Rafael Moneo - art & architecture

We received a email from our module leader, KL, my previous tutor also. Rafael Moneo was his professor in Harvard!

Rafeal Moneo is a guy that we have to study in ''history and theory of Modern aki'' text book, and memorize his works to crap during the exam...

KL 严肃的时候很吓人, 但是很有个性. 在lecture 上, 大伙 ''群起而攻之''的时候, 他在戏剧性的灯光里像 ---- 一个战士.

呵呵, 昨天忽然想, 将来子嗣, 我愿它是个男孩子; 我有很多属于男孩子的优秀基因, 呵呵, 可以传给他.

The 2003 RIBA Gold Medalist at the RIBA, 66 Portland Place- José Rafael Moneo, Hon. FAIA, Hon. FRIBA.]

Let me begin by saying how touched I am to be here today at the Royal Institute of British Architects¹ headquarters to receive the Gold Medal. I first came to England after finishing my studies and I distinctly remember entering the Royal Institute of British Architects¹ lobby and stopping in front of the wall where the names are engraved of so many architects whom I revered. I looked upon it as a sort of sacred stone which memorialized many of those I considered to be heroes. To see my name among them was something that I never would have anticipated and today I would like to express my gratitude for this token of generosity from you my British colleagues. I would say the motive for such recognition could be found in my work in as much as it offers proof of an unwavering passion for our discipline and for a loyal dedication to our profession throughout my not so brief career. Tonight I would like to offer some reflections about what architecture means to me. I will not try to offer a definitive vision of architecture something we know to be impossible and yet I would like to address what I consider to be the substance of the profession to which I have devoted my entire life. I will supplement my words with images of my work, with the hope that, together, they will evoke some of the richness that I have found in architecture over the course of my career.

I will start by telling you what I consider to be the great privilege of our profession. And that is, in my view, that we are given the opportunity to create the stage for human life, for producing the artifice which, together with nature, forms the real world in which we live. We have become accustomed to this second nature and hardly notice that it grows around us relentlessly. It is true that our lives depend on innumerable circumstances and that the world around us is also built by other architects politicians, ideologists, lawyers, priests, etc. Their legacy is everywhere to be found and yet nothing else in our world has the inevitable presence of architecture. Our work frames the palpable reality in which people¹s lives take place and this because of its physicality, tangibility, and ultimately own entity, its real presence. Even though some architects insist that architecture is process, or that the essence of architecture can already be found in the design and representation of buildings, I would maintain the importance of the real thing and in the value of the physical results of design, which I consider to be the true expression of our art.

Although architects aspire to transfer their ideas to their work, those buildings ultimately enjoy an independent life, becoming self sufficient artefacts. With the resonance of the architect¹s vision, the building is able to embrace the lives of people for generations to come. Architects create the atmosphere in which life happens and I would like to remind you all of something that is well known but often forgotten: that it is the materiality of buildings that allows them to partake in reality, or better, to become the reality. Architecture never belongs to any ³simulacrum² and we know how difficult it is to create the fiction either of mimicking a style or evoking some nostalgic atmosphere. Recent architectural history, such as Post Modernism in the Œ80¹s, shows this to be true. The essence of what we call architecture is and I believe has always been - found in its materiality and the expression of this materiality. While architecture expresses an implicit ideology and can be seen as a mental operation, tonight I would like to offer some images of my work that illustrate this notion of the physicality of buildings. Let me insist on the importance of the materials, and naturally on the building techniques with which are associated, in order to reach this degree of physical autonomy that I find in the buildings around us.

I wouldn¹t want the façade of Murcia to be seen as a simple geometrical montage. I don¹t think it can be identified as merely an abstract frame. The stone matters. It gives sense to the pilasters and it allows the subtle appearance of the concrete bands that allude to the structural skeleton of this building. The opacity of the material prevents reflections and allows this building to stand discreetly in front of the dominant cathedral facade. The sharp corners emphatically establish the edges of the facade clearly articulating its separateness from the adjacent buildings. It is the choice of the material that establishes the aura and the character of this building.

