ARCHILETTERS

Estem dins d’un entorn heterogeni. Trinxat per infrastructures del sistema general urbà. Una nova zona. Creem una nova centralitat periurbana. Transportem la memòria antiga transformada en una nova fita arquitectònica contemporània.

Formes sublims de Constantinoble.La cúpula de Santa Sofia, el buit únic central de les mesquites que ascendeix buscant el matís de la llum natural.

Una peça que s’expandeix com un tsunami enmig de l’àrea que perllonga la seues onades per tota la ciutat. Heus ací l’emplaçament dins del solar.

L’edifici giravolta arrossegant els elements del programa de manera ordenada. Inverteix els elements, d’espectacle públic, de conferències i de planetari cap l’últim planta per a que l’edifici tinga circulació i vida contínuament. Concentrem en el pati central l’espectacle de simulació de terratrèmols dins d’una urna de vidre visible des dels deambulatoris abocats a l’espai central des de totes les plantes.

Afegim uns espais polivalents en les diverses plantes tant per a guardar ferraments, dedicar a classes, exposicions particulars o mostres sobre el moviment de les plaques tectòniques origen de tots aquests fenòmens.

Hi ha una rampa perifèrica que circumda en hèlix i exteriorment l’edifici que permet la visió panoràmica de tota al ciutat.

Totes les instal·lacions són conduïdes dins de dos nuclis estructurals amb forma de trapezis circulars junt al lobby d’entrada que acull dos ascensors panoràmics que es veuen des del vestíbul d’entrada. En els dits dos nuclis s’acull les dues escales d’emergència i fugida en cas d’incendi.

Així com la rampa perifèrica. Junt als dits nuclis inserim els lavabos.

L’espai central finalitza amb una cúpula de remembrances formals de mesquita-otomana.

L’espai central sols és dramatitzat en dues ocasions: el l’última planta on el planetari envaeix el nucli circular caient cap avall la seua forma en equilibri inestable; i en l’accés principal on el gran lobby ascendeix fins la coberta i on podem veure-hi passar els trams de rampa de quatre metres d’ample en voladís suspesos en l’aire per on circulen els visitants amb un pendent suau d’un sis per cent (6%).

S’intenta subvertir l’ascens wrightià del Guggengeim novaoirquès en externalitzar visualment i efectiva l’ascens.

L’estructura portant està dissenyada  de forma de costelles inserides en els radis circulars de formigó armat que subjecten radialment els forjats horitzontals i la rampa per l’exterior compensant les càrregues. L’edifici s’obre en el seu ascens com si fóra un ram de flors que és lligat perimetralment a nivell del forjat de coberta per a que no s’òbriga superiorment i alhora –per al seua forma- reculla els voladissos que cobreixen tota la base de l’edifici i reben l’entrega de la coberta metàl·lica de perfils amb dues capes.

Una exterior, motoritzada i computeritzada, de control de la incidència solar i generació d’energia fotovoltaica. La segona capa interior que és una pell de vidre que és de protecció a la intempèrie: tèrmica, pluges, neus, etc.

Els forjats posseeixen terres i sostres tècnics per al pas d’instal·lacions d’aigua, contra el foc, d’aspersors a pressió, boques d’incendi, d’instal·lacions domòtiques, elèctriques, electròniques i tubs d’aire condicionat, situant les toveres dirigides als diferents espais servits i tancats, com els de circulació pública oberts.

La sostenibilitat de l’edifici passa per l’existència de plaques solars, de plaques fotovoltaiques i la inserció d’aire condicionat a base d’intercanviadors de bombes de calor geotèrmics.

També s’incorpora la reutilització d’aigües pluvials recollides en dipòsits soterrats en el subsòl que serà usada per descàrregues de lavabos, neteja i aspersors d’incendi contra el foc, mànegues de boques d’incendi, rec dels jardins, etc.

La zona d’aparcament simbolitza la caiguda d’un objecte enmig de l’àrea amb ones circulars on hi ha cabuda a 204 vehicles particulars i vint autobusos voltats entre zones verdes de matolls (llessamins) i arbres de l’amor (cercis siliquastrum) i salzes plorós (salix babylonica). 

En el “vull llegir més …” hi ha un poc més de l’evolució del projecte..

GeoLogics:Geografía-Información-Arquitectura de Vicente Guallart from WebMaster on Vimeo.

From Political Games to Absolute Architecture … and Back – The Architectural Avant-Garde Today

by BAVO

Nothing. It was not my aim that he feels anything. I had only the aim to impose the grandeur of the building upon the people who are in it. If people who may have different minds are pressed together in such surroundings, they all get unified to one mind. That is really all.

Albert Speer when asked for the effect of architecture on the user. [1]

1. I will not apologize for what I am! Respect the cock!
In the last decade, a real exodus has taken place among the architectural avant-garde, not only to ‘allied’ disciplines such as design or urbanism, but also to geography, philosophy, art, photography. Avant-garde architects started to occupy themselves with everything except architecture in the strict, traditional sense. In an obscure, self-destructive mood, architects themselves shifted the focus away from their own discipline and turned to what they called ‘architecture without architects’, ‘do-it-yourself architecture’ or even ‘architecture against architecture’ [2]. Whether it concerned the endless megalopolises in China, shrinking cities in Eastern-Europe or illegal buildings in post-war Balkan, everywhere architects were eager to map these fascinating processes, to photograph the unplanned urban developments with a wide-angle lens from a helicopter, to simulate the built reality in 3D-models and so on. Based on these registrations thick books were produced that reported from a world where, so they stressed, architecture with a big A played absolutely no role whatsoever, and where the traditional role of the architect is being taken over by a heterogeneous group of engineers, developers, marketers, hobbyists and what not. Every time the discussion focused too much on architecture with a big A, architects hurried to stress that 99,9% of the population is not ‘into that’, that most part of the crust of the earth is covered with what the architectural profession would label as ‘pulp’: suburbs, slums, generic shopping malls and so on. In short, in cutting edge architectural circles it had become the norm to affirm everything whatsoever as architecture except… architecture itself! To summarize my point, we can say that the last ten years the seemingly liberating affirmation that ‘everything is architecture’ was paradoxically accompanied by the constant warning that ‘architecture is not everything’.
Of late there has been a growing resistance against this ‘evacuation of the discipline’. This is already obvious from the fact that after the years of aggression and self-hatred against the Master-Signifier ‘Architecture’, today it has been restored to its former glory. Either it is ‘elevated’ – think, for example, of the recent plea of architecture theoretician, Pier Vittorio Aurelio for an ‘absolute’ or ‘pure’ architecture [3]. Or, it is caught in tautological constructions such as ‘architecture is architecture’, ‘architecture is itself’, ‘architecture should have the guts to be architecture’, etc. [4] In the latter case, the same tactics are used as in the advertising world where one repeats the brand name over and over again in order to win over the consumer through pure repetition. Both reinvestments in architecture with a big A are definitely therapeutic. Tired of the knots in which one had to tie oneself to legitimize the fact that one just wanted to build or found enjoyment in the architectural text, a growing group of architects started to behave like guru, Frank T.J. Mackey (played by Tom Cruise) in the film Magnolia. [5] As a form of therapy for insecure men that have problems in taking up their phallic funtions, the guru organises sessions in which the men chant slogans together like: “I will not apologize for what I am… Respect the cock… and tame the cunt. Tame it!”. A similar acting-out is now at the order of the day in the architectural world. After the seemingly limitless expansion of the profession in the past decade, a re-territorialization is taking place. Now it is said that the architect should no longer lay down his mandate and flee from his responsibilities, but should learn to accept his socio-symbolic role. It is clear that this is a case of identity politics. Against the year-long imperative of interdisciplinarity, the architect is now charged with doing ‘what he has always done’: design and build. This is seen as the only way out of the years of promiscuous cross-breeding, the only way for architecture to regain its agency.
This retro movement seems refreshing especially when seen against the backdrop of the year-long self-bashing among avant-garde architects. In the latter case one could even speak of a ‘suicide of the profession’ since it is assumed that the architect cannot do more than passively gaze on in fascination as spatial processes spontaneously unfold. It is clear that in this case architecture is deprived of its capacity to actively intervene in society, bereft of its political role to contest and change the existing ideological coordinates. The presumed radical nature of the architectural phenomena that are mapped or charted – such as third world metropolises, illegal markets or shrinking cities – function thus as a mere fetish that hides the fact that on a deeper level the architect qua political subject is thought of as impotent. While this renewed interest in pure architecture may be encouraging, we nonetheless wonder whether this new orthodoxy is the only way to give back architecture its socio-political function. As the tautological construction already suggests, there is a danger that this radical re-birthing of architecture, this search for an architecture that is committed to society, will end up in its opposite: the architect seeking its salvation in a retreat behind the safe and well-tried limits of the profession, countering every criticism as a sign of disrespect towards his professional integrity. In short, the burning question is whether the much needed new commitment to architecture necessarily lies in a new conservatism.

