Dialogue Between Nature and Architecture The multifunctional space in the mountain as a new complement in the Guinardo park's promenade. by Santiago Cuenca Palacios
Tutor: Ph.D. Aquiles Gonzalez MBArch 2016-2017 Master’s Degree in Advanced Studies in Architecture-Barcelona Especiality Contemporary Project
Dialogue Between Nature and Architecture The multifunctional space in the mountain as a new complement in the Guinardo park's promenade.
by Santiago Cuenca Palacios
“Nature is all the body of God Frank Lloyd Wright
d we mortals will ever see.�
I would like to express my gratefulness to every one to support me in the course of the Master, and the development of the present work, specially to my family, my parents Numan, Raquel (my dear grammar editor) and my brother Andres; at the distance they were present all the time, listening and giving me advices, in order to support me in this process. Also I want to show my gratitude to Caridad and Andrea, two magnificence friends that became my family and my company this time. Finally this is for my sister, I’m sure she is celebrating with me from the heaven, accompanying me step by step in this beautiful career that is beginning, this passion, the architecture.
Abstract
The development of the architecture project involves different issues, resulting always the biggest challenge when we face the nature, in this case, the presence of the mountain in the Guinardo Park. In that sense, the best way to generate this project is creating a dialog, a conversation between nature and architecture. Using the nature as scenario, as a formal element for the building, for its promenade, for its experience; learning from the architectural paradigms that achieve that idea. But, this dialog must have a topic, something to talk. For that reason, it is important to understand how the evolution of the place and space is, the contemporary incidence of the technology, in the way of how we are living those spaces which are going to be placed in the nature. It means, the necessity of designing the multifunctional spaces in the contemporary architecture as different topics in a dialog, but always taking into account its main objective, that is, to respect the context and the nature. In other words, maintaining the dialog.
Keywords:
Nature and Architecture, Space and Place, Multifunctional Spaces, El Carmel, Guinardo Park
Contents 13
Introduction
17 20 26 30 34 40 46
Chapter 1: Knowing the Meeting Point Introduction Chapter 1 Brief History of The Carmel Neighbourhood. The importance of the Bunkers The new project a new light Choosing the site, a problem as opportunity Plan of the site and sections Design Clues
51 54 60 64 68
Chapter 2: Thinking about what to Talk Introduction Chapter 2 The ways to understand the context in Architecture Ideas of the place and space Paradigms of the architecture of the place The contemporary dissolution of the space
75 78 80 84 88 100 108
Chapter 3: Nature as Scenario for Talking Introduction Chapter 3 The language of the landscape Analogies between structural elements and nature. Placing in Nature Understanding the Nature Art and Nature Designing clues of Cases
Chapter 4: Being in Confidence, Conversing 133 Introduction Chapter 4 134 Location 136 Current Situation 138 Initial ideas 140 Project’s Description 144 Gound Floor 146 First Floor - Plaza - Garden - Main entrance 148 The building in slope - Parking use 150 The building in slope - Market use 152 The building in slope - Roof - Public Space 154 Elevation and Sections 166 Perspectives 174
Conclusion
Annex 178 Table of Images 182 Bibliography 186 Process
Introduction
The development of the architecture project involves different issues, like knowing the site and the kind of program needed to develop it there. Every project is different according to those aspects, but always is a challenge when we as architects face a strong context, when we face the nature. Adolf Loos used to say that in a perfect natural image, the vernacular architecture appears inside the nature and looks like it is made by the same God, but sometimes this picture is being destroyed, when suddenly appears another building, another intervention made by an architect. He or she could be good or bad, it doesn’t matter, because the natural image had already been destroyed.
This dialog must have a topic, something to talk, some function in the building that is going to be placed in the nature. For that reason, it is important to understand how the evolution of the place and space is, and the contemporary incidence of the technology, in the way of how we are living those spaces which are going to be placed in the nature. It means, the necessity of designing the multifunctional spaces in the contemporary architecture as different topics in a dialog. The present work shows a project located in an ancient quarry in the Guinardo Park. It reflects and gives us the clues as a way to face the architectural project. Through the lessons and knowledge about the ideas of the place and space, the ways to understand the context and how the architecture is placed in the nature must be in balance. The project pretends to create this dialogue between the nature and a strong context, improving the current situation in the site, linking the promenade of the park and being the perfect complement for the Carmel’s Bunkers, and a new facility for the neighborhood, but always taking into account its main objective, that is, to respect the context and the nature. In other words, maintaining the dialog.
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This aspect is important in the sense that it is always difficult to develop a project when the nature makes a strong influence. The best way to generate a correct project is creating a dialog, a conversation between nature and architecture. When the architecture listens and understands the clues that the nature is telling, and the building answers with a correct implantation, scale, promenades, etc. this dialog is created.
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01 Chapter
Knowing the Meeting Point
In the present chapter the reader will understand the history and the importance of the Carmel Neighbourhood and the presence of the bunkers as a transcendental phase in its development and shape. In order to understand and make an architectonic project, this phase that involves the history and the analysis of the current situation is fundamental. Thus, the architect can understand why the project has different requirements and the best way of fulfill it. In the route of this analysis the bunkers appear. So, it is necessary to understand this project in order to develop an appropriated complement for it. In this sense, the site emerges, but with another particularity, the presence of the nature, giving us the topics that the present work develops in the next chapter in order to find the best way to develop the architectonic project, to promote the dialog.
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Location Horta Guinardo district in Barcelona - Spain 19
Brief History of The Carmel Neighbourhood.
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The Carmel neighborhood below to the Horta-Guinardo district is located at the north of the “Parc dels Tres Turons” composed by “Turo de Rovira, Turo del Carmel, Turo de Creueta de Cooll” all of them joint with hills.
In the first half of the XX century, it began the neighbors association in El Carmel, with the aim of ensuring the interest of the houses’ owners that were installing in the north side of the Turo del Carmel. For example, lack of communications, services, streets, etc. In 1927, the owners were Between the “Turo del Carmel” and “Turo de Rovira” was worried about the destruction of the urbanizable plots that placed the Carlmel’s neighborhood, in 1864. The topogra- surround the quarry of Can Baro. phy and the activities in the quarries like “Turo de Rovira”, influenced on the image of the neighborhood that is char- Between 1900 and 1936 the parceling and later construcacterized by high slopes and stairs. The neighborhood has tion of the residential buildings increase considerably. It 31498 inhabitants, representing the 1,96% of the Barcelo- happened for different reasons. For example, the fact of the na’s population in 2015, with a strong presence of foreign low price was continuing, and the people could dispose with population according with the IDESCAT1. a wild extension of land in an affordable price than other sites in the city. This situation makes appear some urban The zone where is located the neighborhood, used to be planning operations as the “Empresa Nacional de Tiera place of the second residences of the Villa de Gracia’s2 ras”, that speculates the land, favoring the settlement of the bourgeoisie between the finals of the XIX century and the modest social classes, so this situation makes to continubeginning of XX century. This plot always has been charac- ing increasing the segregation of big parcels that are sold as terized for bad communications with the city, precisely the building plots, but constructing later as little isolated houses distance and the isolation of the territory that today occupy or between medians. El Carmel, explain the arrival of new settlements at the end of the XIX century. In 1881 the construction of the Carm- It is important to highlight that the urbanization of the el’s way route, that join Gracia with Horta neighbourhood, Carmel doesn’t answer to the expansion of the old nearest contributed to re-value the terrains of the zone. According neighborhoods as Horta or Gracia. For that reason, the rewith Bou and Guimeo3, the period between 1877 and 1910 sult was a sub urban growing, with no coherence, but also is very important in order to figure out the actual urban dis- isolated without links with another consolidated cores. position of the Carmel by two main reasons. First, it was reaffirming the principal axis of communication in the city, by During the Spanish civil war, in the top of the “Turo de la various single family houses placed along of that axis. And Rovira” this part of the neighborhood was a settlement of second, for the avalanche of people arrival from Barcelona the antiaircraft bases. In the postwar years it was annulled, and other nearest Gracia’s villages, especially because they and the collective claims to get urban improvements. Also were able to buy a terrain with a cheapest price in this no with the postwar, the first migrations waves of the Cataluurbanized zone. Also, the desire of being in contact with the na’s rural areas arrived, especially of the other territories of earth and nature is transformed in a complaint of the popu- the Spain like Andalucia. The Carmel area is transformed as lar social classes that occupy that site; the requirements had important point of residential attraction, occupying graduappeared in the newspapers of that time. ally the “Turo de Rovira” and the Carmel, wher the settleThe result of these first transformations is an incipient ur- ment of the barracks and the self-construction is produced, banized process, with different kind of typology of little under the administrative permissiveness. In those years, the houses in ground floor, facing to the pre-existence rural religious and benefit buildings also gain force, in the way of trials, without coherence, urban planning, or good commu- the new national Catholicism driven for the new regime, nication. but that situation doesn’t appear in the neighborhood. 1 IDESCAT: Institute of statistics of Catalonia. 2 Villa de Gracia: Until the 17th century, this neighbourhood was nothing more than a few, isolated farmhouses, three convents and the odd villa that the wealthy built as summer houses. But with the dawn of the 19th century came industrialisation and Gràcia became important, as it had land that was available for factories to be built on. 3 BOU ROURA, Lluís y GIMENO CASES, Eva. El Carmel ignorat: historia d’un barri impossible. Barcelona, Agència de promoció del Carmel i entorns, 2007.
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In short, the years of the post war were marked by a clear no definition in the urban planning, used by the speculation of the particular owners, and it worked for the settlement of a modest social mass merged by the migration. In 1953, the Urban Planning called “Plan Comarcal”1 is approved and one of its main points was maintaining the variety of the urban core character. It was responsability of the creation of the urban park of the “Tres Turons”2 but until 1967 it was approved. This situation provokes during these years an urban void in terms of planning, this affects the buildings and the activities in the quarries. In these years the authorities didn´t answer the claims of the Carmel’s population, so their start to decide what and how to do it with the land. While the barracks began to convert in a reality, the north side of the Carmle’s Turo constitutes the replacement of ancient constructions by buildings blocks(Img.01). Barcelona wasn’t prepared for the migration waves of the 50s and 60s and attending the new necessities of housing and public services, so the Carmel and another peripheral extensions as Nou Barris or Sant Marti were a place of the recently settlements, because the prices in the center of the city weren’t affordable for them. But in a difficult terrain as the Carmel the result was an abusive growing, without control, with no quality buildings settled above difficult slopes. In the 70s, the background for the neighborhood was continuing depressing without services, no pavement streets, sewerage services, green areas, sports sites, public lights and just one line of bus arrives to there, so they also lack in communication with the city. The neighbors association was fundamental to improve the conditions of the neighborhood. And the municipality started to build social housing in the same neighborhood and other facilities as school, kindergarten, etc.
of the democracy allows a citizen participation that offers significant changes in an urban and social level, in a territory with humble origin with a poorest social condition, because the municipally interest was about the remodeling of deteriorated neighborhoods. Since the 80s until now it has been developing different projects that improve the quality of the Carmel’s habitants, following urban dynamics of Barcelona with facilities and green areas, improving the mobility of the neighbor and the connections with the city. Unfortunately, in the process of extension of the Line 5 of the metro, in order to create the last station in that moment, the Carmel Station, was produced a sinking of the earth that affected some houses of the Carmel’s Neighborhood by the lack of geological studies of the underground and the continuous changes in the project. The night of January 25 in 2005, 12 families must leave their homes as a preventing strategy for the detachment of the earth in the tunnel’s construction and some of the evicted buildings that could collapse. This sinking didn’t cause mortal victims, but left 1276 people without home. Lots of commerce were affected by this crisis, and most of them close definitely their business. The Municipality acted as quickly as possible, sealing the tunnel and the underground of a lot of buildings, also with the demolition of 4 of them because it had serious structural damages. The Municipality indemnified the affected people.
With this brief history of the neighborhood we can understand the development of the Carmel, and how much it takes in order to improve its services, infrastructure and leisure spaces. This history of poverty and tragedy nowadays is changing, mainly with the influence of the Carmel’s Bunkers that at the middle of the XX century use to be a problem with the self- construction. Today, it is the most powerful tool for the development of the neighborhood in this new era of XXI century as a new lookout of the city In 1990 the last barracks were demolished, and the arrival (Img.02).
1 The 1953 Plan Comarcal , (County Plan) was the first general urban plan for Barcelona since the Cerda plan of 1859. It was the initial effort at planning both the metropolitan area of Barcelona, as well as the 25 adjacent cities around. The overall plan was to encourage the growth of suburbs as well as fostering the growth of garden cities in the greater area. 2 Tres Turons: Park Between the tree hills of the Corserolla Mountain, “Turo de Rovira, Turo del Carmel, Turo de Creueta de Cooll”
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Img. 01 View of the “carrer the pasteu” street , showing the slopes and diference of the height in the buildings.
