Congoritme is the former architectural projects studio from 1989 until 2011.
Here are featured some of Bea Goller's own projects
and also several developed with Yago Conde
:// PROJECT
MilanStadtkrone 2030
Lambrate District
archi-urban hyper-buildings
2010
Bea Goller
Urban Planning proposal for Milan 2030
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Living over the clouds Urban Concept The urban concept deals with sawing the
two quarters divided by the railway tracks between the two big streets, that
connect the highway with the inside structure of Milan.
We propose to prolong the lower street, Via
Raffaele Rubattino, create tunnels and use the space underneath the railways as
a commercial boulevard, opened to both quarters in connection with the ground
floor at the right side of the tracks. This side will become a new residential
area, with high rises, giving housing for 25.000 people, plus office, retail,
kindergarten, wellness and leisure services. The ground floor plan will serve
for public use, like shops, bars, restaurants and the tower entries, while the
platform situated at 32 meters will be a semi-privative zone, with restricted
services for the tower inhabitants. Being on this platform offers them a
general view of the Milan surrounding top flats and the existing high rises,
and the Duomo.
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:// PROJECT
GeomeEKAtria
2008
Bea Goller
Estonian Academy of Arts // Design Concept
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GeomeEKAtria
Estonian Academy of Arts
Design Concept
The building resembles a game of push and pull forces, since it will
host different faculties and disciplines under the same cover.
These dynamic forces become furthermore evident the higher the building gets,
forming a spiral in movement which finally disappears in the sky.
This concept has arisen from our intention to deal with the Academy of Arts
as a special building, that could bring together the spirit of the old town
of Tallin and at the same time be a completely contemporary solution of architecture,
forming a new landmark for the city. This spiral effect also creates the notion
of an urban node, which was one of the purposes of the design competition.
Courtyards as continuity of public urban space.
Ice cracks as a poetic entry of light.
Illumination and ventilation:
There are two courtyards, one in the building of phase 1 and one in the building
of phase 2, which is where the oak tree will eventually be placed. These courtyards
give illumination and ventilation to the internal classrooms and to other
facility rooms, like the gallery and the shop on the ground floor, the cafeteria
and the computer labs on the first floor, and finally the common used spaces
of the different departments.
The courtyards on each floor are of a different size, always following the
direction of displacement of the tree. This gives an interesting scheme in
the section of the building, because the displacement creates small terraces,
each of different size, with up a whole series of events by giving a richer
perspective and brings more life to the building. They can serve as an outside
space in the summer, or as plant holding. The spiral of a winter storm has
left these holes in the frozen ice in relation to several cracks, that run
on the deck, on the inside facade and on the pavement of the ground floor.
Finally, we thought about the idea of ice cracks that would bring the light
through reflection, as a proposal for illuminating the workshops at the basement
floor. The sky lights on the pavement of the ground floor will be an assemblage
of cut glass, where you will not see completely through, but you will get
a glimpse of what is happening underneath. The same concept is used over the
stairs strip.
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:// PROJECT
jarDNA
Exposed at 'Temps de Flors' // Girona
2006
Bea Goller
Fabricated Prototype of a vertical and modular garden
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Our project proposes a vertical garden by modules in front of party walls
of middle ages wall in Girona. Green spaces are needed, because the atmospheric
pollution is very elevated and produces toxic effects on the human health.
We need a new protection skin, that provide us O2.
The increase of the automobiles gas discharge in
the urban and industrial sites looks for sustainable solutions to preserve
the physical and mental health of the individual.Plants generates 02, necessary
to breathe.
We wanted to give a more architectonic proposal to the vertical gardens theme,
that would show better the three-dimensional aspect of the pieces, because
party walls reflect the cutting sense of buildings.
They are like a section of the building.
When the adjacent building has been demolished and the party wall is shown,
the old plans of what had existed become visible, and even if the contiguous
building has never existed, the space of the party wall is not a plane,
it can be rather developed three-dimensionally.
We also liked it being like a fabric, adapted to any vertical surface.
We reviewed the materials and we noticed, that it could be done in a lighter and
fitted material, than the materials normally used in architecture.
The plastic and composite were the ideal materials for this project, because
of its shaping flexibility -morphing-, its resistance, production process
and cost. The process of modules manufacture is based on the use of pressed
vegetal fibers. When piling the modules up, the party wall becomes a green columnata.
