This article is 1671 words long.
Key words: Miralles. Awards. Work. Havana cigars. Leone dÕOro
|
CAFÉ GOURMET: ENRIC MIRALLES This article is 1671 words long. Key words: Miralles. Awards. Work. Havana cigars. Leone dÕOro |
  |
||
 Wam Links and Guests Mail to WAM |
Interview with Enric Miralles. by Garanz Barcelona, 18 September 1996 "I like a direct relationship with the student, a relation of quasi-confrontation, devoid of any kind of paternalism."How do you cope with living on a plane? I try to keep things somehow ordered, by not making very much of the fact of travelling. My trips are trips inside a room. Trips teach you a lot. It is permanent training: the situations, the people. I got my academic training in Barcelona, so, on a deep level, my context was this city and its culture--till I started travelling. It is remarkable that when you travel for your work, you travel to cities that have something to do with your training. You go to Glasgow because a school of architecture invites you, or there is a certain client interested in a certain thing, or there is an architect like Mackintosh in that city. It is as if you were touring a circuit that you know beforehand. It has nothing to do with the traveller who goes on trips to discover things. Is it difficult to co-ordinate an architecture studio while travelling around the world? I try to keep my trips three days long as a maximum. This way, even though you are travelling, you don't lose contact with the studio. You are a young architect --41 years old-- and have wide professional experience. During lunch we have talked about the unemployment problem within the profession. How do you get your clients? I have always tried not to break the continuity of work. At the School of Architecture, I worked with the teachers I found more interesting: Albert Vilaplana and Helio Piñón. After finishing my studies, I stayed on in the university on a scholarship, as a lecturer, assistant professor, etc. You follow a path, more or less intuitively. When you are learning a trade, you always have the feeling that there are many things left you should know, that you are short of time. When protesting against the university curriculum, and you remember your life as a student, what comes to your mind is the lack of time, time to learn this or that. I have always tried not to put an end to the activities I have begun. Work, when it comes, is very urgent, and it happens when your professional activities are in full swing. Alicante was finished in nine months; Icaria in four. Other projects, such as the Igualada cemetery, have been waiting for five or six years. When you are out of work, the real strategy for not going paranoid, the real strategy to survive, is to keep doing research and learning within your profession. I remember other cases--it is always easier to talk about other people's biographies-- such as the great architects Coderch or de la Sota, who did buildings every five years. This is very easy to say, but, if you find yourself in this situation, then it looks quite different. Is the first stage of a project that of gathering documentation? Yes, more and more so. At the school, my courses are mainly about that. I want the students to prepare a work context where the complete solution, the final form already appears. "Work, when it comes, is very urgent, and it happens when your professional activities are in full swing."Together with Benedetta Tagliabue, you've just picked up an important award in Venice. What do you thing of what has happened in the Museo del Prado competition? I would like to separate my comments from any specific opinions about the professionals who have worked on the project. All this demagogy about the subject is nonsense. I was keen to participate in the competition, as so many other people were, and the first thing I found surprising was that the museum wanted a few shops and some other trifles. So now they shouldn't come talking about museography and all that, because in their scheme there is only a shopping centre with a small conference room. I also found all this hullabaloo about the name of the winners of the first phase being kept secret surprising. That selection was fundamental. The most important thing wasn't the name of the winner; it was more important to have ten ambitious, high-quality proposals done by people who had put their hearts in it. And all this secret work has mucked everything, by corrupting the process in such a way that the communication between the organisers and the competitors has been cut off. El Prado: " The process has been corrupted in such a way that the communication between the organisers and the competitors has been cut off."Are these competitions a good way of acquiring experience within the profession? Maybe now things are changing a bit. I began to participate in order to face programmes and situations that nobody was going to commission from me. I remember the first competitions we did not win: the Salamanca Auditory, the Granada Congress Hall, some local public buildings, small hospitals, etc. Competitions are a good place to learn, and you may or may not be lucky. You impart your lessons in the USA, Germany and Barcelona. Let's talk about the teacher-student relationship. One of the best moments is when teacher and