2. The new commitment: the architect should do what it has always done
A paradigmatic example of this re-territorialization is the project Fear of the city (2004) conducted within the framework of Group Portraits for Young Architects 2004 by a group of young architects working together under the name Untitled. [6] Group Portraits is a two-yearly Dutch initiative that offers young architects a chance to produce work on hot social issues. This edition’s theme was ‘Fear and space’ and was obviously chosen in response to the growing unrest and polarization in the large cities in the Netherlands. The first thing that is striking about Untitled’s project is the way in which it delimits its position within the current architectural scene. In the publication, they stress the following: “for too long we kept analysing the city by mapping it, looking for subversive structures, characteristic marginal phenomena, just so we could go on believing that there is still a significant public domain behind the scenes. Having desperately tried to rediscover that city, we started having doubts”. [7] Against this, they plead for a re-investment in architecture qua architecture: “Untitled wants to focus again on the ‘profession’. It wants to regain the ability of being critical within its own medium. It practices architecture as a discipline of space…” [8] This other approach was already obvious from the stark contrast with the other contributions to Group Portraits. While the latter included an alternative sociological model and a public performance, Untitled choosed a straight architectural approach: their project consisted of clean and minimalist architectural models and technical drawings suggesting two alternative architectural typologies for high-rise buildings. Already the titles, Two Towers and one Square and One Tower and one Square, communicate the architectural rigidity of the project.
The second thing that was striking about the Untitled -project Fear of the city was its positive attitude towards the existing context: it wanted to “shamelessly embrace Rotterdam’s dream of becoming ‘a city of towers’ and to bend this force and use it to reshape the public space”. [9] Through an analysis of the cityscape of Rotterdam, Untitled claimed to have uncovered the city’s hidden architectural desire but, as project watcher Bert de Muynck stated: “Not as a ludicrously composed mirror image or missed opportunity, but as a joint, as a possibility to start working with that which exists.” [10] Untitled located the unconscious desire of Rotterdam in its phantasmagoric skyline, and its visible ambition to become ‘the Manhattan of the Maas’. And indeed, Rotterdam is renowned for being the one city in the Netherlands that fully embraces high-rise buildings. This not only as part of the official policy, but also as part of the underground culture: there are for instance several specialized websites where ‘high-rise buffs’ exchange the latest data and discuss the most recent additions to Rotterdam’s ‘skyscape’. Although positive about Rotterdam’s towers Untitled was concerned mainly about the desolate spaces at their base, and their erosive effect on the public space. In these negative side effects, Untitled localised the cause for the popular fears associated with high-rise city blocks and claimed to offer a spatial fix.
Symptomatic for this – as De Muynck called it – ‘in situ therapy’ of Rotterdam [11] was a photograph of the secular towers of Italian Medieval cities such as San Gimignano, shown during Untitled’s project presentation. In view of their methodology, the reason behind the choice of this image is obvious. It suggests that just as these towers are the architectural expression of the desire of the Medieval city communities, so too is it the case for Rotterdam’s longing for high-rise buildings. However, the association with this historical precedent brings us directly to the problematic nature of Untitled ‘sproject. In the first place, it is clear that the Italian ‘cities of towers’ are not so much the expression of the unconscious of the community but of a small minority of merchants who use the towers as status symbols or, to use the current idiom, a public relations strategy. On top of that, the ‘condition of possibility’ of these towers has to be situated in the accumulation of wealth in the hands of this same elite at the expense of the city as a whole. In short, are these towers – hailed and praised in tourist brochures – not an early manifestation of corporate architecture? And does the same not apply to Rotterdam, that other ‘city of towers’ for which Untitled holds an impassionate plea? For instance, one merely has to check the logos on the towers to figure out that the same real estate groups and banks that develop the towers – and so realize Rotterdam’s unconscious desire according to Untitled’s interpretation – are the same power conglomerates, which, with their religion of efficiency and outsourcing, keep an industrial city as Rotterdam in a state of permanent socio-economic insecurity. This is what Slovene philosopher, Slavoj Zizek calls ‘self-colonization’: the mechanism through which multinational operating concerns consider and treat their own country as ‘something that has to be exploited’. [12] Is it not a slap in the face of the better part of Rotterdam’s community to affirm precisely the corporate high-rise as its unconscious desire and make of it the key inspiration for an architectural project that is meant to take away all fear?
From contradictions like this, the basic procedure of new conservatives like Untitled becomes apparent. More precisely, that one should threat buildings independently from their political, economic or, in general, non-architectural aspects such as power, prestige, ideology and so on. To put it bluntly, that one has to look at the city’s architecture as a pure architectural gesture, as a professional idiot. With this, Untitled follows in the footsteps of Rem Koolhaas and his psychoanalysis of Manhattan’s skyscrapers in Delirious New York. [13] Here too we encounter a pure architectural genealogy that lacks any serious consideration of socio-economic or political aspects of the built reality. In both cases the underlying assumption is that something exists like an architectural desire uncontaminated by political or economic motivations. This is clearly a massive reduction of the built reality: it subtracts the most crucial dimension from the city’s unconscious, namely the imprints of socio-economic struggle on its architecture. By focusing on its skyline the unconscious desire of Rotterdam is reduced to the architectural ‘wet dream’ of a small minority of its inhabitants and reinforces an urban history of the ruling upper-class.
It is at this point that the doubt expressed earlier by Untitled about the existence of subversive structures, marginal phenomena or a public space in Rotterdam, backfires on them. They fail to realize that this is the inverted, ‘negative’ manifestation of the same ‘city of towers’ they endorse in their project. To be more precise, the disappearance of public space in Western-European cities is the result of the tendency of the global players behind the city’s development to repress everything that threatens their hegemony outside the borders of ‘Fortress Europe’. It is clear that a substantial public space forms such a threat to the peaceful existence of today’s consumer city. In this sense, it is quite cynical of Untitled to believe that it needs the high-rise ideology to accomplish its own political ambition: the therapeutic cure of the city as a public space. Does it not herewith enter a pact with the devil, if one takes into account that for years now the players behind this ideology have been outsourcing every real public space to other parts of the world? And, should the political role of the architect then consist of providing this ideology with a human and architecturally correct face? To these new conservatives we have one thing to say: know your enemy! Know yourself!
During Untitled’s project presentation one of the commentators – political philosopher, Dieter Lesage – pointed towards the socio-economic processes behind high-rise architecture. [14] For instance, he mentioned the fact that it causes land and property value as well as rent to increase exponentially, which furthers the gap between rich and poor. Indeed, all attempts to domesticate or humanize high-rise architecture by embracing it, seem inevitably to lead to an increase in speculation practices. And thus to the acceleration of the destruction cycle of the building stock, to the erosion of the public space and so on. In this sense, it is not at all clear in what way high-rise architecture would counter the city’s fear as Untitled believes. On the contrary, while it might be liberating for architects to endorse the modernist image of a city of towers, the majority of city dwellers see in it a symbol of global outsourcing, the revision of companies, financial insecurity, job cuts, etc. In this light, Lesage suggested to opt for an alternative urban policy for Rotterdam. Building further on its working class character he proposed to make of Rotterdam a ‘city of poverty’ like Marseille successfully does. He considered this strategy to be more realistic for Rotterdam than trying at all costs to keep up the illusion of being a global city by fulfilling its obligatory skyline. Significantly, Untitled replied that architects should steer clear of political matters, that it is not for the architect to determine community policies. Instead, the architect should stick to what s/he does best: design high-quality, innovative buildings that can be realized within the existing political regime. The bottom-line was that the architect’s involvement in socio-political matters should remain within his/her natural, subservient role.
In this context, one might wonder whether this new conservatism will ever be able to fulfil its ambitions? Did it not desperately want to escape the pitfalls of what they call the mapping approach and to reinvest architecture with the capacity to change and model society through a concrete building project? However, to us it seems that this forced attempt to escape the practice of mapping finally ends up having an equally depoliticizing effect on architecture. To be sure, the year-long scepticism towards architecture with a big A and especially its complicity with the ruling order led to a hysteric and unproductive disengagement from architectural praxis and ultimately to the legitimization of impotence. However, we should not forget that this split discourse certainly had something that is worth fighting for: its heightened awareness of the political function of architecture in the reproduction of the existing power relations. In this sense, we can legitimately ask whether the new conservatives have not thrown out the baby with the bathwater. If so, we should further ask whether this new conservatism in architecture is not in its essence yet another attempt at generating a ‘market difference’ – the attempt of a new generation of architects to create a niche and keep the architectural consumer’s desire alive.