The modules can be grouped without having to be bound to a wall,
depending on the height. The modules are basically selfsoustainable,
but they need a bracing system and anchorages to some vertical surface
depending on the reachable height.
The form of the modules derives from the helicoidal form of the DNA structure
of the living beings. The fact that we learn to take care of our environment,
that the party walls stay alive and that we have to take care of them,
-so they continue living-, will make us aware about a more sustainable world
and make us feel belonging to a collectivity.
This vertical garden improves the enviroment of the urban landscape:
breathe better, cheer your life, embellish your environment, experiment...
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:// PROJECT
Venus.Skyscraper
2006
Bea Goller
Bioclimatic Vertical sea garden skyscraper
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BCN
Bioclimatic Vertical sea garden skyscraper
The
site: An Alternative to Barcelona at the sea
Main concept and uses
The site selected for the Skyscraper is located right into the Mediterranean
Sea, off the Barcelona Waterfront, creating a grand vertical visual icon at
the end of the Diagonal avenue in Barcelona, an urban axe cutting the city
grid in a NE-SW angle and finishing right on the sea shore. It is erected
on an artificial fill, a man-made peninsula, giving base to a composite complex
of three intertwined towers, which are all entering a marine dominion, maybe
representing utopia, yet not an impossible gesture to extend the city, using
a vertical element in a metropolis (Barcelona), while simultaneously giving
an end, which turns toward the sky, to this urban axe, fulfilling an old desired
intention but in an unconventional manner. It intends to be a small vertical
city facing the horizontal metropolis of Barcelona – in search of a
skyline icon - and an alternative space solution for many physically-displaced
people, victims of the present and rapid urbanism on the city Waterfront,
in search of prime real-estate and city marketing - recently represented in
grand gestures, such as the construction of the enormous Forum of Cultures
complex in 2004 - and to younger and older generations of economically-displaced
ones, forced to leave the city because of exploding housing value, and in
search of more financially accessible dwellings. It will somehow double as
a sort of a huge rescue ship for a different type of refuge: The one created
by fast shake-and-bake urbanisation. In order to fulfil its purpose, it will
provide all necessities and services a conventional community needs, including
commercial, medical and social ones, and will represent a not-too-far into
the future hope: To adopt the sea as a space of living, and as such it is
formally inspired on marine zoology and resources still found in the Mediterranean
sea, taking advantage of all environmental qualities it can provide through
the use of high-tech ecology and technology.
As a mixed-use structure, it will incorporate into its uses an Institute of
Marine Research and a Marine station, where renewable marine resources will
be investigated. Transportation in and from the mainland city will be assured
by a public transportation link, but also by a car-pool station, where dwellers
can profit of the use of on-a-shared basis rental car system, on a case-by-case
required need. Renting a flat will also mean renting a right to use a car,
and the first lower levels located inside the land-fill will be reserved for
parking use of these vehicles. Some other functions are also incorporated;
such a hotel and some office spaces, as well as restaurants and entertaining
areas at the top levels, including a vertical park with panoramic views overlooking
the city. The same city that pushed this other [vertical] one to go into the
sea.
The Skin: From the nano to the macro scale structure
We got inspired by deep-sea sponges, a deep beneath the sea complex glass
structure, a marvel of natural engineering. We tried to apply our findings
from this organism on a high-rise building, to create marine vertical structures,
looking as garden towers, using a skin made of optical fibre and fibreglass,
beyond a conventional steel and concrete structure. The three skyscrapers
intend to be a new type of bioclimatic buildings, in total mimesis with natural
organisms, inhabitants of the deep sea around them. The double skin is composed
by two layers containing a third layer of suspended vegetation, becoming a
new type of urban vertical agriculture. The Venus BCN skyscrapers structures
will also be ecological and self energy sufficient, having a highly positive,
repairing and productive results for the saturated urban environment, a totally
sustainable design. For this reason we propose an intelligent use of energy,
water and waste. This will be accomplished by way of a green bioclimatic envelope,
which controls temperature, sun exposure and ventilation, so the use of cooling
and heating is kept to a minimum, atmosphere water collector systems are implemented
over the outer skin, plus the use of biogas from the nearby purification plant,
as energy resource stored at the sky lobbies of each module. A waste recycling
facility could be incorporated into the base, at the bottom of the sea level,
connected to the purification plant. A nearby sea wave power station, plus
an eolic plant on the shore, could be alternative energy resources for electricity
in the future. The proximity of sea salt could be used for the cooling system.
