Kauh portfolio 2004-2012 English by kauh arquitectos

Soil Cutaway Garden

portfolio / Vincent Morales Garoffolo & Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz

Work as a hypothesis Kauh designs spaces as hypotheses. What we design is lived in a subjective way. We work on the assumption of possibilities and impossibilities. This approach is based on three attitudes we incorporate into our technical role as architects: experiences, prejudices and desires. Our experiences: we live and observe spaces to try to strengthen or to clarify different ways of appropriations. Our prejudices: we have our own opinions, which lead us to establish mechanisms that produce scenarios we deem necessary. Our desires: we like certain things to happen, thinking that, perhaps, our wishes coincide with those of others. We believe in the perceptive experience that our work generates within the construction of our environment. This is the reason why in our practice we have encompassed under the notion of architecture built space and public space, landscape and the editorial field. We think that a project can be found “anywhere” and come to be out of “any action”. All of this is interwoven by our foremost interest: to add value and enhance what belongs to everyone, to the places in which we all interact: the places in which what is public is expressed.

portfolio / Works & Projects 2004-2012

Carril de San AgustĂn 6 .18010, Granada. Spain +34 958 222 064 / +34 659 824 855 / +34 653 309 375 kauharquitectos@gmail.com; kauh@kauh.es www.kauh.es kauharquitectos.blogspot.com twitter.com/kauharquitectos 5

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

kauh, since 2004 Vincent Morales Garoffolo & Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz Vincent Morales Garoffolo (1976 Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA) Architect (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Sevilla 1994-2003). Completed his studies at South Bank University, London (20012002). Was part of the group Zoogravina arquitectura (2000-2001), and he has collaborated with the office VHP Stendebouw+Architectuur+Landscape, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2003-2004). Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz (1977 Cádiz, Spain). Architect (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Sevilla 1995-2003). Completed his studies at Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2001-2002). He has collaborated with the offices of Rubiño García Márquez, Sevilla (2000-2001), WEST8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture, Rotterdam (2002-2004) and as a freelancer with PARKKIM urban design & landscape architects, Seoul (2008), Boundary Unlimited (Tsai Cheng), Amsterdam (2011). In 2004, together they establish kauh arquitectos. Their main activity is based on participating in ideas competitions, especially those that have landscape and public space as themes. In this period they have developed projects and they have had the opportunity of building some of them. Since 2006 they have accomodated work at kauh with that in the editorial field, becoming in charge of the publishing of the Revista Neutra, the review of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla. The publication was understood as a team research process focused on the relationship between architecture, urban planning, landscape and the city. Recently they have made incursions in the fields of arts and participated in cultural spheres.

kauh has coauthored work with: Sebastien Penfornis, Esperanza Moreno, Palma Carbajal, Manuel Plazuelo, Francisco Torres & Javier Romero, Mediomundo arquitectos, Paula Álvarez , Parkkim, Tsaijer Cheng, Quico Peinado and Rachel Fendler.

Our professional experience integrates architecture, public space and landscape design, combines activities in the fields of editing and research and approaches the spheres of art and culture.

Juan Antonio SĂĄnchez MuĂąoz Vincent Morales Garoffolo

CONTENTS

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE built projects / 11

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> “Los Olivareros” Social and educational Center / 12 > Outdoor Swimming Pools and Sports Area / 14 > Setting for the Monument to Fernanda y Bernarda de Utrera / 16 > Day Care Center “AFA-Conil” / 18

under construction / 21

> 20 Rental Social Housing Units / 22

on going projects / 25

> Parque de la Hoya Masterplan / 26 > Rehabilitation of the Santa María Convent and Social Housing Units / 28

other awarded competitions / 31

> Park Can Escandell / 32 > Villalbilla Parish Center. Javier Morales Competition 2008 / 34 > Ladera Sur Park and Facilities / 36 > “La Muela” Park / 38 > New Sports Facilities for the Municipal Swimming Pools / 40 > Urban renewal of the Salvador Allende Avenue / 42 > Consolación Park / 44

other competitions / 47

> Europan 11. Central Park / 48 >Soil Cutaway Garden / 50 > Visitors Center “El Eucaliptal” / 52 > Access to Vejer / 52 > Séneca Square / 54 > Reform of the Plaza de la Constitución / 56 > Rehabilitation: from tobacco drier to library / 56 > Masterplan for the Santa Barbara and Rehabilitation of Parque Genovés / 58 > Restoration of the Plaza del Torico and its surroundings / 58 > Muro Park / 60 > Masterplan for the Chanca and its related spaces / 60 > Salón Square / 62 > Masterplan for the urban edge of the railway corridor / 62 > MAC Central Open Space / 64

> Connection & Public Space / 64

OTHER FIELDS editorial work / 67

/ 67 > Tranversal Book / 68 > Magazine Neutra / 70 > Neutra 17 city post-periphery / 72 > Neutra 16 city fiesta! / 74 > Neutra 15 city -re / 76 > Neutra 14 city-port / 78

Arts & ephemera / 81

> Puerta, from latin portare / 82 > Cent Garden / 84 > Transite 2006 / 86 > Racons Public: Passeig Bernardí Martorell / 86 > Content-ido / 88

curatorial projects / 91

> Culturalnodes.net / 92 > Blurring Architecture, an approximation / 94

research / 97

> Tourist Guide to Sinister Landscapes of the Spanish Coast / 98 > The Gates of Rome / 100 > Periodical Architecture Publications of Andalusia 20th century / 102 > The Soft Drawing / 104

blog (selection of posts) / 107

> Humpry Repton’s Red Books / 108 > VIB[]K: Happy Birthday! / 110 > VISITORS: La Alhambra(2/2). Owen Jones / 112 > Ribera del Duero Headquarters – EBV BAROZZI VEIGA / 114

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE, BUILT PROJECTS

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE

built projects

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Utrera, Sevilla

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Project date: 2009 Construction date: 2009-2010 Client: Ayuntamiento de Utrera Collaborators: IS Ingenieros (installations), Mª José García García (structure) Construction engineer: Fernando Ruíz Contractor: PROHERNA Area: 1.500,00 m² built Budget: 1.495.570 €

We pile up the uses given in the project brief. A vertical lobby, the product of the “destruction” of the floor slabs and openings in a Gordon MattaClark manner, interconnects the different levels, while these slip against each other generating outdoor spaces at different elevations. In this facility, the Utrera Town Council wants to agglutinate uses that are very popular among the town’s residents and that are complementary to those already given by the existing educational facilities, that is, a large study hall for students of all ages and a series of classrooms for the “Aula de la Experiencia”, an educational program for retirees. In both cases the actual use is accompanied by high levels of sociability. Breaks between classes or study stints (chatting or having coffee around a vending machine) sometimes surpass in importance the actual official uses. This is why, while the functional aspects of classrooms and study halls are solved, the generosity of circulation spaces is enhanced along with the design of outdoor spaces and the detailing of interior dividing walls. All of these become intermediate spaces for informal meetings, as are the large terraces that take the interaction between the people who use the upper-floor outdoors. This fluidity is underlined by the vertically transversal trait of the lobby. Located in the outskirts of the town, where an olive processing factory once stood, the proposal takes into account the traces of that memory to materialize. Its presence is more in the line of an industrial building, which seems to us more integrating in that urban context than the hermetic features provided by the comercially picturesque and self-involved terraced houses that are engulfing the industrial periphery of Utrera. 12

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Competition. First Prize. 2009-2010 Photography: Pepe Florido

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“Los Olivareros” Social and educational Center

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Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia

1 st

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Project date: 2004 Construction date: 2007-2010 Client: Ayuntamiento de Caravaca de la Cruz Collaborators: Carlos Arévalo Martín, Alicia Pérez García, Fco Moro Muñoz Construction management: Juan Martínez Cuenca Contractor: UTE Caravaca Area: 4570,54 m² total; 538 m² built; 4.032,54 m² open space Budget: 976.824,05 € Publications: Catálogos de Arquitectura. nº 17. “Arquitectura y Paisaje (2)” Arquitectura Viva nº 100. “Próxima Generación. Veinticuatro estudios jóvenes españoles”

The notion of enclosure and the construction of a void generate a hybrid spatial experience between built and open space. Internal separations are simultaneously insisted upon and erased while offering potential relationships with the outer environment. The edge of Caravaca de la Cruz is where the project materializes. This situation presents the challenge of rethinking the contact between generic urban growth and a delicate rural surrounding made up of orchards. At the same time, given its use as a summer-time, leisure and sports facility, it has the potential of being a new type of meeting place. To achieve this, an empty space takes shape, an environment with a fresh atmosphere in which swimming and outdoor activitities are enveloped by built form, a wall-building that expands and contracts, thus serving both as an enclosure and as a shelter for the indoor program. The combination of empty and built space —a miniature landscape made up by a valley surrounded by mountains— is organized by a concentric deambulatory system where circulation, experiences and uses merge. Transitions are intertwined and, by working with cross-sections and scales, generate multiple open, semiopen or closed spaces that are in the shade, under the sun or in half-lit shadow and become the setting for user activities and interaction. The wall, as a construction, turns into a thru-way foyer that opens up towards a vacant lot next to the entrance, thus incorporating into the design this previously residual development space and giving it back to Caravaca as a public space. Such a yearround dynamic and adaptable use as a coffee-shop is where “wall” becomes volume at its greatest. Where the wall is a mere fence, a series of small holes are made in order to alter the pre-established codes that govern the diferentiation between bathers and pedestrians. City and landscape, sensations and space, regulated and free use all take part in shaping this public place. 14

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Competition. First Prize. 2004-2010 Photograph: David Frutos

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Outdoor Swimming Pools and Sports Area

Setting for the Monument to Fernanda y Bernarda de Utrera 2004-2005 Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Project date: 2004 Construction date: 2005 Client: Ayuntamiento de Utrera Collaborators: Elena García Moreno Construction engineer: Eduardo Holgado Pérez Contractor: Ayuntamiento de Utrera Area: 380 m² roundabout 462 m² sidewalk Budget: 87.184,32€ Publications: Arquitectura Viva nº 100. “Próxima Generación. Veinticuatro estudios jóvenes españoles”

Our first built project: a sidewalk is transformed into a small square, a roundabout into the illusion of a garden. Together they tint the atmosphere red. It has become a popular meeting place, used by the neighbourhood, a reference point which is part of the collective imagery.

The city council decided to place a given figurative sculpture to honor the flamenco singers Fernanda and Bernarda on the edge of the historic center. The project brief literally was to set the monument in a roundabout and to reshape one of the sidewalks. We turned the sidewalk into a small square and the roundabout into an illusion of a garden. Both elements interact beyond the tirany of traffic, playing with scales, textures and geometries. The roundabout, an object of desire, is made up of the overlaying of outlines, water, vegetation, textures and 105 pots that provide scale and identity to the place. Their self-suficient and sustainable “technology” includes watering and drainage devices and anti-theft anchoring. The square generates public space. It is crossed by a long bench (length 26 meters, width 1 meter) which materializes pedestrian flows, envelops the play area, creates a meeting point, looks to the garden and provides for the taking over, the free use and the reinvention of this public space. The use of the color red reveals the potential that soft features have in urban environment, and takes into account chromatics as a design variable applied to public space in southern Spain. Ceramic pieces, natural stone, vegetation, stucco and paint, all of which incorporate this color naturally or artifically, tint the atmosphere. Red pays homage to flamenco (passion and tragedy) and is connected to car culture (Ferrari as an ideal; the color of traffic signs). It is also a color used traditionally in local domestic spaces, which in this case is taken to the urban scale.