3. Anca Petrescu: spiritual mother of the new commitment in Dutch architecture
In the reasoning of the new conservatives, we encounter the age-old topos of the perverse nature of the architect or more precisely, the phantasm of an ‘other space’. This refers to a political, economic or civil space in which all decisions concerning the organization of society are taken without the architect’s interference. A space, moreover, where the architect qua architect has nothing to say and can only passively look on. According to this phantasmatic scenario, the architect has no choice but to execute the plans of the existing order since he is a mere instrument, a ‘spoke in the wheel’ of society. The only thing that is expected of him is to ensure the architectural surplus-value of the building. This indemnifies the architect against the criticism that, assignment or not, s/he is still responsible for the political or economic implications of her design. For sure, we cannot but admit that the role of jurisdiction and breathing space of the architect today is often very limited. But, is it really true that s/he cannot do anything more than cater to the wishes of the client? He can for instance sabotage the assignment or, in the worse-case scenario, refuse it. However, what the pervert fears more than anything is the loss of enjoyment inherently linked to taking such a firm stance against the employer. Or, in more general terms, what he fears the most is the risk related to acting as a political subject as opposed to a mere instrument of the Other. In short, what is at stake here is the ‘belly of the architect’: performing a radical political act could mean losing the job, being treated as a pariah, getting sanctioned by the board of architects and so on. ‘Self- instrumentalization’ is the only way in which the pervert can solve these risks and secure his enjoyment. However, it is clear that this is a paradoxical enjoyment since it is obtained by voluntarily sacrificing one’s own desire in favour of the desire of the other. This perverse self-reduction can of course be repressed. Think of the typical complaint that architectural practices are mostly the outcome of pre-established demands and expectations with only a minimum of creative input. Still, even if architects generally occupy such a ‘Calimero position’, it still serves as way to legitimize the fact that they actually enjoy an Architecture uncontaminated by political issues as well as an architectural practice that is exempted from having to intervene in the Other Space of society.
By limiting architectural agency in the same, perverse way, the new conservatives join the ranks of architects such as Nazi architect Albert Speer or the Rumanian architect Anca Petrescu. Significantly, the latter recently came to occupy centre stage in Dutch architectural discourse. As is well-known, Petrescu was appointed at a young age by the then-dictator of Rumania, Nicolae Ceausescu to design his so-called House of the People that had to replace the old ‘bourgeois’ centre of the country’s capital, Bucharest. For most, complicity with this project would provide enough reason to whither away in silence afterwards – think of philosopher Martin Heidegger’s retreat after his romance with Nazism in the thirties. Not Petrescu however. After the collapse of the regime, she became the proud defender of the conservation and completion of the building. Up until this day, she still enthusiastically tours the building with interested parties. She is honestly convinced that Ceausescu’s palace is a blessing and a gift to the Rumanian people and the city of Bucharest in particular. Moreover, she is convinced she deserves the gratitude of the Rumanians since they now have a fabulous palace at their disposal thanks to her life-long sacrifice. After all, she managed to keep up with Ceausescu’s whims, to bracket her personal moral principles, and to concentrate on the ‘architectural aspect’ regardless of the rogue character of the regime. And indeed, apart from the parliament the architectural monster now houses one of the biggest conference centres in Eastern Europe as well as a museum for contemporary art. The fact that half of Bucharest had to be demolished first, and that for decades all the country’s resources were sucked into this project, is probably seen by Petrescu as a necessary evil, an inevitable sacrifice for architecture’s sake. In short, Petrescu’s motto seems to be that there is no architectural greatness without bloodshed, no Architecture without dirty hands! [15]
As if this is not bad enough in itself, Petrescu’s legitimization was recently enthusiastically endorsed by Dutch architecture historian, Wouter Vanstiphout. [16] This is all the more surprising since the latter is known in Dutch architectural circles as a progressive force. In 2001, for instance, Vanstiphout was awarded the Rotterdam Maaskant Prize for his engagement in the restructuring of the Rotterdam problem neighbourhood Hoogvliet, amongst other things. This sympathy of liberal-progressivist Dutch architects with their colleagues from the totalitarian tradition is, however, not completely incomprehensible. For years now Dutch architects have warded off every criticism related to the un-kosher character of the employers of their projects or their hidden agendas with the trite retort that architecture is not a profession for beautiful souls or noble principles but comes at a price. In this sense, we can see Vanstiphout’s defence of Petrescu as an ‘answer from the future’. It anticipates the possibility that on a certain day our prosperous liberal-democratic times will be unmasked as a dictatorship of the capitalist market economy. It anticipates moreover the unhappy moment when it will become clear that our Western civilization – including the celebrated Dutch architectural production – is paid for by the ‘blood, sweat and tears’ of the Southern hemisphere’s pauper population. In short, this identification with Petrescu by a prominent Dutch architecture historian, which not only normalizes but ‘hero-izes’ the perverse position of the architect, is meant to neutralize prospective criticisms. It is meant to create a conceptual climate in which it is completely acceptable to turn a blind eye to the prevailing regime’s political or economic corruption while catering to its architectural needs.
Herewith architecture depoliticizes itself even as it presents itself as the only way for architecture to contribute to the ‘good’ of society. The above makes clear that the new wave of commitment ultimately rests on the conservative belief that architecture is unable to really subvert the existing power relations. It has made its peace with the idea that architecture is inextricably bound to the status-quo because the latter determines its content – its programme, function and symbolism. Put bluntly, it argues that if a client asks an architect to build a gambling palace in Las Vegas, the architect can not not build it. He is free to refuse the job of course, but there are hundreds of architects that will gladly fill his shoes. In a ‘deconstructivist’ fashion, one can summarize this commonplace by saying that programme or function (and its ideological source) forms both the condition of possibility and impossibility of architecture. Today, many avant-garde architects heroically embrace this structurally decentred condition of architecture and shift their focus from interfering directly with ideologico-programmatic decisions which, so they argue, cannot be controlled anyway, to the formal aspects of architecture. By assessing the empirical conditions in which buildings come to be, the specific semantic levels in which buildings are inevitably enmeshed in a city, or by way of architectural-historical analysis, they try to establish an autonomous, absolute architecture – one that is no longer ‘troubled’ by decisions beyond its jurisdication. In short, they only focus on problems of a strictly architectural nature – problems of typology, form, space, circulation, light, material, etc. This legal-contractual interpretation of architecture’s agency obviously forecloses the possibility of a radical architecture, a fully politicized architecture that goes beyond what can be reasonably asked of it. Put differently, it rules out the possibility of an architecture that questions the criteria that determine what is reasonable and what is not since these criteria are not naturally given, but always determined by a ideological decision and thus political. It is precisely such an act that is being repressed by the ruling deontology of the new conservatives. They summon their colleagues to put their architectural expertise at the service of the interests and rights of the employer – just like a lawyer puts his juridical know-how at the disposal of his client.
4. From heroic realism to the realist hero
If Anca Petrescu is the spiritual mother of this new trend, Dutch architectural office Neutelings-Riedijk is the father. In a recent exhibition, they defined their position as a heroic realism. [17] This self-referential term serves as an excellent entry-point into the conceptual-ideological matrix of office Neutelings-Riedijk as well as the current architectural climate in the Netherlands. Paradigmatic in this regard is the office’s infamous entry in a competition for a concert hall in Bruges. Instead of compulsively questioning the programme or presuppositions of the employer, which for years was an obligatory task for radical architects, Neutelings-Riedijk remained very conservative and limited themselves to strictly architectural matters such as volume, form and materials. Symptomatic here is the way the office conceived the exterior of the building. On it they ‘copy-pasted’ the texture of Bruges’s number one tourist export product, their renowned lacework. The reasoning behind this formal-aesthetic decision is evident. Instead of attacking Bruges’s million dollar tourist industry head on – by opting for a modernist structure to mock Bruges’s pathetic architectural image of fake Medieval city – Neutelings-Riedijk chose for the inverse strategy by fully endorsing Bruges’s mythology. However, they did this in an unconventional, ‘tongue-in-cheek’ sort of way by blowing up the archetypical lacework motives to urban scale proportions and using them as decorative motif for the brickwork that covers the entire exterior surface of the building. In short, Neutelings-Riedijk’s intervention consisted in updating Bruges’s image, in applying a sort of ‘lacework in the age of mechanical reproduction’.
It is obvious why this is a good example of ‘heroic realism’. First, it is realist in that it does not attempt to intervene on the level of the programme of the building; it makes no effort to question or redefine the employer’s programme. This is a tendency that is gaining increasing ground among contemporary architects. If we scan the architectural field we encounter a myriad of justifications for this so-called realistic attitude. One often-heard reason is that the employer rarely accepts or appreciates such a negotiation of his needs and desires. More fundamental is the argument that programmatic interference smacks of demagogy. It is said to go against democratic principles since the architect forces his own beliefs and programmes on society and this in a building that belongs to the community. Behind this reproach is another popular topos, that of the architect as a totalitarian dictator who abuses his privileged position in the building process to realize his own aesthetic preferences, agendas and ideologies. Moreover, heroic realists are quick to add that in the time of the ‘End of all grand narratives’ there no longer exists a shared, positive, societal project that can legitimize such an intervention. In this context, any intervention of the architect on the level of programme cannot but be based on his personal opinion which is only one among many. For this reason it is seen as a virtue to push through one’s own convictions only with moderation and respect for others
