Master Utzon has died

Utzon has died, but his works are alive.

Dinamism in architecture has to do with light, not with buildings that move. Utzon made the stones, the concrete, the bricks and the wood breath under the light. The video is at his Bagsvaerd Church in Copenhague.

Utzon liked to cite Goethe saying: "give me a job, so I can devote my self with love and skill a hundred per cent. Then it is not a job anymore, it becomes an art, an expression of love". The tribute of the Sydney Opera House is worth visiting.

PD: William Curtis has said recently that there were just two Masters alive in architecture: one of them was Utzon.

David Chipperfield at the IE University

Great Sunday. Having Chipperfield in our University has been a quite rewarding event.

Last Friday, at my studio, we were discussing what I've named architectural "didactism". Didactism is the pathology of architecture determined by explanations of the design process . It comes from design competitions: as the juries are normally neophyte in architecture (politicians, bureaucrats, managers) the proposals have to be easily explained, so much so that design teams tend to propose mainly what is easy to explain. Nevertheless, good architecture can't never be totally explained because it is done to be experienced, not to be understood.

Chipperfield, the best British architect at the moment, has perfectly demonstrated with his outstanding work since 1985 that he believes in architecture to be lived. He explicitly agrees with this point of view in the interview below (specially when he talks about recent architecture as "victim of methodological descriptions"). However, one might say that his own CAT Master Plan is sort of didactic (video). Anyway, I'm a sure that at the end the British-Spanish Dream Team (Chipperfield-Perea-Junquera-Sancho) will convert the Segovia CAT in the public paradise they (and we all) want it to be.

I told Mr. Chipperfield that on Friday we were studying his gorgeous Gallery in Berlin at my studio at the IE School of Architecture: that building is, as the majority of his work, one example of authentic architecture to be experienced. He was glad to hear that.