their routines confers it a residential disposition.
ARQUITECTURA-G:
Beyond its intrinsic symbolism, we totally agree and believe the house to be both suitable and enjoyable as a residence. We never doubted its functionality and architectonic potential. This is why we are attracted to the idea of retaking and bringing into crisis the concept of architecture as something singular and unique, because the house proves this fact as much as it does not. An architect colleague of ours owns a parcel of land in La Rioja, a prairie surrounded by trees and a continuous contour line. Just about every day, a number of people confess to him their desire to build an exact replica of Villa Savoye on his land. The conversation always starts on a light note and quickly turns into a jigsaw puzzle, as we never arrive to a convincing line of reasoning against the idea of building it. In fact, we believe it would be interesting. Le Corbusier himself imagined and sketched out a prairie brimming with Villa Savoyes. Such is our friend’s personal desire. He simply likes it, he cannot think of a better residence to build and he knows of no higher aesthetic experience than the one proposed by the Villa. Having processed this, suppose he has his exact replica built. What happens now when the Villa Savoye kitchen is deemed too far out into a marginal corner because it was meant for the help? What if he decides to change it and expose it to the patio? Surely just this would spoil the charm and the idea of living inside an exact replica 70 years and 1,000 km away from its original site. However, what if instead of changing the kitchen he decides to adapt more and more things to the point of re-interpreting it into something closer to Villa Dall’Alva…? At any rate, this can only happen in stand-alone houses that function as living machines and not at the Casa Ugalde by Coderch, as an example, as this would simply make no sense. An exact copy of Villa Savoye could indeed provide a pleasant life and a complete aesthetic experience, just like Mies Van der Rohe’s Barcelona pavilion does. However, what part of it would be considered architecture?
TATIANA BILBAO:
I think it’s a great idea. I also think that building a copy of Villa Savoye would be an incredible experiment. I sincerely believe that in the past 70 years life has changed almost as radically as I felt the passage of time at the Observatory in India when I was there. We are discussing the aura again, but I believe that here Walter Benjamin’s reference is particularly fitting. Will the uses and customs of the house perhaps change as things change through the centuries? I also consider the amount of architecture in something a subject worthy of discussion. As a matter of fact, one of the constants of my every day entails wondering how much architecture there is in what I do. Sometimes, case in point Casa Observatorio, we believe there is none and then suddenly one day everything about it becomes architecture to us. At this juncture we would need to start defining architecture, a scarcely productive turn for us to take at the moment. We might as well discuss Villa Malaparte, in Capri, which I start to use as an “original” object and end up replicating sensations and transporting them to the site. How much architecture would there be in this, I wonder?
ARQUITECTURA-G en Apartment Therapy
La revista americana de interiorismo Apartment Therapy, con sedes en Los Angeles, Boston, Nueva York, Chicago y San Francisco, publica en su web el último trabajo de ARQUITECTURA-G.
“Under the Sky” by ARQUITECTURA-G (2nd Part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN TATIANA BILBAO, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G ABOUT THE “CASA OBSERVATORIO PARA GABRIEL OROZCO“, BUILT BY TATIANA BILBAO.
Published at Apartamento Magazine #4
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
Translation: Débora Antscherl and Miriam Gerace
Photography: Iwan Baan
TATIANA BILBAO:
Working through this project as an aesthetic decision led me to imagine the path to its ultimate execution. The decision to “reproduce” a space designed to be an observatory, to de-contextualize it and “use” it with a completely different function in my mind could only be feasible if it was an aesthetic decision to begin with. As this was in fact true and, as he was quick to point out, considering that we felt like we were personally taking on part of Gabriel’s work, it was difficult to question from a perspective of architecture, of the resulting space. Without a doubt, reproduction, de-contextualization and change of function remained our core goals and through them the space would eventually take up an identity of its own. In terms of authenticity, since Gabriel’s practice mostly deals with the use of objects, elements, spaces and sensation- inducing scenarios, the extreme detachment of his work from today’s I.T. era where everything has a “logical reason” of being is also obvious as such. The fact that it is the reproduction of something ceases to be our problem as its “aura” now resides elsewhere. The same thing happens exactly when we go see a movie featuring a reproduced landscape, as we do not expect to see or capture the “aura” generated by the original landscape as experienced live, but rather one based on filmic reproduction, storyline, camera perspective and character direction. Herein resides the “aura” of this house. As much as the actual use of these objects, elements and moments is the validating point in Gabriel’s practice, the established sensations associated to an object, in this case, are the artist’s primary concern. I could have never fathomed the result because through the process for me space had been just that, an aesthetic decision as part of an artistic practice based on the creation of sensations rooted on the everyday, reproduction and the use of something that already exists. Only once the piece stood executed and able to lapse into its everyday did it as an object become an inhabitable space, and only then was I able to understand it as an architectural piece. The transformation in perception took place when it was understood that the space perfectly responded to the family habits and purposes. As soon as I saw the “object” as used and inhabited, the “symbolic” space quickly became the everyday space the family was accustomed to reside. The house that seems to expel its inhabitants from its center manages to produce a familiar experience for every one of its inhabitants. For example, this family is used to going camping together through the different beaches of the Mexican Republic, mostly up and down this particular extension of the Pacific coast. Suddenly, here they have a place where they can emulate their past experience, only in a much more sedentary way. In a campsite, private space becomes remarkably reduced and “expels” you from its interior as it encourages any activity outside of itself. The strictly intimate activities are relegated to this space, but everything else is experienced in reference to its context, the sky, the horizon. In a campsite, the “residents” relate directly with their environment; the social dynamic becomes increasingly collective as many of the activities are shared, both the intimate and more socially interpersonal events. The cohabitation space integrates to the site, something we see in the house. The intimate activities, the bedrooms, are what the tent is to the campsite, articulated by an observation and recreational unit conveying coherence and meaning to both space and activity and therefore defining the everyday. In terms of its function, the house incorporates the iconic facet of architecture, defined as such because it responds to a function.
ARQUITECTURA-G:
As we discuss Gabriel Orozco’s relationship to authorship, we remember that the authorship of the house belongs to no one. Although the artist includes the house in his practice, there is no question of there being an original construction, Orozco’s decision to reproduce it and Tatiana’s task of adapting it and building it. Therefore, the final result would not have been possible had it not been for its three “parents”. The relationships in Orozco’s work are established by the choice of an element, an a priori, that is then transformed and presented as something removed from its original condition, retaining its chosen recognizable element and thus producing a particular sensation for the spectator. We do not believe this to lead us to the destruction of the aura that Benjamin speaks of, but to a “superimposition of auras”. When a non-serial piece is reproduced, whatever its condition, and the resulting copy is an element so similar to the original it could potentially replace it, we then convene that the result is an insubstantial object. Now, in this house the purpose is not to create an identical copy, as the new house will have its own “here and now” purpose to it. However, as the result is so geometrically similar to the original, one resists losing the sensations provoked by the same. This culminates in a superimposed aura cohabitation that clearly contributes an added value to the residence. In terms of the permanence of the aura, instead alluding to cinematography as Tatiana did we could allude to contemporary music, mostly electronic: musicians use samples and become part of a song so they can de-contextualize it and construct around it a new theme where we can identify what has been sampled as cohabitating with the artist’s superimposed creation. However, we also want to delve into the symbolic connotations of the house. As compared to the displacement operating in some postmodern pieces mentioned by Ekhi -where an object with a clearly denotative meaning was taken from the collective unconscious and transposed onto a building- this house goes further than that whether or not it intended to do so. The building is based on an original construction devoted to the observation of the sky, the investigation of the unknown in a necessarily nocturnal setting, and was (still is) a machine designed to bring us closer to the stars and the intangible. In this sense, its line of environmental interaction is essentially vertical. On the other hand, its Greek cross floor plan connotes horizontality and an earth-oriented aperture. In any case, it is not a symbol of a religious event but of a search of what transcends us. And speaking of the cruciform floor plan, we would like to ask Tatiana to discuss another element of great symbolism: its orientation, whether it responds to the original, to the place where the house can be found. We have also observed with interest the centrifugal nature of the residence, as it provides for an absence of interior diagonal views that enables an atypical aesthetic experience but mostly because the very residence is forced out to the perimeters. Notwithstanding the upper levels, that is, on the ground floor, a clear hierarchy is established: 1. An unattainable center, 2. The bedrooms, 3. The exterior spaces in between the bedrooms and 4. The region of uncertainty immediately adjacent to the house. One could argue that such a clear hierarchy between the sections is something less befitting of contemporary architecture, but we would not hesitate to qualify the residence as such. I would like to hear your opinions about this.
ARQUITECTURA-G en NEO2
El último proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G se publicará en el número de Noviembre de la revista NEO2.
NEO2 distribuye actualmente 70000 ejemplares/número por las principales capitales del mundo.
“Under the Sky” by ARQUITECTURA-G (1st Part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN TATIANA BILBAO, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G ABOUT THE “CASA OBSERVATORIO PARA GABRIEL OROZCO“, BUILT BY TATIANA BILBAO.
Published at Apartamento Magazine #4
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
Translation: Débora Antscherl and Miriam Gerace
INTRO (ARQUITECTURA-G):
In a sequence of scenes from the film “F for Fake”, Orson Welles tells a story where Picasso notices a girl named Oja whom he seduces and takes back to his studio. She sits for him as he frantically paints a series of 22 nudes that she gets him to give her before she leaves. A few days later as he reads the paper, stingy Picasso learns of an art opening featuring 22 of his paintings which critics have hailed as a true renaissance for the painter. Picasso hurries to Paris to claim his share, as he had expressly prohibited the sale of the gift. As he enters the gallery he is surprised by the beauty of the paintings, but not as much as by the fact that they were not painted by him but rather were authored by Oja’s grandfather, a master art forger. Irritated, Picasso demands his originals only to find out from Oja that they no longer exist because her grandfather decided to burn them.
Beyond how the story may unfold we are drawn to the uncertainty generated by the act of burning originals: the uncertainty of what was only once an original but no longer as it does not exist and the uncertainty of what to now call something that used to be a copy.
For artist Gabriel Orozco, all of this is somehow embodied by “Casa Obsevatorio”. Built by the young architecture studio of Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico) in collaboration with Orozco, the house sits overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Puerto Escondido, Mexico.
As per the artist’s own wishes, the residence is an exact reproduction of one of the architectural pieces from the Jantar Mantar astronomical observatory in Delhi, India, built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur from 1724 onwards. It is a simple cruciform construction made of concrete and wood with a large semispherical concavity in the center dividing the floor into four sections.
We find the house fascinating because it proposes many themes from different vantage points, among which we will mostly focus on the reproduction factor and its architectural consequences. With this in mind, we will use as introduction a text from “the Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction” (Walter Benjamin, 1936), then we have a conversation with Tatiana herself and once again with Ekhi Lopetegi, Ph.D. in Philosophy and musician.
ARQUITECTURA-G:
Plagiarism means copying with the impossibility of reliving the moment of creation. Thus the copy becomes an empty object.
Architecture is intimately rooted to its function, to a time and place. When we copy it and de-contextualize it, we rob all this from it and it is left stripped of meaning.
In this case, one of the many architectural pieces from the Maharaja Jai Singh II observatory in Jaipur is reproduced and transformed into a residence. Replicating this piece in another context liberates it of meaning and renders it blank so it can acquire a different one.
Does this produce a new self-identity or is it just a formal whim? Will the entire intellectual process leading up to this, more befitting of artistic production, all in all yield an architectural piece?
From another perspective, we stand before a good example of a summer house, properly rooted to its place though it has a completely foreign origin. The sections are independent and outward facing, with external areas for daily activities like bathing and eating. The interior-exterior relationship in the house is not intended to blur the architecture or de-materialize the border of what has been built. It is achieved in a more primitive fashion by turning out part of the plan to the outside. It is a matter of climate and the nature of summer or even vacation living.
The pool is of vital importance in the transformation of the nature of the house from its previous conception as an observatory. On the one hand, by filling the hemisphere with water and converting it into a pool, the original meaning is de-naturalized and the structure becomes domestic and summery. On the other hand, it is the central piece around which the residential sections are organized radially, thus forcing the circulation to the outside.
We believe that in this instance we transcend the traditional conception of place as well as the contextualization of the architecture added to it. But was this by accident?
EKHI LOPETEGI:
I think that Casa Observatorio’s distinguishing factor is that it is a product of an “aesthetic decision”. This is why the construction of the house produced a discussion about whether or not it is possible to build and occupy a site by following the principles laid out by the concept of copy, or mimesis.
As the house purports to “represent” the original observatory, it is understood that at first glance and as a product of this aestheticization, a displacement occurs that goes from what it is to occupy a space and “use” it or “practice” in it, to what it is to “see” or “contemplate” an object. Now, neither astronomical observatories nor houses are aesthetic objects per se: observatories are scientific research complexes and houses are organized residential and spatial complexes. Setting aside the possibility of the house perhaps also being an observatory in a different sense, we can say that here the “gesture” made manifest is one of an aesthetic materialization of both the scientific and the residential complexes. Postmodern architecture is often illustrated with examples where a similar displacement occurs, as for example a building shaped like a basket or like any figurative motif around which the intention is to organize habitability. Here, the original observatory, the scientific complex, is in fact the figurative motif governing over, at least partially, the construction of the house. I believe we can agree that Casa Observatorio “looks like” the Jaipur Observatory.
