London book shops

Quinto of Charing Cross (photo by Pfig in Flickr)

Once Mario Vargas Llosa wrote that he loved to walk around the area of the British Library because there were the most amazing little book shops there. It is true: small spaces full of books, perfectly ordered and classified and there is always a book lover sitting in his/her desk working and delighted to talk about books.

It is true too that Charing Cross Road is as well a book's paradise. Shipley, Henry Pordes Books (ask for Gino), Any Amount of Books (they have a good blog) and, very specially, Quinto (in the picture).

Downstairs Quinto it is extraordinary, of course if you do not suffer claustrophobia. There I discovered a book written by the person with whom I was going to dinner that very night: that was one of the biggest surprises ever, because the book was 20 years old and the author a bit more than 80. Please, do not miss the pleasure of diving in the most amazing ocean of old books when you are in London. By the way, down Charing Cross is Cecil Court where there are even more old book shops specialized in any subject: music, oriental religion...

Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Architectural Education

The use of computer in the creative process of architecture has always been problematic. Thirty years ago it was Christopher Alexander who threatened that the computer and not us was going to design. Now the BIM is at the center of the discussion. Renée Cheng,
Head of the Department of Architecture, University of Minnesota is against BIM as the main part of the curricula in architecture. Paul Seletsky, Digital Design Director of Skidmore Owings and Merrill is in favor. What do you think?

Gastronomy and creativity

elBulli, the best restaurant in the world for the 5th time consecutive is not so because it does better what others do, but because it does totally new things: it investigates in pure creativity. In that sense we all can profit from the way Ferran Adria and his team work. They have a list of 23 principles in their Synthesis of elBulli Cuisine which could be subscribed by everyone involved in creative tasks. Harvard has seen the technical side of it. Maybe the creative stand, clear when one learns about the whole history of the restaurant and its research, is a much more coherent interest with an activity pleasure oriented as molecular gastronomy. True progress (because it articulates harmoniously contradictory aspects of the human being) has appeared when we all thought it was dead in a new form of art: gastronomy.

Dominique Perrault Exhibition in Madrid

Good exhibition of Perrault at the Fundación ICO in Madrid. It will be open until May 17th.

The Roaring Nineties in Architecture

In his book The Roaring Nineties professor Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize of Economy 2001, compares current situation (in 2003) to the time that drove the world into the Great Depression. Those days produced excesses in the economy and in architecture. It is true that at the same time the best modern architecture was built then (for example the Barcelona Pavilion and the Villa Savoye). In our times some virtual architecture is going to be considered an example of an "era of vulgarity and ambition" (read this article in the New York Times). Arup, the company that has built almost everyone of the frivolous and scandalous building of the recent “starchitecture” considers a rectification is on its way because of the financial crisis:

“One thing that has slightly disappointed me in the broad architectural world of late, and I think the difficult financial situation we all find ourselves in is going to improve this, is that I think some architecture became quite frivolous, it was doing things that were slightly crazy, just because we could.”

Philip Dilley, Chairman Arup

Nevertheless, there are some other critics who do defend the Star System leaning on a sort of architectural version of the "Trickle-down" theory of the neoliberal economy: Spectacle-Architecture supposedly benefits everybody as "it has opened up possibilities for the young and lesser known". Isn't that interesting?

A Prize to the Autonomy of Architecture

The 2009 Pritzker Prize to Peter Zumthor means a recognition of the validity of autonomous architecture:

"I believe that architecture today needs to reflect on the tasks and possibilities which are inherently its own. Architecture is not a vehicle or a symbol for things that do not belong to its essence"

Peter Zumthor.Thinking Architecture, 1998

The link takes to a good article at Los Angeles Times

Myths on the Death of Modern Architecture: Pruitt-Igoe again

Just as history in Fukuyama's death of history, modern architecture is coming back form the other world. The thing is that in both cases there were false burials. In both the media contributed greatly in building a new utopia: post-history and post-modernity were sophisticated ways of being inside history and modernity. Modern utopia, which has always been the enemy of modern refexive creativity, as it turns into collective what is strictly individual, is behind the political burial of modern architecture. As an example, watch the video on Robert Hudge's obituary of Modern Architecture and read the abstract of the research of Katherine Bristol on the subject:

“(…) In place of the myth, this paper offers a brief history of Pruitt-Igoe that demonstrates how its construction and management were shaped by profoundly embedded economic and political conditions in postwar St. Louis. It then outlines how each successive retelling of the Pruitt-Igoe story in both the national and architectural press has added new distortions and misinterpretations of the original events. The paper concludes by offering an interpretation of the Pruitt-Igoe myth as mystification. By placing the responsibility for the failure of public housing on designers, the myth shifts attention from the institutional or structural sources of public housing problems.”