With the latter, we encounter the most important move made by heroic realists: their ‘turn to reality’ is affirmed as a strength, as a form of heroism, as a victory upon its own hubris. Heroic realists claim that only through a realistic attitude can the architectural discipline be liberated from the heavy moral burden that it has taken upon itself for too long, which has prevented the architectural profession from fully exploring or realizing its own potential. In other words, they claim that only an architecture that modestly sticks to strictly architectural manipulations – an architecture within the limits of architecture alone so to speak – can realize the avant-garde constructivist dream: the enlightenment and transformation of man through architecture.
Although Neutelings-Riedijk’s entry was awarded second place in the competition, we should refrain for attributing this to its subversive quality. To be sure, the winning entree by Belgian architectural office Robbrecht & Daem was a far more traditional design – something which set the tone of the discussions in the media and among Bruges’s inhabitants: it appeared as if the modest-introvert Belgian had defeated the arrogant-provocative Dutchman. However, this obscures the fact that the fundamental architectural operation of both designs was the same. In the winning design it was not Bruges’s lacework but its typical red-brown terracotta roof-tiles that were used in an unconventional way to cover the exterior surface of the building. The debate was thus a pseudo-debate that hid the fact that both designs share the same fundamental position: without scruple both identify with the imaginary place carved out for it in Bruges’s city-marketing scheme. As everybody knows, the concert hall was one of the ‘grand projects’ of mayor Patrick Moenaert. It was meant to be the mantle piece of Bruges Cultural Capital of Europe 2002 – the ultimate city marketing scheme if ever there was one. With the new concert hall, Bruges set out to conquer a new niche: that of the contemporary cultural tourist who apart from consuming historical items wants to enjoy a lively, contemporary cultural scene. In this way the new fashioned concert hall was an attempt to break with its image of being a conservative nest where all normal urban life or activity is put on hold in function of its sole economic motor: tourism. The concert hall had to put Bruges on the map as a proud city that fully takes on the challenges demanded of cities in the 21st century.
However exciting this romance between realism and heroism might seem, its true political allegiance cannot be mistaken: it is part of the new wave of conservatism that has infected the contemporary architectural avant-garde. This is already apparent from the formal structure of the term ‘heroic realism’ as well as all other ‘isms’ that currently circulate to characterize the new engagement proper to contemporary avant-garde architects. Think for instance – apart from heroic realism – of terms such as ‘dirty realism’, ‘fresh conservatism’, ‘radical mediocrity’ or ‘dirty minimalism’. [18] The first striking feature is the fact that all these terms are comprised of two terms that are intuitively and conceptually incompatible. This clearly reveals the manifest belief among architects and theorists that the classic categories used to determine the political flavour of architectural design no longer hold in our late-capitalist present. If we go beyond this first impression of a confusion of terms however, we notice a constant behind these ‘isms’. To be more precise, the terms one would traditionally attribute to avant-gardist architecture – heroic, dirty, fresh, radical – are included as adjectives. Inversely, all tendencies that are normally perceived as reactionary – realism, conservatism, mediocrity, minimalism – are incorporated as nouns. This means that the progressive term is used to characterize the way in which the conservative term is executed. For example, one is conservative but in a fresh way, mediocre but in a radical way and so on. This systematic downplaying of the progressive term is symptomatic for the new engagement in architecture: despite its mixed, hybrid character the true conservative essence of contemporary architecture is easily distinguishable.
In an age in which architecture increasingly disappears in the marketing schemes of municipalities and real estate developers it is very urgent to invert this hierarchy and push the conservative terms into the adjective position. In other words, what is needed today are architects with fresh ideas without a conservative impulse or a radical architectural movement that is not afraid of resorting to very realistic, conservative or dirty tactics to implement these ideas. In short, we need a ‘realist hero’, instead of a ‘heroic realist’. Although this might seem like a negligible modification, it is this very minimal difference that is fundamental for architecture to reconquer its subversive potential.
5. In Lagos, children don’t cry
One of the crucial references for understanding heroic realism is an early project by Rem Koolhaas – another founding father of contemporary avant-garde architecture in the Netherlands – entitled Exodus, or, the voluntary prisoners of architecture. [19] This project sets out a conceptual scheme – worked out in text and collage – for a huge superstructure erected above the metropolitan area of London. According to Koolhaas’s vision, people would voluntarily strip themselves of all their rights and possessions to be able to experience the architectural intensities and experiments taking place in this gigantic dark room. The project should be seen as part of Koolhaas’s criticism against the weak-hearted humanism of modernism à la Team X – a movement that was itself already a criticism of orthodox CIAM modernism. This criticism, dominant since the late fifties, culminated in the Situationist movement. It is therefore no coincidence that Koolhaas’s superstructure looks like a copy of the ‘sectors’ of Constant’s New Babylon. The legal striptease to which the crowds voluntarily subject themselves in Koolhaas’s Exodus are off course the same rights – air, light, space, greenery, etc. – that generations of modernists had projected onto the urban field.
The thing not to miss in this architectural fairy-tale is how the concept of voluntary servitude is radically inverted. In the original of Etienne de la Boétie it functions as the cornerstone of a rather dark, anti-progressivist, pessimistic vision that detects something in humankind that repeatedly desires its own subordination. [20]. In other words, it pointed to an enigmatic inertia in man that makes him resist his emancipation and avoid a confrontation with his radical freedom. Although Koolhaas criticizes the progressivist, emancipatory discourse of modernism, he attaches a much more affirmative meaning to the concept of voluntary imprisonment. In his view, the voluntary prisoner of architecture is a type of urban dweller that no longer lets himself be caught in the moralism of generations of modernist planners. It is somebody who no longer asks of the architects to guarantee a minimal quality of life or to prevent and fix every possible nuisance in his habitat. On the contrary, it is a dweller that voluntarily ignores all the accomplishments of modernity and is willing to risk all of these all too human things for the intensification and multiplication of his kicks – which in Koolhaas’s scheme also include architectural kicks. Koolhaas’s point is that modernism developed in a too pastoral direction, into “an urbanism for the socially and physically handicapped” [21] in which the architect treats the urban populations as weak and pitiful beings that have to be kept biologically, physically and morally healthy. To put it in Freudian terms, modernism overemphasized homeostasis, ignoring or underestimating the erotic or death drive in humankind. Koolhaas’s remedy is obvious: the new modernists should rather conceive of the metropolitan multitudes as Nietzschean figures who do not fear the deterritorializations caused by the globalization and commodification of the urban environment but, on the contrary, affirm it as ways to organize their pleasure in ever more elaborate and intense ways.
This vision has become without doubt the gospel for the architectural avant-garde today or at least for the new generation of fresh conservatives, heroic realists and so on. Whether it concerns skyscrapers, pseudo Medieval cities, shopping malls, African megapolises, the inhabitants of problem neighbourhoods, homeless people or illegal inhabitants, in the discourse of today’s avant-garde architects they are all immediately rewritten as voluntary prisoners. It is argued that only to an outsider, these people might seem condemned to life in inhumane situations, and thus become an object of pity or disgust. Against this, the heroic realist – obviously an ‘insider’ – firmly claims that if you would ask these people themselves, they would not want to trade their lifestyle with any other. In short, the proponents of Koolhaas’s philosophy of voluntary imprisonment claim that most of the present-day metropolitan problems only exist in ‘the eye of the beholder’. They are products of the prejudice of the architect, which in turn is linked to his position in society. As a consequence, any critical or non-affirmative attitude towards these marginal groups is seen by most of today’s cutting edge architects as a stubborn ideological distortion that has to be exorcized at all costs.
What is so problematic about this thesis of the voluntary prisoners of architecture and the way it is practiced by the majority of progressive architects? In one of OMA’s recent exhibitions in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, a documentary was shown in which an exalted Koolhaas claims that he has never seen any children crying in the African megalopolis of Lagos. [22] This anecdote is exemplary for Koolhaas’s analysis of this Third world city which according to him provides us with the conceptual toolbox for a contemporary architectural avant-garde praxis. [23] He for instance provocatively claims that “Lagos represents a developed, extreme, paradigmatic case-study of a city at the forefront of globalizing modernity. … Lagos is not catching up with us. Rather we may be catching up with Lagos.” [24] The anecdote about the ‘not crying’ children of Lagos clearly reveals the dubious stance of Koolhaas’s thesis of the voluntary prisoners. One detects an uncanny resonance with the neo-colonialism of Westerners commentating on the big libido of Africans, their huge genitals, their unrivalled rhythmic feel or their athletic capacities. Or, the common assumption that people living in slums – think of the Brazilian favelas – after all live a more spontaneous live and are happier than us neurotic control freaks in the West. Between the lines of these clichés a clear moral prohibition can be read, urging us not to mess up their supposed happiness by interfering politically or economically in processes that might appear inhumane to us Westerners.
