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Oriol Bohigas | ...by himself

conversation · nuances · expression

editor: Félix Arranz | associated editor: Jaume Prat

architecture + architects

scalae ebook collection vol. #001, English draft edition

January 2013; rev. 2017

ISBN: when final ebook and print editions are published

bookID: scalae.net-bohigas-self-draftENG-20130131-120000

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scalae documents, broadcasts, and stimulates debate around, criticism of, and research into architects and other agents involved in the narration, creation, and construction of architectures that provide shelter for people’s lives and aspirations.

www.scalae.net

[collection credits. 2017]

Félix Arranz, editor and director

Jaume Prat Ortells, Anna Bach, Paula Esquinas, Elisabet Mallafré, associate editors

Ferràn Figuerola, associate industrial editor

Josep Cusidó, associate industrial editor

Marta Ferrer, associate industrial editor

Birgit Zondler, associate industrial editor

Vicente Martínez-Cosentino, associate industrial editor

Irene Elorza, associate industrial editor

Carles Moliner, associate industrial editor

Jordi Vallverdú, associate industrial editor

editorial board

guest participants: Santiago Alfonso, Eugeni Bach, Jordi Badía, Olga Felip, Borja Ferrater, Beth Galí, Jordi Ludevid, Fernando Marzá, Josep Lluís Mateo, Ariadna Perich, Xavier Torras.

industries board:

Cricursa · Lamp · Figueras · Geze · Cosentino · Pergo · Reynaers · Roca

institutional network

guest entities: Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (library) · Institut Ramon Llull · Arquitectes per l'Arquitectura · Associació Arquinfad del Foment de les Arts i el Disseny · Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona, UPC · LaSalle URL · ESARQ UIC · Catalunya Ràdio

scalae universal app >>> http://scalae.mobapp.at

[scalae international ebook collection]

The scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection is a European initiative that began in Barcelona. It became a reality through the support and teamwork of a group of experts, institutions, and companies that are committed to internationalizing industries and their work, creating product intelligence for the construction industry, and configuring an architectonic project based on cultural exchange and debate.

The collection is a continuation of scalae’s earlier publications and initiatives: print publications (scalae 0.0; 2003), podcasts (scalae 1.0; 2005), and the scalae.net rss documentaries (scalae 2.0; 2009), complementary undertakings which are all still available online.

Each volume in the collection focuses on a single Catalan, Spanish, European, or international architect, studio, or architectural agent, and the volume is divided into three ebooks. The first book, “...self” (by themselves), begins with a transcription of a conversation – usually available online as a podcast – that covers the principles, processes, and results of the person or studio in question. It also includes a selection of significant graphics or drawings of theirs in an attempt to reflect on the connection between words and signs in their way of creating architecture. The second book, “...from” (questions), includes the subject’s opinions, experience, or critiques of topics and objects they hold dear. The third book, “...about” (regarding...), reflects other people’s opinions, experiences, and critiques of the subject’s creations, techniques, and professional and personal output. The ...self, ...from, and ...about ebooks make up a complete volume. They are published as free, internationally distributed ebooks in English, Spanish, and Catalan in two formats: mobi (Kindle®) and ePub (iBook, iPad, most eReaders like sony®, fnac®, etc.).

In the final stage of this open production process – which includes both the ebooks and the online material – the issues in the collection become available for low-cost, on-demand printing for those wishing to have a paper version and for public reference libraries in Catalonia and the rest of Spain and in international centres for architecture and culture.

The collection is testimony to the efforts of many people – a fractal map of involvement on the part of the editorial board and multiple other agents – whose only motivation is the desire to open up ideas, documentation, and research so as to foster debate. Their work does not rely on sponsorship or conventional advertising but rather on collaboration: companies produce original articles about their work, which constitute an alternative – and direct – form of expression.