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:// PROJECT
m@pmalgrat: mapping the territory
2003
Bea Goller
Social Center // Mixed Used Equipment Spot // Fluid Moebious Shapes
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m@pmalgrat: mapping the territory
We understand the site as a representation of the Malgrat Plan and its territorial traces.
The boundary of the building represents the main infrastructures and the principal streets
while the rest of the site features the costal mountains and the sea.
We scale those traces to a measure that coincides with the surface of the program.
Inserting these geographical patterns gives a new identity. This mapping mechanism
allows us to understand the building as a landscape, as a new image of the city of Malgrat,
frozen in geological layers.
The ambiguity of the unity-duality of the building has a repercussion on the formal
process that exists as a feedback between the two pieces. The roof promenade
is generated by the geometry of the superposed volume, moved with the parking
grid measure. Another similar mechanism generates the folding and holing of
the square, that links all the layers of the project.
The natural traces (mountains and sea) are completing the rest of the square.
Smooth folds and dunes are protecting and half-covering the bus parking and the lower level.
The ramp concept is converted into the essence of the building, a sequential trip
that resolves the program in three blocks and two roof slabs made of cement.
We think it is important to amplify the communication and the flow in a multicultural
furnishings. The cement roof links different spaces and activities.
The project represents different flowing spaces over a continuous surface.
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:// PROJECT
Tomihiro Museum // Azuma JP
2001
Bea Goller
Tomihiro Hoshino's work Art Museum Project
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An avalanche falls down the mountain covering the existing building of the museum.
The original topography is reconstructed creating a new landscape, a new park
for Azuma Village. We preserve the first floor of the actual museum and cover
it with a new wooden skin. This construction will house the administrative,
storage and investigative facilities.
Towards the road we project a public street, enclosed in a prism that slowly
penetrates the soil, which gives access to the museum spaces in one continuous floor.
It is a new place of encounter for the people of Azuma Village and its visitors,
capable of generating activities around the clock.
This space is an atrium, functions as a foyer, in which concerts, performances,
film projections and a wide range of events take place. It also organizes
the services, coatroom, information, shop, cafeteria and ticket vending areas
and provides access to the exhibition spaces.
The visitor slowly discovers an underground world, which unveils the work of
Tomihiro Hoshino.
The shiga room is a space in which the visitor is introduced to Tomihiros world.
It provides an encounter with his unique vocation of creatively combining
poetry and water color paintings. We also learn from the influence that the
scenery around Azuma Village had on his work.
The experience of the new museum does not restrict it self to exhibition areas
but it pervades to the natural setting.
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:// PROJECT
Jardins Verticals Barcelona
2001
Bea Goller feat. Cloud9
An intervention project of vertical gardens in the urban space
An intervention project on vertical screens in the urban space
Urban vertical screens, surfaces, elevations, façades, scaffoldings, party walls, publicity, hoarding, etc., are places for new contemporary urban functions.
Scaffoldings are only regarded to exist while the building is being restored, during a limited time. Besides protecting the walker of possible falling down
rubble, we look at scaffolding network as a second skin of the building. This new screen is a temporal architecture, and it can change the environment during
the “face-lifting” of the building.
Barcelona needs green spaces. We use restoration facades and other vertical urban screens to create transportable gardens, setting a patented technological
PVC canvas with bags, which include plants of different colors and designs, an hydroponics earth compound and an irrigation system.
Color and vital cycle are important for the plant selection. We draw with the plants, using them as "pixels" and therefor giving a new expression to publicity.
It is a garden with natural and technological (hydroponics) characteristics.
With this innovation in an urban intervention, the vertical garden, Barcelona is going to become an example of sustainable city.
It is a leading project in ecological architecture, because it represents an aesthetic contribution and an improvement of the environmental conditions.
Plants fix and generate C02 and filter pollution.
A way to express the temporal, environmental and ecological new architecture.
