REV - RA. Revista de Arquitectura - Vol. 23
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10171/62479
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Results
- Multiple Authorship: The Collaborative Production of Knowledge in the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965–2020)(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Nuijsink, C. (Cathelijne)This paper challenges the notion of the heroic genius as driver of invention and development in architectural culture. It considers the production of architectural ideas prior to design as an integral part of the production of architectural projects and takes the Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition (1965–2020), a yearly housing ideas competition from Japan, as a tangible case study for exploring notions of multiple authorship. The paper focuses on the editions of the competition judged by Toyo Ito, Rem Koolhaas, and Kazuyo Sejima–who respectively set the provocative themes of “Comfort in the Metropolis” (1988), “House with No Style” (1992), and “The Possibilities of Non- Movement” (1996)–to illustrate how this ideas competition functions as a fruitful dialogue between judge and contestants that produces architectural knowledge collaboratively. At the same time, by de-mystifying the genius of the single “star architect” judge, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing quest to write a more inclusive global history of architecture that reveals voices hitherto silenced.
- Silent Partner: Design and Making in the Early Modern Architecture of Britain(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Casey, C. (Christine)This article argues that, in early modern architecture in Britain, the role of making has been subordinated to that of design. It takes it cue from Gottfried Semper’s image of the architect in antiquity as choragus or orchestrator of the many skills required to create a building, and demonstrates that knowledge of materials and craftsmanship informed the design process. It argues that the architect’s role as orchestrator of craft production has been overlooked due to an overemphasis on conceptual design. The relationship of conceptual and intuitive approaches to building is explored, as is communication between architect and craftsmen through models and large-scale working drawings. The nonarchitectural concerns of plastic artists involved in architectural production are noted. Finally, historiographical tendencies toward stylistic and biographical attribution are shown to militate against a holistic view of design and craft in early modern architecture.
- A Pyramid of Paperwork: Labors of Imagination and Interpretation in Late Twentieth Century Architectural Practice(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Abrahamson, M. (Michael)A fundamental shift in employment patterns among architects in North America during the 1960s and 1970s impacted how particular kinds of tasks were either monopolized or delegated within firms. This article uses the archive of the U.S.-based architectural firm Gunnar Birkerts and Associates to show evidence of a growing gulf between executive architects and employee architects (particularly women assigned to work on interiors), as well as the persistence of chauvinistic ideals of practice under changed circumstances. The design for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis building (1967- 73) is shown to be illustrative of this gulf between imaginative and interpretive labor.
- A Landscape of Conflict: Speculators and Books in Early Modern London(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Astengo, G. (Gregorio)This article examines the speculative building world of late seventeenth-century London, a context often associated with the birth of modern real estate culture. It examines existing literature on the subject, and identifies the economic and social conditions that converged in producing new paradigms of speculative construction, as well as the actors and instruments involved in its codification. Rather than through the design and authorial practices usually associated with architects, building was realized based on a constellation of conflicting and largely still unsystematized negotiations between the stakeholders, such as builders, landowners, investors, and lessees. This article discusses these paradigms, particularly in relation to a fundamental and overlooked genre of the operational publications produced to organize and codify professional roles and relationships in the business world. I ultimately argue that in order to make sense of our capitalist building culture, we should reconsider the contentious circumstances that produced it, as well as the knowledge base generated to normalize these circumstances.
- Who Designed Villa Planchart? Gio Ponti’s Architecture in Caracas: Between Influences and Contamination(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Danesi, G. (Giorgio)In 1953, Armando and Anala Planchart asked the Italian architect Gio Ponti to realize a new house for them in Caracas. They did not know at the time that it would become one of the most iconic works of twentieth century architecture: “Can I be your Michelangelo?”1 Nevertheless, the correspondence between the architect and several of the individuals involved in its construction testifies to the multiple influences that can be recognized in the house. This makes it one of the clearest examples of building with the involvement of multiple authors.