“The Pruitt-Igoe Myth”, Katharine G. Bristol. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 44, No. 3 (May, 1991), pp. 163-171

John Gray: contemporary thinking

John Gray's thinking is a good model for contemporary thinking, by which I mean the reflexive and skilful inteligence we need right now.

I have already recomended two of his books, Black Mass, last year just after he presented Critical Modernism, the book by Charles Jencks in the Royal Academy in London; and False Dawn, when commenting Hay Festival in Segovia.

It is very interesting to listen and watch this pragmatic philosopher thinking live on stage.

Aesthetic Science

Old intentions have created a new field: Neuroaesthetics.

Professor Semir Zeki at the University College London is the inventor of this new subject. At first glance, in his writings and research there is an inovative balance between art and science: art is not a simple object there. The primarily importance given to the aesthetic experience makes the difference, compared to Gestalt School, for example. Based in neuroscience, the constant references to artist's ideas, writings and complete works of art are inspiring in this proposal.

The main difference with any artistic research is that all the experiments of Neuroaesthetics pretend to learn more about the brain, whereas in art research always pursues to produce works that challenge the definition of art itself. Anyway, I find this trend stimulating.

Less plausible are some derivations of Neuroaesthetics. Specially those that struggle to invent a machine capable of creating a work of art: what is called esthetic prosthestic. That's plane and simply old Science Fiction.

Professor Zeki has an interesting blog in which, curiously enough, there are no images at all. Just words.

Architecture and popularity

Centro de Formación Profesional Building, Costa Rica 30, Madrid (1970)

Popularity in the realm of art and architecture is a curious thing . Ortega y Gasset used to say that modern art was not unpopular, as if it would be finally accepted when people got to understand it. In his opinion it was anti-popular, because it had to break conventions in order to innovate.

A few days ago Iñaki Ábalos was saying that internet forums were a good way of promoting urban critique in article in Babelia. Well, I have to say that this is a quite risky mean to promote criticism in art and architecture as the following case reveals. For a long time I have admired a wonderful building in the number 30 of the Calle Costa Rica (with Victor de la Serna) in Madrid; looking for information on internet I found this forum in which it is nominated as the ugliest building in Madrid.

I hope this is a sign of its modernity (in the Orteguian way). The building is now the INEM Offices (Empleo Estatal) and the author is the great Valencian architect Fernando Moreno Barberá. Anyway, it is encouraging that nobody has voted the building in the pool.

Ultra High Definition Prado Museum

The possibility of watching masterpieces by Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Tiziano, Rembrandt, Rubens... like if we where in the studio of those artists and as close to the work as they have been is something really interesting.

The only way of understanding art is to put ourselves in the place of the artist that has create the work, to be in his shoes. Well, digital technology has just done it possible. The only thing is that the news made it impossible today to reach the museum site. Yes, digital queueing. Even technology cannot avoid the fact that there are millions of people interested in the same things at the same time.

This article in The Guardian speculates on whether it is even better than the real thing.

Sunset in the Alhambra

The autonomy of architecture is based in the exclusive possibilities it has to introduce beauty in everyday life.

Sometimes, however, certain coincidences improve those possibilities: like the couple of gypsies that were singing flamenco at San Nicolas Square in the Albaicin (Granada) with the Alhambra in front of us (watch the video below). The landscape, history, architecture, music...reality conspiring to impact our sensibility.

What is not a coincidence is the panoramic view of the Alhambra from the squares and gardens in the Albaicín: it is a tradition that all the open spaces in Granada, specially the "carmenes", face that marvellous building.

Total Enlightenment and Art at War

Marsden Hartley, The Iron Cross, 1915 (the link takes to a video on the painting by Washington University in St. Louis)

Korman & Melamid, Double Self-portrait, 1984

Until tomorrow (sorry for the delay) there are two wonderful exhibitions in Madrid: Total Enlightenment. Conceptual Art in Moscow 1960-1990, at the Fundación Juan March , and ¡1914! Avant-garde and the Great War, at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Both are one of those luxuries that are going to disappear if the economic crisis gets really bad. If you cannot go, the catalogues are excellent pieces of literature on their respective subject, maybe the best one in both cases: Russian conceptual art and the relationship between war and the historical avant-garde.

Boris Groys, the curator of Total Enlightenment, has just published in Spanish an excellent book on current mediatic era: Bajo sospecha. Soon, in Revista de Occidente it will appear my review of the book.

Temporary and permanent architecture

French Communist Party Headquaters, Paris, 1972. Oscar Niemeyer

Deconstruction is unbeatable in terms of spectacle.

The video below is on the ZHA 2007 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, and it shows the construction process of such a clever devise. The result could not be more appealing. Koolhaas , Ghery and Liebeskind have done theirs with similar striking results.

For permanent wrap surface buildings, I mean real (not virtual) architecture, Oscar Niemeyer is still the unbeatable one, as his Paris building demonstrates. The picture was taken few weeks ago thanks to Monsieur Benoit kindness.