Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), Laboratorio de Arquitectura Reflexiva (LAR)

Reflexive Architecture Laboratory (RAL), a paper related to the design studios of professors Miguel Jaime and Eugenia Lopez Reus, is going to be presented at an international congress sponsored by the Spanish Universities of Vigo, Santiago de Compostela and A Coruña. The I Congress of University Teaching is going to take place from the 2^nd to the 4^th of June in the beautiful city of Vigo, and it will gather together experts from various countries that are trying to build the European Space for Higher Education.

The RAL combines the reflexive theory of architectural creative process (JAIME, 2000), the importance of context in innovation (LOPEZ REUS, 2002) and modern pedagogical techniques that improve creativity, commitment and excellence.

The RAL has been assessed by the Quality Agency of Castilla León (2005-2008), Benchmarking meetings (2008), and, which is more important for the reflexive philosophy of the RAL, has been highly appreciated by the users of the laboratory, the students, in the surveys (2005-2009). The Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca is about to publish the paper “Las sesiones ECCC en el LAR”, one of the pedagogical techniques of the RAL.

Mirar para otro lado

The newspaper of Segovia has published and article of mine (in Spanish) that relates the financial and the architectural crisis. The main idea is that the utopia did not started with Fukuyama's "end of the history" but with the oil embargo of the OPEC in 1973. There are two more articles on the subject that are specially interesting: Joe Nocera points out in The New York Times the fallacy of the rationality of markets and Ignacio Sotelo, in El Pais, explains (in Spanish too) the differences between current crisis and the 1929's crack.

Paris vaut bien une messe

I was so impressed by Niemeyer's building in Paris that I did not recommend anything but the best in december. But, I have to say that it is one of the cities that offers more if you are really interested in architecture today. Of course there is Le Corbusier, etc., and the city itself, but L'Arsenal and la Cité de l'Architecture are instruments to better understanding and enjoying the city, its architecture and modernity in general. I realized all this reading and watching an excelent article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/magazine/14paris-t.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=paris+ouroussoff&st=nyt) and video in the New York Times about Paris plans, by Nicolai Ouroussoff (to read the article copy the address in your browser directly, otherwise it sends you to the video). At L'Arsenal there is a huge exhibition on the new plans reported in the NYT.

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