Img. 02 View from the Turro of Rovira Hill, the strongest point of the neighbourhood as a lookuot of the city. 23
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The importance of the Bunkers The bunkers are placed on the top of the Turo de la Rovira Hill in the Carmel’s Neighbourhood. It was built during the Spanish Civil War1 in 1937, because the fascist Italian Legionary Air Force used Barcelona as its first testing ground in the brutal tactic of “carpet bombing”, which eventually became routine practice in the Second World War. In these years eight hundred people died in the indiscriminate attack (Img. 03), more than a thousand were wounded and about fifty buildings were destroyed. As its only defence, the city had an extensive network of underground air raid shelters constructed by the population, and a system of anti-aircraft gun emplacements that were installed by the Republican Government. The first of this defence was the Carmel’s Bunkers with a height of 262 meters. It is the highest peak in Barcelona, perfectly for the antii aircraft purpose. The military infrastructure, consisting of seven circular gun platforms, a rectangular platform for the military command person and shelters for the troops, also it was used as a place for storage different kind of weapons.
Spain, and owing to lack of housing, Els Canons ended up with more than a hundred self-built houses (Img.04). If their inhabitants had few material resources, their resourcefulness was great and they were well organized, struggling for better accommodation in the future, while, at the same time, equipping and improving their everyday living space as best they could. But the image of poverty didn’t disappear, during the 40s and 50s, the bunkers became somewhat a slum of Barcelona, and during the 60s, there were over 3000 people living surrounding the bunkers in the hill.
This situation became a problem for the image of Barcelona. So in 1992, when the city was awarded with the Olympic Games, the municipality in an attempt to clean up the city and improve its image before the games, the city council decided to rehouse all the residents living in the bunkers, placing them in flats within the city. Thus, they were abounding the area and the village completely. In this sense, the cannons settlements were leaving behind on the hill’s stony ground tiled floors, fragments of stairs, and remnants When Franco2 came to power at the end of the Civil War, of masonry walls. the guns were retired, but the bunkers were maintained. So this military settlement was abandoned after the war ended. For most of the 1990s and 2000s The Turo de la Rovira Due to problems that were rising among the social classes hill and the Bunkers were virtually forgotten, marked by and extreme poverty, which was experienced by many peo- the overlapping of the significant fragments of history it ple in the city under the Franco regime, locals saw in this had accumulated, surrendered its land to clumps of shrubs, abounded site of the city, an opportunity for solve the prob- rubbish dumping and graffiti, except for the few locals who lems of housing and shelter, in this kind of new place with came up to admire the privileged views over the Carmel the nickname of “Els Canons” (The Guns). Over decades neighborhood in the north and, in the opposite direction, of large scale immigration of workers from other parts of the plain of Barcelona with the sea in the background.
1 Spanish Civil War, (1936–39), military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union, as well as from International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States. 2 The general and dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975) ruled over Spain from 1939 until his death. He rose to power during the bloody Spanish Civil War when, with the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, his Nationalist forces overthrew the democratically elected Second Republic. 26
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Img. 03 Spanish civil war, bombs in Barcelona March 1938.
Img. 04 “Barracas”, slums surrounding the bunkers. 27
The new project, a new light
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Eventually, at the initiative of the District of Horta Guinardó, the Agència de Carmel and the MUHBA1, they propose a project of renovation and landscaping of the site, it was embarked upon with a view to creating a Museum in the Tres Turons (Three Hills) Park. The objective was to be a space conserving history and in memory of a recent and highly relevant past with a lookout that would be accessible to the general public. The intervention aimed to minimize the impact on the existing features of the hilltop while bringing out its different layers of meaning. This new project was opened in 2011, excavating the bunkers, partially restored them and improved the accessibility as we can see in the general project’s plan (Img. 05).
The latter project is educational in its highlighting of the historical value of the site. Some aspects are loaded with the epic nature and drama of war, while others speak of the more prosaic, but no less relevant drama of newcomers The starting point was the awareness that this was a dy- to the city, excluded people who lacked the basic right of namic site, which was confirmed as the processes of clean- housing. ing up and clearing away of brushwood revealed new aspects of the idiosyncrasy of the place. The project with basic Nowadays, the Bunkers are said to be one of the Barceconstruction materials and rusting metal were used in the lona’s best kept secrets, although they are becoming an incorporation of new elements, which were reduced to an increasingly site to visit. Apart from the history, the main essential minimum (Img. 06). For example, fine handrails reason for the importance of the tourism is that its offer protect stairs and balconies and indicate possible routes to the most incredible 360º view of the city, and represents the visitor. The only added paving, consisting of a stretch a perfect vantage point from which to look out on all the of concrete of deactivated surfaces revealing granulates in development and progress that took place on the plain of relief, is respectfully separated from the platforms of the an- Barcelona, admiring the landmarks and monuments in one ti-aircraft gun emplacement, although it links them with a sight. At dusk, locals and tourists alike gather at the bunpath leading to the access road. kers to watch the sun set over the city while playing music, enjoying picnics, taking pictures, and simply taking in the The slopes of the hill have been reforested with different jaw-dropping view. species of Mediterranean pines, concentrated at the low-
1 MUHBA (History of the City Museum of Barcelona)
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er levels; so as not to interfere with the views from the lookout (Img. 07). On the northern side, which overlooks Carmel, there is also a variety of vegetation adapted to a certain degree of humidity. The care put into renovating this once-marginal space, it has rid it of vandalism without stripping it of its magic. The residents of the Carmel neighborhood and visitors from further away now have easier access to a site that offers both fine views and a delicate restoration of ruins.
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Authors: Jansana, de la Villa, de Paauw arquitectes SLP, AAUP Jordi Romero i associats SLP Start: 2010 End: 2011 Area: 9,611 m2
Img. 05 Plan of the Bunkers’ new Project. 32
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Img. 06 View at the entrance of the project, is a balcony itself
Img. 07 Image of the apereance in the low part of the project 33
Choosing the site, a problem as opportunity
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In this sense, we can understand the history and the importance of the Carmel Neighborhood and the Bunkers in Barcelona, also how the presence of them are helping for the development of the neighborhood because it has hundreds of visitors each day, but there is a problem. When the people start looking in the Carmel’s lookout, the beauty of the sea, the city, and its landmarks are disturb for a presence of a big grey zone in the first plane of the sight below the bunkers, and it is impossible do not notice it.
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parking lot will continue and increase it, in order to provide more parking space for the people that visit the bunkers or just want to have a journey in the Guinardo Park. Third, the Carmel’s market is too far from this zone of the district, that also have the physic limitation of the hill, making almost impossible the idea of using that building. So, it is pertinent and necessary the idea of an open market at least once a week in the project. And finally another problem is about the promenade of the Ginardo park, because it is broken for the hole in the hill that leaves the ancient quarry. Thus, the The grey space is the Rovira Municipal Parking lot, located project could be a bridge between the two sides of the hill on Carrer de Josep Serrano and Carrer de Tenerife streets, improving the communication of the neighborhood. in a hole of the Rovira Hill below the bunkers. This place use to be the quarrier called Can Baro, which provide with So, the project is not going to be just a parking lot, it should stone in the 60s of the last century. Nowadays it is visible be a multifunctional space with a market and a space for the presence of the ancient quarry, giving a strong image in restaurants and bars, in order to be a complement for the this part of the Guinardo park. bunkers, because in the upper side, there is not any of this commercial activities in order to keep active the bunkers, In this way, it emerges the necessity of changing this image so this new project will provide it, being a complement for with a new infrastructure because of 4 reasons. it. Also the project can be used as a bridge between the Guinardo Park’s promenade, and the people could experiFirst, the grey space disturbs the sights, so it should be ment a new way to conquer the hill and to enjoy the park, cleaned, in order to improve and complete image of the transforming an initial problem as an opportunity for the city’s skyline. Second, the new infrastructure must respond development of a new architectural project as a facility for to the needs of the neighbourhood and should be a comple- the neighborhood. ment of the bunkers; for that reason, the actual use of the
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The Site
Img. 08 The site in the 50s, and its transformation by the Can Baro quarry. 36
1 Selected Site 2 Carmel’s Bunkers 3 Bus Stop Line 114 4 Private Football Field 5 Metro Station Afonso X, L4
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The Site
Img. 09 View of the original use of the site, as an ancient quarry for the constructions in Barcelona. 38
Nowadays the site is used just as a municipal parking lot, with a capacity of 190 vehicles, mostly used by the neighbours in the closly streets.
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Img. 10 View of the original use of the site, as an ancient quarry for the constructions in Barcelona. 39
The Site, plan and sections
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Inner Views
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Img. 11 View to the east of the site, the Guirardo park’s promenade at the top. 42
From the inner space of the site, it is very evident the strong force of the mountain, the nature, the rock, and a wall of the site, the grey aspect of the parking lot and the bunkers in the upper side of the hills.
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Img. 12 View to the east of the site, the presence of the bunkers at the top. 43
Outdoor Views
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Img. 13 Entrance to the Guinardo Parking 44
When the site is observed from outside, it contrast with the image of the city, as a grey hole between the mountains and also again we can see the force of the mountain that surrounding the site.
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Img. 14 View from the bridge below the bunkers, here apears the force of the grey image of the parking lot. 45
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Design Clues
The presence of the Bunkers as initial guide
The topography starts to give the clues for the order
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Posibilities of stablish new circuits
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Posible placing of the project, followign the site guides
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The Project as a new complement in order to provide commercial activities
The diference of the levels by the topography and the streets give us the posibles entrance of the project, the pedestrian and vehicular.
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02 Chapter
Thinking about what to Talk
According to the necessity of the neighbourhood for a multifunctional space in that strong context, this chapter presents an analysis of the ways to understand the context in the architecture, and some paradigms of different types of interventions are developed in those strong contexts. Then, it is necessary to understand the conception and evolution of the contemporary space that we want to create in that context, until the actual dissolution of the space that we are living with the advance of the technology. All of this study is done with the aim of understanding better the contemporary necessities and tendencies in the design of spaces that are going to be placed in those strong contexts, in order to create the dialog that the project is looking for.
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The ways to understand the context in architecture. “We cannot separate history and modernity and trying to First: linguistic environment on which it depends of the do, could be a bad idea”Jean Nouvel sense of the value of one word, phrase or fragment considered. Second: Physic environment or of situation (Politics According to Jean Nouvel1 when we wanted to intervene historical, cultural or another else nature) in which it conin a place, doesn’t matter how much sacred it looks, it isn’t siders a fact. untouchable, always can be enriched. Because most of the architects and generally people, have the idea that some Thinking again in architecture, it seems that usually the arplaces or buildings don’t have to be touched, for the history chitects prefer to use the second definition instead of the that represent it, but they don’t realize that the time is pass- first one, I mean, “take place of a fact in an environment ing and with it the technology and techniques improve, so physic, politic, etc…” in our case, translating the meaning, that sacred places that sometimes are in bad conditions for is about to locate an architectural work without any rethis fear to develop a project, can be enhanced, these notion quirement attribution. Most of the times, when an architect of enrichment is essential. For example, we can understand develops a project, he just thinks in the fact that the archithis idea with the previous picture and the following image tecture has its own environment, but it doesn’t affect the that shows the Kannikegården project in Denmark, one of project, is just what it exists surrounding it. For example, the finalists in the Mies Van Der Rohe Award that shows some buildings, forest or views, but those considerations how an historical place can be enriched with a correct in- doesn’t intervene in the design, so little by little some architervention. tects think and follow some ideas that Le Corbusier uses to give in the CIAM4 about trying to develop a kind of catalog Also, we need to think that not all the interventions are architecture. good, starting with the idea that the project, the sacred project could be wrong. Because always the design starts with In another hand, the first definition told us about how loan analysis and with it the project make an answer for it, cate a word, which is dependent for an specific situation but we need to keep in mind the reality that following the in order to build its own sense or value, the context is an ideas of Jean Marie Vincent2, not every analysis is good, active part of the construction of the subject, in this case of the architect not always has the economy resources and the the word. Again translating this definition in architecture, it necessary time to make this analysis in a deeply way. But refers to when a building its located in some place, the conwhen we start to think in a project, it always is located in a text which surrounds it, is transcendental for the meaning place, I mean, each project has its own context, but this idea and design of the building, it means how it is oriented, why or meaning ultimately is misunderstand. For that reason, the dimension, and position of the windows, patios, mateit is necessary to establish the difference, and for me the rials, height of the building, etc. It means everything, so the correct way is to act in a context. So, according to Luis An- building tries to be perfect in the place where is located, gel Dominguez3 the word ´context´ is been used as a plus making an answer to that specific context and without it, of quality in some architecture, in some times where looks the building doesn’t have complete sense. that the culture of globally, forces us to look our closely local environment, in order to don’t lose it, confusing the deterio- Unfortunately, nowadays, immersed in its own velocity of rated identity in some many cases. the digital world, the cities are been converting in a collection of objects with more or less fortunate design, that the According to the real academy of Spanish language the same building can be placed in Barcelona, London, or New word context have different meanings, but talking about York because is a kind of catalog architecture. architecture the two most important and linked with the subject are: 1 Jean Nouvel Pag, 7. Muntañola Thornberg J. Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004 2 Jean Marine Vincent Pag, 11. Muntañola Thornberg J. Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004 3 Luis Angel Dominguez. La Necesidad del Contexto. Muntañola Thornberg J. Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004 4 CIAM: The Congrès internationaux d’architecture moderne (CIAM), or International Congresses of Modern Architecture, was an organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent architects of the time.