Let me repeat this point with the aid of another example. I don’t think it is a coincidence that in today’s designer’s circles or the enlightened cultural scene in general there is such a flirting going on with pornography. The aesthetic of ‘hustlers & pimps’ or the wild and ‘juicy’ lifestyle of porn stars has become the theme for many a culturally correct party, the dress-code of the urban avant-garde and even an inspiration for cutting-edge architectural details. [25] The ideological nature behind this fascination becomes obvious if we regard the porn-star as the ultimate voluntary prisoner. Today, only a retarded moralist can still seriously claim that porn-stars are victims of a ruthless and perverted industry and suggest that it would be better for them to have a monogamist, straight relationship, to enjoy the satisfaction of working in the household or of having a straight job. Such criticism can easily be countered by the question of who is in fact imprisoned here: the critic or the porn star? Of course, porn stars themselves usually promote their job as a dream-job – preferable any day to the imprisonment of a normal, institutionalized marriage. Still, is this presentation of the so-called facts not rather cynical in a time in which children are bombarded from an early age by perverse sexual demands through advertisements, video clips or television series that are carefully designed by an entire industry? Even if youngsters dress up voluntarily like ‘hustlers and pimps’ is it not rather the existing system of economic and power relations that wants this through them? The adjective ‘voluntary’ loses all meaning here since the subject is on a more fundamental level deprived of its will. Or put differently, the subject is unconsciously made to want it.
6. It’s about a voluntary imprisonment ‘with a will’, stupid!
The first step to break with the present conservative architectural climate is to make Koolhaas’s concept more precise by speaking instead of a voluntary imprisonment without a will. Seen from this perspective,the heroic realist architect – voluntarily imprisoning himself in conservative architectural phenomena such as shopping centres and tourist industries – appears in a different light. It is clear that with the copy-pasting of all kinds of reactionary architectural elements the architect also sacrifices his initial will to politicize the antagonisms behind these phenomena. However, instead of rejecting this strategy altogether, we need a selective or strategic affirmation of conservative architectural codes and structures. After all, even if one sees in realism the only way out, even if the only opportunity for an avant-garde architectural project today is to be found in heroically endorsing the prevailing architectural programmes, this does not free the architect from thinking strategically. Can these reactionary architectural phenomena not serve as a vehicle for provoking and subverting the underlying ideological processes? And does such a selectively affirmation not enable architecture to be critical while at the same time accept the demands of the employer? In short, even if it seems impossible today not to relate to the dominant programmes or forms, the architect can still choose to become a voluntary prisoner with a will.
To make this strategy concrete, we can refer to a project by Belgian architect, Wim Cuyvers. It concerns a stereotypical Belgian housing project: a free-standing single family house nestled in a small condominium of houses. [26] These condominiums usually prescribe certain rules for the design of the houses. Relevant here is the fact that the building materials had to be ‘region-specific’, which – as every Belgian architect knows – is but another term for rustic bricks and terracotta roof-tiles. Apart from that, another important element to know is the fact that the client could hardly afford the property not to mention any additional building costs. The architect thus had to find the cheapest possible solution. Further, the project is situated in a heterogeneous landscape of condominiums, huges blocks of industrial greenhouses as well as canning factories – the type of area known in architectural circles as the ‘In-between-land’. [27] What is particularly celebrated is these sorts of areas is its heterotopic and dirty character, the fact that it is both rural and urban, vernacular and high-tech, traditional and industrial. Cuyvers’design seems to have negotiated all these factors by designing the house in, what you could call, a Le Corbusian way, a ‘greenhouse for living’. The house consists of a huge cubic industrial greenhouse construction containing all the living functions. One of the reasons for this choice is that an industrial greenhouse construction is a very cheap way of building while allowing, at the same time, for huge living surfaces and an experimental lay-out for the housing programme.
Apart from these, what you could call, internal design affairs, the materials and construction method were also chosen in order to intervene in the context. That the latter was achieved was already clear from the violent debate Cuyvers’s greenhouse stirred with the surrounding house-owners as well as the municipality. The latter accused the design for being a barbaric architectural act with total disrespect for the regional building tradition. Still, legally speaking they could not prevent this design from being built since the greenhouse seems to inversely accuse the other pseudo rustic houses from being disharmonic elements in a landscape governed by industrial greenhouses. Thus opening a debate on the relativity of what people spontaneously experience as their architectural identity.
The strategic genius of this house is that through a strictly architectural intervention political issues were addressed and worked through. In the first place, the tension between the ‘Belgian cottage’ as symbol of the anarchist radical-democratic Belgian housing culture on the one hand, and the network of formal and informal building regulations that keep building costs unnecessary high on the other. It is clear that with this, only the upper middleclass is allowed to satisfy its anarchist drive and further that it mainly benefits Belgium’s brick capitalists. In the second place the house reveals the split nature of its context: the so-called In-between-land. It reveals how an architectural conservatism celebrating the traditions of rural life forecloses the ‘Real’ industrial-economic processes, not allowing for any hybrid forms to be developed. However, in both cases Cuyvers’s greenhouse goes further than simply staging the contradictions of the context or mirroring them. The building functions rather as an unbearable knot that creates a short-circuit between all parties of the ‘in-between-land’ and forces them to choose sides. The house has such a suffocating effect because it reveals how the many differences of the area are based on a deeper identity. In the first case, the fact that the anarchist-libertarian ideal of having one’s own cottage is only possible through a juridical-economic set of rules that secures the exclusivity of the own enclave. In the second place, the house shows how the peaceful condominiums deny their condition of possibility: the industrial horticulture that first make them possible because they support the region economically. By revealing the underlying relations of dependence the building reveals the superficiality of the heterotopic tensions of this ‘in-between land’.
Let me end by bending this discussion back to the new conservatism in architecture I have problematized above. What makes of the design of Cuyvers an act of a realist hero is that through a purely formal architectural invention – which is what Untitled and Neutelings & Riedijk plea for – he politicizes the political and economical inconsistencies typical for Belgian housing ideology. On top of that, Cuyvers’s building proves that such an architectural act is not necessarily at the expense of the client and its interests and rights. Neither does the architect herewith commit ‘professional suicide’. Let alone that it implied a return to an elitist architecture. Firstly, the architect’s statement was clearly understood by all parties involved. Secondly, the ‘greenhouse house’ also offers a realistic alternative both economically, ecologically and spatial for the dominant building praxis. In short, all disaster scenario’s that keep the new conservatists from doing more than facilitating the demands of the employer, proved in this case to be mere phantasmatic constructions that are meant to legitimize one’s own passivity. In this sense, the house reveals how architectural formalism does not exclude political intervention.
If architecture wants to take up its avant-gardist mission again and subvert society from within, it is only possible in such a precise, selective and political-strategic over-identification with existing architectural codes. However, to achieve this, one cannot avoid to play political games, dirty the formal purity of architecture or, in short, to put at stake the absolute character of architecture. We have to be very precise here. Our criticism of the new conservatives is not just that an architecture that wants to stay far away from ideological games and remain on its own level – an absolute architecture so to say – cannot escape recuperation by the regime in which it is embedded. Rather than eradicating all hope for a radical architecture, the point is that this recuperation takes place precisely when it takes as its objective such a naïve pseudo-avant-gardist longing for a pure architecture. Cuyvers’s greenhouse house on the contrary proves that it is more strategic to depart from the opposite premise. Through a deformation of a statement of the Slovenian avant-garde rock-band Laibach, we can determine the latter as follows: all architecture is subjected to political or economical manipulation except for that which speaks the language of the same manipulation. [28]
NOTES
1. http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,885724,00.html#article_continue
2. See the essayas ‘Do-It-Yourself’ and ‘Architecture against Architecture’ by Roemer van Toorn, www.xs4all.nl/~rvtoorn
3..See PhD thesis entitled The Possibility of Absolute Architecture, defended at the T.U.Delft, 10/10/2005
4. See ‘Architecture is itself’ in the program brochure 35m3 young architecture, Office K.G.D.V.S., De Singel/VAi; pp. 16-33; see also ‘DTN#2, Architecture is itself! DTN#2 in gesprek met Eleni Gigantes & Elia Zenghelis’, in AS no.161, 2002, pp.70-81
5. Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999
6. Untitled consists of Kersten Geers, David van Severen, Bas Princen and Milica Topalovic
7. Fear & Space, NAi Publishers 2004, p.110
8. Ibid., p. 156.
9. Ibid., p. 94.
10. Ibid., p. 85.
11. Ibid., p. 85.
12. Slavoj Zizek, Ticklish Subject, Verso 1999, p.215
13. Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York, 010-Publishers 1994
14. Witte de With Rotterdam, 11/12/2004. See also Dieter Lesage ‘Metropolitane Machinaties’, in Metropolis M no. 2, 2005, p.80-83
15. It is a significant anecdote that when Petrescu went into hiding in Paris after the regime change she built tourist palaces for the Club Med in Florida – other elite, same position.
16. He made these claims during the television programme RAM on Dutch public television channel Nederland 3, 29/02/2004
17. Exhibition Behind the Curtains: Fifteen Buildings by Neutelings Riedijk Architects, in the Netherlands Architecture Institute, spring 2004.
18. Respectively: Rem Koolhaas in S,M,L,XL, 010-publishers 1997, pp. 570-577; Roemer Van Toorn ‘Fresh Conservatism, Landscapes of Normality’, 1997 (www.xs4all.nl/~rvtoorn); Henk Oosterling Radicale Middelmatigheid, Boom 2000; Wouter Vanstiphout ‘Dirty Minimalism”, in Archis, no. 5, 2004, pp. 76-79.
19. See, Rem Koolhaas S,M,L,XL, 010-publishers 1997, pp. 2-21
20. See Etienne de la Boétie The Politics of Obedience: the Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Black Rose Books 1975.
21. Rem Koolhaas Bijlmerstrip, Technische Universiteit, 1977, p.4
22. Exhibition Content, in the Kunsthal, Spring 2004
23. Rem Koolhaas, Mutations, ACTAR 2000
24. Ibid., p.653
25. See Roemer van Toorn ‘Dirty details’, www.xs4all.nl/~rvtoorn
26. Gits, Belgium 2000
27. Ruimtelijk Planbureau, Tussenland Nai Publishers 2004. See also: Dieter Hamers, ‘Nederland Tussenland’, in: Filosofie Magazine no.2, 2005
28. See Laibach’s convenant of Trbovlje, 1982 at: www.nskstate.com