Vertical Garden: “do it with a lung in your city”
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:// PROJECT & BUILT
Torre del Reloj Xixón
1992··95
Bea Goller
The Clock Tower in Gijon : a vertical Archaeological Museum
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The Clock Tower in Gijon : a vertical Museum
This project is part of a general rehabilitation program for the old section of the city of Gijon.
Recent archaeological excavations prove the existence of an important roman settlement in this northern part of Spain.
A new museistic program has been developed in order to incorporate archaeological studies and findings to the exhibition
and adequation of three different excavation sites as cultural city spaces. One of them is the actual clock tower,
a recent reconstruction of an old prison tower dating from 1572 and which was originally a defensive structure
of the roman wall, being destroyed several times during history, disappeared completely at the end of last century.
The exterior shape of the tower is based on the original volume.
The interior renovation and museistic project tries to create a link between the shape and the contents of the permanent
exhibition and the existing space : a six floor high tower with a 6 x 8 meter floor plan. This verticality, even more emphasized
by the existing stair system, seems to need continuity and fluidity in the explanatory course.
The idea is to integrate the exhibition elements to the existing architecture. Walls, floors and stair volumes become
showcases and therefore setting the small exhibition space free of single furniture pieces. A series of new skins cover the existing
interior, leaving a certain interspace to place the archaeological pieces. Trapped in time by these new coverages, the pieces appear
and disappear depending on the movements of the visitors. While some objects can be seen directly, others can only be discovered
through the reflected image.
Introducing the notion of play and fluidity into the concept of a museum helps to understand such a cultural place in a more dynamic
way as a city event. The visual connection through the different glass floors establishes a relation of space and time during the history of
Gijon. The visit will start at the top floor observation gallery of the present time and will continue with a vertical descent through the
different periods of the city history until the roman foundation at street level. This course between time and space of the city can be
understood chronologically and spatially. The new glass wall as extension of one of the original wall shows in its interior pieces found
in the wall dating to different times of the history of Gijon. The wall goes through chronologically all the tower floors, being of stone
in the two first ones and of glass in the upper three. Parallel to this vertical explanation, the different deposits excavated in the
city are exhibited, assigning a horizontal plane to each one. Going from one floor to another means also to pass from one deposit to another.
In this museum exists somehow a juxtaposition of diverse edifying concepts in a single construction. On one hand the tower with its
gallery from which you can see the whole actual city. The diorama or representation of a panoramic view, being a landscape or a city, is a
habitual technique in the exhibition tradition and specially in history museums. The representation is here replaced by the vision of the
real city, as reference and beginning of a descendent course towards the caves of the past. On one hand the building and the museum
( container and content ) will constitute a mnemonic place in a spiral course. We are therefor not placed in front of a situation that
wants to explain a story or a lineal memory like the trajaneous column. We don’t find ourselves in a situation of spiral continuity of
the Guggenheim museum, which always refers to a central and unitarian space. Our discourse attends to the juxtaposition of continuities
and discontinuities of history and allowing flash-backs and transcronological connections through the glass floors between the different
rooms, and sometimes an intermittent view of the actual city.
We find ourselves in front of this multiple programmatic situation, clock tower, open gallery, archaeological place and mnemotechnical
course place. It will be a course time/ space not strictly lineal and attending to a multiplicity of connections, some expected and some
unexpected and to flash-backs or advances into the future. At the same time it will be also insisting in some continuities or historic
archetypes through the exhibition technique of the glass wall- showcase that runs through all the plans.
Reaching a peak in the descent, a fusion between the contents and the container is produced when real archaeological fragments appear.
The divisor line is dissolved between the poles of duality enclosure / collection ( or theater / memory ), to situate the museum in a
ciceronian setting of furnishing an enclosure with the discourse of the speaker, a mnemnotechnical exercise that generates the theater of
memory and the museum, and offers an integral representation where background and figure have melt into a single object. The enclosure
appropriates the collection, in this case the archaeological place itself.
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:// PROJECT // Competition 1st Prize
HITOS TEMÁTICOS Sevilla
1992
IMPRESSIONS OF THE WORLD / FABRICS OF OPTIMISM Competition First Prize
Yago Conde & Bea Goller
Ephemeral intervention in Expo92·Sevilla
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IMPRESSIONS OF THE WORLD / FABRICS OF OPTIMISM Competition First Prize
The four interventions have the theme of printing in common (be it of patterns, texts or images) on different materials
(paper, fabric or plastic). Rolls of such materials have been rotary manufactured throughout human history.
