rita_ Revista Indexada de Textos Académicos
La revista rita_ es una publicación semestral, que pretende convertirse en la revista asociada a las más importantes Escuelas de Arquitectura de España e Iberoamérica.
rita_ actualmente cuenta con mas de 60 Escuelas de Arquitectura asociadas.
rita_ se nutre principalmente de la publicación de textos académicos escritos por profesores y estudiantes de posgrado, así como de textos y obras centradas, cada número, en un país de Iberoamérica.
rita_ aspira a ser un medio natural de publicación de textos de arquitectura y a otorgarle a estos la mayor difusión y el mayor valor académico posible. Para ello se incorporará a los más prestigiosos índices internacionales, cuando se vayan cumpliendo sus requerimientos.
Se trata de una publicación en formato papel y digital que publicará trabajos originales no difundidos anteriormente en otras revistas, libros, congresos o seminarios.
rita_ está indexada en ESCI (WoS), Scopus, Avery Index, Latindex, Actualidad Iberoamericana, MIAR, DOAJ e InfoBase Index y forma parte de las bases de datos ISOC y DIALNET.
La revista va dirigida a arquitectos, estudiantes, investigadores y profesionales relacionados con el proyecto y la realización de la obra de arquitectura en todas sus variantes, incluido el urbanismo.
ISSN: 2340-9711 / e-ISSN: 2386-7027
Supervisors: Juan Paulo Arlarcon Carreño
Phone: +34 910 11 55 84
Address: Calle Ferraz, 7. 28008 Madrid, España
rita_ actualmente cuenta con mas de 60 Escuelas de Arquitectura asociadas.
rita_ se nutre principalmente de la publicación de textos académicos escritos por profesores y estudiantes de posgrado, así como de textos y obras centradas, cada número, en un país de Iberoamérica.
rita_ aspira a ser un medio natural de publicación de textos de arquitectura y a otorgarle a estos la mayor difusión y el mayor valor académico posible. Para ello se incorporará a los más prestigiosos índices internacionales, cuando se vayan cumpliendo sus requerimientos.
Se trata de una publicación en formato papel y digital que publicará trabajos originales no difundidos anteriormente en otras revistas, libros, congresos o seminarios.
rita_ está indexada en ESCI (WoS), Scopus, Avery Index, Latindex, Actualidad Iberoamericana, MIAR, DOAJ e InfoBase Index y forma parte de las bases de datos ISOC y DIALNET.
La revista va dirigida a arquitectos, estudiantes, investigadores y profesionales relacionados con el proyecto y la realización de la obra de arquitectura en todas sus variantes, incluido el urbanismo.
ISSN: 2340-9711 / e-ISSN: 2386-7027
Supervisors: Juan Paulo Arlarcon Carreño
Phone: +34 910 11 55 84
Address: Calle Ferraz, 7. 28008 Madrid, España
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rita_ 20 by rita_ Revista Indexada de Textos Académicos
Texas. Una singular intervención con la que trasladaba a la arquitectura los principios espaciales testados con sus objetos, haciendo habitable el espacio contenido en los límites. En definitiva, se descubren unas propuestas en las que ese límite es el mediador de un espacio, específicamente diseñado para promover el interés de espectador o habitante, en la experiencia perceptiva integradora defendida por Donald Judd.
Como consecuencia, el diseño del hogar familiar contemporáneo es, en la mayoría de los casos, el resultado de la aplicación de un patrón genérico que, impulsado por intereses del mercado, incorpora por defecto ciertas suposiciones sobre la naturaleza de la familia que debería contener y los roles que cada uno de sus miembros debería desempeñar dentro de dicha estructura básica, ayudando así a consolidar una de las más obvias – y todavía no resuelta- desigualdades sociales: aquella entre hombres y mujeres.
De la mano de activistas y pensadoras feministas el texto sitúa esta desigualdad en el centro del debate en torno al espacio doméstico y el proyecto de la vivienda colectiva analizando sus efectos sobre la arquitectura para revelar cómo la relación entre espacio y género ha ido evolucionando a la vez que lo hacían los diferentes sistemas socioeconómicos, y cómo esta circunstancia ha ido mutando nuestros hogares en espacios de explotación, desposesión e invisibilización.
rita_ 19 by rita_ Revista Indexada de Textos Académicos
investigación que parte de su viaje a América donde comienza a tomar conciencia de la importancia del espacio en las nuevas soluciones artísticas y donde se encuentra con la cultura primitiva precolombina, con sus estatuas como artefactos salvadores espirituales, y acaba en el crómlech vasco, vacío y receptivo religiosamente. Los dos dibujos suponen dos visiones o cortes a lo largo de este proceso que permiten entender mejor los intereses y mecanismos proyectuales de Oteiza en relación con su intervención en Arantzazu en el descubrimiento y definición del espacio religioso.
Mediante la revisión de fuentes bibliográficas primarias y de archivo (incluyendo revistas especializadas e iconografía), así como la elaboración de entrevistas y análisis in situ, esta investigación revela un proceso marcado por el cambio continuo e influenciado por la dinámica de trabajo de Oíza, su experiencia académica, y sobre todo por sus lecturas y reflexiones en el campo de la Fenomenología.
El acercamiento parte de la reexaminación de las referencias orgánicas y utópicas utilizadas por Oíza (provenientes de F. L. Wright y Le Corbusier respectivamente) para adentrarse gradualmente en el carácter evocativo de Torres Blancas y en las estrategias arquitectónicas seguidas para tal fin por el arquitecto, siempre girando en torno a la definición de la fachada e incorporando el concepto de “umbral” como mediador —tanto físico como simbólico— entre exterior e interior.
Texas. Una singular intervención con la que trasladaba a la arquitectura los principios espaciales testados con sus objetos, haciendo habitable el espacio contenido en los límites. En definitiva, se descubren unas propuestas en las que ese límite es el mediador de un espacio, específicamente diseñado para promover el interés de espectador o habitante, en la experiencia perceptiva integradora defendida por Donald Judd.
Como consecuencia, el diseño del hogar familiar contemporáneo es, en la mayoría de los casos, el resultado de la aplicación de un patrón genérico que, impulsado por intereses del mercado, incorpora por defecto ciertas suposiciones sobre la naturaleza de la familia que debería contener y los roles que cada uno de sus miembros debería desempeñar dentro de dicha estructura básica, ayudando así a consolidar una de las más obvias – y todavía no resuelta- desigualdades sociales: aquella entre hombres y mujeres.
De la mano de activistas y pensadoras feministas el texto sitúa esta desigualdad en el centro del debate en torno al espacio doméstico y el proyecto de la vivienda colectiva analizando sus efectos sobre la arquitectura para revelar cómo la relación entre espacio y género ha ido evolucionando a la vez que lo hacían los diferentes sistemas socioeconómicos, y cómo esta circunstancia ha ido mutando nuestros hogares en espacios de explotación, desposesión e invisibilización.
investigación que parte de su viaje a América donde comienza a tomar conciencia de la importancia del espacio en las nuevas soluciones artísticas y donde se encuentra con la cultura primitiva precolombina, con sus estatuas como artefactos salvadores espirituales, y acaba en el crómlech vasco, vacío y receptivo religiosamente. Los dos dibujos suponen dos visiones o cortes a lo largo de este proceso que permiten entender mejor los intereses y mecanismos proyectuales de Oteiza en relación con su intervención en Arantzazu en el descubrimiento y definición del espacio religioso.
Mediante la revisión de fuentes bibliográficas primarias y de archivo (incluyendo revistas especializadas e iconografía), así como la elaboración de entrevistas y análisis in situ, esta investigación revela un proceso marcado por el cambio continuo e influenciado por la dinámica de trabajo de Oíza, su experiencia académica, y sobre todo por sus lecturas y reflexiones en el campo de la Fenomenología.
El acercamiento parte de la reexaminación de las referencias orgánicas y utópicas utilizadas por Oíza (provenientes de F. L. Wright y Le Corbusier respectivamente) para adentrarse gradualmente en el carácter evocativo de Torres Blancas y en las estrategias arquitectónicas seguidas para tal fin por el arquitecto, siempre girando en torno a la definición de la fachada e incorporando el concepto de “umbral” como mediador —tanto físico como simbólico— entre exterior e interior.
En torno a esta ensoñación se construye un texto especulativo sobre la vigencia del rincón y su presencia a la hora de adecuarla a la escala de sus habitantes, de ofrecernos un contacto alternativo con la materia de la habitación, hasta descubrir su ausencia en el discurso de la modernidad salvo las respuestas ocasionales que ofrecen figuras como Jacobsen, Go Hasegawa, o la metáfora que nos brinda la escultura de Giacometti sobre “la mujer cuchara”. El presente escrito actualiza el tema del rincón desde los planteamientos conceptuales de la Escuela de los Annales, el apoyo en la metodología de la Nueva Historia y el estudio de las estructuras de la experiencia subjetiva de la fenomenología y la historia de las mentalidades.
Este artículo traza la historia de la sala de espera y la posiciona al centro de un debate sobre programa arquitectónico, tipologías edilicias y urbanidad moderna. Para ello, se construye una historia de la sala de espera, desde su origen infraestructural (en las primeras estaciones de trenes) y sus numerosas iteraciones arquitectónicas específicas en los últimos dos siglos (por ejemplo, los lobbies de hoteles o los bares en restaurantes). El artículo argumenta que la sala de espera moderna llega incluso a constituir espacios con nombres y características específicas, pudiendo establecerse una suerte de tipología, aunque menor. Finalmente, se termina cuestionando su lugar en la actualidad.
Este trabajo de investigación profundiza en el estudio de este proyecto desde su concepción hasta su materialización y trata de establecer una relación con los conceptos de formanúcleo y forma-artística propuestos por Karl Bötticher (Nordhausen, 1806 - Berlín, 1889) y debatidos por Gottfried Semper (Hamburgo, 1803 Roma, 1879) a finales del siglo XIX. Estos conceptos fueron retomados casi un siglo después por Kenneth Frampton (Woking, 1930 - ) en varias ocasiones, en particular en su libro "Studies in tectonic culture" (1995).
El artículo pretende analizar este proyecto desde un punto de vista estructural para identificar no sólo la presencia de estos conceptos, que tradicionalmente han sido pensados por separado, pero también la superposición física y conceptual de ambos en una única entidad que podríamos llamar forma-esencial.
El caminante deviene arquitecto menor en el momento en que subvierte el diseño arquitectónico, vulnera barreras, deja mensajes camuflados, juega con los nombres y los rótulos, presenta a la escena pública un perfil minoritario, desafía horarios establecidos, o contribuye activamente a un clima de indiferencia solidaria entre desconocidos.
‘Lo blanco’ se presenta así como desencadenante de una forma de pensamiento que recorre transversalmente la filosofía, las artes plásticas y la arquitectura hasta nuestros días, pero más vinculado con lo plano, lo monocromo y su frontalidad, que con la literalidad cromática de su aplicación superficial. De esta forma, las texturas repetitivas de las superficies ciegas que recubren hoy la arquitectura se proponen como última manifestación de este proceder que se concentra en potenciar los efectos de indiferencia y unidad, bloqueando cualquier posible interpretación del interior. Lo blanco como concepto no encarna ya lo más puro, sino lo puramente opaco.
Si bien ambas experiencias pertenecen a contextos y circunstancias muy diferentes, las dos se hacían servir de la tecnología de cada momento para, junto con las características del propio edificio, poner en “éxtasis” a sus espectadores (miles en el caso neoyorquino, algunas decenas simultáneamente en el caso londinense) reunidos ante la representación de un fenómeno natural perfectamente sintetizado, como si se tratara de un atardecer frente a una gran puesta de sol.
Sin embargo, estos efectos, envueltos en una sutil manipulación sobre aquellos que están expuestos a ellas, son objeto hoy de controversia, ya que los métodos empleados serán descritos por algunos autores como “agresivos” en tanto en cuanto pueden dar lugar a que ciertos comportamientos, deseos y experiencias se den con mayor probabilidad sin que sus espectadores sean necesariamente conscientes de ello.
en la novela de Roberto Saviano, nos invita a reflexionar sobre algunos aspectos urbanísticos y arquitectónicos de la ciudad de Nápoles, verdadera protagonista del relato.
A partir de la ficción, nos remontamos a los orígenes urbanísticos de la periferia de Nápoles y cómo la mafia impuso su control socio-económico. Gomorra establece una relación dual de documentación y dramatización del patrimonio arquitectónico de la ciudad. En la serie vemos reflejada la importancia de la relación entre los espacios domésticos y urbanos y la constante disputa entre pecado y redención que rige el destino de Nápoles.
una escultura si no que se transforma, en base a la mecánica operativa de Max Bill, en arquitectura habitada.
denominado como abrazadera giratoria. Desde el año 1914, esta unión ha tenido un desarrollo tecnológico en relación con sus patentes de fabricación y su evolución a través del tiempo. La investigación que desarrolla este artículo se ha basado en la práctica, como un método de acercamiento para constituir un vínculo entre la tecnología y la producción
del espacio en red del andamio. Esta relación contiene un potencial socio político ligado a las posibilidades que el nudo es capaz de producir en la red. La primera unión de abrazadera giratoria, patentada en 1939, permitió el montaje libre de una red tal como lo haría el andamio en base al nudo de cuerda. El abordaje de un tipo de pensamiento arquitectónico en red ha caracterizado los proyectos de vanguardia del arte y la arquitectura entre las décadas de los años 50s y 90s. El entramado que conforma la abrazadera giratoria se adelanta a la tecnología que utilizaron algunos proyectos de vanguardia, produciendo una incubadora revolucionaria capaz de materializar los deseos asociados a los imaginarios de utopía en la segunda mitad del siglo XX.
Se hace hincapié en la metodología de análisis de los casos seleccionados y se propone un argumento devenido desde la introducción y el prólogo, que traslada las instalaciones desde un problema técnico a un recurso mayor dentro de la proyección y construcción de la arquitectura y la ciudad y necesaria para enfrentar la crisis climática.
Tafuri escribe en 1974 el artículo «L’Architecture dans le Boudoir: The Language of Criticism and the Criticism of Language». Ante el agotamiento del repertorio lingüístico de la Arquitectura Moderna, identifica la obra de James Stirling como un ejercicio ejemplar para la recuperación del lenguaje arquitectónico. En este artículo planteamos
la hipótesis de que el proyecto para un Salón de actos en la escuela de Brunswick Park en Londres, realizada entre 1958 y 1961 por James Stirling junto a James Gowan, es una especie de proto arquitectura que sintetiza toda la obra previa de Stirling y fija los elementos que se desarrollarán en sus conocidos edificios de los años 60. Consultando
los primeros escritos y el cuaderno de notas de Stirling, el “Black Notebook”, proponemos apoyarnos en la teoría de Los cuatro elementos de la arquitectura de Gottfried Semper para defender que la nueva estructura gramatical que plantea Stirling parte de una relectura de estos elementos, de estos “signos vacíos de contenido” en palabras de Tafuri, para reconstruir a partir de ellos las estructuras lingüísticas del lenguaje de la modernidad.
Como prueba de las capacidades de las redes neuronales para su uso en arquitectura, se usa una red neuronal antagónica condicional (Pix2Pix), entrenada por el autor para la generación de planos bidimensionales de vivienda colectiva. Mediante este flujo de trabajo se lleva a cabo la desagregación del conjunto en unidades de vivienda individuales, el procesado por parte de la red neuronal y la re-agregación en el conjunto de viviendas.
Debido a la gran cantidad de plantas de vivienda necesarias para el entrenamiento de la red, es necesario automatizar los procesos, realizar un etiquetado y su almacenamiento en listas de datos. Los planos generados por la red neuronal son exportados a Grasshopper para su posterior tratamiento, pudiendo definirse diferentes aproximaciones mediante procesos de automatización.
Koolhaas comprende el pulso de los cambios a través de sus entrevistados y realiza un gran esfuerzo por averiguar cómo podrá ser la arquitectura si las condiciones fabricadas por el neoliberalismo la hacen irrelevante. Esta cuestión es crucial en el momento presente: la mezcla de tratar de revisitar mediante entrevistas lo que ha pasado recodificándolo y lo que está pasando leído desprejuiciadamente, intelectualizándolo como forma epistemológica y que sea una herramienta para poder trabajar con problemas acuciantes que nos permitan afrontar el futuro con una posición crítica.
La redundancia es una fórmula ampliamente repetida que asegura el funcionamiento continuo de nuestras ciudades, ecosistemas y redes en caso de fallas, mediante la multiplicación preventiva de algunas o todas las partes del sistema. Es también un instrumento político que, bajo el capitalismo de vigilancia, ha adoptado su última configuración espacial en los centros de datos.
¿Tiene el diseño agencia en el problema de la redundancia?
Revisamos estos conceptos en el momento actual para volver a pensar en el significado de un lenguaje esencial, desde un sentido de economía, no sólo de medios y recursos sino también de acciones.
y escenarios. La comprensión preliminar del barrio se manifiesta en el lenguaje temporal adoptado que, gracias a una serie de artefactos móviles, permite la multiplicidad de acontecimientos en lugar de una muestra estática. Salir a la calle a presentar arquitectura que aborda problemas comunes y cotidianos es un gesto de apertura sin precedentes en Chile, sin embargo, su puesta en escena derivó en un enroque de roles; la exhibición se volvió accidental, mientras el barrio y su comunidad se transformaron en objeto de interés. La bienal, subordinada a las leyes del lugar, se tropezó con un contexto sociopolítico complejo que finalmente reveló una inusitada apropiación y resignificación de los soportes y contenidos del evento.
trayectoria, durante su estancia en el Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) del Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), entre 1971 y 1975, se encuentran implícitos los principios que han guiado su modo de trabajar a lo largo de su vida. Con el fin de aportar algo más de luz sobre su obra temprana, el artículo plantea el análisis de la colección de obras, piezas y objetos cotidianos presentes en el estudio que ocupó en el CAVS durante aquellos años. Todas ellas constituyen el registro de su espacio imaginario, un ámbito mental propio del artista en el que se gestan las obras y donde se recogen sus referencias e intereses. Así, su estudio
de trabajo se concibe como un pasaje, un ámbito de transición entre su espacio imaginario o de ideación y el medio físico sobre el que proyecta su obra, aportando una información valiosísima para profundizar sobre los presupuestos artísticos que guiaron su trabajo en esta primera etapa de su trayectoria profesional.
y, como consecuencia, las propuestas artísticas y arquitectónicas que realiza para él. El Homme type lecorbusieriano de los años 20 y 30 es concebido, bajo el influjo de la revolución industrial de estas primeras décadas del siglo XX, como una pieza más en el preciso engranaje de la gran maquinaria de la ciudad de los tiempos nuevos. El fracaso de los planteamientos sociales y económicos, representado por las dos guerras mundiales, así como determinadas circunstancias personales, provocan una progresiva variación de esta visión hacia una concepción del hombre
en términos opuestos. El Homme type varía progresivamente hacia el Homme réel del periodo de postguerra cuyo desarrollo es confiado a nuevas variables como la “libertad”, la “espontaneidad” o la “creatividad”.
Será en la década de los 50, en el convento de la Tourette, donde encuentre finalmente la oportunidad de reflexionar y presentar de una manera biunívoca su hombre y arquitectura ideales.
escrito es profundizar en estos cruces disciplinares desde la revisión de estudios precursores en este campo de investigación quehan sido omitidos de las revisiones historiográficas, tanto en arquitectura como en antropología, y situar a este autor en una discusión metodológica más amplia que integra los debates actuales.
El artículo analiza la casa Futuro como paradigma de la arquitectura sin lugar cuya relación con el entorno, tanto por su forma cuasi extraterrestre como por la levedad con la que sus patas se posan en el terreno, es mínima. Su cuerpo de níveo plástico brillante destaca entre el paisaje que la rodea como una nave aterrizada, a veces literalmente, en medio del bosque. Las unidades que a día de hoy siguen en pie son testigos vivos de la primera casa de plástico vendida alrededor del planeta.
Este recorrido alcanza su cénit con el inicio de la década de los 80, momento a partir del cual Cano Lasso recibiría hasta su fallecimiento varios premios y reconocimientos a su trayectoria profesional
proyecto, lo sitúa, irónicamente, como antesala de un nuevo paradigma que
reclamará la desaparición de la arquitectura y su sustitución por redes hípertecnológicas que posibilitan una vida cambiante en un entorno “bien atemperado” —siguiendo las corrientes medioambientalistas del momento. Sin embargo, esta revisión sigue acomodada en relacionar La Ciudad Espacial con el mundo referencial aceptado por el propio Friedman: Le Corbusier, Metabolistas, Konrad Wachsmann... Este artículo amplía este contexto yendo más allá de los escritos del autor y comparando, para ello, imágenes poco conocidas de su Ville Spatiale con otras de aquellos con los que siempre negó relación alguna: Alison y Peter Smithson. Es en una pugna intelectual no reconocida con estos, donde la investigación pretende situar los fotomontajes de Friedman como medio transmisor de las ideas que años después fueron llevadas al extremo por una nueva generación de “arquitectos radicales” —sobre todo en Londres, Viena y Florencia— pero reconociendo el papel fundamental —obviado a menudo por la crítica arquitectónica— que la pareja británica tuvo en su fundación.
avanzados del Movimiento Moderno, yendo más allá de las ideas preestablecidas por el régimen de Mussolini. El presente trabajo reconoce las aportaciones más reveladoras de este elogio a lo rural hecho por Pagano, las contrasta con las ideas gubernamentales y las pone en relación con otras valoraciones coetáneas de esta arquitectura, como las desarrolladas por Josep Lluís Sert desde España. Se valora asimismo la continuidad de sus ideas en exposiciones sobre temas similares realizadas posteriormente, como “Architettura spontanea” comisariada por Giancarlo De Carlo y “Architecture without Architects” dirigida por Bernard Rudofsky
El acercamiento al objeto se realizará por escalas: en primer lugar se hablará brevemente de la casa como contexto y contenedor de un elemento especial; el paso siguiente será analizar el vestíbulo y la importancia del perchero en la secuencia de recorrido; el tercer apartado se centrará en el propio perchero, en el ensamblaje de todos sus componentes y en su carácter maquinista, otorgado por
el movimiento de las piezas; finalmente, se reflexionará sobre el origen incierto del perchero y sobre su deseada permanencia en la memoria colectiva.
Este objeto sensible, al interactuar con los usuarios, provoca una reacción de sorpresa e invita al juego.
No hay arquitectura pequeña. Como este perchero demuestra, una pieza singular y poética es capaz de cualificar y transformar el espacio.
Este artículo aborda el tema de la vivienda social, en su formalización a nivel de barrio, a partir de un conjunto de ejemplos, construidos a lo largo del siglo XX, que se usan para explicar una posible visión de la Ciudad Social muy pertinente frente a una realidad contemporánea, relativa a la Vivienda colectiva, pobre en significado y frágil en términos de capacidad de respuesta.
su dorna, en el mar de Bueu.
If there is something that characterizes the work of Ramón Vázquez Molezún
it is creativity, risk, emotion. This work, vital and optimistic, was innovative and absolutely personal, and the origin of all this should be sought in something as prosaic as a motorbike. As a pensioner in Rome in the early 1950s, Molezún acquired a Lambretta C125 which he transformed and adapted completely until appropriated it and turned it into a real house on his back and a perfect companion on his journey through Europe. A vehicle that allowed him mobility and independence that reflected his restless vitalist and artistic character in formation, becoming an indispensable object, full of meaning, that Molezún photographed insistently alongside the beautiful landscapes and buildings that he visited during the more than 100.00 km he travelled on his great journey. The motorbike is revealed in Molezún as much more than a fast and cheap means of transport; it is discovered as the driving range and transformations of the future architect. Mind and hands united in work; symbiosis of architect and craftsman. A journey of life that begins on land on a motorbike in Rome and ends on a boat, his dorn, in the Bueu Sea.
e impersonal, al margen del habitante y con el objetivo final de crear un objeto
estética y funcionalmente ensimismado. No necesitaba ni referencias externas, ni
validaciones del usuario. A partir de los años 50, Louis Kahn explorará un nuevo
tipo de espacio en el que la materia, la estructura y la luz están íntimamente
relacionados y son los elementos para crear un espacio humanizado, con el usuario
en el centro de su quehacer. El proceso de proyecto de Kahn sigue una secuencia
en la que la materia crea el muro que va disolviéndose en columnas entre las
cuales se introduce la luz para hacer del espacio interior un mundo habitable y, por
ende, humano. Ese mismo proceso aplicará también al interior de los elementos
estructurales, que en sí mismo acabarán siendo contenedores de espacios, en
una relectura moderna del poché clásico. Estructura y espacio están de este
modo indisolublemente asociados, superando la canónica premisa de la ortodoxia
moderna por la cual la estructura, el cerramiento y el espacio eran categorías
independientes.
Canonical Modernism imposed a fluid, extensive and impersonal conception
of space, indepedent of the inhabitant and with the final objective of creating
an aesthetically and functionally self-absorbed object. Needed neither external
references nor user validations. Starting in the 1950s, Louis Kahn will explore
a new type of space in which matter, structure and light are closely related and
are the elements to create a humanized space, with the user at the center of his
work. Kahn’s project process follows a sequence in which matter creates the
wall, which dissolves into columns between which light is introduced to make
interior space a inhabitable, and therefore human, world. This same process
will also apply to the interior of the structural elements, which in themselves will
end up being containers of spaces, in a modern re-reading of classic poché.
Structure and space are thus inextricably associated, overcoming the canonical
premise of modern orthodoxy whereby structure, enclosure, and space were
independent categories.
en 1932 hasta su desaparición por causas políticas en 1943, uno de los
últimos reductos de la Neues Bauen. Integrada por los grupos holandeses de
8 y OPBOUW, se mantuvo siempre atenta a las experiencias que se estaban
desarrollando en otros países, especialmente la Francia de Le Corbusier, Alemania,
la Unión Soviética o Estados Unidos. Por esta razón, acogieron con grandísimo
interés las nuevas teorías de reforma de la vida y la necesidad de revisar los
modelos de la ciudad decimonónica, entre otros muchos temas. Este trabajo se
centra precisamente en la búsqueda de artículos referidos a los espacios verdes
o a la necesidad de vida al aire libre descubriendo, no solo la urgencia con que
demandaron políticas de higiene y zonas verdes, sino, sobre todo a partir de 1938,
muchos proyectos de un altísimo interés paisajístico y urbano, que bebían de
propuestas alemanas de los años 20 y de la Nueva Objetividad. Mención ineludible
merecen los proyectos del Ámsterdam Bosch, el Plan Verde para Rotterdam o
decenas de proyectos de dotaciones para baños públicos, piscinas o escuelas que
se presentan.
Dutch Magazine de 8 en Opbouw, heir of i10 was from its beginnings in 1932,
to its disappearance in 1943 for political reasons, one of the last refuge for
the Neues Bauen. It was formed by two previous groups from Amsterdam and
Rotterdam, de 8 and OPBOUW. The magazine was always vigilant of every
experience coming from France, Germany, the URSS or the USA. They took
on enthusiastically new theories about Lebensreform, and the necessity for
redesigning the Nineteenth Century city. This work seeks for articles focused or
related in some way to green areas or “Outdoor life” encouragement. We’ll discover how dramatic was their claim for public policies in hygienic improvements
and new green areas necessity. We’ll also discover, specially from 1938, high
urban and landscaping value projects, inspired from the german 20’s and the
New Objectivity experiences, as the Amsterdam Bosch, Rotterdam Green Plan
or several sports, bath and swimming complex or new schools.
de habere, “tener o poseer reiteradamente” y su significado indica el “hábito” de
permanecer en un lugar. Desde el inicio de las primeras revoluciones industriales,
la tecnología aumentó el movimiento de las personas, reduciendo la permanencia
en el espacio. Estas nuevas circunstancias han afectado a las relaciones
interpersonales y al concepto de hogar.