Generally speaking, architecture made only to be seen is branded as grandiose. And generally speaking, architecture claims to be engineering purely for the sake of the pragmatic. Such is the quintessential modern architectural ideal. However, it would be a fallacy to believe in an exclusively functional architecture of a sort of functional purity. Any construction functions both as an example of spatial organization and as an aesthetic object to be contemplated that produces an “aesthetic experience”. This is why architecture magazines include more than just scale drawings, floor plans and diagrams to illustrate houses, and usually have a “spectacular” shot of the façade or something along those lines. Any architectural construction is an aesthetic “object” simultaneously experienced as such and as a residential complex. In this sense, architecture often becomes iconic, meaning that it turns into a symbol or it is granted a symbolic meaning. It is debatable whether every house is “a priori” a symbol or if it is only “a posteriori” that the house-machine becomes a “representational object”. Without delving too much into detail, or discussing whether or not “every architectural construction is an aesthetic object” (I believe some examples in history do not square with that definition, at least not immediately), suppose we at least agree that in the era known as Modernity it is not unusual for the reception of an architectural construction to take place in the form of aesthetic contemplation nor is it rare for us to experience this event.
The first distinguishing trait of Casa Observatorio is that it brings to light all these complex relationships between functionality and the aesthetic experience. What experience does the house bring forward? The experience one has of the observatory is not a scientific one but rather an aesthetic experience brought on by observing the sky. According to Gabriel Orozco himself, water, the fundamental protagonist of the house, functions when it is still and does not flow, like a mirror. Therefore, this “observatory” leads to the observation of the sky as it appears symbolically reflected on the watery surface of the pool. Through this game of reflections the water doubles into the sky and the sky into the water. Through this doubling, the concavity of the pool stands before another great concave form: the celestial cavity. Because the roof of the house acts as the horizontal plane, it becomes extended into the very horizon à propos to which it was placed. This horizontality is perhaps the building’s main line of force. Now, the house as a horizon exists in the same fold as the one between sky and water, the same boundary or area at the aperture-fold between the sky and the house. Horizon, house, and sky: together forming a receptive complex. Is such receptivity questionable from a volumetric vantage point? Is the house an open volume, is its geometry dynamic and open? It could be argued that the fact that it has been surrendered as a figurative motif is not necessarily an obstacle for this to be true. Pure geometry could argue that the symmetric and closed “cross floor plan” was in fact conceived as a static and not dynamic form. Suppose we set this discussion aside, as it is separate from the house and its purposes that are more symbolic than they are formal. I think we can agree that the formation or the moment of happening for this receptive complex occurs at a symbolic level.
But not just that. Since its center is taken, the house “expels” residents from a center to which they have no access. The centrifugal nature of the house organizes the possible uses of space. The facilities as well as the circulation routes are established on the margins of the house and in some sense they are in themselves marginal. Why? Because just as the pool establishes a connection with the sky, placing the house outside of itself, so are the inhabitants expelled out and into the margins of the house -the horizontal surface of the observatory- and forced to reside, meaning “make use of”, this symbolic receptive space made up of the observatory-horizon-sky triad. The residents are tossed out, or rather “tucked in”, to this engrossing and receptive place. On the whole, I believe the house speaks of (1) the non-private and therefore public nature of residential spaces, where the possibility of a private life is snatched from under us, forcing us to be exposed to the exterior (the house has no “interior”); and (2) the receptive and hospitable nature of an exterior space comprised by reciprocal sky-observatory reflections that fold out into the horizon like a third dimension and creating a symbolically receptive space where we go through the aesthetic experience of feeling tucked in and in some sense protected (however exposed).
Finaliza Taller Vertical 2009
Jonathan Arnabat, miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G, ha formado parte del equipo de profesores de Taller Vertical 09, titulado este año “Objetos Vivos, Juegos Sociales”, y dirigido por Emilio Tuñon y Luís Mansilla. Taller Vertical es un workshop que se ha realizado durante la primera semana de curso en la Escuela de Arquitectura ESARQ de la Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, en Barcelona. Han participado los alumnos de segundo a quinto.
Directores: Luis M. Mansilla y Emilio Tuñón
Subdirector: Carlos Martínez de Albornoz
Conferenciantes Invitados: Andrés Jaque y Luis Úrculo.
Jurado: Enrique Walker, Ramón Prat, Vincenç Sarrablo, Luis Mansilla y Emilio Tuñón.
Cordinadores: Borja Ferrater, Esther Rovira y Joan Vitoria.
Profesores: Estel Ortega, Joan Vitoria + Pere Buil, Cristina Castelao + Jordi Roviras, Jaume Canals, Marc Binefa, Jonathan Arnabat, Carlos Cámara, Esther Rovira, Ivan Shumkov, José Zabala + Irene Hwang y Jorge Vidal.
Aitor Fuentes, miembro también de ARQUITECTURA-G, ha colaborado con Miquel Lacasta y Manuel Arenas en la organización de Taller Horizontal, workshop especifico para los alumnos de primero.
Nueva incorporación en ARQUITECTURA-G
David Fernández Taboada, Arquitecto Superior por la ESARQ, se incorpora al equipo de ARQUITECTURA-G en periodo de prácticas.
Centro Sociosanitario de la Orotava
ARQUITECTURA-G ha colaborado con el despacho Menis Arquitectos en la realización de una propuesta en concurso restrigido para la construcción del Centro Sociosanitario de la Orotava, Tenerife. La propuesta obtuvo el tercer premio.
Obra: Centro Sociosanitario de la Orotava
Promotores: Instituto de Asistencia Sociosantaria y Excmo. Cabildo Insular de Tenerife
Ubicación: La Orotava, Tenerife
Año proyecto: 2009
Superficie: 8000m2
Presupuesto: 6.596.266€
Consultores: Josep Lluis Canosa, Josep Maria Milian
Maqueta: Artkitect
El proyecto nace del lugar y sus condicionantes, con el mar al norte, la autopista al sur y la presencia del Teide al suroeste. La intervención se concibe como el resultado de una sustracción estratégica de terreno mediante un sinuoso corte. El núcleo del resultado del corte crece en altura para configurar el edificio y define un mundo de 2 materiales:
- Picón, la tierra del lugar que da origen al proyecto y funde en un mismo paisaje la cubierta y el entorno inmediato.
- Flamboyán, árbol que ocupa el espacio llano restante y lo tiñe de rojo ofreciendo contraste cromático.
El entorno inmediato acoge las áreas de estacionamiento de trabajadores y visitantes. El terreno desciende para alojar en el nivel inferior el área de carga, descarga y maniobra de suministro y mantenimiento. El edificio proveniente del corte rodea un patio hacia donde vuelca sus áreas más públicas y las actividades colectivas. La forma del patio favorece la formación sombras y rincones acogedores para la relación al aire libre tanto de residentes como de visitantes. La planta -1 distingue los accesos del personal y suministros, y conecta ambas circulaciones con los extremos este y oeste del edificio mediante un gran corredor de servicio facilitando el tránsito de personal, mercancías y alimentos hasta cualquier lugar del mismo. Asimismo, contiene todos los cuartos de instalaciones, cocina, comedor y vestuarios de personal y todos los espacios de almacenaje principales. El acceso principal a la planta baja se efectúa a la misma cota que el parking de visitantes por un vestíbulo con visión al patio y un espacio a doble altura. En el amplio vestíbulo, se identifican claramente la recepción y los ascensores, y cuenta con una zona de espera que se relaciona directamente con la cafetería y la sala polivalente de acuerdo con las directrices del Plan Funcional. Se preserva la independencia de usos entre residencia y centro de día ubicando éste último en las proximidades del vestíbulo, pero se conecta verticalmente con el gimnasio de rehabilitación y las consultas médicas para posibles necesidades. La administración y dirección también se encuentran junto al vestíbulo. En el lado oeste del edificio se hallan las habitaciones de medios requerimientos y en el este las de altos tanto en planta baja como en la planta 1. Los puntos de control de ambos tipos de residencia están conectados verticalmente para una rápida comunicación en caso de necesidad. Todas las habitaciones cuentan con una terraza privada hacia la que extender su actividad. La parte norte del edificio se destina a almacenaje y a actividades más intimas como la sala de actividades tranquilas. Las actividades colectivas como comedor, sala de TV o biblioteca se vuelcan hacia el patio, insertas en brazos rodeados de flamboyanes y con fantástica ventilación y luz natural. El patio constituye el corazón del proyecto, el telón de fondo del desarrollo de cualquier actividad, provee de luz a todo el perímetro y facilita el intercambio social en un recinto controlado. En el lado sur de la planta 1 se concentran los servicios médicos formalizados en una pieza de geometrías blandas fácilmente reconocible por los residentes. Los servicios de peluquería y podología, con un área de espera independiente a la de la zona médica y el despacho del psicólogo también se hallan en el lado sur. En las proximidades del vestuario se encuentra el gimnasio de rehabilitación, que incluye un área de masaje y fisioterapia y que podrá ser utilizado tanto por residentes como por usuarios del centro de día. Las habitaciones de la planta superior cuentan en sus proximidades con un corredor exterior con vistas al patio además de con una terraza privada con vistas al exterior. Las protuberancias hacia el patio se destinan en este caso además de al citado gimnasio a la sala de animación y terapia. Los dos cuerpos del lado norte forman unas grandes terrazas orientadas a sur, con vistas al Teide además de al patio. El segmento norte sirve también en este caso para dar cabida a actividades más íntimas ubicando en él la capilla.
ARQUITECTURA-G en Pasajes Diseño
Pasajes Diseño publica en su blog el último proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G.
Ático en el Ensanche Derecho de Barcelona
Remodelación de un ático en de 100m² en el Ensanche Barcelonés.
En fase de Proyecto Ejecutivo.
Reforma Vivienda en Barcelona
ARQUITECTURA-G finalizó el pasado mes la reforma de una vivienda de 160m2 en Barcelona.
La vivienda mostraba inicialmente una disposición de habitaciones encadenadas, unidas entre si mediante puertas de dos hojas. Estas habitaciones comunicantes estaban relacionadas con un corredor anexo que desdoblaba el recorrido de la casa, evitando así el paso del servicio a través de las estancias y relacionando de una forma mas eficaz la cocina, el lavadero, la despensa y el lavabo de cortesía.
Dicha organización de estancias enlazadas proporcionaba al usuario la posibilidad de readaptar la vivienda a distintos requerimientos de uso con gran economía de medios. El paso generoso que obtenemos a través de la puerta doble, equiparable al de una divisoria móvil, permite enlazar programáticamente las piezas, pudiendo multiplicar la dimensión de una estancia manteniendo algunas puertas abiertas, o incluso llegar a una situación de permeabilidad absoluta cuando la totalidad de puertas estén abiertas. Por contra, cerrando las puertas con llave, y gracias a que todas las estancias cuentan con más de un acceso, se pueden conseguir distintos niveles de compartimentación según los requisitos de uso, numero de habitantes, etc
Debido pues a la flexibilidad que proporciona dicho esquema, se optó por mantenerlo. Dicha organización también encajaba con la indeterminación de las necesidades de los futuros usuarios. Únicamente se decidió cambiar de posición las estancias especializadas: cocina y lavabo. La cocina se ubicó en el acceso a la vivienda, acabando así con el hall, cuyo tamaño era insuficiente para entenderse como una habitación más de uso intercambiable.
El nuevo lavabo fue el encargado de acabar con el antiguo pasillo de servicio, apropiándose de él, para conseguir así un aumento de dimensión que facilitara entenderlo como una gran habitación de aseo, donde se agruparan los dos baños completos que acompañaran a dos hipotéticas habitaciones, y el de cortesía, pudiendo entremezclarse o independizarse a voluntad del usuario.
Se insistió en la desaparición del corredor de servicio mediante el giro de un tabique existente que propició la aparición de zonas de ambigüedad programática, listas para ser definidas por el usuario, y que mejoró la permeabilidad visual, potenciando diagonales que rompen con la ortogonalidad de la planta. A su vez el giro de este plano de espejo desmaterializa la compartimentación del lavabo y arroja imágenes de esta estancia a las contiguas.
Más allá de la igualdad de tamaño de las estancias, la puerta fue la herramienta a partir de la cual se pretendió manifestar la adaptabilidad de la vivienda. No se han usado puertas de una hoja, pues invitan a ser cerradas. Por contra, se han mantenido o desplazado las de dos hojas y se han introducido nuevas tipologías: correderas de una hoja, correderas de hojas practicables, puertas en abanico…, casi de forma aleatoria, jugando con la relación de tamaño entre la puerta y el tabique para confundir un elemento con otro, y para enfatizar que cada habitación mantiene una relación próxima con la contigua.
Obra: Reforma de una Vivienda en el ensanche barcelonés
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta)
Colaboradores: Marc Medina
Promotores: Sres. Adelantado
Ubicación: Barcelona (España)
Superficie reformada: 160 m²
Año proyecto: 2008
Año de construcción: 2009
Industriales: Cristal Studio, Instalair, Construciones Orms, Lumens, Vinçon, Fritz Pereferrer, Orlasa, Quimipres, Aicober, Wooddesign bcn
Presupuesto: 200000€
Fotografías: ©José Hevia
Conversación con Ekhi Lopetegi y Tatiana Bilbao
En el siguiente número de la revista Apartamento, Arquitectura-G mantendrá una conversación sobre la “Casa Observatorio para Gabriel Orozco” con la arquitecta mexicana Tatiana Bilbao y el filósofo Ekhi Lopetegui, con el texto “La Obra de Arte en la Época de su Reproducibilidad Técnica” de Walter Benjamin como telón de fondo.
Edificio Asistencial en Palma de Mallorca
ARQUITECTURA-G, en colaboración con los arquitectos Jaume Canals y Sebastià Martorell, ha presentado una propuesta para la construcción de un edificio asistencial destinado a centro intergeneracional con vivienda para jóvenes y ancianos en el barrio de “Sa Gerreria”, en el centro histórico de Palma de Mallorca.