Patterns, phrases and information have been printed on them. Bodies have been draped, objects wrapped, information transmitted
by them. These materials and the technologies that have transformed them both partake of a system of strips flowing continually through space via a set of rotating elements. From spinning machines to looms, machines for producing paper and plastics to
newspaper rotary presses, plan reproducers, printers, film reels, video and fax.
The four interventions proceed from this idea of a flow of 'fabric' (be it fabric proper, plastic or paper) around a revolving
machine structure, as in the loom or rotary press.
PRINTING ON DIFFERENT MATERIALS
Each one of these 'fabrics' appears at a different moment in human history. They have been utilized for a variety of ends,
extremely diverse motifs have been printed on them, motifs related to a wide range of messages, geographies, technologies and
intentions. Our intervention will attempt to simultaneously combine printed motifs belonging to totally different countries,
ethnic groups and eras, with a unique end result. By means of computer combination we can, for instance, print a German news
item in Chinese characters and with a photocomposition inspired by the geometric designs on Guatemalan fabrics; a fabric with
Aztec patterning with the arabesques and geometries of the Cheyenne Indians. These same geometries can be subjected to the
logic of fractal geometry, etc.
New printing systems - offset, serigraphy, laser printing, photocopying, fax, heat printers, robot spray guns, scanners, etc -, aided
and abetted by computerization, permit us to recodify, combine and transmit messages, designs and images belonging to totally different places and times.
For example, we can now translate the sound of a bell in Tibet, transmitted live via satellite, into graphic images by means of
computers using animation techniques. These drawings can be printed instantly on a fabric which can in turn be cut out on a pattern and a
garment made from it.
The sole limitations are imagination and the fixing of a budget vis-à-vis the technologies existing on the market. In a reduced
printing format, all the above can be realized (and to spare) with the budget allotted for these four interventions. It is rather more
difficult at present to execute this kind of instantly changeable combination in a large format, due to its cost; this is one of the
reasons why in three of the four interventions we will make use of more conventional printing systems for a very wide 'fabric' and
leave for installation nº 3 the use of future technologies with A3-wide format laser and heat printers in order to have all kinds of
changing combinations of images.
CLOTHING AND PARTICIPATION
The four interventions have a similar formalization but with different combinations, in order for each to be identifiable while
belonging to the same family or group. What they all have in common is having a structure that simulates WATERFALLS, FOUNTAINS,
STREAMS OF FABRIC which emanate from the ground or the air, like a DOWNPOUR or JET OF IMAGES in continual movement.
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:// PROJECT
BARCINOAUSANEMAUSUS Roman temple at Vic
1989
Yago Conde & Bea Goller
Ephemeral intervention between three roman temples (Barcelona, Vic, and Nimes)
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The decking out of the Roman Temple in Vic was part of the Barcinoausanemausus project,
the aim of which was connect simultaneously the Roman temples of Barcelona,
Vic and Nimes by means of readily available present-day technologies such as fax and computers,
rediscovering, reappraising and celebrating a common heritage.
The intervention proposed the transmission of fax tapestries from one temple to another
in all directions, simultaneously linking the three sites by way of transmitters and receivers.
These tapestries or garlands in the interior and on the exterior of the temples
would thus constitute an ephemeral ornamentation or embellishment analogous
to the way these constructions would have been decked out for important celebrations.
of the temples would thus permit the recuperation (either by restitution or invention)
of the original polychrome decoration which the buildings would have had in their prime.
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:// PROJECT
Fontana Mix Vila Olímpica Barcelona
1988
Bea Goller & Yago Conde
A Urban Design Reinterpretation of john Cage's FontanaMix work
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Competition of monumental fountain Water
The theme of the competition was the design of a monumental fountain for the
most important roundabout in the Olympic Village at Barcelona. The site is located
at the crossing of a new avenue linking the Sagrada Familia with the waterfront
avenue and the sea. The brief stated that the proposed fountain would be equal
in importance to the fountains built for 1929 World Fair: Jujols fountain in Plaça
d'Espanya, and the Magic Fountain on Montjuic, beside the Mies van der Rohe pavilion,
the biggest fountain in the world.