En esta nueva era, la ubicuidad que otorga la digitalización de pertenencias y
procesos permite que desde la vivienda se puedan realizar actividades antes
inimaginables, la compra de todo tipo de productos, el teletrabajo, impartir o
recibir docencia, y también la posibilidad de hacerlo desde cualquier otro sitio del
mundo. Consecuencia de esto, surgen nuevos espacios domésticos, los modelos
colaborativos Cohousing y Coliving, que aparecen para dar respuesta a nuevos
perfiles sociales, como son el habitante y el nómada digital.
La limitación de la movilidad a escala global, producida por el COVID-19, ha
evidenciado la sostenibilidad de estos nuevos modelos colaborativos. Ante esta
realidad, se hace necesaria su revisión en pro de la calidad de vida de sus usuarios,
que resulta vinculada a la reconexión con el entorno y la interacción con una
comunidad.
The etymological origin of the word inhabit comes from the Latin habitare, frequentative of habere, “to have or possess repeatedly” and its meaning indicates the
“habit” of staying in a place. From the beginning of the first industrial revolutions,
technology increased the movements of individuals, reducing the permanence in
space. These new circumstances have affected interpersonal relationships and
the concept of home.
In this new era, the ubiquity afforded by the digitization of belongings and
processes, allows previously unimaginable activities to be carried out from the
home, the purchase of all kinds of products, telecommuting, providing or receiving
teaching, and also the possibility of doing so from anywhere else in the world. As
a result of this, new domestic spaces emerge, the collaborative models Cohousing and Coliving, which appear to respond to new social profiles, such as the
inhabitant and the digital nomad.
The global mobility limitation, produced by the COVID-19, has evidenced the true
sustainability of these new collaborative models. Given this reality, it is necessary
to review it in support of the quality of life of its users, which is linked to reconnection with the environment and the consolidation of its community.
ha jugado un importante papel en el desarrollo de la arquitectura moderna en
Europa, especialmente en la de carácter doméstico. Se pretende sintetizar este
hecho, ampliamente estudiado en Estados Unidos debido a la obra de Frank Lloyd
Wright, si bien, sólo parcialmente analizado en Europa, sobre todo durante la
segunda mitad del siglo XX y en lo relativo a los países nórdicos. ¿De qué manera
los arquitectos nórdicos encontraron inspiración en Oriente? ¿Qué les atrajo de
su cultura tectónica? ¿Cómo aplicaron la estética nipona a sus diseños? Mientras
que en ocasiones sólo se utilizaron elementos formales, sin mayor profundidad,
en otros casos, los principios rectores de dicho orientalismo, de la arquitectura
sukiya o la Villa Katsura como referente, enriquecieron proyectos de arquitectura
doméstica de Jørn Utzon, Halldor Gunnløgsson, Arne Korsmo o Sverre Fehn, entre
otros; protagonistas de una corriente de “sincretismo oriental moderno”, deudora
de la visión de los pioneros centroeuropeos que visitaron Japón, del magisterio de
Erik Gunnar Asplund y, sobre todo, del legado de Tetsuro Yoshida.
The research starts from the idea that traditional Japanese architecture has played
an important role in the development of modern architecture in Europe, especially
in the case of domestic architecture. The objective is to summarize this fact,
widely studied in the United States due to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. However, this fact has only been partially analysed about Europe, especially during the
second half of the 20th century and in relation to the Nordic countries. How did
Nordic architects find inspiration in the East? What drew them to your tectonic
culture? How did they apply the Japanese aesthetic to their own designs? While
sometimes only formal elements were used, without much more depth, in other
cases, the principles of Orientalism, Sukiya architecture or the Villa Katsura as a
reference, enriched domestic architecture designs. Such is the case of Jørn Utzon, Halldor Gunnløgsson, Arne Korsmo or Sverre Fehn, among others; who were
the leaders of a current of modern Eastern syncretism, which owes its origins to
the vision of the Central European pioneers who visited Japan, to the influence of
Erik Gunnar Asplund and, above all, to the legacy of Tetsuro Yoshida.
y abierta de limites difusos”, ha provocado una reacción inmunitaria opuesta de
precisas fronteras sin que por ello se haya dejado de estar hiperconectados. Esta
cohabitación de lo viral y lo neuronal, utilizando términos empleados por Chul Han
para definir estos extremos, solo puede encontrar acomodo en una estructura
de realidad hibrida que podríamos denominar paradigma paradójico. “Menos es
más” fue el oxímoron que definió la arquitectura moderna, un binomio plausible
de términos antagónicos, presente en muchas de las expresiones forzadas que
fundamentaron las profundas transformaciones que renovaron la cultura del
siglo XX. Un periodo convulso y contradictorio donde incertidumbre y miedo lo
emparentan con la actual pandemia que nos azota. Entender este mecanismo
radical y productivo abre otros caminos para redefinir las nuevas formas de habitar
en contextos indeterminados y vulnerables como nos esperan en la era postCOVID.
Desde la crisis del modelo de alta densidad de la ciudad actual hasta el manejo
de los espacios de confinamiento y distanciamiento que configuraran la vivienda
en esta dualidad de agrupaciones de habitaciones autónomas, términos como
COaVitación, centrar-descentrar espacios educativos y sociosanitarios, serán, en
suma, relaciones de opuestos que marquen esta arquitectura paradójica en sintonía
con la nueva normalidad.
The emergence of COVID-19 in a digital and open society with fuzzy limits, as
Toyo Ito indicates has caused an immune reaction of the opposite sign with precise closings, without ceasing to be hyperconnected. This cohabitation of the
viral and the neuronal in the words of Byung-Chul Han can only find accommodation in a hybrid reality structure that we could call the paradoxical paradigm.
“Less is more” was the oxymoron that defined modern architecture, a binomial
of plausible opposite terms, and present in many of the implausible expressions
that founded the profound transformations that renewed the culture of the 20th
century. A convulsive and contradictory period where uncertainty and fear are
related to the current pandemic. Understanding this radical and productive
mechanism opens other ways to redefine the new ways of living in indeterminate
and vulnerable contexts such as those that await us in the postCOVID era. From
the crisis of the high-density model of the current city to the management of
the confinement and distancing spaces that configure housing as a duality of
autonomous room groups, COaVitation, center-decentralization mechanisms in
educational and socio-sanitary spaces, in summary, relations of opposites in a
paradoxical architecture consistent with the new normality
(CENIM, 1963) y en el Centro de Cálculo de la antigua Caja Postal de Ahorros
(1975) de Alejandro de la Sota. Ambas dan respuesta a aspectos prácticos de su
organización, pero a la vez comportan aspectos de significado en cuanto a que se
corresponden con la manera de solucionar la relación entre partes heterogéneas
dentro de un mismo proyecto. Se incluyen en un mismo estudio ya que se pueden
establecer entre ellas aspectos comunes asociados a desplazamientos y solapes
entre partes de la trama que no parecen encontrarse en otros proyectos también
utilitarios y relativos a programas de trabajo en la obra de De la Sota. Como se
indica en anotación al texto ha sido preciso un examen amplio de la composición
entre partes fundamentales de otros edificios de programas semejantes para
apreciar la singularidad real existente en los aquí considerados. Las particularidades de cada una han invitado a un análisis detenido que nos revela sus aportaciones y el carácter de los espacios por ellas generados.
This article analyzes two alterations of the general order included respectively in
the buildings of the National Center for Metallurgical Research (CENIM, 1963)
and in the Calculation Center of the former Savings Bank Postal (1975) by
Alejandro de la Sota. Both respond to practical aspects of their organization,
but at the same time they involve aspects of meaning regarding the relationship
of heterogeneous parts within the same project. They are included in the same
study since they can establish common aspects differentiated from the rest of the
projects, also utilitarian and related to work programs in De la Sota’s work. These
aspects are especially linked to effects on the regularity of their project nettings.
As indicated in annotation to the text –although its discussion has not been
addressed within it because it exceeds the available space– a comprehensive
examination of the composition between fundamental parts of other buildings of
similar programs has been necessary to appreciate the real uniqueness existing in
the here considered. The particularities of each one has invited a careful analysis
that reveals their contributions to the total composition and the character of the
spaces by them generated.
estudiada vinculación entre la propuesta arquitectónica de Rem Koolhaas y el
surrealismo con claras conexiones con el automatismo, la deformación onírica o la
locura. En este caso nos centraremos en analizar cómo Koolhaas utiliza también
la metodología paranoico-crítica desarrollada por Salvador Dalí para reflexionar
sobre dos de los grandes maestros de la arquitectura del siglo XX, Le Corbusier
y Mies van der Rohe. Se pretende descubrir que este análisis, al igual que hiciera
Dalí con Velázquez, Vermeer o Rafael, le permite al arquitecto holandés considerar
la posición de estos maestros, retroactivamente necesaria para justificar su
propia presencia en el devenir del pensamiento arquitectónico contemporáneo y
cómo, además, esta fricción intelectual alimenta importantes ejemplos de la obra
construida de OMA.
The text investigates a singular aspect within the already solidly studied link
between Rem Koolhaas’ architectural proposal and surrealism, with clear
connections to automatism, dreamlike deformation or madness. In this case
we will focus on analyzing how Koolhaas also uses the paranoid-critical
methodology developed by Salvador Dalí, to reflect on two of the great masters
of architecture of the 20th century, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, and
how this analysis, as Dalí’s work with Velázquez, Vermeer or Rafael, allows
the Dutch architect to consider the position of these masters, retroactively
necessary to justify his own presence in the evolution of contemporary
architectural thought and, furthermore, this intellectual friction feeds important
examples of OMA’s built work.
construida entre 1984 y 1991 constituye un verdadero crisol de experiencias y de
exploraciones, no sólo relacionadas con el espacio doméstico, sino también con
otras nociones que se integrarán en proyectos de mayor escala como “territorio”,
“paisaje” o “estructura”. A tenor de su posición en el nivel de planta baja, la cocina
aparece como un elemento aislado, segregado. Sin embargo, una vez activada a
través de los rituales diarios cotidianos, nos percatamos de su hiperconectividad.
Es a la vez un espacio de uso y de transición, dotado de una condición estática y
dinámica que adquiere verdadero valor al comprobar que ese mismo estatus se
reproduce en otras viviendas, a pesar de una definición formal completamente
diferente.
Este artículo trabaja con dos herramientas. La primera, la documentación original
del proyecto perteneciente al archivo O.M.A. Rotterdam. La segunda, el dibujo,
dejando la palabra en un segundo plano, minimizando su presencia. Queremos
proponer una reflexión que vaya más allá del tema concreto y que trate de
desarrollar mecanismos de investigación, comprensión y discusión al interior de
nuestra disciplina, y que nos permitan aprovechar nuestra formación intrínseca
como arquitectos diseñadores.
Despite its scale and restrained budget, Villa Dall’Ava, conceived and built between 1984 and 1991, constitutes a melting pot of experiences and explorations,
not only related to the domestic space, but also to other notions that will be
integrated into larger scale projects such as “territory”, “landscape” or “structure”.
According to its position in the ground floor level, the kitchen appears to be an
isolated, segregated element. However, once activated through daily domestic
rituals, we become aware of its hyper-connectivity. It is both a place to rest and to
go through. This double condition, static and dynamic, acquires real value when
we are able to check that this same status is reproduced in other houses, despite
a completely different formal definition.
This article works with two tools. The first one, the original documentation of the
project belonging to the O.M.A. archive in Rotterdam. The second one, drawing,
leaving words aside, minimizing its presence. We want to propose a reflection
that, beyond the specific theme, tries to develop mechanisms for researching,
understanding and discussing inside our discipline, allowing us to take full advantage of our intrinsic training as designer architects.
creación de una nueva tipología para la reunión. Su calor propiciará la aparición de
nuevas común-unidades de poder en la Inglaterra de la Revolución Industrial. Los
Gentlemen’s clubs, o Clubs de caballeros, con sus diferentes temáticas necesitarán
un soporte arquitectónico donde poder escenificar sus postulados y actividades.
Este modelo será exportado a las colonias con sus respectivas adaptaciones.
Nueva York será un nodo de atracción donde desembarcarán todos estos nuevos
modelos. El movimiento revolucionario ruso de la segunda década del siglo pasado
recurrirá a un lenguaje propagandístico y provocador mediante agrupaciones de
términos hasta ese momento antagónicos como los Rabochiy klubs, o Clubs de
trabajadores. Una paradoja semántica en la voluntad de apropiarse de estos lugares
propios de la nueva burguesía para ser ocupados por los nuevos postulados
ideológicos de la denominada cultura del proletariado; y dando como resultado una
nueva tipología para la común-unidad.
The lights of the reason’s fire caused by the Enlightenment will make it
necessary to create a new typology for the meeting. Its heat will lead to the
appearance of new common-units of power in the English Industrial Revolution.
Gentlemen’s clubs, with their different themes, will need an architectural support
where they can stage their postulates and activities. This model will be exported
to the colonies with their respective adaptations. New York will be a node of
attraction where all these new models. The Russian revolutionary movement
of the second decade of the last century will resort to a propagandistic and
provocative language by means of groups of terms that were antagonistic
until that moment, such as the Rabochiy klubs, or Workers’ Clubs. A semantic
paradox in the will to appropriate these places proper to the new bourgeoisie
to be occupied by the new ideological postulates of the so-called culture of the
proletariat; and resulting in a new typology for the common-unity.
no realizada para una plataforma web de diseño colaborativo en línea titulada
Information Technology and Architecture. Su estudio revela los principios teóricos
que los fundadores de esta oficina, Bjarke Ingels y Julien de Smedt, establecieron
en 2001 para una arquitectura pensada para la era de la World Wide Web, desde
el entendimiento del proyecto arquitectónico como un dispositivo relacional
hasta su condición global. Vistos en perspectiva, dichos principios parecen haber
enmarcado las intenciones y lógicas subyacentes a muchas de las obras realizadas
por ambos arquitectos después de la disolución de PLOT en el año 2006. En
particular, los planteamientos de la embrionaria plataforma web se manifiestan con
nitidez en Superkilen, un proyecto de regeneración urbana construido por BIG en
2013 y que resultó de la congregación en Copenhague de un centenar de objetos
de mobiliario urbano procedentes de todo el planeta.
This paper sheds light on PLOT’s first project: Information Technology and
Architecture, an unpublished proposal for a web-based design platform. The
study of the project brings to the fore the theoretical principles that the founders
of PLOT, Bjarke Ingels and Julien de Smedt, associated with an architecture
conceived for the age of the World Wide Web, including the definition of
design as a relational device or the acknowledgement of its global condition. In
hindsight, much of the work produced by both architects after the dissolution
of PLOT in 2006 seems to respond to such principles. In particular, the logics
of Information Technology and Architecture resonate with Superkilen, the public
park built in 2013 by BIG as a compilation in Copenhagen of a hundred objects
from all around the world.
fragmentario. Al mostrar tan solo una parte y un momento de la obra se sumerge
de lleno en una estética del fragmento, que carga de posibilidades lo mostrado,
escondiendo el final, pero abriendo la obra a infinitas interpretaciones. Como
si fuese una ruina inversa, Zoelly pretende, a partir de la evocación, mostrar su
confianza en que la arquitectura tiene un sentido mucho más allá de la mera
funcionalidad. La casa se presenta como enigma: símbolo de algo que no se sabe
qué es pero que está cargado de necesidad.
A través del análisis del modo de presentación elegido por Pierre Zoelly para
mostrar su obra en Elements of an architect’s language y de la propia casa
de Hächler se indaga en las razones y el pensamiento que llevaron a Zoelly a
presentar su obra inacabada, y en las relaciones que se tejen entre arquitecto
y escultor gracias, precisamente, a esa visión fragmentaria. Se pondrá de
manifiesto el valor del fragmento como clave del diálogo, y se presentará una
manera de entender la arquitectura en la que lo importante es la visión parcial.
Instead of the finished object, Zoelly opts for the incomplete, for the fragmentary.
By showing only a part and a moment of the building, he works with the aesthetic
of the fragment, which it’s full of different possibilities, hiding the end, but opening
the object to infinite interpretations. As if it were a reverse ruin, Zoelly tries, from
the evocation, to show that architecture has a meaning beyond mere functionality.
The house is presented as an enigma: a symbol of something that is not known
but it exists.
Through the analysis of the mode of presentation chosen by Pierre Zoelly to show
his work in Elements of an architect’s language and in the Hächler’s house, the
reasons and thoughts that led Zoelly to present his unfinished work are investigated, and also the links that are woven between architect and sculptor because
of that fragmentary vision. The value of the fragment as a key to dialogue will be
revealed, and a way of understanding architecture will be presented in which the
important thing is the partial vision.
arquitectónicos, vistos como remanentes que pertenecen a la trama urbana, pero
a su vez, son tangenciales a esa dinámica, el tiempo de desarrollo proyectual
en estos vacíos urbanos –forma y programa–, pueden ser indefinidos para su
concreción. A su vez, el sitio eriazo –sin uso ni construcción–, suele ser un
espacio clausurado en su perímetro que convive con la cotidiana y constante
mutación de la ciudad, por lo cual ha sido objeto de variadas intervenciones
que buscan integrarlos urbanamente para el goce de la ciudadanía. El presente
texto se centrará en discutir intervenciones en sitios eriazos desde su carácter
permanente, efímero y temporal en contraste con los actuales proyectos políticos
de plazas de bolsillo en la ciudad de Santiago de Chile. De esta manera, el rol
del sitio eriazo se entiende como una oportunidad de espacio público desde
su afectación multiescalar –local a metropolitana–, las posibilidades para su
implementación podrían reducir la desigualdad en la distribución de los espacios
públicos en ciudades consolidadas.
The definition of vacant land has been discussed in urban and architectural
spheres, seen as remnants that belong to the urban fabric and at the same time,
tangential to this dynamic, the development time in these urban voids –form and
program–, can be undefined for its concretion. In turn, the vacant land –without
use or construction–, usually is a space closed on its perimeter that coexists
with the daily and constant mutation of the city, therefore it has been the subject
of various interventions that aim to integrate them urbanly to the enjoyment of
citizenship. The discussion will focus on interventions in vacant land from their
permanent, ephemeral, and temporary nature in contrast to the current political
projects of pocket parks in the city of Santiago de Chile. Finally, the role of
the vacant land is understood as a public space opportunity in its multiscale
affectation –local to metropolitan–, the possibilities to its implementation could
reduce the inequality distribution of public spaces in consolidated cities.
centro de Río de Janeiro en los años 70. Esas transformaciones traumáticas del
entorno construido han provocado el desvanecimiento de la memoria urbana.
Las ciudades son un tema recurrente en el entorno de la fotografía, instrumento
potente para recordar el pasado. Sin embargo, los libros fotográficos raramente
son utilizados como fuente de conocimiento acerca de las ciudades y como
medio para rescatar memorias urbanas borradas. El estudio del libro fotográfico
Rio que desaparece (1993), de Claudio Bruni Sakraischik, nos ha permitido
ahondar en el potencial de este género bibliográfico. El objetivo era constatar
cómo ha podido contribuir a impedir el desvanecimiento de la memoria urbana.
Sakraischik registró el proceso de transformación urbana de Río en los años 70,
mientras se implantaba el metro. La publicación va más allá del plano iconográfico
de sus fotografías incorporando textos acerca del desvanecimiento de la memoria,
de la historia de la ciudad y la biografía y escritos de Sakraischik. El libro ofrece
puntos de partida para acceder a aquel entorno construido y a sus ejemplares
arquitectónicos demolidos.
Devastations of architectural ensemble had often taken place in Rio de Janeiro’s
Historic Center until the end of the 1970s. These traumatic transformations of
the built environment erased urban memory, which undermined social groups’
resistance against unwanted projects. Cities are often the subject of photography,
which is a powerful instrument to remember the past. Despite that, photographic
books are rarely picked as sources of knowledge about cities and means to
recover erased urban memories. In this sense, this work has studied the case of
Claudio Bruni Sakraischik’s Rio que desaparece (1993) (“Vanishing Rio”) book
to highlight this bibliographic genre potential. Its main goal is to verify whether
the book could contribute to the urban memory erasure’s resistance. Sakraischik
registered the transformation process by which Rio de Janeiro had been through in
the 1970s as the City Hall implemented the subway system. The publication was
analyzed beyond its photographs’ iconographic planes, articulating texts about the
urban memory erasure, with other texts on the city history and the author’s writings
and biography. It was verified that this photographic book provides starting points
from which it is possible to access and reinforce memories regarding the built
environment and its demolished architectural examples.
establecer un claro control sobre el doblez es necesario realizar un documento
proyectivo, un plano. Es por eso que los asuntos ligados a la geometría y al
control matemático de los patrones de doblado han sido siempre fundamentales
en la construcción de este tipo de diseños. Nos acercamos aquí a uno de los
principales referentes y precursores sobre el estudio y desarrollo de los patrones
de doblado para fines volumétricos, Ron Resch. Se trata de un desconocido
artista y científico computacional norteamericano cuyo trabajo se menciona de
modo repetido cuando se habla de arquitectos contemporáneos como Greg Lynn,
quien ha aplicado también el uso del ordenador como herramienta de control
y desarrollo geométrico. Para situar el momento, veremos el trabajo didáctico
de Josef Albers y su manera de “abrir los ojos” mediante la experiencia con la
manipulación restringida de la materia. El trabajo de Ron Resch establece una
manera científica de aproximarse al problema y de aplicar las por aquel entonces
incipientes herramientas computacionales, como son la elaboración de modelos
3D o la utilización de maquinaria CNC para el corte o el marcado. Los sistemas
topológicos de Resch son en gran medida el origen de lo que hoy es el diseño
paramétrico y la arquitectura de desarrollo con ordenadores.
The designed bending is inseparable of the geometry that makes it possible. To
establish a clear control over the fold it is necessary to make a projective document,
a plan. That is why issues related to geometry and mathematical control of
bending patterns have always been fundamental in the construction of this type
of design. Here we are approaching to one of the main references and pioneers
on the study and development of bending patterns for volumetric purposes, Ron
Resch. He is a not very well known American artist and computational scientist
whose work is mentioned repeatedly when contemporary architects such as Greg
Lynn are mentioned, who have also applied the use of the computer as a tool for
control and geometric development. In order to situate the moment, we will look
at Josef Albers’ didactic work and his way of opening the eyes through experience
with the restricted manipulation of matter. Ron Resch’s work establishes a scientific
way of approaching the problem and applying the incipient computational tools
at that moment, such as 3d modelling or the use of CNC machines for cutting or
marking. The topological systems by Resch are to a large extent the roots of what
is now parametric and computer development architecture.
acelerado un proceso de crecimiento urbano que debilita las relaciones y los intercambios
entre las poblaciones y los ecosistemas o las políticas ambientales.
La costa norte peruana es muy vulnerable al cambio climático, los desastres
naturales y las tensiones sociales, hechos que se agravan por las altas tasas de
pobreza en las zonas rurales. Frente a esta situación, proponemos recuperar la
conciencia del lugar a través de nuevas estrategias para restaurar, en la práctica
contemporánea, la sensibilidad ambiental para proteger el patrimonio común, es
decir, la cultura, el paisaje rural y urbano, la producción local y el conocimiento.
El enfoque territorialista es el punto de partida para la integración de aspectos
humanos, ambientales, geográficos y de biodiversidad, junto con los más específicamente
arquitectónicos. Todos estos insumos nos permiten construir un
proyecto de escala territorial que responda a la preservación de la identidad y el
aumento de los valores patrimoniales para asegurar el desarrollo autosostenible
localmente.
Lambayeque’s growth over the last eight decades accelerates a urban consolidation
process that weakens relationships and exchanges between populations,
regardless ecosystems or environmental policies. North Peruvian coast
is highly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters and social tensions,
increased by high rates of poverty in rural areas. Against this situation, we
propose to regain the sense of place through new strategies to restore, in
today’s practise, the environmental sensibility to protect the common heritage,
meaning: culture, rural and urban landscape, local production and knowledge.
The territoriality approach is the starting point to for human, environmental,
geographic, and biodiversity issues integration, together with architectural aspects.
All these different inputs allow us to build a territorial scale project with
focus on identity preservation and increase of patrimonial values to ensure local
self-sustainable development.
a la producción arquitectónica. En este artículo, se subvierte su rol instrumental
para explorar sus posibilidades como elemento de soporte a la construcción, pero
también como elemento arquitectónico integrado a la obra. Para esto, se lleva a
cabo un estudio de caso de dos obras desarrolladas por el colectivo República
Portátil, en las cuales los andamios dejan de lado su función netamente operativa y
se constituyen como obras. Se aplica un método de investigación por acción y las
conclusiones ofrecen un conjunto de reflexiones teóricas sobre el andamio como
modelo teórico espacial donde la reticulación de soluciones permite una amplia
versatilidad productiva.
The scaffolding, as an architectural tool has a long history linked to architectural
production. In this article, its instrumental role is subverted to explore its
possibilities as a support element for construction, but also as an architectural
element integrated into the work. For this, a case study of two works developed
by the Chilean collective named República Portátil is carried out, in which the
scaffolding neglects its purely operational function and is constituted as an architecture
itself. An action research method is applied, and the conclusions offer
a set of theoretical reflections on the scaffolding as a theoretical spatial model
where the cross-linking of solutions allows a wide productive versatility.
la aparición de una arquitectura disímil respecto a los bloques de vivienda tradicional
desarrollados en el barrio de la Esquerra de L’eixample. Este estudio pretende
hacer un análisis de los elementos que hicieron posible la construcción del Edificio
Mediterráneo de Antonio Bonet y Puig Torné (1960-1966), evaluando los motivos
e influencias que dieron lugar a este ejemplo de reinterpretación y crítica del Plan
Cerdá, para así generar una arquitectura moderna y diferente a la desarrollada
hasta ese momento en la mayoría del Ensanche. Esta innovación se evidencia en la
propuesta de cambiar la manera de hacer fachada y chaflán, rompiendo el esquema
continuo y homogéneo que se venía desarrollando desde 1860. Las limitaciones
establecidas en la normativa, la promoción del proyecto, las circunstancias económicas
del país y el desarrollo del barrio de la Esquerra, posibilitaron proyectar y
construir este caso de estudio, en búsqueda de revalorizar el sector. Asimismo se
pretende generar una reflexión de por qué no se siguieron desarrollando proyectos
de este tipo en el barrio, teniendo en cuenta el favorable impacto mediático que
tuvo en su momento como elemento de propaganda-manifiesto y promoción del
proyecto para incentivar un cambio en el resto de arquitectos de la ciudad.
In the 60s in Barcelona, the union of multiple circumstances appeared that allowed
the creation of a dissimilar architecture with respect to the traditional housing
blocks developed in the Esquerra of L’eixample district. This study intends to make
an analysis of the elements that made possible the construction of the Antonio
Bonet’s and Puig Torne’s “Edificio Mediterraneo” (1960-1966). For this reason it is
intended to show the reasons and influences that allowed the construction of this
example of reinterpretation and criticism of the Cerdá Plan, in order to generate a
modern and different architecture to that one developed in the most of the widening.