[issue credits. 2017]

· issue: Oriol Bohigas ...self, draft, CAT v2.0 2017

#001 scalae architecture + architects ebook collection, January 2013, scalae ed, Barcelona (Catalonia; Spain; Europe)

· editor: Félix Arranz

· associated editor: Jaume Prat

· social management: SCALAE editorial & industries board

· english translation: Victoria Patience [nativawordcraft.com]

· photographs: SCALAE

· drawings: Oriol Bohigas, MBM architects

. technical & distribution support: Micky Bou [ysi.net]

. free distribution & subscriptions: archbib.com and scalae.net

. ebooks@scalae.net

. disponible la versió en català d'aquest ebook a scalae.net

. disponible la versión en español de este ebook en scalae.net

[conversation]

The following section contains an abbreviated transcript of Oriol Bohigas’s ideas and opinions as they emerged in a conversation with Félix Arranz that was recorded to be broadcast as a scalae.net podcast. However, this particular recording has not yet been broadcast because the trust and close relationship between the two interlocutors meant that the conversation took place in Catalan, rather than Spanish, the language used in all other scalae podcasts. As a result of Oriol Bohigas’s maturity and wisdom, his comments from 2005 are still totally valid in 2013 – indeed, at times they seem visionary regarding both the collective and the personal. The following issues are covered in this conversation, as defined by the matrix for scalae.net documents and podcasts: academic and professional training (fundamental principles), way of working (processes), output and personal and professional background (situations).

a certain humanistic or historiographical air...

My father was involved in the creation of cultural environments but he wasn’t an architect. In fact, he didn’t even go to university. When I said I wanted to study architecture it didn’t sound unusual. There were two things that sounded normal—the other would have been doing a degree in history. My father had a natural inclination towards history. At the last minute, I decided to study architecture. I might have been influenced by Josep Martorell, who finished secondary school with me. I had this image of architects as having a certain humanistic or historiographical air about them. And architecture was the sort of thing my family did, even though no-one in it had ever actually become an architect. I also studied classical piano for years—I did a degree in it, except for the final subject, which coincided with the toughest part of the entrance course for the School of Architecture. My mother was a real music lover and at one point she got her hopes up that I’d become a musician. But it didn’t last long. In a way, music left its mark on me: I still have the grand piano that my father gave my mother the day I was born.

The Spanish Civil War interrupted my secondary school years. By the time I was able to finish, Franco’s dictatorship was in place. I had a taste of each political system. At that time, the architects I most admired were the Noucentistas: Francesc Folguera,  Raimon Duran Reynals,  Josep Goday, Adolf Florensa, etc. As a movement they had ties to the Lliga Regionalista (the Regionalist League, an important Catalan political party), to the pro-Catalan movements, to the left, to civilized architecture, which included many specific fields and was more modern. Although it was highly respected, the GATCPAC (Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture) was too small and elitist to have influenced me. The opposite position was that of the primoderrivistas, those involved with academism, like Francisco de Paula Nebot or Eusebio Bona, who had access to official commissions. They were clearly different because they spoke Castilian Spanish, rather than Catalan. The difference between the two groups was patently political.

no-one talked to you about architecture until...

At that time, to get into the School of Architecture you had to spend two years at the School of Exact Sciences, as though we were mathematicians, then take an entrance course and sit exams in integral calculus and line and figure drawing. No-one talked to you about architecture until the third year of university. Once you had passed the introductory course to the degree, everything was relatively easy, except subjects like structures, the standard of which was the same as or higher than on degrees in civil engineering. By the time we graduated we were so well trained that, in the early years, we did all the structural calculations ourselves. Things are very different now. A nine-year degree would be unthinkable these days.

The Barcelona School of Architecture was more prestigious than the one in Madrid, which was all about academism and regionalism. The curriculum in Barcelona wasn’t bad, although some of the teachers left a lot to be desired. I stand up for the tough education I received. The pedagogical tendencies throughout the degree were so diverse that you came to feel you were being split into two people, a physicist or mathematician and an artist or humanist. It was easy to think that, on the one hand, you were doing well, but then on the other, you were failing. I still dream that they made a mistake when they gave me my degree because there’s some subject totally unlike any of the others that I still haven’t done! It would be good to review the criteria for that particular educational program.

I don’t know what the field of architecture is all about, officially speaking. Town planners do town planning. Landscapers do urban architecture. Interior designers put the finishing touches to buildings. Structures are made for us, and the electricity and the electricity and plumbing systems are calculated for us. The project manager oversees the construction process. It seems that the role of the architect has been reduced to making a small intervention in the facade. This is how things have been for the last twenty years. I’m lucky enough to have been an architect for thirty years before then, when the situation was very different—but buildings were simpler. These days architects go out of their way to make superficial things into the most important: making the skin or shape of a building interesting, for instance. If architects don’t bring that kind of thing to the project, then the other people involved will. We seem to be responsible for the wrapping paper.

our tradition is dialogue...