Utrera, Sevilla

Day Care Center “AFA-Conil”

Conil, Cádiz

2009-2011 Project date: 2009 Construction date: 2009-2011 Client: Asociación de Familiares de Enfermos de Alzheimer AFA-Conil, Diputación de Cádiz (Área de Planificación). Collaborators: IS Ingenieros, Ignacio Quijano, Ismael Carpinter Gómez, CODEXSA-Mª José Leal García Construction engineer: Rafael Cia Peña Engineer: Fernando Contractor: AEPSA, TAU Area: 825,00 m² built Budget: 647.236,03 €

With a tight budget and strict technical requirements, the proposal is a “house” built around its communal spaces: living rooms, patios and dinning room all of which expand outdoors towards the active recreational grounds This Day Care Center for people with Alzheimer’s disease, for 60 patients, is a collaboration between us, the Asociación AFA-Conil and the Diputación de Cádiz. The starting points for this proposal are a project brief that depends on the strict outlines of the building’s technical requirements as well as the association’s own experience, a tight budget and the phasing of its construction, managed through public employment programs, all of which influences the construction methods used. The creative challenge is to work closely along with all those involved in search of the optimum solutions. Once the program was set, we established that the construction methods should be the most common ones used. The entire program is placed on a single floor, around a central courtyard and living room, both of which are wrapped by a gallery, from which each of the rest of the accommodations can be accessed. Similar uses have been grouped: offices, service facilities, geriatric bathrooms and therapy wards. The core of the house is made up by the common living room, dinning room, central courtyard and lateral patio from which access to the outdoor spaces takes place. This layout holds similarities with the traditional typology of Conil’s rural homes set around an open space. As far as the volume of the building is concerned, we designed a low lying, subdued and clean cut slab perforated by the courtyards. A higher volume, corresponding to the living room, protrudes from this plinth. By placing a number of skylights, special care is put into the natural lighting of the spaces. Orientation, exposure to the sun and prevailing winds has determined the placing of each of the accommodations. 18

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE, UNDER CONSTRUCTION

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE

under construction

> 20 Rental Social Housing Units / 22

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Project date: 2009 Construction date: 2012- in progress Client: ROSAM. Ayuntamiento de Conil de la Frontera Collaborators: Celia Ramos, IS ingenieros, Duarte Asociados Construction engineer: Francisco Alba, Francisco Gallardo Contractor: Area: 2.262,00 mÂ˛ built 631,50 mÂ˛ open space

The proposal is resolved by paying attention to scale and proportion and taking into account the strict parameters of social housing as well as a very limited budget.

Where illegally-built houses, an elevation difference with previous growth and the sloppy layout of a new masterplan meet, we place a necessarily generic collective housing block. Once the typology of the housing unit is set according to a tight plan that, nevertheless, can be subjected to slight variations depending on user needs, we concentrate on the intermediate spaces that link inhabitation with street. To do so, the design effort concentrates on the access to the block through a semi-public passageway, on a connecting common patio and on the relationship between the comercial spaces and the whole. Likewise, the proposed placing of the building on the plot allows for widening up urban space, a feature which, at present, the public space lacks in the existing environment. Once the topographic data of the plot are updated, new parameters will be incorporated into the project.

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Competition. First Prize. 2009 - in progress

Conil, CĂĄdiz

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20 Rental Social Housing Units

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE, ON GOING PROJECTS

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE

on going projects

> Parque de la Hoya Masterplan / 26

> Rehabilitation of the Santa MarĂa Convent and Social Housing Units / 28

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Almería

1 st

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Client: Consejería de Vivienda y Ordenación del Territorio de la Junta de Andalucía. Ayuntamiento de Almería. Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Andalucía. Collaborators: Joaquín Morales Garoffolo (Biologist), Esperanza Moreno Cruz (rendering 3D). Area: 55.586,48 m² total

Presently, there are two hoyas in Almería: the New Hoya and the Old Hoya; our proposal gradually reveals one more hoya, the “Hoya-Plaza”

La Hoya Park [Park of the Hollow] is located in a setting of great historical, cultural and natural wealth. It is on the urban edge of the historic quarter, in contact with the landscape and beside the city’s monumental area and tourist attractions. Beyond the revitalisation of the Hoya, our proposal gradually reveals a new hollow; the “Hoya-Plaza”. The Hoya-Plaza takes on its role as a key urban element and becomes the public space that interconnects the system of open spaces and monuments: the New Hoya, the Old Hoya, the Alcazaba, the Historic Quarter and the Hill of San Cristobal. As a whole, the proposal brings to light the environmental values of the area and incorporates elements of the city’s heritage with the goal of generating a contemporary urban park that will become an open place for civic activities. The project will be carried out in different stages. The intervention, especially regarding the urban edge, is understood as the process of slow, careful and informed growth of the park. Just as if it were a natural, ecological succession, each phase will incorporate complexity and diversity in order to build this new collective space in a sustainable manner. Placed at the foot of the Alcazaba, in the contact zone between the Old Hoya and the Hoya-Plaza, the Visitor Center is a landscape-building that touches upon the different topographic elevations so as to make the Hoya permeable and accessible. The building intensifies the relationship between the park and the city, both at a physical and at a social level, and proposes, as part of the process of its own growth, a connection with one of the Alcazaba’s towers, la Torre del Saliente, by means of an elevator. Within the remarkable concave space of the Hollow, the proposed environmental regeneration is based on the outlines set out by intelligent landscaping, or xeriscape, as well as on the incorporation of the archaeological remains that are likely to appear. Likewise, an effort is made to recover the historic man-made landscape elements of the site. All in all, the necessary spatial and programmatic mechanisms are created to produce new and diverse forms of civic appropriation.

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Shortlisted Competition. First Prize. 2010 - en proceso / in progress

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Parque de la Hoya Masterplan

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Cádiz

1 st

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Competition. First Prize. 2006 Project date: 2006-2009 Client: Junta de Andalucía. Obispado de Cádiz y Ceuta Collaborators: José Lozano, Mª Angeles Morillo, Rocío Romero, Jorge Barrena, Mª Mar Rodríguez, María Cantizano, IS Ingenieros, Edartec Construction engineer: Francisco Barrena Area: 4.272,09 m² convent 2.163,07 m² housing Budget: 5.098.038,00 € Publications: TC Cuadernos nº 74, 2006; Future Arquitecturas nº 7, 2007

The convent: an isolated way of life in cloistered grounds and hidden roof terraces. The city: an open environment that is revealed in its streets and houses. The intermediate spaces: tentacles of the city or folds of the convent. When designing a convent for cloistered nuns one must begin by asking what living in seclusion from the outside world means nowadays. In the case of this rehabilitation of a 17th Century convent in a dense urban environment, this question is answered in part by taking into consideration the pre-existing situation —a large cloister, various patios, and contact with the church, especially its roof terraces— and the characteristics of the Santa María quarter in Cadiz: the sequence of streets, squares, alleys, entryways, patios, houses and roof terraces that merge fluidly, shaping forms of inhabitation that soften the edges of the relationship between public and private space. The proposal traces possible interfaces between the convent and the city in the building’s ancient walls. Around an old wild olive tree the entry patio is re-positioned, turning Calle Mirador into the new main entrance area. Simultaneously, to maintain and enhance the building’s street-to-street transversal quality, a covered passageway or “nuns’ alley” is created towards Calle Teniente Andújar, between the two social housing ensembles that are also part of the project brief. The old cloister once again becomes the center of the community’s daily amblings. The convent’s representative spaces (kitchen, refectory, chapter room, chapel and archive, among others) become a new ensemble made up of spaces that are inter-joined and differently lit. The most private world of the nuns’ bedrooms reaches the highest floors, looking over the rooftops. These roofs, interconnected with those of the church, become the less regulated recreational areas: we imagine a small orchard or a garden of exhuberant pots from which the inmensity of the sky and of the sea of Cádiz is contemplated. 28

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With Francisco Torres Martínez & Javier Romero Vicente. Competition. First Prize. 2006-2009

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Rehabilitation of the Santa María Convent and Social Housing Units

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE / OTHER AWARDED COMPETITION

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE

other awarded competitions

> Park Can Escandell / 32

> Parish Center. Javier Morales Competition 2008 / 34 > Ladera Sur Park and Facilities / 36 > “La Muela” Park / 38 > New Sports Facilities for the Municipal Swimming Pools / 40 > Urban renewal of the Salvador Allende Avenue / 42 > Consolación Park / 44

Competition. Special Mention. 2011 Client: SEPES-Entidad Estatal de Suelo Area: 122.894 m² open space

What will become Ibiza’s largest park is understood as the union between the island’s rural landscape and that of the city, a rurban reality emphasized by its location along the city’s growth corridor, on its very edge. In this manner, if one can still find elements on the site belonging to its rural landscape heritage, these are not only brought back to life and underlined, they are also activated and reinterpreted in contemporary form: dry stone walls that once were property lines are restored and extended, thus becoming structuring elements that help physically weave together the park and the city. Preexisting vegetation is not only maintained, but also multiplied and protected by means of renaturalization and the reintroduction of species such as pine trees and oleanders, generating a park of both pine and oleander groves that while consolidating what is already there bring about their own ecosystems with new species. If this former agricultural land was once productive, the park also becomes it, and beyond restoring part of it as a sample of that world, revealing agricultural resources to its users, it makes them participate in the process of upkeeping orchards and greenhouses. If we also add the contemporary requirements that the citizenry demands of public space—play, rest, sports and cultural areas— and the proactive approach of this proposal which considers the rural spaces “outside” Can Escandell as a park per se, a new place arises that participates in the joining up, materially and immaterially, of the city and its territory .

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Ibiza

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Park Can Escandell

Client: Fundación Hercesa Area: 1.000,00 m² built; 1.530,00 m² open space

Light is the main working material. The lighting of the main nave strives to create an atmosphere in which light becomes matter and is hued and cast, thus generating an interior atmosphere that reflects what is happening outside. Light and ethereal matter construct a place for assembly: the nave. Activity creates the gathering areas: the parish rooms. Assembly and reunion merge, bringing about the social and meeting areas: the halls. The diaphanous nave made up of light, flexible accommodations for activities and open halls constitute a collective space materialized into a grounded plinth, which is full of uses, above which a large lantern is placed —a light contraption that covers the nave and raises it up to the sky. The way the church and parish center are set allows for open and semi-public spaces to emerge. The temple opens up to the city and the city enters the temple. The parish facilities are places for the active participation of the congregation. In continuity with this diverse program, the nave is set as a large open space in which the sensation of openness is enhanced by the amplification of volume towards the sky through the composition of skylights that introduce luminosity into the assembly hall. This way a contemporary place for liturgy is generated: isotropy and the dilluting of directionality for communal meetings and individual introspection. Tha lantern is based on a double lighting system: inner skylights wrapped in a translucid outer skin. These skylights combine direct overhead lighting with the indirect luminosity that comes from inclined walls of microperphorated panels, which filter the light that comes through the outer skin. 34

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Competition. Finalist. 2008

Villalbilla, Madrid

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Parish Center. Javier Morales Competition 2008

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Baena, Córdoba

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Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes de la Junta de Andalucía. Ayuntamiento de Baena Collaborators: Joaquín Morales Garoffolo (Biologist) Area: 24.500 m² total; 825 m² built Budget: 1.895.548,01€ Publications: Future arquitecturas nº 16|17. “Concursos competitions”

The conceptual approach to the park is based on tranferring to its location landscape features belonging both to the city and to the territory surrounding Baena. This group of elements generates the formal layout of the proposal and responds to the goal of a park that is to be experienced by the citizens.

