The embryo of the project by Enrique Juan Garrido

· The embryo of the project · Degree Final Project

Architecture · ETSAB · UPC February 2016 Author · Enrique Juan Garrido Website · enriquejuangarrido.wix.com/english Tutor · Esteve Terradas Muntañola Examining board · Pere Joan Ravetllat Mira Fernando Álvarez Prozorovich Julián Galindo González

路 The embryo of the project 路

· Index ·

5 Preface. The question from my tutor 7 Introduction. The umbilical cord 9 A dialogue with four architects Oscar Niemeyer’s scrawl 10 The first stroke. A hand movement 12 The memory. The seeing eye 13 The text. The argument of the project Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s scrawl 14 The sketch. The simplicity of the architecture 16 The paper models. The tool of the project Enric Miralles’ scrawl 18 The tale. The story that the project tells 20 The collage. The essence of the project 21 The talk. The drawing of the word Carme Pinós’ scrawl 22 The game. The sensitivity of the place 24 The negative. The way of what you don’t want 26 Conclusion. My own scrawl 31 Bibliographic references

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· Preface · The question from my tutor

When I was a child, I liked to turn my eyes into sheets and think I was able to change the reality scrawling and drawing in the air with the finger, so this wish for imagining and creating on the reality was what brings me towards architecture. The fact is that my steps through the architecture’s degree started being like a challenge; I introduced myself to this world without knowing or expecting anything, without having previous knowledge or any kind of relationship with architecture before, nor I had never met anyone engaged with it, even with architectural interest... I was curious and I wanted to experience it through my eyes (this is why I have always seen myself like a blind person who has taken the vision towards architecture). In the first correction of this project with my tutor Esteve Terradas, I had doubts about the intentions of the project. I had a clear idea but didn’t know how to give focus on it and the title was very wide too: The simplicity of the project. This aspect brought changes in the project and in the end the title took off and, not knowing how, emerged as The embryo of the project as a title that showed the head from the start and ended up being born. For me, the key question was asked by my tutor, who asked me how I would present or what I would teach in an interview when looking for a job. I answered not to show the complete result of the project but the process by which I reached it. In short, if we think, I would be doing the same I do when I show a project to my mother, for example. That means that I would do the same with anyone who has not any architectural knowledge. In other words, I would introduce myself from the beginning, from where everything came up and, therefore, is how I would explain it to a client in the future or to anyone who has an interest in my architecture. This dialogue with the tutor will be the key to focus the project. In fact, this project starts with the question from my tutor.

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· Introduction · The umbilical cord

“Leaving, even desiring, that after this first point where the pen touches the paper appears something we don’t known, we didn’t expect ” · Enric Miralles · The aim of the project is to talk about everything that is not talked, to see what is not seen, to understand the whole time in which you feed and care for the project as if you had it in the belly and when it is born, it gets rid of you and there is only the navel’s mark that reminds us from where all emerge, what sense it has and where it goes. What defines the way of planning of an architect is just all the unseen work (texts written when you go on the metro, sketches when you wait in the hospital, diagrams in the napkin when you eat, the reflections in the shower, the pictures you take when you go to the place, etc.). These are elements that I want to deal with, which you are always bringing with you and define you as an architect, but especially as a person. Architecture is really a way of life and is always present so that we cannot understand the result of a project without considering the process by which we had come to some final conclusions. Throughout this period of reflection, we need to carry out a deep look and each line drawn will search for a critical reasoning behind it. This is the concept that I will try to explain with which I’m going to call scrawl. The scrawl can have a certain intention, a particular objective or even may be determined by a previous idea or some defining thoughts. Everyone will have their own personal view of the drawing, but in the end it’s understood as a closed set made from the simplest representation, that is to say, the line, which organizes and simplifies the set, and therefore, the line has to be the beginning to understand the scrawl because one makes a condition of the other.