Per tant, la conseqüència és que a més de la metodologia proposada des del projecte, caldrà procedir a realitzar infiltracions de resines per tal d’obturar aquestes ‘buidors’ amb injeccions (infiltracions al mur ençà l’extradós) des de l’interior de l’intradós del mur a base de morters amb resines epoxídiques. El hàndicap de les infiltracions radica en que obturem entrades conegudes i l’aigua sempre cerca -i en troba-, de nous conductes de penetració a distàncies impensables.

  

Pengem una sèrie de fotos amb d’altres dos vídeos del procés en el “vull llegir la resta…“

Apareixen també algunes solucions de façana en què hem canviat el raspallat de juntes per la projecció d’aigua a baixa pressió ( aproximadament 4 atmosferes) per a netejar i sanejar les juntes de les fàbriques així com la pol·lució adherida al maó cara-vista.
Com en qualsevol activitat cal anar fent aquestes aproximacions successives encerclant les causes dels problemes, per tal d’esbrinar les causes i donar solucions. Ha estat bé una mena de ‘brainstorming’ que hem fet in situ tots els presents. No resulta fàcil trobar els punts d’entrada actuals i , molt menys, els futurs. Heus ací el nostre repte.

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Per l’actualitat i persistent existència en els darrers temps d’aquestes patologies hem cregut oportú publicar aquest post. Les fltracions en soterranis és una de les patologies constructives que més estan sovintejant en els darrers anys. Possiblement perquè en les darreres dècades hem fet més soterranis que jamai abans. Tot i que, caldria afegir amb una gran mancança de coneixement de com funciona la mecànica del subsòl. Sols a partir de mitjans dels seixantes comencem a tindre un aparell de càlcul mitjanament fiable conjuntament amb l’estructural. Dos sistemes basats en concepcions ‘model’ que evolucionen i interaccionen continuament.

En les darreres dues o tres dècades en els plans generals s’ha inserit l’obligaritorietat de fer-ne places d’aparcament percentualment segons els habitatges existents. Com el sòl és car, cal situar-les on no consumisquen edificabilitat com és al subsòl. I que hi acomplisquen els requeriments establerts per la normativa urbanística.

En certa època, tret de les grans promocions, no hi havia la possibilitat d’emprar mètodes de realització ‘in situ’ de murs pantalla continus de formigó armat amb excavació amb murets-guia que canalitzaren les culleres bivalves d’extracció i llots tixotròpics bentònics.
En aquelles situacions d’emplaçament àmples on es podia fer a cel obert podria donar-se el cas que calguera la dessecació mitjançant bombes introduïdes en el subsòl amb la voluntat de rebaixar el nivell d’aigua existent dels estrats inferiors per succió mitjançant el bombeig per a poder treballar com si fóra en sec. Això s’aconseguia aplicant el mètode wellpoint.

Tampoc, encara, teníem els actuals prefabricats palplanxes inserits per acció mecànica de vibració o colpeig. Provinents de la construcció civil de grans infrastructures.
    
Cal dir que hem anat aprenent pel tradicional mètode de prova i error. Aprendre a construir dins del camins del mercat de la manera que pogueren encabir els costos dins d’ell.
Sempre s’ha pogut construir bé amb molts de diners. Per contra, el difícil és fer-ho amb recursos límitats. Des dels anys setantes del segle passat començaren a sovintejar i a cercar-s’hi mètodes estesos entre el promotors i constructors per a complimentar tal requeriments.
I l’encàrrec de trobar resposta recaigué sota responsasbilitat d’arquitectes i d’enginyers. I no ha estat gens fàcil, doncs era considerada una acció de bescanvi entre el diner esmerçat a construir-los i el diner obtingut per la venda de les places d’aparcament fins que els preus s’han enfilat amunt.

Per a desencallar tal situació, calgué usar mètodes artesanals com ara anar fent anells de formigó armat i deixar armadures en espera, bé en superfície del mur, o bé soterrades en sorra, que en continuar l’excavació desplegàvem per a lligar en l’anell inferior superposant-les amb les noves. Tot això, òbviament fet a trams o batatxes. Amb tot és entretingut vore les fileres de vellets que segueixen els moviments d’una obra d’aquesta mena. Recordava el que s’anomena ‘pous indis‘.

Hem aprés que en els inicis es formigonaven els murs per etapes. Per anells que s’anaven cosint verticalment entre ells i enllaçant als forjats horitzontal mitjançant armadures en espera. En comptades ocasions era possible

Antigament calien uns percentatges de cotxes o a voltes ni tan sols això. En la darrera tongada de plans d’ordenació urbana calia una plaça per habitatge més un percentatge d’elles en funció de la superfície dels altres locals per a usos diversos.

Ara tenim un coneixement científic dels sòls més o menys elaborat. L’estudi dels sòls és ben recent. D’unes quatre dècades ençà. Així com del moviment dels nivells freàtics del subsòl en funció de les estacions anuals, el règim de pluges, etc.

En quant a les tècniques constructives en les dues dècades finals s’ha esmolat i desenvolupat. Tanmateix ara ens troben en quantitat de casos que foren construïts entre els setantes i els inicis del segle actual. En la construcció de murs de contenció de terres ens trobem amb algunes problemàtiques espècífiques com són:

1. La pràctica impossibilitat d’impermeabilització dels murs per la cara exterior quan els fem amb culleres bivalves i llots tixotròpics, en què la cara de formigó armat està en continu contacte amb el nivell freàtic d’aigües subterrànies i la seua afecció continuada.

2. si poguérem impermeabilitzat caldria una pèrdua d’uns 5 cm al voltant del tota la perifèria murària i això suposa molts metres quadrats que són necessaris per a incloure-hi les places que estan mesurades en dimensions mínimes i llur accés.

3. El sistema constructiu usat normalment consisteix a realitzat buidats i anellat per plantes connectant-los mitjançant el forjats intermedis el que pressuposa la realització d’un parell de juntes de formigonat entre la part inferior i la superior de cada forjat. És el que hom diu ‘junta freda’ en general i que avui pot ser evitada amb la imprimació d’una resina epoxi entre el formigó vell i el nou fresc que ‘tanque’ i impermeabilitze la dita junta. Eixos materials procedents de la indústria química orgànica de tancament són recents i que apareixen en la dècada dels noranta del segle passat. Així les ‘oureres’ de pvc, poliuretà, etc. amb els tubs drenant de sota dels murs i la reblida exterior per extractes de sòls que vagen drenant els líquids en descens a causa de la força de gravetat.

Fa tres anys ens van encarregar un projecte de reparació que vam haver de elaborar a corre cuita i que suposa la impermeabilització dels soterranis de nou (9) torres d’un complex residencial de més de 270 habitatges que en breu començarem a realitzar. El dit complex es va edificar durant els setantes promogut per una de les grans promotores de la ciutat i que quedava entre mig de les hortes i estava aïllat dels seus voltants erigint-se tot sol com si fóra un terra de ningú. A hores d’ara ja ha estat connurbats per grans avingudes. Conscients de la problmàtica van alçar dues caixes estanques la dels garatges, la dels jardins i  una que se’ns ha afegit consistent en la realització d’un mur que recorre pel mig de l’avinguda destinada a albergar el metropolità en un futur. Amb dita acumulació de barreres se’ns fa molt difícil la dessecació dedels terrenys immediats al soterrani. Som conscients de que l’aigua subterrània constitueix un acompanyant no desitjat però perenne. En un primer moment volíem buidar el terreny i impermeabilitzar l’extradós del mur i implantar un mur nou de protecció drenant…però amb el pas dels pressupostos la quantitat de diner se’ns anava de les mans, amb la qual cosa en els darrers mesos ha calgut ajustar-se a solucions més econòmiques. Després de molts dubtes sols se’ns va acudir que traspolar les pràctiques de la impermeabilització de les juntes dels trams de túnels dels trens metropolitans i per l’interior actuar com si volguérem impermeabilitzar una piscina o dipòsit de líquid. La solució que hem redissenyat és la següent i vos expliquem el seu funcionament:

La solució consisteix a conèixer el sistema constructiu emprat aleshores, sabe rel seu punt feble d’entrada d’aigua sota la pressió hidrostàtica exterior que fa que acabe intersticiant-se i deixatant la junta. Provoca la penetració i major diàmetre virtual dels canals. Tot sabent que la junta generalment es produeix a la part inferior he optat per fer una regata longitudinal amb tronxadora que elimine el formigó sense afectar les armadures del mur. Netejar i pasivitzar de la corrossió aquestes. Aplicació en el fondo de la regata una massilla hidroexpansiva que quan penetra l’aigua i entra en contacte amb ella produeix un augment de volum i un esforç que cal que siga coartat tant pel forjat superior i el pla inferior irregular. Per a la qual acció cal fer una pel·lícula longitudinalment que faça de pont d’unió al reblit longitudinal de morter de reparació amb particules de fibres de polipropilé. El punt clau consisteix a que si expandira la massilla espentaria fora de la secció el reblit de morter. Per tant, per a subjectar i evitar la dita acció, cal contrarestar-la amb la inserció de petits ancoratges en forma de L inserit-los amb resines epoxi prèvia trepanació inclinada per a poder insertar els trepadors de cap multidireccionals.