At the beginning, our clients were pretty fixed. We haven’t really kept up with what happened to the apartments that we designed and built with the dedication expected of an architect back then. They were rental properties instigated by manufacturers who needed housing for migrant workers, to whom they sold the flats as they ran out of money. Our relationships with people whose houses we started and finished were good. When things didn’t work out, we would leave halfway through. We worked continually for other people. For one fantastic client, a man called Joan Lluís Heredero, we built three factories, renovated an office building, and built two houses, one in Barcelona, which has since been knocked down, and one in the Pyrenees, where he still lives. The original designs of our houses—which are the test of whether a client stays with you or not—have been relatively well preserved.

We worked the same way as we do now, although in a slightly more disorderly fashion because we had less projects. We’ve always worked with two or three pairs of hands at the same table. Our tradition is dialogue, conversation, joint decision-making.

First there was Josep Martorell and I. Then along came David Mackay -a friend of ours asked us to give him a job to if he came out from London to live with her. He ended up becoming a partner. Our first employees were friends: draughtsmen who came to work on one project, then on another, and ended up staying on permanently. At the beginning draughtsmen were our only employees. Now, except the secretary and the archivist, etc., they’re all architects. Using draughtsmen was an efficient way of working—they didn’t bring a lot in the way of culture, but they had a lot of professional experience. The architecture students or graduates who come these days have a lot of cultural knowledge but little professional experience. Globally speaking, computers are a very positive thing, but they have complicated the way this new generation of architects relates to their projects. Everything takes place in the abstract. Computers give no sense of scale. Draughtsmen have evolved into architects, and today’s projects seem to be made in the midst of a struggle. We are constantly having to overcome prejudices. The ease with which things can be changed means that nothing is ever fixed. Before, deadlines took precedent over spur-of-the-moment whims, which were problematic to include because it meant redrawing the whole thing by hand.

for better or worse, we created a school...

In the 1960s and 1970s, students were the stepping stone between draughtsmen and architects. For ten or twelve years our studio was crammed with students who are now our friends. Our studio became trendy because we let new people in and it was supposedly a place where you could learn. One day we drew up a list, and it turned out that twenty-five notable architects had spent one to two years at our studio back when it was on Calle Calvet. For better or worse, we created a school. The Barcelona School -a neorealist tendency that focuses on brick, concrete, the details of construction, architectonic vicissitude, and the expression of functionalism, sometimes dramatically- was founded by people who spent time at our studio. Either they learned it from us or we learned it from them. Those years brought us a lot of positive things. It was the time when the studio was at its most fun, its most playful. There were parties, trips... The fourth stage in this process, when the students stood aside to let actual architects in, was that architects began to visit us from abroad. Italians and Central Europeans, mostly. The other thing that changed was that, for the first time, there were more women than men. I would like these architects to have a better understanding of our trade. But having seen how they work, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, and it’s partly the fault of computers. They don’t know much about construction, and teaching them is complicated because the type of construction we know about is proving more useless by the day. Too excessive. The construction process is bound by the time and place in which it occurs. changes to materials are one of the most significant things happening today, along with the structural consequences these changes entail. The key problem of architecture, however, is the way it is promoted, in that it has become normal to offer buildings that do not provide solutions for our way of life. Not even the most conventional way of life.

political struggle and cultural management...

When Federico Correa started to work at the School of Architecture, around 1963 or 1964, when Robert Terradas Viawas the director, it seemed like the school might improve, and they asked me to start teaching too. I taught the third-year Projects course for two years, until they kicked out all of us who took part in the sit-in at the Capuchin Monastery in Sarrià to mark the creation of the Free Student Union. Teaching was a great experience. The courses were lovely. In 1971, in similar circumstances, I beat other candidates to the chair of a Composition course. In reaction to the Burgos Trial, the last of  Francisco Franco’s executions, I refused to sign a document declaring my adherence to the Principles of the National Movement. As a result, I was reported to the press and a ministry ordered that I be stripped of my chair. On Franco’s death, I was reinstated, and there was a movement to make me director of the school. I’ve spent more time as a political activist and in cultural management than as a normal university professor. I left the School of Architecture when Narcís Serra, then Mayor of Barcelona, appointed me Director of Town Planning.