· A dialogue with four architects ·

It’s time to think, to meditate and reflect a wider view of the scrawl. In the following lines I’m going to embark on a dialogue with four of the architects that have left a mark on me during my steps through the studies in architecture. This study is not to show their qualities, nor under no circumstances does it mean that what is explained from each one could not be related to the other or even to yourself, quite the contrary. What I want is to emphasize the personal part of each one that has caught my attention and translate it into some lines through some reflections so I can later fit this thought process and design in my own architecture. We all go through this process in which we feel that the project is ours, that comes from our hand and knowledge and we understand better than anyone how it has been molded and adapted to be showed in its best result. But isn’t also to transmit this feeling to others necessary? If we feel the architecture, why didn’t we transmit in the same way we live it? The scrawl is the essence of the project and we cannot ever lose by the wayside! Among these architects are found: Oscar Niemeyer and the union of word and drawing explained through the human eye, Paulo Mendes da Rocha supported by his way to synthesize architecture through his sketches and paper models, Enric Miralles and his desire to discover new hidden aspects of architecture through the tale and talk and, finally, Carme Pinós and the thoughts that go with her, mixed and open, playing and denying to live the story of those who live there. Although for their similarities we could join them in two groups: Niemeyer-da Rocha due to their origin and architectural culture and Miralles-Pinós for their teamwork during many years. If we look at them, in reality, each one found his own way to direct architecture towards a personal way and style, which is what makes them special and what defines them as architects and people.

· Oscar Niemeyer’s scrawl ·

“The beginning of the idea is the most important time in architecture. For example, I work in

a very special way: when I have an idea I start to study a problem. First, I check what are the local conditions, the economic possibilities, these things ... Then, I start to draw and when I come to an idea, a solution that I like, I change to handwriting, to write an explanatory text, because if I can’t find arguments in this text, I go back to the drawing board ” · The first stroke · A hand movement

Undoubtedly, what we do in the first place when we are going to design is to take a pencil and think drawing. This is an aspect that I could stress over any other in Niemeyer: the important role of his hand to explain architecture. In fact, drawing was what bring him to this world and one of the most important sources of his work. Few architects have defended the value and importance of drawing in our own architectural creation, and not only for the quantity of graphic testimony that we have from him, but for his reflections on drawing as a creative tool. Starting from drawing gives us the freedom of a child, the first naive stroke in which architecture is exhibited through a simple hand movement. It is in this movement where is expressed what is seen and what is not, in which there is an intention, a thought translated on the paper by hand, the importance of drawing. Niemeyer did not speak of architecture, but drew of architecture because he is not able to communicate or express their deepest architectural thoughts without the need and company of his drawing, without the use of the hand, the black marker on white paper, the pure contrast and with no shadows. The pure form expressed in lines, which defines his architecture: line is just the shape and structure of the project.

We know that his architecture doesn’t make any compromises, it looks for beauty and imagination without falling into small details, acting on the structure, in which it‘s exhibited from the first stroke. In addition, the drawing represents the purity of the shape of the building in which the details hardly exist and, if they exist, they have no relevance. The lines of the drawing are the edges of the future structural shape, the result of a simple architecture, with no details, as if there is no trace of the path taken to the project or the subsequent steps required to carry out the work. His drawings are so important that we can see works with two worlds: the architect’s drawing and the drawing’s architecture. “It is not the right angle what attracts me, nor the hard and inflexible straight created by

the man. What attracts me is the free and sensual curve, the curve that I could find in the mountains of my country, in the sinuous course of its rivers, in the waves of the sea, the body of the beloved woman. The whole universe is done by curves, the Einstein’s curved universe ” We could say that freehand drawing is so important to him that it’s hard to find constructive definition plans in his projects. Actually, it seems as if there were no intermediate steps between drawings and the work built. This doesn’t mean that it is not necessary for him, but he is able to explain the whole essence of the project and its purity only with a hand gesture, a memory. The drawing allows us to imagine that we can change what already exists, to feel we are able to modify reality and add what we want to reflect on it. We transport ourselves into a world for children, purity, default, where there is only freedom. A free hand movement with no limitations, no tools. The natural and sincere curve, the path of a thought, what imagination describes on a paper under a watchful eye, the look from who wants to see what is not seen. The memory of a past, of what you have been and you are becoming, of a start where everything arises and is arising...