Donada la irregularitat i heterogeítat dels murs després de 30 anys, hem projectat a més a més, actuar com si d’una cara interior de piscina o dipòsit de líquids. És a dir, eliminar les pintures dels murs, sanejar-los, emplastar-los i donar dues capes de productes l’enginyeria de túnels.
Una de morter osmòtic cristal·litzador a base de ciment especial i minerals reactius de silici que ens faria de taponador en superfície. I una segona capa i més exterior un impermeabilitzant especial, que ens permetreu de no revelar.

L’única manera de dialogar críticament en les arts és fer-ho des de fets concrets des de la pròpia art. Com és el camp de l’arquitectura. Vos mostrem un exemple ubicat en El Cabanyal, on tanta violència i dolor s’ha generat. La proposta alternativa ve de la mà de la tranquil·litat, la calma, la viabilitat i l’amor concret a una societat i llurs materialitats que conformen un tot únic. Insubstituïble. Davant d’una reacció agressiva, una resposta amable, amorosament suau.
PS: El Cabanyal no és un fet immaterial, per això ens hem permés la llicència gramatical d’usar el genetiu saxó. Un fenomen paradigmàticament viu. Un toll de petits diferencials anònims que en el conjunt de l’agressió perd l’anonimat. El vídeo, el missatge i eixa rehabilitació és la nostra petita contribució a la propaganda pel fet humà. Per a ésser acurats, caldria parlar més prompte, de Poble Nou de la mar. Tot esperant que vos agrade. Un homenatge també per a l’arquitecte suís-americà,  Bernard Tschumi, qui des de Londres estant durant els anys 1970′ ens explicà casos semblants en Irlanda del Nord.

A tomb d’aquesta situació creada cal veure una fal·làcia promoguda pel consistori municipal amb l’anuència de la legalitat existent i del sistema de representació ciutadana. A propòsit de les darreres eleccions municipals semblava que tota la ciutadania votàvem sobre l’esdevenidor urbanístic d’El Cabanyal. Aquells que no som ciutadans directament afectats dels districtes marítims del Poble Nou de la Mar no hi hauríem de poder modificar què vol la ciutadania implicada. Aquest sistema s’aplica en sistemes polítics immadurs. Més burocràtics i opacs. Possiblement el desenvolupament, en el cas contrari, seria més lent i caldria aplicar-se més a fondo en el debat i major participació directa del ciutadà. Vos mostre un exemple que s’esdevé aquests dieas a Zuric amb la ubicació del projecte guanyador del Kunsthaus museum, projecte guanyat per David Chipperfield i que està generant molta polèmica i que properament serà sotmés a referèndum per a que el seu emplaçament siga desplaçat 10 metres per a poder permetre certes vistes que oculta i els veïns no volen perdre’n. Alhora de que l’edifici projectaria ombres que no en volen. En cas de guanyar el corriment, tindria la conseqüència immediata de que Chipperfield hi hauria de modificar el projecte.
La democràcia, feta des de baix, no pot ser aliena al fet del planejament urbanístic i l’arquitectura. I a la inversa. Un bon urbanisme no pot restar al marge de l’opinió i l’acció pública. e la transparència que tant ens cal a tot arreu del món. Un petit cercle d’escollits documentats, per molt formats que estiguen, no pot esdevenir el cenacle de gurus de la tribu. Perquè estan fets per al conjunt de la ciutadania. I cada petit col·lectiu ha d’ésser responsable del seu entorn immediat.

Ací teniu la polèmica zuricenca:

Campaigners are trying to force David Chipperfield to move his
planned £100 million Kunsthaus extension in central Zurich by 10m.

The
project will have to be approved by a city referendum, and the council
is taking the well-organised protest seriously. But it denies the Open
Peacock campaign – named after the square where the Kunsthaus stands –
is responsible for the project falling six months behind schedule.

Chipperfield,
who won the scheme in competition in 2008, has already been forced to
shrink it by 6% following recommendations from the jury.

The
protesters, who support the project in principle, claim it would
overshadow the square in its planned location and cause overcrowding
when visitors queue for what would be Switzerland’s biggest art gallery.

They have drawn up their own detailed plans showing how stepping it back by 10m would create a more generous entrance.
Gabi
Hildesheimer, one of the leaders of Open Peacock, said: “It’s not
Chipperfield but council planning officers who made the mistake by
designing it where you feel scared by the huge mass of the building.
It’s a very narrow street and there’s no air between the street and the
building. The extension is 21m, almost twice as high as the existing
building.

“Zurich has a long history of shooting down good
projects because some groups don’t agree with the details. The last
four or five big projects in Zurich were stopped completely because of
our very democratic system. We are trying not to do that.”
Caruso St
John’s Nail House and Rafael Moneo’s Congress Centre are among previous
victims of Zurich’s planning referendums. If the Kunsthaus receives
planning approval this summer it will be put to a public vote in 2013.
It could open in 2017.

Chipperfield’s office stood by the plans and said any move would result in the partial loss of an art garden behind the museum.
The
city council invited Chipperfield to Zurich to address a meeting of 400
local architects, who it hopes will act as ambassadors for the scheme.
Urs Spinner from the council said Chipperfield had been “warmly
welcomed.

He defended the fact that campaigners were not invited
to the meeting, saying some groups were “more equal” than others and
that architects were “very important stakeholders”.

He said: “They
were free to think what they want but we wanted them to understand the
project. They were pleased so we were lucky. It’s not manipulation, it’s
very open and democratic.”

With the appearance of new technological elements that we have to insert in our buildings we have to think of another way to explain them. With this competition we have started to move toward that goal. Now we present only a slideshow of photos. How we are working. Without any preconceived sense of what is right. It is an hazard. But not too much of the risk, if we want to develop a discourse about some body of architectural building, we must establish an appropiate conceptualization within which that regard can unfold. We must have a strategy for segmenting architectural compositions into parts and a way to refer to parts by name. As in the tradition of classical architecture, for example, there is a standard system of segmentation and naming. We must also have sufficiently extensive and finely differentiated vocabulary relation between relations and function symbols for use in specifying the properties and interrelationships of parts of building systems.
We need a system for constructing assertions from names of parts, in the new buildings, relation symbols, and function symbols. To be understood. We should construct a new set of first-order logic sentences, or we could allow the discourse to unfold as a sequence of constructive sentences. In the future we will make our own personal choice among every photo. Therefore, at the moment there is only a previous chaotic discourse. To be continued…
Here you can watch the slideshow.

Untitled from Josep Blesa on Vimeo.

RESTAURACIÓ/RESTORATION from Josep Blesa on Vimeo.

THE GUERILLA BUILDING:

The guerilla building was architecturally just a shelter, a barrack on a building site, but it was called “The House of People” and thus referred to meaning of freedom, equality, power, and so on. The space in itself was neutral, but in order prove that  it had a political meaning, specific signs to this effect were necessary so as to give it a name or, less crudely, to perform political acts involving building (in this case, erecting a building for the people on private or state property) It was a rhetorical act, and the only possible one, for the main reason for suchacts was their symbolic and exemplary value in the seizure of the land, not in  the design of what built.

POLÍTICA EDUCACIONAL.
Ho dic amb orgull de company d’ofici. Sense un bri de gremialisme. Avui en que les paraules han perdut el significat per a caure en meres formes sense un sentit sentit. Se’ns ha tornat tan difícil treballar en allò en què gaudim que qualsevol fita és un poc miraculosa. No sols per als arquitectes. En general.
De sempre m’ha molestat l’atribució de “genialitats” a joves procaços. Joves o no tan joves que amb penes sabien fer la O amb un canut. La banalització de les actituds socials ens vénen des d’aquest cantó. Pot semblar més estimulant en un món múltiple com l’actual el capteniment d’en Salieri que el d’en Mozart. Un Amadeus Wolfgang apareix cada tres segles. Amb la proliferació de la informació sembla que en tinguem un, o un Leonardo cada any. La correcció en la tasca diària és el bé que al conjunt de la societat més beneficia. La genialitat és l’epígon que en beneficia a tothom al llarg dels segles. En eixir del PFC amb l’aprovat ben alt, els meus professors em digueren que no era un geni, però que faria arquitectura amb correcció. Llavors m’ho vaig prendre a mal, però amb vint-i-cinc anys i els mitjans que tenia a l’abast em sembla tot un elogi. Ells tampoc feien classe amb la metodologia creativa d’avantguarda de l’Architectural Association School of London i el seu caràcter innovador. No, no són l’Escola d’Alacant, ni tan sols la de Barcelona per posar exemples propis. Ací, a l’Escola d’arquitectura de València, ens condueixen per ‘la disciplina’. La seua disciplina. Amb el pas dels anys hom pot comprovar que on han excel·lit és precisament en doblegar l’espinàs amb la consegüent mostra de natges. Hem vist en el Canal de tv.de la Poltècnica fer abraços a Consellers, d’urbanisme i habitatge, dir-los que ‘los querían muchísimo’ de ressonàncies escatològiques…que farien envermellir a qualsevol ciutadà mínimament decent.
  