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In the development of the projects, most of them stop to consider the essential facts as the relation with the users, thus the use of these spaces and the building every time is worst. So the projects are success when the architect analyses the link with a cultural determinate context and the importance of it in the design process as an identity factor. In this way, the same author can develop very different works apparently opposite; however, makes an seer to a same compromise very clear respect of the kind of work (program, use, budget, technology, etc.) and the place (physic, social, cultural) in where it is located. As a result, is a work of architecture thought for being inhabited and being part of a determinate context, where the architect as an author-artist past to a second plane. These aims are more easy to get when the architect eliminates his vanity or ego, projecting things more clearly with sense and sensibility for the place, not an architecture for being photographed or for achieved with it enter in some fashion award, it is simply and nothing less than Architecture. So, the role of the architect is transcendental, as an articulator of the relationship social-spatial, with everything that it means, and the possible dissociation between architecture and the interpretation of the context. But if it doesn’t develop in that way, the dangerous to transform this profession in a tool of particular interest could be the beginning and the end of the architecture and in its transformation in arch politics. Because the importance of architecture is about it makes a shape and the sight of the city, where a live city consists in the interaction between different buildings in various times with different characters. In this sense, according to Elisa Valero Ramos1, the architecture is the best testimony of the way of seeing a historical period and all in it, since the predilection of certain shapes until the way to study the problems, essentially the kind of constructive one; for example, how the Partenon shows us the Greek life in the beginning of the times (Img. 15). Being conscious that the architecture for its own permanent feature, constitutes an autonomous body that transcends its one origin and can radiate more than the period that makes it and the style that it belongs.
All the desires and tastes of a moment, considered jointly, create a spirit of a time. The image of the cities is the set of layers and various spaces of these times. The intervention on it implies, therefore, the commitment with the language of its own time. This is the condition for the Architecture and stays in the time, living mark and not just a creation of a moment. Another need of the good architecture could be the creativity, all of the truth art work supposes something new, goes farther than we knows, being risk. The truly tradition is being contemporary and learn of its inherent architecture, as Jaques Herzog2 says, it reveals us a lot of secrets if we are allowed to listen it and enter in the fascination if it radiates. But we must be conscious of the forces that act in the time that we are living. The time is a reality that is part of the project. But this necessity of building the city makes us think, according to Enzo Escandorra3, that the environment adapts to him, it is the difference of the animals, the human is deprived of genetic characteristics (instincts, claws, fangs) that spontaneously creates the survival conditions. The human species in this sense is deficient, that it trusted in the technology the task of modifying itself, and modifying the natural environment. The Technology contributes to make the essence of the human (Longo 2000). When we start to think, an animal inhabitant in environment as long the human inhabitants the world, it is possible only if technology allows the necessity of planning and transforming it, making it suitable for his existence. So, the technology is a transcendental part of the physical conditions of the human existence (Galimberti, 1999). If the purpose of the human activity of transformation destroys the natural world with another one, every time more artificial stuff for the human necessities will be used, the city could be interpreted as the more emblematic achievement of the human necessity for building its own environment. The best contemporary example of those thoughts could be Dubai as the following picture shows this city in the middle of the sand.
1 Elisa Valero Ramos, La Ciudad Viva. Muntañola Thornberg J. Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004 2 Jaques Herzog: Jaques Herzog with Pierre de Meroun leds Herzog & De Meroun Parthnership, they have designed a wide range of projects from the small scale of a private home to the large scale of urban design, with many awards as the Pritzker prize in 2001. 3 Enzo Escandorra, Habitando la Tierra. Muntañola Thornberg J. Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004
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Img.15 Classic front view of the Parthenon, a footprint of the history. 57
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Ideas of the place and the space Riegl1 placed as an essence of the architecture the concept of the space. It means that he presents as paradigm the Parthenon in Rome as the interior delimited and perfect. Nevertheless, the connection that develops the avant-garde its based in a free space, fluid and lightness , continues, opens infinite, transparent, abstract and newtonian against the traditional space that is volumetrically differenced, or identifiable shape, discontinuing, delimitated, specific, orthogonal and static. This new way to see the space, some people call “space time”, in relation to the relative theory of Einstein and the introduction of the variable of the movement, also another quality of it as anti-space, because it generates in opposition and dissolution of the traditional space delimitated by walls. The international conception of the space is formed over a free horizontal plane with transparent facade. The fluid vacuum revolves, around the elements punctual and verticals of the pillars made of reinforced concrete or iron. All the modern space revolves around a protagonist such formal and structural: the pilar. Either the concrete pilar of Le Corbusier with and square section more orthogonal, the pillar of concrete of the Health minister of Oscar Niemeyer with a round section, more sensual, or the steel pillars of Mies van Der Roe with a plan like a ‘cross’. All of them are following an isotropic tradition as maximum. As an example, the following picture shows the German Pavilion in Barcelona, where the idea of infinite space was showed in the best way. The conception of the infinite space as continuum natural, receiving all the created and all of its visible part, have the ideal platonic root. In the Timeo, Platon talked about Chora as the eternal and indestructible space, abstract and cosmic that provides a position of averting that exist. It is the third basic component of the reality. Otherwise, Aristoteles identifies in his physics the generically concept of the space with another more empirical and delimitated that is the place, using always the term topos. It means that Aristoteles considers the space from the point of view of the place. Every corps occupies its place in concrete,
and the place is a basic and physical property of the corps. If for Platon the ideas don’t stay in a place, instead following Aristoteles the place is something different of the corps and every sensible corp is in a place. The place of a thing is its shape and limit. The shape is the limit of the thing, while the place is the limit of the corp continent. Thus, the containers are a movable place, the place is a container no movable. In the modern architecture, since Jean - Nicholas - Lois Durand2 until some of the masters of the modern movement, the sensibility of the space is irrelevant. Every architectonic object emerges above an undisputed autonomy. When Denis Diderot3 talked about the organic relation between the painting and the place, he pointed out that our architects don’t have genius, they unknown about the accessorial ideas that awake from the place. For example, we can understand this complain with the metaphor of the ship, present in part of the Le Corbusier work, which is very closed attached with the idea of an autonomous architecture, who can anchor without any relation with the environment. The concepts of space and place; therefore, can be distinguished clearly. The first one has an ideal, theoretical, generic and undefined condition. While the second one has a concrete, empirical, existential, articulated and definite character, even the details. The modern space is quantitative; although, the space can be always delimitated for its nature. It has the tendency of infinite and unlimited. Instead, the place comes definite by substantives, by the qualities of the things, by the symbolic and historical values. It is related with the human body since a phenomenological point of view. Some Architects as Lucio Costa, Arne Jacobsen or Josep Luis Sert, for instance, appeal to the popular figurations and the vernacular architecture. In face of the incipient or insufficient conscience of the language and the modern technology, these vernacular references have an objective, - to provide the architecture with an expressive and constructive common sense character. In the case of Le Corbusier since his Latin American trip, he started to think about the value of the nature and the characteristics of the place.
1 Alois Riegl (14 January 1858, Linz – 17 June 1905, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian, and is considered a member of the Vienna School of Art History. He was one of the major figures in the establishment of art history as a self-sufficient academic discipline, and one of the most influential practitioners of formalism. 2 Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand (Paris, 18 September 1760 – Thiais, 31 December 1834) was a French author, teacher and architect. He was an important figure in Neoclassicism, and his system of design using simple modular elements anticipated modern industrialized building components. Having spent periods working for the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée and the civil engineer Jean-Rodolphe Perronet, he became a Professor of Architecture at the École Polytechnique in 1795. 3 Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d’Alembert. 60
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If we are looking back at the first architectures of the place, always we can find farther antecedents, as the aesthetics of the picturesque developed in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The picturesque that emerge of the mimesis of the landscape pictures could be another of the roots of this incipient liking of the place.
tecture exist two traditions different and totally opposites in this relation between architecture and landscape. In one hand, the garden city of Ebenezer Howard and in another also for a moment it get imposed and won, was the one represented by the regionalism and the new objectivity of Le Corbusier. This Dominant tradition is based in the omnipresence of architecture and the no respect for the ecologIt had been the culture of organicism, developed in the work ical circumstances. of Frank Lloyd Wright, and the contributions of some Nordic architects as Alvar Alto, who introduced with definitive As Martin Heidegger1 says, we can establish interventions force the relation of the architecture with the place. Wright as Malaparte in the rocks of Punta Massullo or the Chillida base his projects in geometric and polygonal patterns, re- in the San Sebastian Coast, transforming an indeterminate lating the work with the natural environment, shaping the site in a singular and no repeated place. In fact, the idea of space to the functional program, using traditional materials. place differs of the space for the presence of the experience. In his projects he assumes the horizontally of the landscape; The place is related with the phenomenological process of for example, in the Kaufmann House(Img.16) he uses big the perception and experience of the world by the human artificial platforms of concrete in cantilever, it means a solu- body. tion with high tech qualify and improves an environment with natural beauty. In the last decades, the idea of place has been in a specific weight, very variable, and it has been interpreted in difIn the open space, Wright discovers through the destruc- ferent ways. In a little scale, it is understood as an interior tion of the box, that the concrete conception of the place quality that it is materialized in shape, texture, color, natuis present. In the modern space that Wright configures, it ral light, the objects and the symbolic values. This quality doesn’t depend on the rational conception, autonomy, and is manifested in the interiors of Heinrich Tessenow in the prototypical, but it depends on the visual and corporal ex- works of Louis Kahn. The big scale is interpreted as genius perience of each user living in the interior. Wright pursuits loci, as a capacity of make out the preexistent ambient , as a modern space that cannot be indifferent to the place. Be- objects joined in the place, as an articulation in the different sides, the works of Alvar Alto (Img. 17) show also these urban pieces like square, street, and avenue. That is to say, as kinds of seduction for the world of living nature as a meta- characteristic of landscape. A deepness relation could unphor of architecture, understanding this as a landscape con- derstand the concept of a place, precisely, as the adequacy figurator. His buildings follow growing shapes that adapts relation between the little scale of the inner space and the to the place. big scale of the implantation. Anyway, we cannot forget, that inside the modern archi-
1 Martin Heidegger 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher and a seminal thinker in the Continental tradition and philosophical hermeneutics. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, he is “widely acknowledged to be one of the most original and important philosophers of the 20th century”. Heidegger is best known for his contributions to phenomenology and existentialism, though as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy cautions, “his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification”
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Img.16 Fallingwater house, the cantilevers slabs follows the nature shape.
Img. 17 Back view of the Maison Louis Carré by Alvar Aalto, the architecture mixed in the nature. 63
Paradigms of the Arhitecture of the place In the works of the architects called “third generation”, reawakening the interest of the vernacular architecture as log with this sensibility of the place. Luis Barragan develops a research of the pleasant space, in his work exists and evident Mediterranean influence with Arab roots, learned specially from the Morocco architecture.
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Jose Antonio Coderch offers with his work, a synthesis with traditional architecture and modern language. His functionalist and austere vision pushes him sometimes to the use of rational shapes, and sometimes organic shapes. A good example of his integration with the landscape context is the project of Ugalde House (Img.18). Fernando Tavora develops in his works the constrictive knowledge of the traditional Portuguese architecture, planting a modern architecture, intelligently adapted to the landscape and exultantly qualified for craft objects. For example, we can see the Municipal Park in Quinta de Conceicao in Matosinhos. Tavora intervenes with a rational and contemporary spirit that pretend to read it, of the functionality, beauty and the technical knowledge of the popular architecture far away of the nostalgic, anachronism or populism.
time, suppose its critics and overcoming. His maximum objectives were integrating the modern buildings with the context, establishing the relationship between the nature and architecture. In all of these cases, it produces a resonance respect to the conceptions of Martin Heidegger, passing of an architecture based in the idea of the space to another based in the idea of place. Based in the text of Heidegger “Construir, habitar, pensar” the spaces receive their essence not for the space unless of the place, the space where life develops must to be places. Louis Kahn constitutes a special case. While recreating the idea of the place in the inner space that stay totally qualify for the light, the symbolic values, textures, the shapes, and the comfort. Instead, his architecture, thought as autonomous volumes, he doesn’t interpret the context as differential factor. This situation is clear; for example, in the Indian Institute for the “Mandatarian Formation” in Ahmedabad that it could be a prototype collage for Harvard or a concrete work for India.
