Orders for printed editions will be processed after 26 August Rafael MoneoEpifanía del momentoEpiphany of MomentLa vida de las formas The Life or FormsLuis Fernández-GalianoOrganismos unicelularesUnicellular OrganismsFrancisco MangadoLa emoción lógica Logic Emotion 1975-1990: Vocación cívica Civic Mood Viviendas en la calle María Coronel Sevilla Housing on María Coronel Street Villanueva del Ariscal (Sevilla)Row Housing Villanueva del Ariscal (Seville)Conjunto residencial en Carabanchel Madrid Residential Development in Carabanchel Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz)Novo Sancti Petri Development Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz)Estación de Santa Justa Madrid 1990-2000: Juego de límites Game of LimitsConjunto de viviendas Hannover (Alemania) Spanish Pavilion at the Expo Hannover (Germany) Centro de visitantes de Doñana Almonte (Huelva) Doñana Visitors’ Center Almonte (Huelva) Cambio de código Code SwitchEstación ferroviaria Basel (Switzerland) Ampliación del MNCARS Granada Ampliación del estadio Chapín Jerez (Cádiz) Chapín Stadium Extension Jerez (Cádiz) Manzana residencial en Ceramique Maastricht (Holanda) Housing Block in Ceramique Maastricht (Holland) Museo de la Evolución Humana Lisboa (Portugal) Residential Blocks by the Tagus Lisbon (Portugal) Centro deportivo y comercial Thun (Suiza) Shopping and Sports Center Whoever has closely followed the work of Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz of projects like their entry to the competition for the extension of the Reina Sofía their proposal for the Solar de Caballería in Burgos The serene mood of repose that we appreciated in much of their previous work has now been sacrificed in the name of reflecting a fluid and malleable universe Cruz and Ortiz are not the only ones tempted to undertake such an adventure It has been some time since architects abandoned the orthogonal grid to unfurl in space a battery of undulating structures endeavoring to represent and register movement When Alvar Aalto astonished the world with the rolling walls of the Finnish pavilion at the World’s Fair of New York (1939) critics spoke of Guarini’s Carignano Palace and the disturbing geometry of Borromini churches as references and with him many Latin American architects felt drawn to an architecture that took shape to the dictates of movement But definitely it is only recently that we have come upon the latest Gehry on one hand and those trying to transform architecture into a restless landscape on the other-all toward a way of building architecture that negates the condition of radical immobility heretofore considered consubstantial to the discipline Isn’t the idea to identify the character of those singular works of Cruz & Ortiz to which we alluded at the start what distinguishes these troubled and restless works are differences The Reina Sofía project makes allusions to movement and its architectural discourse seems to insist which in this case-as in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim-encourages us to carry out a pleasant descent The museum as a place where culture provides hedonistic satisfaction seems to be present in this project But it would be a mistake to judge the Reina Sofía extension from a strictly functional The extension is understood as a symbiosis and the new building as an attachment that imposes no obligations It is the epiphany of the moment that seems to be important to the Sevillian architects an epiphany that translates into the lack of prejudices in the treatment of the roof and wall almost graphological gesture is constructed in a conventional manner What matters now is the gesture; in the gesture lies the force of an architecture no longer under obligation to explain the logic that supports it in compositional or constructional terms Testifying to the moment or instant in which the architects conceived the building counts more than a structuralist discourse of the kind that tends to reconsider the mass and the lines of the old hospital through the construction of a complementary building-the annex that helps keep it on its feet The emphasis on showing us that the buildings share only some element of vertical communication serves to confirm what these written lines affirm The attitude behind the Solar de Caballería project is diverse Hence it consciously offers the future visitor a building from which to contemplate the city and its past and which while respecting scale and surroundings openly manifests its artificiality the artificiality manifests itself through mimesis And by accepting it-at the risk of resembling a theme park when replicating the Atapuerca Cave-Cruz & Ortiz encountered what would be the most attractive episode of this architecture: an exploration of possibilities in the construction of a wall through the manipulation of its thickness and shape Transpiring between the two episodes that give life to this proposal is a fruitful dialogue-a balance between architecture of the kind that makes its contour and perimeter its banner (the external seems to prevail here) and architecture where the internal spaces (the auditorium) define and dictate what both the volume and the structure are to be so consciously established-are equalized with the roof a