The park is understood as a reflection of its related surroundings, which are made up of landscapes adapted to the arid and semi-arid climatic reality of Baena and whose physical, functional, symbolic and sustainable characteristics are the catalysts of the rehabilitation of the environment and heritage of the Ladera Sur (South Slope). Transformed by environmental technologies, these transferred landscapes, as a group , constitute the proposal: terrain, paths and rest spots; vegetation, shading and clearings; buildings and atmospheres. This is how the forestation techniques rescue the plantation methods of olive groves. The surrounding woodlands bring about the use of certain trees in areas with larger concentrations of water. The fields along the river valley are reflected onto the hilly terrain. The architecture linked to agricultural production—white, faceted, of scales that are integrated into the topography— is the reference used to materialize the new public facilities at the base of the Slope. Finally, the way the city settled and grew is followed up by resting the different elements on the flatter elevations and by producing transition slopes to layout the network of paths that tie the different spaces and the edges of the area. The contact zone with the historic center is where work on joining up and making continuous the relationship between park and city is concentrated. Thus, to reverse its current situation as a back space, a walkway is devised at the upper elevation. All paths part from there to float above the topography, descend the slope, connect with the new facilities and circunvent the city

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With Manuel Plazuelo Caballero. Shortlisted Competition. Second Prize. 2008

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Ladera Sur Park and Facilities

With Manuel Plazuelo Caballero. Competition. Second Phase Finalist. 2008 Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes de la Junta de Andalucía. Ayuntamiento de El Viso del Alcor Collaborators: Joaquín Morales Garoffolo (Biologist) Sophie Pasleau Callejón (Enviromentalist) Area: 311.088 m² total Budget: 9.853.441,20 €

Ecosystem-ecotone units, both natural and cultural, are the basic components for the contruction of a park that is understood as an inclusive space in which activity becomes possible by the free and diverse will of the user: the wish to co-inhabit, to relate, to get to know one another and to understand our surroundings. This is how we define our ecology, “oikos”, home. We inhabit the park.

La Muela is a place of transition, a space in which there is an interaction between the Alcores and the Seville farmland, and a rural and urban environment. Based on mankind’s manipulation of this territory, our proposal is to use the place’s existing elements and resources, to take them to their full potential by introducing new ecosystems in accordance with climate and topography. The incorporated and pre-existing ecosystems make up a network of focal points for the environmental, spatial, social and, of course, forestal and faunal regeneration of the park.They act as landmarks while they are also capable of generating activities that are associated with a park that serves El Viso on a day-to-day basis and that aims at being incorporated into the network of large ex-urban public spaces of Seville’s metropolitan area. An experience of a multiplicity of identities and ecocultural landscapes is created: green expanses of purely urban nature; lookout points; agricultural and livestock uses for educational and recreational purposes; natural and artificial water courses; woodlands of different types and densities; steppes and wetlands of diverse sorts around the former mud quarries. This naturalization process of pre-existing elements and ther intensification by the incorporation of new ecosystems implies a complex network of relationships between habitats. This is how the ecotones come about, as transition areas between ecosystems. The idea of ecotone is also used when approaching the design of the very different areas in which the city and the park make contact; walkways, lookout points, visitor centers, bridges, recreational and play areas and, even the greenhouses and maintenance facilities of the park, become thresholds that materialize in different forms according to their specific location.

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El Viso del Alcor, Sevilla

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“La Muela” Park

Client: Ayuntamiento de Herrera Area: 18.765 m² open space 1.000 m² built

Sport, leisure and nature shape the proposal into a park-like facility, a fresh environment that constructs a space for multiple relations. The area is designed as a contemporary recreational village for physical well being. As a starting point, the features of the area surrounding the future pools are taken into account: its trait as the limit between consolidated urban core and rural landscape; its connectivity with the existing expanse of sports facilities; its direct integration with the indoor pool; the existence of a network of paths and rural roads that wrap around it. Simultaneously, the potential that the proposal has to make visible and trace relationships between physical and figurative places of Herrera’s imagery, such as the ruins of the Roman Baths that are found nearby, is brought into the proposal. By using the existing topography as design material, the terrain is adapted into various levels. The entrance building, at the lower level, holds the reception and restaurant area. By setting itself back, it creates a square: a public space that is shared by the facility and the city. The service building at an intermediate level is placed to serve the different pools. It concentrates the changing, bath and first-aid rooms, the infirmary and the spa complex. It also becomes a grand balcony upon which daily sports activity and sporting events take place. The paths create the functional areas that this kind of facility requires, but at the same time they are layed out in such a way that they materialize areas in which leisure activities complementary to the main uses take place (picnics, children’s playgrounds, outdoor sports). This is how the place is enriched by more uses and their formalisation. 40

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Competition. Shortlisted. 2008

Herrera, Sevilla

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New Sports Facilities for the Municipal Swimming Pools

Client: Ayuntamiento de Fortuna Area: 20.996,00 m² Budget: 2.785.367,00 €

The proposal materialises a new green forum for the city, a contemporay public space to be appropriated and put into use once again by the citizenry.

To the feeling of wholeness that the intervention has longitudinally, areas with different gradients of specificity are superimposed that mediate in the generation of the place’s new itdentity without obliterating its function and history as thoroughfare. These spaces play their role as recreation and play areas, the setting for events and celebrations, being both a didactic and touristic showcase of the town’s resources and a quality environment where daily action takes place. And they are tied and interconnected by two bands which are set laterally to the road and turn into continuous surfaces that guarantee the accesibility and fluidity of all sorts of pedestrian flows. The proposal responds to the reasonable demands the citizenry makes for places that are both environmentally and socially sustainable: a green forum. Thus we multiply by two the amount of existing trees to create an almost continuous surface of treetops for shade and freshness thorughout the avenue. A comprehensive network for retrieving and accumulating rainwater is designed, so that the town can count on a self suficient supply of water for watering and maintenance. The pavement is made up of natural materials, like stone, and recylced ones, like concrete and rubber, both with low energy cost. On a social level, the diversity that the spaces allow for guarantees their continuous use. Last but not least, what has become the virtual public space, the Internet, is incorporated into this physical public space through the design of specific urban furnishings, thus generating new ways of establishing relationships in this new forum.

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Competition. Special Mention. 2007

Fortuna, Murcia

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Urban renewal of the Salvador Allende Avenue

With Esperanza Moreno Cruz & Palma Carbajal Guerrero. Competition. Runner up. 2005 Client: Ayuntamiento de Utrera Area: 163.491,40 m² Budget: 9.035.055,20 €

A confined space full of places to contemplate and enjoy a hypostyle landscape. Its perimeter is made dense with urban sensations: edge spaces that generate transitions between the generic suburban growth and a magical orange orchard.

Before, the orange grove used to be a dense and filled space in the midst of the vast emptiness of Utrera’s fields: a refuge and oasis full of smaller places. The proposal uses this trait to design the park as an isotropic space in which small-scale elements are inserted in a surgical manner. The orange trees are minimally pruned and the layout of the plantation is restored; the terrain is kept in its natural state and the ancient irrigation system is revealed to the users. The landscape of the past is presently turned into an urban void merely by the newly found proportion between the open space it leaves behind and the built environment that now surrounds it. Keeping a piece of the rural world within the city, a multitude of new paths crisscross it as incisions in a labyrinthine space. These paths cross over fields of vibrant textures that speak to our senses: touch, sound, color, smell —the oranges were used for the production of soaps and perfumes. Between the magic space of the orange grovecome-park and the generically bad space of urban growth, a new transition and sponge-like edge is produced —in part upon the trace of old rural roads— which incorporates new public facilities and where industrial-heritage buildings are restored. The esplanades in front of the Sanctuary, a sacred public space, are also considered as part of these bordering spaces. They are designed with subtlety, merely recovering some of their historical traits in contemporary architectural language.

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Consolación Park

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE / OTHER COMPETITIONS

ARCHITECTURE, PUBLIC SPACE & LANDSCAPE

other competitions

> Masterplan for the Santa Barbara and Rehabilitation of Parque Genovés / 58 > Restoration of the Plaza del Torico and its surroundings / 58 > Muro Park / 60 > Masterplan for the Chanca and its related spaces / 60 > Salón Square / 62 > Masterplan for the urban edge of the railway corridor / 62 > MAC Central Open Space / 64 > Connection & Public Space / 64

Eurpan 11. Central Park: The Life of the Park Competition. 2011 Collaborator: Begoña Leal Client: Nynäshamn City Council. Europan Sweden Area: 60.000 m²

How to design a park in an area that is prone to flood and will probably be, in the most part, permanently covered by water with the rise of sea levels? The site’s edges are delineated so that the border becomes a structural and spatial element in itself. This act is determined by the need to establish a future flood control perimeter ring at an adequate height above the flooding level. Simultaneously it serves as the setting for part of the park’s complementary program. Meanwhile a new landscape is created that reads and interprets one of Nynäshamn’s most defining physical traits: its topography. The site is shaped using the towns own matter into an agreeable topography of mounds, bowls and flatter spaces. This allows for the natural emergence of a plaza within the park, precisely in the area in which the preexisting Estögangen pathway crosses it. This important element of urban connectivity widens to become the heart of the public space. The bowls and hills are conceived as the sum of infrastructural interventions deemed necessary in order to control and enhance the presence of water in the area, be it the sporadic floods of each winter or the predicted rise of sea levels and the permanent flooding this implies. In their different shapes, natural materials, locations and functions, the topographies retain, guide and filter sporadic flood water so as to incorporate it into the park in the form of ponds and reservoirs that can take up different formal and programmatic functions. This topography, as a natural technology, allows Nynashamn to envisage a possible future of rising sea levels with potential and hope. It empowers the park and prepares for its natural evolution into a landscape of islands within a lake ringed by a boardwalkdike full of activity and crossed by the Estögangen now transformed into a hybrid plaza-bridge over the waters.

