I sometimes wonder whether I should write more. What has been said by an architect in the last twenty years that has a substance on the level of Venturi or Rossi’s texts? Rem’s contributions are more comments on what’s happening, not a single text or
Hace algunos años, en la década de los ochenta, no había arquitecto con ambiciones que no salpicase sus proyectos con citas de artistas conceptuales como referencia indispensable. (Incluso hoy en día es frecuente encontrar arquitectos maduros cuyos i
Según el tópico repetido a finales de los años ochenta y principios de los noventa, Herzog & de Meuron eran arquitectos de fachadas; muy hábiles en la decoración de naves pero apenas interesados en la configuración espacial. El refinamiento y la
Deptford is a restructuring area, southeast of London, where the Laban Center has been constructed. St. Paul’s Church becomes an important point of reference for this new complex. The large, embracing gesture of the Laban building volume gives the ef
The initial observation of the site revealed two things: on the one hand, the extreme heterogeneity of the area freed from the need to meet any contextual requirements, and on the other, the site was surrounded by a low-rise type of building. No squa
What is the point of a Schaulager, of a building in which art is stored but still accessible to the public? What ideas about art and collection strategy does it involve, and what is the best architectural and urban concept for it? The brief: a wareho
Un símbolo para la ciudad de Múnich y para el fútbol: el estadio como objeto luminoso sí identificado, posado junto a la autovía, señalando un lugar entre la ciudad y su periferia. Además de ser el escenario en el que tendrá lugar la ceremonia de ape
The new National Stadium is located on a gentle rise in the center of the Olympic complex. It is conceived as a large collective vessel. The stadium’s appearance is pure structure. Facade and structure are identical. The structural elements mutually
Con esta ampliación, los responsables del Centro de Arte Walker, el museo más importante de la capital del estado de Minnesota, pretenden algo más que aumentar la superficie de exposición. Su intención es ofrecer al público un ingrediente urbano euro
Situado en el parque Golden Gate de San Francisco, el Museo Memorial M. H. de Young alberga diversas colecciones representativas de una gran variedad de culturas del mundo, desde los inicios de la historia de la humanidad hasta el momento presente. E
The Centro Cultural will become a new and lively place for people of all generations and with various interests. In order to achieve that, the architectural concept promotes that the different activities and spaces of the Center interfuse and interfl
Tenerife is the result of volcanic eruption. The steep shores and the abrupt transition from scarce land to the Atlantic is a physical reality which has always determined the urbanization on the island. Therefore the relation between sea and land is
Uno de los aspectos más asombrosos de esta retrospectiva general de la arquitectura moderna es la temática dialogística que está implícita en la interpretación del material. Con este enfoque, el Chicago de las postrimerías del siglo XIX y principios
La breve biografía intelectual es uno de los géneros más difíciles: o bien se hunde bajo el peso de demasiados datos, o bien —en el intento del autor por sintetizar todo el material— carece de sustancia empírica. En su monografía sobre Le Corbusier,
Buena parte de las crónicas publicadas durante los últimos meses insisten en el estrepitoso fracaso de la 50 Bienal de Venecia. Las imputaciones son variadas: confusión entre las múltiples y deshilvanadas exposiciones, tamaño inabarcable, ausencia de
El ocupar en solitario el pabellón de un país de cierto peso en el mundo del arte como España es, para cualquier artista, una clara prueba de consagración. Hablamos de la Bienal de Venecia 2003, y del caso singular de Santiago Sierra. Se trata de un
Concebidos como un eco formal de las instalaciones fantásticas que Raymond Roussel describió en su Locus solus (1914), los veinte capítulos que articulan este libro de Juan Antonio Ramírez son una síntesis del asunto del cuerpo en el arte; breves ens
Tras publicarse la traducción del Diccionario abreviado de surrealismo de André Breton y Paul Éluard—a cargo de Rafael Jackson—, éste es el segundo título de la colección Biblioteca Azul Mínima que Siruela dedica a temas de arte y arquitectura. Con u
