blog de notas de juan freire

My topic is the shift from ‘architect’ to ‘gardener’, where ‘architect’ stands for ‘someone who carries a full picture of the work before it is made’, to ‘gardener’ standing for ‘someone who plants seeds and waits to see exactly what will come up’. I will argue that today’s composer are more frequently ‘gardeners’ than ‘architects’ and, further, that the ‘composer as architect’ metaphor was a transitory historical blip.

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Resumen. El concepto de “modelo Barcelona” se utiliza de forma dominante en círculos internacionales de urbanistas, arquitectos, geógrafos, sociólogos, políticos municipales y expertos en políticas culturales, para definir lo que podríamos llamar una estrategia de regeneración urbana referida a los profundos cambios, tanto socioeconómicos como urbanísticos, que la ciudad sufre desde la mitad de los años 70. El concepto del modelo Barcelona es positivo, alabatorio, y considera como un gran éxito tanto las resoluciones urbanísticas adoptadas en diseño y arquitectura, tenidas como de alta calidad formal y estética, como las políticas que las respaldan y el impacto de todo ello en la ciudadanía y en la economía de la ciudad. En este sentido, Barcelona y sus políticas institucionales se establecen como un buen ejemplo, como un modelo de principios y prácticas a seguir.

A. Cócola Gant (2011). El Barrio Gótico de Barcelona. De símbolo nacional a parque temático. Scripta Nova, Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales. Vol. XV

Resumen. El Barrio Gótico de Barcelona fue construido en las décadas centrales del siglo XX. De hecho, su nombre también es una creación moderna, ya que tradicionalmente el espacio era conocido como barrio de la Catedral. Aunque en teoría los monumentos históricos nos remiten a épocas pasadas, en muchos casos han sido fabricados recientemente. La medievalización del centro histórico de Barcelona transformó físicamente el barrio institucional de la ciudad, dotándolo de nuevos significados simbólicos y de una apariencia antigua que hasta entonces no poseía.

Pero si en un principio la monumentalización de la ciudad histórica fue un proyecto de la burguesía local con el fin de exhibir la arquitectura nacional catalana, en la práctica las obras sólo pudieron justificarse por los ingresos que generaría el nuevo turismo urbano, el cual gusta de contemplar edificios de apariencia antiguos, sean o no originales. Por lo tanto, el texto analiza el uso político del pasado y su posterior conversión en una mercancía cualquiera, enmarcando el análisis dentro del llamado «marketing urbano», cuyo objetivo es crear marcas con las ciudades para posicionarse en el mercado internacional que compite por la atracción de inversiones y turistas.

… The assignment of dealing consequently with the flexible city contains two important dimensions. On one hand the exploring of opportunities for temporary use of both private and public space which have become obsolete. On the other hand the search for new forms of construction, urban planning and architecture where principles of change, movement, (dis)appearance or extensions are embedded. Our aim is to create a network of a wide range of professionals who are interested in dynamic urbanism.

… The real work of architecture that adapts and reflects this new mediated world is yet to come. A discussion about “social media and architecture” is still more likely to consider how architects can use Facebook—or Architizer—to market their work, rather than how social media changes our experience of it. And a conversation about “technology and architecture” is probably about parametric modeling, not about how the two spaces we inhabit—one physical, one virtual—might be pulled together. A world where we are all “alone together,” in Turkle’s formulation, is a haunting image of the future. But there remains the possibility of a new richness arriving along with our divided attention, an additional layer in our experience of the built world.
“Public spaces are always going to be sites of negotiation. They are not places, like your laptop screen, where you can do whatever you want,” David Benjamin, of The Living, told me. But what if our screens engaged in that conversation? If our building facades didn’t just communicate information to us (à la the Jumbotron), but we communicated back, communally? After all, what makes cities vital are their color and diversity, the wild mix of scales, even the noise and confusion. This has been the defining sensation of modernity, from the Parisian boulevard to the contemporary aerotropolis. Social media has the potential to amplify this quality, making people feel disoriented and overwhelmed—but also focused and inspired. Great cities have always done both, and architecture’s role has always been to help make sense of it all. It took Mies to show how the lowly industrial I-beam could be transmuted into something as grand and symbolically profound as the columns of a Greek temple. What architect will turn the networked screen into a chapel?

A hundred designers, 10 urban challenges, very little money, and no sleep. That’s the recipe for 72 Hour Urban Action, a three-day marathon for designers to improve their city. Founder Kerem Halbrecht first debuted the concept at the Bat-Yam Biennale of Landscape Urbanism in Israel in September, where 120 participants working in 10 teams got three days and three nights to solve problems in public spaces. “I wanted to challenge the common perception that creating change in public space is long and difficult, and to see if public space can respond to changing needs in real time,” he told The New York Times last year…

Sobre las burbujas inmobiliarias que forman las universidades en sus campus. Aunque esto sucede en EEUU y sus universidades tienen unas características muy diferentes a las españolas, ¿no es posible que en España esté sucediendo algo similar cuando buena parte de los proyectos de “excelencia”, “internacionalización” … son en realidad proyectos arquitectónicos?

… university presidents are enamored with flashy construction projects which are much easier to justify to boards than equitably-paid faculty or low tuition for students (indeed, both of these are at odds with the sort of mentality that Ho observes on Wall Street: employees are always disposable and any university that keeps tuition down must be failing to charge apporpriately for its services).* After a few years at a university, the building-enamored president moves on to bigger and better digs, leaving faculty to struggle to get grants to fill buildings that shouldn’t have been built in the first place.

As a byproduct, universities issue bonds and, so long as endownments keep flowing in, can service them. It’s a giant ponzi scheme with little of value for students and, as Harper’s described in a notorious graphic about the consequeneces of overbuilding in Brandeis (Brandeis has threatened a lawsuit and has accused Harper’s of slander and libel over this piece), can collapse precipitously during times of economic crisis. But while bonds were hot, Wall Street couldn’t have enough of them, so universities eagerly complied.