The aim of this project is to create, not an objective unity like the Magic Fountain
on Montjuic, where water, light and sound share a single aesthetic truth, but a dispersed,
disseminated place, a black hole that would invite endless new connections a place
for displacement of place.
The constituents straight lines, curves and points are drawn from the surroundings:
the Olympic Village and combined as if they were a chromosome containing the information
of the place, which is then grafted on to a part of its own fabric, simulating a reality
which is transformed and distorts, but at the same time belongs to itself.
Fontana Mix, the graphic score composed by John Cage in 1957, which was also constructed
from a grid, lines, curves and points, is used as a hypertext, or transforming choreography,
for the place. It contains ten transparent sheets with points, ten drawings having six
differentiated curved lines, a graph (having one hundred units horizontally, twenty vertically),
and a straight line, the two last on transparent material.
Given the similarities between the from of the Olympic Village and the Fontana Mix score,
it is possible to implicate the first text into the chance movements of the second.
Once the former begins to behave like the latter, all the syntactical
articulations of the Olympic Village disappear. New connections, or hieroglyphs,
appear. The two texts interact, creating a sediment of different layers, like
a sort of tailors pattern, from which new figures are cut
out. It is impossible to recognize every single element; instead, we are confronted
by fragments, or combinations of fragments. The fluid quality of the Fontana
Mix curves introduces a sort of artificial geological accident, in which the
temporality liquid state of the form is frozen. Liquid affects solid, as solid
affects liquid.
The interior circle of the roundabout should be regarded, not as a frame, but
as the perimeter of a microscope or magnifying glass, which reveals the nature
of some of the constellations, or a world of hidden currents/constellations
might appear outside the perimeter of the microscope, on Carlos
I Avenue and in the park, as if they were splashes from the fountain, or peripheral
spouts. The experience of driving along the avenues would be reminiscent of
driving through farmlands in autumn, when the edges of the fields are burning.
The geological score also regulates the spatial disposition of possible
events: different types of water and sound. Streams of water, water curtains,
light-lines, sprinklers, etc., will be alternated, concentrated or dispersed
in the different figures. The aria, designed to be compatible with Fontana
Mix, combines a series of sounds with different tonalities and rhythms, in
five languages. The programme of the Carlos I fountain would be similar, distributing
sound constellations along the park avenue. The sounds voices,
drawn from all over the world, would be capable of infinite number of combinations.
Notes:
( 1 ) The title of Duchamps first article in English * WATER
WRITES ALWAYS IN * PLURAL published in The ( New York 1915)
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:// EXPO
international property EXPO@COAC / BCN
1995
Bea Goller
On how architecture is often sold for the masses vs. architects guild
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Exhibition-installation
INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY
This exhibition-installation uses property sales advertisements
from worldwide press as almost its only material.
The buying and selling of land and property is always quite independent of or removed from the concerns of
INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY “cultivated” architecture, in spite of the fact that they share a common interest:
the buildings to be inhabited. It is also true that sometimes the concerns or ideas from the architects creativity,
and which develops a new way for unseen programmes and solutions.
In the pages of daily press devoted to advertising property sales, we can identify the proposals, the situation
within the city and the consumer ideals which lie behind the advertisements and descriptions of properties. However
much advertisements and advertising styles and graphics may vary from one country to another, we can pick out similar
comercial trends in all of them.
These trends are often submitted to pressure from the ideals architecture as spread by
cinema and television. This is often encapsulated in the style of the relation and visual aspects of these
advertisements. The influences of one city’s or one country’s comercial architecture on another probably arise to a
large exent through the printed advert rather than through a real, physical experience.
This makes it interesting to stop and look at what is happening in the territory of the printed advert. The creation
of an exhibition-installation purely on the basis of this material provides us with a very different interpretation
to what we normally find in the newspapers and, of course, the functional reading of a flat-hunter.
The information contained in these adverts, sometimes spread out through other sections of the newspaper, may give
rise to unexpected connections, like a cadavre exquis, referring us to a type of thematic relation/coexistence with
other aspects of life which are not common when talking about architecture. Property advert, death announcements,
political declarations, thank you Holy Spirit, comercial tenders, philosophical thought, stock exchange rates... At
times, the layout places such different messages on an equal footing.