Obra: Centro Intergeneracional. 15 Viviendas, Zonas Comunes, Piscina y Gimnasio
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta), Jaume Canals y Sebastia Martorell
Promotor: IBAVI, Instituto Balear de la Vivienda
Ubicación: Palma de Mallorca, España
Año proyecto: 2009
Superficie: 1116m2
Presupuesto: 892800€
Vivienda en el ensanche barcelonés
Finalizan las obras de la vivienda de 160m2 en la Calle París de Barcelona.
Fotografías: Lluis Folch
60 Viviendas en Palma de Mallorca
ARQUITECTURA-G sigue desarrollando concursos de obra pública. En esta ocasión elabora un edificio de 60 viviendas y un centro de día en colaboración con los arquitectos Jaume Canals y Sebastià Martorell.
Obra: Edificio de 60 viviendas dotacionales para la tercera edad, centro de dia i aparcamiento
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta), Jaume Canals y Sebastià Martorell
Promotor: IBAVI, Instituto Balear de la Vivienda
Ubicación: Palma de Mallorca, España
Año proyecto: 2009
Superficie: 4800m2
Presupuesto: 3.840.000€
ARQUITECTURA-G en Viena
El día 17 de Junio tuvo lugar la presentación de los equipos Españoles, Portugueses y Húngaros de Wonderland en el Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft (BIG) de Viena.
ARQUITECTURA-G, representado por Jordi Ayala-Bril y Aitor Fuentes, presentó algunos de sus proyectos mas recientes.
Wonderland es una plataforma europea de jóvenes arquitectos emergentes que forma un proceso dinámico cuyo objetivo es establecer una red de trabajo común. Para ello, se organizan diversos eventos como simposios o workshops y se edita una publicación semestral que recoge todas las actividades del grupo además de dar cabida a artículos o reflexiones de los equipos acerca de la arquitectura contemporánea y su marco socioeconómico.
The Advantages of Living on a Loop (last part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POWERHOUSE COMPANY, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
(See first part) (See second part) (See third part) (See fourth part)
Published at Apartamento Magazine #3
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGI
So far it seems like the discussion has opened many fields concerning different features of the Spiral House. I’d like to make one last and brief remark on the issue of the connection between the two bodies and the experience of the Spiral House as a whole.
Arquitectura-G seems to be focused on the fact that the experience of the Spiral House is the experience of a complete and unified dwelling unit. We should make some distinctions here. It happens to be true that in terms of inhabiting the house, living everyday live, the extension shouldn’t really have to be taken as a separate body. That is why the two bodies work together. As far as they do work together they generate a new field for the functional experience of the house. Sculpturally taken, though it doesn’t really seem that the two bodies can form a unique one, they don’t and can’t come together as one.
We should therefore separate the inner and outer experiences of the house. One is pragmatic and the other is visual and voluminous. The border between both can be blurry sometimes, but it seems like the functional use of the inner space and the outer impression of the bodies connecting are somehow heterogeneous; it also seems like the outside/inside opposition shows up clearly in the Spiral House as an essential feature of it. There is an sculptural experience of the house based on the relationship between the bodies and the relationship between the bodies and the surrounding landscape, as well as there’s a pragmatic one based on its inner functional use. Iconically taken, there is no communion between the bodies; functionally taken there’s a “pretend” one based on programmatic efficiency and harmony.
I’ll end with a couple of questions that don’t really seek to underestimate the building, for the Spiral House gets more interesting with the more the questions it generates.
Could it be true that the utilitarian efficiency of the Spiral House is at stake with the fact that the owners plan to move to the extension of the old house? Is it possible that, despite the beauty and power of the Spiral House, the gap between the two buildings could be impossible to overcome?
POWERHOUSE COMPANY
It is not a programmatic input and they always conceived the Spiral House as only an extension until it was finished. When they mentioned switching houses they, in fact, only mentioned shifting their own bedroom.
Though I totally agree with Arquitectura-G that the house should be experienced as one house and not as two, to a large extend I hope they will turn their bedroom towards the new one and turn their actual understanding upside down.
The Spiral House and the old farm are proposing two opposite architectural regimes, one that was designed from a utilitarian point of view and the other from a hedonist and sensuous viewpoint. I think it is very amusing and intriguing to see how they are going to use it. They commissioned us to design the extension because they wanted to change their lifestyle, so I am curious to hear from them what will become their dearest room, the old or the new regime? Utilitarian or hedonist?
Because the Spiral House and the farm do not seek any compromise in their relationship and there is no indoor space in-between at any moment, one has to choose where to be: where to sit or sleep or sip a glass of wine? Practicality verses hedonism. It is a luxurious dilemma, but I am interested in the output.
If they move their bedroom it would really be a statement for them of a clear shift in their approach to life. The clients are a very busy people, their professional mobiles are always on and in every holiday travel hides a business appointment here or there. They live in the countryside but they have a hectic life with long working hours and a lot of travelling, obviously much more than what they wish. When they decided about the extension we strongly sensed that it was out of a desire to change their life and formalize it and we took this seriously. In the old house, even if they could still live there comfortably, its utilitarian architecture seemed to recall the burden of daily contingencies, whether it was theirs or those of the former farmer. The spaces of the Spiral House suggest a totally different attitude to the user; more distant and deliberate, where one can walk around with no purpose, sip a glass of wine, crash in the sofa and stare at the ceiling and feel good about it.
Architecture is an instrument that makes those fundamental changes possible and tangible. That is what fascinates us in architecture, especially when it is about housing. Cheap or expensive, it doesn’t matter.
We will have to wait to see the finished product, because at the moment there are some functional obstructions due to the young age of the children and the necessity of proximity between their bedrooms.
Let’s make an appointment in ten years and see what has happened.
Centro de Acogida de Visitantes en Euskadi
ARQUITECTURA-G y Alberto Sarasa presentan una propuesta para la construcción de un centro de interpretación y acogida en Euskadi.
Obra: Centro de Interpretación y Acogida de Visitantes
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta) y Alberto Sarasa
Infografias: Nelson Arango
Promotor: Ayuntamiento de Zumarraga
Ubicación: Zumarraga, Euskadi
Superficie: 1500 m²
Año proyecto: 2009
Presupuesto: 3.000.000€
Plató de Televisión en Barcelona
Finalizan las obras de instalación de los nuevos mecanismos de control solar en el plató de televisión que ARQUITECTURA-G realizó en 2005.
Reconversión caserío Agote Txiki
Reconversión del baserri Agote Txiki (caserío vasco) del S.XVI en Aia (Euskadi) a dos casas patio de 350m2.
En fase de anteproyecto.
The Advantages of Living on a Loop (4th part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POWERHOUSE COMPANY, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
(See first part) (See second part) (See third part)
Published at Apartamento Magazine #3
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
About the conceptual link between experience and architecture:
I understand your question from two points of views.
Does it mean that we design spaces independently of the functionality of spaces?
No, in the sense that we take the functions of the house as a departure point and make sure that the spaces we design do not become unpractical.
But yes indeed, in the sense that we do not limit the experience of living in the house (because that’s what it is all about) to pure questions of efficiency and spatial economy and therefore have to seek qualities such as: intimacy, openness, exposure, mirroring. For example the Spiral House is both intimate and both exposed; intimate because it is rolling around itself and exposed in the sense that it is possible to the house from the house at any point of the Spiral House.
The Spiral House is very abstract for a house, it doesn’t look like a house, and it is a bit of an alien in the landscape of the village. It has no formal reference and its form results of its sequence of experiences, like going under the house to enter it, entering it from its heart, looking at the house from the house, the traveling on the landscape, the progressive decrease in ceiling height, etc. Those experiences were much more important for this project than the final form of the house. The abruptness and abstraction of the form prompts the visitor to experience it, otherwise it is difficult to understand it. It is sculptural but it is not Gehry-like and it is abstract but it is not a functionalist house. It is also not photogenic but it is very nice space to inhabit. The owners are planning to use it as the main house and use the old house as the extension; we can’t really resist bragging about it.
The second way we understand your question regards the way we produce a project and eventually a building. Architecture in this respect is always very frustrating because we can’t fully experience a project until it is finished and occupied. In this regard we are very envious of graphic designers or artists who work at a 1:1 scale. It is not really feasible with architecture so we try to compensate that with a lot of physical models at very different scale. This still remains for us the best way to design a house. Strangely enough, a cardboard model still looks and feels more “real” than any super-realistic rendering.
ARQUITECTURA-G
We don’t avoid talking about the “sculptural object”, but we plainly believe that it doesn’t describe this house, and probably neither the architecture. At the same time, we don’t think it’s an abstract house. It’s a construction that responds directly to a problem or will. It’s a house that can be experienced and lived without requiring any intellectual effort or architectural knowledge, and that’s a victory.
In this case we can’t state if the shape is nice or not, photogenic or not, in fact it doesn’t matter. It (the shape) tells us how the house is lived and how this addition lets someone experience the whole in a new way; we could say that the Spiral House is functionally transparent.
The addition responds to the request in a physical way, that’s why the aggression over the original, pure and canonical object is rude, vigorous, and even sexual. This relation seems very attractive to us and provides the strength of the project.
Talking about the subject of anchoring to the place in such vast plot with a house “dropped” on, we don’t think the Spiral House is a landscape architecture solution as an object in a scenic context and linked to it, we think it’s a project that is understood from its core to outside.
The house is somehow something not related to the surroundings, and the appropriation of the plot is seen from the inner living experience. For instance, the patio or the spiral sets out when touching the farm in the ground floor, where a small piece of plot defines a summer dining room.
Those generative gestures are which make these constructions not sculptural, are new realities of architectural experience.
The gradual ascent surrounding the patio lets us experience the original body like something new viewing it from a historically unusual point of view. In the same way we understand the program itself like something new; a smoking room is quite different from a bedroom, but it’s not so far from a children playing room or a study. Like we said in previous conversations, approaching subjects as the flexibility in this way is very contemporary and sets out where are the nowadays inhabitant’s limits.
Besides this, we are talking in terms of two houses; while we would like to see it as a whole, a single one, where some time ago there was one and the time and requirements brought us another different one. That’s why we can’t help having a little disappointment when you say that the owners are thinking of using the new part as first home. In the same way that the Russian penthouse of 500m2 living room requires a different dwelling experience from having 50 sofas in it, the Spiral House should be inhabited like a new experience of the whole, without the barrier of time or material difference.
We would like to know your opinion on it (Ekhi and Charles) and also (Charles) if this distinction is a program input.
Remodelación Vivienda en Barcelona
Continúan las obras de reforma estructural e interiorismo de un apartamento en la Rambla de Barcelona.
The Advantages of Living on a Loop (3rd part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POWERHOUSE COMPANY, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
(See first part) (See second part)
Published at Apartamento Magazine #3
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
POWERHOUSE COMPANY
Brutality is often referred as a negative word, because it is most often associated with the idea of the “brute”, a being with a cruel or aggressive behavior. But brutality can also mean something “brut”, raw and un-mitigated like in the case of Jean Dubuffet’s “art brut”. In that sense the brutality of the Spiral House is in our eyes directed at the site and not directed at the old house. The two volumes share the same an unmitigated relationship to the site. This is the only thing they have in common and that is also what unites them.
When looking at the site plan, the old house appears as if it was “dropped” randomly on the site – it makes no attempt to insert itself in the context.
When we visited the first time we immediately noticed it, the old house was sitting on the site in the same way as a forgotten and isolated object would, as something left behind. But somehow its isolation and its brutal juxtaposition on the site had a positive aspect: it almost gave to the old house the status of a sculpture displayed in a park. On the other hand the banality of the volume prevented the house to really achieve its potential sculptural presence and inhabit the site as such.
Though the extension was to double the size of the house it was clear that it would not be insufficient to occupy or inhabit the park. At the very beginning we tried to design it as a landscape architecture where the extension would become a “hill” attached to the old house attempting to anchor it on the site. But it never worked, the sculptural potential of the old house was getting weaker and the new landscape element was simply too small and too anecdotal compared to the overwhelming size of the site.
It became clear that we had to find a third approach.
To reinforce the sculptural aspect of the old house and to reinforce the presence of both inhabitations in the site, we designed the extension as a new sculptural volume dropped next to the old one. In this way the contrast between the two strengthened their identity, as well as helped each other to claim their sculptural presence in the park.
We do not think the relationship between the buildings as brutal since there is no cruelty in it. We see it more as an abrupt but playful encounter where the two volumes engage vigorously with each other. Let’s say it’s like is an intercourse without foreplay… not necessarily unpleasant if there is no victim.
Arquitectura-G mentioned that the Spiral House “considers a contemporary way of living more than a formal answer to what a XXI-st century house should be”. We agree very much with this statement and that is the way we’ve approach the design of this house. In this regard, it is interesting to compare the two volumes because they testify the changes in the understanding of a house. The 19th-century houses are organized with a very clear separation between “leisure rooms” like the salon, and “utilitarian rooms” like the kitchen, bedrooms etc. In the case of a farm the exterior is also the result of utilitarian approach to materials and structure. At the opposite, the Spiral House is fully designed as a pleasurable experience that offers a diversity of an internal as well as external situation. The old house becomes a part of this diversity of spaces and is not perceived anymore as a conventional straightjacket.
By understanding the two houses as an array of spatial experiences, it opens unlimited possibilities to extend it beyond its pure functional program.
In that respect the Spiral House did open up the old house to a new understanding shifting from a utilitarian to a qualitative interpretation.
We had the opportunity recently, with a project in Russia, to experiment with a similar situation but with more radicalism. We had to design a 2500m2 penthouse 300m above ground, and that was also for a single family with young kids. Designing for example a 500m2 living room is very unusual, and certainly cannot be approached from a functional and programmatic point of view – imagine how many sofas one would need to furnish it. This radical situation allowed us to illustrate clearly what the focus of our architecture is about.