The brick here at Mérida was the basis of the construction method I chose in an effort to establish a connection with the existing ruins. The continuity of the brick fabric allowed the new building to be familiar with the ruins around and about which it was built.

The brick walls are an ideal background for the display of the marble pieces both for their structural integrity and their visual neutrality. They allow the Roman fragments to repose comfortably in the spaces of the museum. In addition, I believe that the scale of the brick and the manner in which it is laid legitimates the thickness of the walls in a way that stucco, cast concrete or another aggregate would not do.

In the case of Bankinter, brick was used to create a natural continuity with the existing 19th century building. But here the façade becomes almost paradigmatic of the brick with which it is built. Today, what I like about Bankinter is the free expression of the material. The baked clay is manifest in its materiality and the beauty of the brick is evoked through the care and precision of its application.

In Seville, the small scale is the prevalent reference. Today it is a city that, in spite of its apparent Muslim traces, is dominated by its 19th century architecture with its ornate details and rich palette of materials. I tried to keep these features in the Previsión Española building. Rather than looking for stylistic compatibility, I relied on textures and materials. They are responsible for a diversity that, in my view, produces an architecture which comfortably inscribes itself in the urban fabric.

This prominent role that materials play in architecture is not the only basis for talking about physicality. Architectural presence implies space and I would like to emphasise how much the spatial experience determines architecture¹s relevance. I won¹t insist on something that so many critics, from Wolfflin to Bettini, from Argan to Zevi, have illustrated to clarify our understanding of what space means for architecture. But I believe it is more and more common today to find architects dedicated to the distribution of specific activities without any concern for the spatial conditions in which they take place. Space, as a figurative category is today neglected. Spaces aren't designed anymore. They come simply as a result. I believe, as those above mentioned critics claimed, that space should be considered the primary domain of architecture.

When first thinking about the Los Angeles Cathedral, I was decidedly drawn to architectural atmospheres that provoked a certain feeling of mystery. Byzantine churches, Gothic Cathedrals, some Baroque chapels, the Bryggman church in Turku, Le Corbusier¹s Ronchamp, all offered models of this atmosphere. In each of them the spatial experience based on time and perception was crucial. Also, I wanted to use natural light in such a way that you were taken by it without knowing its sources. And finally, I sought to establish a prevalent directionality which led the believer towards the iconic image, the Cross, to signify the act of faith. All those ingredients are present in the space, a reality, a sensorial experience, that cannot be captured by photography, and that speaks to the physicality that I consider to be at the heart of architecture.

The stairs of the Kursaal are the protagonist of these interiors. They animate the space, freely occupying the void that results from the displacement of the hall in the cube. The result is an open and visible structure that allows people attending the events to see each other and so to enjoy and celebrate their presence among others. The space therefore performs as the stage for social life almost as if they were a contemporary version of a Baroque model.

The vault-like condition of the Davis Museum is transformed by the existence of this double stair which allows one to move freely among the spaces of the building. The stair offers a place for a moment of reflection so that Museum visitors have some intimacy while moving between the expansive galleries. The experience of the space is the result of this contrast. Space here is felt through this sensory perception, something due to the building¹s presence that I was talking about earlier.

The fashion of considering architecture as the inevitable result of a mental process has led us to ignore this perceptual condition that architecture has always had. To use our eyes as a means of architectural control still seems to me to be an essential tool for us as architects. In many of my projects, I confess that I have used my eyes instrumentally to inform the building¹s design. It is true that we can speak of a crisis of the figurative arts at this turn of the century, but if architecture endures - and I believe it will still will be alive one of the figurative arts, related inevitably with the eyes and vision. For me, and perhaps it is the result of enhancing the importance in architecture that has its physicality, architecture still is among the figurative arts and therefore the visual control of it is needed.