Nynäsham. Sweden

Soil Cutaway Garden

Jardins de Métis-Reford Gardens, Québec. Canada

Competition. 2011 13th International Garden Festival at Refrod Gardens/Jardins de Métis Client: Reford Gardens/Jardins de Métis Area: 200 m²

Soil Cutaway is a manifesto that encompasses two crucial concerns in contemporary landscape: transformation and transience. By carefully digging into the soil until reaching the water table at -1.5m, removing each of its layers in a surgical manner, piling these materials next to this void, and laying out the strata in the same order, the proposal shows that gardening is a transformation process in which equilibrium within a site plays a crucial role. The garden is made up of the matter of the place itself, from the water table to the sky, with the usually unseen technology of the soil’s section and its components revealed and in full view, both downwards towards the deeper realms of the earth and upwards towards the life that takes place above ground. To achieve this, retention in the excavated part and contention of the pile is obteined by means of transparent reinforced security glass, through which visitors can experience the different behaviours of the soil’s diverse materials, their change in time once they have been manipulated and exposed, as well as their influence on the resulting horizontal man-made landscapes and ecosystems: a shimmering puddle of water and a wild prairie. 50

Visitor Center El Eucaliptal

Punta Umbría, Huelva

Competition. 2011 Client: Ayuntamiento de Punta Umbría Area: 600 m² built 3234 m² open space

Three attributes of the archeological remains of El Eucaliptal themselves make up the proposal for the visitor center: their layout, their elevation and their current and future extension. The layout of the remains speaks of a way of settling linked to the river bed in order to optimize the resources it produced; the center’s position rescues this layout and orientation as a mechanism that will give it identity within its surroundings, inserting itself critically against the banal configuration of the more recent developments. The elevation of the remains, a couple of meters below street level, evokes the passing of time; by bringing the center down to that level we enable an integrated passage from our contemporary daily life to that of centuries ago. The current archeological window and ongoing studies show that the extension of the remains is greater than what is exposed at present; assuming this possibility lets us embrace the entirety of the remains to generate a broader perception of them, establishing a building that is made to fit those that we can now see and those yet to be revealed.

Accesses to Vejer

Vejer de la Frontera, Cádiz

With Mediomundo Arquitectos . Competition. 2009 Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas. Junta de Andalucía. Ayuntamiento de Vejer Area: 42.000,00 m²

A transfer is proposed between urban reality and its territory by means of a “park interchange” that takes on the shaping of mobility’s, connectivity’s and accessibility’s multiple intensities both for the visitor and the actual inhabitant, with the understanding that the new public space and its facilities, besides being the gateway to Vejer, form a place to be appropriated on a daily basis. 52

Seneca Square

Alicante

Competition 2008 Client: Gerencia de Urbanismo. Ayuntamiento de Alicante Area: 9.030,00 m²

The new Seneca Square is presented as a public infrastructure for meeting, representation, events, leisure, games, culture, celebrations and time out, and is built by the recycling of several materials that belong to the place, including both tangible and intangible elements from its social and cultural heritage. Contemporary public space needs to take into account the complexity of our cities: their timing, their materials, their programming and the subjectivity of their inhabitants. Freedom, exchange, creativity and collective action take place in the squares and the city as the common space makes these values visible and even enhances them. Inherent to Mediterranean urban culture, in Alicante they acquire their maximum expression during the festivities of San Juan, and through our proposal they are taken beyond the momentary celebration and expanded into the day-today experience, thus constructing a new contemporary landscape, both multiple and shared. The proposal is presented as a hybrid between a square and a park. We integrate soft, forested rolling hills (some landscaped, some paved), a group of recreational spaces for intergenerational interaction and a forum for outdoor events which is a natural extension of the indoor space of the restored hall of the bus station. The architecture of this hall is kept and recycled, given that its historic role as the interface between Alicante, its province and the rest of the world —depicted in the murals by Gastón Castelló Bravo— is updated to contemporay parameters and converted into the new civic centre BUS (Spanish acronym for Urban and Social Bustle). As an exercise into material recycling, the debris from the buildings that today occupy the site of the square, and also part of the soil from the excavation of the new parking lot, are used to form the hills. This allows for the possibility of having large trees throughout. Because of their particular morphology, these hills enhance the spatial experience of the public space and they give a particular character to the intervention, thus becoming the identifying elements of its landscaping. 54

Reform of the Plaza de la Constitución

El Carpio, Córdoba

Competition. 2008 Client: Ayuntamiento de El Carpio Area: 6.770,00 m²

Empty space is perhaps the best place to create collective space. And if collective space is a representation of life, where domesticity is extrapolated and where the living room is brought in and shared, then the center of the living room is the rug, a space for freedom and games, capable of producing planes full of possibilities. And possibility is the essence of public space, upon which social relationships are established

Rehabilitation: from Tobacco Drier to Library Competition. 2008 Client: Ayuntamiento de Ogíjares Area: 277,00 m² Budget: 235.000,00 €

The proposal considers the heritage potential of this former tobbacco drying building and transforms the building into an urban element capable of holding a small public library. To do so, we take into consideration the existing typology, both regarding its functional structure and the particularities of its skin. 56

Ogijares, Granada

Masterplan for the Santa Barbara grounds and Parque Genovés Competition. 2005 Client: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz Collaborators: Fernando Gallego Area: 35.597,25 m² open space 16.259,00 m² built Budget: 12.271.071,00 €

Wind becomes the matter of this proposal: an exposed park and a sheltered park are part of a dual experience interconnected by a rosary of small facilites, an ambiguous threshold between city and sea. This interface holds programs such as a kindergarden, a coffeshop, a theatre, a visitor and research center, a gardening school, a greenhouse and a shade house, as well as an entrance to underground parking, that serve both Eden (Genovés Park) and Eolus (Santa Bárbara grounds). The identifying features of the nineteenth century park are restored, transformed and made dynamic for contemporary uses in an atmosphere of exhuberant greenery. The Santa Barbara grounds, characterized by their austerity, hold the new theatre. There are also uses that are linked to open spaces and include the informal activities that always took place in this area, which until now was hidden from the city: fishing from the seafront and bathing at the foot of the city walls.

Restoration of the Plaza del Torico and its surroundings Competition. 2005 Client: Sociedad Municipal Urban Teruel Area: 16.700 m² intervention 30.400 m² study area

There exists in Teruel an inherent trait that is based on duality and on places where two sides meet: Teruel is the place where the bull stood still under the star or where The Lovers lay, their hands brushing against each other eternally. These dualities become concrete by working upon the materiality and layout of the new infrastructured paving, with references to the ways the place was conformed and to its evolution into a node of activities, which emphasizes the plaza’s character as the confluence of urban life. The proposal also reflects upon the plaza’s invisible façade, its ceiling, incorporating into the design, on the one hand, the plaza’s sky and, on the other, the ceilings of the colonnade as a transitional space between private and public realms.

Teruel

Cádiz

Muro Park

Utrera, Sevilla

With Esperanza Moreno Cruz & Palma Carbajal Guerrero. Competition. 2005 Client: Ayuntamiento de Utrera Area: 4.981,08 m² Budget: 358.637,73 €

A tatooed topography that is embraced by a faceted-stone surface stresses the potential “intemediate” quality of this urban space --historically indeterminate, but always empty. In this “half-way city” situation —in the city walls and outside the city walls— we propose free urban activity upon a topography that is merely tattooed with a gradient of soil and vegetation types and partially enveloped by hard surfaces which simply underline the features of the terrain. The edges between these tectonic plates, which slip and fold, and the hills, whose vegetation mutates and evolves, will become blurred by mutual invasion with time and the citizenry.

Masterplan for the Chanca and its related spaces Competition. 2005 Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes de la Junta de Andalucía. Area: 16.700 m² intervention 30.400 m² study area

In Conil, the urban fabric, understood as a continuum of public space, is a series of courses from the town (the interior) towards its natural medium (the sea). The proposal weaves the Chanca into an urban reality that is shaped by the dramatic fluctuation of population and activity produced by turism. To do so the architectural strategy is balanced around the proposal for both built and open space. The old buildings linked to the historic fishing industry of the place are restored, while they are also embedded with the construction of new elements which, while solving transitions between different urban environments, are also destined to hold uses that have to do with the knowledge industry. Meanwhile, open space becomes public space through the use of a single and site specific material, stone, which is versatile enough to mutate according to the narrow spaces, differences in levels, vegetation and large squares that make up the design.

Conil de la Frontera, Cádiz

Salón Square

Écija, Sevilla

Competition. 2005 Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes de la Junta de Andalucía, Dirección General de Urbanismo. Ayuntamiento de Écija Area: 4.981,08 m²

The proposed square, an urban parlor, is a reading into the vertical layering of all its predecessors, which once superimposed reveal a contemporary public space where the citizenry can once again represent itself. Through the architecture of the ground, the proposal formalises at the center the regularity that the different interventions throughout history always strived for. In the meantime, the trait of this space as a “spontaneous square,” which has eventually adapted to the needs of the different peoples who have used it, is addressed. Thus, irregularities also play their role. That is why certain “errors” and multiple tangent and peripheral environments are introduced that are capable of holding the different edge situations of this evolving square.

Masterplan for the urban edge of the reailway corridor With Sebastien Penfornis & Palma Carbajal Guerrero. Competition. 2003 Client: Ayuntamiento de Cádiz. Colegio de Arquitectos de Cádiz. ETSA Sevilla Area: 163.491,40 m² Budget: 9.035.055,20 €

A linear tropical garden along with a certain carnavalesque manhattanism put into play the urban trauma the railway corridor produced, while offering a critical review of the lack of quality urban growth that the isthmus of Cádiz has gone through. The proposal brings attention to the need to approach this corridor as the sum of multiple public micro-spaces related to a very dense urban layout of collective housing. It also speculates with the possibility of urban public space and the built environment in general becoming an infrastructure and productive medium that is based on the cultural industry generated by the Carnival and the peforming arts.

Cádiz

Connection and Public Space

Mojacar, Almeria

Competition. 2012 Client: Ayuntamiento de Mojacar

The slope, small and difficult as it is, offers the possibility of creating a new public space in Mojácar while solving access and circulation between the two levels of the town it connects. Our approximation is to add what is just necessary by establishing that: -The stone slope is beautiful: its surface is maximized, as it is the last remaining piece of nature left within the town. -There are various ways of going up and down the slope: we restore the existing staircase, barely changing its last flights to improve accessibility. We add a new system that holds both a new staircase and an elevator. This new element offers an urban and spatial experience: the slope and views are enjoyed while it also works as a resting and meeting point. Its placement liberates the maximum surface of the slope and covers the party wall. -The middle also counts: beyond the steep slope, we identify the opportunity not only to connect the top and bottom, but to generate an intermediate public space that connects the existing stairs with the new system.

“Rhythm Of Growth” - MAC Central Open Space

Sejong, South Korea

With PARKKIM Landscape architects. International Competition. 2007 Client: Multi-functional Administrative City Construction Agency of the Republic of Korea. Korea Land Corporation. Korea Institute of Landscape Architecture Area: 6.982 Ha

We received an invitation from PARKKIM to work with them on the final presentation to this competition. Juan Antonio spent 3 weeks in Korea. The proposal was developed according to the following ideas: Sejong is the first SLOW CITY in Korea. Sejong’s slow urban condition —30 years of incremental urban intervention— gives us the first opportunity to emancipate urbanism from the static relationship between the fast-track city and the fast-track open space. So, what is the advantage of this new engagement between the open space and the city? More specifically, how can we maximize the effect of the slow open space to evoke the rhythm of growth of this young city? As the city is being built step by step from 2007 to 2030, the central open space should lead its physical growth and enrich cultural identity. The rhythm of growth of this open space is to be implemented in three phases: first “ATTENTION!!!”, secondly “park of parks”, and in the third place “mosaic of lifestyles.”