In many occasions for Luis Kahn, Oscar Niemeyer or RobIn the research of the archetypal relation between the ert Burle Marx, the challenge is the transformation, it is like shapes of the private space and the public space between create a place where it don’t exist, transforming the Amerithe relation with the place, the Danish, Jonh Utzon take can no place in a place. references of the primitive architecture, basic shapes of the oriental, pre-Columbian (Img. 19), and Mediterranean Ar- Giedion1 establishes in his last texts, the two attitudes that chitectures that he uses as a tool for facing different works the architecture takes respect to the creation with the nain scale and place, that interprets perfectly the context. ture: The contrast expressed in the pyramids and the Greek temples, and it actually could express the bridges in the high The gardens and Parks of the Brazilian Roberto Burl Marx mountain of Robert Maillart, the amalgam that we can find constitute the more genuine applications of the modern in the Indian temples in semi-circular theaters or in the movement, principles in landscape project, and at the same Wright’s work.
1 Giedion: Sigfried Giedion (14 April 1888 in Prague – 10 April 1968 in Zürich) was a Bohemian-born Swiss historian and critic of architecture. His ideas and books, Space, Time and Architecture, and Mechanization Takes Command, had an important conceptual influence on the members of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in the 1950s. Giedion was a pupil of Heinrich Wölfflin. He was the first secretary-general of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne. He also taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University.
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Img. 18 Exterior View of the Ugalde Hause by Coderch, the waves shapes follow the terrain.
Img. 19 View of the Machu Pichu city, how the pre colombian buldings understood the terrain and how they emplaced their architecture in the hills. 65
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The capacity to integrate in the place, changes drastically between the late modern and postmodern proposals. Two examples licitly comparing can show us it. The Fundation Joan Miro of Josep Lluis Sert (Barcelona 1972-1975) contempt and destroys the magnificent environment of the gardens by Nicolau Maria Rubio i Tuduri project in Mointjuic (Img. 20). Instead, the Foundation Pilar and Joan Miro by Rafael Moneo (Palma de Mallorca), he interprets and obtains the best advantages of the terraced landscape (Img. 21). Moneo responds with a lineal and high element for the library, temporary showroom, and administrative services,
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that refers to the shape of the apartments that surrounds it. And with a down starry volume, ponds of water in the terrace for the representative showrooms, this shape is related to the arbitrary shapes of the familiar houses near it. The edifice is converting itself as and arranged center of the place. Also, the inner space of the museum is totally subordinated to this initial decision of integrating it to the space. Consequently, Moneo generates a typological solution, empirically adjusted to the place, while Sert applies a previous typology and repeatable.
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Img. 20 The emplacement of the Joan Miro fundation by Josep Lluis Sert in Barcelona
Img. 21 Emplacement and how Rafael Moneo understand the context in the Joan Miro fundation in Mallorca. 67
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The contemporary dissolution of the space Finally when the celebration of the architecture consolidates as an art of the place, outcrop a totally new reality respecting of the space. This situation is generating a new sensibility, new perception capacities, and new theorizations. For example, the idea of “Atopy” that Eisenman1 defends, detractor of any possible relation with the place, the projects of Rem Koolhas, that amalgam the energy and the chaos of the urban flow, or the theories of Ignasi de SolaMorales2 that proposes new categories for a metropolitan architecture, based in the transformation that point to this direction. The places don’t interpret as existential permanent containers, but they are understood as intense foci of events, as dynamism concentration, as circulations flows, as ephemeral stage, as cross of promenades, as energetic moments. Inside these new spatial realities we can distinguish three groups of phenomena. The first one is the media space, where the physical space is not predominant, but the architecture has been transformed in a neutral container, even transparent with an object system, machines, images, and equipment which configure the inner spaces that can be modifiable and dynamic. An emblematic example can be the Museums of Science, the technique and the infantile. Where the shape of the space, and the presence of the natural light is not defined. In contemporary museums, as the Vitra Design Museum projected by Franc Gehry(Img.22) or the Museum fur Moderne Kunst of Francfort projected by Hans Hollein, the inners parts are characterized by flow spaces, defined by the natural light and real original objects. The media museums consist on containers that concentrates the fascination and attention around of dematerialized outbreak of the artificial light, information, experimentation, and interaction, like the Explora Park in Medellin for instance (Img. 23). The physical spatial limits, stop to been perceive in the inner space of this kind of containers. Because the attention is focused on these new areas of perception and phenomenological experience around the images, reproductions, installations, monitors, mechanisms, and virtuality.
Also the domestic space and the work places can be considered inside this coordination of media space, based in containers and system of objects. This phenomenon has a clear antecedent in the project of Robert Ventury for the content of National College Hall of Fame in New Brunswick, 1967, with the façade transforms exclusively in a sparkling electronic screen and the inner space defined by media elements. Secondly, we can situate the called “no places”, the phenomena that Marc Auge3 has been qualified as the spaces of the over modernity and the anonymity. They are always spaces related to the fast transportation, the consumption, and the leisure. They can be seen in big shopping centers, hotels, in highways, airports, and exchangers. Also, in fast transportation as airplanes, is mandatory to access with the identification card and always prove the innocence of been a terrorist or something like that. There are “no places” where the users pretend to pass sooner as possible. For example, in the highways, fringes of the “no places” cross places that just announce themselves, but never have been visited, they just have been perceive quickly. Always these “no places” are objective of terrorist attacks that pointed to anonymous victims that inhabit ephemeral the “no place”. In fact, the space of the traveler constitutes the archetype of “no place”. The space of the “no place” does not create an identity or relation, just loneliness and similarity. Finally, we have the virtual space or cyberspace, one who uses architects, engineers, designers, musician, etc. In order to project and create in the computer, it can connect different spaces of the buildings by computer systems, without the necessity of appeal to traditional spaces. In that untouchable space that configures the people who speaks by phone or cybernauts that moves thought the infinite space of the Internet. In few decades we passed to talk of the qualities of the place and the magic of Hetereotopic, to accept the anonymous place and the coldness of the virtual reality. Now, we can consider the cyberspace not just as the maximum creation of the intelligence and the science, but also as the imagination and the fiction, of the capacity of the human being for dreaming and creating.
1 Peter Eisenman (born 1932) is an American architect. Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his writing and speaking about architecture as well as his designs, which have been called high modernist or deconstructive. 2 Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió (Barcelona 1942 - Amsterdam 2001) was a Catalan architect, historian and philosopher. He was professor of composition at the Barcelona School of Architecture, and also taught at the universities of Princeton, Columbia, Turin, and Cambridge.Among his most notable architectural works are the reconstruction of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, and the reconstruction and expansion of the Liceu Theatre in Barcelona 3 Marc Augé (born September 2, 1935 in Poitiers) French anthropologist.In an essay and book of the same title, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), he coined the phrase “non-place” to refer to anthropological spaces of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as “places”. 68
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Img. 22 The Vitra Design Museum by Frank Ghery, new shapes in order to increase the sentations in the space.
Img. 23 The Explora Park by Alejandro Echeverri, the close box, the new concepts in the inner space don’t obey what its happening outside. 69
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However, in front of the optimism of people as Bill Gates1, William Mitchel, autor of City of Bites, another different authors as Herbert Schiller, Micha Bandini or Vicente Verdu, have been pointed some of the hidden counterparts of the virtual world. Actually, it is a new world that constitutes as the higher goal achieved for the American society. This metropolitan society tends to reject the corporal contacts, and it is based on the distrust, the utilitarian individualism, and the consumption it has gotten imposed.
For other radical critics, in other way, the sociability, the communitarian costumes, the human contact, the physical spatiality, the structuring, and equilibrium, are typical of the pedestrian European cities. The tolerance to the others, the capacity of vindication, association, rebellion, its essential values that it have been exposed in danger for a new elitist system, individual, fragmented, and consumerist. In any case, it has been developed critical perspectives with the hegemony of the technology and its systems of domination.
The culture of electronic communication, thought by tissues formed by isolated housing, segregated in the suburban periphery of low density, it impose itself on other cultures of the urban traditional space and the physical communication. But although this media possesses this genuine democratic vocation, there is no doubt that exist a relation between the richness and the access of the computers. It has been creating a new elite that following the guidelines of a wild Darwinism2, is going to control the major part of the ways to access to work and richness, excluding all the people that is not able, socially, economically, intellectually or functionally, to have easy access to the computer work.
According to Josep Maria Monatner2, in the future, the containers with interiors populated by system of objects, will not configure an space instead of media ambience, the protagonist will not correspond to architecture but to engineering or industrial design (Img. 24). The place and the no place as the space and the anti-space are polarity with no limits. The space is almost never delimited perfect, as well as the anti- space is almost never infinitely pure. Neither the place will never be completely erased as the no place will never be fulfilled radically. In our condition, the present spaces, anti-spaces, places, and no places interweave, complement, interpret, and coexist.
1 William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, author and philanthropist. In 1975, Gates and Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft, which became the world’s largest PC software company. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. 2 Josep Maria Montaner: Professor of Architectural Composition at the Barcelona School of Architecture and co-director of the Housing Laboratory of the 21st Century master’s degree, he has taught at several universities and institutions in Europe, America and Asia, and has been curator of different exhibitions including Habitar el presente. 70
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Img. 24 Inner interactive space, focused in the experience inside of the bulding. 71
03 Chapter
Nature as Scenario for Talking
After understanding better the new conceptions of the space and the different ways to place in those strong contexts, chapter three analyses the nature as architectural scenario. This analysis was done in this way: First, realizing that we can understand the nature as a language that provides us some clues for the project, according to its necessities. Second, finding some analogies, some ways of linking the structure of the architecture with the nature, and how we can relate those elements to create a harmony. Third, looking for some paradigms about how the architecture can be placed in the nature, taking more advantage of the promenade, and the experience for enjoying the architecture. Fourth, taking into account some concepts about how we can understand better the projects placed in the nature, those concepts helped to choose the study cases that give us some strategies of design. And finally, finding the close link between art and architecture, inspired in the art works that some artists develop, but taking the nature as a protagonist.
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The Language of Landscape Remaining some initial thoughts, developed in chapter one about our habitat and how we are available to inhabit it, the language of landscape is our native language. Following the Spirn1 thoughts, the landscape was the original dwelling, humans evolved among animals and plants. Everyone has that legacy of natural habitat in body and in mind, we use our complete senses for living and shaping the landscapes before the species had words to describe what it did. So, the landscapes were the first human texts and read before the invention of other sights and symbols. For example, the clouds, winds, and sun were clues about weather, ripples and eddies signs of rocks and life under water, caves and ledges promise of shelter, leaves guides to food, birdcalls warnings of predators. For those reasons, early writing resembled landscape, other languages verbal, mathematical, graphic, derive from the language of landscape. This language can be spoken, written, read, and imagined. Speaking and reading landscape are by products of living, of moving, mating, eating, and strategies of survival, creating refuge, providing prospect or growing food. To read and write landscape is learn and teach to know the world, to express ideas and influence on others. Landscape, as a language, makes tangible thought and imagination could be possible. It contains the equivalent of words and parts of speech, patterns of shape, structure, material, formation, and function. Like the meaning of the words, the landscape meaning elements as the water for instance, are only potential until context shapes them. Rules of grammar govern and guide how landscapes are formed, some specific to places and their local dialects, others universal. The Landscape is scene of life, cultivates construction, carrier of meaning, simply, it is language. In this way, verbal language reflects landscape. Up and down, in and out, the most basic metaphors of verbal language stem from experience of landscape, like bodily movement thought landscape. Verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives,
and their contexts parts of speech and the structure of verbal language mirror landscape processes, products, and their modifiers, material, formal, and spatial. Just as a river combines water, flowing, and eroded banks, sentences combine actions and actors, objects and modifiers. The context of a word or sentence, like that of hill or valley, defines it. Elements of landscape language are like parts of speech, each with separate functions and associations. Flowing, like a verb, is a pattern of events expressed in both water and path. Water and path, like nouns, are action’s agents and objects; like adjectives or adverbs, their qualities of wetness or breadth extend meaning. Elements do not exist in isolation, but rather combine in significant ways, like words in a phrase, clause, or sentence, to make a tree, fountain, street, or a larger, more complex landscape story, garden, town, or forest. Every landscape feature, such as a mountain, embodies at least one complete expression, its own formation. Describing the elements is like looking at landscape, scanning the scene, then successively zooming in and out on significant details, letting the context blur but keeping it always in view. Landscape is the material home, the language of landscape is a habitat of mind. Heidegger2 called language the house of being, but the language of landscape truly is the house of being, we dwell within it. To dwell to make and care for a place is self-expression. Heidegger traced that verb in High German and Old English, in both, the root for “to dwell” means “to build”. In German, the roots for building and dwelling and “I am” are the same. I am because I dwell, I dwell because I build. The following picture shows us an intervention in the nature by Renzo Piano, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center, he could interpret the language of the landscape and create a building with native materials, creating a correct relation with the context, it means a building in dialog with the nature.
