LEGEND 1. City of Culture. Peter Eisenman. 1999-2012. 2. Presidential Complex of Galicia. Manolo Gallego. 2000-2002. 3. Musical Studies Center. Antón Garcia Abril. 1998-2001. 4. SGAE Headquarters. Antón Garcia Abril. 2005-2007. 5. Kindergarten. Giorgio GRASSI. 1992-1993. 6. Trisca Socio-cultural center. John Hejduk. 1992-2002. 7. Belvís Towers. John Hejduk. 1992-2002. 8. Housing on the “Carme de Abaixo” Dairy Farm. Victor Lopez Cotelo. 1998-2002. 9. Congress and Exhibition Hall. Alberto Noguerol y Pilar Diez. 1991-1995. 10. Journalism Faculty Building. Alvaro Siza. 1997-2002. 11. Contemporary Art Museum. ALvaro Siza. 1992-1994. 12. Bus Station and Xoan XXIII Avenue. Albert Viaplana. 1991-1994. | COMPOSTELA SUMMER PROGRAM | WWW.CAINSTITUTE.ES |
Peter EISENMAN Born in New Jersey, 1932. Eisenman’s fragmented forms are identified with an eclectic group of architects that have been labeled as deconstructivists. Although Eisenman shuns the label, he has had a history of controversy aimed at keeping him in the public (academic) eye. His theories on architecture pursue the emancipation and autonomy of the discipline and his work represents a continued attempt to liberate form from all meaning, a struggle that most find difficult to accept. He always had strong cultural relationships with European intellectuals like his English mentor Colin Rowe and the Italian historian ManfredoTafuri. Degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cambridge. Eisenman received an honorary degree from Syracuse University School of Architecture in 2007. He currently teaches theory seminars and advanced design studios at the Yale.
City of Culture Peter Eisenman Date: 1999-2012
In 1999 the Xunta de Galicia organised an international competition to select the project for building the Cidade da Cultura de Galicia, a grand cultural facility with a vast programme including different museums, a library, a newspaper and periodicals library, an opera house and a study and research institutions. The competition was divided into two phases. First of all, twelve teams were selected by means of a merit competition. Of these, five were Spanish, led by Ricardo Bofill, Santiago Calatrava, Manuel Gallego, Juan Navarro Baldeweg and César Portela; one German, Daniel Libeskind; two French, led by Jean Nouvel and Dominique Perrault; one Dutch, Rem Koolhaas and OMA; one Swiss, Annette Gigon and Mike Guyer; and, finally, two North American, Steven Holl and Peter Eisenman, who was the final winner. Eisenman’s project reflects the architect’s intellectual and creative stature. Eisenman proposes a topographic building in which the undulating roofs of the different buildings mimic the relief of Monte Gaiás, with profound crevices for moving around and entering the different volumes. Eisenman proposed, once construction had begun, paying tribute to his fellow countryman John Hejduk, integrating into the City of Culture two towers designed by the deceased architect for Belvís Park.
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Manolo GALLEGO Born in O Carballi単o, Ourense, 1936. He graduated in Architectural Studies by theETSA of Madrid, 1963. He is a Professor at the ETSA of A Coru単a since 1978. At present moment, he works as an architect at his studio in A Coru単a. He has received several awards andhonourable mentions, but the most important is the National Architecture Award, 1997. Continuously with the landscape. His work is based on a permanent introspection, inwhich the current componentsfit on the one hand, the specific requirements that every project has and on the other hand, a personal contemplation of architecture. His work has its own place in our cultural topography; and through his references, this architect has always been one of the censoring critics in the current Galician panorama. architectural panorama and for the Galician cultural scene as well
Presidential Complex of Galicia Manuel Gallego Jorreto Date: 2000-2002
The residence lies below the crest of hill, sited in search of sun, facing the city of santiago and sheltered from the rainy winter winds. The almost obsessive presence of the extraordinary monumental facade of santiago along with the need for intimacy, hidden from the outside, meant having spaces in which a private world could be created, more intimate and enclosed. On one of these hills, site of the “finca Monte Piio�, once home to the geografic and cadastral Institute, stands the Official Residence of the President of the Regional Goverment og Galicia, along with an adjoining public park. The residence was desing as a sequence of spaces which can be joined up visually. Spaces with courtyards that lend points of light and depth to the home. With its openings, walls, sliding doors and slopes this flexible and open area is defined as a series of small spaces meant to offer and suggest a variety of uses.