· The memory · The seeing eye

“Ah, it’s magical to see how a palace, a museum, a beautiful female figure appears from

a sheet of paper! How I long for and enjoy drawing them! How I feel the curves of my architecture!” Niemeyer defends the need to practice drawing from the human figure arguing that it is what gave the manual ability of the freehand stroke, from which everything emerges. In his books, its pictures have free lines and there are many drawings of Niemeyer relating to women and their curves. There are also many drawings of buildings that are treated with the same sinuosity and remind us immediately to female form. We don’t know if it’s a coincidence or the influences of the memory of what we draw, of the past, of the beginning that guides us towards the steps of our architecture. 12

In addition, one of the most used and peculiar graphic tool in the Niemeyer’s drawing is the human eye. We often see the observer’s position represented by an eye that we could call the seeing eye, which gives us information about where it looks and where the user has to look. Even, it provides a reflection on the user’s position and the best views regarding his buildings. These are reasons that can encourage the solution of the project, that is to say, according to the observer’s position regarding the building and its perception of space, he shows us the different ways to approach the project’s making process. So, it’s all about the allegory of the fact of looking represented through the human eye, a fact that tells us how the architect think about the facade, the empty spaces, the orientation, the views... but above all, viewed from the eyes of the recipients for which we make architecture: people. This is always a relevant fact that explains a lot about the thought of a creator, of an architect. It’s what he draws in his leisure time, in his travels, what impresses and surprises him, what makes him reflect... because all these little details will have a later impact on his work.

· The text · The argument of the project

As we have seen, Niemeyer’s drawing is for him a large part of the explanation of the project’s concept, but it is not able to be understood by itself and it should always be accompanied by letter, by an argument. The forms of his architecture looks for surprise, innovation and being able to convey emotions to those who observe them and it is for this reason that he explains both graphically and textually. Niemeyer wrote the text next to the line, as if it were another drawing. In fact, the text complements the drawing in his work and one needs the approval of the other. The word is the idea that defines our thought, it is what makes our hand drawings come true and gives us a more concrete and less free idea of the drawing: it tells us. “Drawing and head are the basis of architecture. When I get at a solution with the drawings

already defined, I start to write a text explaining the architecture, and if I don’t find arguments reading the text, I return to the drawing because something is missing ” Still, Niemeyer holds that he often resolves a project only thinking, without drawing, imagining how it is and how it should be. But he sometimes does it drawing, with intensity, with determination, without the need of thinking. In any project, the text makes the final touch, the explanation of the project, the need to teach an invisible process, a constant thought. It has the concepts grown in your head, in your imagination and which, together with drawing, form the essence of the whole project. Doing this, not only we see and take to see a sense to drawing, but we learn to trust in our own words and they become an important part of our lives, such as notes we write, concepts we point, words that summarize it... friends of the drawing.

· Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s scrawl ·

“A writer always cares about seduction, that is to say, by the fact of who read the first

paragraph of his book would not stop reading the second, since it has to be read until the end in order to be able to express what he wants to say... The same happens with the construction ” · The sketch · The simplicity of the architecture

For me, Paulo Mendes da Rocha is one of the architects that has caught more my interest or the most one. His architecture is able to respond to many concepts through such a simple expression as a line supported by a point. He is my reference on this issue and I keep feeling curious when I’m in front of one of his sketches. 14

