edicions-espontaneas.com

RCR architects. Library in Barcelona

edicions — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:05:35 +0000

On April 2010 we were in Barcelona visiting the transformation of a city block of the Cerda enlargement, RCR Architects (Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta) converted a former factory of candies in a library, a residence of elders and an interior garden.

The library Sant Antoni - Joan Oliver is placed beside the Market of Sant Antoni, in the interior of the city block limited by the street of Manso, the round of Sant Pau and the streets of the Parlament and Borrell.

In the video below you can see our trip for the building, a volume that is configured as door that opens the interior of the city block, divided in two pieces that are attached to the party wall and another two pieces that cross the resulting emptiness as bridges. Internally, the double heights and empty spaces offer crossed visions among the floors and on the street and the interior of the city block. If you want to see plans and sketch push HERE.

RCR I. Biblioteca S. Antoni from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

Reclaiming the inner patio of the city block for public use, one perceives the wealth of the proposal of Cerda extension. Few city blocks have been opened as he was proposed, but those that can be visited, without having the continuity that would allow to cross the city as a pedestrian from one to another one, they are green spaces of silence and playgrounds like this designing by RCR.

The library is developed in height and closes the cornice of the city block front. The elderly center extends along one side of the interior patio, like a mud wall that allows to generate covered sections of shade and seat close to the entrance of the elderly center. The elderly center is a large an small block divided by patios, that allow to give light and more rest to the internal spaces.

RCR. Centro de Maiores S. Antoni from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

REIMA PIETILÄ talking about 4 works

edicions — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:40:17 +0000

In March we visit the exhibition “RAILI AND REIMA PIETILÄ: Defying to architecture moderna” at the ICO Museum of Madrid, first retrospective realised in Spain about this Finnish architects of the 60´s.

The Exhibition was realised in collaboration with the Museum of Finnish Architecture of Helsinki, seus showed their 9 best projects, presented/displayed by means of original sketches, photographs, copies of plans, 16 scale models, and the film “Stations: Four routes through the architecture of Raili and Reima Pietila” that you can see here.

Reima Pietilä from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

OPINION 6. Dosmasunoarquitectos

edicions — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:53:57 +0000

Interview with the architect Néstor Montenegro, that next to Lina Toro and Ignacio Borrego are part of the architectural office “Dosmasunoarquitectos”, placed in Madrid. In our conversation we have spoken about the meaning of inhabit, the education in architecture, the relation architecture and society, social housing, the housing access, the price of the ground, the promotion of processes of change in the relations with politicians and promoters, the paper of the architect in the decision making on city and landscape, citizen participation, processes of creation and construction in social housing, the flexibility and residential mobility, an advice for whom studies architecture and a reflection about the future of the profession…

OPINA 6. Dosmasunoarquitectos from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

CONFERENCE

Thanks to Néstor Montenegro about the interest with which shared the projects of its Office in this conference organized in A Coruna on March 5th 2010, before the interview placed above and the critical session with our 2nd year students. The conference deals with their housing projects in Carabanchel, Vallecas and Colmenar Viejo, as well as of EUROPAN competition projects in Cartes and Ama. CONFERENCIA. Dosmasunoarquitectos from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

EDICIONS-ESPONTANEAS will publish here in the next days the conference colloquy, with among others subjects, we talked about the way of working in its Office, the use of drawing during the project concept, prefabrication, the future of the collective housing, and the transformation of periphery landscape of Madrid…

Social Housing. The change of uses

edicions — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 12:49:28 +0000

Throughout 20th century, in Spain, the ways of living in colectivity have changed more than the types of houses lodge that them. Anyway these changes have finished being reflected to the interior of the block that is created to organize them, in their common elements and the apartments in which their more private activities are closed.

The familiar structures and their habits, throughout the past century and at present, contribute new uses to a space that in a very slow form offers answers in the design of the houses. From the organization and hierarchy of the spaces, to the modification of his program, the kitchen, the hall, the rooms, the baths and the different pieces with which we are familiarized they have changed and they changed throughout our lives without the structure of the apartment in which we lived is sufficient the flexible thing to adapt to them.

The following videos show to us in a very general form the modifications in the spaces that shelter common or individual uses to the interior of the apartments. They belong to the exhibition organized by the Spanish Ministry of Housing on “ Social housing, History of a necesity”. They are an index, fast notes that do not get to illustrate the history of the happened thing, but allow to make us reflect on the future of the residential structures, and the necessity of house for everybody.

VIVIENDA PROTEGIDA. Cambio de programa from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

ROOM

EL DORMITORIO. Vivienda protegida, historia de una necesidad from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

KITCHEN
LA COCINA. Vivienda protegida, historia de una necesidad from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

DINING ROOM

EL COMEDOR. Vivienda protegida, historia de una necesidad from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

BATHROOM

EL BAÑO. Vivenda Protegida, historia de una necesidad from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

Haiti. Remembering Port au Prince

edicions — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:40:16 +0000

On April 2007 I traveled to Haiti like a consultant for a project of renewal of the Jacmel old town, located to the South of the capital Port-au-Prince. At this moment of catastrophe for that country, worried about the friends that I have left there and by its future, I want to rescue the images and the text that it published in 2008. Thinking about the deep inequality which I knew and the big efforts of which they fought by its improvement, and which I wait for non they decay now that needs as much them.

