This article is 647 words long.
Key words: Limit situations
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EMERGENCIES: BUILDING IN THE LIMIT This article is 647 words long. Key words: Limit situations |
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Building in the limit by Vicente Guallart Understanding the nature of things in order to act on the world. This is how architecture begins. Limit situations provide information on the nature of central, stable, normal situations. The limit is the place of the unknown, of what is not understood; by thinking about it, however, we discover new points of view on our immediate reality. I like to pose problems without knowing the solution beforehand. To act on the edge of the abyss, where one has to accept the vertigo produced by the unknown as a permanent state to be able to create new realities. To use materials suitable for the problem posed. To confront projects as an action which looks towards the future. Buildings will be used in the future. Architecture always builds for the future. The city needs to renew itself. It must grow inwards, reform itself, recycle itself. This is an ecological problem that does not admit sentimentalism. Otherwise, the Liceo syndrome will develop again. Urban recycling is necessary. Why grow constantly on the low-density periphery when in the centre semi-constructed or semi-demolished spaces are abandoned? What energy costs are involved in this uncontrolled growth? What infraestructural costs? Why do cities grow if their population does not increase? The territory around cities, the landscape, is something to be preserved like gold. Its value is incalculable. It is the heritage of a culture. It is the economic assets of a country. And the intervention on this territory must be carried out on the necessary scale. The whole of today's territory has been domesticated by man, by means of motorways, of fires, or of cultivation. Natural nature no longer exists. Everything is artificial nature. City and territory. The construction of the city is a cultural problem, but we should understand culture in its wider sense, in relationship to economy. Culture reveals the reality of a community in its time. Its ambitions and vital needs. Culture is the motor of economy. To create a product following the needs of the market, advertising it to the right people in the right moment on the right way and put on it the highest price acceptable after investing just the necessary to produce it, is a cultural problem. In ten years, the problem will be another and the product too. Buildings are just another product of our time. I like to think in contemporary architecture in the classic sense, as a commitment with its time. The only way to be atemporary is to be absolutely temporary. Buildings have to show the hour and the minute in which they were designed and built. That is how architecture has been always done.
HOUSE IN THE LIMIT OF THE CITY CLIENT: I'd like to have a big house. When I was little, I lived in a conventional house, with an L-shaped living room and a small bedroom where I could never get away from the sound of the television. Now I'd like to have a large space, with high ceilings, lots of light and not very much furniture. The bedroom will be on the top floor, looking towards the mountains. ARCHITECT: That's a good idea. CLIENT: I'd also like a garden, with trees and flowers, with a tennis court and swimming pool, but I don't want to have to look after it, like my father did with his little garden. ARCHITECT: We'll make it all artificial. Plastic lawn, iron trees, artificial mountains with the earth dug away, flowers with coloured lights... It won't be a "consolation" project. CLIENT: But I've got a very small budget. ARCHITECT: Getting the best in quality at a low price is a great challenge. We'll build a noble building out of simple materials. CLIENT: And how will you manage that? ARCHITECT: The house will be hard and comfortable; abstract and natural at the same time. Conversation Client-Architect (Lliria, 19/3/1994) |
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