For Mendes da Rocha, architecture is to design the invisibility of life, what you don’t see, the design of what is not predictable, the drawing of our life. It’s for this reason that the sketch is also architecture. The sketch is the blank model of a book, an initial idea, the page on which you delete, the note you take, the drawing no one discusses because it is what contains the beginning and the essence of the project, from where the idea arises and appears. “No one can create something that has not thought before. For example, the needlewoman

knows the embroidery technique, but she also knows the flower she is going to embroider before the embroidery is finished. The same happens with us too, architecture can be built slowly, but never the reasoning ” In my case, whenever I try to translate my ideas on a paper, Mendes da Rocha and his drawings of people making kites fly come to my mind. In fact, the fundamental question which occupies our minds as architects is to imagine things that don’t exist to make them appear.

· The paper models · The tool of the project

There is a magical moment in the process of the project in which architects have transformed first sketches into something touchable that can be seen at a distance, from another angle, in order to be able to assess the validity of decisions taken in a first creative impulse. It is from this moment that we turn to other ways of representation, that we change the working scale and generate wooden or digital models. In this sense, da Rocha uses paper models. In his publication Paper models, Paulo Mendes da Rocha includes a seminar where he is the professor who explains to the students the value of the project’s idea and its materialization through paper models. In this conference, he decided to talk about them for the first time, given the importance of such models has in their working process and, after his presentation and explanation, the students made their own models pointed by the architect. 16

“For me, there is an step between first lines drawn and the paper model. When the articulation

of the project with the territory and its transforming capacity seem to be spatially ordered is when I build my models (...) to build, where before there was nothing, a place to live ” At the time Paulo Mendes da Rocha believes he has reached the first concise sketch of his proposal, he makes small paper models with common materials found in his studio such as wire, adhesive tape, glue, etc. These are models made alone and not to be seen by anyone. Therefore, models represent to the architect a project’s time for assessment, because he uses them to verify proportions, transparencies and shadows generated with reference to human scale.

Paper models have no trees, volume or details. They are to design further, with a future view, to plan our wishes and hopes from the present. Da Rocha is looking for the clear, underdone and naked model that is made alone, with which he takes note of his thoughts and with which we can imagine the architecture, an architecture that represents much of the speech on this new knowledge. So, it is the moment when we understand the model used as the tool of the project, as the complement of the drawing, as pencil in hand... Therefore, as we can see, it seems that the model is not intended to show the idea finished, because it is just a tool that is part of the working process: small and simple models thought to be shown. The model is built in the same way as the sketch, the model that is done in solitude and built as a test of what we are imagining, making possible to see better what we want to do, feeling architecture through the third dimension. For us, the architects, seeing and touching means to materialize our ideas, like a clarification that we need to do ourselves, the assessment of what the building could be: living the city. Using the idea of the model, it is possible to imagine all the integrity and entirety of the project, we introduce ourselves into it in a more realistic and closer way. We feel the curiosity of being in the place and let ourselves be surprised by its presence and it is at this moment when the model appears as an extension of our own mind. Thus, the model is not to show a final or successful architecture, but it provides us arguments able to support the project. This process is always a game, a complement, the tool that allows us to do architecture and see what the pencil donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t show us. Actually, architecture is a singular way of knowledge, something difficult to define. It turns to history, to tenderness, to memory, to development, to the decision to say: now is the moment!

· Enric Miralles’ scrawl ·

“I want people who learn with me to be aware of the moment they are and not the architecture

they should make [...] It is a process which is valued. Learning to be able to say no, to know what can be done, have good judgment and know whether what we are proposing is welldone or not ” · The tale · The story that the project tells