1 Anne Spirn has an international reputation as the preeminent scholar working at the intersection of landscape architecture and environmental planning. Her first book, The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, won the President’s Award of Excellence from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1984, has been translated into two other languages, and remains a standard university text. Her new book, The Language of Landscape, sets out a theory of landscape and aesthetics that takes account of both human interpretive frameworks and natural process. She is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. 78
Analogies between architectural elements and nature
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Landscape is loud with dialogues, with story lines that connect a place and its dwellers. For example, the shape and structure of a tree record an evolutionary dialogue between species and environment: Eucalyptus leaves that turn their edge to bright sun, deciduous leaves that fall off during seasonal heat or cold. And they record dialogues between a tree and its habitat.
dicular to the ground line, and beams if it is horizontal or inclined respect to the ground surface. These lineal parts are longwise elements, because they are characterized by their length, but no by their thickness. Although, are directional because they mark an orientation, and manage the space in that direction. And through the combination of these basic lineal elements, supports and beams, we can compose frameworks and tridimensional structures that finally give Therefore, when we start looking for analogies and relations the shape of the architecture. between architectural elements and nature, we star to think in the three basic elements of the architecture according So, those Samper’s architectural elements can be related with Gottfried Semper1 constituted by walls, ground and with nature, applying some operations. If the wall could be roofs, that are surfaces or elements defined by two dimen- reduced of its minimum lengthwise expression, in the way sions, although in some locations, these can be comprised that its vertical dimension or height predominates, we will by bars. In this manner, when an element of area is reduced obtain a support, we will obtain a column. In the same way, to one dimension, according to Devesa2, we are forming a if a roof, a plane in horizontal position, inclined, or made of lineal element: a bar or piece, generally, prismatic or cylin- a curve shape, it could reduce its quality of depth, we will drical, longer than thick. In Architecture, these elements can obtain another kind of support, a beam. constitute pillars or columns when its guideline is perpen-
1 Gottfried Semper November 1803 – 15 May 1879, was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture. Semper wrote extensively about the origins of architecture, especially in his book The Four Elements of Architecture from 1851, and he was one of the major figures in the controversy surrounding the polychrome architectural style of ancient Greece. 2 Ricardo Devesa. He got his PhD in the Universitat Politécnica de Catalonia. He is professor associate at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB, UPC) and also teaches at the Institut d’Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya (IaaC). Currently is editor-in-chief at Actar Publishers and urbanNext. With his doctoral thesis “La Casa y el Arbol” he makes important contributions in the theory of the architectural project respect to its relation with the nature. 80
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In the case of the trees, the trunk constitutes its main support and its spatial directionality. So, the analogies and relations about the support of the building with a tree, will be between a trunk and column. Looking for those analogies, it is necessary to start following the morphological characteristics of the vegetal component, we should consider the relative distance between the elements, the maximum high of each of them and the thickness of each section. Although, the relative orientation that the pillar will take, respect to the tree, because between the two points, looked it on the ground level, you could draw a line between them; therefore, a unique direction. In the case of the walls, there are some differences with respect to the relations established with the trees. First, any support present a lineal component and no superficial. And second, the tree cuts the ground in a point and not in a line as the case of the wall. Moreover, one pillar doesn’t represent the idea of the spatial limit in a clearly way as the wall does, but just a signal or landmark that establishes a point on the ground. On contrary way, a wall doesn’t represent a relative direction of the building; so clear as the trunk fulfills a tree. In the case of the beam, there are some particularities between it and the tree. By definition, a beam is a structural element used in the construction in order to hold and ensure other elements. For that reason, it always will be a dependent and subordinated to a support. The beam, as well as a roof, is not autonomous in the way that pillar or a wall could be. A beam always is used in architecture to save the spam between its supports, a distance between the elements that hold it. For that reason, other elements will transmit their loads to the ground. The relations of coexistence between a beam and a tree, at the same that happens with an unique support or wall, depends on the morphological characteristics of the tree,
it means the high, diameter of the cup, structure of the branches etc. These characteristics we can be related with the formal properties of the beam, its guideline, section, longwise, and height respect to the ground. Nevertheless, if we attract the purely formal properties of its mechanics, a beam is just a bar raised of the ground and generally, follows a horizontal line to it, but also can be inclined or curved. The beam in relation to the tree; therefore, acts as a line of reference following four orders. First, it marks a level respect to reference, the parts of the tree that are located in or below it. Second, it will establish a given angle of rotation between the extremes of the beam and the point of the born of the axis of the trunk, it means, the grade of inclination of the beam respect to the tree’s center. Third, it determinates in which distance will be the center of the tree, if it is farther or closer regarding to it. And finally, a beam also will impose a relative orientation with the tree, it means, if it is placed at the north or south, east or west, respect of the beam. All of these orders or relations, are properties of the three dimensional space that help us as humans to orientate. In any case, these lineal basic architectonic elements, pillars or beams are always linked to a tree, it will be creating, definitely a series of dimensional relations; for that reason, space with it. Whatever it could be, these relative distances established between them and the trees, the architect will establish consequently, a mutual order between them, some relations of subordination. It means, the tree will be subjected to the order or formal rules disposed by the architectonic elements, and in the same way, the spatial architectonical units will incorporate to their composition, another structural logic pre-established by the vegetal element
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Placing in Nature
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A coherence of human vernacular landscapes emerges from dialogues between builders and place, fine-tuned over time. They tell us congruence between snowfall and roof pictures, between seasonal sun angles and roof overhang, wind direction and alignment of hedgerows, cultivation practices and dimensions of fields, family structure and patterns of settlement. Dialogues make up the context of individual, group, and place. The context of life is a woven fabric of dialogues, enduring and ephemeral. In this way, the context is very important in the development of the project. So, the manner of how we implant the project in that context is transcendental.
house, following the slope of the mountain. Therefore, according to Enrico Tedeschi1 in his Theory of the Architecture, the plastic relation between the edifice and the natural or cultural landscape are: a) Contraposition between the building and the landscape. Some examples can be the Renaissance’s buildings as Santa Maria della Consolation, Todi, The Escorial Palace, or the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier about its rigorous geometrical shapes confronted to the landscape. b) Harmonic Relation It refers when it can take the hue of a harmonic separation or and harmonic union, according to the grade of plastic autonomy respect to the environment. Tedeschi quotes as examples some EEUU embassy in some countries with a historic tradition with unequal results in general, in particular the work developed by Gropius2 in Athens with classic references in the building.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the term implantation means “the action of inserting a device or tissue into the body”; or that reason, when we are talking about the implantation we are referring to the action of locating a shape in a place, if the shape is preconceived. Or the action of conceiving and project that shaped in order to respond and provide its insertion in the place. For example, the follow- c) Union ing picture shows the project “2 Casas en Ponte de Lima” It can be distinguish between fusion and continuity. by Souto de Moura, which implants the main shape of the
1 Enrico Tedeschi (Roma, 1910 – Buenos Aires, 1978) He was an Architect, urbanism, writer, teacher and researcher. His book more knew was the Theory of Architecture (1963), expressing on it a systemic thought, showing the architecture and urbanism not just as something disperse, but all of these elements as something co-related and organically articulated. 2 Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture.
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Tedeschi shows a clear preference by the second concept, because he thought that the fusion is produced when the building is diluted in the ambience, being in some many cases as the result of insufficient capacity of plastic expression. He exemplifies the mimetic attitude of a building with the rest of buildings that make up the facade’s plane where it is inserted. On the other hand, he is followed by the concept of continuity, which looks like the separation between landscape and construction, it looks like it is erased but the work maintains its personality. The architecture complete the nature, it does not annul it. We can take the architecture of Wright and Neutra as paradigms that illustrate this attitude. After affirming that the relation between the buildings and the landscape is enough clear with this terms about contraposition, harmonic relation and union, Tedeschi thought that is not difficult to establish a correspondence between these terms and particular moments in the architectural history; for example, the prevalence of the opposing relation of classic and regionalist times, and the link of romantic and organic times. The architectural work is complex, especially in its relation with the place. In rarely occasions we can tribute a category for them in a clear way. The most common way will be to find architecture, that in its relation with the environment it can be understood as harmonic, contrast, and continuous. But essentially Tedeschi seems to refer principally to the plastic character or volumetric, in order to establish his terms and categories. Therefore, it is more useful to use the sequence of approximation and access to the project, it means how we perceive the project before arriving to it, and the mechanism of implantation in the context, in our case specially in the natural landscape. For example, we can distinguish the compact shapes, it means with pure geometry or irregular geometry. It has a higher pregnancy, using a term of the Gestalt theory, it facilitates its identification and its contrast relation with the natural ambience. Norberg Schulz affirms that in general, the definition of a place is based in the gestalt principles of proximity and closure. “The proximity creates crowding elements, it means a concentration of masses. Consequently, we can find in all the antique history the tendency of mark
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a place by a big mass; for example, the Egyptian pyramids.” (Norberg-Schulz, 2000) In this architecture made of masses and different shapes, doesn’t matter the complexity of its formal structure, it has the tendency of being perceived as a certain compact unity from the distance. This is a matter of simplification. The competitive mechanism starts to work, it means to be perceptive, from a certain distance in function with the work scale. The architecture must have a very marked structure if it can be appreciate from the distance with certain unity. The aptitude of a mass for works as accented, it means, to possessing that marked structure, according to NorbergSchulz, it could be explained better with the concept of concentration. The concentration is a quality of the principal shape and the treatment of the details. In general it is reinforced by a covering continuous surface and by the symmetry. The sphere; therefore, has a maximum concentration. The concentration is increased when a mass is elevated respect to its round. It exists implicitly a vertical axis around of it the space is organized. Schulz introduces the variable of the relation with the plane in the ground as determinant factor in the appreciation of the architecture as a contrasting entity, it is combined with the concepts of open and close shape, in order to establish its relation with the environment. For that reason, the architects that desire in any cost the identify of their architecture as a contrasting object with the surrounding environment, appeal to employ pure shapes, geometrically recognizable, at least in its distant appearance, and separated of the ground plane, as the case of Le Corbusier and his use of the closed shapes. In another hand, the architects that are not looking for the contrast, but for the integration or continuing union, attempt to decompose their architecture in little parts, and extend it to the contact with the terrain in order to propitiate the interpretation between them, as the case of Wright (Img. 25). In these situations the perception totally clear the architectonic object, it is secondary in front of the appreciation of the architecture as an answer to the place where it interacts.
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Img. 25 Fallingwater House, general view showing its relation and how it is placed in this natural landscape. 87
Understanding the Nature
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Humans are not the sole authors of landscape. Volcanoes spew lava, remarking land; rain falls, carving valleys. mountains, gardens, and cities are shaped by volcanoes and rain, plants and animals, human hands and minds. Trees shade ground and shed leaves, produce a more hospitable place for life with similar needs. Beavers cut trees and dam streams to make ponds: a dwelling place. People mold landscape with hands tools, and machines, through law, public policy, and actions undertaken hundreds, even thousands of miles away. All living things share the same space, all of them make landscape, and all landscapes, wild or domesticated, have coauthors, all of them are phenomena of nature and culture.
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one must first have a vocabulary. Although some learn the language of landscape intuitively, through living and making, without studying vocabulary or grammar, many miss significance and connections and fail to see and make the landscape whole. Many designers compose formal arrangements, quoting the plan of a historic garden, borrowing a phrase here and there from a contemporary work. Many choose materials belatedly and consider process rarely, if at all. This is like trying to compose a sentence entirely of nouns and adjectives, without verbs. In landscape context supplies elements, the author neglects or forgets. Incomplete utterances lead to unforeseen consequences to buildings, parks, and playgrounds, which fail to function or are To read landscape more deeply, as signifying wholes, and to unsustainable. They are destroyed by those who use them or tell other landscapes more artfully, to be literate and fluent, by wildfires, floods, and landslides.
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Thus, in order to follow the idea of the language of the nature, and understand what it is telling us to develop a correct intervention, it is very useful to take into account the research of Vicente Guallart1 the architecture and geography. It helps to understand different ways and concepts in order to develop a project on it, being the following concepts or resources the most important of the present work:
Geography
Geometry
Any trace on the territory could be physic, economic, or social have a geographic character. The more basic geography, previous to the human action refers to the physical elements of the territory. The geography deals with phenomenon that have a multi scalar condition, and it forms complete and complex ecosystems. They are part of the same geographic phenomenon in a mountain range or eroded stone, as the relational network of a city, or personal encounter. Any architectonic action acts over multiple geographic factors.
Any geographic success is measurable through specific techniques corresponding to its category. Farther to the traditional Euclidian geometry, the fractal geometry allows to draw natural elements, of the character self-similar and multi scalar, that is located in any emplacement. The statistic mathematic allows to visualize basic relations in elements, in particular of the human groups. The geometry generates maps and relations that themselves are a material pre-formative that can trigger a project.
