Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Although it seems surprising to declare, we could say that the Congress ended on the eve of its start, when, in El Polvorín de la Ciudadela of Pamplona, the two exhibitions that had been organised to accompany the Congress opened. Since what they showed was so graphic that later discussions did nothing but corroborate what the panels of the exhibitions displayed.

En cualquiera de los libros o manuales sobre la historia de la arquitectura moderna encontramos un nutrido numero de páginas dedicadas a las vanguardias y la formación del movimiento moderno en entreguerras, y otro tanto dedicado a la reconstrucción y expansión del movimiento moderno tras la segunda guerra mundial. Entremedio, como una incomprensión o un convenido silencio, queda un gran vacío de años oscuros, de guerras, exilios y miserias sobre los que apenas nada puede ser dicho. Es precisamente en esos años oscuros, como en tantos otros de los más reveladores de la historia de la cultura, cuando comienza a fraguar una emergencia experimental profundamente renovadora. Arquitectos y artistas expulsados a los márgenes de la realidad civil, voluntaria o forzosamente, comienzan a configurar un cuadro de reacciones a una situación cultural insostenible, y de la que aún hoy, quizá por miedo o por vergüenza, parecemos conocer muy poco.

The first Bienal de Arquitectura Latinoamericana (BAL) took place in Pamplona in May 2009. It is a new young event promoted by the AS20 research team that aims to show in Spain the most recent and outstanding work of young latin american architects. For the first edition, the selected teams were: Tristán Diéguez and Axel Fridman; Sebastián Adamo and Marcelo Faiden; Nicolás Campodonico; FGMF Fernando Forte, Lourenço Gimenes and Rodrigo Marcondes Ferraz; Carla Juaçaba; Mauricio Pezo and Sofia von Ellrichshausen; Grupo Talca –Macarena Ávila, Cecilia Cullen, Martín del Solar, Alejandra Liébana and Rodrigo Sheward; El Cielo –Armando Hashimoto and Surella Segú; Pablo Pérez Palacios and Alfonso de la Concha; Juan Manuel Peláez Freidel; Camilo Restrepo; Felipe Mesa; Marcelo and Martín Gualano; Gonzalo Díez Ponce and Felipe Muller.

Martín Domínguez went into exile in Cuba after the Civil War, where he remained until 1960 when he left to a second exile after the triumph of the Revolution, this time to the USA. The fact that his degree was not recognised forced him to collaborate with diverse teams of professional young people, making a career that was not always seen as his own. Buildings such as Radiocentro CMQ or the FOCSA are among the most emblematic of La Habana, leaving projects unbuilt such as the remarkable El Pontón or the Edificio Libertad.

As globalization has taken root in the past decade, the circumstances within which architects work have changed dramatically. But a correlative transformation of our interpretative tools for understanding Spanish contemporary architecture has not taken place. Take for instance the traditional historiographical categorization of architectural production through its identification with political units. The old question of which political unit is more appropriate (Spanish, Basque, Catalonian, etc.) appears less meaningful in light of the fact that political boundaries no longer coincide neatly with the territories that are brought into relation through the production of buildings (global financial markets, telecommunication systems, transportation infrastructure, and international social networks).

This article presents Thomas Sharp's contribution, a glance to the past with the objective of rescuing valid ideas to face sustainable urban development. His contribution is known fundamentally for his protection of the role that urban form should play in planning. Nevertheless, the impact of his plans for historic cities, such as Oxford, Exeter and Durham, should not hide the interest and the ambition of his first approaches, very well reflected in his first publication, Town and Countryside. In this book Sharp's proposal for facing planning goes beyond the scope that comes off his most known works.

Setting out from Mies’ famous quote: “We refuse to recognize problems of form; we recognize only construction problems (G, 1923)” and to celebrate the ninetieth aniversary of the foundation of the Bauhaus (December 1919), sometimes denounced as an artistic rather than architectural movement, we will discuss which was the first work of modern architecture built in Spain, using it to question ‘formalism’ as a generating principle for architecture.

A kid, faster than the camera’s shutter, looks at the photographer while waling home with his mother, followed by his pet. The photographer was Julius Shulman, the picture was always dated in 1950 and the house was Model 301 of L.A.’s Mutual Housing Association built by A. Quincy Jones, Whitney R. Smith and Edgardo Contini between 1948 and 1950.

The work entitled Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, printed by Aldo Manuzio in 1499 in Venice and provisionally attributed to Francesco Colonna, is a book in which architecture, whether described or illustrated, is the true protagonist, representing the character to which the greatest number of words are dedicated. The manner of going about this is not that of the academic treaties which began to appear at that time, exacting the privileged position of the discipline among artifice and the arts and classifying and suggesting models to imitate, inspired on antiquity; rather, it held it to form part of that privileged bit of reality in which occurrences take place: the physical and symbolic stage for the most relevant events. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, the text and its 171 xylographies, is a complete architectural analysis insofar as it represents an expostulated critique of preceding constructions and ideologies, as well as a study and evaluation of the conditions of the area, the user and the landscape. It likewise represents the execution of a project methodology. Following an examination of the surrounding area comes an architectural suggestion which prods the flexible limits of reality: the suggestiveness of some of the most bizarre and raucous buildings ever imagined, which succumb to the strict laws of geometry and proportions while paying no heed to the laws of gravity. Its modern qualities, interest and benefits for contemporary architecture are also to be found in other matters: in its use of composition techniques based on collage, superimposition and accumulation; in the novelty of the poetic concession of ruin and in the archaeological perception of inheritance and legacy; in the rejection of the city as a concerted, like-minded dwelling site; in the pursuit of dispersion, fissures and fragments; in its insistence on the idea of architecture as a hollow, an interior, a welcoming void, the domestication and humanization of a bit of space.

David Rockefeller’s influence on Latin American consumer culture was not constrained to ideas, however. By the late 1950s David, now chairman of Chase Manhattan, was helping to create a physical manifestation of zeal for free trade. This transfer of ideas into a tangible institution probably began early in David Rockefeller’s life, as he saw his father, John D. Rockefeller, agonize over his commitment to build what would become Rockefeller Center, the first multi-use urban structure dedicated to office space, international trade, shopping, and entertainment. Twenty-years later, David Rockefeller found himself trying to do for lower Manhattan what his father had done for Mid-town, rescue it from decline, as well as protect the families investments in New York City (David had recently completed a new headquarters for Chase Manhattan in Lower Manhattan and had an interest in the area coming to life as a viable commercial and residential district). He took this as the ideal opportunity to create a new international trade center, the World Trade Center, for New York. He hoped that this would reposition New York as a trade and financial capital of the world. The buildings would be occupied by trading companies from all over the world who desired to do business in New York or in the United States. Their close proximity, as well as a myriad of business services, would offer a degree of commercial synergy difficult to find elsewhere. Curiously, however, the World Trade Center, would not simply be an office building. David took control of a group of businessmen in the lower Manhattan area who were interested in preserving the importance of the financial district, as well as adding to New York’s prestige. This group, the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, established in 1958, hired the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill to develop of plan for the center, which would be located on Water Street close to Battery Park. In many senses the new structure mirrored the multi-use format employed by David’s father at Rockefeller Center, in its emphasis on office space and monumental architecture. In other, ways, however, the center was more sophisticated, and in addition to the presence of office space, the Trade Center would cater to the retail and hospitality industries.