If I had to make an effort to seek out enemies, I’d find them according to their ideologies. Engineers are slight enemies of mine, because I’ve always treated them badly regarding what they are responsible for in construction, town planning, etc. These are battles of ideas about the structure of a professional society. Everyone has me pegged as a part of the Catalan left, somewhere between the Socialists and the Republican Left. Their enemies are my enemies. But this is about thinking differently and fighting for ideas. I can’t think of any personal enemies. And as I can’t think of them, it’s as if they don’t exist.

Parallel to my work in the studio I’ve been continually involved in other cultural activities: at the School of Architecture, at the City Council, first in town planning and later as the Director of Culture. I’ve been president of the Miró Foundation, of the Ateneo Barcelonés... which was more work than I imagined it would be. I also write: one or two newspaper articles each week, introductions and prologues to books… And I’ve been bringing out books of my own regularly. All that takes up a lot of my time outside the studio.

my whole life in Barcelona...

Barcelona is my home. I’m lucky to have been born here and spent my whole life here. I wouldn’t know how to live anywhere else. The city has its defects, but there are also good things that have made my life here happier: the landscape and climate, the kind of people who live here, the size of the city... If I had to find another place to live, I’d choose an improved version of Barcelona. Cleaner, with better architecture and more urban infrastructure. But it would be very difficult to find another model that wasn’t this one. This intermediate status, a city of three million people who are relatively spread out but still concentrated in a single place—I’ve never seen it anywhere else. And there’s the concept of the Mediterranean city: open but compact, where you live surrounded by crime and grime without either of the two seeming more important than what’s going on in your own life.

I’ve given Barcelona what all conscientious professionals have given to it. I’ve taken part in some events, in re-establishing a way of planning and understanding the city, the problem of the urban project in opposition to the general plan??... but architects have very little influence on the city. Cities are made by politicians. Town planning is a political idea. The only thing more important than politicians’ ideas is the ebb and flow of public opinion. If you’re a technician and you don’t agree with this, it’s best not to get involved. We don’t need another Olympics or another Forum of Cultures. I don’t disagree that major events help the city to grow. Especially if the city in question isn’t a capital, because events take place in capital cities every day. The problem of the suburbanization of the city hasn’t improved at all since the return of democracy. In fact, it’s become worse. One really positive job would be to return to that idea from the 1980s of fixing problems square by square, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Being a national capital is fundamental. If Barcelona was the capital of an independent Catalonia there would have to be an aggregation policy to expand the city; it would have to include the areas between the mountains to the sea, between the Llobregat and Besòs rivers, or even further, perhaps, taking in El Prat and Santa Coloma. Just like what happened at the beginning of the twentieth century with Gràcia, Sants, and Sant Andreu... The city should be subdivided and centralized politically, not administratively. People should feel that their district is governed by someone that they elected. Many Central European and English cities work that way. We should have a legislative assembly, a representative government, with the centralized power that’s appropriate to them. That would also solve the problem of the fiscal balance. Anyway, there’s no need to aspire to being an independent state, because the individual countries that make up Europe are eventually going to disappear. The future of Europe is all about very autonomous regions. People always say that I’m pro-independence, and I reply that I’m pro-interdependence. I want to choose what I depend on. Being calmly and securely independent, but with decisions being made by the international community.

[nuances]

This text is a summary of a second conversation between Oriol Bohigas and scalae editors Félix Arranz and Jaume Prat, which took place in January 2013. The aim of this second encounter was to add to the issues covered in the earlier conversation and bring them up-to-date, and also to include those matters that Bohigas considers important to understanding his position regarding architecture, his role as an architect, and his life as a whole.

fundamental principles: the third generation...

I don’t know if there’s anything indispensable in my way of thinking about architecture and acting on it. Being able to dispense with things depends a lot on our circumstances. The moral function of architecture has disappeared because the significance of architects has changed greatly: they’ve become less important and have less responsibility and authority when decisions are made. We’re moving towards a functional architecture that seeks to make immediate economic returns, in keeping with the interests of real-estate investors.

The spirit of modernity is an attempt to solve this problem. Its main enemies are craftsmanship and class-based elitism. A belief in social equality is one of the basic values of modernity.

When the avant-garde became mainstream, which happened around the time we started out as architects, its language was appropriated for profit. That was when the denaturing of the Modern Movement began, beginning with the disappearance of the grand masters and their revolutionary spirit. We were conscious of belonging to the third generation, and we put up a fight because we understood that the radical rationalism of the beginning no longer applied. We needed to find ways of expressing other things besides the rationalization of construction. We had moved beyond aggressive radicalism and the stripping away of all ornamentation. We’d stopped trying to find formulas for expression, artistry, and content that would lead us along the road to renovation, but which would very quickly become a road of reactionary repetition. Over time, we began to see that this attempt to return to the irrational was very dangerous: we would end up losing our whole sense of rationality.