1 Vicente Guallart ( b. Valencia 1963) chief architect of the city of Barcelona and general director of Urban Habitat since 2011. Guallart have been founder of Guallart Architects (1993) and of IAAC (Institute of Advanced Architecture in Catalunya) (2001). Pioneer of interaction between nature, technology and architecture proposes new paradigms based in urban, social and cultural conditions emerging from information society,he crosses boundaries through collaborations in geology, sociology, engineering, fabrication, economics, and software design merging architecture, nature and new technology. His projects follow a “natural� logic, referring to components originating in nature, as well as to environmental systems. A logic that connects nature with the transformations of urban spaces, social organizations, and the digital world. 90
Estructure
The logics are the relations, phenomenon, conditions, or situations that define the physics or relational structures, to the various elements of the geographic order that we study. The logic that is extracted can belong to strategic questions, functional, relational, or formal, that can be applied to trigger projects, The projects can be developed since one or various logics. The logics that attract us have a humanitarian value, not speculative.
The structures are mechanism, physics no relational that allow the architecture works in a project. The structures show the basic pattern since all the different tissues and systems of a project will develop it. An structure can be developed in strategic way, defining the basic criteria of action, tactic, defining the mechanism to implant that relation the different parts or technique, through the specific solutions of constructive elements.
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Logic
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In the same way, when we add together some of the elements mentioned above, we can develop different actions in order to promote a coherent project in an specific context, in this case, natural context. The most important actions for the present work are the following:
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Accumulate An edifice built in high is the crystallization of the functional accumulation that it decided to happen in a place. The first human’s settlements developed creating walls and roofs in a place of the territory. But soon its recognized the potential of building a space on another in order to multiply the capacity of receive activities in the same quantity of territory. This functional accumulation is one of the essences of the architecture and the cities. Is it the cubic shape of the buildings and its discontinuity between levels its naturally structure? The prismatic shape of the buildings answers principally questions of urbanism order, about the development of the building in the inner of the parallelepiped given, without invading the flight of the adjacent territory. In this sense, questions of ambient exist in order that when they try to distribute in equal manner the access to elements as the light or air, especially in mono functional buildings that receive housing or offices. Nevertheless, nowadays a house or edifice has the potential of keeping all the functions that a city has, in a minor scale. The necessity to reduce the mobility between places of residence, job, leisure, and the inner, in order to keep non urbanized the maximum of the time the space around the cities, make that the constructions must to grown in high, starting with the buildings that suppose functional accumulation of various activities. The concentration of functional diversity in a building allows create urban and social variety, creating entities that can work along the days, following the same logic of a micro city. The functional diversity grant to organize the building as a stratigraphic system, that allows to place near the ground the spaces with more necessity of access and with minor necessity of light and natural air, and in the upper side more private functions or less overcrowded, that can be enjoyed of the air and the views. For example the Hamburg’s Philharmonie is a building that accumulate those different kind of activities (Img. 26)
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Img. 26 Section of the Hamburg’s Philharmonie, showing the different overlapping activities like parking, lookout, music hall, hotel and housing. 93
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Reflect
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The colour emerges of the decomposition of the light as a visible part of the electric ratio spectrum sensible for our eyes. The colour is a fundamental property of all the landscapes, and we perceive it because the solar light reflects in the objects with different wavelengths. Various living beings in the nature have been developing techniques of mimesis with its environment in order to camouflage in it from its shape, texture, or its color. The buildings as artificial systems that are inserted in a given place, with landscape, environmental, or cultural conditions precisely, can take for the interaction with the place through the lecture of the colour of the elements that surround it, this means the crystallization of the light. The Thermas del Val by Peter Zumtor could be a good example of the use of the colour, in this case, the grass of the roof (Img. 27)
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Img. 27 Thermas del Val by Peter Zumtor in Switzerland, the green roof disappear with the mountain. 95
Democratize
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If an settlement is produced with the aim of extracting value of an element with great nature value as the marine coast, a big park or some monumental elements, the distribution of this attribute for the maximum number of the inhabitants looks as a necessary condition as a starting point.
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The sights, the air, the access to the services or the proximity to a communication mode can be values to distribute in an equitable way, the inhabitants of a neighbourhood or a population. For that reason, it’s necessary to foment the strategies of volumetric implantation that allows this equitable distribution. In the case of the city of Benidorm in the Spanish coast (Img. 28), it seems as a paradigm. A simple decision of spatial and urban order allows to build high towers, more than form the traditional compact tights in regular height, they have been generating the main concentration of European skyscrapers, in the way that the major part of the city doesn’t matter how far could be, or if it has sights to the sea. In other cases, the panoptic character of certain constructions with specific goals, determines a specific shape for the architecture as can determinate a natural shape, a specific ambient process. For that reason, in front of certain generic shapes of appropriation and the use of the human territory, could be the reflection in each case, that is, the requirements of the system that make any place of the world different to any other.
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Img. 28 Line coast in Benidorm Spain, the different buildings are disperse in order to every edifice has ocean views. 97
Discontinuity
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The repetition of the ground floor with the aim of allowing the greatest number of activities in certain surface of the earth is a common practice since the cities were founded. This process was amplified when certain technique inventions as the lift or the concrete allow to make the buildings grow, in the way that the discontinuity of the accumulation of the planes were solved by a mechanism that equated the level of the effort that it cost to access, the plain more closer and the further to the ground. This process has been converted in a generic practice accepted beyond the analysis of the potentials of the division of the ground level as a way to allow spatial achievement or functional relations, potentially more useful for an organization. For that reason, a ground could not be continuous floor by floor. The totality of the construction surface as a field above it will implant an organization or work in groups. The way that it has been divided, and the shapes as different parts or units of a building have been connected, this is part of the essence to the act of building multiple levels of roofs, above the same ground, for example The Mountain dwellings, developed by BIG (Img. 29). A fragmentary and discontinuous local system could allow the complete continuity in a global level. The point of discontinuity of a system and the way that the parts can be combined in order to form a whole, is part of the essence and character of itself, defining the functional and formal structure.
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Img. 29 The Mountain dwellings, developed by BIG in Copenhagen Denmark showing the discontinuity in the same ground. 99
Art and Nature
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Historically the art is intimacy linked with the architecture, therefore to the nature. Artists find the most of their inspiration in landscapes and natural objects. In this way, it is very useful to see and understand how they are interpreting the landscape and how we as architects can see and also get inspired by them. In this sense, I decided to show briefly three examples of interventions made by contemporary artists and develop their works directly in the nature.
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Perejaume
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Pere Jaume Borrell i Guinart, known as Perejaume is a self-taught artist, he began his artistic career in the late 1960s with clear influences from the historical vanguards, although over time he became a heterogeneous artist who engages in constant experimentation in different languages. His work is the union of literary and visual practices, many of them are based on the theme of territory, with a frequent obsession as he by himself acknowledges for the concept of “surface”, seen as a place, a base on which fasten things, but also on the importance of the presence of man as part of the landscape – “The presence of humans in the world is definitive in a way that it has never been before”, as if the geologic time would have been accelerated, the artist asserts. The landscape is a recurring subject, analyzed and explored in his work, re-taking and re-evaluating the presence, it has had most of all, in its literary and visual production. Through this approach, his relationship with the landscape is examined from diverse points of view, none of which are exempt of irony. He always tries to understand and translate the landscape. This means, not represent it, but translate it to the gallery, not just represent. For example, the following picture shows his idea of the nature profile, irregularity, and beauty of the mountain impregnated in those walls (Img. 30, Img. 31).
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Img. 30 The art work in the natural place
Img. 31 The mountain silhouette in the exposition, transporting the essence of the nature. 103
Olafur Eliasson
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Eliasson’s art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self. Eliasson strives to make the concerns of art relevant to society at large. Art, for him, is a crucial means for turning thinking into doing in the world. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the broader public sphere through architectural projects and interventions in civic space.
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In the following pictures we can see some of his works and thoughts, the first one in Versailles that invites visitors to increase the sense experience of the gardens by the movement and sound of the waterfall, the second picture shows his gallery when he literally respect the ground, building the walls as the nature guide, living holes in the walls were the stream was located.
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Img. 32 Fallingwater, increasing the senses in versailles’ gardens.
Img. 33 The artwork respecting the ground and the natural stream. 105
Arik Levy
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Best known publicly for his sculptures - such as his signature Rock pieces -, his installations, limited editions and design, Levy nevertheless feels “The world is about people, not objects.�
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His inspiration is the nature, particularly the minerals, the rocks. He represents its essence in different kind of works, evolution in all the time. He is sensible with the context where he places his works. In the following picture we can see a variation of his Rock works, where instantly remains us the nature, the material chosen is reflecting like mirror, and every facet reflects different sites of the surrounding landscape, inviting us to walk around it and discover it (Img. 34).
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Img. 34 One of the rock series in a natural context. 107
Design Clues of Cases
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Once understood the nature as a language that always is talking with us, we need to learn about how to dialogue with it, when the nature is present as a scenario for the architecture. Therefore, I selected some projects that provide some clues for developing the project in the Guinardo Park. These projects have the particularity of being placed in strong natural contexts. And the main aspect of the present work is to learn about how those references are placed in the nature. In order to learn those clues, also it is present a project about a parking lot, this project is not located in a natural strong context as the others, but by its program is very useful to reflect about that solution.
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topography
natural wall
promenades
hanging
adapting
Villa One, Cotes d’Amor Location: Saint-Cast-le-Guildo, Francia Designed by: Dominique Perrault Year Completed: 1995 Client: Dominique Perrault, Aude Perrault
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Client Type: Private
This Holliday home is one of the best examples of disappearing in the landscape. It has only one façade, revealed on the garden front, as a continuous glass curtain wall, in order with the other three walls that are completely buried in the low hill. In order to embed the house completely in the hill, the topography was also remodeled a bit. The earth excavated for placing the project was leaving at the side of the site, like a visual screen to the surrounding. For that reason, in front of the site becomes a topographically defined space, emptiness that the visitor arrive from the upper entrance to the site located in the main road. You can notice the skylights set flush turf only taking a second glance; suddenly, realizing that what seems to be a meadow is not the ground, but in fact, the roof of a house concealed beneath it (Img. 35). Resourses:
Geography
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Logic
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Img. 35 View from the upper zone of the site, the relation with the nature. 111
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The project shows us one way to insert in the topography when it has those kinds of strong changes, also how we can take advantage of this change of level, in order to connect the roof with the upper side of the terrain that we can use as access or parking. The illumination is necessary and the project doesn’t forget it; for that reason, some big holes exist in the roof in order to increase the natural illumination inside the house as a complement for the entire wall of glass.
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Oijared Executive Country Club Location: Lerum, Sweden Designed by: Wingardh Arkitecktkontor AB Year Completed: 1988 Client: Oijared Club
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Client Type: Private
The building is located in a golf camp, in order to don’t disturb the character of the site as a club house, it is not articulated as a building, but integrated in the topography. The construction nestles against an existing hill as a green roof over its own volume, forming an artificial hill that also features as the first tree of the new golf course. Also in the interior of the building, the project recreates the hybridization of nature with artificial landscape. On one hand, the walls, stairs, and doors are all made of red Oland Limestone with emphasizes on the natural condition of the ground. On the other hand, the stone is treated in different ways, highlighting to what extent our understanding of nature is, conditioned by technology of how the stones are used on the different sites of the project. The spatial typology of the project also deliberately shifts between nature and artifact, while atmospherically evoking an underground rocky cave, it is organized on a rigid geometric structure and programmed as a synthetic leisure oasis, with pool, sauna, and fitness center, as well as conference rooms and a restaurant (Img. 36). Resourses:
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Img. 36 Perspective of the project and its relation with the golf camp. 115
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As the previous example the project uses the roof as a green area, but this time in order to dissolve in the ambiance, the project teaches us a new way to achieve it. The building follows a curved shape, this new surface is not regular, it leaves some deformations intentionally in order that the people can appropriate of those spaces and the roof can be used not just like a promenade, but also as a leisure place at the same time. The inner space also creates new perceptions with these natural irregularities.