This innovation is evidenced in the proposal to change the way of making facade
and corner-chamfer, breaking the continuous scheme that had been developing
since 1860. The conditions of regulation, promotion of the project, economic
circumstances and the development of the Esquerra neighborhood, put in evidence
the possibility of projecting and constructing this case study in search of revaluing
the sector. It is also intended to question why they didn´t continue developing
projects of this type in the neighborhood, also taking into account the mediatic
impact that had at the time as an element of propaganda-manifesto and promotion
of the project to encourage a change in the rest of architects of the city.
para el CSIC es, sin lugar a duda, de Ricardo Fernández Vallespín. Así lo reconoció
explícitamente en numerosas ocasiones Miguel Fisac, aunque él fue el único
director de la obra. No obstante, durante la ejecución, Fisac introdujo algunas
modificaciones, la más significativa en el salón de actos, y definió los elementos
no especificados en el proyecto. Este estudio pretende mostrar a través de la
documentación original de la Fundación Fisac, alguna de ella no publicada con
anterioridad, que en este edificio se materializan por primera vez elementos
originales del lenguaje arquitectónico-constructivo propio de Fisac y aparecen
intereses que van a marcar toda su obra posterior como son la naturaleza interna
del hormigón como material blando, pastoso y moldeable; la experimentación con
encofrados que generan superficies continuas y las estructuras híbridas, donde
las partes se funden entre sí.
The authorship of the project for the Central headquarters of the Patronato
Juan de la Cierva for the CSIC is, without a doubt, from Ricardo Fernández
Vallespín. Miguel Fisac, who only supervised the construction’s works, explicitly
recognized this on numerous occasions. However, during the execution, Fisac
introduced some variations, the most significant in the auditorium, and defined the
elements not specified in the project. This study aims to show through the original
documentation found of the Fisac Foundation, unpublished, how in this building
some of the original elements of the Fisac’s architectural-constructive language
of are first materialized, and interests appear that mark all his later work, such
as the internal nature of the concrete as soft, pasty and mouldable material; the
experimentation with formwork that generates continuous surfaces and hybrid
structures, where the parts merge with each other.
posguerra fueron cuestionados por la siguiente generación de arquitectos, planteando
conceptos como asociación, movilidad, identidad o crecimiento, distanciándose
de la recurrente sectorización funcional. Esa crítica generó en Francia experimentos
alternativos al bloque lineal y la torre con los que se habían reconstruido las ciudades
durante los Treinta Gloriosos años. Este artículo analiza conjuntamente tres complejos
construidos por Jean Renaudie para la renovación urbana del barrio parisino
de Ivry-sur Seine —Danielle Casanova (1970-1972), Jeanne Hachette (1970-1975)
y Jean-Baptiste-Clément (1973-1975)–. El análisis de la hibridación programática
llevada a cabo con la combinación de una gran diversidad tipológica de viviendas
junto a equipamientos culturales, educativos y comerciales se identificará con un
pensamiento arquitectónico jalonado de influencias multidisciplinares, derivadas del
paisaje cultural de Mayo del 68. El concepto político y filosófico de cohesión social,
complementado con el deseo de traducir arquitectónicamente el orden biológico
de la naturaleza, permitirá comprender su desafío teórico. Las ideas de propuestas
utópicas previas, reelaboradas en proyectos posteriores, situarán aquella arquitectura
en el punto de inflexión de una trayectoria que legitimaba la complejidad frente a
cualquier tipo de homogeneidad.
The social effects of the Athens Charter’s materialization (1933) during the post-war
period were questioned by the next generation of architects, proposing concepts
such as association, mobility, identity or growth, distancing from the recurring
functional sectorization. In France, this criticism generated alternative experiments
to the linear block and the tower, with which cities had been rebuilt during the
Thirty Glorious years. This article jointly analyzes three complexes built by Jean
Renaudie for the urban renewal of Ivry-sur-Seine’s Parisian neighborhood –Danielle
Casanova (1970-1972), Jeanne Hachette (1970-1975) and Jean-Baptiste-Clément
(1973-1975)—. The analysis of the programmatic hybridization carried out through
the combination of a great typological diversity of dwellings together with cultural,
educational and commercial facilities will be identified with an architectural thought
punctuated by multidisciplinary influences, derived from the cultural landscape of
May ’68. The political and philosophical concept of social cohesion, complemented
by the desire to translate the biological order of nature architecturally, will allow
us to understand its theoretical challenge. The construction of ideas in previous
utopian proposals, reworked in subsequent projects, will place that architecture
at the turning point of a trajectory that legitimized complexity against any type of
homogeneity.
dando paso a las historias, las narrativas, los relatos que permitían explicar y justificar
el planteamiento y evolución formal de los edificios. El papel de la fotografía en este
contexto se tornará fundamental. En 1935, la fotógrafa austriaca Margaret Michaelis
capturaba a través de una serie de fotografías las recién inauguradas viviendas de fin
de semana en el Garraf, proyectadas por los arquitectos del GATEPAC Josep Torres
Clavé y Josep Lluis Sert. El estudio de estas imágenes permite valorar la contribución
de la obra de los arquitectos catalanes en su interés por llevar a cabo una
arquitectura moderna con referencias a las arquitecturas mediterráneas populares
y rurales. A través de la construcción de 3 viviendas de fin de semana, definidas a
partir de la combinación de unos mismos elementos reconocibles, los arquitectos
configuraron una arquitectura hoy únicamente visitable a través de las fotografías
de Margaret Michaelis. Este trabajo pretende contribuir a la recuperación y puesta
en valor de su mirada, anónima y escasamente reconocida. Publicadas en la revista
A.C: Documentos de Actividad Contemporánea —donde quedarían expuestas a
continuación de obras de Gropius o Helen y Szymon Syrkus—, solo unas pocas fotografías
viajarán en el tiempo resultando referencia de interés entre los arquitectos en
las décadas sucesivas, hasta nuestros días. El estado actual de las construcciones, y
la notable alteración de su configuración y de su contexto, hacen que las fotografías
realizadas en 1935 constituyan un testimonio relevante para la historiografía de la
arquitectura moderna, además de considerarse su última realidad.
With the arrival of modernity, treatises and manuals were abandoned, giving way
to histories, narratives, stories that could explain and justify the approach and
formal evolution of buildings. The role of photography in this context became
fundamental. In 1935, the Austrian photographer Margaret Michaelis captured,
through a series of photographs, the recently inaugurated weekend homes in
the Garraf, designed by the GATEPAC architects Josep Torres Clavé and Josep
Lluis Sert. The study of these images allows us to value the contribution of the
work of the catalan architects in their interest in carrying out modern architecture
with references to the popular and rural Mediterranean architecture. Through the
construction of 3 weekend homes, defined from the combination of the same
recognisable elements, the architects configured an architecture, that today can
only be visited in Margaret Michaelis´s photographs. The aim of this work is to
contribute to the recovery and enhancement of her point of view, anonymous and
scarcely recognised until the time. Published in the magazine A.C: Documentos
de Actividad Contemporánea —exhibited after Gropius or Helen and Szymon
Syrkus works— only some of these photographs will travel in time and become
a reference of interest among architects in the following decades, until our
days. The current state of the buildings, and the remarkable changes on their
configuration and context nowadays, make the photographs taken in 1935 a
relevant testimony for the historiography of modern architecture, and can be
considered its last reality.
académico” en las Escuelas de Arquitectura españolas en los años setenta y
ochenta, así como las contradicciones en las que este proyecto académico
incurriría. No se ahondará una vez más en las distintas teorías del dibujo, la
percepción, la creatividad o el proyecto que tanto abundaron en aquellos años,
ni tampoco se intentará un relato detallado sobre el inicio de los Departamentos
de Expresión Gráfica y sus protagonistas. Lo que se pretende investigar son la
causas, diversas y contradictorias, que impulsaron este protagonismo del dibujo en
las Escuelas de Arquitectura españolas, que pronto se extendería a la producción
arquitectónica. Para ello, este ensayo se situará más allá de los aspectos
meramente gráficos del dibujo, para establecer una reflexión sobre la propia
disciplina, la figura profesional, la transmisión del conocimiento arquitectónico,
así como sobre el papel protagonista que jugaron las escuelas en el contexto
arquitectónico del último cuarto del siglo XX.
The essay discusses the core ideas that inspired the recovery of “academic
drawing” in the Spanish Schools of Architecture during the 1970s and 80s, as
well as the contradictions that constituted this academic endeavour. Thus, it
neither focuses on the different theoretical approaches to drawing, perception,
creativity or to the architectural project, which characterized those years, nor
historizes the beginning of the Departments of Graphic Expression and its main
characters. On the contrary, the paper investigates the diverse causes that
inspired the protagonist role of drawing in the Spanish Schools of Architecture,
which soon extended to the architectural production at large. In this sense, it
positions itself beyond the graphic aspects of drawing to constitute a reflection
on the architectural discipline, the transmission of architectural knowledge, and
the role of the Schools of Architecture in the last quarter of the 20thC.
teórico que sea capaz de afrontar la densidad, la verticalidad y la complejidad
siguiendo un modelo que ponga al habitante en el centro. Los desarrollos urbanísticos,
principalmente en ciudades asiáticas, son impulsados por un mercado
inmobiliario al alza que construye para especular y no para habitar. Por otro lado,
los planificadores, sobrepasados por las urgencias a las que son sometidos,
proyectan entornos que siguen los principios de una Carta de Atenas, publicada
hace ya casi ochenta años. Es el momento de preguntarnos por una alternativa
que sea capaz de abordar la ciudad como un organismo de múltiples capas y
dimensiones, que proponga organizar la ciudad en altura de forma más libre, más
rica y más espontánea. Este ensayo pretende rescatar los experimentos de las
vanguardias de los años sesenta para encontrar estrategias de crecimiento en altura
más humanas. De lo contrario, conceptos como comunidad, cohesión social
y tejido urbano irán desapareciendo de nuestras ciudades, perdiendo el mayor
valor que tenemos como sociedad: lo colectivo.
The reflection on the contemporary vertical city seems to lack theoretical support
that is capable of dealing with density, verticality and complexity following a model
that puts the inhabitant in the center. Urban developments, mainly in Asian cities,
are driven by a rising real estate market that builds to speculate and not to inhabit.
On the other hand, the planners, surpassed by the urgencies to which they are
subjected, project environments that follow the principles of an Athens Charter,
published almost eighty years ago. It is time to ask about an alternative that is
capable of addressing the city as an organism of multiple layers and dimensions,
which proposes to organize the city in height more freely, richer and more spontaneously.
This essay aims to rescue the experiments of the avant-garde of the
sixties to find more human growth strategies in height. Otherwise, concepts such
as community, social cohesion and urban fabric will disappear from our cities,
losing the greatest value we have as a society: the collective.
titulaban varios arquitectos que formarían la generación clave de la importación de
la vanguardia europea. García Mercadal, Lacasa, Colás y Sánchez Arcas fueron
algunos de los protagonistas de viajes, estancias académicas, colaboración
profesional y encuentros internacionales, que revirtieron en información y apertura
para la arquitectura española. Entre ellos se repite la visita a las sucesivas sedes
Bauhaus, en Weimar, Dessau y Berlín. Estas experiencias quedaron plasmadas en
las publicaciones de arquitectura, cuya vocación propagandista tuvo en la revista
bauhaus un referente para la extensión del mito moderno. Arquitectura, Anta, La
Gaceta Literaria, APAA, Viviendas, RE-CO, Arte, Art, AC, D’Ací i d’Allá y gaceta
de arte son algunas muestras de la urdimbre periodística en torno a la nueva
arquitectura. Nombres como Behne, Gropius, Linder, van Doesburg, Hilberseimer
y Meyer aparecen en sus páginas y confirman la transferencia de contenidos y
formatos de ida y vuelta entre la escuela alemana, su revista y el entorno español.
Interferencias que aún admiten nitidez en el enfoque historiográfico de la ambivalencia,
carente de un centro, entre la vanguardia utópica y la transformadora, para
descifrar la tradición del Moderno.
Shortly after the foundation of the Bauhaus school in Weimar, several architects
who would form the key generation of the import of the European avant-garde
were titled in Madrid. García Mercadal, Lacasa, Colás and Sánchez Arcas were
some of the protagonists of trips, academic stays, professional collaboration
and international meetings, that reversed information and openness for Spanish
architecture. Among them the visit to the successive Bauhaus headquarters is
repeated, in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin. These experiences left marks on architecture
periodicals; whose propaganda vocation had a reference in the bauhaus
magazine for the extension of the modern myth. Architecture, Anta, La Gaceta
Literaria, APAA, Viviendas, RE-CO, Art, Art, AC, D’Ací i d’Allá and gaceta de arte
are some samples of the journalistic warp around new architecture. Names like
Behne, Gropius, Linder, van Doesburg, Hilberseimer and Meyer appear on their
pages and confirm the transfer of content and formats back and forth between the
German school, its magazine and the Spanish environment. Interferences that still
admit sharpness in the historiographic approach of ambivalence, lacking a center,
between the utopian and the transformative avant-garde, to decode the tradition
of Modern.
Este escrito trata de redescubrir el sentido de tamiz que poseen las paredes y las cortinas. Porque, en una época donde los filtros han perdido su poder de separación, aún podemos descubrir experiencias como las llevadas a cabo por Matta-Clark, Anne Holtrop, Luis Callejas o Petra Blaisse, entre otros, que emplean estos elementos para indicar el valor cultural, simbólico y físico del espacio en que se injertan.
The word transparency has lost its naivety. It has become a sign of opacity itself and architecture is no longer able to escape this radical change of meaning. The relation between clearness and architecture has had optimistic scholars or, at least, their theorists, but today transparency is neither a threat nor a promise anymore. Transparency has reached its paroxysm. So, is it still possible to build a filter that protects our overexposed privacy? This paper tries to rediscover the meaning of partition walls and curtains as filters. Even in a time when they have lost their power of separation, we can still discover experiences such as those carried out by Matta-Clark, Anne Holtrop, Luis Callejas or Petra Blaisse. They all work with those walls and curtains with different approaches. Those elements can underline the cultural, symbolic and physical value of the space they are within. Their curtains can produce a new kind of distance between exterior and interior life.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Centro de Cálculo of Madrid’s University, it is offered a review of some of the alternative city proposals made by the architect Juan Navarro Baldeweg during his stay at the Centre, in the middle of the 1960s, which seem to anticipate some of the ideas associated nowadays to what has come to be known as smart cities. These ideas prioritized greater community involvement in shaping the city, as well as the use of new technologies for the design of more connected, efficient, affordable and sustainable cities.
After the I World War, technological sector experienced a significant progress, the background of modernity in architecture had been improved, not only by the experimentation of material and production, but also by the creation of a machinist aesthetic. Meanwhile technological innovations gradually spread across architecture, the material allowed the testing of new material handling techniques. In this process, the collaboration between Spanish architects and furniture companies acquired a cardinal role in modern design in the country during the 30s. Through the analysis of several case studies and providing original documentation, this research shows the influence of the work of foreign architects on the design of Spanish furniture in the 30s and the role of companies, in collaboration with Spanish architects, as catalysts of the new avant-garde currents. With this, a single objective is pursued, which is to show the furniture as an exercise in technological experimentation and a vehicle for the modernization of architecture.
Alison y Peter Smithson en su Diagram of Appreciated Unit (1954) presentan un dibujo sin escala, sin localización, sin límites. Esta es la culminación de su ciudad entendida como tejido relacional. No dibujan ningún objeto sino relaciones de asociación entre distintos entornos y personas. De hecho, este posicionamiento a favor de un espacio relacional abstracto frente al de la composición formal provocará constante fricción entre las sucesivas generaciones desde los años 50 y 70 hasta el momento actual.
En paralelo, los Smithson, al reducir la arquitectura a la calle, reclaman un papel más activo de esta en la construcción de lo social. La arquitectura debe construir los lugares en los que las personas puedan encontrarse, celebrar la cotidianeidad de sus vidas, en donde manifestarse individual y colectivamente.
Son, precisamente, esta incorporación de lo público y del pensamiento inclusivo a la arquitectura, por un parte, y del entendimiento de esta como máquina relacional y posibilitadora de situaciones, por otra, los dos aspectos que confieren a su trabajo máxima actualidad. Este artículo indaga en las claves que determinan la formulación
Alison and Peter Smithson in their Diagram of Appreciated Unit (1954) present a drawing without scale, without location, without limits. This is the culmination of their city understood as a relational fabric. They do not draw any object but associational relationships between different environments and people. In fact, this positioning in favour of an abstract relational space as opposed to that of formal composition will generate a constant friction between generations from the 50s and 70s up to the present time.
In parallel, the Smithson, by reducing the architecture to the street, claim a more active role in the construction of the social. Architecture must build the places where people can meet, celebrate the ordinariness of their lives, where they perform individually and collectively.
This incorporation of the public and inclusive thinking into architecture, on the one hand, and the understanding of it as a relational machine and enabler of situations, on the other, are the two aspects that make the work of the Smithson highly relevant today. This article investigates the keys that determine the formulation
The Agreements of Madrid were signed in 1953. In them, Spain started to be an ally of the United States of America. In those years, the Spanish public opinion was anti-American because of different reasons. The American Information Services used their available tools to show the population a positive view of their country, in order to obtain the need support to the renovation of the Agreements in a close future. The emigration to America of some of the great Architectural masters and the development of the technology and the industry, placed the USA in a leading role in the architectural field. As they were conscious of it, they used architecture as a political tool, showing in Spain an image of the modern architecture and the American cities really attractive. The aim of this article is to study the role of the American Embassy in Madrid and the entities that directly depended on it in the spreading of the American Modern Architecture in Spain.
También intentamos demonstrar la hipótesis de que la instalación del régimen militar en Brasil llevó a la eliminación de los arquitectos del IAB de los procesos de toma de decisiones de las políticas de vivienda, una práctica que el Instituto había contruido y en la que había profundizado en los gobiernos anteriores al golpe de 1964.
The article presents how the Brazilian Architects Institute (IAB) participated in the processes of elaboration of Brazilian public housing policies in the 1960s, using as primary source mainly reports from the specialized architecture magazines Guanabara (1961-1962) and Arquitetura (1962-1968).
We also tried to demonstrate the hypothesis that the installation of the military regime in Brazil led to the removal of IAB architects from the decision making processes of housing policies, a practice that had been sewn and deepened by the Institute in the governments prior to the 1964 coup.
Por otro lado, la arquitectura moderna funcionalista actúa sobre la ciudad consolidada, destruyendo la arquitectura tradicional colonial sin respetar su escala o la trama urbana. Ambas ciudades se unen a partir de los años setenta convirtiendo a Lima en una superposición de capas históricas, urbanas y sociales y llamando la atención de sociólogos, arquitectos y antropólogos que estudian cómo el crecimiento no planificado de la ciudad está construyendo, espontáneamente, la identidad peruana.
El artículo presenta la visión crítica de uno de los arquitectos peruanos contemporáneos más importantes, Juvenal Baracco, quien propone una metodología de estudio de la ciudad en desarrollo y la traduce en un edificio en particular, la Escuela de la Fuerza Aérea del Perú, ubicada en la capital peruana. El estudio de Lima que realiza en el taller de la Universidad Ricardo Palma, así como sus propuestas arquitectónicas actúan sobre la idea de una ciudad en crecimiento de la que aún no se conoce la forma final.
In the middle of the 20th century, Lima grew rapidly due to migrations from rural areas to the unoccupied peripheries of the city. The new neighbourhoods, self-built and self-managed, quickly became the landscape of poverty, incorporating into their urban structure forms of traditional architecture that adapt to the context of the capital.
On the other hand, the modern functionalist architecture acts on the consolidated city, destroying the traditional colonial architecture without respecting its scale or urban layout. Both cities come together from the seventies, converting Lima into a superposition of historical, urban and social layers and, drawing the attention of sociologists, architects and anthropologists who study how the unplanned growth of the city is spontaneously building the Peruvian identity.
The article presents the critical point of view of one of the most important contemporary Peruvian architects, Juvenal Baracco, who proposes a methodology for the study of the developing city and translates it into a particular building, the School of the Air Force of Peru, located in the Peruvian capital. The study of Lima that makes in the workshop of the Ricardo Palma University, as well as his architectural proposals act on the idea of a growing city from which the final form is not yet know.
The Spanish Republican exile, product of the Spanish Civil War, attracted some 20,000 refugees to Mexico, this migration included a large group of architects, engineers, surveyors, technicians and builders, who developed a successful career in their host country. Part of the contributions of the exile, was the publication or promotion of articles and specialized magazines in the field of architecture, engineering, construction or interior design. This work exposes the work of Spanish refugees in Mexican magazines: Architecture-Mexico, Las Españas, Science and Decoration. Who participated in these journals and what communicative function did they fulfill their writings? What themes did the exiled architects address and what did they contribute to Mexican architecture? What relationship is expressed through articles with Francoist Spain and the rest of the Spanish diaspora? To this and other topics we will try to approximate answers.
The relationship between the production of architectural debates and the implementation of the neoliberal model in Chile, is especially relevant to analyze considering that the vectors of the early implementation of the neoliberal model –such as policies oriented to the deregulation of the market, the reduction of the State and the weakening of civil organizations– found in the urban space a key resource. The forging of a “neoliberal urbanism” –in addition to a political process of broad and violent cultural transformations– directly affected the architect’s professional practice, obliterating his public role and transforming the social perception of the discipline. In this context, the essay explores how the professional and pedagogical debates of architecture changed, in relation to the cultural transformations imposed by neoliberalism in Chile. To do that, it focuses on the definition and the outcomes of the Chilean Architecture Biennial, a surrogate public sphere developed in the context of the dictatorship, where the professional clash between a social and a market oriented professional practice is rendered through the record that the biennial offers of the encounter between architectural discourse and public policies, pedagogical projects and conceptual frameworks of architecture.
The different ideals and purposes of the groups of architects around the “collective” derive in architectures and other very diverse productions. The important attention to the graphic will be a common element between this heterogeneity. The disclosure of its architecture and its processes are in general an essential objective in the “collective” ... plans, drawings and models will be an ideal material to disseminate their work and their ideas in publications and networks. Some collectives chosen for their care in “the graphic” leave evidence of the exposed. Six selected studies provide the graphic imaginary to be analyzed from three sections: transgression, experimentation and communicability, as characteristic components of graphic strategies in the architecture of collectives.
El conjunto de prismas se analiza desde tres puntos de vista: el geométrico, con la repetición de piezas iguales y la implantación de una retícula variable en planta y sección; el sistema constructivo, caracterizado por el ensamblaje del hormigón y piedra en cada una de las piezas y, por último, la percepción cambiante del monumento con las oscilaciones del nivel del agua de la laguna veneciana.
Scarpa se aleja en esta obra de los detalles más sofisticados o retóricos, a los que nos tiene acostumbrados, para ofrecer un sistema preciso de elementos geométricos puros que expresa la relación entre arquitectura y naturaleza y refleja de un modo poético el paso del tiempo.
This research focuses on the study of the monument to the Partisana that Carlo Scarpa made in Venice between 1964 and 1968, a base consisting of 83 pieces of concrete and stone, which served as the basis for the bronze sculpture of a recumbent woman by Augusto Murer.
The set of prisms is analyzed from three points of view: the geometry, with the repetition of equal pieces and the implantation of a variable grid in plan and section; the construction system, characterized by the assembly of concrete and stone in each one of the pieces and, finally, the changing perception of the monument due to the water level oscillations of the Venetian lagoon.
Scarpa moves away in this work of the most sophisticated or rhetorical details, to which we are accustomed, to offer a precise system of pure geometric elements that expresses the relationship between architecture and nature and reflects in a poetic way the passage of time.
The obsession with creating a universal method of classification has been a constant in the history of art, literature and architecture. Medieval alchemists, Renaissance patrons and avant-garde nihilists were involved in the chimerical task of codifying the world through disparate taxonomies; in the 20th century, architects such as John Hedjuk or Louis Kahn based their compositional theory on the construction of their own alphabet for each new project. A suggestive catalogue of primary architectures capable of revealing historical permanences as if it were the letters of a primitive alphabet: the "house", the "temple", the "market" or the "tower" build a collection of archaic lexemes –referring to Aby Warburg and his Atlas Mnemosyne– that show how the world can be explained through a brief architectural alphabet. This article delves into one of those axioms, "the bridge," an icon that traces the foundational connections of three unbuilt projects: John Hejduk's masquerades, Andrea Palladio's Rialto Bridge, and Louis Kahn's Congress Palace. With Venice as a physical and dreamlike support, these three projects prove how their creators reduce the idea of a project to a constructed aphorism.
“Hommage au Japon” is the title chosen by the Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn to publish in 1964 his first single-family house, the Villa Schreiner, which would eventually become an iconic building in his work. After the unique slogan and accompanying description, both succinct, it is possible to find a wide range of connections that converge in the project. The evolution shown in the original plans of the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo shows that its orientalist origin is not so clear. However, the project does feed on the modernity of the work of Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier. Both authors were reference for the Nordic architect. His interests are filtered through the experience he has with Jean Prouvé, and through his links with the PAGON group (Progresive Architects´ Group of Oslo, Norway). All this becomes a work with an eloquent modern syncretism. The project does not look for orientalist aesthetic approaches, but to integrate the immanent, international and local, in a contemporary solution.
The final appearance of a project may occasionally conceal aspects of its creative process. A process along which ideas develop, evolve and are transformed by discarding interesting features which do not show on the final execution of the work. In order to discover the key elements that drove that evolution, it is necessary to examine the documents that were dispensed with, both while the project was being developed and during its execution. This practice is even more significant when a broad team of professionals, which makes decision-making more complex, undertakes the project. This paper intends to give some light to the process Gilles Clément, one of the most paradigmatic landscape architects in the last decades, went through while developing his project for André-Citroën Park, and it will do so through his sketchbooks and some scarcely known documents from his own personal archive. From the first sketches to the final proposal, the process to establish the main lines and the difficulty in the realization of the work, everything will be studied in order to understand how the designer experienced the creative process of his first important project of a public space, which has become one of the most emblematic parks in Paris.
The relation between man and territory is always mediated by the particular understanding of where does the point of departure stand. This seminal situation needs to be described before any action can take place. Traditionally, the modern attitude towards the existing has been defined by a ‘tabula rasa’ approach, that is, the erasure of past traces as the only way to bring about the new. Le Corbusier’s visionary plans for Paris are usually taken as a paradigmatic case for this ideal of a cleared-out departure, which still today haunts the architect every time he is confronted with the design of a large scale intervention, as is made evident at certain works by OMA. On the other hand, the term ‘terrain vague’ started being used during the last decades of the past Century to describe an alternative emptiness; one that claims no zero state of things, but admits instead the embedded information of a place, even if it is scarce. This postmodern reading of the territory was first promoted by art, photography or films, and then absorbed into the architectural practice with the promise of building up another kind of origin where the non-normative and the accidental are welcome. By the confrontation of these two well known phrases, the neutral condition of emptiness itself is problematized, interrogating at the same time the nature of our current disposition towards the territory.
Santa María Micaela (Valencia, 1958-61), the work of the architect Santiago Artal, is a singular fact within the Spanish architecture panorama of the fifties, since it is one of the first examples of the incorporation of modernity approaches in the architecture of collective housing and, at the same time, participates in some of the revisionist proposals carried out by the young architects who are beginning to be critical of the Athens Charter. In those moments, Spain is living a situation of isolation from the European reality, where the most outstanding works of residential architecture are being carried out in Great Britain, associated, in part, with the construction of new cities to decongest London. Within a humanist environment, architects try to find models closer to local cultures, giving primacy to circulations and spaces of coexistence. In particular, it is especially interesting, for its confrontation with Santa María Micaela, the concrete case of Park Hill (Sheffield, 1953-60), by the architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith. Our objective will be to carry out a comparative analysis of these two works, with the purpose of locating the Artal dwellings within the european cultural and architectural context of those years.
Esta preocupante evidencia cuestiona el papel otorgado a la persona al tomar decisiones de proyecto, la relación entre habitantes arquitectos y fotógrafos, el impacto docente de esta imagen desierta de la arquitectura y cómo afecta esto a nuestro presente y el futuro de la profesión.
