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drp-barcelona
This is definitely a lecture I am looking for. I have been tracking this woman’s work for quite a time now, and their work is worth checking. 
She and her husband created this “alternative” editorial based in Barcelona, dpr-barcelona. However, don’t get it wrong, despite having Barcelona in it’s name it is incredibly international! I got Ethel’s contact in Chicago, thank to Iker Gil, the founder of MAS Context.
Whatever, I’ll be there. Hope to see you all there!
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MECEDORAMA
A couple months ago I ran across this elegant, minimalist yet full of life and color design. I loved them so much that I couldn’t keep from getting in touch with them to know more about it.
But, before you start asking yourselves what the hell I am talking about, it’s CHAIRS!
What architect doesn’t just love chairs? All our famous architects since Le Corbusier have designed CHAIRS! Mies, Eames, Jacobsen… we could go on forever. This ones have been designed by Lys Villalba, Maria Mallo & Juanito Jones who learned the technique from a Colombian-Caribbean coast artisan Rogelio. The chairs have been designed and made in MADRID.
The second fact, other than just being chairs. These are HANDMADE! Perfect thin metals structure handmade! I just can’t love it any more! Crazy.
Enjoy:
 
 
More model in: http://www.mecedorama.com/
 
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ComboCompetitions
So, for all you that love fun ideas competitions and are tired of being a student a having to participate in Archmedium’s or tired of having to pay crazy fees for entering another one. Here is our solution!
It is oriented to ANY designer that might be interested. Current competition: a Garage facility with an extra program which is up to you to choose. Fun, right?
The deadlines is April 6th 2014.
Good luck!
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Le Corbusier
Photo Credit: Vincent Desjardins

Under this title anything could happen, Le Corbusier is too many things, but Caixaforum Barcelona is going to try to show us a little bit more about his works and life. I must admit I know nothing about this exhibition other that it will show all of Le Corbusier’s work, from Switzerland to the very end and that it has been curated by the great Jean-Louis Cohen, the same one we published about 6 months ago (you can read it here). It will open it’s door next January 29th, and little has been published yet.

However, what I do know and I’m excited to share with you, is the two different series of conferences that will be going on as additional activities to this exhibition. The first will be held on Wednesdays which will be: “Le Corbusier, an approach to a transformative work“with the following lectures:
Wednesday, February 12th 7.30p.m. Another Le Corbusier by Juan Calatrava Escobar
Wednesday, February 19th 7.30p.m. Ways of Living by M. Tereza Muñoz
Wednesday, March 5th 7.30p.m. Cities and Landscapes by Xavier Monteys
Wednesday, March 12th 7.30p.m. Measure and Listen: the MODULOR by Marta Llorente
Wednesday, March 19th 7.30p.m. Le Corbusier: Revolution can be stopped by Juan José Lahuerta
Wednesday, March 26th 7.30p.m. Round Table with Rafael de Cáceres, Antón Salvadó, Victoria Garriga and Ricard Gratacós.
The second series of lectures will talk about another topic which will be “Building, Living, Touch: the architecture and theory of Le Corbusier” and will have the following lectures:
Thursday, February 13th 11.30a.m. Build, imagining a new space from the technique revolution
Thursday, February 20th 11.30a.m. Living the house; Living the city. A new way of life.
Thursday, February 27th 11.30a.m. The challenge of thought: communicating and writing. A way of spirituality.
Thursday, March 6th 11.30a.m. Answering to time, answering a place.

All these lecture will be taken care by Marta Llorente, also a speaker in the other series of lectures. She is at professor of Theory of Architecture at my school, ETSAB.
Both these lectures are not free, you must pay. If you are lucky enough to be a client of “La Caixa” the foundation that owns this museum, you will enjoy a 50% off of you ticket fee (which is 4E).
Let’s hope we get more information about this opening soon.
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Juan Navarro Baldeweg _ TRANSLATED
“Variaciones sobre lo antecendente”
Under this title, that would be translated as “variations about preexistence”, ETSAM’s /Escuela Técnica Super de Arquitectura de Madrid/ Studio professor has shared as the opening of the 2013-2014 academic year in ETSAB /Escuela Técnica Super de Arquitectura de Barcelona/.
A lecture stared by the constant noise os student coming in and out, as usually happens, and the peaceful voice of Juan Navaro, whose voice has finally risen towards the end of the session.
I must confess I knew little about the work of this architect/painter/sculptor/critic and, what we have been presented was characterized by a very international style but being able to still capture that devotion for details and a very human scale.