EKHI LOPETEGUI
I should maybe clarify what I meant by ‘brutal’. I maybe put a special emphasis on its aggressiveness, but I don’t really think of it in a negative way, no victims or unpleasant feelings are presupposed here. What I actually meant is what Arquitectura-G explained in a more concise way as the losing of the iconic identity of the house. This, too, can seem ambiguous though, for the iconic identity of the house is also highlighted with the intervention, as far as it shows the bodies as clearly limited individual units. So, the gesture of coupling the volumes somehow reinforces both the identity and the losing of it. The conceptual play of the difference and the identity is shown in its fullest here by bringing it up as an unsolved subject that architecture faces as such.
Of course, the coming together of the dwelling units has to be seen as a ‘playful encounter’ rather than as a ‘problematic crash’. It is playful because we gain new dwelling possibilities, and not only in terms of program. As explained in the Russian project, the design of a 500m2 living room cannot be achieved in utilitarian terms so the aproach must include some other experiential criteria. It can be guessed that this shift is entailed in the Spiral House too, as far as it’s “fully designed as a pleasurable experience”, exceeding thus the utilitarian point of view. This is maybe how the ‘qualitative interpretation’ mentioned can be understood. The inclusion of such a wide concept as experience reframes the whole architecture perspective and uncovers a series of new problems, both theoretical and practical. We could ask how ‘experience’ is understood in the Spiral House, even though I know the answer to such a concept can be hard to figure out. At least, we could state that the farm house as an utilitarian complex wasn’t meant to be experienced but to be used, while the Spiral House seems to seek being a place for ‘having experiences’ of any type. We should never misunderstand this though, because being designed for having some sort of ‘experience’ won’t ever erase the functional needs, but it will necessarily include ‘experience’ as a variable to be taken as part of the program itself.
Therefore (apart from the gap separating the building and the site) because it’s linked to ‘experience’, it makes sense considering the farmhouse and the extension in its ‘sculptural potential’. Sculpturally taken, the Spiral House falls under some sort of aesthetical treatment or point of view. I don’t mean that the house is now treated more artistically; I simply mean that it’s supposed to be a source of certain ‘sensations’ (the ‘pleasurable experience’), and not only supposed to be a functional facility. In the end the word ‘aesthetic’ etymologically means nothing but ‘perceiving’ or ‘having sensations’. Now I should ask Charles, is this conceptual link between experience and architecture also considered while facing a project?
Concurso Vivienda Colectiva
ARQUITECTURA-G sigue desarrollando concursos de obra pública. En esta ocasión elabora un edificio de vivienda colectiva en colaboración con los arquitectos Jaume Canals y Sebastià Martorell.
The Advantages of Living on a Loop (2nd part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POWERHOUSE COMPANY, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #3
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGI
I wouldn’t like to reduce the complexities of the Spiral House to its most obvious and eye catching feature, but the encounter between the extension and the farmhouse at the roof level deserves some remarks. As Charles (POWERHOUSE) wrote, the extension’s appearance is ‘brutal’ and in my opinion the more brutal it appears the more interesting it gets. Instead of a Siamese body, I would say it’s more like a prosthesis, for every prosthesis entails a formal and functional aggression and strongly makes reference to the difference between the bodies connected. The visual relationship between the two bodies as volumes is not transitional or continuous, even though there is a functional transition and continuity in pragmatic terms that makes the two bodies work efficiently. Above all, the strangeness of the new body is highlighted and so it is the violence the prosthesis does to the old ‘maison’.
Two subjects come to mind at this point. In terms of memory, by explicitly showing the present burst into the past, the Spiral House implies a discontinuous or non-linear historical approach. And this is achieved not by some fancy futuristic trick (that would probably entail a rather linear approach), but by the sober but radical presence of the new body. What we see is not the 19th-century lifestyle friendly meet the 21st-century forms of life. What we see is two historical situations collide.
So, the way I see it, the historical encounter is understood as a confrontation. The whole historical timeline is broken and the gap in between is uncovered violently.
Related to this temporal feature, in terms of space, the confrontation is even more dramatic. The whole idealistic idea of the ‘maison’ as a whole, complete and finished object is destroyed. The visual image of this farmhouse, this childish ‘triangle + cube’ image of a house, is perverted by a simple gesture of coupling two bodies in a visually arbitrary point. In my opinion there’s an underlying principle concerning any architectural interventions that could be expressed as follows: any object or volume can be cut off in any of its points. Which doesn’t mean the cut off is arbitrary, for the functional coherence and efficiency will always be a measure and a value. But it clearly shows the house is partially taken in consideration, not as a whole ideal unit.
Gordon Matta Clark showed us this in other terms by cutting off building size volumes as if they were hand size sculptures, and this way he broke the idea of how those objects should look in our mind’s eye, opening a new field for volumetric experimentation. As far as the Spiral House is a dwelling unit and not a plain body, we should maybe quote Deleuze and Guattari’s first principle for a definition of a rhizome, which encloses this pragmatic feature:
“1 and 2. Principles of connection and heterogeneity: any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be… semiotic chains of every nature are connected to very diverse modes of coding (biological, political, economic, etc.) that bring into play not only different regimes of signs but also states of things of differing status. “
Obviously, architecture can also be understood as a bunch of ‘modes of coding’ space, with their particular set of rules and syntax. The Spiral House connects two heterogeneous architectural regimes (the 19th century farm house and its extension); the connection is understood as fragmentary (both units connect in a partial and arbitrary point, the roof level), and not as the complete harmonisation of different dwelling units or codes; therefore, the Spiral House provokes the rupture of the farm house coherence in favour of a new functional and spacial relationship that opens the house to knew dwelling possibilities.
ARQUITECTURA-G
We find interesting to invert the proportion 80% public / 20% private, because it complements the house in a yin-yang-like way, with the background idea of making the house more open. Thinking about the Spiral House as an opening to itself though, it looks even more interesting to us; to understand the farm like a closed and finished being that generates something open to new possibilities when breaking (like Ekhi pointed mentioning Matta-Clark). “Two bodies kept irreversibly captive of the time loop and forced to explore together the possibilities of this new situation”, but Matta-Clark showed us the entrails and then his action was over. His aim wasn’t to create a place to live in, although it could be a space to live.
The farm is broken and it loses its closed unity, its iconic identity fades out, it’s opened up. Then, in contraposition program is added and related with the existing one and what we get is the Spiral House. Is this opening something for closing it back? Could a house be an open box, or is the program too rigid (due to its finite possibilities) and therefore requires us to a closed outcome?
We prefer the definition of “two Siamese bodies” for the whole rather than the Ballardian prosthesis one for the new piece. Prostheses are artifices subordinated to a body that brings them life, and in this case the dialogue is from equal to equal. One could usually live without prosthesis, but in this case, and for this program, they are two bodies that die when separated.
It’s evident but important to see that we have two bodies, the 19th-century one and the 21st-century one. It is this last one, the spiral, which achieves that, although they are two bodies that work continuously as a single one. The new body is a programmatic gradient that gives continuity to the two existing trays that had premeditated and polarized functions. Thus, the Spiral House considers a contemporary way of living more than giving a formal answer to what a XXI century house should be. It looks for a new way of dwelling.
Interiorismo Barcelona
ARQUITECTURA-G desarrolla el proyecto de reforma interior de la tienda Furest de Paseo de Gracia. En fase de proyecto ejecutivo.
ARQUITECTURA-G en el Architekturzentrum
El día 17 de Junio tendrá lugar la presentación de los equipos Españoles, Portugueses y Húngaros de Wonderland en el Architekturzentrum de Viena.
ARQUITECTURA-G, formando parte del equipo español, presentará su trayectoria y proyectos mas recientes, y participará en la exposición “Deadline Today!-99 stories on making architectural competitions”.
Los nueve equipos representantes del estado español serán:
AACT Architecture Studio: Emiliano Armani, Alexis Cogul Lleonart e Iván Torres Ramón
ARQUITECURA-G: Jonathan Arnabat Vila, Jordi Ayala Bril, Aitor Fuentes Mendizabal e Igor Urdanpileta Placencia
BARBARELA STUDIO + EAU: Juan Carlos Castro y Xavier Ribera Soler
ex.studio: Patricia Meneses e Iván Juárez
Elena Fontal
HARQUITECTES: David Lorente Ibáñez, Josep Ricart Ulldemolins, Xavier Ros Majó y Roger Tudó Galí
MIÀS arquitectes: Josep Miàs, Silvia Brandi, Adriana Porta, Mario Blanco, Mafalda Batista, Anja Visini, Elena Alfaro Alvarez, François de Montgolfier, Dafna Servadio, Blanca Rieder, Patrick Hitzberger, Emanuela Scano y Stefania Carboni
Josep Cargol i Noguer
NUG architects: Amadeu Santacana y Umberto Viotto
Más información en SCALAE
Más información en AJAC
The Advantages of Living on a Loop (first part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN POWERHOUSE COMPANY, EKHI LOPETEGI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #3
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
INTRO (ARQUITECTURA-G)
Our studio has recently been commissioned to transform a 16th-century traditional Basque house into two dwellings. When you face a project of this kind, more factors than usual come into play. You rarely deal with a tabula rasa, and sometimes the context is the background; however, in cases like this, its presence is so powerful it becomes the co-star.When approaching an existent being which has worked in a certain way, you have the mission of making it yours without making it disappear. You get into the game of appropriation of the space by removing, adding or plainly transforming. This game requires sometimes subtle acts, but occasionally the action can be drastic.
This is what Apartamento is about; no matter if it’s a flat, a penthouse or a garage. You paint a wall or you demolish it, transforming a space with a previous identity into something new, completely yours.
The Spiral House project by Powerhouse Company fits really well in this subject. It sets out a complex matter in a simple and clear way: a typical burgundy farmhouse, for example, set on a large terrain needs extension that will just about double the house.
We invited them to have a conversation alongside Ekhi Lopetegi, philosopher and musician, and Charles Bessard (office partner, along with Nanne de Ru) who joins us in this discussion.
This time we have decided to tackle our discussion with the film ‘Groundhog Day’. We see a relation between the movie and the space Spiral House creates. We could state that Bill Murray drives a loop, which takes place in the town and modifies the space by manipulating elements in a repeating time…
ARQUITECTURA-G
We agreed in the previous conversations that architecture is something that mostly belongs to “time”. Not only in its generative process but in the time for being understood, modified, assimilated, lived and demolished. In that way, Bill Murray prompts situations that change the space in a way that suits his tastes once he understands his new world, and, as a last resort, changes himself by self-improving.
Being the Spiral House a suggestive act, neither a parasitic nor futile extension, it provokes a new understanding of the existing fabric; we don’t have only a house or a spiral, nor strictly the addition of the two, but something new, different.
We would like you to explain the physical and functional connection between the two bodies, as your website drafts don’t show it at all. Furthermore, we would like to know if, in your opinion, an extension can provoke in an immediate and aggressive form, a new way of understanding the space, or if it’s something gradual, with two bodies converging over the time.
POWERHOUSE COMPANY
The Spiral House is a house extension that creates a link between the ground floor and the loft floor of an existing farmhouse. The existing building was organised according to a traditional 19th-century lifestyle with a strong spatial segregation between the two levels: the dining and hosting parts on the ground floor and the more intimate family area including the bedrooms and a study on the upper level, with a tight separation between the two. This reflects the rising bourgeoisie lifestyle of the 19th-century where the representational rooms like the living room and the dining room were completely separated from the daily rooms like the bedrooms and the kitchen. This polarisation of the domestic functions resulted in the familial life never meeting the social and representational life of the family.
By restricting the guest area to only a small part of the house it gave the guests the vague impression remaining in the antechamber of the house without really entering the family’s life. For this young family of winemakers who decided to live in a small typical burgundy village, inviting guests implied in most of cases an overnight stay and required more area.
The Spiral House extends the program of the existing house with a large living room joined with a study and a cigar/home-cinema corner, two guest rooms, a children guest room / play zone and an additional kid room. While the existing house dedicated 80% of the area to the daily familial life and only 20% to the social life, the extension was to be the opposite with 80% for the guests and 20% for the family.
From an architectural point of view, it meant that we had to understand the extension as complementary yet opposite element to the existing house. While the architecture of the original house was “closed” and exhibited discrete banality, the architecture of the extension had to be more open and extraverted.
But opposition doesn’t necessarily mean segregation, and we designed the extension as a continuous space spiraling from the ground floor to the roof level. It departs from the existing dining room and has been extended with the new living room /study/ cigar corner, and it ends in the roof connecting the new kid’s room and play room with the old common children room. In the ascending part one finds two guest rooms connecting visually with the ground floor with the upper level, and becoming the link between the social and the intimate sides of the house. The existing house is incorporated as a part of a continuous circulation from old to new, from ground to roof and from intimacy to openness. The Spiral House embraces a part of the garden to form a patio between the extension and the existing house creating a visual link between all the rooms and the two levels while maintaining a nuanced level of intimacy.
The extension and then existing house have an ambivalent relationship. They have more or less the same area and therefore cohabit without any clear hierarchy. Sometimes the extension steps back and leave the foreground to the existing house and sometimes it decisively takes over the old structure depending from where it is observed. Together they form a “Siamese” body made of two opposite yet complementary parts. They form a diptych. They are two chapters of a story about the sudden change of destination of use the old farmhouse and its land into an urbanite’s mansion. The brutal appearance of the extension precipitates the whole on a new and unexpected course, like the storm in the plot of the Groundhog’s Day. In this case the extension is not conceived as a continuation of the existing one, but as an unexpected and external event changing the course of the “plot”. In that sense the two bodies are not converging in time, but are precipitated together in a new situation like Phil and Rita in the initial script; where instead of being back to normal, they were kept irreversibly captive of the time loop and are forced to explore together the possibilities of this new situation.