The traditional model of the architect has fallen into decline these days. An interesting new path is being taken by the Vogadors, a group of mostly young architects whose name means “rowers” in Catalan and who are working shoulder to shoulder not with clients but with local residents. The way they work has existed throughout the history of Catalan and European architecture. It has emerged time and again, and has always been an efficient way of doing things. The Vogadors have transformed knowledge of the social, physical, and architectural world into material for their designs. Their concept of architecture is based on the idea of finding a balance between diversity and possibility, and making this into an artistic and cultural experiment. Creating a kind of architecture that is about more than just icons or images representing something, one that not only provides a service to the people who will live in the buildings in question but will also improve the architectonic method itself.

processes: changes in scale...

The projects that have interested us most are the ones that haven’t worked out. We used to think that if the architect was to be transformed, it would have to take place in the context of large technology-filled studios. We hoped to have such a studio, which would solve all our problems… and we almost managed it, but the context made it very difficult to keep our architecture independent. In the end we’ve come back down to a more traditional scale. A large studio is interesting when it’s being run by those who began it. It’s impossible for anyone else to inherit your way of being. If someone decides to walk the exact same road as you, they’ll end up doing it badly. I think it’s fine for a studio to grow to become reasonably powerful and then shrink again; it’s like the way our lives flow. A large studio, like ours ended up being, needs to be led by people who can take on abnormal amounts of work if you want to keep designing the projects yourself. That’s one of the problems: if you enjoy architecture you can’t run your studio like a normal business.

The way I see the current financial crisis, I’m not convinced that it’s coming to an end. There’s a stupid sense of faith in the air that there will be a return to real-estate speculation. Everyone is waiting. But change needs to come from politics. And politicians aren’t ready yet. It’s not necessarily their fault—the problem is serious and they don’t know how to solve it. If there was a brave government that managed to convince the population that land should be free and that the only thing the government should have to help fund is building houses on it—that would be a great step forward.

Working together with industry is also important. A good example of a local industry that has gone international is ROCA. I met the Roca family when all they were manufacturing was radiators. After the war they took possession of a German-French company, and they diversified. They had very efficient workers who were able to bring in good returns on a small investment. The bad thing about business in Catalonia is that other often people try to change the scale of a company without the means to do so properly. Especially when it comes to family-run businesses. You end up with the three-generation model: one generation starts the company, the next develops it, and the third destroys it. And I’d add a fourth, the one that picks up what’s left -in other words, real estate- and expects compensation through some town planning project or other. We can only hope that some of these generations may overlap.

results: like a city...

It’s hard to pinpoint one specific job where our way of thinking first came together. I’d maybe pick four or five projects that are emblematic of a period when we were involved in making low-cost housing. The apartments on Calle Pallars or Calle Meridiana are both significant examples of this. The former was more radical: the austerity of its design and materials reflect its expressive theme, poverty. The architectural homogeneity of the latter constitutes a formal representation of social equality.

The series of buildings of ours that most interest me are schools, because they represent a change in typology: no closed classrooms, like a city. Not as a metaphor, but as a real urban layout. That particular typology is practically forbidden these days because the rules of the economy don’t allow it. All you’re allowed to build is a corridor with classrooms on either side, which effectively removes the possibility of an education-oriented teaching style which would be able to replace rote learning.

The latest project we’ve been involved in is the Barcelona Design Hub. From the day we won the competition for the commission, we asked for a director to define the programme for us very precisely, because the building brings together five existing museums. We did a preliminary design, and then when it was ready and we were about to start on the actual building plan, they got rid of the director and the new one had totally different ideas. One had been in favour of bringing together traditional museums. The other only wanted to create a research centre, with no collections... We’d spent a lot of time on the design, and at the moment of truth, no-one even looked at it. And when the building was finished, the city council agreed to include a library which hadn’t been included in the original plan. But I think the building has improved. That was the way the city used to be built: you’d finish a building, then you’d just add another chunk onto it when you needed, and no-one minded. It would be good to go back to doing more austere projects. The Design Hub took more than four thousand plans. For the houses on Calle Pallars there were only six, drawn in pencil. I had a look at them recently, thinking they’d be ridiculously inadequate, but no, everything was laid out in them!

everything else: equality is...

