Arquitectura

Muchos críticos y arquitectos, a lo largo de los años, han encontrado semejanzas y analogías entre la restauración llevada a cabo por Carlo Scarpa en el museo de Castelvecchio (Verona, Italia, 1957-73) y la de Sverre Fehn en el Hedmarkmuseet (Hamar, Noruega, 1967-1980), a pesar de las claras diferencias que hay entre la manera de hacer arquitectura de Scarpa y la de Fehn. Sin embargo, la postura crítica hacia el tema del pasado es la misma. La premisa teórica es, para ambos, la dignidad del lenguaje contemporáneo de la arquitectura, que puede con legitimidad confrontarse con lo antiguo; el objetivo es llegar a un punto de equilibrio tal que tanto lo nuevo como lo antiguo puedan adquirir algo desde la confrontación.

Algunos de los edificios más discutidos y relevantes del siglo XXI se caracterizan  por  ser  singulares,  inusuales y llamativos.  Hay,  en este  periodo,  un  difundido  enfoque  proyectual  que  exalta  la autonomía del objeto arquitectónico a costa de su capacidad para estrechar relaciones sólidas con el lugar. Sin embargo, a lo largo de los últimos años ha ido cobrando relevancia un paradigma de proyecto opuesto. Al protagonismo del  objeto  arquitectónico  este otro  enfoque  contrapone  su  neutralización. Este  paradigma  propone  una  arquitectura  que hace  lo  posible  para  pasar desapercibida, que acepta un cierto grado de previsibilidad y banalidad de la forma, que llega hasta a dudar, en ciertos casos, de la necesidad misma de su construcción.  Las  estrategias  para  neutralizar  el  objeto  arquitectónico que más  a  menudo  se  utilizan en  la  arquitectura  actual  son  el  camuflaje,  el anonimato y la  minimización.  El  objetivo  de  este  artículo  es  explicar  las características  de  este  paradigma  y  las  razones  de  su  relevancia  para  la arquitectura contemporánea.

Domestic and urban spaces have always been bound, but in the last decades this interconnection has become stronger.  Socio-economic changes, together with changing customs, have led to a situation of expanded domesticity, where activities normally associated with the house are increasingly carried out in the city. Domestic space, for many contemporary city dwellers, is not so much a physical and stable place, but rather a network of different locations spread all over urban territory: house is the place where to sleep, but the city is the place where to live. All this directly concerns 21st century architecture. Architects are increasingly being asked to provide urban spaces with some of the possibilities usually related to domestic spaces. This can mean, for example, transforming an abandoned lot into an orchard or a small garden; or making ephemeral interventions that transform it into a sort of open-air living room, through a careful design of urban furniture; or also turning it into a place of conviviality, where it is possible to cook and eat together. All these operations, although very different from each other, aim to reactivate a place by giving it a sense of domesticity.

Over the last twenty years, an approach has become increasingly important, which consists in giving all the protagonism to the place and, at the same time, in submitting the architectural object to unusual renounces. This could mean designing a camouflaged building not to disrupt a beautiful, yet fragile landscape; or an anonymous one that fits naturally into its context; or even doing almost nothing, if the intervention site does not seem to need great changes or modifications. Camouflage, anonymity and minimization are the strategies that contemporary architecture uses more often when circumstances require for the quietest and most silent intervention; each one of them constitutes a different way to address the needs of a place and to make the architectural object disappear. This paper analyses these strategies through case studies dated to the last two decades.

Elementi dell’architettura lodoliana (1786) es un libro escrito por Andrea Memmo (1729 -1793) para divulgar las teorías del fraile veneciano Carlo Lodoli (1690-1761) sobre arquitectura. Literato, matemático y educador, Lodoli era conocido en Venecia tanto por la amplitud de su cultura arquitectónica como por su mirada inusual sobre la disciplina: a la autoridad de la historia, incuestionable para sus contemporáneos, Lodoli oponía la autoridad de la razón. En tiempos recientes, sus ideas han sido consideradas precursoras directas del racionalismo arquitectónico moderno. Este artículo se propone resaltar los rasgos más destacados del pensamiento de Lodoli a través de una lectura crítica de Elementi , acompañada de pasajes del texto traducidos al castellano para la ocasión.

Architecture has always had an obsession with time. Architects from different places and generations have struggled to make buildings able to last for decades, or even centuries; permanence has traditionally been considered the most desirable architectural quality. Even if, throughout history, temporary interventions have played a key role in defining urban spaces, architects have often considered them a minority practice not deserving much attention. Things have changed in recent years. Increasingly, architects understand temporariness as a potential answer to some of the most pressing problems of contemporary cities. Being adaptive and quick to build, temporary interventions can help architecture bring life back to vacant lots; or provide vitality and dynamism to the most distinct urban situations; or restore a sense of home and urbanity in post-disaster camps. In 21st century architecture, temporary buildings have a special place, for their flexibility and for the formal / spatial possibilities they offer to architects: because of their characteristics, temporary buildings are often pure space, free from the constraints of function and time-fighting. The paper aims to analyze strategies and objectives of temporary interventions in the context of 21st century urban architecture, through case studies from the last two decades.

