Cevisama, Architecture and Design Forum: Material Architecture 3

05/02/2020

Cevisama. Foro de arquitectura y diseño: Arquitectura material 3

Architecture is ideas and forms, but both crystallize through matter. While a building is prefigured in the immaterial geometries of the design, it takes shape in the physical world by means of materials and techniques. The intricate interplay of intentions, demands, constructions, and environments is the subject of a seminar that tackles the materialization of the architectural project through six case studies: six recent built works and a major scheme by contemporary practitioners, who explain them from the angle of the complexity of their contexts and that of the aim of executing them.

The first of the sessions began with Antón García-Abril of Ensamble Studio presenting C’An Terra, a rare, lyrical intervention in an old quarry of Menorca, to continue with Benedetta Tagliabue of EMBT explaining the Kálida Sant Pau Center in Barcelona, the first-ever Maggie’s Centre for cancer patients to go up in Spain, and wrap up with Bjarke Ingels, head of the influential Danish firm BIG, showing his Noma restaurant in Copenhagen.

The second session brought to Valencia the studio Barozzi/Veiga, with the partners talking about their latest major international work, the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne; Belinda Tato of Ecosistema Urbano, who discussed Open Shore, an extensive coastal redevelopment operation near Miami; the Pritzker Prize holder Thom Mayne, who spoke in detail about the headquarters for Giant Interactive Group in Shanghai; and, closing the forum, RCR Arquitectes, Pritzker laureates too, leading the audience on a revisiting of one of the firm’s most important works, the Soulages Museum in Rodez.

Some participants of previous cycles of ‘Architecture and Design Forum: Material Architecture’ were in attendance, among them Francisco Mangado, Emilio Tuñón, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Joan Roig (Batlle i Roig), Rafael de La-Hoz, Rafael Moneo, Enrique Sobejano (Nieto Sobejano), Carme Pinós, Jacques Herzog (Herzog & de Meuron), Josep Ricart (Harquitectes), Ángela García de Paredes (Paredes Pedrosa), and Dominique Perrault.