We can’t make a big deal about the value of culture when there are some many people who don’t live well. Living well doesn’t just mean living surrounded by culture. Living well means eating well. It means having a powerful education system??. Having things to read. But I don’t want to get away from the most important point, which is having enough to eat. Poverty is a horrific thing. There is nothing that can compensate for it. Culture, precisely because it isn’t physical, isn’t so important. Education would improve things more than culture would. Rather than having a good theatre, I’d like to have a good theatre school. And in order to educate people, you need a good theatre audience. Training and education are vital.

Speaking of what is indispensable, I think that equality is more important than freedom. Freedom is a topic that isn’t of much interest to me. The banner of freedom is a reactionary one. I don’t know why we should be demanding freedom, as it’s impossible. It’s impossible, and isn’t particularly beneficial. Freedom to do what? To do what you want with your money? That’s a right-wing slogan. Equality is necessary for a democratic life. Equality is for us all to have the same type of education, for us all to have some basics covered by the state... that’s why things that seem small, like what schools [buildings] are like, are important. For me it’s important to create schooling that is free, compulsory, and the same for everyone. The cry of the French Revolution, “Freedom, equality, fraternity...” The French don’t talk about fraternity any more. Freedom, equality. If they’re not careful, they’ll end up prohibiting equality, and they’ll be left with “Long live freedom”. Freedom is the argument the Partido Popular (the People’s Party, Spain’s foremost conservative political party) uses to say that we all must speak Castilian Spanish, rather than Catalan or Basque and so on. I would understand freedom as being able to study in Catalan, whereas they see it as being able to study in the dominant language. Freedom is clearly a right-wing concept.

...Working with Bohigas. Challenges and opportunities.

by Ferran Figuerola, José Luis Ruiz and Joan Tarrús

The first contact Cricursa had with MBM architects studio was in 1995, and since then, we have been assisting them on their projects in which special glass treatments are required. It is a symbiotic relationship in which two specific and complementary agents benefit from each other. The architect, having the company as his/her support, obtains a result which is more similar to that desired. The industry broadens its opportunities thanks to intangibles which go beyond a specific project, in order to approach territories specific to research.

MBM has asked Cricursa to perform technological investigations and develop new construction systems. An example of this complimentary relationship is the entirely glass staircase we manufactured for the Gaudí Room of la Pedrera, supported by titanium fixings inserted and laminated within the glass steps allowing it to be fixed to the balustrade, also made of glass. This project produced in 2005, provided Cricursa with a technical development which has enabled us to become part of international projects where similar attachments have been needed.

The latest façade to have this technology applied is adjacent to another project in which we collaborated with Oriol Bohigas and MBM architects, in 2003: the Corte Inglés de Francesc Macià, in Barcelona. This project completely transformed the existing building, as well as the architectural concepts used for shopping centers belonging to the chain. For the first time, a glass façade opened the interior of a huge store to the outside world: the Diagonal and Villarroel Street. The use of large curved glass, placed horizontally, emphasizes its transparent appearance even more. On the rear façade, a retro illuminated translucent green glass skin, point-fixed to avoid any carpentry projecting shades, fills the adjacent spaces with the corporate color. After this project, the commercial chain started opening its buildings outwards, and so other centers also started having curved glass façades like Valencia's, or translucent or with colored glass like Jaén's, in which we were also lucky to be part of.

Ultimately, this collaboration generates symbiosis, demonstrating that also in architecture, one plus one can equal more than two.

[expression]

There follows an editorial reflection and small collection of graphics produced or overseen by Oriol Bohigas. Some are related to his professional work, others are exercises or pure fun, and one of them is of… fish!

...originals

by Jaume Prat and Félix Arranz

In his ingenious preface to The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky warns Russian literary critics about what it means to be an eccentric, a label he applies to himself: an eccentric is not necessarily an exception or an isolated phenomenon; indeed, it often happens that it is he who embodies the very essence of his time while his contemporaries somehow seem to have been cut loose from it by gusts of an alien wind. In this way, Dostoyevsky excuses his own deliberate surliness while declaring himself the incarnation of “normal”. No complexes to speak of.

