The year ends and the compilations begin. In the coming days, we will be the victims of the lists of the most streamed songs on Spotify, the celebrities who left, and this year’s draw winners.
In such an unusual year that we even held the World Cup in December, architecture also needs to do a synthesis and sharing work. This is not a list of what happened this year (architects who left us or emerging stars), but to lay the table on how architecture has faced this growing environment of uncertainty that still fears economic woes. without truly knowing his role in the past and in the face of the great challenges the planet will face in the next five years.
Among the pleasant surprises of the year, we see that Spanish architecture, which has always been a joy if not new, continues to resonate internationally. In particular, the excellent reception received by the Munch Museum in Oslo stands out favorably, one of the most emblematic projects of the last decade, the work of Juan Herreros, the architect responsible for his office in Madrid. We should also highlight that Emilio Tuñón was awarded the 2022 National Prize for Architecture (in this context, David García-Asenjo’s article is quite interesting: Considerations on Emilio Tuñón at CTXT). An award that values the career of an architect who can produce high-quality buildings (and a good portion of it definitely goes to the late Luis Moreno Mansilla), but an award that annually acknowledges the continuation of these awards, especially at a time when housing is one of our society’s most pressing issues, social housing circumventing other architectural proposals such as The fact that these awards have come into the hands of architects who have built almost no public housing in a row is particularly notable, especially in a country fortunate enough to have authors and groups betting on new housing models.
So over the past year, architecture has experienced a kind of disturbing duality, as can be seen in two recent projects; In particular, two schools were visited.
On the one hand, the Office of Political Innovation, led by architect Andrés Jaque, inaugurated the College of Reggio, a resounding building towering in one of the capital’s noblest districts. The building is a catalog of geometries, systems and stylistic rhythms that, without any dialogue with the environment, will delight any young apprentice in this difficult art of design, yet very dubiously manages to respond to the initial strategies described by its author. Therefore, according to the recently appointed Dean of Columbia GSAPP, the project aims to “transcend the sustainability paradigm” to stay committed to ecology and be at the intersection of environmental impact, alliances with nonhumans, material mobilization, collective governance and pedagogies. however, it is not explained/visualized how it is achieved and why this implies a continuous maturation process, beyond the students’ living with reclaimed water tanks and soil feeding an inner garden that reaches the upper floor under a building greenhouse. becomes a greater skill for students to explore the school ecosystem on their own and with their peers.
Faced with unifying and compelling norms and standards, this school intends to “become a multiverse where the complexity of the layers of the environment becomes readable and experienceable”, but the classrooms or the relationship and/or workspaces create a new paradigm for learning. In its fully self-representing state, the building functions as a collection of different climates and ecosystems, but here (at least for now) the complete absence of spaces for contact with nature (understood broadly) is a place where the school, students and teachers can feel and adapt to the ecosystems of which they are a part. It is doubtful that it can function as a community.
In contrast, Valencian architects Carmel Gradolí and Arturo Sanz built the Imagine Montessori School in the town of Paterna (the second phase of which began this year). Having a radically opposite proposal to Reggio, the building bases its initial idea on an excellent design decision: the entrance is not from the city but from the mountain pass. Children cross a pine forest, see the school through the trees and reach the school.
The project is simply a natural organism in which each cell is grouped according to its own needs and related to the others. Its shrinking and expanding interiors become meeting, work and play spaces. All classrooms (distributed to areas where students have free access based on their concerns and needs) directly overlook the valley and the adjacent forest. For the teacher, in a school where there is no blackboard or desk, the sensory connection with nature is the real hero, something we can see in the large extroverted agora that finishes one of the front walls of the building.
Also the use of materials (almost) km. Like terracotta and wood, 0 adds the necessary harmony to the project. All this with the aim of creating the least possible ecological impact. In fact, this erasure of all kinds of architectural traces on the ground reaches every part of the building, from the facade camouflaged among the ivy to the vegetation that stretches out like a huge green blanket as if to hide from the public. Eye of geeks flying over it via Google Earth.
There are no sports fields or football fields here. What this school is trying to build are spaces of relationship, enjoyment, and learning. In short, playgrounds are natural spaces where they play with their hands. Although it may seem naive or naive, it is something that happens exactly as its authors predicted. As the architect Arturo Sanz put it: “the building is the school’s first didactic material”.
Observed in both examples – and in this one can predict a certain common trend in the discipline – the idea of making facilities visible so students question how our comfort and well-being is linked to our (as well as social) well-being. It is an exchange of energy that takes place through everyday elements such as water and air. Both projects allow ducts, pipes, cables and metal trays to form part of the visible body of the building. It is something that is increasingly found in existing works that overlap in the almost unanimous absence of finishes, suspended ceilings, technical floors and heavily clad facades. The final result presents bare buildings where their functional systems are evident and made visible, where naturalness defines their appearance. Rather than being a problem, it is a need that turns into a new aesthetic.
In our economic, social and climatic context, where high-tech sustainable solutions are only available for high-budget buildings promoted by large companies or public administrations, it is worth appreciating the daily attention given by Spanish architects to low-budget applications. Systems and technologies to reduce the ecological footprint.
In summary, the anomaly of 2022 leaves an indefinite step, but at the same time and as architecture has done many times before – they call it resistance – it is appropriate to initiate a change of direction. A spin that knows how to take advantage of the forced reduction of costs and material resources to create a new “aesthetic of necessity”. I agree with Jaque’s idea to make a wish for 2023: “More thoughts and less material”.