So the fact that the Diagonal was going to be perceived only from the side led us to design a series of setbacks which characterize the building. A visual mechanism guides the architecture and the modelling of the volumes come as a direct result of this approach.

The height of our building in Murcia was dictated by the desire to neutralize the adjacent buildings. As a result our building prevails and the existing buildings almost disappear, reinforcing the direct relationship between this building and the Cathedral. The mass of the building is, ultimately, established by this primary visual concern.

Reflecting on the way architecture contributes to people¹s lives, I would like to remind you how buildings also perform like Œmachines¹ to use the Le Corbusian expression. Buildings become instruments for social life as well as for institutions. Primitive architecture as well as many vernacular buildings give clear testimony to this attempt to conceive buildings as tools. The complexity of contemporary buildings has done much to hide this significant architectural feature but it emerges from time to time with force and reminds us of this potential. I find it rewarding as an architect to be called upon to produce buildings which are asked to be tools because it reminds me, in broad terms of what the architect¹s task has always been. Hospitals and big infrastructure buildings are examples of architecture where the meaning of the old Vitruvian ³utilitas² still pertains. I rejoice that such a category is still entrusted by society to architects and, for that reason, I will present now some examples of my work serving this endeavour.

This is a recently finished building in Madrid. It is a Maternity as well as a Children¹s Hospital. The complexity of the program is present in its architecture, with its system of courtyards that produces a porous plan, ready to receive disparate uses. The courtyards also help to establish a clear grid of movement, a very important feature in buildings of this nature.

The Atocha Railway Station is a building serving an extremely complex circulation system. It is a long distance train station, accommodating the most recent high speed trains, connecting Madrid with Seville and Zaragoza, and it also provides a hub for the commuter railway and the subway. In addition to all that, Atocha serves as a bus terminal. The building was conceived to provide a coherent and efficient link in this elaborate network. The role of the building as a pure utilitarian element, as an urban tool, prevails.

I like to think of architecture as the substance of the city. Cities are for me the places where architecture is deposited. Cities are inhabited by architecture, by simple buildings, that are indecipherable beings, with a very specific condition that makes them quite different from a work of art such as a painting or a poem. They stand by themselves with a physical autonomy that establishes a parallel between themselves and nature. Often cities are understood as growing organisms but, instead, I like to see them as archives of time gone by. It is a past that is sustained by those buildings which configure the face of our cities even once they have become obsolete. Buildings remain alive although they no longer play the same instrumental role for which they were conceived. The greatness of the architect, to return to what I said earlier, is to be responsible for this new, composite, artificial nature, this new reality that is the built work.

Rossi made, not too long ago, a desperate attempt to provide a systematic description of how cities grow, looking to establish a definitive theory of the urban form. I would not dare to do so. But I would like to explain to you how I see my buildings forming a part of the card game that is the city, assimilating themselves among the other cards already on the table, and yet, maintaining their autonomy as individual cards. The city is an open-ended game, but the new card must recognize the conditions into which it is played. This leads me to mention continuity, a concept which has to do with respect for the past, but that shouldn¹t be confused with historicism. The city is not predetermined, it is open. And yet the pertinence of what exists already will come to bear no matter what the architect does.

Atocha is a 19th century railway station that required an extension. The card was on the table, but the new one, our project, the extension, was going to invert the orientation that the old station had. A new façade was needed, indicating to the travellers the new entrance. The new project embraces its predecessor and leaves embedded in the new building the old railway station, offering a clear example of the continuity with which a city proceeds.

In Logroño, a project from early in my career, an old barracks was removed and a new use for the land was assigned. It represented the essential change in Spanish political life: the new City Hall would become the center of the new democracy. A card is moved in the card game of the city and a new one appears. The building is conceived in urban design terms and its form works to configure a public space, something that could be associated with the Spanish Plaza Mayor, the paradigm of Spanish public life.