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Braga Stadium Location: Braga, Portugal Designed by: Eduardo Souto de Moura Year Completed: 2003 Client: -
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The project is located in a point with a dramatic change of level in the terrain between an elevated rock plateau, in the west and the south of the terrain. The lower plain of fields in the east shapes the nature of the stadium site. The project is so close to the rock plateau, it connects both levels with each other. The east stand is a freestanding sculpture in the landscape, the west stand is joined like a swallow’s nest to the steep rock face, that consequently becomes part of the circulation space of the stand. The top of this stand is on the same level to the plateau, where is located one of the entrances to the project, and the other is located below the valley, both are connected underground level beneath the pitch. The most particular issue in the project is to leave completely open two sides of the stadium, the north side to see the Iberian Landscape, and the south side to see the rock that shapes as a natural wall for the project (Img. 37). Resourses:
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Img. 37 View from the court of the stadium, the rocks of the hill like another wall of the project, but a natural one. 119
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The Braga Stadium face a similar situation that the Guinardo park, it has the mountain, the rock as the wall of the project, it is the most important lesson, because this project leaves the nature as an inherent part of the building. Another lesson was how the project reads the difference of levels in order to determine a slope of the grandstands, looking for a correct interaction with the natural landscape. These grandstands just touch the site with the pillars and the architecture is elevated respect the mountain. Also the location of the entrance shows us how to use the difference of levels for solving the project. In the example, we can see how the project joins the upper side of the mountain with the people by the building.
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National Tourist Route Trollstigen Location: Matsunoyama, Japon Designed by: Reiulf Ramstad Architects Year Completed: 2010 Client: Norwegian public roads administration
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Client Type: Public
The aim of the project is to enhance the experience of the Trollstigen plateau’s location and nature. Thoughtfulness regarding features and materials will underscore the site’s temper and character, and well adapted. The building gives functional facilities that will increase the visitor’s experience. The project is characterized by precise transitions between planned zones and the natural landscape. The building respects the topography and law down of it, flying in deeply zones and creating amazing lookouts to the natural landscape (Img. 38). Resourses:
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Img. 38 View from the promenade of the project, the outlook flying over the landscape. 123
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This project shows us a simple and elegant way to lay in the mountain, with promenades that make the user enjoy the views, the ambience. The project shows us two different ways to make this kind of lookouts. In the first case with a supporting wall and a slab that hangs of it. In the second case, the lookout is elevated, again just touching the site by its pillars, but the columns are not perfectly perpendicular, the pillars have an inclination evoking more natural ambience.
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Parkhouse / Carstadt Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands Designed by: NL Architects Year Completed: 1995 (Study) Client: -
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NL Architects made a study where they propose an analysis and an alternative about increasing the density of the monuments in order to clean an area where something new could develop a Parkhouse Carstadt, created a mixed use construction, combined building and infrastructure. The idea of the project is to make some continuity with the street at a gradient of 6% with parking spaces at the both sides of the main promenade. By elevating this parking ramp until it reaches a height of 30 meters, as the maximum height permitted in that area of Amsterdam. After reaching that height, the building goes down again to the starting level, with a length of one kilometer in total, folded around the site, creating spaces for parking, shops, offices, apartments, and restaurants (Img. 39). Resourses:
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Img. 39 Axonometric model of the building, how it is a continuity of the street with those public character. 127
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This project is not located in a natural landscape but give us important lessons for the present work, because the program is very similar. In this case the project is located surrounding by an urban landscape, but it teaches us about how the street itself can be an extension and in some moment it becomes part of the project. Because it proposes that the street goes inside and begins to go upper, folding itself in order to take advantage of the place and also leaving other areas for developing different activities in the building, with the purpose of achieving a mixed use program.
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04 Chapter
Being in Confidence, Conversing
Finally, after understanding the site, its history, its necessities, the program that we need to develop the project, the contemporary evolution of the space, the strongest of the nature, and how we as architects can listen to those clues and project the building, we are ready to develop the proposal. This chapter shows the proposal for a new building that continues with the actual use of the site, the parking, and also increases the number of parking pots, in order to provide more space to the people that want to visit the bunkers, the Guinardo Park, or for the neighbors that surround the place. This new building also has its multifunctional spaces, which allow people to have their free market once a week, galleries, and stores, linking all levels of the site until joining with the Guindardo’s promenade in the park, taking advantage of the topography of the site, lastly dialoging with the context, and with the nature.
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Remaining the analysis of the chapter one, the site have an area of 5400 m2. The actual use of the site is public parking, with a capacity of 190 vehicles. Is evident the difference in the topography at the sides of the terrain, because is literally located in a void of the mountain. This difference of levels is important in the project in order to integrate the new
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Initial Ideas
Project’s Description
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The Project is located in a public plot, in the lowest zone of the Guinardo’s Park that belongs to the “El Carmel” Neighbourhood. It has a strong collective memory in Barcelona. The plot is positioned in a void surrounded by a mountain where used to be a quarry in the middle of the sixties. That strong image is evident nowadays. The current use of the plot is for parking, with a capacity of 190 vehicles for the neighbours and the people that visit the park or the Bunkers, that is a strong tourist point in Barcelona, at the upper site of the mountain. Another incidence is the fact, that there is not a market around the site, all the district has only the Carmel’s Market, which is too far from this part of the district and has the natural barrier in the mountain. In this way, the proposal turns around a fundamental idea, to involve the nature, the mountain, the rocks as part of the building of its environment. The project renounces to the autonomous architectural project, putting in that place the idea of a building with an urban vocation. In that sense, the building shapes a serpentine, an irregular building that follows the site guidelines. This means that the building enters and goes, in the parts where the mountain and the topography allows, breaking the regularity of the building. The serpentine surrounds a void, a new public space, that connects all the levels of the project, and is a new meeting point for the neighborhood. The project is divided in two volumes: one evident, the serpentine and another that is located on ground floor under the plaza. This plaza is the point where those two volumes fuse as a unitary composition. The main function of the edifice is to be a parking building, but it is not just a place for that use. According to the necessities of the neighborhood, the building has the facility to develop multifunctional spaces, with stores, galleries, open market and public space. In this way, the ground level is cars entrance, where it also starts one level of the slope of the serpentine building. The pedestrian entrance is located following the Josep Serrano Street, that arrives to the plaza level. This new point of unions provides another entrance to the serpentine building by lift and stairs, or is the starting point of promenade in the roof of the serpentine that func-
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tions as public space and connects the project with the Guinardo Park’s promenade. The whole building can be used as parking, according to the necessities of the neighborhood, some event in the bunkers or in the park, but also each side of the building allows people to develop other activities. For example, all the serpentine building for the market and just the ground level as parking, or half of the serpentine as gallery and the rest of the building as market and parking. In other words, it allows all the possibilities. All the spaces are designed leaving the nature as scenario. That is to say, the rocks are the walls of the project, using as structure the pillars that enter in the mountain as trees in the nature. The ground floor leaves spaces with trees that cross first the free areas of the building. The user can appreciate them in any side of the edifice, they work as visual connectors. Second, some trees are crossing the slab of the plaza by holes that also increase these connections between the levels. Also, in the plaza, more holes exist in order to provide natural illumination to the ground level. All of those trees are related to the pillars because of their vertical composition, and the fact that both crop the building in different levels, making a unitary ambience of forest, surrounded by the mountain. The formal composition of the plaza doesn’t touch the serpentine building in order to leave another hole that makes the project permeable and visually connected in all of its levels. In that sense, all the activities always are visible, increasing the dynamic sensation of the building and also always showing the mountain naked in all of the levels. The public space in the serpentine roof, enters in the mountain, and the aim is to increase the natural ambience with trees and gardens. Those trees in the promenade and plaza are putting in structures that born in the floor and increase the height, in order to leave enough space for the growing little trees. Also this change of the artificial topography helps to create furniture and places for relaxing and leisure. These elements and the disposition of the building according to the place increase the experience of touring the project, creating this dialog between nature and architecture.
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Ground Floor - Parking Level 0
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In this level, we can see the car entrance for the parking and the pedestrian entrance that is following the street. In the area of the ground level are located trees that cross the slab, located on the upper part of it. In this part the plaza is located, increasing the sensation of unity of the project. Here it starts the slope of the serpentine building that surrounds the plaza. This level also can be transformed in part of the market as the last perspective shows.
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The main plaza is developed in this level, as encounter point for the neighborhood and a new public space. This plaza doesn’t touch the serpentine pavilion, leaving a void, this void will be the projection of the ground floor. In that sense, all the project preserves the visual unity, leaving exposed the activities that are developing there. Always the rocks of the mountain are presented naked as walls of the project, and they are evident from this level. The plaza leaves another holes, apart from the trees’ holes, these voids will increase the natural illumination of the ground floor, and they are protected with ropes in order that the user can lay dawn there, giving the sensation of flying, this plaza level is continuing with the new promenade in the roof of the serpentine building.
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The Building in Slope - Parking Use
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This is the area of the serpentine building, with its main use, the parking, according to the necessities of the neighborhood and the demanding of the Carmle’s Bunkers. The building leaves just one road of parking in the half of the building, in order to stop invading the free space of the plaza, but the other half of the serpentine that is above the plaza, increases the width of the edifice in order to leave two parking roads and more open space for the other uses that will be developed there.
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The Building in Slope - Market Use
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This is the other flexibility of the serpentine building, as a free market that can be used once a week. Most of it developed in a walkable slope of 4%. This open market can be organized with stalls of three meters square each one, leaving correct size for the circulation inside it, as well as the other use of parking, this space considers the experience, it means, the mountain that is surrounding it, leaves free views through the pure metal structure of the building, using just a handrail for security with a net that protects the users, but without affecting the views.
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The Building in Slope - Roof - Public Space
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This level shows the promenade above the edifice that links the neighborhood with the Guinardo Park. This promenade is part of the new public space, increasing the green view of the project. This space has areas with grass and trees, those trees are placed above structures that emerge from the ground and height 90 centimeters in order to give space for the trees growing. Also this change of the artificial topography can be used as furniture for the public space. In that sense, the project preserves the idea of public, with green areas that don’t affect the views and atmosphere from the bunkers that are located in the upper side of the mountain.
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Conclution Nowadays, the conception of place and space is changing as we see in the present work, and analyze their evolution in order to understand what happened before, and how to face the current necessities is transcendental in the architect’s mind, as Rynan Braham says, we can be like dwarves and if we stand in the shoulders of giants we can see even farther than them, the great masters of the architecture are our giants.
dialog between nature and architecture. Because for me, this is the duty of the architect, it is create those spaces, looking for the relation, quality, looking at the nature. We, as animals, have within us, in our minds the nature as our comfort area, in our brain is the happiness of relaxation that give us a tree, a mountain, the tranquility of the water. But in the looking for those relations, for me, is not about imitate the nature itself, creating a sort of rock as a building, or with the shape or aspect of a mountain develop an edifice. The nature is different from the architecture. Both elements must to be in relation, not in mimesis or trying to be each other. It is not about to create columns with a crazy creativity in order to invent columns as trunks and branches, it is different, we can learn from nature and translate it in the architecture, using some clues, some principles, in that case structural principles for solving the project, but not creating a column as a tree just for fashion. For me, as I understood the relation, the dialog is not about a mimesis, not about to pretend to be a nature. It is to understand first the necessities of the place, the neighborhood, the urban necessities. It is to think how to develop the building, the intervention in that context. That is, what happens with the trees, forest, water, mountains, topography, and sun, in order to find where is the best site, and how to place the project there, trying to do the less excavations, respecting the natural landscapes, using the visual force that some natural elements have, in this case, the rocks of the mountain as walls of the project.
In that sense, every time is more frequently the existence of the no places and media spaces, but also it is evident that a lot of architects are forgetting the essence, the importance of the context, the place, because for them is more important the time, the money, and they are creating spaces without constructive quality, those spaces are more dependent of the inner artificial ambience than the context and the reality outside. For this reason, the leadership in the creation of spaces is been taking by other professionals as the interior designers or industrial designers, they are creating like inner masks inside some constructions. So, it is important to take our role as architects, see and learn about the technology, and about its future. Not just think in constructive technology, the thought is deeper, it is about thinking in the human evolution in general, because we need to understand it, in order to link and see the best way to achieve those ideals with the architecture. Not just creating empty spaces without qualities, or fulfilling them with something, because the place and the context are linked with the architecture. The sensations and the experience that they can give us, need to About the program, nowadays is risky or stupid to create a restore that relationship. building with just one purpose. In that sense emerges the necessity of multifunctional spaces, as the multi task deSo, with the aim of developing the space in that contempo- vices, computers or cellphones that we are using daily, we rary way of thinking, I decided to create this relation, this need to think in that with the eyes of architecture. In this
specific case the main program is the parking building, it seems easy but it’s more difficult if we are thinking about a building that allows to adapt to multifunctional uses and even more difficult when the building is following a not lineal shape. So, we should think in the constructive system, at the same time that we are starting with the design, because that structure should leave space from multifunctional activities, in this case is the parking, free market, or commercial facilities, but it’s part of the current idea of mixed uses, maybe is only missing one of the most important activity, living, in other words, the house. All of this stages should consider the phenomenological experience of touring the site, it means the light, air, sights, and the strong impact that the mountain give to the project in order to increase that experience. Apart from the knowledge about the contemporary advances of the humanity also must to be related with the Art for the architects. Because those subjects are not the same, but they could complement or find inspiration from each other. The sensibility that the artist develops, must to be one tool for us, especially when we face this kind of projects with strong context as the nature. For example, some thoughts and interventions from Olafur Eliasson teach us another point of view from the art, because it is more than shapes, it is more deep, it is about concepts that provide us with the tools for developing different shapes, different works. But all of those analysis maybe let us think in another options, maybe the probable dissolution of the architecture as we know until now. Probably the future could be in recreating the ambience that we use to live or we are living now, because of different aspects, we have the global warming
that changed the weather drastically in the last years. Probably in the future, we are going to be condemn to live under ground, in order to protect us from the pollution or extreme weather, and the architecture must change, must evolve, as scenarios that we use to see in fiction movies as Matrix, where the architect must create underground worlds, with no context only the darkness and the aim of creating a fake reality. Fortunately, until now, we are no facing that extreme stuff and maybe utopian scenario. Now, we are living another reality, changing, but it’s time to create new projects that can be in that relation with the nature, with the context, with real experiences. We are living the technology era, the communication times, and we should take advantage of it, learn and try, even making mistakes, because this is the best way to learn. Understanding the same metaphor of the giants, of contemporary architects, or of the great masters, realizing that the paradigms of works that we are studying now, must be examples, clues, not the last word or the law from architecture, because everything is changing, and if they should do the same project today. For example, the Kauffman house of Wright, nowadays it’s sure that he will do another one, with a totally different architecture, because we are living another culture, another technology, another reality. But we should always keep in mind those universal rules, those paradigms like the ones that the Kaufman’s House gives us, those universal rules that the dialogue between nature and architecture can be done, those readings of the site, those languages, and creating an answer, with just something simple, nothing less than simply architecture.