When we talk about the tale of Miralles, we are referring to the concept of design, where everything arises, where the essence is born: the story that the project tells us. So, architecture is an experiment, the building of the dreams of the architect which are subject to continuous changes of the project and the acceptance of a final result. These dreams often come from the character of the place, the silence, the concentration, the intensity of working or simply from the disconnection and everyday personal life brought to the life that should have the architect. Thus, it is an architecture closely connected to the architect. What is outside, what is behind or in front, what is beyond or before or after... What is not seen or what generates approaches to the form. All of this is what I’m interested in and I should begin any architecture and any review from here, of what we don’t see but want to see, what we don’t know and want to know. In fact, what likes the most to Enric Miralles is to repeat, try again, repeating the form by changing the volume and finally he stops in a position. “I’m not entirely organized, but I don’t feel myself tormented. I act spontaneously and my

ideas come from different information from architecture [...] however, I won’t look for some similarities that are not apparently on its own issues such as formal descriptions or through surfaces, folds, slipping, etc. ”

This fact led Enric Mirallesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; architecture to become a mystery, who did not hide his sources, but they were hardly to understand with the naked eye, because understanding his architecture was a difficult process in which links between his sources and his work were not easily shown. Most of his sources were literary or came from writings of artists, and therefore, searching for this connection was a hard job of reading that plunged the observer into a spider web hard to untangle. Precisely, Miralles referred to the architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job as a tangling and untangling, a way of doing and undoing, drawing and erasing freely. This is why his work is very influenced by his wishes and imagination and hides a series of everyday thoughts, one superimposed over the other. On the other hand, Enric Miralles liked to change the project until the last minute, to look for the way to go towards things to enrich them, find the shape... The debate produces architecture and it seems as if Miralles had always been waiting for a response. He suggested us open topics to start discussions which colloquially can be seen in the classes, conversations or seminars, but they rarely set down in writing. Similarly, he was aware that poetry is the result of a confusion of words, an approach to daily life, the speech that accompanies the drawing and provides it with truth. We are made from what we see. Each work of Miralles is just an evolution of pieces that calls one another and his works end up being like a novel, like a diary, like a dictionary that has no end. In addition, it was difficult to choose a color for him, he always uses a fine pen as if it was a pencil, he was attracted by the architecture that is unable to hide the complex reality from where it departs, he liked to develop things almost without thinking, understand the plans as incomplete notes, use the hand movement as a technique and break reality to transform it into a large collage.

· The collage · The essence of the project

Collage is a document that leaves a thought fixed in a place in vague and distorted manner and in which we can work with a created reality. We understand as collage all those main elements that make up the tale of the project, without which this would not have sense. In fact, the project is always made of these moments, different moments, fragments that sometimes are contradicted in the same project and accompany him in his argument. For Enric Miralles, it is a puzzle that represents space in one action of time. It is from this concept that he developed the deformable representation, a way of noting memories, of putting together the elements that make up the project, a collection and investigation of the process and the way of making architecture.

“Architecture occurs at different times: before, during and after [...] You only understand a building when you are within it. So, it is exactly the moment when you don’t see the building” Miralles represents collages as moments of a project interrupted, the passing of time on his production, the view of what you don’t see and those images that fix the moments that build the project. Therefore, the collage technique allows us to have a partial view of things, a view that makes clear the contents of the project, because if we draw something realistically, there is no doubt. Enric Miralles’ photocompositions capture the essence of the project, the moment when we are interested in redrawing, in which doubt is evidenced, the disagreement in which pieces don’t fit, the need for a talk. As a consequence, the intention is not to describe but to propose. These photomontages intend to make forget the ways of representing the physical reality of things and the perspective. In a certain sense, they are those simultaneous sketches of different views at the same time, the look of the pencil.

