Ernesto Rogers at Rai Radio 3

On tuesday 22th (next Tuesday) on Rai Radio 3 the program Radio 3 Suite will be on the new books published to celebrate the centenary of Ernesto Rogers. Eugenia López Reus will be interviewed. Press "ascolta RADIO3 in diretta" at 21:45 local time to listen to it live.

Gillo Dorfles: cien años os contemplan

Dorfles ha hablado. Y lo ha hecho alto y claro para afirmar (confirmar) que Ernesto Rogers era tan proyectista como teórico, las dos cosas al tiempo.

Coincidiendo con el nacimiento de Rogers (este año cumpliría cien años, los que va a cumplir Dorfles el que viene), el crítico de arte con más autoridad en Italia y su amigo de la infancia dice en un artículo en el Corriere della Sera que el libro de Eugenia López Reus llena "una laguna verdaderamente incomprensible".

Esa laguna, que según Dorfles llena el libro a base de "sutileza", es, en mi opinión, resultado de la dificultad de reconocer en otros la capacidad de hacer y pensar al mismo tiempo, de hacer literatura con las palabras y arquitectura con la construcción: algo de eso le pasaba a Wright con Le Corbusier.

En efecto, escribir y diseñar suelen convertirse en pecado cuando es un mismo arquitecto el que ejerce ambas habilidades. La kantiana autonomía entre pensar y actuar se convierte en intolerancia cuando el profesional y el crítico se obsesionan en defender la pureza de sus ámbitos respectivos. Lo que sucede es que la vida mezcla las pretendidas purezas, las cuales, por cierto, son en el kantismo sólo legalidades subjetivas no constituciones objetivas. En los textos del excelente congreso que acaba de terminar en el Politécnico de Milán-Bovisa se recogerán muchos de estos matices que la celebración ha permitido sacar a la luz.

Mientras tanto, hay que agradecerle a Dorfles que siga defendiendo tan rotundamente la posibilidad de una subjetividad integrada a través de lo artístico. ¡Salve Maestro!

X Bienal Española de Arquitectura y Urbanismo (BEAU)

Hasta el 14 de diciembre se puede (debe) ir a ver la X BEAU en las Arquerías de los Nuevos Ministerios en Madrid.

El montaje de la exposición es muy interesante (Luís Úrculo y su equipo son los responsables): cada visitante se puede llevar una copia de lo que está expuesto, al punto de que podría montar una exposición identica en su casa (si tiene espacio para hacerlo, claro, y está un poco pirado).

Además, hay un blog que recoge la expo. Los finalistas se pueden ver allí con calma: este es el link. Los PFC que han participado también están colgados en el blog: este es el otro link. Casi 700 comentarios en algún proyecto da idea del interés que realmente existe y que se puede canalizar por esta vía. Ambas exposiciones la virtual y la real son excelentes.

Market and Con-temporary Art

This interesting book on "the curious economics of contemporary art" has just been published in Spanish. Written by an economist, professor Donald Thompson, is a good example of the theoretical benefits of joining art and economy.

As it always happens when aesthetic matters are involved, there are several ways of considering the central theme of the book: one, the amazing and crazy market of contemporary art. Another, market itself tends to be criticized when considered in art's world.

As every version of it art market has been de-regulated in the last two decades. One of the main expressions of this is the almost total disappearance of art criticism: except Robert Hudges, who considers brand-art pieces as "simple minded" works addressed to "business big-shots", art critics have been replaced by docile journalists that produce the "blither and rubbish" necessary for the "fatuity of art-world greed" (Hudges).

In architectural realm the situation is even worse, I am affraid: no respected critic has had the courage of denouncing brand-architecture and, which is more harmful in the long run, this whole situation has already contaminated architectural education. Today students of some of the best architecture schools in USA do not know who are Arnee Jacobsen, Utzon or Niemeyer, but they are saturated by con-temporay brand-architecture (temporary meaning that it is not going to last in time). The problem is that painting or sculpture can be hidden in a wardrobe, but architecture always involves public space and/or public money.

Do not miss the video with Hudges's critique on Hirst's work and the business of art:

Reforming Architectural Education

Let us suppose it is true that Western culture is in a conclusive crisis: would not the best educational institutions in USA and Europe have certain responsabilities in all this? The curriculum of the best architecctural schools are going to change very soon. Where to? How? The article New Blueprint for Architecture in Inside Higher Education gives hints.

Ágora, ¿ahora?