In order to collaborate with the reconstruction of Haiti visit www.architectureforhumanity.org

Port-au-Prince over the years has become rather disorderly in its urban planning, dominated by informal settlements and a ring of districts that radiate out from the political Downtown. Approximately 1,3million people living in the capital, and 3.5 millions in the metropolitan area. Nearly 80% of city dwellers live below the poverty line and the majority of residents are unemployed or underemployed. An estimated 40-85% of the metropolitan residents live in slum and squatter settlements with poor housing conditions, lack of basic infrastructure and services, poor sanitation and unclear tenure status. Many of the city’s inhabitants live in densely populated slums such as La Saline, Bel-Air, Martissant, Cité Soleil and there is a rapid informal settlements expansion in the peri-urban areas and around other middle class suburbs such as Pétionville, Delmas and Carrefour.

HAITI. Port au Prince I from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

The unplanned urbanization experiencing of the metropolitan region is further stretched by poor urban governance, lack of capacity building, absence of land record, and inefficient land administration. Furthermore, the city suffers from severe environmental problems (sanitation, sewage, natural and human-induced disasters such as fires and hurricanes), economic under-performance, security and safety, poor infrastructure and services and socio-political instability.

Haiti. Port au Prince II from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

Travelling along the main city roads the landscape is viewed as a fragmented urban layout composed by unfinished constructions placed in between hills, where people walk exchanging their mercancies all around. In the middle class suburbs there are not public activities in the streets, the expensive city life with their exclusive restaurants, hotels, shops, buildings and houses are built up closed by high walls. Denying the coexistence and constructing a sheltered individualistic city in the fear to the violence.

Jørn Utzon. Visiting the Mallorca houses

edicions — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:53:36 +0000

Weeks ago we visited two of the three houses that Jørn Utzon build for him and its family in Mallorca. In Porto Petro, located between pines and in front of the cliff, they are his summer house “Can Lis”, and that of his daughter Lin. We study its house by drawings and pictures, with its volumes on terraces, dispersed between patios following the route of the sun, I read about the modulation and the proportions generated by the use of traditional stone of the island, but until this visit it had not understood it, the architecture is only explained with its use, and the experience to cross it, sit down there, listened the wind and the sea between the trees, caressing the texture of the stone, seeing play the shades and the light between the patios, those things can not be described. The videos that we showed here own the silence and the tranquillity of that wonderful place, they do not recreate all our experience but I hope that they serve for aproach it a little, and to understand the many qualities of the architectonic space when this it is thought to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants.

Jorn Utzon. Can Lis, Porto Petro from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

Jorn Utzon. Can Lin, Porto Petro from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

After having to abandon the construction of the Sidney Opera House in 1966, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon on his way home, made an intermediate stop at Mallorca. The island fascinated him to such a degree that he decided to build a summer house there. It was located facing the Mediterranean, on a cliff near a small fishing village and he gave it the name of his wife, Lis. In 1994, he felt obliged to move from his house, which had turned into a place of pilgrimage for architects. Utzon built another house, Can Feliz, also in Mallorca.Can Lis
Jørn Utzon had been affected, at the beginning of his career, when he learnt that the celebrated Swedish architect, Gunnar Asplund, had died of stress. On his death bed, Asplund asked his son whether all this effort had really been worth while. These words came back to Utzon years later when, after he had been nine years working on the design and building his winning project of the Sidney Opera House, he decided to resign from this job because he had not been shown professional respect by the Ministry of Public Works. Since then, Utzon has never returned to Australia to see his building finished.
Looking, in Porto Pietro, for an ideal refuge during his holidays, Utzon built Can Lis in 1972, set among myrtle and pine trees, with an extraordinary view to the sea. Integrating with the colours in the landscape, the main building material is a hard local limestone, called marés stone, which varies from gold to pink in colour. The original concept for the house was the same as for the one that Utzon had intended to build in Sidney; a sequence of pavilions linked by a wall, and arranged so as to respond to the various functions within the dwelling. He explained it with a story by Karen Blixen about African farmers where she said: “It was impossible for them to build their houses in a uniform row because they followed an order that was based on the position of the sun, the places of the trees and the natural mutual relationships of the buildings.” The orientation of the pavilions in Can Lis selects distinctive views of the Mediterranean, and consequently, the furniture became fixed, built on site and finished with shiny ceramic tiles. Additionally, as the window frames were mounted on the outside surface of the walls, they were made invisible from the interior, which again, stimulates the effect of light, blurring the limits between the dark interior of the house and the blistering Mediterranean sun. For all these reasons, family life follows a route as the day passes which seems to pursue the passage of the sun.

México DF. The green architecture of the UNAM Campus

edicions — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:32:27 +0000

In 1997 I was teaching at the UNAM-University of Mexico postgraduate program of Urbanism, I keep many rewarding experiences from this period, among them the one to coexist with the transformation of a city of 25 million inhabitants, in a University of 300,000 students, and a Campus with a public space that I study with my students every year, to observe the relation between architectonic geometry and the naturalization of the human space, between the human scale and the variety of stays, places and gardens, that allow to the relation between people, turning hearing, seeing, walking, to be standing up or to sit down in a experience that improves the coexistence of its users.