ANNEX
Table of Images Chapter 1 Img. (01,02) By the Author Img. 03 Civil War. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Barcelona_bombing_%281938%29.jpg/1200px-Barcelona_bombing_%281938%29.jpg
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Img. 04 Barracas del Crmel http://unfollowmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Barraca-los-cañones- 1024x680.jpg Img. 05 Plan of the New project of the Bunkers. http://www.jdvdp.com/proyecto/detalles/101 Img. (06,07) By the Author Img. 08 Can Baro quarrie http://totbarcelona.blogspot.com.es/2016/04/canteras-de-can-baro.html Img. 09 Can Baro Quarry https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-c-JkaCDHQUs/VuGil4CbmqI/AAAAAAAAbPw/6rUvtAmlmW4/ s1600/002%2B%25282%2529.JPG Img. 10 View of the Site. Google Maps Img. (11,12,13,14) By the Author Big Images Page 21. Stairs and walls in the Carmel Neighbourhood. By the Author Page 24,25 Talking in Barcelona. By the Author Page 28,29 The barracks in the Carmels’s bunkers in the 60s. http://www.lavanguardia.com/r/GODO/LV/p4/WebSite/2017/03/24/ Recortada/img_memartinez_20170324-204815_imagenes_lv_terceros_barracas_carmel_turo_rovira_1972-kUOE-656x421@LaVanguardia-Web.JPG Page 31 The Carmel’s Bunkers. By the Author 178
Chapter 2 Img. 15 Parthenon Greek http://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/3372.jpg?v=1485681001 Img. 16 Falling water House http://www.wright-house.com/frank-lloyd-wright/fallingwater-pictures/large-fallingwater-photos/high-resolution/falling-water-fall-house-L.jpg Img. 17 Maison Louis Carré http://tyylit.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/maison-Louis-Carre-1.jpg
Img. 19 Machu Pichu https://media.cntraveler.com/photos/5818a486b6f3d25e7b5c6a3e/master/pass/GettyImages-573103543.jpg Img. 20 Joan Miro fundation by Josep Lluis Sert. https://circarq.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/img_3723.jpg Img. 21 Joan Miro Fundation by Rafael Moneo in Mallorca http://www.fpa.es/interactives/rafael-moneo/img/obras/miro.jpg Img. 22 The Vitra Design Museum by Franck Ghery https://www.vitra.com/en-us/_storage/asset/77309/storage/v_fullbleed_1440x/01187082.jpg
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Img. 18 Casa Ugalde http://www.epdlp.com/fotos/coderch5-3.jpg
Img. 23 Explora Park by Alejandro Echeverry https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Parque_Explora_%28Medell%C3%ADn%2C_Colombia%29.JPG Img. 24 Phillip Beesley Spaces https://uwaterloo.ca/architecture/sites/ca.architecture/files/uploads/images/philipbeesley_01.jpg BIG IMAGES Pages 52,53 Kannikegården Project. http://miesarch.com/work/3156 Page 55 Kannikegården Project http://miesarch.com/work/3156 Page 58,59 Dubai Skyline https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Dubai_skyline_2015.jpg Page 61 Barcelona Pavilion Classical Picture https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/55/ca/13/55ca13ebdcc90e2c6305907c8ab4ce79--bauhaus-architecture-space-architecture.jpg
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Chapter 3 Img. 25 Faaling Water House http://www.wright-house.com/frank-lloyd-wright/fallingwater-pictures/large-fallingwater-photos/high-resolution/26SW-falling-water-path3-L.jpg Img. 26 Hamburg Philharmonie https://d3c80vss50ue25.cloudfront.net/static/images/background/house-infographics.jpg
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Img. 27 Termas del Val. https://en.wikiarquitectura.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Termas_de_Vals_13.jpg Img. 28 Benidorm https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/398570/this-how-benidorms-skyline-intempo-would-look-after-buildingsconstruction-will-be-finished.jpg Img. 29 Mountain Dwellings https://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/copenhagen/mountain_dwellings_big280908_boserup_1.jpg Img. 30 Perejaume Mountain. http://catalogo.artium.org/sites/default/files/imagenesbody/02/2015/cambra1.jpg Img. 31 Perejaume Exhibition http://catalogo.artium.org/sites/default/files/imagenesbody/02/2015/cambra2.jpg Img. 32 Eliasson Falling water in Versailles https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/06/waterfall-olafur-eliasson-versailles-installation-art-france-anders-sune-berg_dezeen_1568_3.jpg Img. 33 Olaffur Eliasson https://www.google.es/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwi89LeAjNnUAhVNkRQKHcHVDugQjBwIBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com%2Folafureliasson. net%2Fobjektimages_final%2FIMG_MDA115571_1600px.jpg&psig=AFQjCNHh2rezY7P5eXIrxe2reqQefBdjxg&ust=1498483441567483&cad=rjt Img. 34 Arik Levy in Nature with Rocks http://www.domainedumuy.com/cspdocs/artwork/images/arik_levy_domaine_du_ muy_26.jpg Img. 35 Casa Perrault http://photos1.blogger.com/img/133/6247/1024/DP-c.jpg Img. 36 Oijared Executive Country Club http://birdieable.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Wingardh-Architects-GreenRoof-Golf-Club-House-Sweden-1-300x200.jpg Img. 37 Braga Stadium https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CJkc4eUVEAEMSoi.jpg 180
Img. 38 National Tourist Route Trollstigen http://images.adsttc.com/media/images/56c5/fd96/e58e/ce27/af00/0010/slideshow/08_TheNationalTouristRouteTrollstigen_ReiulfRamstadArchitects__Recognition_Norway__Photo_CourtesyRRA.jpg?1455816049 Img. 39 Parking Study http://www.architectureweek.com/2009/1202/images/14467_image_8.150.jpg BIG IMAGES Page 76,77 Silence in Yasuni. By the Author
Page 81 The force of the Trunk in Yanusi Jungle, By the Author Page 85 Two Houses in Ponte de Lima https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/44/59/a2/4459a2806fef7d746e7072397aff6757.jpg Page 89 Montserrat Mountain https://www.likealocalguide.com/media/cache/be/f2/bef2527779b1ff5afb94bb87ab425eb1.jpg
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Page 79 Tjibaou Cultural Centre http://images.adsttc.com/media/images/540e/03c0/c07a/802f/f500/011c/large_jpg/saturnino. jpg?1410204579
Page 101 Reflecting the Nature https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/41/e3/f0/41e3f0b61a11718a8efdd4d6e0d6f74f. jpg Page 109 Collage with the Img (35,35,37,38,39). By the Author Chapter 4 All the images, plans, renders, ilustrations are made by the author.
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Bibliography Chapter 1 Books 1. BOU, Lluís y GIMENO Eva. El Carmel ignorat: historia d’un barri impossible. Barcelona, Agència de promoció del Carmel i entorns, 2007. 2. ALBERCH FIGUERAS, Ramon (dir.). Els Barris de Barcelona. Volum VIII. Gràcia. Horta-Guinardó. Nou Barris. Enciclopèdia Catalana. Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1997.
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3. BOHIGAS, Oriol. Reconstrucció de Barcelona. Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1985. 4. PRADAS, Rafael. El Carmel, 30 anys de progrés. Un barri de gent lliutadora. Barcelona, Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2010. Thesis 1. HENAO, Adriana. Dinámica y encaje urbano. 8 mercados de Barcelona. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2015 2. MEJIA, Carolina. Valoración de la cultura ciudadana en el espacio público posterior a una renovación urbana caso de estudio barrio El Carmel. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2013. 3. BELTRAN, Cristina. Repercusión de la transformación urbana en la regeneración social del Barrio del Carmel. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2012. Other Sources 1. ADJUNTAMENT D’ BARCELONA. Carto Bcn. February 2017. Available at: http://w20.bcn.cat/cartobcn/ 2. ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. May 2017. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/event/Spanish-Civil-War 3. HISTORY. May 2017. Available at: http://www.history.com/topics/francisco-franco 4. MUSEU D’HISTORIA DE BARCELONA. May 2017. Available at: http://museuhistoria.bcn.cat/en/muhba-turo-de-la-rovira 5. PUBLIC SPACE. May 2017. Available at: http://www.publicspace.org/en/works/g320-arranjament-dels-cims-delturo-de-la-rovira 6. INSTITUTE D’ESTADISTICA DE CATALUNYA. May 2017. Available at: https://www.idescat.cat
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Chapter 2 Books 1. MONTANER, Jose. La modernidad superada: ensayos sobre arquitectura contemporánea. Barcelona, España : Editorial Gustavo Gili;2011 2. MUNTANOLA, Thornberg . Arquitectura y contexto. Barcelona : Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; 2004 3. MONEO Rafael. Inquietud teórica y estrategia proyectual en la obra de ocho arquitectos contemporáneos. Barcelona : España ; 2004
Thesis 1. Ma Li. THE 24-HOUR METROPOLIS “ mixed-use ” intervention in building a thrive neighborhood. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya; 2014
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4. AUGE Marc. Non-Palces Introduction to an Anthropology of Super modernity. London. Verso;1995.
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Chapter 3
Books 1. GULLART, Vincent. Geologics : geografía, información, arquitectura. Actar. Barcelona 2008. 2. STEADMAN, Philip. Arquitectura y naturaleza. Las analogías biológicas en el diseño. Madrid: Blume, 1982.
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3. SPIRN ANNE. The Language of Landscape. Yale University Press. New Haven, 1998. 4. FERNANDEZ, Antonio. Sobre la naturaleza del espacio que construye la arquitectura: geometría del recuerdo y proyecto del lugar. Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1989. 5. ILKA ANDREAS Ruby. The rediscovery of the ground in contemporary architecture. Editorial Gustavo Gili. Barcelona, 2006. Thesis 1. Soler C. MECANISMOS DE IMPLANTACIÓN. ESTRATEGIAS DE APROXIMACIÓN. La secuencia de aproximación y acceso en la obra de F. Ll. Wright. Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, 2015. 2. DEVESA Ricardo. La Casa y el Arbol Aportes teoricos al proyecto de arquitectura. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2012. 3. GRILLO ACD. La arquitectura y la naturaleza compleja: Arquitectura, ciencia y mímesis a finales del siglo XX. Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, 2005. 4. PORTOGUESI, Paolo. Arquitectura y naturaleza. Arquetipos y semejanzas. Valencia: Ediciones Generales de la Construcción; Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Valencia, 2004. Magazines 1. TOPOS : Architecture and Landscape. 57. 2006 2. TOPOS : Building with Landscape. 74. 2011 3. TOPOS : Construction & Landscape. 86. 2006 5. MONOGRAFIAS: Souto de Moura. …
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Other Resourses THE NOUN PROJECT. June 2017. Available at: https://thenounproject.com ARIK LEVI. June 2017. Available at: https://www.ariklevy.fr OLAFUR ELIASSON. June 2017. Available at: http://www.olafureliasson.net CCCB. June 2017. Available at: http://www.cccb.org/es/participantes/ficha/perejaume/24776
ARCHDAYLI. June 2017. Available at: http://www.archdaily.com E.U.PRIZE. June 2017. Available at: http://miesbcn.com/prize/
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NL ARCHITECTS. June 2017. Available at: http://www.nlarchitects.nl
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As part of the architectonic project, the test, mistakes and success, I attached the different proposals in descending order, with the sense of show the process, it means the different options developed with the aim to achieve the dialogue between nature and architecture.
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