ARQUITECTURA-G en eme3
ARQUITECTURA-G ha sido invitado a participar en la charla “La Situación de los Jóvenes Arquitectos y sus Experiencias como Profesionales” organizada por la AJAC Associació de Joves Arquitectes de Catalunya en la cuarta edición del Festival eme3. También participaran en el debate: Cadaval&Solà-Morales, Juan Carlos Castro, David Caralt, Josep Muñoz, Alexis Cogul y H Arquitectes.
Eme3, primer festival de arquitectura de Barcelona, celebra este año su cuarta edición con el titulo Collapse. Arquitectos profesionales, estudiantes y creadores de otras disciplinas, se reúnen para reflexionar, experimentar y debatir sobre los nuevos escenarios de la arquitectura. El festival se celebrará los días 19, 20 y 21 de Marzo en el CCCB Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, en el FAD Foment de les Arts i el Disseny y en el MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporàni de Barcelona.
La charla tendrá lugar el día 19 de Marzo de 18h a 20h en el auditorio del MACBA
Jordi Ayala y Aitor Fuentes representando a ARQUITECTURA-G en la charla
Conversación con Ekhi Lopetegi y Powerhouse Co
ARQUITECTURA-G en CNN Sports Illustrated
Recientemente se ha publicado en el blog Sports Illustrated Vault de la CNN, una entrevista donde Fernando Lopetegi, realizador de ETB, habla sobre el proyecto que ARQUITECTURA-G esta llevando a cabo en París.
Canal ARQUITECTURA-G
Nuevo Canal ARQUITECTURA-G en vimeo:
ARQUITECTURA-G en Euskal Telebista
Fernando Lopetegi, realizador de Euskal Telebista, habla sobre el Palacio de Deportes y Convenciones en París que Arquitectura-G esta desarrollando.
Lopetegi fue entrevistado por el prestigioso periodista David Barbero en el programa Forum de ETB-2.
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling (last part)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN FAR, EKHI LOPETEGUI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #2
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGI
When we first started the discussion I wasn’t really aware of how the boundary concept has changed once the bioclimatical issues interfere the formal and geometrical problems. When we talk about the bioclimatical we already talk about the energetical and therefore about the thesmodynamical. The sentence quoted by Marc explains it clearly. The environment is not only a geometrical complex of formal volumes; it deals now with formally ambiguous substances such as heat, noise, light and on. Is not that we found new substances to care about determining architectural results; it’s more than even old and classical variables such as light or heat will be treaten in a different way once we adopt a ‘bioclimatically aware’ perspective. This perspective is one in which architectural substances or matters affect each other; they’re not contained in formal geometries but rather they already correlate in a diffuse way. Thus, from an energetical framework the ‘boundary’ is just the zone in which the substances meet, interact and affect each other (“zone of exchange”); the ‘boundary’ between a built unit and its environment will thus be a co-affective one too. The difference between the inside and the outside will therefore be a degree difference. The new space is built upon a general principle of affection derived from the energetical or thermodynamical viewpoint.
ARQUITECTURA-G
We like the idea of house’s fragility, the sensuality of the boundaries that goes beyond the material. A house that on the one hand exposes itself unsteadily, but on the other hand combines welcoming, warm and human inner spaces. As we said before, the house works radially, and it is true that it radiates in a temperature slope. This approach to understanding the boundary is nice and contemporary, owing to the fact that the temperature is (as in Joseph Beuys’ work) in a certain way what makes you feel you are at home, and the temperature is as a result of the geometry, construction and architecture. This way to understanding the limit, is the way the house is.
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling (part 4)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN FAR, EKHI LOPETEGUI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #2
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGI
So far, two discussion topics can be distinguished from our mailing: one concerning architectural or aesthetical problems inner to the discipline itself (the in/out problem); another one linked to the problem we called eco-political that frames the architecture in a wider context. Obviously, both cross over and we can only make such a distinction as far as it is useful to our discussion purposes.
Let’s face the first topic. It can be stated that the in/out problem has crossed architectural practices all the way from modernism to contemporary architecture. Although limiting is never to be taken as its only feature, architecture is necessarily based on establishing certain limits out of which ‘places’ emerge. Taken this way architecture could be understood as the art of shaping places through coordinating certain limits and working on their co-relationships. Nevertheless the practice of co-relating limits seems to be over-determined by a binary relationship between the inside and the outside, dwelling unit and environment, in and out. Although this is not always to be taken as ‘a problem to be solved’, it seems like architecture has always been concerned with the purpose of overcoming this dialectical opposition. So, it can be said that the Wall house seems to follow the path modernists walked. Some remarks can be done on this, though. The way modernists dealt with the in/out problem can be exemplified with early works such as the Bauhaus building in Dessau (of course, I’m aware of the simplification here): the reconciliation between the inside and the outside is mainly achieved with the curtain wall. A visual relationship between the inside and the outside is established. However, a transparent wall is still a wall containing certain isolated indoor environmental conditions. I therefore agree with MF when he suggests that there’s an isolationist attitude in the machine-image based architecture. No categories as permeability or softness can be applied to the traditional curtain walled architecture. Climate or Energy based architecture’s starting point is completely different. It’s not about transparency but energetical permeability between layers. The radial geometry of the Wall house is based on degree differences between a ‘hard’ core and a ’soft’ surface. Obviously these categories are relative for ’soft’ always stands for ’softer than’ the way ‘hard’ does, and this conceptual remark is not a simple trick. Actually, it’s an essential feature of the rather energetical than visual reconciliation of the inside and the outside searched or negotiated in the Wall house.
One last remark concerning the second topic. I find absolutely necessary being aware “that the ecopolitical dimension of architecture does not just lead to an ‘accelerating arms race’ in the material and technological battle for rising energy efficiency” as MF writes. For if we meditate enough on the main issue concerning the ecopolitical approach to architecture we’ll notice that it’s not about solving bioclimatical problems within a bioclimaticaly blind framework, but about founding the architectural practice itself on a bioclimatically aware framework. That is, changing the whole paradigm depending on wich our approach to architecture is defined. Indeed, this is what Heidegger’s text is about: the proper way of dwelling is that in wich our approach to things is proper too. As I already wrote, that would mean dealing with things according with their essence.
MARC FROHN
I think that it is quite productive to bring the discussion back to the issue of boundary as it will actually help us to tie the two strains of the discussion that E characterized together once more: I want to step back for a moment to see how we characterize boundary as I think it will help us relating the two trajectories. To some degree it builds on an issue that A-G brought up, when referring to the “flow” and “opening” of the Wall House. I think that in the context of both describing this house, but also in seeing architecture in general in relationship to a larger eco-political context it becomes crucial to overcome the notion of boundary as object, as fixt element of separation. Instead I would follow Michelle Addington in her argument that “perceptual environments – those that determine what we feel, hear and see – are all thermodynamic in that they are fundamentally about the motion of energy”. Thus their boundaries, too, should be thought of in that vain, as they don’t interest me as static elements of separation, but more as behaviours and interaction. Thus the boundary becomes a zone of exchange between two environments. From here I think it is a small step only to get to A-G’s point of the “element of connection”. At the same time it constitutes for me one of the aspects of a “bioclimatically aware framework” (EL).
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling (part 3)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN FAR, EKHI LOPETEGUI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #2
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
MARC FROHN
Absolutely (Ekhi), there is an ethico political approach in architecture of the Wall House as it integrates the environment to become an inseparable part of its inhabitation. Obviously certain aspects of that approach are neither new nor unique to that project.
An important shift in the understanding of buildings in relationship to the environment has taken place over the last 20 or so years: Up until then architectural technology was used to achieve a complete separation of inside and outside. The air conditioning unit (actually called “weather maker” by its inventor Carrier) brought with it an isolationist and homogenizing attitude within architecture that lost any regional specificity and orientation as climate became a technically generated commodity. Since the early 80s this machine-like understanding of architecture has bit by bit been replaced by an understanding of architecture as an organism that mediates between the interior condition and the outside environment. Through that a certain understanding of “climate concept” developed for buildings. But what is important to me in the context of the Wall House is that this project relates to the environment in a way that goes beyond what is generally considered a “climate concept”. It formulates a multitude of possible connections that can be drawn between climate, environment, technology/material and inhabitation: Climate or Energy becomes a resource in the architectural vocabulary, a building material of sorts as spatial differentiation is achieved through the careful play with it. What that implies as a result is that the architect gives up his or her position of full control in the process of establishing architectural space as the elements that define it on a daily basis are out of his or her reach: In the Wall House one inhabits climate zones more than spaces in the traditional sense. What the different material layers of the house do then is what I described before as a process of negotiation: the amount of light, heat, the depth of the view inside or out as well as the use of these spaces by the clients, all of those are within the range of this negotiation.
I find it important, that the eco political dimension of architecture does not just lead to an “accelerating arms race” in the material and technological battle for rising energy efficiency. As important as this is, it is too one dimensional. Sometimes it seems as if little thought is put into the question of how a new awareness of climate shapes our ways of relating to or inhabiting environment. To me the Wall House seeks to exactly do that: find possible relationships that go beyond a technological “solution” to the “problem” with our climate.
ARQUITECTURA-G
We do believe that the abuse of air conditioning which Marc was speaking about is already overcome. It exemplifies the context of a badly understood bioclimatic policy or energy efficiency. It is clear that we are at a point where it is possible to obtain a totally efficient architecture without being subordinated to ultracomplex technological systems, popular psychosis or business of the climate change. We can face a project attending to all inputs obtaining an efficient final score, that’s why it seems more interesting to emphasize the limits. Some time ago Ekhi told us he considered that nowadays architecture is the architecture of limits.
This is exactly what we are interested in when we focus on the Wall House project. On the one hand, one of the principles of the house is considering the hedges that surround to the plot as the first layer (limit) of the project. In this case, in spite of the covers of the house are getting blurred and becoming lighter radially from interior to exterior, the diamond-like formal aspect of the housing is so powerful and fits so well to what it is (to its construction), we understand that ultimately it turns out to be an object that is closed on itself, without taking in consideration the immediate surrounding. On the other hand, once first membrane is crossed we enter the game of the habitable framework we were speaking about.
At the Perception Restrained MOMA exhibition by Herzog and DeMeuron, Herzog said that the imaginaryof what a house is has an incorruptible strength for them, where a room is a room, a kitchen a kitchen, and a sitting room a sitting room. Just like that, what could be different between the nowadays images and the ones from a Hammershoi picture would be limits. The bridge wich Heidegger talks about is not a static element as far as we are concern, but an element of connection. It actually works as an opening, as a flow. The Wall House works just the same way in its interior. The other day a friend asked for our opinion about how to reform his flat in the city centre, in Barcelona. We opened up his mind about what a partition means, and that it doesn’t have to be a boundary by itself. It is not about emptying or using transparent materials, but it is about configuring autonomous not clearly-defined spaces yet still a sitting room, a bedroom or a kitchen, as Herzog referred to them.
That’ s why we are interested in knowing what were you Ekhi saying in that conversation where you talked about today’s architecture as the architecture of boundaries and how you see the Wall House in that context. Also we would like to know your opinion, Marc.
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling (part 2)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN FAR, EKHI LOPETEGUI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #2
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGI
My approach to the problem may seem theoretical but I don’t intend to displace the conversation to non-architectural grounds. The way I see it, the core problem here is the relationship between the ‘habitable framework’ and the ‘surrounding’ or ‘enviroment’. The concept of ‘relationship’ itself (between framework and enviroment) seems to be the main issue in a way I shall explain. Let me explain this.
When Heidegger reminds us that we have to learn how to dwell , he’s never inviting us to search for a certain content we should assimilate the same way we comprehend a mathematical theorem. On the contrary, he’s inviting us to deal with things in a proper way. Basically, dealing with things is being related to things in such and such a way; so we can either relate to things properly or unproperly. Being related to things in a proper way already means dealing with things according with the essence of dwelling. What kind of dealing with things is that of dwelling?
Far from the activity of occupying a certain space dwelling unfolds as cultivating and erecting buildings. Cultivating is taking care of things the way they essentially are, letting them be what they truly are; that is to say, we don’t ask or pretend things to be the way we want them to be, rather we only take care of their growing keeping it save from any danger so that the growing can take place according with its true essence.
On the other hand, building is arranging spaces in the way of producing locations for men and women, and all this according with the essence of dwelling. Those locations make the proper relationship to The Fourfold take place: we take earth as earth; we take sky as sky; we take death as death; we take divinities as divinities. That is, we take them the way they already are, we take them in a way we let them be what they are.
Heidegger’s exotic argot should not hide the main problem concerning dwelling. For the problem is ecopolitcal. From Heidegger’s perspective, we could state that a culture anxiously searching for a way to avoid maturity through multiple make up strategies is not taking death as death. Builiding up a ‘beach’ where no beach has ever been naturally produced could easily be taken as forcing earth to be a certain way rather than taking earth as it actually is. And still, dwelling is not be taken as being according with ‘nature’ in a superficial way. MF wrote that the Wall-house “allows to renegotiate boundaries both amongst the occupants and in relationship to the surrounding”. We could therefore ask wether there’s a concious ethico-political approach to architecture in the Wall-house; and if yes, what’s the role of the ‘bioclimatical’ or the ‘ecopolitical’ in the architectural practices today.
ARQUITECTURA-G
Talking about “renegotiation of boundaries” you both mentioned we might say that any house, as dwelling unit, has at least two general levels of limit:
1 The boundary among inner house and the outside
2 The inner boundaries between spaces
In the wall house, and in any suburban/garden house the outer limit gives more chance to think about than in an urban house. We consider that your choice, when approaching the matter, it’s been to blur the edge. The same reading is valid for the (almost non-existent) limits between interior spaces.
