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

This text proposes an analysis of the photographical dossier that Eileen Gray prepared on E.1027, her best-known project. Far from assuming a simple compilation of unconnected images, the report was conceived from its origin as an architectural journey, made up of photographs carefully taken by the architect herself. In them, the space and the objects were part of a scenography designed to generate a visual tour of the portrayed scene. The aim of this article is to recover this dossier published in 1929 by the magazine l'Architecture Vivante, showing the personal vision that Eileen Gray developed of her own house. Likewise, the aim is to analyze Gray’s outstanding facets as an architect, a designer, and a photographer.

We suggest creating a journey—both geographical and historical—put together using five of houses of Alberto Campo Baeza.  The story begins in Cadiz, with the Gaspar and Guerrero houses, enters the Sierra de Madrid mountain range, in the Blas house, then crosses the Atlantic to reach the Olnick Spanu house in New York and, from there, arrives at the coast of Cadiz in the House of the Infinite. Using these five houses, we propose a dialogue that is woven around three key points: nature, the man that moves to this nature and the time when it becomes habitation.   The result of this journey will be an architecture that returns to origins and not simple originality.  Architecture with the vocation to endure over time, that time which T. S Eliot sings in his Four Quartets: “Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past/ If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable”.

How can a study of Le Corbusier’s post-war work – the Poème de l’angle droit and Modulor 1 and 2 – throw light on his earlier preoccupations. These works are retrospective and confessional. They are obsessed with the question ‘By what right may I create?’ The former work looks for answers in experience and the latter in the ‘divine’ world of mathematics. From at least 1906, when he bought and devoured Edouard Schoré’s Les grands initiés, Le Corbusier had a strong sense of predestination and a conviction that suffering was a necessary part of the voyage to enlightenment. His dualism, the belief in the separation of the spiritual and material worlds, encouraged him to view mathematics as part of the ‘hidden world’ of the spirit. His problem, in the research leading up to Modulor 1, was how to reconcile divine proportion and human experience. He invariably described the passage from the material to the spiritual worlds in terms of physical processes – smoking, simmering, brewing, giving birth. This idea, clearly described in one of his lectures in 1929, and his frequent discussion of ‘cosmic’ forces and symbolism during the 1930s, indicates that these ideas were well entrenched before the war.

Among the many definitions of nature, one is particularly relevant for architecture: the physical world that exists independently of mankind but includes man in its list of creatures. Among the relationships between architecture and this world that mankind inhabites and transforms, two are particularly relevant for understanding the work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907-2012) and its legacy. One comes from situation, involving pre-existing conditions and the desired outcomes of their transformation. The other feeds on emulation of known forms. In academic terms, one impacts primarily on architectural composition, the definition of the correct anatomy and physiology of buildings, while the other impacts primarily on characterization, the definition of a distinctive physiognomy properly correlated with the building's anatomy and physiology. Niemeyer was educated at ENBA- the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio, created in1826 after the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. A close reading of his works belies the widespread association of his work with fusing nature and architecture and reveals a far more complex attitude.

Javier Pérez Herreras (coord.)Arquitectura como Naturaleza. De la Geografía a la Anatomía / Architecture as Nature. From Geography to AnatomyZaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2021. 134 pp. Softcover. Language: Spanish and English. 19 €ISBN 978-84-1340-249-9

Susan S. Benjamin, Michelangelo Sabatino Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-1975Nueva York: The Monacelli Press, 2020. 296 p. Hardcover. Language: English. 60 $ ISBN 978-1-58093-526-5

Fernando QuesadaTeatro Móvil. La Contracultura arquitectónica a escenaBarcelona: Actar, 2021. 248 pp. Softcover. Language: Spanish. 29 €ISBN: 978-1-948765-73-2ISBN: 978-1-945150-80-7 (English version)

Manuel de Solà-MoralesMiradas sobre la ciudadSelection and edition, Oriol Clos. Foreword, Rafael Moneo Barcelona: Acantilado, 2021. 319 pp. Softcover. Language: Spanish. 19 €. ISBN 978-84-18370-18-2

Xavier MonteysLa casa como jardínBarcelona: Gustavo Gili, 2021. 184 pp. Softcover. Language: Spanish. 16,90 €ISBN/EAN: 978-84-252-3241-