En una entrevista reciente sobre la última película de Alejandro Amenábar, Ágora, Iñaki Gabilondo y el director se esforzaban por ver en el mundo actual un conflicto entre conocimiento y religión similar al que ilustra la película. Hace unas semanas también se podía leer en la prensa nacional que la película tiene "un guión que bien podría servir para ser interpretado con personajes de la actualidad" (El País 7/10/09).

Crítica cinematográfica aparte, este diagnostico de la realidad es errado y puede inducir a actuaciones desencaminadas para salir del atolladero en el que nos encontramos. Nuestro tiempo no está caracterizado por un choque entre ciencia y religión sino por una mezcla de ambas, por una religión de la ciencia, y muy especialmente por la religión de las ciencias económicas y políticas. (seguir leyendo en el Adelantado de Segovia)

Human Nature

Human nature is the responsible for the financial crisis, in Greenspan opinion (watch the BBC video here). And former Federal Reserve Chief does not just talk about current one: all of them, he says, from the South Sea Bubble in the XVI Century to todays.

The amazing thing is that the Homo Economicus is the only model economists use today: this is not serious at all. Current economy should not be considered a real science (in fact, it is a religion right now) since its models do not fit its subject. To make a long story short: the main problem is that economists are pure mathematitians that excuse their failures and dogmatic excesses about society by blaming the "unquenchable human nature" (Greenspan). How can coexist ideas like deregulation, free market and invisible hands in the very same discourse with "unquenchable human nature" and still pay these people such bonuses?

To have a remote chance of understanding human nature it has to be taken into account factors like art, for example, that are not reasonable or driven by interest. Any map of human soul that does not count on subjective impulses, beside moral attributes and mathematical skills is not going to be fully human. Economist should have the capability of dealing with the contradictions of human nature. So, little hope of fixing current state of the art of society in the hands of current leaders, I am afraid. Last hope are politicians...

Estilo blogero del premio Nobel

«O Caderno de Saramago», o livro do blogue from Fundação Jose Saramago on Vimeo.

Hasta el más pintado puede columpiarse con esto del blog. Los comentarios de la actualidad calientan la pluma como se le calienta la boca a los oradores en público.

El caso de Saramago es ejemplar en este sentido. Toda la sutileza y poética de su escritura se desvanece al calor de sus enfados por lo que pasa y no le cuadra en sus esquemas. Que los comunistas no aceptan la realidad tal como es ya lo demostraron suficientemente en la historia. Que un medio como el blog podría hacer a todo un premio Nobel abandonar la autonomía estética de la literatura es algo novedoso.

Como dice Umberto Eco al respecto: resulta "simpático" verlo perder los papeles en su libro El cuaderno, escritos del blog.

Principles against poison

Yes, I know that I have already linked Ouroussoff's article in a recent post. The thing is that I have read the article again (thanks to a reader of the blog from New Zealand) and have decided to give it its own space.

The most "delirious era in architecture" is not going to be over just like that: years, maybe decades will be needed to overcome this "poisonous cocktail of vanity and self-delusion" (Ouroussoff).

By the way, have you notice that there is a consensus about "desintoxication" (see post under this) and "poisons" in the realm of contemporary form creation...?

Disintoxication of Design

It is not just in the architectural realm that experts predict a retreat from recent "vulgarity and ambition" (Ouroussoff), designers too see the coming trends as:

Retreat to the comfort zone

Purism as Self-Therapy

Back to basics

A Return to Reason

No Jokes, No Fakes

Utility

Craftsmanship

Back to Bauhaus

The beauty of reason: Luxury is no longer sought in comfort but in formal and qualitative consistency. Only forms that are beautiful, innovative and durable can be useful as well. Bauhaus classics set the tone, quality workmanship adds authenticity. Slender, simple furniture with as few edges as possible dominates. The materials also indicate a return to the authentic: wood, leather, woven fabrics or ceramics, rounded off with the occasional plastic detail.

Design against design: with experiments, with products and furniture that are driven by artistic rather than market-oriented motives and play with our expectations, designers and their public are rebelling against the slickness of the design world

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Read more at Dezeen. In Spanish there is good article in El PAÍS.

Muere el profesor Juan Antonio Ramirez

La noticia se ha regado por los medios como la pólvora. Sucede que Juan Antonio Ramirez tenía una inmensa autoridad, que no poder. De hecho, era de los pocos que ha defendido a contracorriente que la modernidad artística tiene un largo recorrido por delante y no cejó en denunciar sus sucedáneos contemporáneos.