The video and the photographies that accompany this text were do it in our visit of 2008, reproduce a stroll surroundings to the central area of the Campus, from the North entrance that takes to the shutdown of Copilco subway station, with the central library, the rectory one and the faculties of humanities and architecture in their perimeter. we can observed the concept of “modern superapple” it allows the pedestrian circulation securing the continuity of the deep spaces elevating the buildings on open porches in ground floor, delimiting stays that the topography and the trees finish to forming, with also landscaped the road peripheral ring circulation, from which it is acceded to the parkings and the buildings.

UNAM Campus. Mexico DF from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

OPINION 5. Los del desierto

edicions — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:26:03 +0000

Interview with Eva Luque and Alejandro Pascual, this architects group known as “los del desierto” give us their opinion about the meaning of inhabit, environmental control, the useful capacity of space, the experience of the environment, education and living, the social status of architecture , flexibility and residence, the object and thing, the user participation in the conception of architecture. The management, security and privatization of public space, other uses of public space, and its appropriation. Reflection on project process, analysis, concepts and development of ideas in their projects, the learning experience, observe and see otherwise …

OPINA 5. Los del desierto from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

CONFERENCE. PART I.

Conference of “LOS DEL DESIERTO”, organized in November 2009 in A Coruña, in that they develop the conception and work process of “Garrocha” Sports Pavilion.

CONFERENCIA. PARTE I from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

CONFERENCE. PART II

The second part of “Los del desierto” conference, in that they develop the conception of the competition for a Center of Technological tranference in Almeria, and the result of a workshop in the Cadiz Bay.

Los del desierto. CONFERENCIA-PARTE II from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

DISCUSSION

COLOQUIO from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

Pecha Kucha (A Coruña)

edicions — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:23:08 +0000

On November 6th we were part on the first Pecha Kucha Night vol.1, held in A Coruña. An exhibition celebrated in over 200 worldwide cities, that arose in Tokyo with the idea of showing the work of new creative, an informal way to exchange ideas on architecture, design, photography, illustration, film, dance or any kind of artistic or scientific research.

In this video you will see our presentation, which showed part of the architectural and urban design projects of our architectural office. We proposing a reflection about the transformation of our habits and our ways of living, using a sequence of projects from minimum to maximum group size, trying to show how different ways of participation of future users of an architectural project enriches and creates new spaces for social relations.

Toni Garcia + Yolanda Somoza. arquitectos from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

You can see the complete video of Pecha Kucha Coruña, vol.1 in the Web of Santi González www.stgo.es, or beating Here.

What about before turistic facilities? (Dominican Rep.)

edicions — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 01:03:53 +0000

We have spent 22 days in the Dominican Republic developing a Plan for Isabela´s natural and archaeological park, placed in the northwest of the Island, an exceptional natural space still without a great tourist development, in spite of being declared like tourist zone of interest. It has been very interesting our work with the rural communities in the decision making, and the necessity to implement a participating model of management, related to questioned the tourism like the unique possibility of development identified by the population, putting in doubt the model of development based on a tourism that has grown of backs to the community, attracting a type of tourist who arrives interested in enjoying ” everything included” , locked up in a hotel complex and without cultural interaction with it surroundings. The Northwest has been the first tourist destiny of the Island, and now their great facilities that have privatized great part of the coast are almost empty, with very low occupations, and an environmental deterioration difficult to recover. We have traveling along this coast observing his transformation, and we have stopped in Sosua to record this video, between the ruins of an empty hotel, next to another one in construction, forward edge of a coast to which one of last hurricanes has left without hardly sand in the beach… what it makes us reflect about what will happen to this coast in the future, and if the tourism disappears? , it will be able to regenerate? , how to do it?.

Sosua I - Rep. Dominicana from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.

This type of tourist activity is unsustainable. A change of model is considering, looking for a greater interaction of the visitors with the local population, to restrain the deterioration of the surroundings, impelling a process of taking to consciousness on the cultural, social, natural, and local values.

Although this will not be enought if the work does not begin by the improvement in the quality of life of its inhabitants, used to the service of the international investments. The existing populations throughout the coast from Puerto Plata, like Sosua or Cabarete, that have been transformed radically, and need so much an environmental regeneration, like of the improvement of quality of life of its inhabitants. We can see in this video the way from the hotel, throughout the way from Sosua to Puerto Plata, like in first, second and third line of beach, are accumulated a disorderly growth of blocks, single-family houses and facilities for the tourist leisure. The image of this territory for international leisure it does not contrast in excess with the informal slums, where lives the most part of the population. This banal internationalization of the landscape makes think us about the fragility of the economies based on ephemeral seasons, dependent businesses of the visit of inhabitants from other countries, and how easy is move infrastructures transforming in deep social conditions and its way of life.

Sosua II - Rep. Dominicana from edicions espontaneas on Vimeo.