La fotografía, testigo insobornable de la historia reciente, muestra tras un filtro de “maquillaje” lo que se puede ver, y desvela lo que no queremos ver. La arquitectura deshabitada se contagia en la enseñanza y nos lleva a proyectar y fotografiar espacios “vacíos” en lugar de buscar que sean “interesantemente habitables”, pensando más en la “apariencia” que en la “experiencia”. Esto necesita una urgente revisión y un cambio de conciencia global o acabaremos reduciendo la arquitectura a un superficial, marginal y prescindible rol social asociado al Botox-shop.
The target of Architecture has shifted from “attending the person in all its dimensions” to “generating a universe of surprising, beautiful and photogenic forms and spaces” relegating those who will use them to a second level or total oblivion. The phenomenon is easily detected by studying the traces of photographic memory, and this helps to focus on what really matters.
This worrying evidence questions the role assigned to the inhabitant when making project decisions, the relationship between the inhabitants, architects and photographers, the teaching impact of these lifeless images of architecture, and how this affects our present and the future of the profession.
Photography, the incorruptible witness of recent history, shows behind a filter of “makeup” what can be seen, and reveals what we don’t want to see. The still life architecture is contagious when teaching and leads us also to design and photograph “empty” spaces instead wishing them to be “interestingly habitable”, thinking more about the “appearance” rather than the “experience”. This needs an urgent revision and a global change of awareness or we will end up reducing the architecture to a superficial, marginal and dispensable social role associated with the Botox-shop.
In 1979, the Biennale di Venezia commissioned the architect Aldo Rossi to design the Teatro del Mondo: a floating building that should evoke the analogous constructions of the popular festivities of previous centuries, the ornate theatre stages that navigated along both the lagoon and canals, amusing the population stood on the fondamenta. As is usual in Rossi’s work, the Teatro del Mondo combined the intention of recovering past and memory adopting contemporary formal language. After taking part in the Carnival and in the International Architecture Exhibition of the 1980 Biennial, the theater sailed to Dubrovnik and was eventually dismantled. Although its materiality disappeared, the building–boat remained preserved in the memory and imagination of its admirers. For years his image could only be seen in the photos and films captured during the short existence. However, in 2004, the city of Genoa decided to rebuild the Teatro del Mondo, albeit provisionally. The forty-year anniversary of the project in 2019 provokes this article, which addresses the historiography of the famous theater, as well as discusses the theme of reconstruction in the light of the approach of the design as heritage.
The Historic Center of Matera was declared as Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 1993, due to its representativeness as a settlement of the Mediterranean region and due the unique symbiosis between its natural and cultural characteristics. Since then, the Sassi have had an intense economic, cultural and especially touristic development; nowadays, most of the recovered properties are operating for tourism purposes. Following the eviction of Sassi inhabitants in 1950, the historic area has remained almost uninhabited despite the various strategies promoted by the government to promote occupation. One of them, the law 179/92 on the “Public Residential Building”, designated areas in disuse of the Historical Center to implement housing projects. In this line, the present work focuses on the analysis, development and evaluation of the architectural project for the Comparto “E”; developed in 1996 within the framework of the aforementioned law. The work aims to determine the main shortcomings, benefits and challenges of this initiative of occupation of the Sassi of Matera, as well as enrich the project with alternatives and strategies that can promote its execution.
We are in a post-ecological era in which nature, as a distinct archetype of the human, no longer exists. An era known as the `Anthropocene´, in which global warming commonly known as climate change, is for many, the most emblematic crisis. A moment therefore, of personal and global responsibility, in which imagination and action become necessary. An imagination nourished by the creativity inscribed in ecology, to produce molded strategic scenarios and tactical designs capable of catalyzing cultural and physical processes for climate change adaptation. In this global context, world coastal areas are one of the most densely populated territories where the dynamic cascading effects of climate change are more intense. For that reason, a coast free from the metaphysical concept of a static nature that needs to be protected is claimed, while reinventing itself by design is proposed. This reinvention entails their understanding as complex adaptive systems. It involves, on one hand, the reconfiguration of the conceptual framework of coastal planning and design and, on the other, the creation of a typological and technological toolbox for the design of resilient coastal landscapes.
Power and architecture have established interested links over time, demanding the first one, for well versed will, the iconographic manifestation of this one that in turn represents in his different styles the ideological needed message. The nazi regime was this faustian alliance with a symbolic fascinating symbiosis in their coded language. Albert Speer, the brilliant architect of the visionary Führer, was caught in this atmosphere that cultivated idolatry to the charismatic leader within a totalizing vision. It served as effective instrument for the creation of the expressive architecture of the political to the point of achieving set in stone the word of power. We propose a look from semiotics as additional device of architectural analysis since not only the architecture is a functionality, but also expression, emotion, and, especially, communication. Speer reaches his greatest achievements to get in their architectural scenery a cohesive space in which the representation of absolute power becomes common emotional climax, destined to a public narcotized in the collective fascination. It´s the semiotics, even with their limitations in their need for continued restructuring for the decodifications, where the ideologies and the circumstance disturb the message, a successful analytical instrument, among others, applicable to the architectural field.
We propose to examine uncertain places and landscapes in a way that allows for the understanding of the main characteristics present in nowadays territorial realities. What if we were to look at these unattended landscapes otherwise? Would not they become the blank pages we are in need of? Is it not true that only in the void can the garden reality be, as a result of filling one “non-site”, capable of hosting a whole new spirit? The work of the French gardener G. Clément, The Third Landscape and Le jardin en movement. De la vallée au jardin planétaire, recognizes these spaces and pursues the task to contemplate and redraw them under its own landscape regard. In order to review uncertain landscapes we will approach decline and uncertainty in the work of the architect Peter Latz. Although it has already been broadly studied, due to his challenge and dialogue towards landscape, the investigation will take on the experience of Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a fascinating landscape shaped by the fragments and leftovers of a desolate industrial territory which, nonetheless, possesses a great evoking capacity. Territory recovery possibilities are conceived from the garden perspective, from the spontaneous and wild vegetation growing that rejects being an imitation or figurative replica of the natural landscape, outlining the influence performed by this project on the subsequent Third Landscape theories.
The significance of nature as a reference from which Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin try to generate an alternative architecture, comes from the deep convictions of both in the human being as one whose direct relationship with the environment in which they live produces a unity indissoluble. Heirs of the American transcendentalism thought, the interest of both for the oriental culture, and in particular for the Japanese representation system Ukiyo-e, serves to develop project strategies that condense concepts of this artistic discipline, reflecting the essential characteristics of nature not only graphically but also as constructed reality. The projects for the residential communities of Rock Crest / Rock Glen and Castlecrag, in the United States and Australia, are conceived from the ideas contained in the Japanese drawing style. The ephemeral nature of the individual in relation to the place where he lives, implies a subordination of the latter to the natural laws that define it, from the urban scale and its implantation in place, to the construction and internal organization of each one of the households.
Cartographies, understood as a graphic interpretation of the territory, are one of the main tools to comprehend places and one of the starting points in the architectural project. Traditionally an element that gathered literal data as well as subjective data, since the late of the 20th century a split appeared between maps that brought out great amounts of geographic information, and the landscape depictions with a much more abstract interpretation. In contrast to raw cartography, both art and architecture have looked for creative processes that could recover the worths that can be drawn from the territory, to produce more substantial and more profound speeches. These displays were full of subjectivity and elements that talked about personal aspects of the artists and architects, which were relevant in their landscape reading. This article shows a journey through diverse ways of understanding and pictures the territory, where the works and projects are a reflection of the ability to read a place in different ways, depending on the perception, the culture, or even the personal experiences.
The “Programa Nacional de Tambos” (PNT) has meant an important achievement of the Peruvian state to achieve an effective presence in the rural populations furthest from the national territory, through the massive implementation of buildings called “tambos” that act as multisectoral platforms that allow the provision of basic services. Initially, the architectural approach of the tambo was carried out under a welfare bias, however, now faces heterogeneous demands according to the population dimension, natural region, and productive capacities of the rural population centers. In this context, the present investigation has as objective to identify the project potentialities of the PNT from a systematic vision of the national territory, in order that these serve as inputs to optimally articulate the future approaches of the PNT to the qualities of the Peruvian territory. This is achieved from a theoretical and graphic synthesis –maps and diagrams– of the phenomenon of population dispersion showing that Peruvian rurality is not only a demographic-social issue but is more related to physical-spatial components, and therefore, a systematic vision of the national territory is necessary to intervene from the architectural exercise. As a result of the research, four project potentialities –program, location, demand and form– that PNT has and that must contemplate to intervene in future remote scenarios of the Peruvian rural area.
El objetivo será demostrar críticamente si el entendimiento entre el tripartito Pared-Arquitecto-Pintor, al que se dedicó con diversos co-protagonistas, consiguió la anhelada integración del arte, o si, por el contrario, dicha simbiosis perjudicó en ciertos casos la arquitectura que acogía sus composiciones y creaciones pictóricas.
Fernand Léger’s painting coincided together intermittently with aspects of modern architecture such as the harmonious relationship between volumes, lines and colors. His choosing of the mural as opposed to easel painting allowed him to include factors like weight, contrast or chromatic balance in his work. He was of the opinion that all of these aspects, coupled with others of a more social nature, such as utility, should govern future artistic value, without forgetting to make the most of the successful experiences of the past. This article will analyze the evolution of his most synergetic creations in architecture, addressing both his thoughts as a prolific writer and the bringing to life of these thoughts in his painting. This double reading makes it easier, from a spatial approach, to identify elements of innovative architectural experimentation, such as the flexible wall, the elastic wall or the color associated with both constructive and vital characteristics, on relating them with their sensory and psychological effects.
The aim will be to demonstrate, from a critical point of view if the understanding between the tripartite Wall-Architect-Painter, which he dedicated himself to, along with others, achieved the longed for integration of art or if, on the contrary, this symbiosis adversely affected the architecture that housed his work and pictorial creations in certain cases.
A lo largo de la historia han sido varios los intentos de acotar ese concepto de belleza arquitectónica. Este texto aborda algunas de las aportaciones, fundamentalmente americanas, que durante el siglo XX quisieron identificar la belleza en unos rasgos que, de acuerdo a la más consolidada tradición formal, deberían estar desprovistos de ella: la ausencia de orden y armonía. Unas aportaciones que, al contrario que otros intentos de legitimación del desorden mediante su asociación a determinados cánones estéticos, como lo sublime, lo grotesco o lo feo, trataron de redefinir el propio concepto cultural de belleza. Y, al hacerlo, reconectaron este valor no solo con el resto de principios de la tradición clásica –firmeza, utilidad–, sino también con algunos de los retos de la arquitectura actual.
The beauty is, from the classical tradition, one of the essential components of the good architecture, but at the same time one of the most elusive and difficult to be defined. Faced with objectively evaluable issues such as solidity or functionality, the beauty escapes from any pretension of being univocal understood and it seems to appeal to the subjectivity of the observer, their relationship with the architectural fact and their own cultural context.
There have been several attempts to limit that concept of architectural beauty throughout history. This paper addresses some of the contributions that during the 20th century wanted to identify beauty in features that, according to the most classical formal tradition, should be devoid of it: the absence of order and harmony. These, unlike other attempts to legitimize disorder through its association with certain aesthetic canons such as the sublime, the grotesque or the ugly, tried to redefine the cultural concept of beauty itself. And in doing so, they not only reconnected this value with the other principles of the classical tradition –durability, utility–, but as well with some of the challenges that contemporary architecture has to face
The flexibility in housing, one of the main paradigms of domestic architecture of the twentieth century, is criticized by the philosopher José Luis Pardo, who describes it as a "process of fluidification", where the borders of the private sector are diluted, a process that he questions if it has no limits. To respond to this criticism, we must distinguish flexibility from adaptability, protagonism of the architect or the user, hard versus soft tactics, determined versus indeterminate systems. But is it possible that mobile or variable stuff and the design of the space are designed according to the same principles? That a partition or wall is a piece of furniture? That the furniture has enough dimension to be habitable? That in addition to containing living space is able to organize the space around it? We will review different moments of twentieth-century domestic architecture that propose variations on “hard” and “soft”, in which flexibility takes on different names and uses different strategies —evolutive housing, electrical appliances, habitable furniture, house inside the house— to finish analyzing an own project which is taken as an example of “research by design”, a house that, on a building from 1859, rather than seeking flexibility, has left adapting for twenty years to the user's life, both as domestic and work space. As Till-Schneider concludes, this is an example of the incomplete or unfinished as a paradigm of soft strategies, that is a basic infrastructure that leaves room for the user to occupy, use and transform over time.
When the city undermines the health of its inhabitants and its landscape is the result of a mechanized and mercantilist production process that forgets the person as part of it, landscape architecture has to react. In the American sprawl cities, known as Suburbia, the landscape architect James C. Rose (1913-1991) opposed the egalitarian behaviour of modernity with his idea of a garden as an art form committed to the place. Deeply influenced by the Japanese spirit towards nature, his project in Ridgewood (1953) presents the idea of evolutional habitat as a house that grows and evolves with its user in a spatial perfection through the fusion of indoor-outdoor. In addition, his project in Baltimore (1956) presents how to conceive a form that comes from the place itself, as an instructive action for the client. The contribution of Rose to modern landscape architecture should be understood as that gardens inspire celestial paradises in the earth that are in themselves a failure due to their impossible materialization. Rose’s lawbreaker character remains in the lesson that each place has a different quality that only through the creative act it reveals.
Su espíritu crítico y el interés por los avances técnicos le acompañaron durante toda su carrera. El arquitecto no dejó de plantearse el correcto funcionamiento de todo aquello que le rodeaba, sin dejar de buscar soluciones innovadoras para la arquitectura, que aportasen avances constructivos, siempre con el menor coste posible.
This article aims to illuminate, as far as possible, a little-known facet of the brilliant architect Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, the inventor, with the publication of two of his Patents —registered for twenty years and throughout the Spanish territory—, which have remained unpublished until now. The first, a “new drawing device”, which provides, as an improvement, the accuracy in the drawing that double parallelogram devices did not offer. This invention was registered in January 1946 in the Registry of Industrial Property at twenty-eight years of age, still a student at the School of Architecture of Madrid. The second, which proposed “improvements for the manufacture of flat roof tiles”, registered in July 1960, at forty-two years of age, being already an assistant professor of Architectural Projects at ETSAM.
His critical spirit and interest in technical advances accompanied him throughout his career. The architect did not stop considering the correct functioning of everything that surrounded him, looking for innovative solutions for architecture, which would provide constructive advances, always at the lowest possible cost.
This research identifies Tradition as the theme central to the architecture and thinking of Julio Cano Lasso; that is to say, the means of transmission and persistence of the past in the present. It examines the role of tradition in Cano’s body of work and pinpoints a critical duality. On the one hand, tradition is represented as a continuous flow, which maintains constant structural characteristics, discards the superfluous, and carries forward only the most valuable ideas. This view of tradition manifests in the study and use of typologies; that give rise to what we have called Typological Method. On the other hand, tradition is inserted in the fractured temporality of personal memory, thereby destroying the notion that history is a continuity. This article takes care to examine this second conceptual line. Moving away from evolutionism and teleological pretensions, we focus on what is revealed in Cano’s work through the use of reference. We argue that the formation of referential constellations is the means by which latent elements of tradition, “survivals,” anachronize history. This can occur through montage and juxtaposition. The Referential Method breaks historical continuity; it is iconographic, fragmentary, and cumulative, based on associations and analogies within a constellation of icons. The Referential Method is presented as a means of instrumentalizing the personal memory of Julio Cano Lasso.
Se aplicó la metodología PRISMA para la revisión sistemática de la literatura disponible, que permite identificar artículos relevantes en base a términos de búsqueda. Se filtraron un total de 203 artículos indexados y se obtuvo una selección final de 19 artículos. Analizamos las metodologías de aproximación para identificar los indicadores utilizados por los autores para el análisis de la vivienda informal.
El conjunto de indicadores se organizó en seis aspectos y 26 variables, en un cuadro de síntesis de los estudios existentes, que revela los distintos posibles enfoques. En este estudio se observa la complejidad del fenómeno a través de aspectos multidisciplinarios, y se propone una herramienta teórica para el planteamiento de futuras investigaciones.
In the analysis of the informal city, the description of housing units is usually more relevant than the study methods. While there are precise methodologies for the metropolitan and neighbourhood scales, the approaches for the study of housing units, when confronted with reality, are insufficient for reaching the complexity of the problem. The aim of the study is to identify and synthetize the used methodologies for the study of informal housing, from the second half of the 20th century.
We applied PRISMA methodology for the systematic revision of available literature, which allows the identification of relevant papers based on search terms. We filtered systematically a total of 203 indexed papers, and we obtained a final selection of 19 papers. We analysed the approach methodologies in order to identify the indicators used by the authors for the analysis of the informal house.
The set of indicators was organised in six aspects and 26 variables, in a synthesis matrix of existing studies, which reveals the different possible approaches. In this study, we observe the complexity of the phenomenon through multidisciplinary aspects, and we propose a theoretical tool for future research.
This paper is based on original documents from the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris. It intends to catalog, organize and analyze the initial photographs of the Villa Savoye (1929-30), managed by Le Corbusier himself, taken during the works or just at the end of these, and that were used in the publications of the thirties. First, all the known photographs have been located, in the archive or in the editions. Then, the date and authorship of each image has been clarified, through indications such as the state of the works, the interior conditioning or the direction of the shadows. They have been grouped according to the different reports and the main reviews and books of the period where they appeared have been ordered. We also propose formal and conceptual relationships between the images, the architecture they represent and the story they elaborated about that house.
Si bien existe unanimidad en situar esta obra como pieza clave de su trayectoria, apenas ha sido estudiada en profundidad. Con la presente investigación se desea cubrir ese vacío, planteando un estudio detallado desde una serie de interpretaciones de lo complejo, verificando así la hipótesis de entender Durana como un ejercicio de sincretismo entre la cueva y la tienda de campaña, entre lo abierto y lo cerrado, entre lo moderno y lo tradicional, o entre la ciudad y el paisaje. En su ambigüedad reside su valiosa aportación a la arquitectura doméstica española del siglo XX.
The Fernando Gómez house (Durana, Álava, 1959-60) represents a turning point in the career of Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza, both from a personal and professional point of view. A house that is born from an elementary idea – the refuge – in which the architect abandons the previous modern orthodoxy developed in the 50s and where explores a path that, beyond organic theories, suggests that architecture has to be a complex organism, alive, that arises from conciliating opposing attitudes, of uniting ‘the one and the other’, attending to Venturi’s bothand phenomenon.
Although there is unanimity in placing this work as a key piece of his career, it has hardly been studied in depth. With this research we want to cover this gap, proposing a detailed study from a series of interpretations of complexity, thus verifying the hypothesis of understanding Durana as an exercise of syncretism between the cave and the tent, between open and closed spaces, between modernism and tradition, or between the city and the landscape. In its ambiguity lies its valuable contribution to the Spanish twentieth century domestic architecture.
The theoretical framework associated to the Chilean architect Juan Borchers tends to portray a personal, local and intimate connection. His texts are difficult to decipher and his frame of reference covers from ancient Greece, or the Renaissance of Leon Battista Alberti, to the last treatise writer: Le Corbusier. This article presents two less-known aspects of his theoretical production. On the one hand, it defends the Workshop as an entity, organized around a system of postal communication. Borchers, Suárez and Bermejo tried to position their theories within the international circle and, in doing so, they opened a new understanding of their views, at the time considered contemporary, despite coming from a remote country: Chile. On the other hand, this article connects Borchers’ writings to the city of Madrid, how he got to have an influential role among architects and critics in the 1970s, and who helped him get to that position. Madrid was not only a meeting point, but also part of the context and content of the five lectures of his theories, that evoke a special knowledge of the world and of the history of Architecture.
In its obsession to unveil the secret of the world, a multitude of maps have been elaborated by the human kind in the shade of the unknown. The article visits a number of cartographies that have addressed the effort of representing uncertain places, and pauses in those related works that have subverted the historical order in which the unexplored was a void in between the known world’s sites. Robert Smithson’s artworks are submitted to a second reading, stablishing coincidences to the old cartographic tradition and discovers a series of connections between historical maps, art and certain interests of architects and their way to understand places. This interpretation suggests a critique to the dominant scientism in almost all of the facets of mankind lives, even in those related to the realm of the uncertain. In an unprovable yet undeniable displacement of the currently extinct Terra Incognita towards his maps, lays the key to understanding some aspects of the landscape reality of our time.
El objetivo es mostrar cómo el protagonismo creciente de ambos, confort y objetos, requiere un replanteamiento de la arquitectura que vaya más allá de la aséptica invisibilidad a la que se quiere relegar.
Privacy was the greater contribution from the bourgeoisie to domestic space and Comfort its necessary attribute. Comfort represents the piety of the house towards its inhabitants. This domestic comfort has supposed substantial changes in the relationship of man with objects, and not only in its utilitarian character but also in the symbolic aspects. The present article is twisting, as in a musical fugue, the evolution of the concept of comfort with significant episodes of the atypical conversion of objects into architecture.
The aim is to show how the growing prominence of both terms, comfort and objects, requires a rethinking of architecture that goes beyond the aseptic invisibility to which one wants to relegate.
Identificamos los soportes –basamento y cubierta– con la “Forma interna” (Kernform), concebidos desde las técnicas estereotómica y tectónica, y las envolventes con la “Forma artística” (Kunstform) concebidas desde el arte aplicado, textil y cerámico. Para concluir que la obra de Utzon es una dialéctica entre interioridad sustentante y exterioridad significante, conciliando precisión técnica y expresividad artística (Baukunst).
The most accurate analysis of the dialectic between roof and mound present in all the work projected by Jørn Utzon was carried out by Kenneth Frampton, who recognizes himself as a debtor of the Gottfried Semper theory The Four Elements of Architecture. We cannot but wonder what happens in the work of Utzon with another element that originated the architecture, the enclosure. If we apply the Semper theory in the two most significant works of Utzon, Sydney Opera House and Bagsvared Church, we will discover that the cover is conceived from tectonic –but it is not built with wood–, the platform is conceived from the stereotomy –but it is not built with masonry–, and the materiality of the envelopes is conceived from the textile art –but it is not made with fabric–.
Utzon identifies the supports, basement and platform, with the “Core form” (Kernform), and they are conceived from the technics, stereotomy and tectonic. And the envelopes with the “Art form” (Kunstform) and they are conceived from the applied art, textile and ceramic. We conclude that the work of Utzon is a dichotomy between sustaining interiority and significant exteriority, conciliating technical precision and artistic expressiveness (Baukunst).
Este texto es uno de los resultados de una investigación mayor en la que se ha estudiado el proceso de recepción y difusión de la arquitectura española en la cultura arquitectónica occidental, tal y como se puede seguir desde las publicaciones periódicas foráneas, entre 1949 y 1986.
On his 100th birth anniversary, this article considers Saenz de Oiza’s career from a historiographic perspective, focusing on the international reception of his work as documented by foreign architecture journals between the 1950s and the 1980s. This analysis identifies the key elements that define Oiza’s image in the international architectural scene, among which his Torres Blancas stand out as the work that would confirm him as one of the Spanish architects most widely covered by the international press.
This text derives from a broader research project that studies the reception and dissemination of Spanish architecture in the West, tracing it through international architecture journals between 1949 and 1986.
Dali´s obsession for the geometric order is a long term issue, but in the forties it became stronger due to his conversion to Roman-Catholicism and his recognition of the traditional aesthetics values. All of this has been reinforced due to his return to Spain, more precisely to Portlligat, where he started to live at least half of the year. In his book 50 secretos magicos para pintar —50 magical secrets to paint—, the artist is theorizing about several geometrical forms, between them the sphere, which represents the Monarchy of the solid geometrical bodies. Strong influenced by Eugni d´Ors, who wrote “Cúpula y Monarquía” —“Dome and Monarchy”—in his book Teoría de los Estilos —Styles Theories—, Dalí externalized this obsession for the sphere and the dome in same architectural projects. The Portlligat studio is based in the icosahedral geometrical form, which will be the reference of the rounded room with its semispherical shape. In 1957 appeared in the Architectural Forum his project known as Dali Nait club, a night club in Acapulco, where he used the form of a sea urchin as a cover. Maybe the geodesic dome, which encloses the Dali´s Museum, is the one which better pictures Dali´s obsession. Originally the dome was commissioned to Fuller, but finally was Pérez Piñero who made it possible. Fuller represented Dali´s idea of an architect in contrast to Le Corbusier, which Work is defined as old and heavy by Dalí.
El proyecto de Anversa para Cagliari constituye un caso paradigmático, aunque poco difundido, de una universidad que quiere ser, más que nunca, universal y ubicua, y que recurre para ello a la dimensión territorial y a una perspectiva de sistemas.
Between 1970 and 1973, four architectural competitions were held in Italy for the new Universities of Florence, Cagliari, Cosenza and Salerno. This article analyses the case of Cagliari, focusing on the winning design by Milanese architect Luisa Anversa Ferretti (1926). The crisis of the Italian University, which motivated this enormous building effort, was a result of the significant regional imbalance in the location of facilities and students; the higher education based on superficial knowledge, far from a critical spirit; and the divorce between university and society, which prevented knowledge exchange and transfer. The problem that mass university posed during the decades of the ‘60s and the ‘70s had a quantitative bias and a qualitative one: it was necessary to physically expand the university in order to open it to broad segments of society; to structure the territory thanks to the idea of university as a communication system; and to review in depth the pedagogical strategies through a new departmental organisation.
Despite not being widely known, the Anversa’s design for Cagliari is a paradigmatic case of a university that wants to be, more than ever, universal and ubiquitous, turning to a territorial dimension and a systems approach.
The employment in 1954 of the Portuguese architect Luís Possolo (1924-1999) into the Lisbon-sited Gabinete de Urbanização do Ultramar (Overseas Urbanization Office-GUU)-which the Overseas Minister Marcelo Caetano had started ten years before-coincided with his sending to attend the inaugural edition of the course in Tropical Architecture at London's Architectural Association. Scientific matter in this article is raised, on one hand, from a revision of state-of-the-art literature on the subject, and on the other hand on primary sources from that State Office, to be found at Lisbon's Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, along with data in the architects' personal papers. The exercise adds relevant information for a broader understanding of that course at the AA, which would have a wide international repercussion in the field of researching and designing in architecture for the tropical regions through the following decades. The influence Possolo had on project designing at the GUU, and particularly his work as an architect for the Portuguese Overseas, shall also be engaged, as his major projects made in the civil service, as well as in private practice, are presented.
Many authors point out that around the 1950s, the increase in the population of Lima caused the overflow of its urban footprint. At the same time, those decades coincide with the arrival and the rise of modern architecture in Peru. The demographic explosion had as an architectural response several models of collective housing widely studied: Neighborhood Units, Groupings and Residentials. But these are all ensambles outside of the traditional compact blocks and deep plots that characterize many of thecolonial traces in Latin America. Inside this urban fabric however, the multifamily building between party walls allowed for the vertical densification of the city. This essay focuses on commenting on the relationship between a selected group of local multifamily buildings and the modern canonical prototypes from which they adapt certain typological features. Thus, we intend to demonstrate that, despite the limitations of lotification and the design difficulties implicit in infill type buildings, modern influences help enrich these cases, producing complex and varied solutions.