· The talk · The drawing of the word

Miralles’ architecture adopts a human behavior and is able to reproduce his thoughts and feelings through hand gestures and words. For him, one of the most important aspects to explain his architecture is the talk, the dialogue with the client, with the student, with team mates, with his project, even with himself. The talk understood as an architecture’s method of expression, the fact that it speaks for itself and expresses what he has already imagined, what arouses his drawing, the dream of his architecture. The dialogue is always used as a possibility of relationship: we need the project to be born from the word, from the expression, the gesture and that it relates to our tale. Indeed, the texts of his books seem to be made from talks, from relationships between concepts, from explanations on which the interest is not in the result, but in the fact to understand and be understood, as to understand the needs of our surroundings or of the project itself is necessary to turn to the talk. “I don’t call architecture to built objects according to techniques and materials, but a way to imagine, to express [...] I believe that the best model of a project is the talk ” Imagination is free. Enric Miralles drew his intentions, intuitions, and even ideas coming from his imagination. His lines are full of clues to the argument of the project. His words appear as if they had not been written, but pronounced and they gain value when time is changing our eyes and our memory. Miralles left many sketches of his ideas, of his dreams and views, notes he didn’t have time to develop but needed to communicate, things not understood and that time is gradually filling with meaning, what is not seen and now is looked for being seen. Miralles drew speaking, understood that his architecture had to speak, that he couldn’t make an architecture that was not able to have a talk with him.

· Carme Pinós’ scrawl ·

“I dislike what is done by memory, which is repeated again and again without being aware

of what we are doing. This lack of awareness is what brings us to vulgarity and triviality. If things don’t surprise, they don’t interest me. I try architecture to cause new experiences, not to be able to take it with one look as if it was a photography. I mean the surprise that involves to experience each occasion in a different way: the presence of the building has to require our attention ” · The game · The sensitivity of the place

For the cover of the first book published by Carme Pinós about her work, already with no collaboration of Enric Miralles, she chose a picture on which there are some people playing in a protected garden. Thus, her most personal conception of architecture began, and that’s how she likes to conceive her study: like a game, in which this protected garden is the territory that she has once she has understood what it needs. Territory in the sense of place, of space of freedom. For Pinós, working means playing, so there is no game if there no place where having fun. I like a lot the curiosity and the tireless interest of Carme Pinós, the desire to play and have fun planning, the continued use of those phenomena of life that only happen once, architecture seen as a detonator of relationships between people and between they and the territory where they inhabit, that is to say, the opportunity to create game in the place. She lives in a constant curiosity in her projects and takes the place through free lines and fragmented spaces, which she explores with the animals’ similar movements, smelling each patch and living a philosophy that accompanies her throughout the whole working process, from start to finish, the game.

When we play, we put in value the idea, the concept and the interpretative and creative work. Through the artist’s gesture, her main ideas are explained making use of forms and spaces that solve the project’s program. Not only that, but during the game she is breeding and maturing a more expressive and specific vocabulary, and a certain level of study and research applied to the project. In addition, Pinós doesn’t conceive buildings as simple objects placed on the ground, but as volumes which also appropriate the outside, thus creating a strong and close relationship between inside and outside. Architecture as the living element that pulls the roots and feeds by the place that surrounds it. The place is confidence, expression, where we act authentically, with no fear; the people’s confidence and which helps us to give a response to what the territory needs, where we can start playing, a territory that gives us some rules so that we can participate in this game. It is from this point when it begins the teamwork, the sincerest and most innocent tale of the project. “I try to give a poetic value to architecture, and always try to find the story that people tells.

Although I play with abstract values, I try to bring them to the limit without losing the value of these small stories that architecture’s spaces are able to generate ” Carme Pinós’ architecture is based on the expression of a game, the game of shapes, of balances... It is this sense of the game what allows us to make architecture and enjoy the hours we spend in front of a blank sheet where the line is drawn under a set of reflections. We are looking for surprise, surprising ourselves, the impact that would cause us new experiences and would require our attention. The architects, we feel close to Pinós’ thoughts and mean by architecture not only the building itself, but the impact of it on its environment, controlled from the street level, from where we feel closely linked to the place, on people... We act in the place so that we could transform it later into a game.