The Avenida Diagonal is a determinant street in Barcelona¹s Cerdá Plan and our building recognises this literally: the building runs along the street for 300 meters bringing those from the outskirts of the city to its center. Instead of a compound of isolated towers, Manuel de Solá-Morales and I proposed this elongated building in a winning competition entry that accommodates a mixed program, which has now became a point of reference for the city.

In cities there are occasions when great interest is focused on the site. Architecture inevitably becomes related to site. While today it can be argued that Nowhere prevails, that buildings appear as generic products without any specific influence from either the geography or any other urban circumstances. Ready to admit the uniformity of both programs and building methods in most parts of the world, I would like to think that architecture remains related to its site and that the design process begins there. To discern what should be kept, what could permeate from the previously existing site into the new presence and emerge after the substantial immobile artifact is built, is crucial for any architect. The inevitable dialogue between a site and the act of building on it ends with the emergence of architecture, through which the site is transformed and on it a new reality engendered by the presence of a building.

San Sebastián is one of the most beautiful cities in Spain. Its magnificent geography features a collection of all the topographical conditions that we learned in our geography textbooks. And yet this astonishing natural medium has been taken over by the urban fabric. The competition asked for the completion of a piece of land at the mouth of the Urumea river. From the very beginning I thought it would be best to build something that could be considered a natural accident rather than one more urban episode. So these two cubic forms, almost like geological fragments, animated by the proximity of the Urgull and Ulía mountains, occupy the site in an willfully erratic way. The difficulty lies in maintaining the abstract condition of this proposal, and its success comes from the transformation of this glass enclosure into a luminous object. This project was instigated by the site which, through the challenge it presented, became the source of a new architecture.

The Moderna Museet on Skeppsholmen, in Stockholm, is an attempt to build something that, with the virtue of merging with the existing buildings, provides room for a rather large building, a Museum. It was a competition where architects had to make proposals for the location of the new building. Many of them located their proposals along the shore. In contrast, our proposal, slightly setback, took advantage of the existence of a very long building, the Tyghuset, which served as a spine, for a series of pavilion like structures, thus creating a museum as a collection of independent and autonomous rooms. These rooms capture light from the top, mixing the skylights with the walls, so establishing a sort of continuity between the walls and the roof. The result is a Museum that blends both the landscape and the built world of the island, that lives with the city without creating any anxiety.

The Miró Foundation is another building where the interpretation of the site drove my design from the very beginning. When Miró settled in Mallorca in the late 1940s¹ he bought a piece of land overlooking the Bay of Palma. The tourist boom since then has radically changed the landscape. I tried to react against this new situation and so I raised this broken succession of walls, echoing the defensive attitude found not far away in the old fortifications. Atop this structure, I put water so that the lost view of the Bay would be present again. Inside, Miró¹s works inhabit an unstable space insisting on the singularity his paintings have.

An issue that will always surface is the question of knowledge in architecture. Is there a specific knowledge that allows us to speak about our discipline with its own territory and its own laws? I would say ³Yes². Architects have tried throughout the centuries to establish a body of knowledge which would define their activity like other positive sciences. And yet architectural literature has not been able to reach the level of science. Since the Renaissance, architects have attempted in vain to use treatises and handbooks to collect their knowledge systematically. Neither did the attempts of the 19th century even with the work a theoretician as important as Viollet-le-Duc offer conclusive results. This struggle today carries over into the schools that also attempt to define what knowledge means in our field. And yet with the awareness that a systematic approach to the idea of knowledge in architecture isn´t possible, I would like to believe that architectural knowledge isn´t hopelessly elusive and often can inform the work that we do.

The design of the Thyssen Galleries can be considered as a result of this understanding and synthesis of architectural precedent. The building I received was the product of several extensions from the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th. In the 1970s, the building was partially demolished, retaining only the perimeter walls, in order to become the headquarters of a bank. I reinvented the fabric of a palace-like building able to hold Barón Thyssen-Bornemisza¹s collection. Without the application of what I would call an architectural body of knowledge, this project would not have been possible. In this case, our effort to recreate a character of space that was already built implied this knowledge to which I refer.