OTHER FIELDS, EDITORIAL WORK

OTHER FIELDS

editorial work

> Tranversal Book / 68 > Magazine Neutra / 70 > Neutra 17 city post-periphery / 72 > Neutra 16 city fiesta! / 74 > Neutra 15 city -re / 76 > Neutra 14 city-port / 78

Transversal Book 2010 Client: Universidad de Sevilla Data Book: 2010. ISBN: 978-84-472-1240-8 Color. 156 pp. 17x23x2,75 cms Español / English Graphic Design: Buenos días, proyectos para el entorno Edition: Centro de Iniciativas Culturales de la Universidad de Sevilla, with the collaboration of: ICAS / Ayuntamiento de Sevilla Translation: Anna Zoltwoska Printing: Imprenta Luque Photograph of the book: CienxCien Producción Fotográfica

May the extraordinary be the ordinary

The book compiles the proposals that were submitted to the competition known as The Transversal of the BIACS, which was organised within the Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, BIACS3-Youniverse. We participated in the actual editing of the book, we were in charge of the editorial concept and coordinated the entire process of its making. The challenge was to edit a book-object that inquires into the material possibilities of printed edition. We found paper an attractive differentiating variable in contrast with the very different and incipient field of digital publications. The book incorporates into its structure the urban route that the five winning interventions established in five locations of the city (the façades of the ICAS and of the Faculty of Fine Arts on calle Laraña, and the courtyards of the Architect’s Institute of Seville, of the headquartes of EMASESA and of the Faculty of Fine Arts on calle Gonzalo Bilbao) during the celebration of the BIACS3. This itinerary followed the line of the West-East axis which crosses historic centre of Seville. The chapters are organised as spaces for reflection, in which the capacity of transformation of each of these everyday locations can be seen, showing what they became, in an extraordinary way, for sixty five days, as well as what they could have been. Besides showing all the proposals, in the book there have been included three transversal looks taken at the group of winning proposals by three of the members of the competition’s jury. We hope you all enjoy this book, by reading and feeling it.

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Issues: Neutra 14: ciudad→puerto 2007, Neutra 15: ciudad→re 2007, Neutra 16: ciudad→¡fiesta! 2008, y Neutra 17: ciudad→post-periferia 2009. Ownership: Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla Editorial Staff: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar y Jorge Yeregui Tejedor. Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Translation: Anna Zoltowska Graphic Design: Buenos días, Awards: Premio Málaga de Fomento de la Arquitectura - ámbito privado. 2009 Publications: Catálogo Arquia / Próxima. Orígenes y desacuerdos. 2008 Revista Arquitectos. nº 184. “Arquitectura mediada.” 2008 Exhibitions: VII Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, Medellín (Colombia) 2010 Others: Seleccionado en la I Bienal Arquia / Próxima 2008

Publication of a magazine, understood as a team research process, focused on the relationship between architecture and the city.

Vincent Morales Garoffolo, Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz and Paula Alvarez Benítez are the editors and publishers-in-chief of the third stage of the magazine Neutra (a publication of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla). Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar and Jorge Yeregui Tejedor are members of the editorial staff. The edited issues have been: Neutra 14: city→port, Neutra 15: city→re, Neutra 16: city→fiesta!, and Neutra 17: city→post-periphery. Neutra has “the city as its the background theme, interpreted as a complex phenomenon which finds its cohesiveness in the intangible and difficult definition of what constitutes the urban element. As it is an open territory, the city transcends its iconic status in order to assume a geographic complexity. In this scenario we understand it is not possible to detach it from its architectural condition. The different fields of the profession must assimilate it as a support for practice with all its consequences, while understanding its potential for exploration in search of new tools to incorporate into the wide range of instruments the architect already possesses. The subject matter for each issue has been chosen in accordance with its capacity for synthesis, and to centre the debate on the urban element. As a whole, and owing to the visit to different physical and imagined territories in the city, we will have drawn up a common discourse which begins by claiming of the right to the city and the architect’s obligation to take part, along with other agents, in the construction of this awareness.”

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With Paula Álvarez Benítez. Since 2006. Competition. 2006. First Prize

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Magazine Neutra - Third Stage

Neutra 17 City post-periphery With Paula Álvarez Benítez. January 2009 Ownership: Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla Editorial Staff: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar y Jorge Yeregui Tejedor. Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Translation: Anna Zoltowska Graphic Design: Buenos días,

Excerpt from the editorial

Until well into the twentieth century the periphery in the western city was always considered an urban sub-product subjected to a dependent relationship with one or several traditional production centres; and its main characteristic was that it was distanced engough from these centres and could hold populations or activities that were homogeneous enough so as to lack the “urban” qualities of the historic city. Although these notions were put into question in the 1970s, what really prompted a decisive change was our transition into the third millennium within the framework of globalised and networked economy. The enhancement of this new form of economic development, which fully incorporated scientific, technological and financial production, triggered an extreme decentralization of power, and subsequently, of the city. The entire territory was put at the city’s disposal, prompting such an urban explosion that it overcame intermediate stages of polycentrism, and acquired attributes without the least expression of centrality. Its categories and hierarchies blended into networks with conveniently fleeting, instant and changing nodes, while its natures merged into an almost undifferentiated state of densities, demographies, forms of inhabitation and uses. All of which redefined the concept of urbanity

NEUTRA 17, Index ◦ Post-periphery: crisis, border, laboratory. Neutra interviews Saskia Sassen. 14-17 ◦ The Urban Agreement. Manifesto for an operacional urban space. José Morales Sánchez, Sara María de Giles Dubois. 18-27 ◦ Ciudades celestes: Buenos Aires, Montevideo. Graciela Silvestri. 28-29 ◦ Urban Attributes: On urban dynamics in the Andalusian territory. Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco. 35-39 ◦ Platforms for a Permanent Modernity. Alexander D’Hooghe. 40-47 ◦ The back end of nowhere: Architecture in the periphery : where Andalusia is no longer so far away. Plácido González Martínez. 48-57 ◦ A grammar for the city: two projects. Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara. 58-65 ◦ Medellin. Library-Parks: urban laboratories against violence. Raul Marino, Elkin Vargas. 66-73 ◦ Garrucha Sports center. ELAP. 74-79 ◦ The + or – house. La Panadería. 80-87 ◦ Love seat: A lookout in a sound barrier. Loos Architects. 88-91 ◦ Back from a Walk: Action on the landscape of the Cortijo de las Colonias. Carmen Moreno Alvarez. 92-97 ◦ Disurbanism and the soviet socialist city. Víctor Pérez Escolano. 98-105 ◦ Experimenta 4 Student Competition. 106-113 ◦ Conflicts, negotiations and consensos. What is local as producer of new contexts through artistic practices. Ramón Parramon Arimany. 114-119

◦ PRESENTES -Torre del Homenaje. Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas - Rehabilitación de 5 viviendas y local . MGM Morales Giles - Centro de Salud Lucano. Fco Javier Terrados Cepeda - Teatro. El Puerto de Santa María. José Antonio Carbajal , José Luis Daroca - Avenida de la Constitución. Sara Tavares Costa, Marina Lagos Mariñansky, Federico García Martínez - Plató de televisión y oficinas. SV60 - Subestación eléctrica “Rocío”. RG&R Arquitectos 73

Neutra 16 City fiesta! With Paula Álvarez Benítez. April 2008 Ownership: Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla Editorial Staff: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar y Jorge Yeregui Tejedor. Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Translation: Anna Zoltowska Graphic Design: Buenos días,

Excerpt from the editorial

Anywhere in the world, from great metropoli to small villages, the party has repercussions on urban nature which extend beyond the time of celebration, leaving imprints that remain in the city. The party does not only transport the city outside time, but also outside space and the social structure, allowing for the emergence of an existential and spontaneous community. The city is momentarily suspended and in the middle of the exaltation the horizon clears allowing a glimpse of possible alternative cities by altering the everyday, even if it is only as a fleeting illusion. States of exception, changes in the weather and the social structure which are manifested in the eloquent diversity of spatial transformations. This may be why architecture wants to pay attention to situations which, though not exclusive to the party, are clearly manifested in it. We are talking about its capacity to unveil locations, generate functions, flexibilise uses, produce atmospheres, found places or provide meaning to spaces. The creative technologies we find in the many manifestations of party (global events, extraordinary occasions, cyclic festivities, everyday celebrations…) help us to understand the environments we inhabit and offer suggestions to operate on them from architecture. This issue tackles these matters through several interlinked lines of work: the problems posed by the construction of mediums for the party, which are occasionally ephemeral, and sometimes permanent: urban transformations associated with large events; the varying scales of celebration, their relationships and ways of interacting with the city, particularly, between the public and the domestic sphere; and the incorporation of play into the architectural project. Properties such as sensoriality, temporality, versatility, intensity, proximity, expressiveness and ambiguity or notions associated with improvisation, evasion, suspension, programming and collective appropriation reappear with great importance in creative processes. The party as a stimulating and complex urban function, which over and above its exceptional quality, has the potential to be part of the everyday project.

NEUTRA 16, Index ◦ Celebrating the Street. Adrià Pujol Cruells. 26-31 ◦ Sofronias, cities partying. 32-43 ◦ Architecture Celebrates: Festive Keys to the Architectural Project. Miguel Torres García. 44-49 ◦ Places for Fiesta in Andalusia: Some Case Studies. Gema Carrera Díaz, Aniceto Delgado Méndez. 50-51 ◦ Transformations in the Relationships between Domestic and Public Space. Rafael Reinoso Bellido, Alfredo Rubio Diaz, Luz del Pino Fernández-Valderrama Aparicio. 52-57 ◦ Samba in Rio de Janeiro: Exploring the relationship between culture and city. Lilian Fessler Vaz. 58-63 ◦ Plaza de las libertades. José Morales Sánchez, Sara María de Giles Dubois. 66 ◦ Paris was a Movable Feast. Félix de la Iglesia, José Ramón Moreno Pérez. 68-71 ◦ EXYZT: The Constructive Rave. Vidal Romero. 72-77 ◦ Olympic Paris. A festive layout for a global event. Yona Friedman, Julien Beller. 78-81 ◦ Beijing: The Wedding Banquet. Qing Fei. 82-87 ◦ Kuchenmonument: the kitchen-monument. Raumlaborberlin; Plastique Fantastique. 88-91 ◦ Tea house. Jun Igarashi. 92-95 ◦ “Charco de la Pava” Park. RG&R arquitectos. 96-103 ◦ Archigram in Montecarlo: Celebrating the ZOOM! effect. Nuria Alvarez Lombardero. 104-109 ◦ Seville structure, by John Hejduk: A Mask for Seville. Curro González de Canales. 110-111 ◦ Experimenta 3 Student Competition. 112-117 ◦ Score for a Bizarre Reality. José M. Galán Conde. 118-121