· The negative · The way of what you don’t want

Generally, Pinós face the beginning of the game starting from the negative, that is to say, knowing all what she don’t want. Each project is an adventure in which, at the beginning, we don’t know where we are going, but we know where we want to go. We face the place with questions to discover what we want. We have to ask ourselves how people have to feel and interact in the space that we are going to build, how the project should be linked to the context we are and the impacts that it should have on the environment. These spaces are noticed with senses, with passion and instinct rather than the mind or rationality. “I have often said that the figure of the architect is more like the film director’s one than the

sculptor’s. The sculptor creates volumes, the film director builds existential stories. The architect has to invigorate these existential stories through volumes built and, to do so, he should be very clear about the script of the movie ” 24

Having guide notes we can start playing, finding rules that allow us to reach a formal solution. This is why we need the teamwork, which allows us to refine this shape gradually. Thus, the look of many eyes charges the project of intensity, but if we want this game to be successful, very importantly rules has to be clear for all team members. By the time Pinós finds a diagram that contains all the aspects that she needs, and therefore she has already found what she wants, the teamwork begins, the game. She often gives a small sketch to the members of her team to play and indeed she can see other perspectives to discover aspects she could not see before and, if it doesn’t work, she starts again not to distort the rules of this game. In short, Carme Pinós’ architectures are identity signs of her personally, the mirror of her architecture, the game under construction...

路路路 CONCLUSIONS

· Conclusion · My own scrawl

The question from my tutor started it all, it is what brings me to a dialogue with these four architects as if it were a job interview. It is the starting point of a job and the end that now close my degree, a dialogue in which we share opinions and ways of design, a trace on myself where I have reached a set of reflections that I explain in the following lines... From a very young age, I have always liked to be able to develop my imagination, imagine that I’m able to change the reality with a gesture. It is this fact that takes me towards architecture, where everything came, the gesture that marked me from Niemeyer, a hand movement. Women are as important as people are for me, who made me find the way my architecture goes, my reality, my life. These words are now the essence of the project, what inspires me, the text I put next to the drawing and that it fills the paper with wealth. 26

Almost until the last years of the degree, my contact with architecture was still poor and little rich. Little by little, I became interested in a deeper way, felt closer and it was Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s architecture what got my attention, his way to do and be able to explain it with the hand, with the line and the point, the fact of making architecture look like an easy job. Every time I start designing, I cannot forget the sketches of Paulo Mendes da Rocha. His drawings of people flying kites are always with me, lines that begins being clear and ends up resulting in some indefinite scrawls that requires us to finish the drawing through our imagination. This is the scrawl that defines it, the lack of an end, the principle that never ends and is reborn with the line. Not only this, but Mendes da Rocha has quite internalized the idea of paper models as a tool that is part of the project and completes it.

In short, models are for me all of those explicative elements you start alone and end the need to be shown because they are what defines the idea and makes up the essence of the project itself. In the projects lessons, Professor Josep Maria Gil already taught us the importance of the paper as a working tool. For example, I remember how he always used to take a paper and explain the stability of a roof by folding it. I like the fact of drawing using transparency papers, paper on paper, drawing on the previous ideas, not to feel the need to reach an end or a particular result. By the same way, trying to find a story that the project tells like Miralles is what really calls my attentions. I try to explain it as a tale, a story that my architecture needs to convey and the everyday history that identifies us and brings us close to the project. In the last year of degree, I attended a lecture of Carme Pinós that changed everything and made me think a lot. Her explanation aroused admiration to me and I could understand what playing with architecture means, what was having fun with a pencil in the hand, and I did so in my latest projects. Architecture is really the choice I want looking for the way of what I don’t want. It’s the choice of being a child again, of feeling the freedom, the curiosity, of believing in what surprises us, of living architecture, of playing again... Each project is related to some comments, what I write down in my notebook, the concepts coming with me. They are not already only words, but they are now placed next to the project, at the beginning, where all begins. I have understood what before I didn’t and I will continue learning during the years ahead that are waiting for me together with my architecture. But, what does the scrawl represent in my way to do architecture? Mainly, it wants to reflect my steps through the architecture’s degree, which I’m going to express in the following lines...