The boundaries between domestic and urban environments are
increasingly blurred. Until the contemporary era, the house acted
as aquite autonomous microcosm and the city as its receptacle, but
today this distinction is not so sharp. Various changes are transforming both domestic and urban life. Many activities, events and
rituals usually associated with domestic space today take place
often outside, scattering the home throughout the city.
Meanwhile, domestic environment is increasingly accommodating
some urban functions, changing its traditional meaning and giving
rise to hybrid situations. Domestic and urban environments are
merging in asymbiotic way; it is then necessary to rethink their
spaces in order to respond to their contemporary and future evolutions. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the
contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban
space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of
both the house and the city

Ongoing social, cultural and economic changes in western societies are affecting the way people experience both urban and domestic environments.  Contemporary technologies, the gender revolution and the evolution of habits are among the factors that are leading to the emergence of new forms of urban life, where the very ideas of home and city blur, and the dualities traditionally used to understand the cultural landscape are dissolving (man/woman, interior/exterior, public/private, work/leisure, sedentary/ nomadic, inside/outside). Domestic and urban life are slowly but inexorably merging. Home is increasingly understood, rather than as a fixed place enclosed within four walls, as a mental territory that extends into the broader context of the city. The domestic environment is opening up to the city, adapting many of its uses and spaces to new forms of nomadic, post-human and digital life; its identity is changing, evolving into a hybrid environment difficult to define. At the same time, the urban environment is being domesticated: many of the activities normally associated with domestic life, such as resting, eating, finding some intimacy, watching movies or talking to relatives, increasingly take place in the spaces of the city.  This blurring of boundaries between home and city is radically changing the way of thinking and designing private and public spaces, to make them able to respond to emerging and future lifestyles. The paper aims at introducing the main facts about the contemporary blurring of the boundaries of domestic and urban space, explaining how this is currently affecting the architecture of both the house and the city.

Contrariamente a lo que se suele creer, lo esencial en arquitectura nunca han sido los edificios, sino las personas que los habitan y las sociedades que los construyen. Lo interesante de la arquitectura siempre ha sido lo lateral: más aún que los edificios, lo que les conforma, y las modificaciones socioculturales que éstos llegan a generar en su contexto. Esto ha sido cierto siempre, pero hoy lo es aún más. La mayoría de las principales problemáticas contemporáneas del territorio habitado conciernen, directa o indirectamente, la arquitectura: el cambio climático, las crisis migratorias, la falta de viviendas asequibles - sólo para citar algunos. La arquitectura puede y debe hacerse con la mirada puesta al lugar y a la sociedad que contribuye a formar: hay que pensar en las consecuencias de la arquitectura, mucho más que en sus objetos.

This paper discusses a contemporary design strategy to deal with urban spaces. In 21st century architecture it is possible to recognize the existence of several projects that consist in doing almost nothing, carrying out only minimal modifications to their sites of intervention. In present-day architecture, this approach is considered useful sometimes to respect the surroundings and sometimes to improve them through the smallest and tiniest actions. Doing almost nothing is a strategy that can unfold in many ways. It can mean opting for inaction and thus not modifying a place at all; or designing a temporary project intended to occupy it only for a limited period of time; or also carrying out a particularly small but permanent intervention. Depending on the circumstances, it is an approach that can help architecture protecting a place, reclaiming it or reactivating its latent qualities. This strategy can be implemented both through a single intervention on a specific place, or throug...

Cholula (Puebla, Mexico), an ancient pre-Hispanic city, since 1971 is home to UDLAP, Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Over the years, the presence of UDLAP has deeply affected the fabric of the city, transforming a once rural center into a university town. Students are very important for the economy of Cholula: one example is avenida 14 Oriente, a street entirely devoted to nightlife and student fun. Since the pandemic, most students returned to their hometowns. This had huge consequences on the microeconomy of the city, especially for informal traders. In this paper, we discuss the changes brought about by the pandemic in the socio-economic dynamics of Cholula. To do so, we rely on fieldwork, complementing it with information found in magazines, newspapers and local media.

In recent years, architectural interactions have become the center of many important reflections. However, there is little agreement on the subject. Some authors consider architecture to be about its relations with human and nonhuman agents. Others consider that buildings have an autonomous presence, which transcends all their interactions. These approaches are generally seen as incompatible. Although at the heart of the debate is the role of relations in architecture, their nature is not addressed. The discussion could gain clarity by recognizing the differences between them. In this paper, we propose a classification of architectural interactions, which may help to better inform further discussion on the topic. A closer look at architectural relations reveals that autonomy and relationality are not opposing, but complementary, aspects.