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Born in Madrid. List of awards: 2000 Opened his own firm in Madrid 2005 ‘International Award Architecture in Stone’, Verona, Italia. 2005 Finalist in the Mies Van der Rohe Award (Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales). 2005 Finalist in the Spanish National Architectural Awards 2005 (Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales). 2005 Design Vanguard Award, Architectural Record, Nueva York. 2008 Arquitecto del Año. Premio Architectural Digest.
Musical Studies Center Antón García Abril Date: 1998-2001
The Escuela de Altos Estudios Musicales, one of the university buildings built inside Finca Simeón, was designed by the young Madrid architect Antón García Abril, the son of the famous composer of the same name. This piece was conceived as a large cube of heavy granite pieces, of rough texture, which were cut against the grain, leaving the quarry drill marks exposed. The huge mass of the building lies on the landscaped terrain, almost without touching it. Its entrance is underneath a large metallic lintel, which enables a corner of the heavy volume’s base to float above the gently rolling ground. The interior is dominated by an empty space that extends from top to bottom and connects the different areas. This empty space, which has a complex volume, gets smaller the higher up it goes and is bathed in daylight thanks to the skylight in the flat roof.
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SGAE Headquarters Ant贸n Garc铆a Abril Date: 2005-2007
The SGAE (General Society of Authors and Publishers) Central Office in Santiago de Compostela, is located in Vista Alegre property, a privileged site with intermediate scale between a private garden and a public green area, from where the skyline of the historical city can be glimpsed. The project for the development of the plot was designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, and contemplated the construction of a series of buildings with academic purpose, most of them already built. The architectural conception of the building incorporates the spirit of the city of Santiago developing a singular identity and entering a dialog with the history and memory of the place, as well as a close relationship with contemporary language. The program includes not only social activities for the attendance of authors and publishers, but also a wide range of public cultural activities. It is divided into four functional areas distributed in four levels respectively: Diffusion, Formation, Public Area and Management, with accesses from the garden and the street. Three thousand square metres in total constructed to serve the city and its artists. The SGAE central office expresses its will to become part of the perimetral wall of the property both by its location and longitudinal layout adapted to the border of the plot. The building puts forward the confrontation of three walls which run along a space of varied constructive, material and perceptive scales. A stone wall looking into the garden, an interior wall made of CDs and a translucent glass wall facing the street.
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Giorgio GRASSI Born in Milan, Italy, 1935. He is one of Italy’s most important architects. Much influenced by Ludwig Hilberseimer, Heinrich Tessenow and Adolf Loos, his extremely formal work is predicated on absolute simplicity, clarity, and honesty without ingratiation, rhetoric, or spectacular shape-making; it refers to historical archetypes of form and space and has a strong concern with the making of urban space. For these reasons Grassi is a nonconformist and a critic of conventional mainstream architecture. He has been professor at the Politecnico di Milano and other universities since 1965. Grassi is a prolific writer and theorist, having most notably written The Logical Construction of Architecture (1967), Architecture as a Craft (1979) and other influential works. His designs incorporate sensitivity to classical and neo-classical architecture (Alberti, Schinkel) but are at the same time deeply influenced by the modern movement, especially in Germany and Austria.
Kindergarten Giorgio Grassi & Celestino GarcĂa Date: 1992-1993
The theoretical facet of architecture pervades all of the Italian Giorgio Grassi’s work. His idea that the principles of architecture and unique and immutable is reflected in all of his work and, logically, in his conceptual project for a public school in Compostela. Built in a garden bordering the historical city, the severe building reveals, in its symmetry and regularity, the values of timelessness that enable it to appear at the centre of the plot as a solid serene volume without surprising forms. As if it had always been there. One of the main inspiring elements of this building is the volume of on old suburban villa, near the building, bordering the River Sarela. Its forms’ capacity for dialoguing with the surrounding landscape evoked the characteristic outline of the school’s four towers. The Raíña Fabiola Public School, in Santiago, along with the controversial intervention in the Roman theatre of Sagunto and the university library of Valencia are Giorgio Grassi’s three only projects in Spain.