When crossing the house from its rigid core up to the surrounding area, we observe that as the spaces have a minor requirement of intimacy the house becomes more permeable up to getting blurred to open to the garden. In order to do it, aside from the materials hardness gradient, the geometry of the layers becomes more complex in a scheme that we could qualify as radial; ((((concrete cave) stacked shelving) milky shell) soft skin). The resulting interstices are themselves a classic in-and-out space of modern architecture. However, the interstices speak to us of an ethics in the place positioning, as much from the functional point of view as from the formal one, and from the ecopolitical approach that Ekhi mentioned.
We notice that the aim or will of the wall house is not to indoctrinate –in the sense of dictate- how to live, but it is unavoidably a device that moderately determinates how to dwell as it configures a scenario. It is the soft thing, the smoothness of the boundaries which speaks to us of a new ethics of how to dwell, in which the negotiation between individuals or inhabitants supposes a greater shock of the one that exists in traditional houses made by cell addition.
Video anteproyecto Jai Alai París
ARQUITECTURA-G sigue desarrollando el proyecto para el Centro de Convenciones y Deportes en Rueil Mailmaison, París. Os ofrecemos el video del anteproyecto.
Obra: Palacio de Deportes y Convenciones en París
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta)
Promotor: Privado
Ubicación: Rueil Malmaison, París
Año proyecto: 2008
Superficie: 25000m2
Presupuesto: 45.000.000€
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling (part 1)
CONVERSATION BETWEEN FAR, EKHI LOPETEGUI AND ARQUITECTURA-G
Published at Apartamento Magazine #2
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
Apartamento Magazine speaks about the appropriation of the space by the inhabitant, about the reflection of his/her personality at home. In short, about dwelling and its consequences. In this issue we deal with the fact of dwelling from the whole architectural process; From the project at its drawing board stages, until it is inhabited, passing through it’s construction. The Wall House by FAR Frohn & Rojas is really suitable to discuss this topic. It is a magnificient suburban residence in Santiago de Chile. As they say in their website, “opposed to the general notion that our living environments can be properly described and designed “on plan”, this project is a design investigation into how the qualitative aspects of the wall, as a complex membrane, structure our social interactions and climatic relationships to enable specific ecologies to develop. The project breaks down the “traditional” walls of a house into a series of four delaminated layers in between which the different spaces of the house slip.
FAR (Marc Frohn & Mario Rojas Toledo) are a Cologne, Los Angeles and Santiago de Chile based networked architectural practice. This time is Marc Frohn who joins our via mail discussion along with Ekhi Lopetegi, philosopher and musician.
We present the topic of debate with an extract from a Martin Heiddeger text, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking”.
ARQUITECTURA-G
We have considered wall house to be very appropriate to talk about the ethics of dwelling, because as far as we are concerned this house speaks clearly of it and it is open to be analyzed over and above its formal or merely tendentious aspects. So, the way we see this house is as an example of unity in architecture practice, resolving structure, shape and habitable areas in its construction. That is, we are not talking about a house made by the addition of independent units which are assembled together to give shape to the dwelling, but a habitable framework, and it shows it with no shame at all. There’s no limit in-between but every piece can be understood at once. The architectural elements are corrupted turning the structure into a divider filter or shelves, and at the same time every component is bare with its raw materials talking about this ethics. If people have to learn how to dwell (speaking in a Heideggeresque sense), constructing is in itself dwelling, therefore the way we build is the way we dwell, is the way we are men. Can a house have a didactic function? Can a house help mankind to be men? Can it link us to the earth?
MARC FROHN
I have a rather hard time imagining architecture as a didactic device. If – for example – the Wall House was such, it would – according to Merriam Webster – be “intended and designed to teach”. Thus the prime objective of the house would be to convey ONE agenda of inhabitation that could more or less unmistakably be read by the occupant. Instead I personally find your short description of the Wall House as a “habitable framework” very productive to touch upon some of the key aspects of the project beyond the obvious formal aspects. By definition a framework leaves room to be filled out and I think that exactly this is one of the challenging aspects of the project as to me it marks – both in the process of designing and building as well as in its occupation – an exploration into the environments of living: It allows to renegotiate boundaries both amongst the occupants and in relationship to the surrounding. It is in this sense unconventional in the truest sense of the word: By unconventional I don’t mean “having a surprising form”, but instead excluding some of our dearest assumptions of suburban living (that’s what the house is) of privacy, personal space and relationship to the environment.
On the Unfinished (last part)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI
(…see part 1) (…see part 2) (…see part 3) (…see part 4) (…see part 5)
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI
I think that throughout these emails we’ve outlined what can initially be considered this “interior design” concept, or what’s usually called the “interior,” which is ultimately this question about what is inherent to the discipline. At the very least, we have outlined what idea of space is problematic or contemplated here. From the periphery of my discipline, which is even further from interior design than architecture, I will try to speak to this issue. Perhaps it is superfluous to point out that interior design can never be a “specialty of taste,” because starting with the first text the debate itself has been approached in contrast with that idea. If it is not a “specialty of taste” (for as subtle as that may be), what is? Although architecture determines a “surface,” that “surface” must in turn be determined by the inhabitant. And at that point “interior design” should provide assistance by developing the right instruments. But then, should it go for just gadgets or furniture? Obviously not solely. But that’s where it becomes problematic, this task of understanding “interior design” and the relationships established with architecture. Perhaps it’s that this idea of “interior design”—whether that be as a discipline or the mere act of utilizing a space or working on it for it to be inhabited—is an attempt to organize the architectural surface that has been offered, without determining once and for all every one of its possibilities for “use.” If Casa OS is organized in relation to “degrees of uncertainty” relative to the “use” of the rooms, and the intensity and variety of that “use,” will it not be the activity of working with the “interior,” the rooms, the ratio of those uses, of those certainties and uncertainties?
NOLASTER
Construction and architecture may in fact have the same relationship that decoration and interior design have. Architecture should offer the users a space that exceeds their expectations. It must handle with precision the available resources, as well as the needs and the social and physical environment being developed—that much is clear. But the product created is a result of other factors that do not impose conditions, but are in essence intentions being materialized. When intentions are brought to fruition in a satisfactory and coherent manner, a piece of architecture appears, or a redistribution is done and textures are arranged in an interior in such a way that might prove exciting to us. This provides us with situations in which a contemporary inhabitant can get situated and develop, all the while doing so inside a setting that is their own. Therefore, interior design seems something not created by the user. They can dress it up, decorate it or put different touches on it, but we’d like to think that requires more intentions than the immediate comfort that the inhabitant can self-provide. It is not an issue of one’s discipline or trade, but rather projection and engagement. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be all that much distance between what one must think about in order to do a 12-story building for a Korean systems-integration company on the outskirts of Bologna, and the adaptation of a 400-meter space so as to turn it into a restaurant that will offer meals costing 77 euros, or even designing a street bench that will be mass produced for installation throughout half of Europe.
ARQUITECTURA-G
“Thus, it is untrue that when I paint a street or a wall that they become unreal. They are still real despite being painted differently for my scene. I’m required to modify or remove the colors that I run across, in order to produce an acceptable composition. Let’s say we have a blue sky: Who knows if it’s going to work? And if I can’t use it, what am I to do with it? Then I take a grey day as a neutral backdrop where I can put in all the color elements that work for me: a tree, a house, a ship, an automobile, a telephone pole. It’s like having a blank sheet for laying out the colors.” (Michelangelo Antonioni)
Ampliación Ático Barcelona
Nuevo encargo de ampliación de un ático en el centro de Barcelona. En fase de anteproyecto.
Wonderland Spain
Ya se ha actualizado la página de Wonderland con los equipos españoles.
Concurso Centro Cívico Malgrat
ARQUITECTURA-G obtiene el tercer puesto en el concurso para la construcción de un centro cívico en Malgrat de Mar.
Nuevos post sobre ARQUITECTURA-G
Recientemente el blog ERGO, cabòries artístiques, de la historiadora y crítica de arte Mireia Guillaumes, ha hecho referencia al trabajo de nuestro estudio. Os invitamos a visitar su blog, lleno de entradas interesantes.
Por otro lado, la página de actualidad sobre el mundo del Jai-Alai Euskal Jai-Alai, anuncia el anteproyecto del Palacio de deportes y convenciones en París que Arquitectura-G esta realizando actualmente.
On the Unfinished (part 5)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI
(…see part 1) (…see part 2) (…see part 3) (…see part 4)
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI LOPETEGUI
I think that technical questions can be clarified “from an architectural perspective” where with other peripheral perspectives they cannot, perhaps because they are explained differently, or perhaps a different set of nuances surrounding the same question are explained. The relationships between the rooms are about “use”; the specification of a room depends on the level of specification of needs (for use) in the context of a system of relationships. The spaces are used more or less, and establish relationships between one another depending on a question of degree and relationship: the inherent uncertainty of each room and relationship to other degrees of uncertainty of other rooms. Between rooms, the type of each transition, the doors. Personally, I would like to cover two categories of particular interest to me (which is no longer architecture, or not entirely anyway): that of degree and relationship. The house is coordinated (determined) from a non-essentialist perspective: it is not types of rooms that are drawn up (only in a secondary manner) but rather relative intensities of use (degree of uncertainty relative to the other degrees of uncertainty). You are not heard citing the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, although those rooms exist as such. Does that mean you are not taking them into account? Obviously not, and besides that would be to ridicule what’s in play here. But from a theoretical standpoint, that brings another question to the fore: that the kitchen be such is contingent as it depends on the intensities of use (I’m not particularly referring to the Casa OS kitchen). Let me explain: a house’s essential (in the most literal, strongest sense of the word) attribute is not its having a kitchen. In fact we can imagine lifestyles in which the kitchen disappears from the household (this is happening). In that case, the kitchen would end up having a different degree of uncertainty and another level of specification and the entire system of relationships would be reconsidered. That could not happen if one were to believe that it is impossible to design a house without a kitchen; they would believe that the kitchen is an essential attribute of anything that is a house. The kitchen would still occupy a place without being “used” (this is also happening). If we put the focus on the question of use—and that can only be measured in intensities or degrees—we can imagine a house without a kitchen because first and foremost the kitchen space is “a degree of uncertainty relative to a system of relationships” and not an essential characteristic of all houses (an exclusively typological treatment of the house). Herein lies where I see the open part, in the balance between specification and indeterminacy. Or better yet, to avoid reduction: it is about organizing (determining) that game of specification/nonspecification, all of those relationships. As Oteiza said: coincidence, chance or risk are organized, calculated; lated; they are never shapeless. I think this is how that awkward dialogue can be clarified: Casa OS could be understood from that calculation, that form of calculating. At the very least it could be understood as the aspiration to tread upon that region where the architect withdraws (without withdrawing). Sociological questions aside: “aren’t all disciplines peripheral”? Yes. It’s always been that way. What happened is nothing more than the illusion of a nonexistent centrality of the Architect, and that myth of Centrality has passed through not only architecture but an entire era that is ending now. Is it enough? At the very least, it’s realistic without being cynical. What’s worrying is that this “give and take” ends up as simply everything being “enough,” and there the richness of that first humble withdrawal will inevitably be mistaken for a kind of poverty.
ARQUITECTURA-G
Our intention was to end this conversation with a series of conclusions. However, realizing that the topic lends itself to an open conversation without conclusions defined as such, and that we agree about the essentials, we have decided to skip that part. We would like to steer the conversation toward the magazine topic to wrap things up. The indeterminate part of what we’ve been discussing, the appropriation of space by the inhabitant: is this related to interior design? What is interior design to you?
Concurso Casa de Cultura Getxo
Empieza la fase de elaboración del concurso para la construcción de la Casa de Cultura de Getxo de 4000m2.
On the Unfinished (part 4)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI
(…see part 1) (…see part 2) (…see part 3)
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
NOLASTER
Let’s start, as you suggested, from an architectural perspective, which is what we are trying to learn.
The Casa OS floor plan was supposed to respond to some very specific needs. The rooms soon took on some very specific dimensions [herein lies the determination]. Some of the rooms responded very specifically to some of the very specific needs. Others did not. In any case, all of them were conceived within a system. In that, the very specific dimensions of the rooms and the relationship between one another were perhaps more of a determining factor than the very specific needs of some. The system was looking for the relationships between rooms to be about “use” and not “perception,” such that the very specific needs of each piece could be “contaminated” with needs that had yet to be specified [herein lies the indeterminacy]. A relationship of “use” between two rooms is established with a door. The type of door defines the nuance of that relationship. All the rooms are similar; there is a certain sensation of isotropy. The result is simple and complex all at once. Let’s conclude from a non-architectural perspective. This is something we don’t know much about, though we feel we could try to say something. We feel comfortable within that “game that transcends the architect.” We are in a peripheral discipline. Aren’t they all? This condition seems positive to us and its acceptance is part of a realism (not a cynical one) that allows us to contribute what we have, and receive what they give us. Isn’t that “enough”? “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Hamlet, W. Shakespeare).
TallerRealityEsArq
Comienza el curso de Análisis de Formas en la EsArq. Aitor Fuentes, miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G, será profesor asistente junto a los cordinadores Manel Arenas y Miquel Lacasta.
Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling
Finaliza la conversación entre Ekhi Lopetegi, FAR y Arquitectura-G, titulada “Boundaries and Ethics of Dwelling”. La conversación se publicará próximamente en el segundo numero de la revista Apartamento.
Discusión en formato PDF:
Finaliza Taller Vertical 2008
Finaliza Taller Vertical 2008 con resultados excelentes. Taller Vertical es un workshop que se ha realizado durante la primera semana del curso en la Escuela de Arquitectura EsArq. Han participado los alumnos de segundo a quinto. El tema de este año ha sido: “Jocs en un lloc” (juegos en un lugar). El ejercicio ha consistido en diseñar, realizar y utilizar un juego en un sitio. El mismo taller ha sido un juego en el que diferentes equipos han competido por el premio Taller Vertical. Jonathan Arnabat, miembro de Arquitectura-G, ha formado parte del equipo de profesores. Aitor Fuentes, miembro también de Arquitectura-G, ha colaborado con Miquel Lacasta y Manuel Arenas en la organización de Taller Horizontal.
