Architecture is ideas and forms, but both crystallize through matter. While construction is prefigured in the immaterial geometries of the project, it takes shape in the physical world by means of materials and techniques. This entangled relationship between intentions, demands, constructions, and environments is the subject of this seminar, which tackles the materialization of the architecture project through six case studies: six recent buildings completed by contemporary masters, and explained directly by their authors from the complexity of context and the material aim of their realization.

The first of the sessions opens with Enrique Sobejano presenting the Arvo Pärt Center in Estonia, a work that pays tribute to the great composer, and continues with Carme Pinós, who explains the new building in Barcelona of the mythical Escola Massana, and is wrapped with the lecture of the Pritzker Prize laureate Jacques Herzog describing in detail the different projects to transform the Bankside Power Station in London into the Tate Modern.

The second session brings to Valencia one of the members of Harquitectes, Josep Ricart, who explains the project to convert the building of Cristalleries Planell in Barcelona into a civic center, Ángela García de Paredes, who shows the Public Library built in Ceuta over an archaeological site, and Dominique Perrault, closing the seminar with his latest work, the colossal Exhibition and Conference Center in León.

Centro Arvo Pärt en Laulasmaa (Estonia), de Nieto Sobejano