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The experiment of Community

Spangen

Spangen State de J.P. Oud – Rotterdam ©Pablo Abad Fernández

<<The three of them went upstairs to the “Saddam’s block”, as everyone calls that building in popular argot. Some visionary and cheap Gropius, a middling urbanist, thought that the blocks in the suburbs were structured so ingeniously that, sooner or later, the upper classes would go crazy for living somewhere like this. And, as result of this revolutionary idea, the block where Simpel is living with his family is located in one of the better districts; it’s the worst kind of building, and the aforementioned urbanist, in his blind faith, had to fight for his vision-of-a-block-of-family-housing-for-the-upper-class as if he was fighting for his own life, in order for the building to be constructed in this district. (…)

No one likes the block; and the people who live in the district don’t like the people in the block; just as the people in the block don’t like the people in the district; and, at the same time, the people in the districtdon’t like the block, and the people in the block don’t like the block itself, and they don’t even like themselves. >>

Cocka-Hola Company,Matias Faldbakken

I have been lucky enough to visit several examples of blocks of flats designed by some of the most important architects. I have visited, photographed, observed and walked around them, some of them from the outside and others also inside. I remember with huge interest and admiration El Ruedo by Sáenz de Oíza in Madrid, the Unités d’Habitation by Le Corbusier for Marsella and Berlin, the Spangen State by Oud in Rotterdam or the social dwellings by Siza in Oporto.

Do these blocks really work?

The Capitalization of Movement

Tijuana © Elsa Solorio Borbón

Tijuana © Elsa Solorio Borbón

Day after day, millions of people are forced to spend a considerable number of hours stuck in their city’s traffic, trapped in their own transit. Cities, with their people and their routines create strong pendulum-like inertias that generate a rhythmic and sequential movement.

Moving back and forth, from left to right, at a certain time,on certain days of the week is an inevitable part of daily life. There are times and routes that one thinks or hopes may be calculated. . This is where the majority of the citizens’ irritability stems from – the obstruction of movement.   For car accidents, road remodeling, and funeral marches attack one of the most cherished values that humans possess: their time.

The endangered Artis-tect

El Cambio. Ilustración de Miguel Brieva. “Bienvenido al Mundo” Enciclopedia Clismón.

El Cambio. Ilustración de Miguel Brieva. “Bienvenido al Mundo” Enciclopedia Clismón.

All revolutionary processes bring along with them periods of crisis. I suppose we agree on this premise. We can, therefore, say that a crisis is nothing more than the first step needed in bringing about the advent of Change.

With this in mind, it can also be accepted that we are heavily involved in one of these changes. I seriously doubt that you aren’t already aware of this. Not only is there an abundance of written material on the subject but it has also turned into the main topic of conversation of any mortal, as well being an excuse or a pretext for most of the mistakes we have made.

Before this period of crisis began, (a period which it would seem necessary to channel and optimize our energy), also a kind of architect with all the prerequisites to exercise his profession appeared on the scene.

Architecture used to be one of the most valued professions in society. It had the backing of big companies, as well as the financial support provided by public administration. Everything seemed to indicate that the architect’s hands could develop worthwhile projects which could be carried out in a reliable and relatively fast way.

Arquitectura Popular: Las iglesias de Chiloé

1© Giuliano Pastorelli

© Giuliano Pastorelli

La Isla de Chiloé es destino para turistas que vienen de todas partes a aventurarse en un territorio de bellos paisajes, lleno de tradiciones y creencias. Pero además, esta misteriosa isla atesora una reliquia arquitectónica única en el mundo declarada Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco el año 2,000. Estoy hablando de sus iglesias.

Architectures in paper / What really matters

«The astronomer repeated his demonstration in 1920, wearing a very elegant suit. And this time everyone believed him. If I’ve told you these details about Asteroid B-612 and if I’ve given you its number, it is on account of the grown-ups.  Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters.

DSC_0444 copia

Art & Architecture: Decay / Matthias Haker

© Matthias Haker

These walls speak. People lived here. They cried and laughed here. And, there were feasts, balls, kisses, nightmares and sorrow there. Great stories and small, everyday moments buried under the weight of extinction, under the shadows of decay.

A sort of apocalyptic scent dances with the fallen leaves that gather into piles against the walls and between the winding staircases. Something both scary and attractive drives you towards a scenery in twilight, into the architecture’s agony.

But these are not ruins. Not just a bunch of stones proudly displayed in the middle of a square, surrounded by a mob of tourists, cameras in hand. Their erosion is not covered by the make-up of restorations, like an old lady still trying to be young, running from the inexorable passage of time.

These buildings aren’t dressed in vanity, but hide their secrets in shadows. But there is beauty to be found in their abandonment, an intimate beauty revealed by the German photographer Matthias Haker, who fights for the preservation of their slow-paced decay, capturing it in his photography and keeping the location of such architectural Venuses a secret.

Art & Architecture: Patterns / Dariusz Klimczak

How do you dream architecture?

Dreams are set in uncertain surroundings. When we sleep, we imagine and become the architects of our own world, capable of creating, materializing, and inhabiting far from our consciousness and the desire for consciousness.

Oneiric Architecture is self-generated and self-destructive, leading us to project spatial sensations into our minds, created when reality has become obsolete. In the contortion of the daydream, Oneiric’s space is set in an illogical, strange underworld where infinity and absence, lights and shadows, patterns and paradoxes are the materials that shape of our quirky architecture.

This ‘random’ piece of construction, a creative and inventive spontaneity that comes from a naked view of ourselves, free from the social artifices of our environment, are expressed through photographic manipulation in the work Patterns, by the Polish photographer Dariusz Klimczak.

Nacida de un modo de mirar

"Aquí tenemos también un arte, la arquitectura, nacida de un modo de mirar, porque de estas mínimas peculiaridades depende a lo mejor el arte de un pueblo, y sus costumbres, y su política, y hasta su manera de entender el cosmos" Ortega y Gasset...

"Aquí tenemos también un arte,...

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