Issue 111-112
I-IV 2005
44€
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ESPAÑA 2005
Balance del año
Summary of the Year
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Líneas de fractura
Fracture Lines
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Líneas de fractura Fracture Lines
Mundo burbuja Bubble World
Deconstrucción ‘in memóriam’ Deconstruction
‘in memoriam’
2004, una antología
2004, an Anthology
Conexión continental
Continental Connection
Ampliación del aeropuerto, Barajas (Madrid) Airport
Extension
Richard Rogers & Estudio Lamela
Edificio Fórum, Barcelona Forum Building
Herzog & de Meuron
Torre Agbar, Barcelona Agbar Tower
Jean Nouvel & b720
Edificio Mirador, Madrid Mirador Building
MVRDV & Blanca Lleó
Encuentro ciudadano
Town Meeting
Mercado de Santa Caterina, Barcelona Santa
Caterina Market
EMBT
Centro de arte contemporáneo, León Contemporary
Art Center
M. Mansilla & Tuñón
Teatro Olimpia, Madrid Olimpia Theater
Paredes & Pedrosa
Auditorio y palacio de congresos, Castellón Auditorium
and Congress Hall
Ferrater, Martín, Sanahuja & Escura
Estancia pública
Public Space
Explanada y pérgola fotovoltaica, Barcelona Esplanade
and Photovoltaic Pergola
M. Lapeña & Torres
Parque y museo, Córdoba Park and Museum
Juan Navarro Baldeweg
Parque de Cabecera, Valencia Cabecera Park
De Miguel, Muñoz & Corell
Plaza de Salvador Dalí, Madrid Salvador
Dalí Square
Mangado & Torres
Educación y gestión
School and Council
Instituto, La Orotava (Tenerife) High School
Artengo, Menis & Pastrana
Escuela de negocios, Huarte (Navarra) Business
School
Vaillo & Irigaray
Ayuntamiento, San Pere de Ribes (Barcelona) Town
Hall
Clotet & Paricio
Oficinas municipales, Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz) Municipal
Premises
Martínez & Trillo de Leyva
Dimensión local
Local Realm
Guardería, Manlleu (Barcelona) Kindergarten
RCR, Aranda, Pigem & Vilalta
Centro de salud, Miño (La Coruña) Health
Center
Irisarri & Piñera
Piscina cubierta, Lepe (Huelva) Indoor Swimming
Pool
Laguillo & Schöenneger
Torre de ascensores y oficinas, Cartagena (Murcia) Elevators
Tower and Offices
Amann, Cánovas, Maruri & Lejárraga
Escala residencial
Residential Size
Torre y plaza Woermann, Las Palmas (Gran Canaria) Woermann
Tower and Square
Ábalos & Herreros
Viviendas de protección, Rota (Cádiz) Subsidized
Housing
Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra
Viviendas sociales, Viladecans (Barcelona) Social
Housing
Nogué, Onzain & Roig
Viviendas sociales, Madrid Social Housing
Chipperfield & Fernández-Isla
Un año en el mundo
A Year
in the World
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Tristes trenes Tragic Trains
Doce meses y cuatro estaciones Twelve Months
and Four Seasons
El año en doce edificios The Year in
Twelve Buildings
Premios y pérdidas Distinctions and Disappearances
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Fracture Lines
The clash of civilizations predicted by Huntington is becoming a standard
measure to interpret the cracks of the globe: the agitation of the Slav
world within its blurred perimeter, the rivalry between China and the
United States or, above all, the violent conflict between the Muslim universe
and the Judeo-Christian West. But this self-fulfilling prophecy reproduces
its cracks in the interior of the tectonic plates of the cultural blocks
and, while the American professor is concerned about the segregated heterogeneity
that the growing population of Hispanic origin is bringing into his country,
other clefts, of the political sort, open up in the West: between the
United States and Europe, within the United States between the rural areas
of the interior and the urban areas of both coasts, and within a Europe
enlarged to 25 members, between those devout and those reluctant to the
Atlantic bond. This panorama of shifts and fractures finds a fitting symbolic
representation in a broken and turbulent architecture, whose unstable
balance recalls the instability of a world shaken by terror without boundaries
and war without frontiers.