The origin of the urban form of the Tokyo mMegalopolis, its urban genetics, is found in nature. Before Tokyo was a big city, it was a large village immersed in a large garden. The qualities of the urban space of Tokyo come from that urban entity that remained stable during the three centuries that Pax Tokugawa lasted (1603-1868). Tokyo was a huge urban organization where lived more than 4 million people and it extended by the fluvial plain of 32,000 km2 of Kanto plateau. The large village has been identified as the pre-urban state of Tokyo’s current megalopolis, a state of lethargy prior to the rapid process of densification that transformed the large village into a large city in a few decades, and a place as complex and extensive as the contemporary scattered city.
The methodology performed consists of a scalar analysis of the great village in a downward direction, starting from a wide view of the Kanto plateau until arriving at the urban landscapes built on the periphery of Edo, its metropolitan center. The article is a compendium of eight short texts, which together with their respective eight graphic documents, build the corpus of the research. The reader faces a graphic essay formed by small chapters that will immerse him in the great village, the genesis of the largest urban agglomeration on the planet.
This text emerges as one of the results of a research, dedicated to the Chilean and Argentine architectural journals published during the second half of the 20th century. In this wide range, Técnica y Creación, published between August 1960 and December 1967 from the Instituto de Edificación Experimental (IEE), at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Chile. His analysis is made from the academic and social circumstances promoted by the University of Chile before the 1960s and from the importance that prefabrication and technological innovation in Chile then acquired. A careful reading of the pages of Técnica y Creación allows us to suppose that both this edition and the spirit expressed by the Institute that promoted it and its Director arose as a consequence of a contemporary Spanish pair, the Instituto Eduardo Torroja de la Construcción y el Cemento (IETcc) and its journal Informes de la Construcción.
This article aims at describing the continuous process in the social production of the architecture of Raúl Hestnes Ferreira. The neorealist ideology defended by his father and followed by the family, as well as the values of freedom, democracy and respect for the others, built his personality and his humanistic character. His cross-cultural career in Portugal, Finland and the United States of America was instrumental in building his architectural lexicon. In order to illustrate these influences, four housing works with different conceptual dimensions are presented such as laboratorial experiments: the José Gomes Ferreira House in Albarraque (1960-1961), the Twin Housing in Queijas (1967-1973), finishing with the presentation of two social housing experiences, namely, the neighborhood Fonsecas and Calçada (1974-1986) under the SAAL project in Lisbon and the João Barbeiro Housing Unit (1978-1987) in Beja. In Hestnes Ferreira, the social production of architecture was not a consequence, nor an anticipation, but a fact that by the simultaneity, defined and characterized his architecture.
The subject of our research is the curatorial strategy behind the project for the last major exhibition devoted to Latin America by the New York Museum of Modern Art. The show is understood itself as a project, where each of the implicated agents-the institution, curators and the works themselves-relate to each other in building an action, a narrative, and in the best of cases, contributing to critical thinking. We will analyze the mass information strategies used by the museum in selecting the works, designing the spaces and advertising the exhibition.
This paper tries to explore the act of drawing as a tool for analysis and cultural dissemination, an instrument of memory which lives beyond the vanishing of what tries to represent. It applies this idea to the house of Aldo van Eyck in Loenen aan de Vecht, in order to understand the building of which handrawn sketches, blueprints and numerous pictures are conserved. The text is a result of a deeper research on Aldo van Eyck's house, an unkwnown project shown here for the first time, outside the inner circle of his family and friends. The paper takes but five as
L'Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans les Temps Modernes in Paris (1937) offered, across the construction of their pavilions to each country the opportunity to materialize their technological progress and also to show so-cio-political factors referred to the art's integration or aesthetic formalization of their ideologies.
This work wants to address the analysis of the whole architectural academic project process in Spain, through previously unpublished documents. It also aims to be a reference to new approaches that may find in the study and research of the illustrated architectonic project a way for a better understanding of the origin of the contemporary architecture project. So the aim of this work is expositive and also didactic, as the result of a good number of years devoted by the author to the analysis of modern architecture.
At the beginning of the 20th Century several buildings were covered with tile vaults all through Latin America. However, two houses designed and built by Le Corbusier (the Maisons Sarabhai (Ahmadabad 1955) and Jaoul (Paris 1955)) have traditionally been considered the main influence for later vaulted buildings covered with this technique in the area in the 60s and 70s. Since there were built examples contemporary or previous to the buildings by the Swiss architect, it seems logical to think that the influence of the Jaoul or Sarabhai houses in Latin American vault construction might have been somehow less relevant. There are several examples that support that idea: the most relevant is the Casa Pizano, a missing Bogota building designed by the local architect Francisco Pizano de Brigard, which was Le Corbusier's main inspiration for the aforementioned houses.
With the dawn of digital media the architecture's formal possibilities reached a level unknown before. The Guggenheim Museo branch in Bilbao appears in 1993 as the materialisation of the possibilities of the use of digital tools in archi-tecture's design, starting the development of a digital based architecture which currently has reached an exhaustion level that is evident in the repetition biomor-phologic shapes emerged from the digital determinism to which some contemporary architectural practices have converged. While the digitalisation of the architectural process is irreversible and desirable, it is necessary to rethink the terms of this collaboration beyond the possibilities of the digital tools themselves. This article proposes to analyse seven texts written in the very moment when digitali-sation became a real possibility, between Gehry's conception of the Guggenheim Museum in 1992 and the Congress on Morphogenesis hold in the Architectural Association in 2004, in order to explore the possibility of reversing the process that has led to the formal exhaustion of digital architecture, from the acceptance of incorporating strategies coming from a contemporary critical formalism.
This article explores the notion of historical center and its implications on the main models of institutional intervention, against the emergence of citizenship practices and ways of living builders of city heritage. Taking the city of Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico as a reference, the study emphasizes the epistemic forms that arise from relating the idea of heritage, with those of public space, habitability and sustainability, to inscribe there the question about architecture and its project process. If it is in the urban area where the risks and contradictions of the global economy are most reflected, and it is the city where new ethics and community spaces take place, the questions that motivate this investigation are how shall the project practice be conceived today? What are its theoretical and epistemo-logical implications and what are its strategies for the preservation of local and global patrimonial environments? ALEXANDER, Christopher. Un lenguaje de patrones. España: Gustavo Gili,1977. BACHELARD, Gastón. La poética del espacio. México: FCE, 1992.
“A Wall for All Seasons” is an adaptive multilayer glass envelope designed by the British architect Mike Davies in the 1980s. It was intended to overcome the energy problems posed by the material, without losing the characteristic smoothness of the Miesian curtain wall. This model is the last example of an organic analogy, which bases its aesthetic reason on nature, on its condition as process regulator. This analogy was adopted by the glass culture of the 1920s, in the expressionist and constructivist movements, and assimilated by Modernism, transformed by British high-tech and North American green counterculture of the 1960s, which evolves into cybernetics. This genealogy and the direct precedents that influenced the author in the development of his model are narrated in the article. It also compiles the discussion around the sustainability of glass architecture that was taking place at that time and that was collected by the RIBA Journal, where Davies’ proposal was published. Davies’ model is described and the current state of “high performance glasses” is presented, commenting on its limited application in contemporary architecture. Finally, the future viability of the model is questioned.
The article analyzes the career of the Danish architect Knud Peter Harboe (19252002), characterized by the fidelity to traditional constructive elements and the modern approach, examines the most important timber frame houses of the sixties, including the architect’s house in Ordrup (1958), and the subsequent transposition of the reinforced concrete structures on the scale of the public buildings of the 1970s at the headquarters of N Foss Electric in Hillerød (1961) or the building of Pharmacia in Hillerød (1971) that will allow him to experience into the formal expression of reinforced concrete. The tectonicity of his work evokes the anonymous structure of the structure of traditional constructions and the notion of an architecture as an assembly of components, through the articulation of wooden posts or the logic of prefabricated elements that establish the order of space and expression of the structural framework as a ordered system.
Konrad Wachsmann was a Jewish German architect who began his carrier in Berlin. In the 50s, Wachsmann began a series of journeys to different universities around the world. In these he taught both to spread his knowledge and to propagate the american government publicity. In Japan prepared a workshop called the Wachsmann seminar with students, between them were some of the future components of the Metabolism group. Years later the influences of the Wachsmann’s seminar took form in the entrance building at the Osaka Universal exposition, called Big Roof. In this way, it could be said, and having the Wachsmann seminar in Japan as an example, that the model called Seminar or workshop has a critical importance firstly in the student reception and secondly in their future architectural production. The reception of his big frame structure could be followed by a young architect generation all over the planet. This young generation was making contacts between them at the same time having the same influences.
Carvajal House is the crystallisation of a deep reflection on the role of courtyards in Modern Architecture. Modern architects had initially dismissed the use of courtyards on their designs, because they used to associate them to the traditional spatial conception, characterised by introversion and a clear conceptual distinction between inside and outside. After this initial rejection, the courtyard was gradually reintroduced, and paradoxically, we will show how it was in fact an element that led to the evolution and development of modern spatial concepts, such as openness, phenomenological transparency and phenomenisation of space, because it constituted a way to integrate concavity again. The aim of this paper is showing how these modern concepts appear clearly in the interiorised courtyards of the Carvajal House, revealing the decisive role that they had in the evolution of modernity. We analysed the formal order and the perceptions that a person can experiment throughout the spatial sequence, from the access to the surroundings of the courtyards. This makes clear how the courtyards are fundamental elements in the design strategy, both at a morpho-syntax level (as the seed of the formal logic) and at a perceptual-emotional level (qualifying space as the stage for life).
The first necessary operation for the determination of an architecture that is defined as territorial implies the physical definition of a boundary. A frontier whose first consequence is the establishment of an order capable of differentiating between the hostile-out and the safe-in. This boundary allows qualifying a first stage of permanence, granted by the most immediate refuge and yet allows successive diversions from its meaning both in terms of the initial definition of this interior-exterior boundary and the materiality of its formalization. Full confidence in this idea becomes the basis on which, in 1963, Charles Moore and his team (MLTW) build the project for Condominium I in the Sea Ranch, a real example of Sussane Langer’s “ethnic domains”, but also a reflection on the construction of the border that is as Europeanist as American. The challenge of domestic construction is here in the definition of a threshold that, beyond limiting the obvious outdoors, allows the inhabitant to know their location at any time, hierarchizing and specifying itself to become a space with its own identity that can be read in an authentic Californian key.
The discourses, in the proposal of Michel Foucault, consist of a series of statements or approaches that communicate a certain idea and define everything that can be said about a theme from the conformation of a particular way of understanding reality. In the case of architecture, the discourses could be used to define assumptions about the duty of the discipline and to conform criteria for the valuation of architectural production, such as works. Under the argument that there will always be discourses from which to justify architecture, a review of contemporary architectural practice centered on the intentions, yearnings, or recurrences of architects rather than on works themselves seems to be not only a pertinent work but a delayed task for the discipline, especially in the case of Latin America, because although the architects are aware of the implications that have the use of certain discourses we have not assumed them as field of production of knowledge.
Photography is, doubtless, an extraordinary tool for the historic study of architecture. This is proven by its capacity to document territories and buildings with ample scales of register. Photography arrived in Chile in the second half of the nineteenth century, coinciding with a process of national construction and territorial consolidation which was being developed in parallel to that of other American nations. Views of cities, streets and buildings, captured by both renowned and unknown photographers, are a testimony of the influence of colonial hispanic architecture on the building traditions of the country. They also document the origins of a new kind of architecture, arising in the so-called ‘colonisation territories’ as a result of an exchange of local and European building traditions, which was swiftly assimilated and expanded. Thanks to the lenses of the nineteenth century photographers today we can take advantage of valuable visual evidence that allows us to better understand the traditional architecture of the centre and South of the country.
Taking as a reference the social housing project Pruitt-Igoe, which has been uncountably named and extensively studied since its demolition in 1972, the study approaches to an analysis of the disjunction between space, program and action, as Bernard Tschumi sets. He questions whether the relationship between architecture and user is symmetrical or asymmetric, based on the observation of events, as an unavoidable fundamental fact. In the determination if one of them dominates another, there is debate about the role of architectural design, as well as the role of the profession in social housing processes. Although it is essential to create spaces of dignified habitability and appropriate architectural design, an asymmetric relationship between action and space is evidenced. In Pruitt-Igoe’s analysis there was a necessity to overcome the biased criticisms of the object (and its iconic guilt based on its conception of the modern movement) to analyse the context in which it was built, inhabited and demolished. In this perspective, Pruitt-Igoe is a widely symbolic project in the discussion about the real extent in which architecture is able to achieve social changes, being fundamental to avoid entrenched dogmas and to glimpse that social and political structures have more causal power than the architectural design.
Esta investigación propone una serie de medidas para registrar, analizar y divulgar los valores culturales de la Dehesa del Generalife, un territorio en continuidad con el conjunto monumental de la Alhambra, muy rico por sus recursos arqueológicos, arquitectónicos, paisajísticos, medioambientales y etnológicos, que configuran un espacio de incuestionable valor cultural. La metodología de trabajo supone una estrategia de conocimiento sensible para detectar y dilucidar soluciones de preservación y mantenimiento en lugares de un alto interés patrimonial. La noción de “paisaje cultural” está tratada como un concepto amplio basado en la percepción antropológica del territorio que incluye el valor histórico, cultural y simbólico de los elementos visibles que componen un paisaje y sus relaciones.
La investigación parte de la premisa del Plan Director Alhambra que propone una revisión de los conocimientos actuales del monumento desde una perspectiva territorial que supera la idea tradicional de la Alhambra como una ciudad palatina rodeada de murallas para ser entendida en su contexto territorial.
In the process of revitalizing cultural landscapes, there is a need to have a comprehensive documentary record of the territory, using different representation techniques that help to understand the characteristics and identities of the same.
This research project aims to set a series of measures to help recording and disseminating the cultural values of the landscape of the Dehesa del Generalife, a territory in continuity with the monumental complex of the Alhambra, in order to revive and strengthen the architectural, archaeological, landscape, environmental and ethnological resources of an environment with an unquestionable cultural value. The work methodology involves a strategy of sensitive knowledge to detect solutions of preservation in patrimonial spaces of a high patrimonial interest. The notion of “cultural landscape” is a broad concept based on the anthropological perception of an area, which includes the historical, cultural and symbolic value of the visible and not visible elements that compose a landscape and its relations.
The research starts from the premise of the Master Plan of the Alhambra which proposes a review of the current knowledge of the monument from a territorial perspective to overcome the traditional conception of the Alhambra as palatial city surrounded by walls, in order to integrate it into its territorial context.
The chicken coops, maize dryers, wineries, stables, etc. Of the central valley of Chile, are smaller constructions that function as infrastructures that complement the basic and small-scale agricultural production that develops there, so that its resolution, bordering on the archaic, is devoid of a disciplinary germ. These constructions, although they may be the material culmination of an idea, are rather presented as the representation in itself of a project, in a pending state of resolution, which has been forged generation after generation. Scattered in the territory represent both the agricultural character of the area and the intelligence deployed over time determined by geographical, cultural and social conditions, in a context of scarcity. Although it has a history in primitive residential buildings, it originates as a type in agrarian reform, when the land is distributed on small surfaces that promote the development of minor agriculture. Rural constructions in the central valley of Chile are in themselves the representation of their project and as manifestations they represent a communal activity, a territory, a landscape, an economic model, a political ideal.
fundamentan, en parte, la calidad de las obras como las innovadoras soluciones programáticas, espaciales y materiales que se pueden observar en veinte años
de trayectoria. La revisión acuciosa de revistas disciplinares chilenas e internacionales otorga un panorama para fundamentar la propuesta teórica, que reordena
una visión crítica sobre el desarrollo de obras y autores. Así, la excepcionalidad de la arquitectura chilena es puesta en perspectiva, por conceptos que explican
estrategias arquitectónicas comunes: Manifiestos, Monomaterial, Refundación y Paisaje. Estos cuatro conceptos refieren específicamente a grupos de obras que
logran encontrar un sentido más allá de la solución específica de cada edificio, y proponen entender lógicas comunes que fundamentan y le dan un sentido más
amplio a la producción contemporánea.
The article proposes to give an interpretation to the important attention that the contemporary Chilean architecture has received, through four debates that base,
in part, the quality of the works as the innovative programmatic, spatial and material solutions that can be observed, in twenty years of experience. The careful
review of Chilean and international disciplinary journals gives an overview to support the theoretical proposal, which reorders a critical view on the development
of works and authors. Thus the exceptionality of Chilean architecture is put into perspective, by concepts that explain common architectural strategies: Manifestos, Monomaterial, Refund and Landscape. These four concepts specifically refer to groups of works, which manage to find meaning beyond the specific solution of each building, and proposes to understand common logics that underlie and give
a broader sense to contemporary production.
mediante el contenido pictórico. Son estas relaciones el motivo que muchas veces llevaba al pintor a desarrollar un cuadro. En el caso del estudio proyectado
por Sert para Miró, la investigación trata de conjugar espacio de trabajo y espacio de la pintura desde una interpretación a la pintura sin abandonar el espacio en la que es gestada. El fin es revelar o mostrar interpretaciones sobre dos programas característicos del siglo XX: vivienda y taller de pintura; desde un análisis concreto entorno a Joan Miró y Josep Lluís Sert.
The text establishes relationships between painting and architecture in the architectural space. The writing creates links between space designed by Josep Lluís Sert and painting activity that Joan Miró performed in the building Son Abrines in Mallorca. One of the reasons why painting in Europe is shaped by itself, from Giotto to Picasso for example, is the relationship between space and use that canvas itself shows. Any painting of the time comes to present the mystery of an event by a pictorial content. Relations between space and use represented are the reason
that often led the painter to develop a picture. In the case the study designed by Sert for Miró, the motive for research is to combine the work space and the space of painting from an interpretation to the painting without leaving the space which
is gestated. The purpose is to reveal or display the contents of two distinctive programs of the twentieth century: housing and paint shop, from a concrete analysis environment Joan Miró and Josep Lluís Sert.
Hay una extraordinaria sofisticación de la construcción vernácula; y una fuerte conexión con la arquitectura tradicional japonesa, revelada por el deseo de vivir
en estrecho contacto con la naturaleza, la búsqueda del refinamiento mediante la moderación, la eliminación de los elementos superfluos y la preocupación por la
luz y la sombra –estableciéndose un paralelismo con el oscuro invierno nórdico.
Su característica abstracción es un ejemplo de modernidad. El edificio se acerca a la belleza clásica, por la aparición de proporción, simetría y orden, pero también por el tratamiento suave de las superficies de los materiales. Se reconoce un
ritmo en diferentes dimensiones. Se valora la escala. Los colores aplicados o inherentes al material, alcanzan intensidad. La experiencia del espacio arquitectónico
es global. Es una casa mágica y maravillosa.
Halldor Gunnløgsson´s own house, one of the most refined works of the Golden Age of modern Danish architecture, is the result of a strong will and personal artistic discipline. The detached flat roof suspended above a large paved platform
–itself continuing the construction of the place– has great presence. In the interior, a single space, flows freely and extends to the landscape. There is an extraordinary
sophistication of vernacular building; and a strong connection with traditional Japanese architecture, revealed by the desire of living in close contact with nature,
the pursuit for refinement through moderation, the elimination of unnecessary items and the preoccupation with light and shade, where a parallel with the dark
world of the Nordic winter is established.
Its characteristic abstraction is an example of modernity. The building approaches to the classic beauty, by the proportions, the appearance of symmetry and order,
but also for the soft treatment of the surfaces of materials. Rhythm is recognized in different dimensions. Scale is valued. Colors applied or inherent in the material,
reach intensity. The experience of the architectural space is global. It is a magical and wonderful house.
The Japanese term “minka” literally means “houses of the people”, and refers to the traditional Japanese dwellings built from the ancient eras up to the mid 19th century. These simple and lightweight houses were commonly made by bamboo, straw and wooden elements, all connected together with wooden joints or ropes. Shirakawa-go and Gokayama regions, in the central area of Japan, west to Tokyo, were isolated for a long period. As a result, a specific type of minka, the Gassho-zukuri, was developed there. Its main feature is the use of an extremely logical and rational construction system as a result of the natural adaptation to the harsh conditions of the environment. Despite being built as permanent structures, these traditional houses are indeed removable: their different components can be disassembled, reused and reassembled without any difficulty. The high potential of disassembly contained in these small constructions invites to reflect on the projective and constructive guidelines found in their solutions that could be recovered and applied to current proposals in order to integrate the disassembly, recovery and transfer of the entire building object as a key factor in a sustainable architectural design.
Al contrario que un monumento, que evoca un tiempo pasado, el anti-monumento es más bien el reflejo de un –apocalíptico– proceso futuro. En el anti-monumento
el tiempo y la memoria se reinterpretan conforme a los nuevos códigos de lectura del lenguaje contemporáneo. Mientras que la memoria del monumento refiere a
un ideal y/o una utopía formada por el imaginario de los grandes acontecimientos de la civilización, en el anti-monumento forma parte de la constatación de lo real,
de la mortalidad, de una distopía que eventualmente prefiguraría el colapso de los sistemas sociales y económicos contemporáneos.
The aim of this paper is to propose the idea of anti-monument, in order to rescue and revalue abandoned places and modern ruins and. This new perspective answers
to the current need to see contemporary landscapes from a different point of view. Anti-monuments are the “new ruins”, abandoned structures that become obsolete due to its disfunctionality over time. The change on the social and production systems and the economic crisis of our time produce the proliferation of these unique and paradoxical spaces. These places are full of meanings but awake a different kind of memory than classic monuments. The concept of the anti-monument works in the opposite way to that of the monument, deconstructing its idea. Whereas a monument brings memories of a past time, an anti-monument is rather an image of an –apocalyptic– future process. In the anti-monument, time and memory are reinterpreted according to the new reading codes of contemporary language. While the memory of the monument refers to an ideal and/or an utopia formed by the imaginary of the great events of civilization, in the anti-monument is part of the realization of reality, of mortality, of a dystopia that prefigures the collapse of social and economic systems.
The Positano building, designed during the 1950s by the architect Luis García Pardo, marked a milestone in the architecture of modern housing in Uruguay. The architect –and real estate developer at the same time– designed a series of projects, identifying three fully documented projects. This series has a strong modern and experimental character, expressed in the general form, implantation, typological development, structural system and the facade design. The last project, carried out in association with the young architect Adolfo Sommer Smith, began to be built in 1959. The series of projects reveals a growing process of “abstraction”, formal as well as conceptual. This will lead to simplifying forms and reducing elements; and at the same time designing more complex devices, capable of solving different functions. Starting from the search and classification of original documents –plans, photographs, articles, among others–, this work attempts to try out a project interpretation, exposing the architects’ main concerns and strategies. The essay seeks to recognize repetitions, iterations, doubts and certainties of an intense process, which crossed the borders of the discipline.
The new urban maps which identify –sometimes in real time– the location of new activities and tours, which seem to belong to their attractive representations of the purest state of gas and manifest effective location changes with respect to the predictable. This is a continuous changeability of locations, and its flows are derived in inevitable adaptations of the actual city. Not only for the new “Interpretational readings” made in the same way and of the new maps which we built, but also for the necessary adaptation of its structures, which will become determined, not by how strong they are –paths and infrastructure– but precisely because of the weak and invisible virtual information. It is not something new; travel books and drawings also modified the construction of the city, first mentally and then physically. But the new cartography formed by the superposition of subjectivities of millions of citizens, show the transformation of the Royal City, and make it to unimaginable speeds ever experienced before, transforming the static into dynamic, and forcing your active account in any future decision that affects its planning and its urban project.
objeto al límite de las posibilidades de la arquitectura.
Las tres obras se podrían definir como ensayos entrópicos por: la ausencia de una organización sistemática y lineal de las tres representaciones; la composición, que en el caso de las tres obras expresaría la condición de fragmentariedad; la
metamorfosis, el proceso continuo en el cual el monumento, el paisaje, la historia sufren incesantes transformaciones; la inestabilidad e indeterminación de los conceptos de memoria, lugar, forma, función, proporcionan un mayor grado de libertad para actuar dentro de sus bases nunca definitivas.
La intención del artículo es establecer cómo la obra facilita instrumentos para una crítica contemporánea, el entendimiento del proceso de continuidad y discontinuidad
del tiempo moderno y cómo muchas cuestiones actuales se abrieron justamente en este periodo, que como una bisagra sigue uniendo y agitando ambas duradas.
Last December, 50 years have passed since the group Superstudio was formed. The anniversary is presented as the occasion to carry out a review of some of the ideas that the group proposed through the theoretical-graphic work of the Monumento Continuo. Through three different formats, Superstudio represented a work with clearly visionary connotations, which presented the proposal of an object within the limits of the possibilities of architecture.
The three works could be defined as entropic essays due to: the absence of a systemic and linear organization of the three representations; the composition, which in the case of the three works would express the fragmentary nature; the metamorphosis, the continuous process in which the monument, the landscape and the history suffer unceasing transformations; the instability and the indeterminacy of the concepts of memory, place, shape and function provide a greater degree of freedom to act within their never definitive bases.
The intention of the article is to establish how the work provides instruments for a contemporary critic, the understanding of the process of continuity and discontinuity of the modern time and how many of the current issues were started just in this period, which, like a hinge, is still connecting and agitating both intervals.
objetos, los artefactos, están acaparando tanto el espacio como la atención del hombre en su vida cotidiana, y que este afán excluyente se produce a costa de la arquitectura. De lo que se induce que el sistema de objetos (Baudrillard) pretende la exclusividad en el suministro de la dimensión simbólica, del sentido que los humanos piden en todo momento al medio en el que habitan.
A partir del tema del Cuerpo sin Órganos, sobre el que reflexionaron Deleuze y Guattari, se van analizando las características físicas que el cuerpo humano
establece con los objetos y con la propia arquitectura en relación con la fragmentación y del automatismo de lo utilitario.
El núcleo de la investigación consiste en poner en relación dos piezas tan importantes para la arquitectura del siglo XX como la Case Study 8 de los Eames y la Casa del Futuro de los Smithson. De ese análisis comparado se obtiene una serie de consecuencias interesantes para comprobar cómo hay dos maneras de afrontar la relación competitiva entre arquitectura y objetos. Cómo hay una manera de hacer arquitectura a partir del diseño para servir a los objetos (Eames); y otra que pretende hacer un gran objeto habitable que absorba a los demás objetos domésticos y que se vuelve paródico al no renunciar a los atributos de la arquitectura (Smithson).
From the assumption that architecture and objects have different ontological statuses, there is the hypothesis that in modern society objects, artefacts, are capturing the space and the attention of men in their daily life. This eagerness
of appropriation is taking place in detriment of architecture. It seems that the system of objects, artefacts, is pretending to have exclusiveness in the supply of symbolic dimension and the sense that human beings ask to the environment in
which they live.
From the issue of the Body without Organs, about which Deleuze and Gattari thought, physical characteristics that the human body establishes with objects and architecture itself will be analysed.
The core of the study consists in putting into relation two very important pieces for architecture: the Eames Case Study 8 and the Smithson’s House of the Future. From this analysis we will obtain some interesting consequences in order to verify how there are two ways to confront the competitive relation between architecture and objects. How there is a way to make architecture from the design to serve the objects (Eames); and another that pretends to make a great habitable object that absorbs other domestic objects and that becomes parodic in not giving up the attributes of architecture (Smithson).
Mediante la revisión de las obras y proyectos realizados por arquitectos peruanos desde la reforma universitaria de 1946 hasta los años 80, se han podido identificar los cambios en la forma de la arquitectura peruana y el conflicto que se mantiene entre el querer pertenecer al lenguaje universal, al mismo tiempo que se quiere ser parte de la cultura local.
Entender este proceso de desarrollo de la forma busca no sólo un conocimiento de la historia, sino también dotar de herramientas y reflexiones proyectuales para la producción arquitectónica contemporánea.