Equipo Wonderland-Spain
Arquitectura-G ha sido seleccionado para formar parte del equipo Wonderland-Spain. El equipo estará compuesto por los siguientes miembros:
Arquitectura-G, MIÀS arquitectes, H Arquitectes, EX.STUDIO, NUG Arquitectes, Elena Fontal, BARBARELA, Josep Cargol, Ricard Turon, AACT-Architectura Studio y Jorge Garcia de la Camara
On the Unfinished (part 3)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
EKHI
Hi, everyone. Well, here are my reflections: I think the best thing is for the response to come from architecture; I’m not questioning that those were your intentions, but sometimes the philosophical mumbo jumbo causes the rest to stumble on its own underpinnings. First of all, I think that in order to clarify things, we should establish degree differences between certain concepts. Architecture’s ceasing to be Determinative does not mean that architecture enters the realm of the Indeterminate. That’s why you (Nolaster) write that, “we are not interested in total flexibility.” In actuality, the idea of Total Flexibility is still fanciful, suspectible solely from a new age perspective like a “mystical bond with Nature” or something. That’s why you both (AG and Nolaster) highlight that your job is full of decisions and determinations; in the end, making architecture is “making”—intervening on a material. Intervening, which is to say determining, shaping, delimiting the material in a sense. Thus, there are decisions and there is determination because there is architecture. Nonetheless, we can consider the problem not to be one of Determination vs. Total Flexibility. In other words, we are not looking at the dilemma of being either “the rich man’s architect” or “the shapeless flow one does with the material.” What we can discuss is how is that which has been determined in each case, to what extent have the possibilities been exhausted, if the work is open and unfinished or not, what relationships are established with other non-architectural domains, etc. I think there are a number of interrelated questions here. First, I think that as far as I see Casa OS, the work you all have done could be called “infrastructural.” I don’t know if that makes sense, or if you agree. In order to get the house to be unfinished, you’ve tried to have your intervention, your decisions (which there are), delimit a space that will work more like a support for the possible forms of habitation that may or may not populate the house someday. That is why it’s unfinished, it’s incomplete; it’s a support. That work can be considered one of infrastructure (although not all infrastructure work must immediately be incomplete or open, perhaps it must with yours). And it is true that this entails also a reflection on architecture, or a reflection that covers both flexibility and architecture, what that should or should not be, etc. That Decision affects you all as architects and it also affects you from an ethical-political perspective (in the lighter sense of these terms, if you like). The question—and here is where AG’s comments intersect—is not this relative withdrawal of the architect, this position of humility, the effect of a “game that transcends the architect,” the effect of a loss of centrality with the architecture and the architect? What unfettered Economy needs is a plain surface, unfinished works that can support, be a support for its vicissitudes—today it’s storage, tomorrow a workshop or garden; likewise it needs living spaces with variable partition walls to accommodate a workforce (the inhabitants) exposed to its infinite variations, migrant workers today, families tomorrow and divorcees the day after that. In that sense, the architect—while we may not like this—is still a subordinate, a human resources manager in the era of diabolical capitalism. And this, by no means, is to say that Casa OS is solely that; “the house still to be done” will always be preferable to that of the “rich finished” one. I simply want to point out that if we are going to think or do some reflection on architecture, whether that be from the perspective of architecture itself or any other discipline, the question of the unfinished or incomplete, the open empty bucket that remains to be filled, is a bit more complex or ambivalent. In that sense, the question would be: what are the limitations of this kind of approaches, and what else could architecture be today than that mere act of conferring open spaces (which is no small contribution)? What the heck does making architecture mean (what’s the point) when both New Babylon or the Situationists and their Unitary Urbanism (coincidentally in vogue), Archigram’s engineering, and Oteiza’s empty boxes are the ideal model of that monstrous delirium that is postmodern society? What I mean to say is that there is a sort of zero degree of architecture, as its primary condition, the acceptance that something transcends the architect and that architects have to confer space to that which transcends them (habitation, Economy); but that today this may not be enough, that perhaps it only serves to corroborate, repeat, redound in a unique reality or form of having things happen, as its perfect complement. And this problem is not one that can be resolved under the cover of any tragic image.
ARQUITECTURA-G
Ekhi, you are absolutely right with respect the mumbo jumbo; in fact, it’s something we’ve discussed quite often, that we architects don’t know how to write and rarely seem to express ourselves without sounding either lyrical or lacking in words. Our medium is IMAGE and architecture is precisely that. Years ago we attended a conference where an architect was whining about how he’d returned to see this housing project a year after it was built and the inhabitants had destroyed his designs. His dismay seemed pathetic to us. When we were talking about tragic, far from an attempt at relying on lyricism, what we wanted was to express the idea of fleeing from that stance. The floor plan for Casa OS suggests a number of things to us, though not so much an open support as Ekhi mentions. For that reason, and because we understand and explain things from an architectural perspective, we would like to know what relationships you’ve looked for among the rooms.
Arquitectura-G en Wonderland
Arquitectura-G asistió a la reunión celebrada en las oficinas de la AJAC con el objeto de presentar su candidatura a la selección de equipos españoles que participarán en la nueva edición de Wonderland (2008-2011). Wonderland es una plataforma europea de jóvenes arquitectos emergentes que forma un proceso dinámico cuyo objetivo es establecer una red de trabajo común. Para ello, se organizarán diversos eventos como simposios o Workshops y se editará una publicación semestral que recoja todas las actividades del grupo además de dar cabida a artículos o reflexiones de los equipos acerca de la arquitectura contemporánea y su marco socioeconómico. Como colofón anual, se organizará una exposición en Viena con la obra de los distintos equipos, que se reflejará en la publicación de un libro.
En la anterior edición participaron equipos de Eslovaquia, República Checa, Alemania, Holanda, Francia, Italia, Croacia y Eslovenia. En esta ocasión se pretenden ampliar los países participantes incluyendo a España, Portugal, Polonia, Irlanda y Finlandia.
Podéis descargaros gratuitamente los 3 primeros números de la revista Wonderland Magazine aquí:
On the Unfinished (part 2)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI (…see part 1)
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
NOLASTER
What’s irritating about the architect of the poor rich man is not so much his desire to determine certain aspects of how the client’s house is lived. What’s irritating is that this desire is extended to the entirety of all future possibilities.
Our job is full of decisions that determine in one way or another the way the inhabitants of our buildings will experience them. And that should not make our hands tremble. At the same time, we are not interested in total flexibility. We haven’t carried out our work in pursuit of a reflection on flexibility. We were aiming for a reflection on architecture. Can we plan an architecture that does not determine the entire realm of future possibilities? But we don’t want this issue to eclipse our interest in determining, in specifying the present possibilities. In the house of the poor rich man, all of the possibilities are exhausted—all of them. But aren’t many of the possibilities also exhausted in Casa OS? We have discovered the importance of having a certain humility in our work: the user might discover richness that you are unaware of. Their form of habitation could continue the process of architectural creation that was frozen the day that construction was completed. We would like to think that Casa OS is alive.
It’s incomplete!
It’s unfinished!
ARQUITECTURA-G
An architect has to make determinations and decisions… but can these be made with resignation? The humility you were talking about could be the consequence—just like flexibility is—of a game that transcends us. So, as Ekhi paraphrased it, you are leaving Casa OS in a moment in which it is defined as a field of multiple-choice possibilities.
It’s unfinished!
It’s alive!
However, for architecture to be alive, it has to be inhabited, threshed, exploited in all of its variants, finite or infinite, and that habitation should behave like a gas, which occupies the total space and adapts to its changes. How would Casa OS be inhabited by 2 people? How can one get it to be unfinished, alive? The succession of rooms to end up in the longitudinal living room overlooking the sea, laid out linearly…are these not conducive to inhabiting only the contiguous spaces? We do believe it is possible to make architecture without determining all of the future possibilities, being aware of the architect’s “failure” in terms of the richness discovered by the inhabitant. When Nouvel kept the workers’ wall drawings in Nemausus, that was nothing more than determining, crystallizing a decision and a moment in which the architect withdraws and gives way to habitation. Failure understood as a nondefeat. At the same time, failure takes on a tragic beauty, one of material contrast with that which transcends us, just as Fitzcarraldo serenely smokes a cigar while listening to Caruso following his failure on the Pachitea. This is the grandeur associated with the contemporary architect. You say that their form of habitation could continue the process of architectural creation that was frozen the day that construction was completed. The house’s ownership could change hands and accommodate the new way of living it via mechanisms that were determined by the architect. Could these mechanisms be an aspiration toward ownership (by the architect)? Would this be fragmenting the house with one of these mechanisms?
Cubierta Palacio de Deportes París
Imágenes de la cubierta del Palacio de Deportes y Convenciones de París.
En fase de anteproyecto.
Obra: Palacio de Deportes y Convenciones en París
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta)
Promotor: Privado
Ubicación: Rueil Malmaison, París
Año proyecto: 2008
Superficie: 25000m2
Presupuesto: 45.000.000€
On the Unfinished (part 1)
CONVERSATION WITH NOLASTER AND EKHI LOPETEGUI
Published at Apartamento Magazine
http://www.apartamentomagazine.com/
ARQUITECTURA-G
Lifestyles today are such that flexibility—defined as functionality that is not subject to strict rules, dogmas or hindrances— is an essential condition when reflecting on the contemporary home. Adolf Loos was already onto this back in 1900. People must be free to appropriate their living space in a way that is pleasing to them. That said, the hierarchical distribution of uses enslaves the user inasmuch as it proffers but one way of inhabiting that space. Thus, a flexible space is one that accommodates any form of habitation. The order, or lack thereof, ought to come from the inhabitant (the Nemausus housing project by Jean Nouvel), and not the architecture itself (renovation of an apartment on Barcelona’s Carrer dels Mercaders by Enric Miralles). Actually, it should be the architecture that allows for disorder and not vice versa. The requirements for a variation of 2 to 30 inhabitants, as well as the uncertainty of the program for Casa OS, opened the door to reflection on flexibility. Reflecting on something and arriving at an outcome, turning thought into something material, is a way of determining that idea, and something that is determined is the opposite of flexible. That way, we could run into the setback of total, perfect flexibility, where the architect’s work is essentially nullified. Can flexibility be planned?
EKHI LOPETEGUI
Casa OS immediately lends itself to be compared, contrasted with the house of “The Poor Rich Man” described by Loos. Why? Because it is the opposite of Casa OS, which was made by taking uncertainty (the indeterminacy of space) as the backbone. This is due to the complexity of a program that requires maximum organization and exploitation of the variability factor. The zero degree of that project, then, is variability, with the “constants” (spaces whose uncertainty equals zero) being an adjacent effect, but never the underpinnings for the project. Quite the opposite of the house of the “rich man,” which exemplifies ultracodification, ultradetermination and the saturation of space. I’m saying “ultra” not to use a buzz prefix, but because in the Loos text we’re presented with the exact same limit for the determined, and the codification of a space. We could call it the Planning limit. In an exaggerated, caricaturesque manner, it exemplifies what the architect has been: meaning, the one who has predetermined the uses of a space, the one who—as if it were about some ferocious Grammar— has prescribed the possibilities for inhabiting a space, and using it freely. But this architect-Despot figure comes crumbling down: first, because his failure is inscribed in the very logic of habitation, given that upon inhabiting it is inherent to him to exceed the limits and conditions on using habitable space; and second, because in postmodern societies flexibility (uncertainty) is not the exception but in fact the rule, and it agrees with the way that precarious lifestyles are composed. “Casa OS has ended up being defined as a field of multiple- choice encounters.” My guess is that this is so because there was an understanding of what the variability of uses is all about. The rich man’s architect would have upped the level of determination in response to the complexity of the program, adding details and, if possible, further determining the space. Casa OS responds in an opposite manner: the architect withdraws in order to concede a free space. How? By contemplating the task as one of infrastructural articulation of the house, or in other words, smoothing down the space for it to be simply (within the realm of possibilities) a surface that supports the complexity of uses. In comparison with the silly postmodernism that adds complexity by creating taut spaces and glorifying spatial confusion (Loos’ architect, or Venturi), the response to complexity is understood as the conferral of a space that is indeterminate, uncertain, plain and, ultimately, free. It comes as no surprise that the organizational logic of the house be the “simple addition of basic spaces.” There is this whole consideration of emptiness here. It’s not only the space that gets emptied (of determinations), but the user profile as well: Who inhabits this space? Who has it been conferred to? To anyone, obviously. The user profile is as obsolete as the profile for spaces in a home. In a sense, the kitchen has ceased to be a space with distinguishing features and is now a space of “zero uncertainty” (this does not eliminate the need for a kitchen sink). As relates to the uncertainty (determinability of space) a relational space is organized where what is important are the differences in degree and intensity of use, not the differences in fixed ‘identities’ (determinations or fixations of the use of a space, or of its possibilities). In that sense, the empty, plain or free space supports gradual differences and variable relationships according to intensity-of-use criteria. To answer the question: flexibility is not planned; it is reducing the plan to the minimum, that is, understanding that the response to uncertainty involved amounts to the infrastructural planning of the home, which is now to be understood as a free surface that supports, meaning it should support the disorder inherent to all forms of habitation. One final note: in my opinion, architects must know that this kind of reflection is nothing more than adapting to a context that transcends them, and this idea was already looked at by Constant and Archigram from a critical perspective, and while this may be the only decent position existing today, it is a “reactive” perspective. Another final note: With respect to the withdrawal of the architect, another thing in play here is an ethical relationship with the medium of the home, and as a paradigmatic example of that, in Casa OS “no element built on the roof (chimneys, railings, etc.) goes beyond the horizon seen by a person positioned at street level.”