Winter on the Tracks
Spain’s long winter would come to an end with the election that
bid farewell to Aznar, architecturally staged by the president at the
new Barajas airport terminal, a colossal structure of metal gulls painted
in the colors of the rainbow by Rogers and Lamela, which was hastily inaugurated
for the occasion; however, the final performance of the politician would
take place rather on the tracks of Atocha Station, the destination of
the four trains attacked by Islamist terrorism with the tragic balance
of 192 dead and 1,500 wounded: the attack of 11 March would cast its shadow
over the polls of the 14th and the life of the nation thereafter, turning
the brick lantern of Rafael Moneo into an impromptu memorial for the victims.
In architecture’s small planet, the star was Rem Koolhaas, who received the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects while his macro-exhibition in Berlin was still open, and the inaugurations of his works followed one another: after the Netherlands Embassy in the German capital and the Campus Center at Chicago’s IIT, the spectacular library of Seattle was greeted with the same critical acclaim expected for the soon to be completed Casa da Música in Porto, two faceted pieces of Stealth aesthetic which pedagogically materialize the shattered mood of the times.
Spring in High Grounds
The London-based Iraqi Zaha Hadid was distinguished with a controversial
Pritzker Prize while the occupation by the United States of her home country
got tangled up in an endless war of attrition marked by the beheading
of hostages and the tortures on prisoners, filmed and photographed to
the disbelief of the world; other international distinctions went to Óscar
Niemeyer (Praemium Imperiale) and Gilles Perraudin (Tessenow Medal), while
the Spanish Gold Medal went to Luis Peña Ganchegui, the French
Grand Prix to Patrick Berger, and the British Stirling Prize to Norman
Foster for his shell-shaped Swiss Re tower, turning our attention away
from the political and military shakes of the hour.
Spain also healed the wounds of 11-M with a wedding in Madrid and a celebration in Barcelona: in the Almudena Cathedral – a work of several styles initiated a century ago, but completed recently by Fernando Chueca, architect and historian that would pass away before the year ended, and with walls and stained glass windows decorated by Kiko Argüello, an extravagant Catholic leader –, that shapes with the Royal Palace the monumental profile of the capital, the Crown Prince wed a TV news reporter; and in the new Forum of Cultures – built by the sea to boost urban development, on top of a sewage plant and with a triangular building by Herzog & de Meuron as central piece – an international cultural fair was launched, with activities lasting all summer long, and which would leave a bittersweet aftertaste.
Summer in the Stadiums
Inevitably, this season was marked by sports events, and both the European football championship in Portugal and the Athens Olympic Games would leave emblematic architectures: Eduardo Souto de Moura raised in a quarry the stadium of Braga, the most significant of those designed for the competition; and Santiago Calatrava lifted the huge roof held by arches of an olympic stadium built in a race against the clock to meet the deadlines, and that would become the best symbol of these games on their return to their Hellenic origins.
The Ground Zero saga continued with commissions for the construction of several memorials and commemorative buildings to Michael Arad with Peter Walker, Frank Gehry and the Norwegian office Snøhetta, threatening to turn the site of the tragedy into a real-estate theme park; and in Spain, the premature inauguration of the Barajas terminal was followed by those of the Reina Sofía extension by Jean Nouvel and the MUSAC by Mansilla & Tuñón, two museums of contemporary art in Madrid and León that show public support of avant-garde culture.
Venice was the most popular destination of the autumn, with a stormy Biennial that celebrated the career of Peter Eisenman – in the year of the centenary of his much admired Terragni –, the works of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, and the critical mood of the Belgian pavilion. For their part, the most controversial openings were those of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, a posthumous work of Enric Miralles whose budgetary chaos spurred a political inquiry; and that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, remodeled and extended by Yoshio Taniguchi with sober laconicism, and inaugurated – as the library built by Polshek for Clinton – after the heated elections that gave George Bush four more years at the White House.
In this last season, the disappearance of Jacques Derrida – whose philosophy of deconstruction inspired an architecture of fractured forms – was the coda of an obituary list that included the Europeans Kleihues, Belgiojoso, Reiner and Steidle, and the Americans Koenig, Larrabee Barnes, Abramovitz and Fay Jones, besides the great photographer Ezra Stoller: the buildings frozen before his lens trace the profile of an optimistic period, and of a modernity which still embraced a promise of emancipation. From the vanishing point of these first steps into the 21st century, a rational dream that has been displaced by the sleep of reason.