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John HEJDUK Born in (1929-2000) Hejduk studied at the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, the University of Cincinnati, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, from which he graduated with a Masters in Architecture in 1953. He worked in several offices in New York including that of I. M. Pei and Partners and the office of A.M. Kinney and Associates. He established his own practice in New York in 1965. Hejduk was associated with several schools, including the New York Five (from the MOMA publication Five Architects that also included works of the architects Peter Eisenman, Richard Meier, Michael Graves, and Charles Gwathmey), and the Texas Rangers (a group of innovative architects and professors at the Texas School of Architecture, Austin; other well-known participants include Colin Rowe and Werner Seligmann). Hejduk was dean of the Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture from 1972 to 2000 Van Der Rohe’s transformation of the Armor Institute into the Illinois Institute of Technology.
A Trisca Socio-Cultural Center John Hejduk, Antonio SanmartĂn Date: 1993-2002
John Hejduk is an indispensable author in the history of architecture in the second half of the 20th century. By means of his teaching work related to architecture and design in New York’s Cooper Union and the publication of his theoretical texts, this architect has acquired great influence starting from the sixties. Among the few projects built by John Hejduk, Santiago has a small socio-cultural centre designed by this architect. This is therefore John Hejduk’s posthumous project. The building’s volume is suitably adapted to the existing fabric, completing an acuteangled corner. Its stone-slab façades contain expressive balconies with thick steel tubes, overlooking the street, and violent steel arrows, with a square-shaped cross section, inserted into the exterior plane, facing the enclosure of the Convent of Belvís. At the corner, in the building’s four floors, there are horizontal openings, whose windows continue the tight curve with which the corner is resolved.The ground-floor roof is made of a concrete slab with fretwork of characteristic forms from Hejduk’s images. La Boda Española (The Spanish Wedding) is the title of the bas-relief completing and enhancing the value of Hejduk’s beautiful project in Compostela’s A Trisca neighbourhood. This building, with stone and glass towers erected in the City of Culture, and initially designed for Belvís Park, makes Santiago one of the privileged cities with a project constructed by John Hejduk.
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BelvĂs Towers John Hejduk Date: 1992-2002
The Belvis towers were designed in 1992 to be built as a part of the Botanical gardens in BelvĂs, a project that never materialized. Originally were two towers with identical shape and height but designed with very different materials and character. One completely transparent, built with metal structure and glass panels and the other one completely opaque, materialized with local stone –granite- . One was designed like a green house to cultivate plants for the Park and the other one like a place where to storage tools and equipment for the gardeners. When Hejduk passed away, his friend Peter Eisenman suggested to erect them at the City of Culture as a memorial to their author, a colleague in The New York Five, the group that best represents the spirit of neo-rationalism in architecture in the United States.
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Victor LOPEZ COTELO Born in Madrid, 1947. Studied Architecture at the School of Architecture in Madrid. 1969. He worked in Munich since 1970 to 1972, when he started to work in Alejandro de la Sota´s firm until 1979 when he opened his own firm. Professor at the School of Architecture in Madrid 1983-1986, in 1993 he was invited profesor at the School of Architecture in Munich and in 1995 he became full time professor at the School of Madrid. He has been invited to teach seminars and to give lectures in the universities of Berlín, Braunschweig, Clermont-Ferrand, Darmstadt, Lausanne and Graz. Awarded with the first prize at the Spanish Architecture Biennale in 2003 for his housing project in Carme de Abaixo, Santiago.
Housing on the “Carme de Abaixo” Dairy Farm Víctor López Cotelo. Date: 1998-2002
On the limits of the historical town, forming part of the complex and evocative fabric combining the presence of urban and rural elements, there are the remains of an old diary farm that the architect VĂctor LĂłpez Cotelo has reconverted into a series of houses. This architectural project is exemplary because of its formal results, the integration of existing and new elements and the solution provided to the renewal of areas bordering the historical town.The complex, divided into several volumes, is situated on top of a platform bordered by a long stonewall running alongside the River Sarela. This wall is the first in a series completed by smaller retaining walls, forming a terraced relief sloping down towards the river. These planes are the site of the restored and new volumes, as well as the landscaped areas leading to the houses. The introduced typologies do not correspond to conventional concepts, giving priority to guidelines that help to integrate the complex into the surroundings formed by the small streets, river banks, church, existing forest‌ The high degree of care and control exercised down to the last detail -not very common in private housing developments- is obvious to visitors, who are able to see the quality of this architectural project in the choice of its materials, finishes and small design details.