- El delirio de Lagos no es el de Nueva York: Rem Koolhaas y el protagonismo del autor-arquitecto en territorios conflictivos(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Cano-Ciborro, V. (Victor)The architect Rem Koolhaas, under the umbrella of the Harvard Project on the City, started studying the Nigerian city of Lagos at the end of the 20th century, a megacity that he ended up designating as the paradigm of the urban condition in the 21st century. Following that sentence, based on a superficial and purely formal analysis of a tremendously conflictive context, the article will make visible not only Koolhaas’ own statements, but also the criticisms that have considered this approach a selfabsorption of the figure of the architect. Thus, we will show how Koolhaas’ authority is counterproductive for the discipline and architectural practice, since in Lagos there only seems to exist what the author has seen or perceived, making invisible both the multiple and complex spatial dynamics of the subaltern bodies –necessary to understand the particularity of the area– and the previous work of academics, architects or urban planners interested in the spatiality of the conflict.
- Mejor en equipo: Peter Harnden’s «Big Band Architecture»(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Garnica, J. (Julio)After World War II, the American architect Peter Harnden (1913-1971) directed the Marshall Plan Information Office in Paris, as well as various US Government units aimed at promoting the image of the United States in the midst of the Cold War, organising the work of a large international team of architects, designers and technicians. In 1956 he established PGHA Associates in Orgeval, where the Italian architect Lanfranco Bombelli (1921-2008) soon played an important role, and with whom he was responsible for the design of American pavilions in Europe in the following years. In the early sixties they decided to move to Spain, where they founded Harnden&Bombelli, a firm in which they combined official commissions with the work of renovating and designing sophisticated vacation houses on the Spanish coast, establishing an unprecedented and enriching dialogue between modernity and Mediterranean tradition. Always working as a team, Harnden and Bombelli’s unique way of architecture is a little-known but highly significant episode in the professional practice of modern architecture in the 20th century.
- Aprendiendo de Denise Scott Brown. Más allá de «Learning from Las Vegas»(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Fontana, M.P (María Pía); Mayorga, M. (Miguel)Denise Scott Brown is one of the contemporary architects who best represents, exemplifies and personifies the necessary revision of what it means to “be an architect” from the perspective of professional practice, teaching, theory or personal experience. That is to say, she represents a way of exercising the discipline that, based on what we can learn from her, should be refocused, among other things, on: the recognition of the changing contemporary urban realities; the need for transdisciplinary work and in conditions of equality, equity and inclusion; the assessment of the differences and specificities of cultures, places and groups; the redefinition of functionalism and its impact on architectural form; the symbolic, the ordinary and the everyday of urban activities and life; the importance of image, new technologies and the use of data; and, also, on the recognition of the cultural thickness of history, in its broadest sense. She is a current and representative figure of a still ongoing approach to architecture and the city.
- «Guard Everything Appropriately and All Will be Well»(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Wendl, N. (Nora)The exhibition Edith Farnsworth, Reconsidered, on view from March 2020 to December 2021, presents the Farnsworth House (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Plano, Illinois, 1951) as it was inhabited by the client and reveals the lived history of the house to the public for the first time. Focusing on the period from 1951 to 1954, shortly after Dr. Farnsworth took ownership and just before a flood destroyed the interior furnishings from this time, the exhibition also traces a timeline of uncertainty: in 1951, Mies van der Rohe initiated the lawsuit van der Rohe vs. Farnsworth (1951–1955), suing his former client for unpaid bills and for ownership of the structure. This essay follows the chronology of that trial and its outcome, taking the temporary exhibition and heavily guarded trial transcript into consideration as twin artifacts: both of which occupy nearly the same period of time, and both institutionally “redacted” in order to protect the patriarchal legacy of the architect. Redaction, here, is seen as temporary: foreshadowing the future liberation of histories from the institutions that bind them.
- Who Designs Architecture? On Silenced and Superimposed Authorship(Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 2021) Martínez-de-Guereñu, L. (Laura)