El historiador Joseph Rykwert recordará siempre la primavera de 1996: apareció su libro The Dancing Column y recibió un caluroso homenaje de colegas y discípulos en su 75 cumpleaños. Dicho homenaje, celebrado en la Universidad de Pensilvania, consist
Uno de los frutos más distinguidos del laboratorio de arquitectura avanzada de Metápolis es su Diccionario. Además de ser una herramienta imprescindible para manejarse en el marco de fecundación interdisciplinar característico de los debates metapoli
Han recibido tanta atención y tantos aplausos, y son modelo para tantos y tantos jóvenes del resto mundo, que han acabado por creérselo, perdiendo parte de la espontaneidad que sirve para titular este libro-catálogo. Holanda es el laboratorio de la v
La competencia es algo inequívocamente norteamericano. Y sus tentáculos llegan cada vez más al mundo académico de la arquitectura. Siguiendo esta tradición, la Escuela de Arquitectura de la Universidad neoyorquina de Columbia publica ahora este libro
Los Fondos Regionales de Arte Contemporáneo franceses llevan a cabo con apoyo estatal una intensa labor de adquisición, estudio y difusión de diferentes manifestaciones artísticas. Desde 1992, el FRAC de la Région Centre ha apostado por concentrar su
Con éste son ya nueve los tomos que la editorial suiza Birkhäuser lleva dedicados a recoger cronológicamente la obra del gigantesco estudio alemán gmp (Von Gerkan, Marg & Partners), fundado en 1966 y cuya primera obra importante fue el aeropuerto ber
Con unos espesores casi inconcebibles en una Europa crecientemente normalizada, los muros de piedra constituyen el principal atractivo de la arquitectura espacialmente simple y formalmente despojada de Eduardo Souto de Moura. Seducido por la belleza
Tras una primera entrega sobre la terminal de Yokohama, Verb, la revista monográfica de Actar, dedica ahora la segunda a otra obra japonesa, la Mediateca de Sendai, que ha servido para elevar a los altares a su autor, y que es, posiblemente, uno de l
En la que es ya su tercera monografía, Carlo Baumschlager y Dietmar Eberle muestran que no han bajado la guardia; la precisión técnica y la elegancia sin adornos continúan sido su imagen de marca. Hace ya casi dos décadas que se produjo el ‘descubrim
The proposal was selected in an international design competition held in 1997. The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is part of a cultural complex located in an urban park on the outskirts of the city, and just a few meters from a masterpiece of modern
Carlos Jiménez Enclavada a lo largo del río Ohio, Cincinnati es la tercera ciudad del estado. Además de ser sede de uno de los equipos de béisbol nacionales y de varias de las empresas inscritas en la lista Global Five Hundred de la revista Fortune —
Synopses
H&deM, from Nature. The award to the Swiss of the 2001 Pritzker Prize celebrated a career initiated a couple of decades before, and acknowledged also the change of direction perceptible in it since the middle of 1990’s decade, when a new relationship between space and enclosure was added to the refinement of the skins and the material density of the works. With dialogue as a starting point, these architects rooted in the humanist tradition of their native Basel now undertake projects in other geographies, with different scales and new symbolic demands, to which they give an artistic and social dimension.
Contents
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Dialogue and Logo
Interview with Jacques Herzog
Alejandro Zaera
‘Al-chemical Brothers’
An Experimental Passion
Gerhard Mack
Means of Expression
The Last Projects
Cover Story
Three Works. The transparent skin announces the open condition of the London building, conceived as a city for dance; the archaic profile of the store built in Tokyo elevates fashion over its ephemeral condition; and the material density of the warehouse raised in Basel provides a new stage for art, poised between the processes of nature and the workings of computers.
Architecture
Translucent Curtain
Laban Dance Centre, London
Beehive and Showcase
Prada Building, Tokyo
Piled Up Arts
Schaulager, Basel
Six Projects. The stadium of Munich, for the World Cup of 2006, and that of Beijing, for the Olympic Games of 2008, materialize architecture as an urban collective landmark; the museums De Young, in San Francisco, and Walker, in Minneapolis, foster interdisciplinary transfer; and the quay and cultural center of Santa Cruz de Tenerife reassert the importance of the public domain.