We can’t recall a declaration along these lines from the mouth or pen of Oriol Bohigas, not from lack of opportunity, and yet he could well be said to embody a way of being that we think he shares with engineers like Ildefons Cerdà, local architects like Josep Puig i Cadafalch, or resolute politicians like Pasqual Maragall. If any of these people were to say “architecture will show us what we were like”, they would have to speak simultaneously of their city and themselves. They are all at the origin -the many origins- of a universal city: Barcelona.

If for a moment we could rummage through the papers of those “eccentrics”, those documents unmediated and in which head and hand are connected and free to offer up the intuitions, clues, questions, or solutions that might lead to building a better society, a better city, a better house, a better place to live… we might well find ourselves looking at sketches and drawings like those of Oriol, who, by trying to build places to be shared by his people and his time, by trying to explain his vision to those who are to help him carry out his professional endeavour, ends up revealing what it is that unites him with everyone else. In so doing, he reveals himself.

Eccentrics, then, like Fyodor, like Oriol and his sketches, have the power to transform any part of a process into a finished product. They are able to make any of their expressions, no matter how embryonic or partial it might be, into literature, architecture, or some other universal condition. The variety of sketches and directed drawings included here take shape as a coherent body of work that points to, that describes a cosmogony. The same cosmogony that, through Oriol’s visions, makes his city grow. His city. Any city or town, like Mequinenza, which -through the work of another eccentric but universal Catalan, Jesús Moncada- becomes a world of its own.

[referencies]

Twelve online references about works, projects, and texts by Oriol Bohigas and the MBM arquitectes studio. The first is a biographical profile of Oriol Bohigas at scalae.net (1). There follow five works published online at HICarquitectura.com, a sister site with visual content on buildings discussed in this ebook. The buildings in question are the Colegio Mestres Montaña in Granollers, (2), Kleine Circus in Maastricht, (3), City block on Carrer Pallars in Barcelona, (4), Eduard Conde Apartments (5), and the Roger de Llúria building at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (6). The seventh entry is the website for MBM arquitectes, Oriol Bohigas’s professional firm. The eighth is a video on Bohigas (8) produced by RTVE from a series on architects called Elogio de la Luz [In praise of light]. An article (9) from El País newspaper recalls the social side of Bohigas. Another article (10) that appeared in El Mundo newspaper is reflects the public repercussions of his work. The website of the Ateneo Barcelonès (11), an organization which Bohigas has been president of in recent years, provides a context for his public and cultural profile as an eminent citizen of Barcelona. The website of the Barcelona Design Hub (12) examines the whys and wherefores of the most recent project that Bohigas has been involved in – in a way, the most recent project that is entirely his own design.

1: Oriol Bohigas Profile at SCALAE.NET

2: HIC, Colegio Mestres Montaña in Granollers

3: HIC, Kleine Circus in Maastricht

4: HIC, City block on Carrer Pallars in Barcelona

5: HIC, Eduard Conde Apartments

6: HIC, Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona

7: architectural studio MBM arquitectes website

8: RTVE video "In praise of light" (spanish)

9: El País article

10: El Mundo article:

11: Ateneu website

12: Museu del Disseny website

MBM is still at a level at which can function as a studio rather than in a necessarily corporate way with a core of less than thirty people. It reflects a commitment to a particular way of doing things that is distinctively its own. One that allows it to mix practice with theory to the enrichment of both. But if it is city renewal that has given MBM a constituency far beyond Barcelona, they also have a distinguished record as architects of sensitivity and discretion. They are not interested in creating aggressive, or spectacular architectural objects, or signature buildings. Yet they make buildings with a distinctive flavour and warmth that clearly demonstrates their roots.

Deyan Sudjic

[Extract from the prologue to MBM 1993-2006. Obras y proyectos. Works and projects, published by RBA Editores. Barcelona, 2006]

[net & fractal map]

The editors would like to thank the individuals and companies that were invited to sit on the editorial and industries boards of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection for their support, hard work, and suggestions. We are also grateful to the public bodies and institutions that were asked to participate through our institutional network. Their inspiration and generosity enabled us to launch the collection, polish the ideas that underlie it, perfect the processes used to create it, and hone the goals we share. Their help has made it possible for this issue to reach the hands of those who are interested in architecture and the agents that take part in the creation of it.