Arquitectura-G en Terminal B
Terminal B se define como una plataforma pública y gratuita de promoción nacional e internacional de la tarea creativa realizada desde Barcelona por los profesionales del diseño, la arquitectura, la imagen, la comunicación visual y la creatividad en general, sin distinciones de nacionalidad o procedencia. El proyecto se concreta en dos espacios,uno físico (FAD) y uno virtual, la página web www.terminalb.org. Los dos se abastecen de una gran base de datos en la que se puede visualizar el censo de creativos que trabajan en la ciudad y su ámbito de influencia.
ARQUITECTURA-G en TERMINAL B
Conversación con Ekhi Lopetegi y FAR
En el siguiente numero de la revista Apartamento, Arquitectura-G mantendrá una conversación sobre la casa Wall House con el estudio de arquitectura germano-chileno FAR frohn&rojas y el filósofo Ekhi Lopetegui con el texto Construir, habitar, pensar de Martin Heidegger como telón de fondo.
Aitor Fuentes se incorpora a la EsArq
Aitor Fuentes, miembro de Arquitectura-G, formará parte del equipo de profesores de Análisis de Formas de primer curso de Arquitectura de la EsArq durante el curso 2008-09.
Arquitectura-G en Taller Vertical
Jonathan Arnabat formará parte del equipo de profesores de Taller Vertical 2008-09 dirigido por Carles Ferrater y Carme Pinós. El Taller Vertical, titulado este año “Games – Entre la estrategia y la táctica”, consiste en un “workshop” de aproximadamente una semana de duración que se realiza durante la primera semana de curso en la EsArq y en el que todos los alumnos de 2º a 5º de carrera se mezclan en equipos para realizar un ejercicio rápido.
http://www.tallervertical.net/
http://www.uic.es/es/taller-vetical-2008
Publicación Premios AJAC V
Recoge todos los proyectos premiados en la V Edición de los Premios AJAC para Jóvenes Arquitectos. Incluye el proyecto ‘Reinventar el Sitió’ realizado por Jonathan Arnabat, miembro de Arquitectura-G.
http://www.coac.net/ajac/premis_ajac_2006/expo_virtual.html
Palacio de deportes y convenciones en París
En fase de anteproyecto.
Obra: Palacio de Deportes y Convenciones en París
Arquitectos: ARQUITECTURA-G (Jonathan Arnabat, Jordi Ayala-Bril, Aitor Fuentes, Igor Urdanpileta)
Promotor: Privado
Ubicación: Rueil Malmaison, París
Año proyecto: 2008
Superficie: 25000m2
Presupuesto: 45.000.000€
Conversación con Ekhi Lopetegi y NOLASTER
APARTAMENTO_APARTADO ARQUITECTURA
Adjuntamos la conversación sobre la “Casa OS”, obra del estudio NOLASTER, publicada recientemente en la revista Apartamento.
Restaurantes de tapas en París
Concurso Hormipresa
Empieza la fase de elaboración de la propuesta para el concurso HORMIPRESA. El concurso consiste en la realización de nuevos prototipos de viviendas unifamiliares aisladas construidas con sistemas industrializados de hormigón prefabricado Hormipresa.
Arquitectura-G en Apartamento
Arquitectura-G se encargará del apartado de arquitectura de la nueva revista de interiorismo “Apartamento”. En el primer número de esta publicación de difusión internacional, Arquitectura-G discutirá acerca de lo indeterminado en el proyecto de arquitectura junto al filósofo Ekhi Lopetegui y al estudio de arquitectura Nolaster.
Interiorismo Eixample, BCN
Nuevo encargo en fase de anteproyecto.
El proyecto propone enfatizar la encadenación de las 11 estancias existentes suprimiendo la antigua circulación de servicio. Una de las piezas se convertirá en galería. El acceso se producirá através de la cocina, que será la única pieza especializada. Los muebles serán los encargados de definir los usos del resto de habitaciones. Éstas mantendrán su tamaño original y por lo tanto su flexibilidad de uso.
ARQUITECTURA-G en ARQUIA/PROXIMA
Ya se han publicado en la web de la fundación Caja de Arquitectos los tres primeros trabajos de ARQUITECTURA-G.
Arquitectura-G en B-AU
Arquitectura-G participó en la II Muestra de Proyectos de Fin de Carrera de la IX Bienal Española de Arquitectura con el trabajo “Reinventar el sitio”. El proyecto se incluió en la categoría “Recuperación e Introducción de Nuevos Usos en Suelos Impactados”.http://b-au.es/
Habitatge Unifamiliar Palafrugell
Finalitza la fase de projecte executiu de l’habitatge unifamiliar aïllat a Palafrugell.
Exposició Premi AJAC
L’Agrupació de Joves Arquitectes de Catalunya i la delegació de la Garrotxa-Ripollès del COAC organitzen l’exposiciól V Premi AJAC per Joves Arquitectes a la sala d’exposicions de la delegació (Plaça Clarà, 12 planta baixa, Olot), la qual s’inaugurarà el divendres 18 de gener a les 20 h. El projecte “Reinventar el sitio” de Jonathan Arnabat, membre d’ARQUITECTURA-G, hi serà exposat.
Via: AJAC http://www.coac.net/ajac/
Helipuerto Internacional de Andorra
La revista andorrana de arquitectura, ingeniería y diseño “L’Art de Viure” publica en su último número un reportaje completo sobre el proyecto “Helipuerto Internacional de Andorra” realizado por Marc Medina Campà, nuevo miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G.
http://www.nuriapublicitat.com/
ARQUITECTURA-G a ARQUIA/PROXIMA
Arquia/Próxima és un programa cultural biennal, de la Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, destinat a promocionar arquitectes joves espanyols amb menys de 10 anys d’activitat.ARQUITECTURA-G hi participa amb tres projectes realitzats durant el 2006 i 2007.
Properament estaran penjats a la web:
Ampliación Vivienda Gracia
El encargo consiste en dotar de una estancia más y terraza a una vivienda ubicada en el barrio de Gracia, BCN. La comunicación del espacio actual (planta primera) y la nueva habitación (azotea), se resuelve con una escalera atirantada que al mismo tiempo mejorará la relación actual entre cocina, estudio y estar.
El encargo se encuentra en fase de anteproyecto.
ARQUITECTURA-G a l’EsArq
Arquitectura-G va participar a les jornades d’inici d’estudis a l’EsArq anomenades “Taller Horitzontal”.Els cinc membres de l’estudi van explicar als alumnes de primer curs d’Arquitectura la seva experiència durant la carrera i la seva manera d’entendre la relació entre universitat i professió.
Vivienda Unifamiliar en Vallromanes
Finaliza la fase de proyecto ejecutivo de la vivienda unifamiliar aislada de 700m2 en Vallromanes. Su íntegra construcción en seco y la singularidad del sistema estructural (desarrollado en colaboración con Martí Cabestany) han sido protagonistas en el curso del proyecto.
ARQUITECTURA-G en la Incubadora del FAD
El proyecto “Reiventar el Sitio” de Jonathan Arnabat, miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G, fue seleccionado para formar parte de la exposición “La Incubadora del FAD”.
El proyecto también recibió el premio AJAC (Agrupació de Joves Arquitectes de Catalunya) en la categoría de PFC.
http://www.fadweb.org/incubadora/
http://www.coac.net/ajac/premis_ajac_2006/expo_virtual.html
ARQUITECTURA-G en Cevisama
Cevisama ha concedido el Segundo Premio en el concurso Indistile a Jordi Ayala, miembro de ARQUITECTURA-G, por su trabajo Deployé Cerámico.
http://www.indicevisama.com/edicionConcursoGanadoresFicha02.shtml
Concurso Met-Festival
En Febrero de 2005 tuvo lugar en Barcelona la primera edición del Met-Festival con carácter internacional cuyos objetivos eran generar un foro de discusión y debate entorno a la arquitectura, el cine y la moda entre estudiantes de estas disciplinas. Uno de los apartados con que contaba dicho encuentro pluridisciplinar fue un concurso de arquitectura en el cual se proponía la construcción de un pabellón virtual de exposiciones para Barcelona ubicado en la red. 18000 euros en premios estaban en juego. ARQUITECTURA-G se puso a discutir cómo había que afrontar el concurso. Inmediatamente surgió la necesidad de definir espacio virtual, pues era necesario acotar con exactitud cual era el tablero de juego. Coincidimos en que estábamos en el terreno de las percepciones y, por lo tanto, contar con la gravedad, con un suelo, un techo, o con elementos constructivos “reales” quedaba descartado. A partir de aquí se desarrolló la invención del proyecto y se presentó. Los tres equipos ganadores, de los cinco que estábamos en la final, plantearon edificios materiales, con estructura, cerramientos y anclados al suelo barcelonés. ¿Quién estaba en lo cierto? ¿El jurado representado por Enric Ruiz-Geli y otros miembros de la escena cool de la ciudad habrán conseguido una plaza como profesores en la AA de Londres cuyos alumnos fueron premiados con el máximo galardón? ¿No hemos entendido las bases? ¿la existencia de realidades múltiples también afecta en este caso?
TEXTO Y FOTOGRAMA DEL PABELLÓN PRESENTADO A CONCURSO:
“Se pide un Pabellón Virtual de Barcelona en tres dimensiones que represente a la ciudad y esté ubicado en la red. El espacio virtual no es un espacio ficticio que se opone al real, es fruto del derrumbamiento de esas separaciones opositivas. Teniendo esto en cuenta el concepto de espacio simulado sería más apropiado. Este espacio se rige por normas distintas a las del espacio euclideo; no hay gravedad, escala, límites, ni restricciones. El espacio euclideo funciona por ordenamiento, centramiento y reducción o reconducción de las líneas-fuerza que abren los cuerpos a una liquidez geométrica no exacta. Funciona fundamentalmente a base de fijaciones. El espacio virtual ya no se deja fijar, y en ese sentido, se puede afirmar que libera todo un nuevo universo de movilidad. Por ello no nos parece apropiado proponer un pabellón que siga las reglas de la geometría clásica. Proponemos, por el contrario, un Pabellón infinito en un estado potencial de constante variación. El pabellón alemán supuso una nueva forma de entender el espacio acorde al movimiento moderno, sin embargo se encuentra limitado por las normas de la realidad física. Nuestro pabellón debe responder espacialmente a nuestro tiempo, teniendo en cuenta que en el espacio simulado los límites de la tecnología han sido superados. Siendo esto así, las plantas, alzados, perspectivas y secciones al uso no es que carezcan de sentido, sino que no existen. Al no haber suelo, concepto de arriba o abajo, y estar dentro de una geometría topológica, no procede seccionar el edificio por un punto concreto, tomar una vista u otra, ya que todo es igual de válido. Es por ello que omitimos estos documentos en nuestro trabajo. Los pabellones de exposiciones universales han servido a lo largo de la historia para mostrar lo representativo de un país o empresa y sus adelantos. Actualmente , los límites de los países y culturas se están desdibujando en todos los sentidos. La proximidad contemporánea no es tanto una reducción de las distancias entre puntos, sino la disolución de lo distante; de la posibilidad misma de darse la distancia que funda lo distinto. En este sentido, la homogeneización geográfica del espacio global no puede sino provocar la indistinción generalizada de todo. Esa tendencia hacia la ciudad genérica que pierde su identidad es un proceso irrefrenable. Muestra de ello es que nos es posible encontrar la misma comida, las mismas tiendas, la misma gente y las mismas estructuras urbanas en la mayoría del globo. Descartamos por tanto esas - a priori - señas de identidad de Barcelona como motivo a destacar en el Pabellón, sencillamente porque ya no lo son. La especialización es lo único que queda para ser competitivo en la economía globalizada. A Barcelona, por tradición y medios, le queda el diseño en todas sus acepciones como símbolo de identidad. Este es nuestro valor a destacar. Pero no sólo se trata de una urgencia económica. La realidad contemporánea se desarrolla como una realidad estetizada, proliferan infinitas copias que no refieren a un original y que compone un contexto en el que el diseño se descubre crucial como herramienta de modelización. La propuesta es una estructura espacial en la que diseños barceloneses se maclan interconectándose entre sí pudiendo ser recorridos; Una Biblioteca de Babel del diseño Barcelona. Nos centramos en una parte en concreto por ser representativa y sintética, tomando como herramienta de trabajo un icono del diseño, la Aceitera Marquina. El pabellón propuesto es una concatenación de Aceiteras Marquina sin escala y transitables virtualmente. El medio en el que se encuentran es vinagre. En una realidad en la que todo es posible, invertimos la naturaleza del objeto al pasar el contenido a ser el continente. En este universo creado tendrían cabida los nuevos diseños, que se irían agregando a la estructura haciéndola infinita y mutable.”
ARQUITECTURA-G en Pasajes Construcción
La gelosia ceràmica “espuma cerámica” desenvolupada per Jordi Ayala i Jonathan Arnabat (membres de l’estudi ARQUITECTURA-G) dins la Cátedra Cerámica dirigida per l’arquitecte Vicenç Sarrablo, fou publicada al nº 16 de la revista d’arquitectura Pasajes Construcción.El projecte proposa un nou sistema d’extrusió que dóna més llibertat formal a la ceràmica com a element constructiu.
Nuevo Blog de ARQUITECTURA-G
ARQUITECTURA-G, estudio de arquitectura ubicado en Barcelona (Calle Graus nº10-12 bajos 08017) y formado por cuatro arquitectos (Igor Urdanpileta, Jordi Ayala, Aitor Fuentes y Jonathan Arnabat), crea un blog como herramienta de difusión de la obra que actualmente esta produciendo.
