ARCHILETTERS

És des de l’obra anònima que hom pot fer Architecture without arhitects, agafant el fluxos dels invariants universals. Separant-nos de la luxúria dels marcadors de tendència efímers de moda.  Posant-nos del costat de l’arquitectura humil, tot sabent que el procés de construcció és l’inici i mai l’arribada d’un organisme transformable, que es modificarà en virtut de les necessitats i gustos de llurs habitadors.

Allò que els grans crítics dels anys 1980′, com ara Kenneth Frampton,  qualificaren com a “regionalisme crític” des del seu status dalt de la peanya. Allò que els servia per a fer autocrítica dels múltiples Kitsch en què queien els grans fenòmens adesiara associant amb l’apropiació de l’envolvent nostàlgica dels antics models de planejament urbà i la projectació d’artefactes per a viure-hi.

What is Architecture?

Normally, we don’t make a distinction between architecture and building. But I think it’s important to recognize that there are these two words in almost every language. And architecture with a  capital A has always been about public building (more or less). Although, of course, very fine architects design very sophisticated, defined, beautiful houses for high-class, bourgeois class, here and everywhere else… but when it comes to the question of extremely poor people, or the mass invasion of urban areas, the whole long-standing problem of favela, barriada, which goes back a good 60  years already, 70 years even, you know architects cannot do very much about that. It’s a demographic, economic, social, political problem. But architecture is impotent from that point of view. It’s more like building, it’s spontaneous building. People building their own houses, which I suppose is what happened during the medieval period and so on. So I think that in the end, one has to discriminate. I’m not saying that one cannot do social housing that has strong architectural quality. Sometimes we ask of the architectural profession demands which the profession by itself cannot meet. So I think that to distinguish between architecture and building, and I suppose finally “what is architecture?” I think architecture guarantees the public realm that kind of political and cultural importance. There’s a philosopher, Hannah Arendt, who coined the term “the space of public appearance.” I think architecture is ultimately about the space of public appearance, like this space for example, and this building.

https://vimeo.com/100454603