ARQUITECTURA-G en diariodesign
Diariodesign, magazine on-line de diseño, interiorismo y arquitectura, publica un proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G.
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.
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.
ARQUITECTURA-G en sólo arquitectura
Sólo Arquitectura publica en su web el último trabajo de ARQUITECTURA-G.
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.
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).
ARQUITECTURA-G en Pasajes Diseño
Pasajes Diseño publica en su blog el último proyecto de ARQUITECTURA-G.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.”
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.
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
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.
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.
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