Juan Navarro Baldeweg. Bilbioteca Hertziana 1996
The two projects that were explained were the Hertzian Library in Rome (1996) and the Kunsthal Kade in Amsterdam (2002). Both with a very interesting use of glass, the first one hidden in the inner courtyard, whereas the second one was the main façade.
Juan Navarro Baldeweg. Kunthal Kade. 2002
Despite having explains the project in the most conventional way possible, what was really interesting to me and allowed the lecture to have a more personal atmosphere was his thoughts about the sites. No need for recent pictures or site plans of the site, Juan Navarro Baldeweg likes for painting and historical plans that allow him to perceive a more personal feeling and tell him what the site needs, obviously without loosing sight of what the building functionally is.
What those artists thought it was important enough to point out in a painting and of the historic growth of the city, Baldeweg understands toward what must the project aim. Something that, in my honest opinion, it might sometimes be a little too exagerated and might fall into just extensive explanations of the site and not generative project information.

Thankfully for me (I have a very negative opinion toward this particular subject in my school which might end up in the craziness of some students of generating thousand of useless site plans) I have been able to see first hand, and after having Baldeweg talked about a huge amount of site plans, how he learned from those to apply them to the library in Rome. How the entrance is followed by a patio, the progression of different levels trying to copy how terraces where organized hundreds of years ago, and the rejection of axiality, so typically present in Roman architecture.

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2026
I gotta tell I don’t know if I believe that all of it will be done by 2026, but, despite that, I do find this video a very nice way of showing us how they would like the Sagrada Familia to be.
However, whenever we talk about la Sagrada Familia we talk about the purity of its intentions or wether it should have been left to stand like Gaudi left it or, on the other hand, develop it the way the are doing it, without more information than a couple models left from the fire. 

Up in the Clouds

If we think about the art of photography we come up with a frozen moment that will stay with us for as long as we keep that picture. Therefore, a picture of a building, or a work of art that stays the same isn’t photography, documentation maybe? 
What about a photograph of a work of art extremely ephemeral? An installation that just lasts long enough to take capture it?
Berndnaut Smilde has developed a unique technique that allows him to shape a cloud in an interior space for a very short time. While this cloud floats in appealing architectural spaces, a professional photograph does his job giving us the opportunity to admire such an idea. 

This dutch artist has often worked with space, as related to architecture or models. Always questioning a dual proposition, such as the inside and the outside, and trying to create and in-between situation totally useless and, therefore, open to personal interpretation.
However, he is not the only artist who has tried to bring the sky closer to us. Tomas Saraceno has tried, and in my honest opinion, achieved creating cloud cities in interior spces that can be inhabited by people. Another famous cloud is the “Blur Building” by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, where you could actually walk into a cloud and experience it from different perspectives, or a least known and less conceptual is the Cloud Installation that Mason Studio filled a warehouse with.

Despite the fact of the difference of the interventions, being Smilde’s the most delicate and unreachable, these make me think if we are suddenly having a pretentiousness brakeout. 

Are we trying to own the sky?

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ARA.CRITICA
Josep María Montaner, a theory professor at Barcelona’s school of Architecture will, tonight, give a lecture about the new approach of criticism in architecture.
Those who can go, should, and it is free. EVENT INFO
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Ai Weiwei strikes again
Ai Weiwei: Sunflower Seeds. TATE
For those who unfamiliar with the name of Ai Weiwei, he is a Chinese contemporary artist very concerned with the social matters, we could categorize him, generically, as an activist for human rights in China, but influential worldwide. He is active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film and social, political and cultural criticism. 

This long list of genres that Weiwei is involved in come together in the Venice Biennale Edition this year. After his imprisonment in China 2011, he created an installation based on 6 metal shipping containers with a Cor-Ten exterior. From the outside, a minimal sculpture installation, the inside, not minimal at all.


The interiors contain 6 different memories captured as a 3d photograph, fully detailed; his own memories sculpted half size. These can not been accessed and these scenes are able to be seen from portholes in both the side and the top of the containers. The different containers show scenes from him showering in front of prison guards, him waking up with guards staring at him, him being interrogated, him eating, … This work has been named S.A.C.R.E.D (Supper, Accusers, Cleansing, Ritual, Entropy, Doubt), this initials respond to the different actions that take place as for the place where it is being displayed, Sant’Antonin church.

Despite the fact that this exhibit is not under the Architecture section (which means nothing), I feel very inspired by him as an architecture student. No matter what your main interest in architecture may be /design, engineering, theory or interior design among many many other options) we should all learn from Ai Weiwei. A man true to his principles, fighting to enlighten the rest of the world about China’s irregularities against all odds; and a Renaissance man, able to bring together into one creation many aspects of different unrelated fields. 
There will be no true architects if we keep specializing more and more and forget about many other knowledges that will improve us as individuals and, specially, as outstanding architects.

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¡GANGA!
¡El GGmarket ya esta aquí! Mañana y pasado consigue libros de la editorial GG a muy buen precio en este mercadillo que ofrecen cada año.
Y si no te van los libros y te va el postureo, también es tu lugar idóneo, aunque quizás no será necesario que llegues a las 9 de la mañana para pillar las mejores ofertas. Moritz pondrá la cerveza, Be My Bagel pondrá los bagels (obvio) y un ambiente salvaje que lo preparará Hivernacle.