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NOGUEROL & DIEZ They were born in Coruña. Noguerol Alberto and Pilar Díez River will be the architects in charge of erecting the new terminal Lavacolla. Noguerol, who was teaching at the School of Barcelona, was born in Callobre de Miño and Diaz in A Coruña, a city with its study today. Alberto’s relationship with Catalonia Noguerol has caused many of the pieces of equipment that are both architects are divided between that community and Galician. Among his works is the municipality of Cangas, houses in Eschborn, the central library of the University of Vigo, the tourist office in Capdepera, the school Barcala in Cambre, or the square of the City of Camas, in Sevilla. Lavacolla not, of course, his first job in Compostela. The tandem Noguerol-Diaz was responsible for the Faculty of Philology of the USC. Although his most important work in the city is the Palacio de Congresos, building Xacobeo 1999 flag and a symbol of Santiago modern and open to the world.
CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION HALL Alberto Noguerol & Pilar Diez Date: 1991-1995
When the Palacio de Congresos e Exposicións de Galicia was designed, its location was an outlying area of the city, with large empty spaces, whose overall aspect was somewhat disorderly. This large building has its back to the approach road, orienting its portico towards the interior of its enclosure. This layout is only one of the subtle and intelligent ambiguities that this building offers spectators. Its formal severity and functional clarity reveals a rich world of second interpretations to the alert observer. The building is conceived as a large low-lying prism, enclosed by large pieces of prefabricated concrete. At the centre there are two large auditoriums, whose stages are situated face to face, which are housed in a second prism covered by stone. This volume stands out above the surrounding exterior, characterising the building’s outline. Around this volume, contained within the building’s exterior perimeter, there is a large empty space, which functions as a buffet of both auditoriums. All of the small meeting rooms, the cafeteria and different offices are located in the long sides of the rectangular ground plan. The interior elements have been designed with severity and elegance, using exclusively the natural colour of the different materials: veined stone, metal, wood…
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Alvaro SIZA Born in Portos-Matosinhos, 25 June 1933. Along with Fernando Távora, he is one of the references o the Porto School of Architecture where both were teachers. His “poetic” modernism draws on context to illuminate universal conditions. In 1992, he was awarded with the Pritzker Prize. Other prizes include: The Golden Medal of The Superior Counsil of Arquitecture of the College of Architects of Madrid in 1988, Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture 1988, the Alvar Aalto Medal in 1988, the Prince of Wales Prize from Harvard University in 1998, Portugal’s National Prize of Architecture 1993, the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2001, the Urbanism Special Grand Prize of France 2005. More recently he was announced as RIBA’s 2009 Royal Gold Medallist.
Journalism Faculty Building Alvaro Siza Date: 1997-2002
The Faculty of Journalism is a complex of 13.000 m2, located in the North Campus of the University of Santiago. The building tries first to relate with its surroundings, improving the existing site with it´s presence. SECYL award in 2002. The building , bedsides resolving all the funtional necessities of the faculty, integrates itself into the city and the neighbourhood as a friendly neighbour. Its presence is subtle but always improves the surroundings it touches. The new school not only facilitates the study of written press journalism, but also television, radio, cinema and photography courses, for which the building has specialised workshops and lecture rooms. the volumetric organization is desiged according to a spinal cheme: the lecture rooms, offices and IT rooms are housed in the longitudinal body, while the more specialised spaces, the cinema studio, the television Studios, Media Library and auditorium are housed in almost external volumes, perpendicular to the main.
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Contemporary Art Museum Alvaro Siza Date: 1992-1994
The Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea building was located in the gardens of the San Domingos de Bonaval convent. The proximity of the huge mass of the convent and its church strongly conditioned the design of the new museum, resolved by Álvaro Siza, whose internationally acclaimed architecture is characterised by its close links with the environment. The new building’s layout is designed to organise the access to the convent, which houses the Museo do Pobo Galego and the Church of Bonaval. The volume of the CGAC consists of two large longitudinal pieces, whose violent union generates complex spaces of intense plastic and poetic value. The building was initially conceived with an outer layer of white marble. However, it was not possible to materialise this decision due to the reluctance of the authorities in charge of conserving Galicia’s monumental heritage. The museum was finished in tan granite, so that its volume merges with the stone mass of Bonaval. The museum’s interior spaces, unified by the white marble floors on the ground floor and the oak flooring of the upper floors, provide itineraries, perspectives and light effects of great beauty, without compromising the necessary conditions for exhibiting the artistic pieces. The building’s roof -a large passable terrace with several volumetric elements, which is not always open to the public- provides privileged views of the city of Santiago.
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Authors: C.Seoane & O.Fuertes c CAinstitute | COMPOSTELA SUMMER PROGRAM | WWW.CAINSTITUTE.ES |