In Peru, as in other Latin American countries, the arrival of modern architecture will condition a material production based on formal abstract principles, being in some cases, oblivious to the construction of links of identity or belonging to specific realities. Instead, Peruvian postmodernism will try to renounce formalism and symbolism as a physical characteristic to begin to discover complexity in its rhetorical discourse, on which relations with the past are to be built, not as a historical reference, but rather as a cultural reference.
Trough the revision of the works and projects carried out by Peruvian architects from the educational reform from 1946 to the 1980s, it has been possible to identify the changes in the form of Peruvian architecture and the conflict that persists between wanting to belong to the universal language while, at the same time, wanting to be part of the local culture.
Understanding this process of development of the form seeks not only knowledge of history, but also provides tools and projective reflections for contemporary architectural production.
El presente artículo reflexiona sobre la pervivencia hasta nuestros días del imaginario arquitectónico de Guadalaviar, a pesar de la desaparición de muchos de sus elementos originales. Además, se analiza la Escuela-Jardín contando con nuevas fuentes primarias: las series fotográficas del seguimiento de la construcción y las memorias profesionales del arquitecto. Junto con la documentación original, se dispone así del marco hermenéutico más completo reunido hasta el momento. Y es que, precisamente a través del constructo originado por la fotografía y su aceptación social, la Escuela-Jardín ha desaparecido y, a la vez, sobrevivido a sí misma.
The Guadalaviar Garden School, the emblematic work of the young Fernando M. García-Ordóñez, is today an architectural point of reference –one of the nine buildings from the Autonomous Community of Valencia to be included as part of the Iberian chapter of Docomomo. Bursting onto the languishing local scene of the 1950’s, it gave rise to formal sincerity, special fluidity and bioclimatism in architecture. Following a somewhat lukewarm initial reception, the positive impact of the design could be seen by the international dissemination through publications –L’architecture d’aujourd d’hui; The Architect & Building News, etc.– and in the consolidation of modernism in Valencia.
The paper analyses the Garden School using primary unparalleled sources: the series of photographs used to document the construction and the professional memoirs of the architect. Together with the original documents, we now have at our disposal the most comprehensive interpretive framework. Lastly, consideration should be given to the cultural role of Guadalaviar, due to the continued existence of its imagery and despite the disappearance of many of the original architectural elements. And it is precisely through this photographic-based construct that the Guadalaviar Garden School has disappeared but at the same time has managed to survive its own demise.
The present article starts from an analysis on the relation between the limits and the configuration of domestic architecture, and the type of family that occupies it to clarify how the spatial solutions are only a reflection of the individual relations inside these groups. Brazilian architects of the 20th century, with figures such as Paulo Mendes de Rocha and Vilanova Artigas, were able to find and develop their own architecture that reflected the beating of a new nation. Through their spatial experiences they succeeded in criticizing the bourgeois class that dominated Brazilian society since the beginning of the American colonization. The spatial solutions of its architecture imply a message addressed to the whole society. For the mentioned architects, architecture becomes a tool capable of modifying the spatiality of the domestic sphere and with it, the relations within the family groups that inhabit it. The manipulation of the boundaries within the dwelling itself and regarding the context –urban or natural– raises a new understanding of the subject within the family structure and with the society that inhabits it.
El juguete manifiesta una particular visión del papel del arquitecto como educador social y transformador del medio que le rodea y más allá de la necesidad de reconstrucción que reinaba en los años de posguerra, trasciende los imperativos del momento para hablarnos de otra necesidad paralela y universal: la de reconstruir el universo lúdico, imaginario, educativo y proyectual del ser humano. El pequeño conjunto de cinco piezas de madera, como metáfora simbólica, nos habla de un mundo que es también el nuestro: complejo y ramificado, pedagógico y abierto, y en su planteamiento —sintético e intenso— abarca resonancias universales y profundas.
Anne Griswold Tyng (1920-2011), one of the first women who studied architecture at the GSD in Harvard, and coauthor with Louis I. Kahn of the City Tower Project –among other works–, designed —and patented in 1949— a small plywood toy, which in diverse arrangements can be assembled in many different ways. The project, known as the Tyng Toy, anticipates Tyng’s future thought and research on geometry as “forming principles” and condenses the concerns of the epoch and the new dream of American architecture after World War II.
The toy manifests a particular vision of the architect’s role as social educator and transformer of the environment and, beyond the dominant needs of reconstruction of that time, transcends the imperatives of the moment to speak about a different need, parallel and universal: to rebuild the ludic, imaginary, educative and design universe of the human being. The small five-pieces-set, plywood toy, as a symbolic metaphor, tells us about a realm which is also ours: complex and ramified, pedagogical and opened, and in its approach, synthetic and intense, gathers universal, deep resonances.
Se revisa la base teórica de la propuesta a partir del concepto de arquitectura líquida, que en su fundamentación pretende incorporar la dimensión dinámica del tiempo en la condición material de los espacios. Asimismo, se examina el término acústica variable, que aborda técnicamente la versatilidad del acontecimiento sonoro en un despliegue de técnicas activas o pasivas.
Luego se presenta la metodología a través del diseño, basada en el modelo propuesto por Lucien Blessing, que formula un proceso desde la definición de los criterios, hasta la concreción formal del diseño en la construcción del modelo.
Finalmente, se presentan los parámetros de validación del diseño que apuntan a la prosecución de su desarrollo en una segunda etapa. En ella, el objetivo será optimizar el modelo y mejorar las transformaciones del ambiente acústico material, espacial y temporal, como se ha propuesto.
This paper present the first stage of research “Adaptative Acoustic Prototype –for multifunctional spaces–”, developed at the School of Architecture of de University of Santiago de Chile. The main has been to design and build a device of articulated geometry has been developed that allows calibrate the acoustics of the space, depending on users reception needs.
The theoretical basis of the proposal is revides from the concept of liquid architecture, which in its foundation seeks to incorpórate dynamic dimensión of time in material condition of spaces. We also examine the variable acoustic term, which deals technically with the verality of sound event in a display of active or passive techniques.
Then the research through design metodology is presented, based on the model proposed by Lucien Blessing, which formulates a process from definition of the research criteria until the design and the formal concretion in model construction.
Finally, we present the validation design parameters that aim at the continuation of development in a second stage. The objetive will be to model optimize and to improve the transformations of material, spatial and temporal acoustic enviroment, as it has been proposed.
Con el objetivo de conseguir un mayor conocimiento y entendimiento de su pensamiento y obra, el texto analiza la relación de la arquitecta con el teatro a partir de los años sesenta, cuando su conexión con artistas y directores de teatro es más intensa, lo que la llevó a la realización de varias escenografías y proyectos teatrales.
El presente artículo analiza cómo las diferentes corrientes artísticas relacionadas con el teatro, tanto nacionales como internaciones, influyeron en el pensamiento de la arquitecta y cómo estas se identifican en sus procesos proyectuales y finalmente en su obra construida.
Marcelo Carvalho Ferraz in his article “Lina Bo Bardi, de Italia para Brasil”, published in Revista Universitaria (Chile) ,wrote that one of the main point for the understanding of the Lina Bo Bardi`s architecture is her relation with the theatre.
With the aim to get a better knowledge and understanding of his thought and work, this article analyze the relation of the architect with the theatre from sixties when her connection with the artist and directors of theater is more intense that led her to work and realize some scenographies and theatrical projects.
Also this article analyze how the different artistic movements related with the theater, both national and international, influenced the thoughts of Lina Bo Bardi and how are identified in the project process and finally in her built architecture.
Esta condición del edificio público monumental del primer racionalismo italiano, heredero de la Antigüedad Romana, fue el elemento extraído por Cabrero de la arquitectura de Libera, con sus propios matices. Interesante será descifrar cada uno de los diálogos ocultos que surgirán entre ambos arquitectos.
Two architects, italian and spanish, Libera and Cabrero, went to the city of Rome. The first one, in order to stay there and to confront himself with the city and the weight of its History. The second one, in order to remember it facing every project along its architectural career. Faced with the same reality, similar answers coexist in two different contexts. Two architectures that locate the idea of monumentality in the public building as an intrinsic concept through two parallel discourses.
This condition of a monumental public building of the first Italian Rationalismo, as heir of the ancient Roman, was the element that was extracted by Cabrero from the Libera’s architecture with his own nuances. It will be interesting if it is possible to decode most of the hidden dialogues that arise between these two architects.
¿Cómo enfrentarse al archivo y catalogación de la ingente obra de un arquitecto? ¿Qué metodología seguir para discriminar los hallazgos y contextualizar obras, publicaciones y proyectos desde diversos prismas: contexto, crítica, práctica, rol, técnica? ¿Cómo dilucidar el significado de la documentación no tanto desde el punto de vista de un documentalista, sino a través de la mirada crítica del arquitecto?
El propósito del artículo es compartir los resultados de la investigación obtenidos durante la organización del Archivo Julio Lafuente, declarado de interés histórico artístico por el Ministerio de Cultura italiano, y la realización del Catálogo inédito de su obra, llevado a cabo por la autora de este artículo.
Julio Lafuente was born in Madrid in 1921. Soon after, his family moved to Paris, where he studied Architecture at the École Nationale des Beaux Arts. once graduated, he established his residence in Rome, where he developed most of his architecture, widely recognised and published between 1950 and 1980. As he is recently deceased, there have been several tributes in the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, the Cervantes Institute in Rome and the Biennale di Venezia 2014, among others.
How should the undertaking of both the archive and catalogue of the work of an architect be faced? What methodology should be followed to feature our findings and contextualize his works, publications and projects from different perspectives: context, critical thinking, practice, role, technique? How to interpret the significance of existing documents, such as drawings, models, plans or photographs, not from a documentary point of view but through the eyes of the architect?
the purpose of this paper is to share the research results obtained through the compilation process of the Archive of Julio Lafuente, declared of historic and artistic interest by the Italian Ministry of Culture and the unpublished Catalogue of his work, non-existent to date, undertaken by the author of this paper.
Este artículo analiza comparadamente un conjunto de modos de entender el paisaje, tanto el natural como el alterado por la acción humana, que se desarrollaron en los Estados Unidos durante las décadas posteriores a la Segunda Guerra Mundial, y del uso que los mismos realizan de determinados tipos de representaciones fotográficas, particularmente de la fotografía aérea, tanto para la comunicación de ideas territoriales como para establecer distancias frente a otras posiciones intelectualmente confrontadas.
Photographic image is now, strengthened by its growing availability, an essential tool for territorial knowledge, analysis and planning. However photography, under its documentary look, does not offer pure information of spatial reality, but a partial, selected and encoded spatial description. The use of pictures, or certain type of pictures, to describe a place is not only an act of filtering information but also a choice of a way of interpreting this place.
This paper analyses comparably a set of ways of understanding landscapes, both natural and man made landscapes, developed in the United States in the decades following World War II, and the use they made of certain types of photographic representations, particularly aerial photography, both for the communication of territorial ideas and to distance themselves from intellectually opposed positions.
The Dutch architect Mart Stam was an outsider of the Modern Movement. Commonly typecast in his role as instigator of the most intransigent hardliners in the rationalist determinism, was nevertheless an original creator, endowed with a particular talent at all scales. His idea of discipline, closer to scientific activity, whose goal is the selfless and anonymous contribution to universal knowledge, was crucial for their participation in some of the most brilliant pages of modernity had been relegated to a testimonial role.
After World War II, many German cities took reconstruction as a necessary response to the serious damage their buildings had suffered. In this context, different restoration criteria that had been formulated in the past were frequently employed causing debates regarding the best way to recover a severely damaged architectural heritage. The Alte Pinakothek in Munich is one example for which different architects raised different solutions, such as the reconstruction of the building in its old shape, therefore erasing the damage caused by war, or its demolition to create a new building according to that moment’s needs. The adopted proposal was the one from the architect Hans Döllgast, with a solution that gave response to its functional needs while respecting the building vaules. This article analyses Döllgast’s reconstruction, pointing out the keys of his creative process and his use of a contemporary language in this architectural restoration, with which he achieved a new architectural addition that coexists with the past architecture. The values contained in the existing building, designed by Leo von Klenze, are deciphered for this purpose, verifying their state of conservation after Döllgast’s intervention.
When designing the Jefferson memorial, eero saarinen reversed Hooke’s technique to determine the ideal shape of an arc. if the latter laid a flexible line in order to obtain the shape that best fit its weight distribution, the former defined first its layout, and sought later the load’s law for which the chosen profile was optimal. Thus, the Gateway Arch does not follow any of the canonical mathematical functions associated with the study of funicular curves, but something called “weighted catenary”. its impure character granted it criticism from both supporters of ideal forms and those who favored a freer approach to the design process. However, its ability to assimilate the principles of mechanics in a flexible way, without losing the formal control of the result, was a constant for postwar modernism, eager to enhance its stylistic repertoire without abandoning rationality; it represents the search for balance between submission to natural or cultural laws, and creative freedom for the author. And failing to be canonical for architectural critics, it certainly became iconic for the general public, the true hallmark of postwar American society.
Until the Civil War, design had been studied by only a few professionals. The greatest advance in this area occurred in the 1950s, due to the efforts of a number of architects like Carlos de Miguel, Luis Feduchi, Javier Carvajal, Antoni Moragas and José Antonio Coderch, among others. They promoted a sequence of initiatives that intended to raise public awareness of the need for “good design”. Among them, a considerable number of exhibitions and competitions were hold, as well as the creation of institutions for industrial design. The boost from the architects was an essential factor for its development. This paper analyzes the important role played by architects in the beginning of the Spanish industrial design.
this article unfolds the analysis of the railway viaduct that crosses the german capital in an eastern-western direction. the aim is to decipher the urban design strategies used in the highl planned Stadtbahn, focusing on the configuration of Berlin’s urban physiognomy through a “well-ordered facade”. thus exposing the morphologically linear construction associated with transport infrastructure, making clear the railway project design as a building-viaduct, imposing its architectural façade’s scenic effects on the surrounding public space. through an in situ survey it is left clear that this building-viaduct, has the ability to break the “curse of border vacuums”, counteracting the destruction of neighboring areas that typically converts the segregated path into a physical and social border route. the intention is to clarify the value that architecture adds to these infrastructures originated as an accurate response to specific problems of time and distance, enlightening a multidisciplinary field which becomes increasingly unavoidable, where the contribution of architects is still very much diffused.
Harnden y Bombelli construirían en Cadaqués nueve casas perfectamente integradas en la arquitectura austera y vernácula del lugar siguiendo los criterios del movimiento moderno. Una de estas fue para la escultora americana amiga de Duchamp, Mary Callery. El artículo analiza esta casa y cómo en ella se aplican los criterios del Arte Concreto, corriente artística a la que estaba afiliado Bombelli.
Peter Harnden and Lanfranco Bombelli were two architects after World War II worked for the government of the United States of America organizing exhibitions to publicize the Marshall Plan from the American Embassy in Paris. After a trip to Madrid in 1956 returning to the French capital they did stop, advised by his friend Coderch, in Cadaqués. In this population he resided Salvador Dali and Marcel Duchamp spent summers who attracted a long list of intellectuals and turning the small town into an arts center artists of the first order. Harnden and Bombelli would build nine houses in Cadaqués perfectly integrated into the vernacular architecture austere place following the criteria of the modern movement. One of these was for the American sculptor friend of Duchamp, Mary Callery. The article analyzes this house as her criteria of Concrete Art artistic movement to which he was affiliated Bombelli apply.
The first decades of the twentieth century started to showcase the postcard rendered by the greatest metropolitan paradigm of the xx century: New York and its skyscrapers. A complete break from the concept of the city known to Europeans. While dystopia has born as criticism in literature form towards the Russian revolution, resulting in sci-fi skyscrapers images that take urbanism planning to new levels. A three-dimensional view of the city that goes beyond the plane emerges, at the same time as when cinema makes the skyscraper a central character of its visual narrative. Progressively, visions of a futuristic, mechanized and alienating society are only possible in a densely verticalized urban area. An accurate image, a visual fiction from 1911 that envisioned how the metropolis of New York would be in the near future. Designed by Moses King and drawn by Richard Rummell, allowing to review the paradigm of city of skyscrapers, and the actual development of the metropolitan phenomenon of verticalization produced by the skyscrapers and the conquest of height.
In a moment of intense activity in the revision of learning spaces,“Timbaler del Bruc” School by Oriol Bohigas and Josep Martorell included advances in school architecture according the new pedagogic necessities and was distinguished as an outstanding work. This research places the school in context, analyzes the building in detail based on original documents and re-drawing plans, and identifies its main values. Although the project was based on previous models, it added particular innovations that contributed to school buildings development and it became a reference for later works of their authors and of other architects.This paper is not only aimed at architecture history researchers, but also at all architects because of the current value of the analysed building.
On analyzing the evolution of the architectural project and building of the row of four summer attached houses designed by Josep Maria Sostres in Torredembarra (1954-57) reveals a deep, critical reflection on the ultimate sense of architecture after Modernism. Starting from the specific site conditions, Sostres builds an exemplary work in which his own modest and wise personality is shown. He dares to go after a synthesis of several formal and spatial keystones developed by the first modernists (i.e. Le Corbusier and GATEPAC Catalonian architects) and other contemporary discoveries (due to Jacobsen in Denmark and to Neutra in California) related to landscape and human values as emerging attributes of the post-war architectural practice. Avoiding International-Style rhetoric gestures and vernacular local building mimesis, a modern architecture subordinated to surrounding Mediterranean landscape is proposed: new forms of living are experimented involving the interior and exterior spaces of every house in the row, considering the presence of the sea nearby and the enjoyment of its garden, in which breeze, shadows, water ponds and vegetal species create a rich experience for human life in open air.
En estos nuevos ámbitos híbridos y borrosos, permanentemente conectados, vivimos mezclando identidades, escalas y mundos, generando prácticas espaciales inéditas de las que somos a la vez productores y consumidores. En ellas resulta fundamental el concepto de interfaz.
Dichas prácticas, relacionadas tanto con la idea de control como con la de fantasmagoría, permiten re-encantar el espacio doméstico y sus objetos a través de la objetivación digital de lo espectral. En esa nueva domesticidad telemática gestionada por interfaces emocionales, la experiencia de lo cotidiano surge de la interacción entre capas paralelas de un espacio-tiempo hecho por igual de presencia y ausencia, de cercanía y distancia, de afectos y de olvido.
The electromagnetic atmosphere that is increasingly permeating the human habitat of 21st century is today one of the great tools of territorial colonization. Implemented through the concept of “coverage”, its raw material is “signal”. “Having coverage” is beginning to be an essential condition of the inhabitable. In the domesticities mediated by this sort of digital ether, privacy is becoming porous; the interior is both interior and exterior, home and city, shelter and outdoor, and is no longer metric and stable but topological and fluid.
In these hybrid and blurred permanently connected environments, we live blending identities, scales and worlds, generating untold spatial practices of which we are both producers and consumers, and where the idea of interface is key.
Such practices, where control and phantasmagoria live together, allow to re-enchant domestic space and objects through the digital objectification of the spectral. In that new telematic domesticity managed by emotional interfaces, the experience of everyday emerges from the interaction between parallel layers of a space-time made equally
En este artículo se abordan algunas de las tendencias que actualmente se perciben en la profesión y su impacto en la formación de los arquitectos. En particular se analiza cómo el modelo tradicional de Taller de Arquitectura está evolucionando hacia nuevos espacios de aprendizaje interdisciplinares, interdependientes e interconectados. También se exponen algunos ejemplos basados en modelos educativos emergentes –Aprendizaje Combinado, Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos Colaborativos, Aprendizaje Digital, Aprendizaje Basado en la Práctica Profesional–. Finalmente se formulan algunas hipótesis sobre el futuro del Taller de Arquitectura.
Nowadays, the professional practice is undergoing changes that are affecting the architects’ work. Architectural studios are reinventing themselves to adapt to new social, technological and productive demands. However, despite the changes that are occurring in the profession, the training of architects in schools continues to focus on educational models that have grown more and more distant from the professional demands. In view of this, schools have been forced to revise their programs in order to develop teaching methods that enable them to adapt to the current situation. Thus, the traditional model of the Design Studio, considered as the core of education in architecture, is undergoing a transformation process.
This essay focuses on some of the driving factors that are currently present in the professional practice and their impact on the training of architects. Especially it analyses how the traditional model of the Design Studio is evolving into new interdisciplinary, interdependent and interconnected learning spaces. It also explains some examples based on emerging educational models –Blended Learning, Collaborative Project-Based Learning, Digital Learning, and Practice-Based Learning–. Finally, some hypotheses about the future of the Design Studio are formulated.
Mastering the resources and tools to access information, especially that available on the internet, is a key issue for researchers in architecture. The use of visual and collaborative curation tools, enables students to organize the vast amount of online data. Moreover, they can drag and collect digital objects, filter web contents and results, thereby avoiding over-reliance on popular search engines. The aim is to enable students to familiarize themselves with an increasingly flexible and open work environment. In short, it is essential for them to incorporate technology, digital tools and online learning activities as key elements of their training, in a radical move away from outdated routines and uses.
Esta dicotomía quedará plasmada en numerosos proyectos que nunca verán la luz. El objetivo del artículo será mostrar, a partir de numerosos proyectos inéditos descubiertos en Valparaíso, cómo la arquitectura pensada para los cerros nunca llegó a construirse y fue dando paso a unas construcciones a medio camino entre lo real y lo imaginario, entre la lógica y el sueño.
Valparaiso is the result of the union of two cities in one: the vertical city of hills and city of Plan horizontal –flat–. This dual nature has been forming a duality forced to live together and establish an ongoing dialogue, ending in most cases conflict. If one side is orthogonal global city as a result of European occupation, on the other hand is the dream city clinging to the cliffs outside any preset order. Each of these two cities will roll out its own architecture: a real, standard, typical of any city outskirts and another impossible. It will be the second that evolves in a continuous attempt to adapt and will place himself in charge of rejecting any construction other than her own.
This dichotomy will be reflected in numerous projects that were never built. The objective of this article is to show, from numerous discovered unpublished projects in Valparaiso, how architecture designed for the hills never built and gave way to a building halfway between the real and the imaginary, between logic and sleep.
En mucha ocasiones sus giros conceptuales pueden observarse como inconexos o discontinuos, incluso contradictorios. Sin embargo, entendemos que se maneja mucho mejor en la ‘controversia’ que en la mera ‘contradicción’.
A través de este texto pretendemos reflexionar sobre sus últimas propuestas conceptuales y comunicativas y determinar cuáles son las continuidades que estructuran el discurso global, proveyendo al mismo de una coherencia mucho más significativa de lo que a priori se podría determinar. Las distintas fases conceptuales presentan una serie de hilos conductores que configuran un todo compacto y, sin embargo, multifacetado.
Rem Koolhaas is a controversial figure, whose manifestations have always a certain ability to anticipate what will be on the table in the architectural subsequent discourse. This gift of opportunity allows him, in a sense, to identify the topics that are going to be studied retrospectively recurrent, or to generate a conceptual flow, projective and even graphic, that lasts much more than his own interest in the specific matter.
In many cases, his conceptual drafts can be seen as disconnected or discontinuous, even contradictory. Nevertheless, we understand that he manages much better in ‘controversy’ than in mere ‘contradiction’.
Across this text we try to think about his last conceptual and communicative proposals and to determine which are the continuities that structure the global speech, providing it of a much more significant coherence thanit could be determined. The different conceptual phases present a series of conductive threads that form a compact whole and yet, multifaceted.
En el artículo se incluye la documentación original conservada en los depósitos de la Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library y Princeton University Library, así como los planos e infografías inéditos, realizados por los autores de este artículo para la reconstitución del proyecto.
La nueva documentación generada adquiere especial relevancia al tratarse de un proyecto que no llegó a construirse y del que existe escasa información. A partir de ella hemos podido analizar la compleja geometría de la cubierta generada a partir de la combinación de paraboloides hiperbólicos que se apoyan sobre una estructura arbórea metálica.
A su vez, en el artículo se estudian las influencias que Candela tuvo por parte de arquitectos como Frei Otto o Emilio Pérez Piñero, que contribuyeron al cambio de rumbo que tomó su arquitectura abandonando sus icónicas estructuras laminares de hormigón para pasar a realizar estructuras metálicas.
The work presented below is part of the results of a research project at ‘Universidad Politécnica de Madrid’. In this paper we analyze the project of the exhibition hall next to the Sport Palace in México. It was designed by Felix Candela in association with Enrique Castañeda and Antonio Peiri in the year 1968.
The original plans made by Félix Candela are included in the research paper. They are stored in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library and in the Princeton University Library. We have also added computer generated images and drawings, which allowed us to analyze the geometry of the project.
The new documents drawn by the authors of the paper are especially important since the project wasn´t built. They allowed us to analyze the complex geometry of the project, which was done using hyperbolic paraboloids on branched pillars.
In the paper we study the influences that Felix Candela had from the architects Frei Otto and Emilio Pérez Piñero. Both of them contributed towards the new direction of Felix Candela’s architecture.
This last year 2015 Frei Otto received the Pritzker Prize. As a tribute to this important architect of the twentieth century this writing searches deeper in The Mannheim Multipurpose Center as a one of the main examples of architecture, solved with the technique of the Grid shell, which is a way to fold an original flat surface made with a wooden net, enough flexible to transform into a undulating surface that could offer a complex and rich space ready to be use. In clear opposition to the well known projects of the Olympic Stadium of Munich or The EEUU pavilion in the International exhibition in Montreal, with this building Frei Otto explores a compression structure that follows the geometry and organization of the nature structures. This field of experimentation and research about the nature structures, is the point in which he focused his work during his whole life in the Institute of Light Structures in Stuttgart. Experimentation with models and photogrammetry techniques to extract reliable data relating to study the surfaces of soap bubbles, as well as studies with thin chains and hanging weights that shape the form of the building, are the main aspects that characterize his work.
Según esta idea se pretende analizar el papel del espacio en la obra del artista vasco Jorge Oteiza (Orio, 1908-San Sebastián, 2003). Para ello nos apoyaremos en varios instrumentos eficaces que permiten entender sus categorías espaciales, tales como el dibujo, la fotografía o el vídeo. Gracias a estos instrumentos, las esculturas, al margen de su valoración particular, adoptan un sentido demostrativo dentro de la obra entendida como un conjunto unitario.
Nos fijaremos en tres maneras de configuración tridimensional del espacio: el espacio modelado, que nos hablará de la acción sobre la masa, el espacio tallado, que perforando la masa busca crear un vínculo entre dos ámbitos separados, y el espacio plegado que conseguirá condensar un vacío cuando envuelva a la materia suprimida.
Estos mecanismos de análisis nos han permitido resaltar varios encuentros espaciales –topografías, ventanas y ausencias– con los que intentaremos justificar la pertinencia de las ideas espaciales experimentadas por Oteiza, haciendo posible una relectura crítica de su obra.
Sculpture, because of its material and temporal immediacy of execution, has been capable of investigating more quickly the parameters that govern spatial reality and its perception than architecture has.
As this idea, our goal is to analyse the role of space in the work of the Basque artist Jorge Oteiza (Orio, 1908-San Sebastián, 2003). In order to that, we base our work principally on several efficient tools that make it possible to understand his spatial categories such as drawing, photography or video. Thanks these tools, the sculptures, apart from their individual assessment, take on a demonstrative meaning within the work taken as a whole.
We focus on three methods of three-dimensional configuration of space: moulded space, which speaks to us about action on mass; carved space, which seeks to create a link between two separate environments by perforating mass; and folded space, which condenses emptiness when it surrounds the matter suppressed.
This system of analise makes it possible for us to extract several spatial discoveries –topographies, windows and absences– that is how we intend to justify the pertinence of spatial ideas experienced by Oteizas, making possible a critical rereading of his work.