A scrawl, as if a child had drawn it, represents all the innocence with which I start the degree, without any insights, without knowing anything. See a drawing of a child is always something beautiful because there is freedom, symbolizes the spontaneous part of the beginning of a project, when nothing comes to mind and ideas appear on the paper. Some lines are traced intensively on it, with decision, dominated by a firm and more confident hand. My today experience draws above emphasizing the projects strongly and defining its essence and purity, its presence and determination of what I am currently. Some people are drawn into a path that is hard to get past. They are the difficulties posed by the way of thinking, the obstacle that we need to progress in order to improve. Some people who mean a lot to me. The way I learned to draw, the deal of time drawing people every day, what made me take a better stroke and lose the fear with pencil in hand. Some requiring people, because architecture has no sense without them. Renzo Piano fills his sections with people and says that drawing architecture without people has no sense because it is made by them and for them. At the end of the scrawl, a pencil. Because it is the line I am still drawing, considering that it’s a path that is only just beginning and will continue... This scrawl expresses my evolution, from start to finish, my way to architecture and towards it. And we are reaching the end of the project, where we can see the embryo showing the head, where everything is born: the most beautiful time of the degree. It’s not an end point but a beginning, the continuous line of a scrawl that represents me, that defines me and answers the question that my tutor asked me at the start. These lines that define the project are a part of my drawing and have appeared as the idea of the project. Actually, my scrawl is my degree final project. Everything I didn’t show, the process that is not seen, now I show it... I’m the embryo that has just been born...

· Bibliographic references ·

· BOTEY, Josep Maria. Oscar Niemeyer. Obras y proyectos. Barcelona: Editorial GG, 1996. · COLAFRANCESCHI, Daniela. Carme Pinós Arquitecturas. Barcelona: Editorial GG, 2015. · FRANCO, Manuel. La Arquitectura de Oscar Niemeyer a partir de sus dibujos. A Coruña: UDC, 2013. · MENDES DA ROCHA, Paulo. La ciudad es de todos. Fundación Caja de Arquitectos, 2011. · MIÀS, Josep. Enric Miralles, para evitar equívocos. Barcelona: Revista DPA, 2001, pp70-75. · MIRALLES, Enric. “Cosas vistas a izquierda y a derecha (Sin Gafas)”, Tesis Doctoral Enric Miralles, Barcelona: ETSAB, 1987. · MIRALLES, Enric. Enric Miralles 1983-2000. Madrid: El Croquis, 2005. · MIRALLES, Enric. Enric Miralles 1972-2000. Fundación Caja de Arquitectos. Barcelona: Colección Arquia, v.33, 2011. · MIRALLES, Enric. Enric Miralles. Obras y proyectos. Documentos de Arquitectura. Madrid: Ed. Electa, 1996, pp.173. · MIRALLES, Enric. TAGLIABUE, Benedetta. Enric Miralles, Benedetta Tagliabue. Work in progress, Barcelona: COAC, 2006. · PINÓS, Carme. Estudio Carme Pinós. Documentos de Arquitectura, v.60. Almería: Revista del COA Almería, 2006. · PISANI, Daniel. Paulo Mendes da Rocha. Obra Completa. Barcelona: Editorial GG, 2013. · RAVETLLAT, Pere Joan. RIBAS, Carme. ROIG, Joan. Entrevista a Enric Miralles i Carme Pinós. Barcelona: A30 Arquitectura v.6, 1987. · UNED, Documental. Oscar Niemeyer. De curvas está hecho todo el universo. [Online]. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVVvQUM_zgs> [Consult: October 15, 2015] · Various Authors. Conversaciones con Paulo Mendes da Rocha. Barcelona: Editorial GG, 2010. · Various Authors. “La reflexión de los profesores”, Revista Temes de Disseny, v.13, 1996.