La Ricarda (1949-1963) – Antonio Bonet

La vivienda fue proyectada por el arquitecto español Antonio Bonet, en la que continúa con una serie de proyectos residenciales caracterizados por el empleo de bóvedas rebajadas.

La maravillosa casa de La Ricarda se encuentra situada a la orilla del mar en los alrededores de Barcelona junto al aeropuerto de El Prat, rodeada por un denso pinar y gracias a su desarrollo en una única planta queda oculta a las miradas ajenas. Adaptada a las exigencias del paisaje, la vivienda se asienta sobre una plataforma artificial construida sobre las dunas. De este modo queda liberada de toda atadura a la topografía y se extiende con racionalidad geométrica en las dos direcciones, según un sistema de bóvedas enmarcadas en un lenguaje innovador y la par conservando las tradiciones locales.

Texto tomado de QUADRATURA Arquitectos

Enrique Ramírez, contributor of Quaderns 262 “Parainfrastructures” wrote an interesting article about Modernism based in an anecdote by Antonin Raymond and Le Corbusier. Here is an excerpt:

The idea of copying necessarily invokes problems of authorship. Before a quick-minded reader evokes Benjamin Franklin’s calls to “Imitate Jesus and Socrates”[1] or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s invective that the “imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity,”[2]  or even before any heart-wrenching calls that decry the loss of the “aura” in the face of rampant “mechanical reproduction” or “technical reproducibility”[3] can be made, I only offer the idea that a copy presupposes an author. There are two ways in which this can happen. On the one hand, there is the unauthorized copy, a canvas, novel, or piece of music that is actionable because it was not sanctioned by the original’s author. On the other hand, there is the authorized copy, the so-called “derivative work”[4] that merits its own recognition though it incorporates another author’s work. An example of this would be a translation of a foreign-language novel, or a scholar’s annotations to a previous work. Thus a copy also invokes a chronological lockstep: it summons or copies a piece of art that existed before. The actionable counterfeit, fake, or simulacra cannot exist without a previous source.

The complete article: Attributing Modernism

Swiss Construction Foremen Magazine. In issue 4/64 —they especially covered the construction of the pavillion of the Swiss Army in detail.

Source: dispokino

A CONVENIENT TRUTH

Giovanni Vaz del Bello, MariaVazPhoto, Brasil 2007. 53’. V.O.S.Castellano

lunes 21 de mayo 2012 /// 19.30 hrs /// pl. nova 5, Barcelona

Un documental sobre la original e innovadora implantación urbana de Curitiba, Brazil, en el que se explican estrategias de sostenibilidad medioambiental, económica, y social aplicables al resto del mundo. El documental se centra en las innovaciones en materia de movilidad, reciclaje, y políticas sociales que transformaron a Curitiba en una de las ciudades con mayor calidad de vida del planeta.

Las ciudades deberían ser una solución y no un problema para los seres humanos. La ciudad de Curitiba lleva demostrando los últimos 40 años como transformar problemas en soluciones económicas aplicables a otras ciudades.

Para explicarnos como Barcelona adopta y genera soluciones de este tipo contaremos con Salvador Rueda, director de BCN Ecología, la Agencia de Ecología Urbana de Barcelona.

“Is not Main Street almost all right?” asked Robert Venturi at the end of his 1966 manifesto, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, thereby sending modern architecture into a state of turmoil from which it has never really recovered. Venturi, his partner Denise Scott Brown, and their long-time collaborator Steven Izenour answered this provocative question with their 1972 opus, Learning from Las Vegas, which used lessons from the everyday American automobile city to critique the status quo of postwar modernist architecture. The book is often credited—or blamed, depending on who you ask—for opening the floodgates of postmodernist architecture that defined the 1970s and 80s.

Adam Marcus interviews Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown for Museo Magazine:

Adam Marcus: You have been designing, writing, and practicing together for nearly fifty years. Yet before you met, you came from such different backgrounds: Denise from southern Africa via London, and Bob from Philadelphia and Princeton via Rome. How have these backgrounds come to inform your work?

DENISE SCOTT BROWN: In some ways, our backgrounds are the same. My family is Jewish, his Italian, but you’d be surprised how interchangeable our relatives are. They feel the same in many respects. We are both what I call “marginal”—half in and half out of our own groups and only partway into the dominant culture. And we share a wobbly foothold in several other groups but don’t quite belong in any. This may have skewed our vision.

Marcus: Denise, you’ve written much about your time as a student in London, after you left Africa but before you came to America. While in London, what was your connection to Team X and their nascent critique of modern architecture?

SCOTT BROWN: Peter and Alison Smithson were not teaching at the Architectural Association when I was a student there, but the atmosphere of rebellion that they embodied was around the school. Last night on TV, I saw a rerun of “Look Back in Anger,” a play that opened in London in the early 1950s. When the curtain rose on a messy student apartment with a young man reading The Observer and his girlfriend in her underwear, ironing, the theater erupted in laughter as students in the audience recognized themselves. The Smithsons were engaged in a parallel probing of architectural reality. And coming from the north of England, they were no more part of the “system” than I was.

The complete interview can be read at MuseoMagazine

La crisi econòmica i les conseqüències per l’arquitectura Exposició a The Architecture Foundation, Londres, fins el 9 de juny.

Molta gent creu que la situació actual no és simplement una caiguda cíclica, sinó un nou conjunt de circumstàncies potencialment permanent. Cada vegada és més clar que el món està vivint un moment decisiu.

En aquest context, els arquitectes Powerhouse Company i el crític i historiador de l’arquitectura Hans Ibelings (The Architecture Observer) han creat la suggerent exposició “Shifts: The Economic Crisis and its Consequences for Architecture” sobre els impactes de les noves circumstàncies econòmiques en l’arquitectura del present i el futur.

Diversos esdeveniments paral·lels ampliaran el contingut de l’exposició. Clica aquí per obtenir el programa complet.

Fuente: Public Space CCCB