The concept of type, a notion which belongs also to the so called architectural body of knowledge, underlies a project like Urumea. It is a concept that guides reflections upon the nature of building and, in this case, to respect the atmosphere of the existing urban fabric. Here, I explored the way transforming the structure of the conventional city block in a new one.

The same explanation can be offered for Houston. A rather constricted piece of land was given as the site for the extension of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. I had no intent of creating a conspicuous building but rather to develop a building where the richness provided by changes in scale and form happened within. It is a compact architecture, rather than a fragmented structure, conceived with the awareness that a city such as Houston lives more indoors than outdoors.

But knowledge doesn´t always serve us so directly. There are moments when architects must transcend the instrumental condition that characterizes architecture in order to provide an answer to more profound questions. Sometimes architecture is required to represent or to illustrate moments of human life with the presence of symbols. This challenges architects to consider where the expressive limits of our discipline are to be found. Is architecture able to convey, with its physicality, feelings and ultimately a certain meaning? I would like to share with you a couple of projects where I encountered this challenge.

The first one is the Mérida Museum of Roman Art. Mérida was a prominent Roman city but it disappeared over the centuries, only to emerge as a humble village at the beginning of the modern age. During the last century, archaeologists began to rediscover its past splendour. The Roman presence was everywhere and coincidentally stretched across the site designated for the new Museum. How were we to build upon it? The answer to this question inspired a building which literally merges with, and emerges from, the old Roman city. Rather than keeping the ruins as museum pieces, they are blended with the new structure, producing a building that is not a remote aesthetic experience but rather exudes a sense of reality while naturally embracing the ruins. The past, manifest in the ruins, and the present, the new building, become the same: the true testimony of what Mérida has been throughout history. By discovering the accumulated layers of history the Museum allows a true view of the past. To my mind, there is no more compelling experience for anyone living in a city than to be able to see the past and present of that city simultaneously.

In order to achieve this, I had to make several crucial choices. The first and probably the most daring was to build with techniques similar to those used by the Romans. The new building the Museum is built in a Roman manner. Literally, using the brick walls as forms to cast the concrete as the Romans did. By so doing the issue of the scale, so often damaging archaeological sites, becomes absorbed and integrated. History is no longer something remote but instead it is tangible in the new architecture. The Roman Museum allows the people of Mérida to know their past.

To build a sacred space today is perhaps one of the most greatest challenges to be offered to an architect. Our society doesn¹t have the homogeneity of those medieval communities that built cathedrals. A temple cannot be today a simple representation of an ideology or an illustration of a way of thinking. And yet, architects, as individuals, are asked to provide an answer to religious space nowadays. What is the appropriate expression of a sacred space? I would say that sacred spaces should allow us either to be alone with ourselves or to share and to enjoy with others a ritual ceremony. It was this ambivalent use that I wanted to be present in the Los Angeles Cathedral. There is in the Los Angeles Cathedral the presence of spaces that are more evocative of the eerie feeling that we associate with religious experience. These would allow the individuals to establish private contact with their spiritual selves. Byzantine churches with their diffuse light; Romanesque churches with the darkness that represents the mystery; Gothic churches with the confidence the builders had of physically representing the true knowledge; Baroque chapels with their beams of light seen as God¹s presence Š I couldn¹t escape all these memories of sacred spaces I had experienced when designing this one. I thought to serve the true believers by offering them an architecture that is still in touch with such breathtaking and memorable spaces received from the past. I don¹t dare to recognize that these memories were present in my work and yet I don¹t see the possibility of being rid of them when thinking of a specific sacred space. What I understood to be the very nature of the ritual seemed to ask for it.