The Warmth of Audiences
Stadiums in Europe and Asia
Aesthetic Mixture
Two American Museums
Atlantic Landscapes
Two Projects in the Canaries
Views and Reviews
Crossed Stories. Kenneth Frampton and A to cross reviews: the first on the history of architecture published by the second, and the latter on the book of the former devoted to the figure of Le Corbusier.
Art / Culture
Kenneth Frampton
The Angel of History
Alan Colquhoun
Seismograph of the Century
Venice, Biennial Balance. The extreme summer heat and a great diversity of exhibitions have marked the 50th anniversary of this artistic event, where the Spanish pavilion was entrusted to the Mexico-based Santiago Sierra. Javier San Martín
Venice Biennial, 50th Edition
Juan Antonio Ramírez
Santiago Sierra, SpainBody-Building. The human body in art and the relationship between art and architecture through corporal imagery are the theme of two works by Juan Antonio Ramírez, and of a Festschrift to the also historian Joseph Rykwert.
Focho’s Cartoon
Gigon & Guyer
Various Authors
Books
Recent Projects
American Beauty. Tadao Ando has built in Fort Worth – in front of Louis Kahn’s Kimbell – a monumental art museum which is his largest work in the United States; and Zaha Hadid has completed in Cincinnati the most complex of her projects to date, a center for contemporary art that piles up the exhibition halls around spaces for circulation that extend the urban pattern.
Technique / Style
Ronnie Self
A Matter of Beauty
Tadao Ando in Fort Worth
Carlos Jiménez
Floating Tumult
Zaha Hadid in Cincinnati
To close, a reflection by Jacques Herzog on the contemporary city, a cultural ‘construction’ that, paradoxically, is as real as it is unapprehensible. If 9/11 showed its vulnerability when its vital points were attacked, the only defense strategy seems to be to blur its urban singularity, an illusory option after all: no city with a history can become an ‘indifferent city’. Products
Materials, Furniture, Wood
Jacques Herzog
Terror without Theory
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Herzog & de Meuron cook over a low flame, and every now and then take out all the dishes at once. This is what happened during the first half of 2003, that aside from seeing them win the competitions for the Beijing Olympic Stadium and the Hamburg Philharmonic, or present the final project for the Fundación La Caixa in Madrid, has been marked by three exceptional inaugurations: after a warm up, February celebrated the opening of the Laban Dance Centre in London, a translucent volume of soft inflections and watery chromatism in a run down neighborhood by the Thames, and of such exquisite finish and intelligent interpretation of the program that it has deserved the Stirling Prize, the highest distinction in Britain, for the first time awarded to a foreign architect; May saw the inauguration of the Schaulager in Basel, a colossal warehouse and exhibition space for art, carried out with abrupt perfection and tactile fascination in an industrial area of the town for a major collection, and whose typological novelty and subversive language set it forth as an alternative to the Guggenheim model; and June witnessed the launching of the Prada store in Tokyo, a large glazed volume wrapped in turgid lozenges that combines Bruno Taut with Pierre Chareau, while exploiting the opportunity of the fashion showcase to take to the limit a spatial and perceptive exploration at the service of bodies, clothes and identities.
This low flame which they like to describe with the terms research and dialogue – presenting the office as a laboratory where the processes of nature are reproduced – immediately evokes the image of the alchemist endeavoring to transform with his retort everyday lead into the gold of art, an inescapable reference within the context of a town so associated to the pharmaceutical industry as Basel. But this Swiss city on the border with France and Germany is also a precinct of humanist tradition, a stronghold of legendary commercial wealth, and a neoclassic milieu of strict conservatism that repeatedly showed its reluctance towards modernity. No matter how illegitimate it may be to establish an excessive link between architect and city, the stubborn rooting of Herzog & de Meuron in Basel makes one wonder whether their severe and rigorous work, harsh even in the expression of pleasure, may not come from the anachronism of that civic culture. The deliberate archaism of their approach can, indeed, go back to the old romantic humus of the Germanic universe, as happens with their exaltation of mythical nature; but in their criticism of the self-satisfied optimism of modernity there is also something of the controversy of the times of Bismarck between faustic Berlin and reluctant Basel, in such a way that we would believe to be hearing the echoes of the historical debate between Ranke and Burckhardt in the interrupted dialogue that Rem Koolhaas and Jacques Herzog maintain through words and projects.
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