To study the architectural practice of the last twenty-five years can generate a sensation of cultural uneasiness caused by the erosion of the discipline foundations in three basic lines: subjectivism in the aesthetic one, cultural relativism –otherness of theory and absence of critic– and engineering like true architecture. The vindication of Hays and Eisenman of the concept of formal autonomy in architecture, introduced a systematic and abusive use of arbitrariness and ambiguity, reinforcing the hermeticism of theory initiated towards 1968, returning it systematically cryptic and unaware of concepts with social thickness and generating an anti-intellectual and anti-theoretical attitude. The increasing schism between theory and practice is today paradoxically reinforced by the Post-Critic revision, by avoiding leaving the hermetic slang that criticizes. Theory, ruled by a metaphysical `discursive autonomy' with an existence of its own and by the shift of the reflection from the everyday architecture to its exclusive entailment with `great architecture', has thus become extemporaneous and demands new styles, formats and models of practice by means of a necessary recons- truction so that it can become a creative field that returns to engage in an alive dialogue with history and the practice of the architecture.
This paper discusses about the implications that had the introduction of the hammock in the Gideon's book Mechanization Takes Command, as part of the develop- ment of modern home furnishings. Under the assumption that this tropical artifact was the key not only for Giedion characterization for modern domesticity, but also for the introduction of a lifestyle characterized by flexibility, mobility and life outdoor. Continuities between an ‘anonymous’ object like that, and the sphere of modern design, where also have functioned as a medium through which to restore the unity between thought and feeling, as well as uncertainties that produced the postwar on the role of technique.
Could we read architectural spaces in a synaesthetic way? With names or senses different from the expected ones? What would happen? Reading spaces from this perspective has to do, both, with questioning the need of names and forgetting the sense of them as hermetic containers. Against the ‘exaggerated’ or ‘absolute’ nominalism that relates uniquely names and objects, spaces and uses –certain stimulus with certain senses–, it emerges an understanding of architecture where spaces and places can be defined in a more indeterminate, unexpected and changing way. The ‘preservation of Turó de la Rovira’s peaks’ in Barcelona, by Jansana-Villa-de Paauw and AAUP architecture studios, represents an interesting case of this procedure that deals with infinitesimal deviations followed by huge results.
After its sixty anniversary (and in spite of the fact that its architecture was left unprotected till the early 90s), the Secondary Modern School in Hunstanton by A+P Smithson remains as a perfect example of modernity in its own photogenic appearance. From the very moment it was built (1949-1953) till now, the dialectics formulated by its skin has been able to integrate into the landscape, as well as reconcile the functionality of their teaching program with it. The success of the language used in its different facades lies in the compositional rigor of mathematics taken to the extreme. The repetition as a projectual mechanism –both its constructive elements and the few necessary detail– makes this architecture an abstract entity, allowing dematerialize the perception of its large size. At the same time, each facade shares the ambiguity which is implied in combining simultaneously the visual permeability and the reflexes which are able to camouflage the interior. Variables as “velocity” and “approach” with which the covering is perceived –both from the inside and from the outside– make possible a game of gazes from this duality that resembles the facade elements as a “cinematographic frame”. Consequently, and placing this in the context of the inauguration of the building, Secondary Modern School in Hunstanton reminds the Free Cinema Movement.
Niels Bohr´s guest house was the first building by the Danish architect Vilhelm Wohlert (1920-2007). Rooted into the Danish tradition, represents a renewal based on absorption of foreign influences: American architecture and Japanese tradition.
The wood box has the responsive character of a living organism, which is always changing according to variation in daylight or temperature. Folding doors and shutters generate extensions of the rooms. When they are opened, they create a prolongation of the interior space, which spreads out to the surrounding nature, and expands to the exterior space, allowing its mobilization. An architecture of flows is set.
It performs an example of the modernity as the refinement in the technique of boundaries and the idea that architecture is not a material object but the space generated inside. It could be seen as an ikebana, the Japanese art of flowers; “the art of space” where is produced a circulation of air between its components; something alive that expresses the third dimension, the asymmetrical balance, an interest for the material, its texture and the emotional effect that emanates. There are harmony and balance, which transmit serenity and beauty; an encounter with nature; a world of relationships gentle to human beings.
The sublime appears to be a diluted and missing concept in the present times, as it doesn´t show up with the force it used to have in other times. This essay es part of a study that presents a journey through diferent moments of reflection about the sublime –and concepts related to it– as aesthetic quality and as a detonator of a certain spectrum of effects, in order to conform a perspective that allows to observe in which range this concept is still present as an influence in aesthetics, but beyond all, in the field of contemporary architecture. This pretends to encourage the critical reflection about the importance and validity of the concept as an aesthetic category that is not univalent, but of mayor amplitude and dynamism, because it admits pleasure and not pleasant effects. Sublimity offers a kind of flexible thought that is suitable to our times, in where indeterminacy and openess are part of the complexity to face.
For the surrealists, the manifestation of the sublime aspects of reality requires the simultaneous presence of the paradigm and its deformation, of the stable form and its fracture. Such paradigm could be language –guarantor of semantic coherence through syntactically structure–, the frame –the mechanism that differentiates reality from its representation– or the anatomical structure of the body –the sustaining mechanism of the organic or, at least, its representation.
In an improbable however undeniable coincidence with surrealism, Le Corbusier benefits from the latent conflicts that lie beneath the surface of appearances to build a more ambitious discourse than the one of reason, overlapping conflicting instruments and strategies. And the surrealist sensibility that pervades the experience of the city of Paris in the post-war years offers him the resources to integrate conflict within the discourse of architecture as the improbable and unexpected connections between “more or less distant realities”.
Every plan is related with the concept of microcosm, as the fact of representing the world over a limited surface automatically folds into a telescopic dimension and reminds the idea of a bigger one than contents it. The essay traces several kindred artistic episodes, from different scales and by the metaphorical statement of involving the world, have developed the notion of art as ideas, the active role of the beholder, the potentiality of seeds, or the suggestion of ready-mades, and allow us to register some correlations with certain creations on territory or certain essential matters of architectural projects, like some land-art works or some questions about architecture, as projects, in both senses of zoom, recognize the world in condensation or expansion.
Due to various housing development policies, specifically generated from the Commissioner for Urban in Madrid in the early 50s and especially since the addition of the director Julian Laguna in 1954-1958, construction activity recovers to levels years prior to the civil war. Especially in the case of Madrid, the priority was to transform indiscriminate precarious settlements in homes with quality residential hygienist. Young architects, as Saenz de Oíza, L.Cubillo, Romany, M.Fisac, FJCarvajal, among others, who in their proposals will reflect a new culture and a new openness attitude critical experimentation favored by a state regulatory framework for progress. Half a century later, we review its history and recognize its architectural value in its current transformed state. Besides being a typological progress in response to a change in the regulatory requirements of neighborhood organization, the selection of the models presented, provided modern solutions in the composition of facades with extensive and experimental laboratory of details, some of which are represented graphically for the current investigation , for the first time.
The Foundation Course (Grundlehre) of the Hochschule für Gestaltung was one the departments in which the preliminary educational program on the first course of the german architecture and design school was organized. During its existente, the Foundation Course experienced an evolution not only on its pedagogical approach oriented by its contribution to the achievement of the social aims of the school. Training went through the experience from the inutitive processes in the beginning to the time when the methodological approach ruled the pedagogy. The Grundlehre appeared as a continuation of the Bauhaus’ Vorkurs and was dissolved and integrated as a part of each Department during the 1960/61 course. The leading professors and their different approach to design were who stabished the evolution of the Foundation Course. This article offers a tour through the HfG’s basic training in order to identify in which moments the true preparation nature is found; the optimal training for the future HfG’s formgeber to develope their design activity at the Departments.
This article belongs to the PhD investigation “On the Concept of Contingency in Architecture. Destabilizing affinities architectural object” currently under development at the Architectural Design Department of the ETSAM. The PhD thesis is co-directed by Federico Soriano and Pedro Urzaiz. It is an investigation whose last wish is to give an answer to the question whether there is in contemporary architecture a project methodology capable of giving effective response –formal, programmatic, structural, communicative– to the uncertainty of the environment in which forms are placed. Based on the conviction that Modern architecture was built on a willingness to suspend contingency and that it prevented it giving effective responses to unstable environments, environments that contemporary architecture has assumed as an intrinsic condition in the definition of models of reality. So this approach is started, personal and accurate, to build a definition of contingency in architecture based on relevant position taking by three authors about the role of uncertainty in the definition of operational environments (both architectural or applied to architecture).
Iniciada con la reforma de estado, la implementación de estructuras espaciales occidentales, doctrinas políticas y sociales, así como nuevas prácticas en la vida diaria, se convierte durante la era siguiente en un arma ideológica para crear un nuevo “moderno Japón”. En lo doméstico, la clave de la “modernización” reside en cambiar, no simplemente un conjunto de artefactos, sino un sistema de comportamiento –fenómeno denominado wayō setchū–, a través de fusionar dos formas de vida: hecho que conlleva una multiplicidad de prácticas espaciales y corporales, una división conceptual de los espacios y un desdoblamiento de la identidad del hábitat (TEASLEY, 2001).
Dentro del nuevo sistema de objetos que colonizan el espacio doméstico de forma repentina, la protagonista indiscutible es la silla, cuya introducción desencadena, entre otros, un cambio en los hábitos corporales, en el plano visual del usuario, en la percepción sensitiva y afectiva del sistema de objetos, así como en el protagonismo del mueble en la configuración del espacio.
The most drastic period in the development of the Japanese domestic space is designated with the term wakonyousai –literally, Japanese-spirit/Western-style– and spans from late Edo to the early Meiji Period.
The implementation of western spatial structures, political and social doctrines, as well as new routines in everyday life, initiated with the Meiji restoration, becomes during the next years an ideological weapon to create a new “modern Japan”. In reference to the domestic space, the key of “modernization” lies in changing not only a set of household artifacts, but a whole system of behavior –a phenomenon called wayō setchū,– by merging two different forms of life, which leads to a multiplicity of spatial and corporeal practices, to a conceptual division of space, and to a split in the identity of the habitat (TEASLEY, 2001).
As part of the new system of objects to suddenly colonize the domestic space, the chair is the unquestionable protagonist. Its appearance induced, among others, a change in the corporal habits, in the visual plane of the user, in the sensory and emotional perception of the system of objects, and in the role furniture plays in the overall space configuration.
Los primeros años de frenética actividad dan paso a un periodo de voluntario alejamiento de la práctica profesional de la arquitectura: ni una sola obra, ni un solo proyecto durante cerca de 15 años. Tan solo su actividad docente le mantiene en contacto con el mundo de la arquitectura.
Cuando Juan O’Gorman vuelve a ejercer como arquitecto, lo hace construyendo algunos de los iconos del movimiento de integración plástica de México: la biblioteca central de la UNAM y su casa en San Jerónimo.
A pesar de las enormes diferencias, o más bien oposiciones, entre unos momentos y otros, puede identificarse una invariante clara como señal de identidad personal: una velada voluntad de no ser arquitecto.
Juan O’Gorman’s projects built along his life outline a long and syncopated itinerary between opposing ways of understanding architecture. His first period of radical rationalism develops through a strictly technical method a revolutionary language based upon austerity and accuracy. In spite of it many of his works stand out by the beauty of its volumes, the spatial richness or even by the creation of oneiric atmospheres.
The first years of hectic activity make way for a period of volunteer abstinence in professional practice of architecture: not a single construction, not a single project for about 15 years. His teaching activities are his only link with architecture.
By the time Juan O’Gorman gets back to professional exercise of architecture he builds some of the Mexican plastic art integration movement icons: central library of UNAM and his own house in San Jerónimo.
Despite the enormous disparity, or rather opposition, between different periods a clear constant can be recognized as a personal identity mark: a hidden will of not being an architect.
Esta aproximación permite obtener y reforzar algunas conclusiones sobre cómo Le Corbusier propagó su mensaje. Inicialmente pretendió mostrarse más como pionero del nuevo urbanismo que como arquitecto de villas contemporáneas, aunque finalmente los medios prefirieron estas últimas. Los peticionarios eran variados e internacionales, y manifestaban gran devoción por el mensaje moderno. Fue solicitado por la vanguardia pero también por publicaciones populares en las que puso un interés continuado. No improvisaba y montó un sistema de gestión específico para no dejar las fotografías en manos de los editores. El volumen de recursos manejado demuestra que Le Corbusier asignó un papel destacado a la imagen en la difusión de su pensamiento. Todas estas actuaciones corroboran el carácter moderno de los métodos “corbuserianos” como el control, la propaganda o la internacionalización.
This paper wants to analyze the diffusion that Le Corbusier made of his own work by sending photographs to editorials: relationships with publishers, preferred issues, pictures management. Although the formal analysis of the images is not intended, we can see some conceptual options in its issue, such as personal control over them, good knowledge of files, the relationships with professional photographers or the indications to them.
This research reinforces some conclusions about how Le Corbusier spread his message. He preferred to be known as a pioneer of new urbanism, rather than an architect of contemporary villas. But the media were more interested in their houses. The petitioners were varied and international, and expressed great devotion to the message of modernity. He was requested by the avant-garde but also by popular publications and new instituciones like industrial museums. He did not improvise and set up a specific management system to not let the pictures in the hands of publishers. The volume of files shows how the image control had a predominant role in the diffusion of Le Corbusier’s architectural work. All these actions confirm the modern methods that he used, like control, propaganda and internationalization.
In the small guest house projected and built in 1992 by Glenn Murcutt not too far –but not too close– from his own house in Kempsey, Australia, the Australian architect achieves to get closer than ever to that archetype around which a significant share of his architecture orbits. In the hut in Kempsey, Murcutt is as well able to combine, in an endless mirror game, the mythical with the popular, the primitive with the latest technologies, past and present, transcendentalism with pragmatism, in an architecture that, keeping a safe distance with the nature into which it is located, is at the same time able to coexist with it from its deep understanding and respect.
Una mirada a los debates generados en torno a la transición de la arquitectura moderna hacia la postmodernidad, de la manera que fueron vistos por esta autora desde Latinoamérica, y que, gracias a la intensa carrera académica y editorial que mantuvo, contaron con un alto grado de difusión a nivel iberoamericano.
This article focuses on various articles published in the 1980s and 1990s by the argentinain architectural critique, Waisman Marina, one of the most influential authors of architectural criticism in Latin America in the second half of the twentieth century. This paper claims to reconstructs some critical readings of “Latin American architecture” published in some Latin American architectural means, which claimed the existence of a “Latin Americanness” in its architecture, and doing so, she established an interesting dialogue between the notion of “identity” and contemporary debate about “critical regionalism”, led Kenneth Frampton in the 1980s.
A look at the main architectural debates generated in the transition from modern to postmodern architecture, the way they were seen by Marina Waisman from Latin America, which due to intense academic and publishing career she held, benefited from a high degree of dissemination in Ibero-America.
Access by corridor, is an architectural principle that has been used in modern residential projects, whose possibilities have been developed by european criticism of the twentieth century. The corridor is a linear element that runs sequentially and facilitates transitions between housing and city. The hypothesis of the article is to reveal new possibilities explored by Bonet, by placing the corridor on the ground floor of buildings, and linking to higher order urban structures, through the analysis of four proposals of Bonet’s Spanish period: apartments “Madrid”, Salou (Tarragona) 1961; hexagonal Set, La Manga del Mar Menor (Murcia) 1963; “Babilonia” building, La Manga del Mar Menor (Murcia) 1965; worker’s dwellings at Hifrensa settlement, L’Hospitalet de l’Infant (Tarragona) 1967. The Works studied, are part of an urban plan. The scope of the corridor beyond the limits of the buildings. In Bonet’s work no clear distinction can be seen separating architecture and urbanism.
The tea house is an example of architecture created to be perceived by all the senses. Its scope is the next space, where all things are at hand. It speaks of man and nature and the relationship between them.
A first approach to the reflections of Rem Koolhaas about the tower typology leads us to New York skyscraper, which is the perfect metaphor for “automonument”: a monumentalized construction essentially designed to reaffirm its mere presence, which can be distinguished from the rest by its height. The legend of the Tower of Babel is an unwavering symbol of the building construction at heights, which dramatizes a full story of erection and destruction that is inevitably linked to Rem Koolhaas critical thinking about the discredited typology of the tower. A reading through the different “Babel” definitions catalogued by Rem Koolhaas and included in the glossary of terms in the text SMLXL provides a discourse on the destruction of the biblical tower and the subsequent construction of the Koolhaasian New Babel, which begins its journey with skyscrapers and ends up claiming a new way of monumentality: absence in its purest form represented by the wall, which is the ultimate example of absence and the highest way of represent the monumental presence. That critical view begins with the Metropolitan Tower and the New Babel and finishes with the wall and the monument to the void.
El artículo ofrece una perspectiva comparada de la naturaleza de esos conjuntos residenciales modernos construidos a ambos lados del Telón de Acero –Housing Estates en UK, Grands Ensembles en Francia, Großsiedlungen en Alemania, Polígonos en España o los grandes conjuntos residenciales socialistas en los países del Bloque del Este– con el fin de entender mejor si –y hasta qué punto– las formas urbanas de dichos conjuntos son el resultado de la cultura internacional del urbanismo moderno.
The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast modernist housing projects in Western (“capitalist”) and Eastern (“socialist“) cities of Europe. Our focus is on mass housing estates built in the period of accelerated urban growth that took place mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. The obvious starting point is that socialist cities were different from Western cities because of the distinct nature of their urban policies, the centrally socialist planned economy, the absence of a free land market, the impact of industrialization on building construction, etc. However, there are many concepts in urban planning and design as well as urban processes which were shared by both ideological systems and which housing estates from that period show.
This paper offers a comparative perspective of the nature of some of those Modern Housing Estates (or Housing Projects) built on both sides of the Iron Curtain – Grands Ensembles in France, Großsiedlungen in Germany, Polígonos in Spain or large-scale Socialist Housing Estates equivalents in Eastern bloc countries– in order to better understand if (and up to what point) mass housing forms are the result of a modernist international urban culture.
Ernesto Nathan Rogers was not only a great architect committed to his time, but a theorist and teacher who influenced many young architects that were forming in the 50s and 60s. this article examines the influence that Rogers´s theoretical corpus left on three outstanding students: Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, and as this thought was present at the conception of his first and principal work: the National Schools of Art in Havana.
El hammam del Baño del Palacio de Comares, también conocido como Baño Real por haber sido de uso particular de los Reyes Católicos, se remonta a la época de Yusuf I (1333-1354). El Baño Real o de Comares constituye uno de los espacios de mayor interés dentro del conjunto de la Alhambra, con uno de los hammam en mejor estado de conservación hasta la fecha en Occidente, prácticamente íntegro a pesar de algunas modificaciones estructurales y un mantenimiento más testimonial que funcional.
Podríamos asumir que el baño del Palacio de Comares se experimenta desde una doble estrategia: la del estatismo del baño como espacio consolidado y no cambiante, relacionado por su masa y la condición original de la tierra de la que surge y sobre la que se asienta, que se infunde de vida al ser intervenida por la luz escenográfica del filtro de sus bóvedas; y la del movimiento establecido, del recorrido del visitante en el marco permanente de la masa continua en la que se perforan los huecos que enlazan con el exterior.
Islamic culture has produced spatial solutions of huge architectural heritage and aesthetic refinement, although not necessarily material. The bath or hammam is most probably one of the most unique. Using the guidelines established by the Romans, these baths became fundamental places for social life in Islamic culture. Some noteworthy examples can be found in Spain: the 10th century Baths of Ali in Jaén, the 11th century Bañuelo of the Albaicín in Granada, or the most representative of them all, the Royal Bath of the Comares Palace in the fortress of the Alhambra, built in the 14th century. They are all characterized by light shining in through the perforated domes. These not only performed the functional task of letting in daylight and regulating the temperature and amount of vapour, but they also transformed the space completely by means of the manipulation of light and shadows, making the rooms very culturally characteristic of their places of origin.
The hammam at the Comares Palace, also known as the Royal Bath as it was reserved for the personal use of the Catholic Kings, dates back to the time of Yusuf I (1333-1354). The Bath of Comares is one of the main points of interest within the whole site of the Alhambra and it is one of the best preserved hammams in the Western world, despite some structural modifications and maintenance that were more symbolic than functional.
We could assume that the Bath at the Comares Palace can be experienced from a dual perspective. The first is that of the static nature of the bath as a consolidated and unchanging space. This is related to its original form –the earth from which it emerges and on which it sits with its great mass, being infused with life whenever a scenographic light operates through the filters of the vaults. The second perspective is that of the movement traced by the visitor within the frame of the continuous mass, in which the holes link the inside to the outside.
The second half of the 60s, that convulsed generator experiences long revisited period, also witnessed a curious phenomenon in Italy that, linked to the American booming nightlife and an intense climate of social emancipation, use these new “fun palaces” as a source of ideological inspiration when perceived among young Italian radical architects and designers as a stylistic and functional experimental laboratory capable of generating models for a new social order linked to entertainment. The fruitful intensity of these years resulting multitude of proposals in which architecture acts as a catalyst for a social drive that mixes in the same space the most radical cultural and experimental art with mass phenomenon in the society of the spectacle, allowing leisure industry occupy without complexes a key position in the discourse of a new generation who intentionally transfers it’s interest from the built form to the production of electronically amplified artificial environments while demonstrating its commitment to the methods and logic of new technologies.
The text explores the Erwin Broner’s first approach to the island of Ibiza in 1934. It inquires into the reasons that led the German architect to fall in love with this place to the extent of settling there and build his own home after traveling around the world. Therefore, the text is mainly based on two pillars: first, on the biographical data of the German architect and, secondly, on the particularities of Ibiza, an unknown and magnetic place for artistsww and intellectuals in early century. Thus, regarding Broner, it is believed that it is fundamental figure to understand the phenomenon of educated migration experienced last century, being undoubtedly a pioneer and mirror for many others. And in respect for the place, Ibiza and its popular architecture –beyond its own rich history– played a key role in the development and evolution of the discipline, embodying the Mediterranean ideal adopted in the early thirties by modern architecture. This reflection is expected to address the key factors that led Erwin Broner to develop on the island in the fifties and sixties a so fascinating architecture , of a opened modern sign, but considerate and sensitive about the special natural and built heritage place.
The recreation of the trip made by the sculptor Jorge Oteiza from Irún to the Brussels Universal Exposition (Belgium, 1958) makes it possible to know the architecture he visited, which are listed in the documentary material available in his archive. The aim is to determine the influence that those architectonical experiences represented in his thinkings and projects. The way of integrating art and architecture that Oteiza defends, pointing out the example of the Pavilion of Finland by Reima Pietilä; but he rejects pavilions based on boastful structures (French pavilion) or those built on the idea of total transparency (German pavilion), as well as the artistic montages shown on the basis of lights, sounds and movement. It is also established the direct influence that the Pavilion of Austria, by Karl Schwanzer, had on the architectonical project he was developing at that time with the architect Roberto Puig for the Monument to Batlle in Montevideo. By this, it is confirmed the existing link between Oteiza and the architecture during the 50’s, not only as a collaborator but as a creator since he developed creative sculptural and architectural projects based on those issues and architectonic references discovered in his trip to the Expo’58.
La invención del hormigón armado a mediados del siglo XIX supuso el mayor avance tecnológico y económico de la arquitectura, generando por primera vez una industria especializada y a gran escala que desarrollaba sistemas de construcción basados, primero en ensayos y posteriormente en profundos estudios científicos. Los inventos de sistemas estructurales basados en el hormigón armado se protegieron celosamente mediante patentes que garantizaban a sus creadores importantes ingresos económicos a nivel mundial. En las dos primeras décadas del siglo XX aparecieron las primeras normativas nacionales con el fin de evitar el monopolio de las grandes empresas constructoras, liberando los sistemas estructurales y dando paso a los proyectistas.
The development of the architecture in the 20th century cannot be understood aside from the evolution of the construction technologies as well as the structural systems. The Industrial Revolution, specially over the second period, was a time of significant technological discoveries and great social changes which triggered the transformation of the cities and the starting of new ways of building to meet the new social and industrial needs. It was also then when new techniques improved the habitability of the buildings.
The invention of concrete in the middle of the 20th century was the most relevant advance in terms of technology and economy of the architecture. This generated a specialized and great-scaled industry that was able to develop building systems based first on trials and later on sound scientific studies. The inventions of structural systems based on the use of concrete were zealously protected by patents that provided great revenues to its creators all over the world. Along the first two decades of the 20th century the first national legislations were passed by the different governments in order to avoid the big building companies monopoly, liberating the structural systems and making way for the designers.
A reading of the architectural environment in atmospheric terms is proposed in this essay. It will approach space as a matter that inadvertently penetrates the objects and assemblages present in our daily lives, as important for the qualification of our environment as traditional, solid and visible architecture. We live immersed in an aerial environment saturated by substances and forces that form a vast ocean of chemicals, energy and information. Such medium is certainly not just ‘air’, at least not in a traditional sense. It is animated air. Therefore the concept of ether will be used in order to analyze this complex, active and largely artificial medium. It will be examined from different points of view, as a historic scientific model and a cultural construction whose meaning has been transferred to numerous areas of material production, also enhancing our perceptive imagination. Ether can shed some light in describing those technical and cultural processes that will probably play a key role in the forthcoming architectural practice.
El artículo propone una visión transversal de la fotografía de Shulman y establece lazos entre su obra y la tensión política que se respiraba en los Estados Unidos de la Guerra Fría. Gracias a las “escenas” capturadas en sus fotografías, la arquitectura moderna californiana quedaría por siempre asociada al contexto creado por el fotógrafo, dando lugar a imágenes que el tiempo ha elevado a la categoría de iconos culturales del siglo XX. Como la arquitectura que retrataba, la fotografía se convirtió en una exaltación de la modernidad entendida como una nueva era de bienestar, prosperidad y progreso.
Julius Shulman was primarily responsible for being the graphic chronicler of modernist architecture in Southern California. Aware of how difficult making the public see the beauty of these buildings could be, Shulman developed his own language, which was characterized by a strong theatrical sense which resulted in a mixture between classical architectural photography and contemporary advertising inspired in pop culture in which the placement of furniture at strategic intervals, lighting, models’ attitude and vegetation were carefully studied in order to guide the eye of the viewer into the architecture and its derived lifestyle.
The article proposes a cross-disciplinary view of Shulman photography and establishes links between his work and the political tension that was present in the United States of the Cold War. Thanks to the “scenes” captured in his photographs, Southern California mid-century modernist architecture would forever be associated with the context created by the photographer, resulting in images that time has elevated to the status of cultural icons of the twentieth century. As the architecture he photographed, his images became a celebration of modernism understood as a new era of welfare, prosperity and progress.
En los dos ejemplos, el esqueleto estructural se muestra en el exterior con toda su potencia, dándole la dignidad arquitectónica que se merece, y le libera de la función. Livio Vacchini coloca la estructura en el ámbito del concepto del proyecto y asume la composición formal del edificio. Es el elemento primario y está privado de cualquier elemento predominante, presenta una forma ideal dentro de un conjunto mayor, la repetición ordenada de la pieza le da un carácter monumental desde el exterior. Mientras, en su interior, la escala humana se establece a través del Modulor de Le Corbusier y cada una de sus piezas tiene una adecuada proporción en sí misma.
The boundary between both inner and outer emptiness is the strength of the architecture of Livio Vacchini. This limit is about structure, thickness and the detail that makes evident with light. A limit that seems to reflect his principles, rules and construction techniques, that vary depending on the public or private nature of the work. The comparison between two of his projects, Vacchini’s House in Costa Tenero and Multifunctional Gymnasium in Losone, leads to show the work and though of Vacchini and how he approaches the project depending on the typology of the work.