I would like to end these reflections that a rather long practice has inspired with a consideration about the way in which architects might proceed. When talking about the sources of architecture I ought to insist in what I believe to be a definitive point: the freedom of the architect.

Often architecture is based on free, arbitrary choices. Since the most classical element of academic architecture, architecture has been based on a rather arbitrary choice of those forms able to provide the guidelines for construction. When Calimachus, walking in the cemetery, saw a basket with acanthus leaves and transformed it into a capital, he took advantage of form being caught in a casual moment. He transfromed the basket into an element that has been repeated countless times throughout the centuries. Calimachus needed the form to terminate a column and the basket provided him, all the ingredients, ornamental and structural, that he needed. In one way or another, form is essential in order to find the path which will end in a building. Architectural history is replete with similar examples and I won¹t carry on tonight in recollecting them. Having said that, I would like to remind you that architects resist the arbitrary and are delighted when use makes arbitrary form so familiar that its legitimacy becomes unquestionable.

Obviously there are architects moving in the opposite direction who claim that architecture results from determinant conditions and in so doing develop the attributes of their architecture with continuous reference to these conditions which might include technology, program, budget, codes, etc. These are architects that believe architecture to be a servant to so many imposed parameters. The most radical functionalists are moving in this direction. Even those two camps that appear so different - those that base their work in Œarbitrariness¹ and those who consider their architecture to be a result of decisive circumstances - coincide in rejecting any commmitment with the free creation of form.

And yet I still believe form, or more precisely the term coined by the Italian philosopher, Luigi Pareyson, ³formativity², to be a valuable concept for an understanding of architectural production. How does Pareyson define ³formativity²? Let me quote him directly, ³Truly this is the nucleus of

³formativity²: to give form means to invent the work, and, at the same time, the way of making it². There is a moment when the invention of a new form implies knowing how to do it. There are those moments in which we foresee the inevitability in all genuine works of art. Pareyson has expressed this concept with clarity and I quote him, ³Every work fulfilled seems - to the

artist- once it has been achieved, the only one which could be done, but it was mandatory that it was done and only by doing does he come to know it: before it was one among many possibilities. Once it is done, it becomes the possibility he was looking for.² Thinking and making are intimately related and to anticipate the form implies the process of how it was done.

This concept of ³formativity² in my view which covers both the use of ³arbitrariness² and the ³search of the inevitable result² requires freedom as a mandatory beginning. In spite of the will of determinism that we are looking for because it will rid us of any responsibility, architects enjoy freedom and ought to assume this freedom. The choice of form is finally the architect¹s endeavour and the result of one undeniable freedom. Even though we architects often claim that the zeitgeist dominates our own personal expression I would say that the individual freedom is prevalent. Or in other words we should admit that our use of whatever style or manner which characterizes the spirit of the time is our freely accepted choice.

I consider myself to be an architect who has enjoyed such a freedom and I would like to show you some traces of this in the projects I¹ve shown here tonight.

In Miró I chose the narrative, a plot which mastered the design: it was the freely assumed attempt of bringing the water up the hill from the Bay of Mallorca that governed this architecture.

The free choice of the retablo like facade is the result of a vision which guided the entire design process. A laborious one.

Anticipating these almost geological crystals in the middle of the dramatic geographical and urban conditions of the site has been the image that I pursued throughout the entire process of construction.

And I finish. I realize that this statement recognising the duties of architects with freedom enhances our responsibility but it also recognises the greatness of a profession to which all of us have devoted the best of our lives.

wawa 在 4/21/2004 3:00:11 PM 说:

刚柔并济, 以退为进. 顺着生命漂流, 舟覆也是宿命. 接过台词, 这一生都要演下去!

yanan 在 4/21/2004 2:22:22 PM 说:

以前我喜欢自己，是一个孤军作战的战士。最好最后战死。现在，我要死了。现在，快到最好、或者最后了。妈妈，四面楚歌……