sloping plane that will in the final analysis be the key element in defining the form The interaction between the abstract plane of the roof and the exact perimeter of the floor plan results in a volume that would surely have established a definitive distance from the existing urban environs the effort to dissolve the conventional square of a lot assigned to Spain by the Expo is manifested through a broken The difficulty inherent in the proposal comes across in the problematic transition that turns the forest of capricious polygonal pilasters into contrived paraments where the choice of material-cork-bespeaks the architects’ desire to avoid trite roads The complex and ambiguous system of voids that gets fenced in by the smoothly fissured cork wall gives rise to a spectacular space worthy of being considered the heart of the pavilion The huge skylight assumes the role of metaphorical center of a universe around which all elements of architecture move: the fragments that adapt as well as the ‘milky way’ formed by the many access-filtering pilasters Recreating through architecture a new natural framework in which to show the now of Spanish life seems to have been the architects’ objective I trust that these brief notes on such singular buildings will help keep the reader from confusing the work of the Sevillian partners with that of so many other architects seduced by the undulating form lured by a world Anglo-Saxon critics call ‘formless’ we nevertheless have to admit that these buildings do indicate a disturbing change of direction in their career I daresay that in all these projects there is a shift in the architect-architecture relationship whereby the object comes to have priority over the subject all responsibility over form is now transferred to the work the mineral fragment of the Solar de Caballería and the microcosmos at Hannover are buildings whose physical condition as objects is not only present given the symbiotic condition of the new building has the character of an object and the character of nature at the same time; we would like to hold the model of the Burgos project in our hands in order to feel its weight just as if it were a mineral; and the Hannover pavilion immediately bring to mind certain architectural objects that are so famous they need not be mentioned That these projects are about architecture with a life of its own (hence our talking about objects) is Such an attitude differs much from that of many architects today who and go on to reduce architecture to a field in which to proceed-or to a mere landscape Recognizing the value of the individuality of buildings becomes a challenge that leads them to explore the unknown Especially when one considers that their career up to now has been a lesson on continuity At a particular moment of maturity they have chosen to abandon their customary road and enter unfamiliar turf This is a gesture that illustrates the importance Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ortiz give to feeling free freed of previous and personal commitments in the undertaking of a new project there arent any match using your search terms do you think your housing developments tend to be exercises in hard realism For this work we’d focus on two questions: attention to domesticity There is a modern tradition that does not insist too much on asceticism It’s probably the Nordics who have best materialized this comfort architecture In every housing project of ours we have thought of comfort as an attribute of the domestic realm Carabanchel presents several other questions of the sort now widely addressed which can do much to improve the quality of housing At the time it was considered a very reactionary thing – to use a word much used fifteen years ago – but today it is very common Privatization of housing guarantees the care of intermediate spaces because if these belong to a community of proprietors instead of Town Council One could actually think of the project as being addressed from each block itself as much as from the perspective of juxtaposed blocks The space between every two blocks is not just a consequence —Earlier we were talking about the influence of Milanese architecture That of Dudok or Oud is evident in other works of yours But another interesting theme to take up is profile in social housing: interior blends with exterior to produce the profile —Does the profile come from the superposition of dwellings of different sizes The very existence of several dwelling types produces a sufficiently expressive block and through staggering each unit gets a good terrace with the living room all the way back-making the house stretch on and the corridor a mystery —The house is laid out that way because at the time we liked exalting the corridor But corridors of this kind make lots of things possible: storage space They become a vital space within the dwelling Up to recently it was also common to install the telephone there.. Conversation of the authors with Luis Moreno Mansilla and Emilio Tuñón.[+] Cliente ClientInstituto de la Vivienda de Madrid  Arquitectos ArchitectsAntonio Cruz & Antonio Ortiz  Colaborador Collaborator Carlos Ruiz de la Escalera (aparejador quantity surveyor)  Contratista ContractorFomento de Obras y Construcciones