In both examples, the structural skeleton is shown on the outside at its best, enabling the architectural dignity deserved and setting it free from its function. Livio Vacchini places the structure within the scope of the project concept and assumes the formal composition of the building. It is the primary element and the lack of any predominant element, that presents an ideal form within a higher set, the orderly repetition of the piece gives a monumental character from the outside. Meanwhile, inside, the human scale is set through the Modulor of Le Corbusier with each of its pieces having a proper proportion itself.
The aim of this paper is to establish a historical line from the first architectural application of structural elements made of industrial iron for roofs and multi-storey buildings to the first application of portal frame in a multi-storey building. With this in mind, the Crystal Palace built for the 1851 Great Exhibition held in London is revealed as the point of inflexion in the transition from metallic lattice typology, which is stabilized by perimeter masonry walls, to modern portal frame applied to the multi-storey building. Historical connections are detected in this transition giving value to some buildings which have remained on the side lines of the conventional architectural historiography. We can therefore expand on the traditional historical focus of the achievements of the Chicago School, highlighting and historically connecting prior events.
Esta actitud global y contemporánea aúna los esfuerzos de ingenieros, biólogos, urbanistas, estudiantes y, sobre todo, ciudadanos para recuperar la condición lacustre de la metrópoli mexicana a través de cuatro estrategias: agua, territorio, energía y espacios públicos. Este proyecto global trata de generar un nuevo sistema de lagos alimentados por las aguas residuales que se producen en la capital y busca dar solución al problema presente. Si el hombre es el causante de la de la degradación del ecosistema natural de la Ciudad de México, también el hombre puede revertir esta situación e iniciar una nueva era que tenga por bandera: la ciudad, la vida y la naturaleza.
El presente texto propone una exploración crítica sobre la trascendencia de este proyecto territorial –en particular– para deducir –en general– que la reversibilidad antropógena de los hechos urbanos es la estrategia sostenible de la ciudad del tercer milenio.
The collective Mexico: Future City proposes an understanding of the city as great work of thought in which the system land formed by biological and human components, auto-regula and the complex interactions between these components have a variability of multiple scales between territorial and anthropomorphic.
This global and contemporary attitude links the efforts of engineers, biologists, town planners, students and especially, citizens, to recover the lacustrine condition of the metropolis, across four strategies: water, territory, energy and public spaces. This global project tries to generate a new system of lakes fed by the waste water that take place in the capital and seeks to give solution to the problem.
If the man is the causer of that of the degradation of the natural ecosystem of the Mexico City, also the man can revert this situation and initiate a new age that it takes as a flag: the art, the city, the life and the nature. The present text proposes a critical exploration on the transcendence of this project - in articulating - to deduce that the reversibility of the urban facts is the sustainable strategy of the city of the third millennium.
Las bóvedas prefabricadas de ladrillo han seguido empleándose con cierta frecuencia en Latinoamérica, aunque todavía son, especialmente desde el punto de vista académico, un terreno casi desconocido. Probablemente esto se deba a la larga sombra que proyecta sobre ellas otro sistema, de apariencia similar, que se desarrolló de forma simultánea y en las mismas zonas: el de la cerámica armada, cuyos más conocidos exponentes son los trabajos de Eladio Dieste. Las notas siguientes pretenden esbozar una historia de estas bóvedas prefabricadas, y reivindicar su puesta en valor.
The use of prefabricated brick vaults was a constant in Latin American construction during the decades of the 60s and 70s of last century. Two main ideas concurred in these vaults. On the one side, one of the great passions of those years, prefabricated construction, an ideal as far as it could ensure streamlined and mechanized production. On the other, light brick vaulting, which, despite being, essentially, a traditional construction system, had several advantages that could be claimed, from the perspective of those years, with a cause: low economic cost, ease of production and moderate energy consumption.
Prefabricated brick vaults have continued being used quite often in Latin America, although they are still, particularly from an academic point of view, an almost unknown field. Probably this is due to the long shadow cast over them by another construction system, similar in appearance and developed simultaneously and in the same areas: reinforced ceramic, whose best-known exponents are those built by Eladio Dieste. The following notes are intended to outline a history of these prefabricated vaults and, whenever possible, to vindicate their value.
La arquitectura de Loos incorpora dos rasgos del espíritu moderno: el dinamismo y la simultaneidad. Loos organiza los espacios de sus viviendas con una fuerte teatralidad. La casa se hace con una suma de escenarios simultáneos puestos en relación por juegos de escaleras múltiples y aperturas visuales. La acción de subir o bajar una escalera introduce el dinamismo del que prescindía la casa burguesa del siglo XIX. Las piezas, situadas como pequeños escenarios, convierten a sus habitantes en instantáneos actores de lo cotidiano.
In Das Passagen-Werk, Walter Benjamin uses the awakening metaphor to explain the entry into modernity of the bourgeois society in nineteenth-century. And he indicates the Marcel Proust work as a preferential example of this change. In architecture, Adolf Loos plays a similar role to Proust in literature: he eliminates darkness and symbolism from the interior of bourgeois houses.
Loos’s architecture incorporates two traits of modern spirit: dynamism and simultaneousness. Loos organizes the spaces of his dwellings with a strong theatricality. The house is the sum of simultaneous stages related by multiple sets of stairs and visual openings. The action of going up or down a stair introduces the missing dynamism in bourgeois dwellings of nineteenth-century. The rooms, situated as small stages, transform their inhabitants in instantaneous actors of day-to-day life.
In 1949 the French minister Eugène Claudius Petit visited Jean Prouvé’s workshops in Maxeville. Then, the Department of Reconstruction and Urbanism (M.R.U.) entrusted Prouvé with the planning and development of light construction houses for series production, which price did not have to overcome the price of a simple house of the outskirts built in the traditional way. The Ministry promised to buy 25 houses of this type and tried to demonstrate that light construction could be a fast and economic procedure to finish the shortage of housings in the postwar period. Finally, only 14 of these houses were built in Meudon, in the outskirts of Paris. His innovative project, and the commitment and dedication of his author, turned them into a model of prefabrication applied to the design and into real works of art that today still can be admired.
With its emphasis on the reciprocal influences between disciplines, as well as on the role attributed to the human senses in the perception of space, contemporary studies on inhabited “atmospheres” have a precedent barely mentioned in the relevant historiography: fin-de-siècle architecture. In France at the close of the 19th century, synaesthesia became a fashionable subject that, coming from the new psychological aesthetics, soon exceeded its original limits to reach architecture, while in Germany, the romantic notion of Gesamtkunstwerk found in Wagner performances a new realm for the arts to collaborate in and produce amazing, dreamlike ambiences. In parallel, synaesthetic perception became the leitmotiv of installations conceived for the multi-sensory enjoyment of the members of an incipient mass culture, giving rise to architectures that were technically sophisticated but also playful: buildings for international fairs. Synaesthetic atmospheres for flâneurs, Wagnerians, and crowds were the seed of the electroacoustic pavilions by Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis, or Charles and Ray Eames, as well as of atmospheric integration of the arts of the kind that we would see in Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, and many of the 1950s and 1950s avant-gardes.
Alejandro de la Sota often explains his interest in the family house as circumstantial exercise: the opportunity to explore the boundaries of new materials and construction systems. The experimental commitment to domestic exercises is the common ground of projects and works from different periods. The single family house is presented as an excellent instrument for this purpose: the “small” work minimizes the investment risk in a scenario of uncertainty and at the same time time, it’s a 1:1 scale prototype for the later development of bigger building (larger area and more floors), but with similar technical requests: resistance , watertightness, insulation, climate control, sunscreen, etc.. The article attempts to identify a number of interferences and contradictions between the “heroic” speech by Alejandro de la Sota reference to “housing as test tube”, and constructed or projected reality, finding that, in most cases, will be housing solutions that integrate previously experienced in larger works.
Architecture faces an evolution of cultural-historical kind that often takes a circular spiral form with periodic returns and continuous reviews of past experiences. It can always be reused, reinterpreted and become again part of the main flow of disciplinal development. Architectural obsolescence is always unfinished and its historic valuation variable. To relate this reflection with functionalism, that is a central concept for modernity, we will discuss a unique case of twentieth-century architecture history, the factories of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, designed by Albert Kahn, for two reasons: due they present a progressive transition from an architectural object to an offspring increasingly technically pure, and because it performed in a series of buildings with the same program, designed by the same architect and in a quick time sequence. This example demonstrates the connection between the evolution of the concept of function and the object’s own obsolescence. From functionalism, we try to explore the boundaries between the project method applicable to an architectural object and the one used for a pure technical object as defined by Gilbert Simondon.
o cristal, sino también con la acción y la mirada. A través de derivas realizadas en
distintas ciudades se establecen diferentes maneras de percibir la realidad urbana,
maneras que a menudo quedan sepultadas bajo las representaciones dominantes de
la ciudad. Construir documentos que muestren la ciudad desde ópticas tangenciales,
relacionadas con visiones subjetivas y vivencias concretas, va más allá de un mero
ejercicio de representación. Los mapas de derivas urbanas expuestos en este artículo
ponen de manifiesto relaciones intensas con la ciudad a través de la acción que resultan
en nuevas visiones urbanas. Nuevas maneras de percibir la ciudad abren caminos
a nuevos modos de entender la rica realidad urbana, que a su vez inauguran nuevos
modos de transformarla desde el proyecto arquitectónico. El sentido último de las
derivas presentadas es la de abrirse a la riqueza de la ciudad para descubrir en ella
múltiples niveles de sentido que sugieren nuevas maneras de transformar la ciudad.
Architecture doesn’t only build places with steel, timber, concrete or glass, but also
with action and gaze. Through drifts carried out in different cities, different ways of
understanding urban reality are established. These ways are often buried under the
dominant representations of the city. Building documents that show the city from
tangential points of view, related to subjective views and particular experiences, is
beyond a mere representation exercise. The urban drift maps shown in this article
reveal intense links with the city through action, resulting in new urban visions. New
ways of perceiving the city pave new ways of understanding the rich urban reality,
which at the same time open new ways of transforming it from the architectonic
project. The ultimate purpose of the presented drifts is that of opening up to the
richness of the city in order to uncover numerous meaningful levels that suggest
new ways of transforming the city.
propone una clasificación que ordene todas sus manifestaciones. El objetivo de este
acercamiento es describir estos procedimientos (que son tres y dan lugar a cada
uno de sus tres capítulos) y establecer cómo todos los procesos de manipulación
de la materia, que dejan algún rastro sobre ella, se producen siguiendo alguno de los
mismos. En Arquitectura, la materia ha sido desde siempre objeto de investigación, y
por lo tanto ha sido receptora y almacén de los avances logrados. El interés principal
de este planteamiento se concentra en la manipulación de la materia que ha sido
llevada a cabo con el propósito de construir, pero el ámbito de la construcción no es
exclusivo de la Arquitectura, por lo que otras actividades como el arte y las ciencias
naturales aportan aspectos y avances que han sido recogidos asimismo dentro de
la investigación. De esta forma se ofrece un acercamiento poliédrico, desde puntos
de vista interdisciplinares, para describir con rigor las posibilidades contrastadas en
construcciones, tanto existentes como aplicaciones potenciales.
This research examines the ability of the matter to storage information, and suggests
a classification to arrange all its manifestations. The aim of this approach is to
describe these procedures (which are three and give way to each of its three
chapters), and to determine that all processes of manipulating matter, leaving a
trace on it, are produced following one of them.
In architecture, matter has always been under investigation, and therefore has been
receiving and storing each progress achieved. The main interest of this approach
focuses on the manipulation of matter that has been carried out with the purpose
of constructing, but the field of construction is not unique to the architecture.
Other activities such as art and natural science bring aspects and advances that
have also been included in this investigation This offers a multifaceted approach
from interdisciplinary perspectives, to describe rigorously the possibilities found in
constructions, both existing and potential applications.
(1958-1962) es un aspecto que no se ha revelado anteriormente en los artículos y
monografías sobre esta obra del arquitecto noruego Sverre Fehn. El conocimiento de
los aspectos relativos a la ejecución de la sede nórdica ha sido muy escaso debido
a la dispersión de las fuentes originales del proyecto y de la obra, localizadas en
archivos de Venecia, Milán, Oslo, Estocolmo y Marieberg. Esta carencia es particularmente
significativa cuando se trata de una arquitectura concisa, cuyo espacio es
consecuencia de la claridad del planteamiento constructivo. El artículo describe el
proceso de la obra y ahonda en la intensa correspondencia entre las cuestiones que
definen su espacio y la materialidad de la obra. El contenido es la síntesis de una
investigación que tiene como fuentes el proyecto de ejecución original, los informes,
la correspondencia entre todas las partes implicadas en la ejecución y el estudio de la
obra construida.
The process that the construction of the Nordic Countries Pavilion (1958-1962)
underwent is something not revealed before in articles or monographs on this work
by the Norwegian architect Sverre Fehn. The knowledge of the details related to
the erection of the Nordic headquarters has been scarce due to the dispersion of
the original sources of the project and the construction process, located in archives
in Venice, Milan, Oslo, Stockholm and Marieberg. This shortage is particularly
significant when dealing with concise architecture, its space being a consequence
of the clarity of the construction approach. The article describes the construction
process and delves into the intense connection between the issues that define its
space and the nature of the work. The contents is the summary of an investigation
based of the original production information, the reports, the correspondence
between all the parties involved in the building process and the study of the finished
building.
Sus creadores, José Antonio Corrales y Ramón Vázquez Molezún, invirtieron un
método utilizado en proyectos anteriores (Instituto en Herrera de Pisuerga, Residencia
en Miraflores, Pabellón de Bruselas) donde la edificación se adecuaba al medio y
el paisaje donde se insertaba. Mediante una transformación topográfica Corrales
y Molezún construyeron un lugar en el que el horizonte, entendido como el paisaje
formado por el encuentro de planos donde converge nuestra mirada, fue modificado.
Cuando esto ocurre se produce una alteración de la mirada del observador, se
“construye” un nuevo horizonte visual que es en definitiva el horizonte de la arquitectura,
en el que los límites están definidos por los distintos planos. En esta construcción
del nuevo horizonte, en la creación de nuevas experiencias visuales, las esculturas
y los árboles, situadas en las plataformas de los patios de la Casa Huarte, se convirtieron
en referencias visuales que alteraban los ángulos de visión previamente establecidos
por la arquitectura. Estas siluetas incorporan nuevos puntos de referencia en
ese horizonte, proporcionando profundidad, perspectiva y una escala intermedia entre
la intimidad del observador y la monumentalidad del infinito.
The Huarte House (Madrid, 1966) represents, above all, an intervention in the
landscape. Its creators, Jose Antonio Corrales and Ramon Vazquez Molezun,
reversed a method used in previous projects (an institute in Herrera de Pisuerga,
a residence in Miraflores, Brussels’ Pavilion) where the building was adjusted to
the surroundings and the landscape of the location. By means of a topographical
transformation, Corrales and Molezun built a place in which the horizon, understood
as the landscape formed by the meeting of planes where our gaze also converges,
was modified. When this happens, an alteration in the onlookers gaze takes place.
He “builds” a new visual horizon which is ultimately the horizon of architecture in
which the limits are defined by the different planes. In this construction of a new
horizon, in the creation of new visual experiences, the sculptures and the tress,
located in the platforms of the Casa Huarte patios turned into visual references that
altered the angles previously established by architecture. These outlines incorporate
new reference points to that horizon, contributing deepness and perspective and an
intermediate scale between the onlooker’s intimacy and the greatness of infinity.
ha construido para su familia a las afueras de Madrid. La vivienda no ha sido todavía
ocupada pero algunos muebles del arquitecto ya están colocados. Más allá de ser
un mero escenario la casa toma un claro papel en la trama de la obra, dejando secuencias
que suponen una oportunidad para acercar la experiencia espacial a quien
nunca la haya visitado. Sin embargo, es importante entender las divergencias entre la
casa-contexto de la película y la casa proyectada para ser vivida. Un análisis comparativo
acerca aún más a la realidad del conocimiento perceptivo. El director manipula
conscientemente el espacio hasta obtener la condición óptima para acoger la vida
de su familia imaginaria. El ensamblaje entre los exteriores de la casa Carvajal y la de
sus suegros, la neutralidad material en la recreación del ambiente, la desaparición del
detalle, la falta de transición en los recorridos aplacan la impronta de una obra cuyo
significado reside en las secuencias espaciales que dan sentido a la percepción.
Javier Carvajal, con gran influencia de la arquitectura árabe, forja la totalidad de la
obra a través de su tránsito y articulaciones.
In 1969, Carlos Saura films his film La Madriguera in the house that Javier Carvajal
has built for his family on the outskirts of Madrid. The house has not yet been
occupied but some of the architect’s furniture is already in place. Beyond being a
simple set, the house plays an important role in the film’s storyline. It contributes to
sequences that represent an opportunity to bring the a-spatial experience closer
to those who have never experienced it. However, it is important to understand the
differences between the film-context house and the house designed to be lived in. A
comparative analysis brings the reality of perceptive knowledge even closer.
The director consciously manipulates the space until getting optimal conditions to
house the life of his imaginary family. The assembly between the outdoors of the
Carvajal house and those of his in-laws, the material neutrality in the recreation of
the atmosphere, the disappearance of details and the lack of transitions in itineraries
soothe the imprint of an endeavour that has its meaning in the spatial sequences
that grant meaning to perception. Javier Carvajal, greatly influenced by Arabic
architecture, shapes the whole assignment through its transitions and joints.
“Estudios cruzados entorno a la arquitectura de b+g”. (Las siglas mencionadas se
forman con la letra inicial del primer apellido de los arquitectos Francisco Bassó
Birulés y Joaquín Gili Moros, unidos por el símbolo de suma. Estas siglas fueron utilizadas
por los arquitectos para identificar la obra realizada conjuntamente). El escrito
pretende mostrar al lector la relevancia de un manuscrito inédito redactado, durante
los primeros años de la posguerra española, por Joaquín Gili Moros, miembro del
grupo R. A través del análisis del texto original, se evidencia la preocupación de este
arquitecto racionalista por la arquitectura que se debía realizar en aquel momento en
que tantos otros compañeros de profesión se debatían entre una arquitectura folclórica
o la recuperación de una monumentalidad clásica, ambas arquitecturas impropias
para la época. El texto, entendido como actitud arquitectónica, patentiza toda su
vigencia en el momento actual, en pleno cambio de paradigma, una vez manifestado
el agotamiento de la arquitectura monumental estelar o corporativa que se había impuesto
durante el primer decenio del siglo XXI. Un nuevo rumbo parece vislumbrarse,
pero con parámetros divergentes. “¡Ay de nosotros si nos equivocamos de camino!”
This text is an extract from the author’s doctoral thesis, currently being written up,
“Crossed studies around b+g’s architecture”. (The mentioned abbreviation is formed
with the first letter of the surname of architects Francisco Bassó Birulés and Joaquin
Gili Moros, connected by the addition symbol. These initials were used by the
architects to identify the work done together). The text intends to show the reader
the relevance of an unpublished manuscript written during the first Spanish postwar
years by Joaquin Gili Moros, a member of the R group. Through the analysis of
the original text, the concern of this rationalist architect for the architecture that was
to be carried out at that moment becomes clear. At the time, many colleagues were
torn between a folkloric architecture and recovering a classic monumentality, none
of which were in keeping with the time. The text, understood as an architectonic
attitude, makes all its validity show today, in the midst of a paradigm shift since
the star or corporate monumental architecture that had prevailed during the first
decade of the 21st century has proven itself exhausted. A new direction seems to
be discernible, but with divergent parameters. “Woe to us should we choose the
wrong path!”
de la arquitectura en los proyectos auxiliares que los acompañan, haciendo uso en
numerosas ocasiones de un lenguaje decididamente racionalista. A la manera de la
Thenessee Valley Authority, que contrató al arquitecto Roland A. Wank para diseñar
una nueva ciudad junto al embalse Norris, un equipo de jóvenes arquitectos de Oporto
(adheridos a las nuevas corrientes encabezadas por Le Corbusier o Gropius, pero
a la vez apegados a los valores líricos de un paisaje fronterizo teñido de melancolía)
dieron respuesta al encargo de diseñar varios complejos hidroeléctricos encadenados
en la tierra más deprimida del Portugal de los cincuenta, tomando conciencia de la
importancia del lugar como valor natural, de la cultura como valor propio y del contexto
condicionante complejo de la propuesta. Este posicionamiento, que encontraría
en el referente nórdico su más feliz manifestación a partir de la publicación de varios
textos de Aalto en portugués, se traduce hoy en un paisaje arquitectónico de fuerza
omnipresente, y su ejemplo en los complejos hidroeléctricos de Miranda do Douro,
Picote o Bemposta se hace extensible a Saucelle o Aldeadávila, de autoría netamente
española.
The construction of reservoirs over the 20th century has allowed for architecture
to play an active role in the duly auxiliary projects, many times using a most definite
rationalist language. Just as the Tennessee Valley Authority did, who hired architect
Roland A. Wank to design a new city next to the Norris Dam, a team of young
architects from Porto (followers of the new trends lead by Le Corbusier or Gropius,
but at the same time close to the lyrical values of a border landscape dyed with
melancholy) were appointed to designed several linked hydroelectric complexes in
the most depressed areas of Portugal in the 50s, bearing in mind the importance
of the location due to its natural value; the culture as a value in itself and the
convoluted conditioning context of the proposal. This positioning, which would
find in the northern reference its happiest manifestation as from the publication
of several essays in Portuguese by Aalto, translates today as an architectonic
landscape of omnipresent strength, and its example set in the hydroelectric
complexes of Miranda do Douro, Picote or Bemposta is applicable to Saucelle or
Aldeadavila, their authorship being entirely Spanish.
según Alison Smithson, un profundo “pensamiento topográfico”: un compromiso
con el lugar basado en un posicionamiento estratégico en el paisaje, una constante
adaptación a las condiciones cambiantes del terreno y un intenso modelado de la
superficie del suelo. Aspectos fundamentales de estas fortificaciones fronterizas romanas
cuya esencia podemos identificar en algunos proyectos clave de Alison y Peter
Smithson. Proyectos enraizados que centraban su atención en el plano del suelo,
en articular el contacto de los edificios con el terreno y en configurar sus espacios
exteriores. Entre estos, los Robin Hood Gardens mostraban de un modo elocuente
la fascinación que sentían los Smithson por la condición topográfica de aquellas
obras de ingeniería romana. Un interés que les llevaría a explorar conceptos como
“límite” y “protección”, así como a recuperar el conjunto de alteraciones topográficas
defensivas convirtiéndolas —despojadas de su naturaleza militar— en operaciones
clave para radicar en el lugar (del latín radicare: echar raíces, enraizar): una sofisticada
apropiación que gravitó “de la defensa al enraizamiento”.
The close link that the Limites Romani had with the territory showed, according to
Alison Smithson, a profound “topographical thinking”, a commitment with the place
based on a strategic positioning within the landscape, a constant adaptation to
the changing conditions of the terrain and an intense modelling of the floor. These
are fundamental aspects of these border roman fortifications, their essence being
present in some key projects by Alison and Peter Smithson. These would be rooted
projects which focused on the floor plane, on articulating the contact between
the buildings and the terrain and on configuring their exterior spaces. Among
these projects, the Robin Hood Gardens eloquently showed the fascination the
Smithsons felt for the topographical character of those Roman engineering works.
That interest led them to exploit ideas such as “limits” and “protection”, as well as
to recuperate the set of defensive topographical alterations – doing away with their
military nature – turning them into key operations to radicar in that place (from Latin
radicare: to put down roots, to root): a sophisticated appropriation that hovered
“from defence to rooting”.
presumiendo de no ser moderno. Ante interminables superficies acristaladas, él prefiere los huecos pequeños y cuidadosamente ubicados. Ante el gusto por la exhibición, Loos apuesta por el placer del voyeurismo. Frente a las superficies atectónicas de sus contemporáneos, él selecciona maderas y piedras nobles para los revestimientos de sus interiores. Finalmente, mientras sus coetáneos más mediáticos diseccionan la construcción separando la estructura del cerramiento y apostando por
la estructura reticular de pilares, Loos reafirmará su condición pre-moderna sirviéndose del muro como elemento primario de construcción y definición espacial.
El Raumplan se comprende habitando el espacio y se dibuja con dificultad pero, ¿cómo se construye? Esa es la pregunta a la que intentaremos responder.
The Raumplan is one of the terms linked to 20th century architecture with more intellectual consideration in it and exerts a great influence over the conception of
habitable spaces. During a period in which the whole of Europe was amazed at the work that emanated from the new ideas about architecture, Loos introduced
his opposing theory boasting about his lack of modernity. Against never ending glazed surfaces, he preferred small openings, carefully placed. Against the pleasure
of exhibition, Loos went for the gratification of voyeurism. Rather than the nontectonic surfaces of his contemporaries, he chose fine timbers and stone for his
indoor cladding. Finally, while his celebrity coetaneous colleagues dissected the construction by separating the structure from the envelope and opted for a
reticulated pillar structure, Loos reinforced his pre-modern condition by using the supporting wall as a primal element for construction and spatial definition. The Raumplan can be understood by living in the space and can be drawn with
difficulty but, how is it built? That is the question we will try to answer.
es un elemento arquitectónico difícil de justificar. Transforma el muro interior en una
especie de fachada y confiere al salón un carácter de espacio exterior. Concede
además a este espacio, descendiente lejano del tradicional hall medieval, un aspecto
ambiguo, entre inglés y español. Lutyens conocía los balcones de reja españoles a
través de los dibujos de Prentice. Existen además en España balcones de reja que se
abren hacia espacios interiores. Los que se abren hacia las naves de algunas iglesias
barrocas, por ejemplo. También existen en Portugal y Brasil. Pero nadie vio antes un
balcón de reja abierto hacia un hall inglés. Este pintoresco balcón, sin embargo, no es
un arbitrario capricho o un simple experimento. Es parte de una estrategia de montaje
destinada a revitalizar lo propio por relación a lo ajeno. El poético parentesco entre
este balcón y la chimenea barroca que Le Corbusier empotró en el antepecho de
la cubierta del apartamento para De Beistegui muestra que Lutyens, al igual que Le
Corbusier, recurrió al montaje para recrear las formas tradicionales.
The grille balcony that Lutyens placed over the lounge chimney in Little Thakeham
is an architectonic element which is difficult to justify. It transforms the inside wall
into a kind of façade and it gives the room a certain outdoor character. It also gives
this area, a distant descendant of the medieval hall, an ambiguous look, half way
between Spanish and English. Lutyens was familiar with Spanish grille balconies
thanks to Prentice’s drawings. Plus, in Spain there are grille balconies that do open
up towards interior spaces. For example, those that overlook the naves of some
Baroque churches. They also exist in Portugal and Brazil. But no one ever saw a
grille balcony dominating an English hall. This picturesque balcony however is no
arbitrary whim or simple experiment. It is part of an assembly strategy aimed at
revitalizing what belongs by relating it to foreignness. The poetic relation between
the balcony and the Baroque chimney that Le Corbusier built in to the roof parapet
of the apartment for De Beistegui shows that Lutyens, just like Le Corbusier, turned
to assembly to recreate traditional formats.
If the man is the causer of that of the degradation of the natural ecosystem of the Mexico City, also the man can revert this situation and initiate a new age that it takes as a flag: the art, the city, the life and the nature. The present text proposes a critical exploration on the transcendence of this project - in articulating - to deduce that the reversibility of the urban facts is the sustainable strategy of the city of the third millennium.