◦ PRESENTES - Casa Cuberta. La Panaderia - Museo y parque arqueológico. Sebastián Carrejón Hidalgo - Centro de Salud Las Palmeritas. CHS Arquitectos - Ampliación del ayuntamiento de Vícar. Nicolás Carbajal , Simone Solinas, Gabriel Verd - Centro de atención socioeducativa. ALT-Q - Nuevo espacio escénico en Rota. Antonio Ángel Haro Greppi - Reforma y acondicionamiento de local para centro de salud. Crespo+Torres arquitectos 75

Neutra 15 City -re With Paula Álvarez Benítez. June 2007 Ownership: Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla Editorial Staff: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar y Jorge Yeregui Tejedor. Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Translation: Anna Zoltowska Graphic Design: Buenos días,

Excerpt from the editorial

Architecture has always been preoccupied with the relationship between environmental surroundings and socio-cultural conditions. But now more than ever its great responsibility as constructor of the environment we inhabit has become apparent, and with it the unavoidable need for critical positioning and a constant updating of the discipline. Despite the proliferation of products labelled as ecological and architectural designs adding touches of green to the city’s image colouring the debates on sustainability, there is a growing number of vectors which require the incorporation of ecological thinking into architecture. This commitment cannot but entail a change of mentality, of the way of looking at the world and the things that would lead us to the collective redefining of human activities – their economic and production goals, urban planning, construction and social, cultural and mental practices. This aim still remains uncertain and in the distant future. This change of mentality requires a prolonged and constant collective debate to repropose contemporary processes and practices. In the meantime, it may be revealing to find experiences where we recognise this tentative ideological update, even if it is simply in the form of small pulsations and traces. Therefore this issue is configured as an attempt to find professionals and proposals that – explicitly or implicitly – accept the demand of asking themselves once more which matters are the concern of the discipline, what the discipline’s field of work is, and how procedures and design are carried out.

NEUTRA 15, Index ◦ Aesthetics and Sustainability: Alternativess. Iñaki Ábalos Vázquez. 26-29 ◦ New Town Planning to Tackle The Challenges posed by Modern Society. Salvador Rueda. 30-37 ◦ Exposing New Orleans. Anthony Fontenot, Jakob Rosenzweig, Anne Schmidt. 38-45 ◦ Emotional, Relational and Everyday. Three Contemporary Art Tactics to Revive Architecture. Jorge García de la Cámara. 48-57 ◦ Public Space and Electronic Flows: Apropos Specific Intangible Urban Resources. J. L. Pérez de Lama. 52-57 ◦ No One Should Be Interested in the Design of Bridges—They Should Be Concerned With How to Get to the Other Side. Ecosistemaurbano. 58-67 ◦ Seville. Approximation to some spaces of the urban social patrimony. Various Authors. 70 - The Parque Urbano de Miraflores - The Corralones de Artesanos - San Luis 40-Endanza - The Casa del Pumarejo - The Huerta del Rey Moro - La Bachillera ◦ Bad (Bath): Infrastructural Leisure Equipment. Smaq. Sabine Müller, Andreas Quednau. 82-85 ◦ The Trace of Things. Ángel Martínez García-Posada. 86-89 ◦ Transferium Barneveld Noord. Gijs Wolfs, Oriol Casas Cáncer. 96-101 ◦ The Women’s House in Dakhla. Beatriz Gerena, Maite Jaraba, Eva Morales Soler, Marta Reina. 102-107 ◦ Refoundation of the City. Berlin and Scharoun. Carlos Gabriel García Vázquez. 111-113 ◦ Experimenta 2 Student Competition. 118 ◦ Interview. Lara Almarcegui and Santi Cirugeda. 122-127

◦ PRESENTES - Parque público en Eras de Cristo, Francisco J. del Corral, Federico Wulff - Paisaje de canoas. Julio Barreno Gutiérrez - Apeadero de autobuses. ELAP - Vivienda tipo kit para trabajadores temporeros. Fco Javier Terrados Cepeda - 25 viviendas de proteccion oficial en régimen cofinanciadas. Santiago Quesada García - Sede judicial. Antonio Tejedor Cabrera, Mercedes Linares, Pedro Lobato - Guarderia y comedor municipal. Elisa Valero Ramos 77

Neutra 14 City-port With Paula Álvarez Benítez. November 2006 Ownership: Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla Editorial Staff: Nuria Álvarez Lombardero, Teresa Cruz Navarro, Ana Fernández González, José María Galán Conde, Francisco González de Canales Ruiz, Antonio González Liñán, Plácido González Martínez, Marta Pelegrín Rodríguez, Fernando Pérez Blanco, Fernando Pérez del Pulgar y Jorge Yeregui Tejedor. Photography: Jorge Yeregui Tejedor Translation: Anna Zoltowska Graphic Design: Buenos días,

Excerpt from the editorial

Traditional ports are those places, on the coast or on the banks of a river, which owing to their natural or artificial characteristics can be used by vessels for loading and unloading operations, or embarking and disembarking goods and persons. Nowadays, when the mobility of people is channelled through airports and the road and railroad networks and that connectivity between humans is being delegated to new technologies, relationships and mechanisms are born which force us to ask ourselves which the new contemporary ports would be. Ports as passageways and doors, as points of connection, but also in their roles of dams, control mechanisms, customs points or regulating barriers. All this causes problems which are hard to map, and lead us to traffic, migrations, exchanges, encounters, crossings, temporalities and regulations, as well as to conflicts and differences, which viewed within the framework of the city, would be echoed in many ways by urban planning, architecture and the continued renovation of these disciplines. But before making such a vertiginous leap and immersing ourselves in the port territories as a metaphor and tool, we wanted to touch upon the specific problems of the physical spaces of friction which link maritime and river ports with the cities and that in themselves signify a great number of landscapes and city dynamics. Key concepts in this issue are: urban water, interface, urban marketing, negotiation, heritage and sustainability.

NEUTRA 14, Index

◦ Rehabilitation, Reconversion, Revitalisation while Keeping the Port in the City. Joan Alemany. 22

◦ Dubai. The Superlative City. 26

- The Port as Prototype. Gareth Doherty, Stephen Ramos, Hasim Sarkis. 27 - Cities Without Cities. Samer Bagaeen. 31

◦ On the Waterfront: Sustainable City, Consumable Port. Francesc Muñoz. 36

◦ Port-City Relations: A Never Ending Story?

◦ Services building in the Nautical-Sport Area of the Port of

◦ Valparaíso: A City Between Times. Mirta Halpert Z. 50

◦ Fishermen’s shacks in Cangas. Jesús Irisarri. 106

◦ Port Industry Heritage: The Matagorda Shipyard.

◦¡Viva la Pepa! Open debate: Visions of Cádiz. 108

Manuel A.González Fustegueras. 46

José María Molina Martínez. 56

◦ Mediterranean: Between the Port and the City. Stefano Boeri. 62

◦ Génova. Center and Metropolis. 64

- Port and Historic Center. Davide Oliveri. 65 - Port y Metropolis. Paula Alvarez Benitez. 68

◦ Toronto Waterfron Renewal. 76

-The Urban Saviour. Adriaan Geuze, Chidi Onwuka. 80

◦ Superport. Plot. 82 ◦ Door, Transit and Flesh. Three Themes on the Port Architecture of Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra. Francisco José González de Canales Ruiz. 84

◦ Algeciras: The Opportunity for Institutional

Collaboration. José Suraña Fernández. 92 - Llano Amarillo. Cruz y Ortiz. 96 - Parque del Centenario. Víctor Cobos, Maria Caffarena, Andrés García, Bernardo Gómez. 97

◦ Shores: Landscape as transition. Thierry Kandjee, Sebastien Penfornis. 98

Barbate. Enrique Abascal, Rafael Herrera. 100

- CAD12. Oficina del PGOU. 110 - Gran Plaza del Mar. Territorio y Ciudad, RG&R. 111 - Proyecto Bahía de Cádiz, Varios autores. 112

◦ The Parliament Briefcase: Commonness and Experiments in a Europe United in Diversity. Andrés Jaque. 116

◦ Fishermen’s club and school of canoeing. Simone Solinas, Gabriel Verd. 122

◦ Atlantropa: The Dream of the Mediterranean. Plácido González Martínez. 128

◦ Experimenta 1 Student Competition. 134 ◦ Muntadas, Urban Projects 2002-2005.... Towards Sevilla 2008. Marta Pelegrín. 138

◦ PRESENTES

- Casa NO, Javier Aldarias - Espacio Escénico, MGM - Tanatorio Crematorio, Rafael Sánchez - Trinchera, Santiago Cirugeda - Sede Judicial, Ignacio Laguillo, Harald Schönegger - Subestación Eléctrica, RG&R Arquitectos - Intervención en la Muralla de San Miguel, A. J. Torrecillas 79

OTHER FIELDS, ARTS & EPHEMERA

OTHER FIELDS

Arts & ephemera

> Puerta, del latĂn portare / 82 > Cent Garden / 84 > Transite 2006 / 86 > Racons Public: Passeig BernardĂ martorell / 86 > Content-ido / 88

As a response to a call for ideas, the door represents itself as a symbolic space.

The notion of limit, understood as restriction, has been an ever present variable within the field of architecture. There rarely has been a chance for exception in the process of enclosing and organizing spaces into hierarchies, with the goal of attaining control over property patterns, functions, atmospheres and people. However, doors imply a (cruel) escape mechanism for these rules. Escape in the sense that, as the origin of the word (in Latin “portare”, for the Spanish “puerta”) implies, doors are an exception within the formal rigidity of the insurmountable limits of a space; beyond their terrifying divine symbolism, they represent emptiness, gaps where matter is lacking, but where transition has always takes place since ancient times. The cruelty of the idea of the door lies in the fact that they are a mere illusion of a break in wall; the gaps are emidiately equipped with opening and closing mechanisms, locks and other controlling technologies. This conceptual and visual proposal is a response to MAMM’s call for ideas for the access door to its venue. The door represents itself as a symbolic space, revealing the ritualistic origin of the Latin word for it and inviting visitors to stop and think while reading about the origins of the word while at the same time looking at their own blurred reflection. Such a common thing as a door thus shows its sinister and forgotten origins.

