Risky Business: Juan Herreros at Columbia

| February 21, 2008

Architecture is a dangerous business. Ok, maybe not James Bond dangerous, but we do get involved in some hairy situations. Not exactly life threatening, but definitely related to our success as architects. As I dilute my exaggeration, I get to the level of risky business that Juan Herreros paired to the work of Abalos & Herreros in his lecture at Columbia last night.

Barcelona Ecopark aerial rendering. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Mark Wigley began the evening with a long “short introduction” to describe Juan Herreros as the “thinking architect’s architect” and as one of the most respected by the late Cedric Price.

Here were the points or questions posed during the lecture, doing my best to apply quotations where appropriate…

The Build-up

The MOMA exhibit on Spanish architecture was about the expression of super objects. “Too much form, no plans, no sections, no organization.”

“How can we regain control of the change of the city?”

Architecture can be broken into two parts. Beauty - wide concept, related to the presence of objects. Nature - processes, “looking for an equilibrium.”

“How can we understand that form and process work together?”

“Risky Business is the title we take if we want to be close to the change”

Barcelona Ecopark

Difficult objective is to create a beach in an inaccessible part of the city, next to industrial plant. Three clients with different goals. The park is just a public space to use as you want - no function.

All additional systems (waste, energy, etc.) exist underground, below a landscape.

“Developed a series of rules to work very fast and in the industrial culture.” Simplicity became key.

Barcelona Ecopark landscape with industrial plant in background. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Barcelona Ecopark landscape where it arrives at the water. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Barcelona Ecopark office building at the industrial plant. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Barcelona Ecopark office building interior. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

…extension of park conversation

Shows another Spanish project turning abandoned areas into park. “We say… if we have a void, what are we going to do… a park.” Not much creativity, and the parks always lack program. This project is also not introducing a strict program, but part of it will be a sports center.

Tower Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

Site sits in a strip roughly 2 blocks wide with port on one side, beach on the other. “Beach and port are co-creating economical growth if this island.”

Abalos & Herreros want to create a void by building a tower, which can mark the past to the future. The big objective is not building higher to look at the horizon but to look down at the most important piece, the void.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Tower. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Interior
Barcelona Ecopark aerial rendering. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Plaza - “the void.” Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Approaching complexity and hybrid configuration

It is difficult to have social housing in city center because land is expensive. Herreros pointed out that the city in question had 400 some public buildings in the city center, not including churches. Their idea is to tear down a public building, rebuild it better and add 20 floors of low-income residential on top.

This seems almost to easy, right? The local administration says this is not possible because laws regulate land use, and of course, they never change those right.

Move to Paris, add willing officials, and Abalos & Herreros were able to pull off this concept. The simplification of details and variables made it even more feasible.

A few more social housing projects. “Materias are cheap, but construction is good quality.”

Prototype APTM Concept
Prototype APTM sectional concept. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Prototype APTM mock-up interior. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.

Conclusions…

“risky business” (stripped down version) is putting social housing on top of private or public enterprises.

“risky business” (intellectual version) can be rephrased as infrastructural geography. This immediately perked my ears because of my own interest in infrastructure, and it sounded like a nice piece of archibabble I could regurgitate at a later date. Joking aside, he defined infrastructural geography as describing how the earth works and how the city works.

His final line….

Abalos & Herreros defines beauty as something more technical or cultural.

dot dot dot

So, for all you rationalists out there, you might want to investigate this office a bit more. I wouldn’t classify them as hyper-rationalist, in the way that Joshua Prince-Ramus approached the Seattle Public Library, but definitely process driven.

Finally, a few snapshots of other projects he presented in the lecture.

Urban Mobiliar Fabricated Parts
Urban Mobiliar fabrication parts. Courtesy of Abalos&Herreros.