El mejor homenaje que le podemos hacer desde aquí es ofrecer un vínculo a su indispensable obra teórica: estos son los hombros sobre los que nos subimos muchos enanos a su alrededor.

Este es el comienzo de "Hacia otra cultura arquitectónica", publicado en LARS, mayo 2005:

No cayeron solamente dos torres de oficinas gigantescas el 11 de septiembre de 2001. Persiste en la memoria el impacto de los aviones y conservamos vivo ese sentimiento mezclado, entre el horror y la fascinación, que experimentamos ante aquel derrumbe colosal.

Ya nada volverá a ser igual, nos dijimos entonces; es imposible que el mundo no saque de esto algunas lecciones. Pensábamos en el ámbito político y económico, por supuesto, pero no sólo en ello. ¿Podía permanecer incólume tras el desastre el universo de la arquitectura?

Para leer el artículo completo pinche aquí

Pragmatismo inteligente

Acaba de salir el número de septiembre de Revista de Occidente. Después del dedicado a Isaiah Berlin llega este con una entrevista con su heredero: John Gray (ver entradas anteriores). En "Pragmatismo inteligente" Gray conversa sin reservas : a él le gusta, como a mí, la discusión franca, la dialéctica cuerpo a cuerpo, conversar.

El pensamiento de Gray ha sobrevivido la maceración acelerada de los tiempos de crisis. Sus juicios se han acabado confirmando por mor de la experiencia: no es puro y simple realismo es inteligencia arriesgada confirmada por el devenir. En este sentido uno de sus mejores libros es el último, Anatomy, en el se recopilan artículos publicados durante esas décadas en las que se le consideraba simplemente un intelectual incomodo.

Good and Affordable houses

The picture comes from one of my favourite blogs: A Daily Dose of Architecture

Accordia is the name of the dwelling complex in Cambridge, UK, that has won the 2008 Stirling Prize. A good way to understand the excellence of this design and the criteria to achieve such a work is spending some minutes watching the video of CABE. Two years ago I published the article below in which the 20 questions of Building for Life (CABE's questionnaire that is on the video) are proposed as a guide to start mending the disaster of Spain's hounsing.
Construir para la vida

Eugenia López Reus Lecture at Cornell

Cornell University has a program in Rome since 20 years ago (the same length of time LIPAU was on in Bergamo before becoming Dr.PAU). In that program Eugenia is going to give a lecture on the role of memory in architectural design. It is going to be in November.

Summer Holidays

Sunset at Segovia's Roman Acueduct

The Blog is going to be inactive for few weeks: summer holiday has arrived. I prefer to think that I am not going to post anything on vacation. Anyway, that just means that I will have some new experiences to feed this sort of intellectual diary that has become part of my life already.

Have a good summer

Miguel

Algorithms and Form Creation

Delanda’s lecture at Columbia clarifies the philosophical roots of algorithms in form creation. To begin with, you have to accept that there are two forms of considering the world: Rationalism (what Delanda calls European Idealism) and Empirism (what Delanda calls Materialism).

The thing is that that duality was the one Kant had to overcome and what allowed the birth of modern art more than a century later. Actually, the whole postmodern philosophy flourishes from the nostalgia of those days when pure reason ruled the world and Idea and Matter were one. In modern times (our time) that harmonious synthesis only occurs in art: no truth or desire can do so with complete legitimacy.

Manuel Delanda’s arguments are exposed in a rather attractive way, and are quite useful in order to relate form creation (generation?) to current philosophical debate.

Poetry and Politics in the Architecture of John Hejduk

Social Center Trisca

Towers in Gaigás

John Hejduk believed in the poetics of architecture. However, when his buildings are more architectonic is when they are simply buildings and not built statements. An example of this difference are the two buildings in Spain by him (thanks again, Clara): one is a built poem; the other a beautiful and useful building. Both are authentic jewels and both are in Santiago de Compostela. It is good, anyway, to read, watch and listen to his poetry first hand, and to contemplate his paintings-designs too.

Above all, Hejduk was a passionate professor of architecture:

" I believe in the social contract therefore I teach. I believe that the University is one of the last places that protects and preserves freedom, therefore teaching is also a socio/political act, among other things. I believe in books and the written word, therefore I fabricate works with the hope that they will be recorded in books. I am pragmatic and believe in keeping records. I believe to record is to bear witness. The book I wrote, Victims is to bear witness and to remember. I believe in the density of the sparse. I believe in place and the spirit of place."

John Hejduk