student are of nearly the same age. I believe in direct communication, and in order to achieve it the interests of the teacher and the student must be very close. To gain experience, the student must be somehow mature. I like a direct relationship with the student, a relation of quasi-confrontation, devoid of any kind of paternalism. Among other things, I learnt from Rafael Moneo that in the classroom everyone is in the same place and holds the same responsibility. Is an architect an enlightened builder? A builder--do you mean that literally? Yes. At present you cannot make this analogy. Maybe you could have in some other time, when there was a more direct relationship between trades. The trade of the builder is now another one. Are there certain things that Gaudí, now, couldn't have done? Absolutely. What do you think of the UIA Congress? The organisers are the only ones that can have an over-all vision of the congress. They had organised a very complex one, with a superb programme. I absolutely agree with the ideas that were developed. As for the results, I don't know what to say. Small incidents about changing venues aren't very important. You could criticise a certain inability to improvise. The 'problem' of the great number of participants could have been made into a celebration. It would have been a very beautiful idea to let the participants get lost in the city, and then let them meet and talk. Those days I made jokes saying that the best kind of congress was done by putting people in relatively close hotels. People have a natural tendency to go out, then they meet some other people that they know and agree to do things together. When you have such a plan, you go if you want to go. You can meet in some other place. So my idea was a congress of absolute dispersion, where the participants meet at random. On a deep level, that is what the model was: participants meeting each other. The congress was saved by the human value of the participants. Everybody was very nice, and they dealt with the problems in a very relaxed, easy-going way. UIA Congress: "A certain inability to improvise can be criticised."Miralles was a basket player, a member of the under-18 Spanish champions. Is basketball still one of your hobbies? Yes, but when you have been really into it, it is very difficult to have an amateur point of view. Basketball was part of my apprenticeship, when I was a boy. How many cigars a day do you smoke? I always say that I smoke one once in a while, but it's not true. I like to think that I'm trying not to turn it into a habit. The problem is that, since I began smoking them, I really have been enjoying them, and the day I'm not allowed to do it anymore I'm going to be quite cross. (Laughs.) So I have to be careful. Nevertheless, it is quite surprising. It is like discovering anchovies when you are fifty. (Laughs.) It is very nice to have this kind of surprise when you are somewhat older. Do you follow the Football League? In the newspapers. Will the Barcelona FC be league champions? I have no opinion yet. Are you a supporter of the Barcelona FC? I'm a supporter of the Barcelona FC in a certain natural way. Any other team would force me to make an effort I'm not at all interested making. I like watching football for the sense of humour, not for the competition. What kind of relationship do you have with computers, Internet and the new forms of digital communication? My generation doesn't have a very easy relationship with computers. I wish I did--there is a good one in the office. I always try not to press these things, not to lend them an aesthetic value. I believe there is no difference between thinking when working with or without computers. Some people work and think in a way that has been made to fit the instrument. "I believe there is no difference between thinking when working with or without computers."From whom do you learn? Barcelona and its recent past give you a context. At present I am very impressed by the great amount of vitality and energy of certain schools in the USA. They have bet on research, and they are asking themselves what architecture can talk about, what it can be about. There is an absolute dichotomy between the professional world and the university. In the United States you cannot move a finger without the help of a sponsor and a corporation. In the Biennale, with the excuse that they have no money, the United States have needed the sponsorship of Disney, so the US pavilion in the Biennale di Venezia is advertising for Disney. And that's not the point "At present I am very impressed by the great amount of vitality and energy of certain schools in the USA."Has this house, where you live, something to do with your ideal habitat? I like to be in second-hand places, to live in places in whose creation you haven't participated, and to play the role of the observer. I don't understand leading a life isolated from society. I'm very pleased to have begun working in Barcelona's old city, and have found out how you can discover something that had been forgotten. Curiosity is a quality I have always tried to develop. The interview is over, so Miralles goes back to his studio in the wink of an eye. He's got a long night ahead. He's got a competition headline tomorrow.  (English translation by Rosa Roig) |
  |