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Competition. Call for proposals la puerta (the door). Finalist . 2012

mpeti fina list

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Puerta. From latin porta Medellín (Colombia). MAMM - Museo Arte Moderno Medellín

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Finalist Transversal BIACS3 Competition Patio del Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla. 2008 Construction of table-top prototype for PECHAKUCHA SEVILLA #5. 2008 Construction of ephemeral model for EME3-Mercado. 4º Festival de Arquitectura. Patio de las Dones. Centro de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona. 2009 Project date: 2008 Competition client: Universidad de Sevilla. Fundación Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla (BIACS). Instituto de Cultura y Artes de Sevilla (ICAS). Empresa Municipal de Aguas de Sevilla (EMASESA). Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Sevilla. Area: 20 m² Budget: 8.000,00 € Construction date: 19/03/2009-21/03/2009 Model client: ADN. Fomento de las Artes y el Diseño (FAD). Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA). Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB). Photograph: PKMN-OGA Area: 4 m² Budget: 300,00 €

Amidst the financial crisis of the fall of 2008, the proposal, both a critical and a playful response to the collapse of the universe of money, invites the city’s inhabitants to take a stroll in a garden paved with loose euro cents from which fortune piggy banks sprout. Throughout time and multiple cultures, gardens have depicted representations of the universe and have constituted spaces for meditation and desire. Money is a universal symbol that embodies contemporary culture and the codes that govern society. However, in economic terms, money as a liquid asset is virtually inexistent; it is an abstraction. Cent Garden makes money visible by evidencing the physicallity of coinage: color, texture, shine and smell. In its current, most basic and often looked down on unit, 1 euro-cent coins, money becomes a gardening material, a surface that reveals its very high perceptive features in contrast with the intangible role it plays in global economy. Initially, Cent Garden was a proposal for the patio of the Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla, as part of the Transversal competitions of the Seville Contemporary Art Biennale (BIACS). In this case the available budget for its realization was turned literally into “money thrown on the ground”. Following this experience, a table-top prototype was developed for PechaKucha Sevilla #5. For EME3-mercado, we presented a 4 m2 model. In this completely self-financed case, all the materials used, except the piggy banks, came from the El Raval’s local businesses. The cents were “bought” from the Banco de España in Plaza Catalunya, given that for commercial banks, the “materialization” of money, be it through a loan or by merely “giving change”, is not considered a business opportunity since the expense of the service offered is higher than the actual material good. 84

mpeti fina list

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Various versions and locations

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Cent Garden

Transite 2006

Almería

Competition 2006 Client: Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes de la Junta de Andalucía. Consejo Andaluz de Colegios Oficiales de Arquitectos Area: 247,00 m² Budget: 17.850,00 € Publications: ARV. Revista de Arquitectura nº 7. Febrero 2008. “Olor a LevanteSur (2).Autócton@”

As in a blurry mirage, by using the simple optic trick of creating a horizon that fades, the party wall is camouflaged and dematerialises. Evanescence, disappearance and reflection are concepts that are also conected to the collective imagery of the desert, the sea and the foremost urban culture “Medianespería” is an urban action, a proposal framed in the urban and environmental landscape of Almería. It reflects everyday urban space and the way it is inhabitated, and it establishes a relationship between what is built, public space, air and the way it flows and becomes atmosphere. The vertical surface, originally silent, opaque, private and inaccessible, is incorporated into the horizontal public space of streets and squares. As an added value, the instalation allows for the projection of either static or dynamic images, serving as a platform for other cultural events, festivals, fairs or visual-art happenings that may take place in Almería.

Intervention in the Passeig Bernardí Martorell Competition. Selected Proposal. 2004 Promotor / Client: FAD Superficie / Area: 370,00 m²

The alley is a garden to be discovered and become an urban provocation. The intervention is a celebration of the passageway itself: a narrow, tall, long place that is used only during specific times of the day. A natural pattern sprouts from the ground, which is conformed by the agricultural past of the neighbourhood and from the unique fragmented multiculturality of the present. The space is formed by new materials at its entranceways (a fishtank, a bench, a shelf) and by vertical elements brought from other places: tall palmtrees that look upon Barcelona, taking the pedestrians gaze up towards light. Following Gabriel García Marquez’s instructions, the six palmtrees will arrive flying over the city, held by helicopters, ready to be placed in the passage. A surrealist object of desire is attached to one of these palmtrees, an endless ladder, inaccessible (probably not by all), that climbs up to the sky in the hope of having a look onto the sea from the vantage point of the palmtree tops.

Barcelona

Conten-ido

Patio Colegio de Arquitectos de Sevilla 19/12/2009. 11-14 h

Installation, self-exhibition 2009 Client: RED PÚBLICA – BIACS3. CICUS

Instantaneous exhibition: “Models, dossiers, photographs of built works, prototypes, drawings, references: the pots and pans and an inside look into the office’s kitchen are presented on a large table in a self-service manner so passers-by can interact with the contents. Exclusive souvenirs of the event will be produced” .

OTHER FIELDS, Curatorial projects

OTHER FIELDS

Curatorial projects

> Culturalnodes.net / 92 > Blurring Architecture, an approximation / 94

culturalnodes.net / INÉDITOS 2012

Obra Social Caja Madrid

Competition 2012. Submitted to Inéditos 2012, a competition designed to shine the spotlight on up-and-coming curators culturalnodes: Rachel Fendler + Quico Peinado + Juan Antonio Sánchez

A cultural platform about collective projects. The proposal is a network research project about collectives and their areas of interests.

Cultural nodes is a cultural platform about collective projects, created by Rachel Fendler, Quico Peinado and Juan Antonio Sánchez, cultural management and architecture professionals with diverse interests within contemporary culture. We are interested in collaborative working processes, training, debate and the generation of synergies with other active groups/ collectives that share their interests in the dynamics of production and exhibition. The proposal presented for Inéditos 2012 under the name culturalnodes. net, is thought as a network research project about collectives and their areas of interest. Each area is a category from which to begin with in order to organize each work group, but as the research/exhibition process progresses these areas will be infiltrated by others. The categories are: artistic interventions, architecture, cultural pedagogy, social action and activism, videogames and net art, graphic design, video and commissioning. Cultural nodes is not a standard exhibition, it’s a knowledge, research and development platform, a project that doesn’t conclude with the end of the exhibit.

Blurring Architecture. An approximation Centro de Arte La Regenta, Canarias Submitted to Nuevos Comisarios. 2011 The name is used with the permission of Mr. Ito

How has architecture evolved since the theoretical text “Blurring Architecture”?

The exhibition Project uses Toyo Ito’s theoretical text “Blurring Architecture” as its starting point. This text, first published in 1999, spoke in terms of a soft architecture that has not yet taken a final shape. The exhibit is understood as a research process that takes a glance back as well as a look forward from the point in time in which the text was written. It deals with thirteen proposals that have contributed to the definition of the architecture Ito speaks of, both in their visualisation and experimentation. All of this set within the broader theoretical framework of “weak thought” and within the current interest in concepts such as fragility, risk and vulnerability, ideas architecture has not remained indifferent to. All of the exhibit’s materials, that is, the representation of architecture, are conceived to be shown audiovisual in digital format. The exhibit proposal is enhanced by parallel activities; the celebration of talks, debates, workshops, etc. and a research and study area.

OTHER FIELDS, Research

OTHER FIELDS

Research

> Tourist Guide to Sinister Landscapes of the Spanish Coast / 98 > The Gates of Rome / 100 > Periodical Architecture Publications of Andalusia 20th century / 102 > The Soft Drawing / 104

Tourist Guide to Sinister Landscapes of the Spanish Coast Submitted to “Pensar el Paisaje 2011”, CDAN. 2011 Submitted to Becas Arte Fundación Botín. 2012 Communication UNIA - Sobre Capital y Territorio III. 2012

After the construction boom, an anti-touristic guide of the Spanish Coast in search of cases that are extreme and sinister.

Coastal landscapes are a narrow but intense stretch of territory that enables the definition and understanding of what we currently known as landscape, both physically and psychologically. In Spain, in less than 50 years time, the coast has been radically transformed. Tourism has been the main motor of change and has defined this landscape. Nowadays, immersed in a post-boom scenario, we are confronted with the obsolescence of these touristic landscapes. This research project traverses the Spanish coast in search of cases that are extreme and sinister: in ruins, abandoned, under developed, half built, stopped, mysterious, paradoxical…. The goal is to layout a series of questions and conclusions that insert themselves into the debate on how this landscape is used, built, protected or recycled.

The Gates of Rome Submitted to becas MAEC-AECID 2012-2013, Academia de España in Rome.

A door is gateways to and intriguing universe while containing in itself an enigmatic nature. It is both boundary and exchange.

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This research project reveals this dual trait of the door—a feature that can be extrapolated to architecture— based on the specific study of such an ancient and powerful image as the gates of Rome are. The starting point is the origins of the Roman foundation of the city, in which the gates were mere absence, bringing the validity of this abstract concept to our contemporary period, in which architecture is exploring its blurred boundaries. This tour of Rome rests on the notions of tourism and the tourist in order to construct a narration that is like a round trip, mixing realties and fictions. The project’s focus encompasses from the physical scale of the gates, which is small, to the multiple scales their echo reaches: territorial, urban, civic, public, domestic or symbolic.

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Periodical Architecture Publications of Andalusia 20th century With Paula Álvarez Benítez. Estudio elaborado por petición del Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico. 2012 Cien años de arquitectura en Andalucía. El Registro Andaluz de Arquitectura Contemporánea, 1900-2000 (A Hundred Years of Architecture in Andalusia. The Andalusian Registry of Contemporary Architecture. 1900-2000)

We had the chance of spending some interesting days of team work exploring magazines, fanzines, collections, etc. that have been published in Andalusia over the last century.

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This article is part of the publication Cien años de arquitectura en Andalucía. El registro Andaluz de Arquitectura Contemporánea, 1900-2000. (A Hundred Years of Architecture in Andalusia. The Andalusian Registry of Contemporary Architecture. 1900-2000). Our collaboration compiles a research project we did with Paula Álvarez. Thanks to it we had the chance of spending some interesting days of team work exploring magazines, fanzines, collections, etc. that have been published in Andalusia over the last century This is the summary of the article: “It is beyond this text’s objectives to thoroughly review how Andalusian architecture publications have approached the architectural production of the region. However we do want to contribute some preliminary ideas, centered on periodicals, that may lead to further research in the field. On the one hand, by delimiting the field we have striven to homogenize the analysis within a body of diverse and heterogeneous publications in order to establish a dialogue among the brief notes we contribute. On the other hand, since these publications are the result of the work of architects, they can be understood as part of Andalusian architectural production themselves. Following Beatriz Colomina’s words, periodicals, like other mass media, have been widely regarded as the places in which architecture is actually produced. From our point of view, the conception and development by architects of this other “place” can only be understood as another work of architecture. We submit critical and descriptive summaries of the following reviews, following their chronological order of appearance: Revista Arquitectura Andalucía Oriental (AQ), Anuario, Periferia, Geometría, Documentos de Arquitectura (DA), Revista PH, Guías de Arquitectura, Archivos De Arquitectura (AA), Rizoma, Revista Neutra, Revista de Historia y Teoría de la Arquitectura, Boletín Fidas, Páginas de Arquitectura ( Diario de Sevilla), Periódico de Arquitectura, Almenas, ARV. “

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The Soft Drawing Ongoing research. Since 2004

The soft drawing is the creative space in which metric and scientific definition intersect with graphic and eidetic representation.

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This is a concept we have been developing through various projects in our office. It is a combination of drawing and design as whole that strives to represent a project or communicate a landscape concept that has yet to be carried out, that feeds on its own materiality, that needs time and that underlines its transitional traits. Soft drawing it interlinked with the idea that landscape is a process, not an object, but a place that is alive and dynamic. To â&#x20AC;&#x153;soft drawâ&#x20AC;? is a way to approach two key landscape concepts: transformation and transition. A soft drawing is a design tool that facilitates, incites, diversifies and proposes what can occur in a landscape. A soft drawing includes, besides what can be strictly represented because it belongs to the realm of imagery, notions such as sound and touch, or simple intuitions that go beyond bi dimensional representations. From a place, a soft drawing reveals past processes, shows present complexities and visualizes future possibilities. To soft draw is to imagine. It means producing an image that constructs an idea, a space-organizationtime image that rather than reproduce a scene, communicates the collective sense of a place. To soft draw is to communicate the excitement of what is to come, is to articulate what the future promises.