POLÍTICA ARQUITECTÒNICA.
Com el professorat d’arquitectura de València, els polítics ens condueixen per la ‘política’…, és a dir, per la seua política. Tots i cadascun dels grups. Que el partit dominant en el país faça cacicades té la component que corromp el conjunt del territori social gestionat, al punt de que els altres han de seguir les pautes impregnades per aquells. El cas que ens ocupa es produeix a la mítica ciutat de Sueca, on encapçalen el consistori les forces progressistes. Un company no es presta a doblegar l’espinàs perquè hi ha un bon projecte i una bona execució. Quatre cinquenes parts executades. Una inserció posterior d’un transformador de mitja a baixa tensió inserit en un edifici públic de permanència per part de la ciutadania i l’arquitecte no combrega en portar-ho a cap. Perquè no hi hagué una previsió anterior per part de l’ajuntament? L’arquitecte ha prioritzat la funció social de la sanitat de la població per sobre dels ineressos particulars dels polítics i els propis d’ell.
Heus ací on la professió i el civisme compromesos es dignifiquen.

L’ARQUITECTURA DE LA REHABILITACIÓ I AMPLIACIÓ.
Hem vist el projecte i la funció que és impecable així com la fluència dels espais. L’estudi de la inserció urbana de manera respectuosa.
Es nota que l’ús dels materials ha estat menant per la contenció pressupostària. Ha predominat més Siza que Calatrava.
La sostenibilitat hipotètica d’arrancada en quant a recursos d’il·luminació i ventilació. Uns tocs wrightians en les façanes i uns volums de l’expressionisme alemany en l’estètica del conjunt de les infografies que resulten adients en posar en valor l’element públic sobre el privat.
A l’Ajuntament de Sueca s’estan equivocant i no donen explicació clara fels perquès de tot plegat. Quès ‘amaga darrere de descavalcar l’arquitecte?
Jaume Lloret, l’arquitecte destituït dóna els seus motius i explicacions.

Jaume gràcies per haver abocat tant d’amor en aquesta professió que és l’art de construir bellament i econòmicament. I vigilar sobre la salut dels teus conciutadans.

Vos dese les raons fonamentades a continuació en el “Vull llegir més…” i que ens convencen..i vos aconselle que lligueu els textos amb les infografies i fotografies del construït fins ara.              

L’Ajuntament
de Sueca enderrocarà obra acabada de la nova biblioteca per valor de més de
200.000 euros

diumenge, 23 de gener de 2011
08:32 REDACCIÓ / JAUME LLORET. Notícia / Opinió

Jaume Lloret i Bosch és arquitecte col·legiat del COACV

Demà presentem els resultats de les mesures d’insonorització acústica a l’ajuntament de València. Els resultats són favorables però mereixen una reflexió al voltant d’ells. Com es pot comprovar al vídeo, resulta del tot impossible en la ciutat de València mantindre els murs, les fàbriques, arcs, etc. i d’altres elements patrimonials puguem trobar-nos-hi i mostrar-los tot posant-los en valor com a element referencial i memoralístic o senzillament decoratiu. Aquesta situació ve donada perquè a la ciutat de València cal complir, a més a més, de la normativa de la Generalitat l’específica municipal de “Sorolls i vibracions” que abarca un ventall de freqüències amplissím entre 50 i 8.000 herz. O calbs o dues perruques, ha estat la tònica municipal. O no es pot dormir, com passà fa uns anys a la zona de la plaça Xúquer i que la denúncia contra el consistori arribà fins a Brussel·les i els van haver de fer acotar el cap o s’inventen unes lleis que ultrapassen el comú europeu i sembla quasi-impossible d’aconseguir el seu compliment, amb les pèrdues patrimonials que resten amagades darrere dels panells d’isolació acústica.

Per a  que se’m puga entendre: la intervenció feta en la fusteria per a encabir Vilaweb a dins de l’antiga fusteria del carrer Ferlandina fóra impossible a València a no ser que hom compre l’edifici sencer i s’aïlle ompeltament pels fonaments, mitgeres, etc. En aquest cas que és un local pertanyent a un edifici, ens calgué construir una capsa isolant dins d’una altra com si fossen nines russes. En el nostre cas ha calgut, a més a més, excavar més de trenta centímetres el terra per a renovellar tota la xarxa de col·lectors soterrats de l’edifici.

Vam fer un primer apunt fa uns mesos que vos enllacem ací per si voleu fer memòria.
El soroll que produeix una nevera és de freqüència de 50 Hz. quasi imperceptible. Són les freqüències menors les que són més difícils d’absorbir i aïllar. Les de grans, en són fàcilment aïllables acústicament.

Tot i que la proposta era per a la ciutat vella de Fez, antiga capital del Marroc, avui encara capital cultural del món al·lauïta hem volgut fer un reconeixement implícit al poble saharià en implementar una canço de la ” Veu del Sàhara” és a dir Mariem Hassan.  Podríem dir que és la “seua” Maria del Mar Bonet. Ja, avui en dia, tothom “és” un poc de tothom, sortosament.
Esperem que vos agrade tant la música com la nostra proposta que ha quedat fora de la segona fase del concurs internacional d’entre les 176 que s’hi van presentar procedents de 49 estats. Òbviament agrair a R. la tria i el mp3 que ens ha servit per a acompanyar les imatges del vídeo. 

PLACE LALLA YEDDOUNA. PROPOSAL. (FEZ CITY. MOROCCO) from Josep Blesa on Vimeo.

PLACE LALLA YEDDOUNA. PROPOSAL. (FEZ CITY. MOROCCO) from Josep Blesa on Vimeo.

Mentre dissenyem per a vosaltres, poble marroquí, el vostre exèrcit  ataca la població civil saharauí. Fa un parell de mesos que intentem el  millor que podem oferir-vos: la dedicació fraterna. Estem consternats. Fa un parell de setmanes assistíem en el carrer de la Pau (precisament) de la meua ciutat a una protesta tot reclamant la reprovació ciutadana per la mort d’aquell xiquet saharauí de tan sols catorze anys.

Avui, dia del lliurament de la nostra proposta, tornen els vostres militars a agredir poblacions amàziga (tuareg) i/o berber i saharauïna. A l’estudi sentim una gran perplexitat. Dolgudament sentida. Punyentment no corresposta, no amb nosaltres, sinó en la societat subjugada pels vostres poders, que també vos sotmet a vosaltres.

Mai no hem de trobar uns mínims comuns denominadors on poder coincidir els humans?  

Foreword.
Setting in surrondings. Integration.

We aim for the site’s revival as an urban space, with respect for the city
and its people. We do not come to impose but to listen to and understand, and
learn, as well. With our knowledge, values buried in past times will emerge so
we can avoid mistakes inflicted on this land. Our interventions are always
enhanced by our passion for cities and villages. We test each corner, each
detail as to find the great telluric forces that have preserved the people’s
heritage.
 
We search for the source of pre-existence. We work like detectives.
What was in there first? we ask, and the answer is quite simple most of the
times:
There was a river, orography, landscape.
There, what did people first?
They sketch the alignament of buildings following the model drawn behind
level curves.
Then, what did they do next? They accumulated their spirits. They did culture.
What can we do, now and here, to be honest with the place and its people?

( n’hi ha+ )

El Slider el podeu trobar enllaçat baix.

We have here an old bridge that links two restored riverside constructions
added and removed without criteria and a footbridge linking the car park
outside the zone subject of our proposal with Yeddouna Lalla square.
 
The structural element of this portion of the city that we want to revitalize
is the river. The river is life. The orography is the wound that opens the
river valley between its hills. The three areas have a wealth of culture
accumulated in this area. They represent years of human vicissitudes. We must
rescue it and maintain it.
We have here a piece of the city that shall be interconnected to the rest of it
and thus, create a new pole of attraction for life, not just tourism. Making it
real is the core purpose of this proposal.

It respects the original alignment of the streets, their twists and knots, as
it is a significant feature of their legacy, except for occasional few changes
in the new buildings. That is the pattern. Then, it monumentalises the
riverside that serves as a link to the second zone along the right side of
river. The third area of the proposal focuses on the city’s character and the
spectrum of viewpoints.

Ens cal conèixer i entendre la ciutat com a la múltiple dansa dels morts i els vius. Vida contrastada entre la foscúria inimaginable de la mort tendenciosament interrompuda en la seua  exhuberant presència habitual, amb llurs formes grotesques, distorsionades, que infonen energia.

Pont: FRAGMENT DE CIUTAT, LLOC DE TRÀNSIT, desitge que sigues, alhora siti on emplaçar-nos, des d’on guaitar la vida de les persones pausadament i viva. El trànsit del dia i la nit, on exposar-s’hi i exposar-nos-en. Pont que enllaça per dalt entre l’antigor de B. i la modernor; i per dessota entre l’Aigüera i el camí actual de la vida. Intentem acoblar-les, tot urbanitzant infrastructures de ciutat.

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