In most cases, the publication has its own classification criteria which reveal aspects of the often : quantity,
repetition, importance, questions of taste or style, “prices!”, target social class... In some cities, in the adverts
with photos, we see a Swiss Chalet , a French mansion, a Mediterranean-style house, Oriental luxury, all existing
side by side in the same area. Just as the cinema, television and satellite transmissions allow the reproduction of
any achitectural scenario anywhere in the worl, built reality (and the faithful reflection of printed advertising)
imitates/follows this situation.
UIA BARCELONA 96
XIX Congress of the International Union of Architects
Catalonia at Sevilla // To exhibit and to expose yourself: the box inside the box
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Catalonia at Sevilla
To exhibit and to expose yourself: the box inside the box
While serving as a venue for other exhibits the Catalan
Pavilion was also an exhibition in and of itself. Our exhibition wants to
show this duplicity of functions and it tries to open a discussion about the
nature and the meaning of the Universal Exhibition´s architecture. At
what point does this kind of construction have to be ephemeral? But it also
includes the question at what point is it utopian to discuss dismantled buildings
without talking in astronomical prices.
The exhibition shows on one hand that the project for the Catalan Pavilion
designed by architects Pere Llimona and Xavier Ruiz Vallés is understood
as the process of the work of construction. On the other hand it intends to
give information about the different content exposed in the pavilion.
Acting as a frame of reference and a connecting link for all this information,
an interior space has been reconstructed thereby recreating the part of the
pavilion originally planned to receive the thematic exhibitions, including
the architectural one.
Ephemeral intervention between three roman temples (Barcelona, Vic, and Nimes)
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Architecture / way of thinking
one instalation for Barcelona
Herzog & de Meuron, and the video artist Enrique Fontanilles covered the windows
of the museum of architecture in Basilea with silkscreen printed pictures of
theirs own buildings.
''The window in a wall and the electronic window within the room.
The preoccupation for the impalpable and fugitive static of the image on television.
The window that looks to the street versus the window that looks to the world.''
The big windows of the C.O.A.C. motivate the continuation of this work. The
installation in Barcelona confronts the windows of the museum in Basilea with
the televisions used in our city.
The exposition consists of two parts:
On the first floor, the Picasso room, drawings and models of the work and resent
projects are shown. The frames of the silkscreen printing used on the windows
are also exposed at the exposition in Basilea.
The only exhibit on the ground floor is a video installation. In a grid, like
that of Barcelona, there are 64 screens installed. Some 50 old televisions
with different designs coexist with 14 others from the most recent generation
of screens. Nine of these screens show Enrique Fontanilles work. They
are pictures of the images in the windows of the museum in Basilea. On the
other five screens one can see the live images of the models exhibited in
the Picasso Room. The five cameras installed in front of the models establish
the physical connection between exposition spaces and the methods of expression.
A Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meurons text, written for the exposition
almost like a manifest, insists on the architects way of thinking.
fold
:// EXPO
JEAN NOUVEL EXPO @ COAC / BCN
1990
Bea Goller
Ephemeral intervention between three roman temples (Barcelona, Vic, and Nimes)
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Jean Nouvel exhibition
The Jean Nouvel exhibition is a selection of thirty projects. The show is a spiral
on the ground floor of the Architects Association of Catalonia and is developed
as far as the premises permit, establishing an analogy in both time and space.
The present is the beginning and end of the route. Incisions in this spiral
provide minimal openings which, cutting through the development of Jean Nouvel´s
work, enable one to distance oneself both physically and mentally.
The outer surface of the spiral contains the most general and emotive information,
while in the interior the works and projects are displayed, from a more rigorous
and homogeneous viewpoint. Each project is a fragment of the skin of this
spiral, which can be viewed and understood from different perspectives, but
belong to a single material unity.
An inclined plane, suspended from the ceiling of the ground floor, suggests
Jean Nouvel´s work environment and brings the visitor into the exhibition
through the team of architects and collaborators.
On the building´s external façade, as an advertisement for the
exhibition, is an opaque plane with its letters cut out, providing a view
of the interior, as well as a distant reading of the shows title.