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OTHER FIELDS, Blog

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OTHER FIELDS

Blog: opinion & criticism (selection of posts)

> HUMPRY REPTON’S RED BOOKS / 108 > VIB[]K: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! / 110 > VISITORS: LA ALHAMBRA (2/2). OWEN JONES / 112

> RIBERA DEL DUERO HEADQUARTERS – EBV BAROZZI VEIGA / 114

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HUMPRY REPTON’S RED BOOKS Post. 03/11/2011

Recently, while presenting a project someone commented that we had done so as if we still were in the 18th Century. We take this as praise, if we look at Humpry Repton’s exquisite presentations

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Humpry Repton (1752-1818) was an English landscape architect. He worked for the English high society, he even worked on some designs for the Prince of Wales. But nowadays he is well known for the art of self-promotion. He used to present his plans and ideas to his clients in the form of Red Books, thus named for their characteristic red morocco bindings. Now, we can look at 2 of those beautiful books at the on-line exhibition Humphry Repton’s Red Books at The Morgan Library & Museum (New York) website: We have enjoyed visiting this on-line exhibition and we recommend checking it out. There is plenty of information and a hand full of great apps. Don’t miss the +on/-off overlay button! This story establishes several links with our interests: firstly, part of our job is how to prepare presentations, specially in the case of competitions where we have to compile the complexity of a project: its concepts, how it is set in its context, its representation, what it conveys, its construction, its viability, etc. in just 3 flat boards for panel of experts to look at among a pile of other competitors’ boards (see the posts labelled under concursos/competitions). Secondly because it is an example of a book object (see all the entries labelled under libro/book transversal) which has been among our latest interests: how to convey space-time sequences in a book’s content; the material interaction between book and reader, and the potential of non-linear, a-directional reading within a subjective physical narrative. And finally, we found this link doing some research for an upcoming competition for a garden in which once again we will be expressing our concerns about the matter of contemporary landscape, its transformation processes and transience. Moreover, finding these two books by Humpry Repton reminds us yet again of the importance of being creative even under the most daunting circumstances.

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VIB[]K: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Post. 19/12/2011

What to call this book, if there are small variations in the title depending on where you look, be it the front cover, the back cover or the spine of the outer box, or if you look at each of the 5 folded ten-paged booklets that turn into posters that the edition includes or if you even read the actual ninety six-paged book that is also included? We think that to wonder about this is no mistake.

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COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURES ARQUITECTURAS COLECTIVAS Trucks, Containers, Collectives is a book by Ediciones VIB[]K, a magnificent project created and directed by our close colleague Paula Álvarez Benítez. This book has just turned 1 year old. Happy Birthday! Paula, who we had the pleasure of working very closely with when the three of us directed and edited the magazine Neutra, leads the passionate project Ediciones VIB[]k which is developing a new editorial concept in accordance with the digital age, in which information exchange and the mutability of contents are the norm. A certain amount of confusion or, to state it in better terms, subtleties between variations, are definitely part of our time, and, among other many questions, the book inevitably takes part in all of these processes. This, which is just her first book, has already had great reviews and awards, some as prestigious as the Premio FAD Thought & Criticism 2011. We can’t wait to see the upcoming ones! Paula, we wish you the best of luck and success in this exciting path you have taken! As readers, when you first see this book, you can find a few explanations on the back cover that give you some clues about its content, such as: “this book is untrue”, “this book is partial”, “this book is useless”, and “this book doesn’t talk about architecture”. Once we have had the opportunity to study the book in depth, we both agree and disagree with these statements. This intellectual conflict is part of the editorial project. The book goes beyond the in depth study of its theme: using the technologies available nowadays it can constantly be reviewed, revisited, re-imagined, reedited and rewritten.(via plataforma booka)

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VISITORS: LA ALHAMBRA (2/2). OWEN JONES Post. 18/01/2012

This post is a continuation of the previous one about our recent visit to two exhibitions: Owen Jones and the Alhambra and MC Escher Infinite Universes. Both focus on the impact that visiting the Alhambra had on the artists. Today we will review the one dedicated to the architect Owen Jones

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This exhibit is fascinating. Its venue is a quadrant on the top floor of the Palacio de Carlos V, and it is divided into a series of rooms that describe the research into the Alhambra carried out by Owen Jones (London 1809-1874) and its latter influence on designers and architects. Throughout the show you can contemplate various copies of Jones’ book Plans, elevations, sections, and details of the Alhambra, which compiles the Alhambra’s décor, as well as drafts and sketches result of his field work. The goal of Jones’ endeavour was to find the scientific laws that ruled the use of ornament and color in architecture, using this foremost of monuments as his object of study and proof of his ideas. This same theme is the leif motiv of Jones’ best known work The Grammar of Ornament, copies of which are also on view at the exhibit. This book became a reference and a study manual for designers and architects, and its influence is made patent in a room dedicated to other authors who based their studies on Jones’. Among the materials there are some drawings by Le Corbusier. The exhibit also underlines another aspect of the architect’s visit to the Alhambra which contributed decisively to the monument’s popularization. In 1851, Jones was commissioned to decorate Jospeh Paxton’s Crystal Palace. Here he would find a unique opportunity to apply his theories about ornament and color. In a variety of graphic information you can see how Jones tinged Paxton’s pristine white structures with the tones of the Spanish monument in order to modulate and organize the pavilion’s exhibition spaces. He thus transformed the Crystal Palace’s interiors, giving them a clear identity with an exotic touch. Perhaps because of this and in a chapter that is yet another twist in this story, once the Crystal Palace was dismantled, Jones was commissioned to build a replica of the Alhambra’s Patio de los Leones within the new Crystal Palace to be built at Sydenham. At the exhibit you can see copies of original brochures, pictures of its construction process —carried out in part by a team of women, as shown in an astonishing photograph, in which they are dressed

in Victorian wear delicately laying tiles— and of commercial events that took place once the courtyard was finished. This replica within a replica reveals a sinister beauty: a paradise of stalactite work, tiles, marble columns and gurgling water contained within the neutral atmosphere of what was then a modern construction of steel and glass. Nowadays we are used to seeing these strange things at fairs, expos and shopping malls, but we can imagine how surprising and captivating the experience must have been back then. Over the years (up until 1936, when a fire destroyed Sydenham’s Crystal Palace), this fictional space received millions of visits and was probably the Alhambra’s best embassador. Both of the exhibit’s aspects have led us to reflect upon, as well as appreciate in contemporary terms, how Owen Jones’ initial romantic reverie became, on the one hand, a form of modern scientific observation and, on the other, the origin and driving force for the massive spread of knowledge about the Alhambra.

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RIBERA DEL DUERO HEADQUARTERS – EBV BAROZZI VEIGA Post. 17/04/2012

Recently we visited this building by Fabrizio Barozzi & Alberto Veiga. We want to share some brief impressions after ambling around the outside of the building and experiencing that which its authors aspired to: generate a proposal that, in itself, finds its meaning by moving between different realities.

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The project summary starts by describing the site, placed on the edge of the town, and continues telling us that the building becomes an element of transition. The place is far from our usual whereabouts, so after visiting this project, we feel like playing a game in which we can interpret and reflect upon the meaning of this intervention. We will reread the authors’ description of the project from the perspective of our visit. We will zoom into the place in order to reveal other border conditions in which to look for the meaning of “transition” in this case. The visit: Due to our travel route, we got to the town of Roa from Peñafiel following the road BU-133. We arrived from the southwest and drove around the town. That is, we approached the building the other way around. We arrived from the opposite direction of the usual narrative of the project: the tower appeared, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, poking up above the town’s rooftops, not on the foreground and from a distance. We reached the site from its side and the tower suddenly loomed above us. From there we admired the landscape of the flat plateau that the project summary describes. Given that it was holiday, the building was closed, so we were unable to visit its interior. We experienced its exterior and its setting. The inside will remain an imagined space known to us only through drawings and pictures. We ambled around for a while, around the town and the surrounding fields, until we continued our journey seeing the tower gradually become smaller on the rear-view mirror. A play on scales: Our perception is influenced by our journey there. Several hours had gone by since we had left behind the last city, Valladolid. We had taken a detour from the highway and followed the course of the river Duero. We had made a point of stopping at Peñafiel in order to see the “plaza del Coso” (subject of a future post). From there we traversed the area using a minor road, enjoying a landscape dedicated in its most part to a rich wine industry. Hence our interpretation of the setting on an edge of this project as a dichotomy: the site is a hundred percent rural, whilst the activity it embodies, once it is converted to use, transcends all boundaries.

This duality is very intriguing from a contemporary point of view, especially fro architecture, because it informs research into current phenomena such as the concept of “rurbanity”, the outreach of what is actually urban, the growth of suburbanism and the ubiquitous presence of the city. Over the last few years, rural areas and small towns in Spain have seen their material and social assets enhanced through the construction of new buildings and public spaces, thus experiencing the emergence of new uses that were once exclusive to cities. Beyond mimetic approaches, the response that architecture has given in this context has sometimes been that of estrangement. In settings often characterized by either bad architecture, be it old or new, or in mere disrepair, and by environments that ugly and hard to grasp, these new facilites, most of which are placed on the edges or within difficult settings, have flourished as new and autonomous architectures, shinny and beautiful in some cases, but always as exceptions to the norm of those contexts. But not necessarily as a strange object alien to its setting. In these cases, estrangement has usually given more to a place than what it has taken away. It has proposed the generation of public space where once wastelands prevailed. It has also given new collective identity through modest centralities and excentricities, and with great care has solved that fragile transition between urban and rural spaces in small towns. In this case the building, the project, is strange due to its sophistication, not because of its strangeness or alien relationship to the place. As a transitional element it gathers up the notion of landscape, monument, settlement, size, shape, materiality and image. The tower recalls the ancient past. The small squarebalcony, in its openness and its intimateness, enables a look out point, a reminder that buildings are not the sole object of the work of the architect, but that the entire city is. The careful stitching up of the town’s torn layout as well as the sealing-up of party walls and other elements leave nothing out. The integration of pre-existing structures such as the hospital building and the remaining wall of a church in ruins seems natural given the continuity of the design. Fragmentation, as a tool, is used here because it is within the spirit of the relationship between the town and its fields. And its aesthetic discourse through color and material, making use of monotony as a theme, prove that this is the project for that place. Whatever your travel plans through the area may be it deserves a visit.

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La Hoya Park

Vincent Morales Garoffolo & Juan Antonio Sánchez Muñoz

kauh, since 2004

Our professional experience integrates architecture, public space and landscape design, combines activities in the fields of editing and research and approaches the spheres of art and culture.

Carril de San Agustín 6 .18010, Granada. Spain +34 958 222 064 / +34 659 824 855 / +34 653 309 375 kauharquitectos@gmail.com; kauh@kauh.es www.kauh.es kauharquitectos.blogspot.com twitter.com/kauharquitectos