We also wish to express our gratitude to Oriol Bohigas, María Bohigas, Francesc Gual and the MBM architectural studio. They were able to find the time and best way to answer every question we asked, and in so doing, they brought to this project that began in 2005 the kind of enthusiasm and happiness that transform the smallest undertakings into something great and unforgettable. Our thanks go to Jordi Vallverdú from the Roca team, whose challenges and comments have helped the initial tradition of the scalae conversations become a provocative, animated, interdisciplinary tool for the exchange of techniques, culture, and international commerce. The distribution and internal coding of the publication would have been impossible without the generosity of Micky Bou, at YSI, or the editors of the Manual de buenas prácticas para la honorable tarea de maquetar ePUBS and their matrix for ePub publications.

We wish to extend a special thank you to the group of people who believed in this initiative from the very start and who made crucial, unconditional contributions as our “fractal map” was starting up: Ferran Figuerola, at Cricursa; Pep e Ignasi Cusidó, at Lamp; Eva Blanco y Marta Ferrer, at Figueras International Seating; Fernando Marzá, Jordi Ludevid, Ariadna Perich, Beth Galí, Josep Lluis Mateo, Jordi Badía, Borja Ferrater, Eugeni Bach, Josep Ferrando, Marta García-Orte, Carlos Quintans, Juan Domingo Santos, Miquel Lacasta, Josep Camps, Olga Felip, Iñaki Ábalos, Patricia Reus, Jaume Blancafort, Ferran Segarra, Robert Terradas, Vicente Sarrablo, Roger Miralles, Eduardo Almalé, Ethel Baraona, Anne-Sophie de Vargas; Vicenç Villatoro, Alex Susanna, Eva Soria and the whole IRL team and BAAS team who made it possible for us to “row” Catalan architecture into the Venice Biennale in the summer of 2012, where we noticed how opportune a permanent space for international debate would be, the team from our sister organization, the documentary space HICarquitectura and  Montse Arnau, our own special Tinkerbell. Finally, we’re sure we’ll be forgiven for doing something as mundane as raising a glass to our families. As is so often the case, they’re the ones that put up with us trying -but never quite succeeding- to balance work and family life: Montse, Esperanza, Alicia, and Vladimir know what we’re talking about, and so too, we imagine, does... the reader.

Barcelona, January 2013

[notes]

[get involved]

Sharing this content through social networks is very simple: most ebook devices and apps allow you to highlight a paragraph or phrase and share it via your Facebook or Twitter account (once you have set up this feature on your device).

We welcome new articles, opinions, or comments on these conversations with Oriol Bohigas, his personal work, or his professional work as an architect. Proposals* should be sent to ebooks@scalae.net -if accepted by the editorial board, texts will be published on the scalae.net site and may be included in the appropriate ...about volume of the scalae ebook collection.

*Texts must not exceed 4000 characters including spaces in the language of the writer’s choice. The author(s) should establish a critical connection between their own professional background or personal interests and the world of architecture or that of agents that have been published or written about in a scalae “...self” ebook. For further information, see the articles in the documents section on www.scalae.net

[subscripció]

Why subscribe? You will automatically receive, free of charge, all the new issues and updates in the collection in the appropriate format for the device or app of your choice (iPod, iPhone, Android, Kindle®, ePub reader, iPad, tablets, notebook, or desktop). We have found the following apps and devices to be the most versatile: the Amazon Kindle®, the Kindle® apps for Windows, Apple OS X, Android, and Apple iOS, and the iBooks app for Apple iOS. Subscriptions website: www.archbib.com

[technical note]

This issue of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection is a “draft” version of the ...self volume on the architect Oriol Bohigas. Its Book ID is: scalae.net-bohigas-self-draftENG-20130131-120000. The issue became available online on 31 January 2013. In subsequent months, corrections and updates to the earlier content will be incorporated to produce the “ready” and “final” versions of the text. The “final” version will be available in print as a book for libraries and collectors. The ...about and ...from volumes on the same subject may also become available in coming months, and will be subject to the same revision process before the publication of the print version (please see the complete explanation of the collection for more information)

[collection catalogue]

published ebooks...

· ebook “Oriol Bohigas ...by himself”

· ebook “Josep Camps y Olga Felip ...by themselves”

· ebook “Josep Ferrando ...by himself”

· ebook “Anna and Eugeni Bach ...by themselves”

· ebook “RCR arquitectos ...by themselves”

· ebook “Jaume Prat Ortells ...questions from”

· ebook “Alvaro Siza Vieira ...by himself”

· ebook “Debate BIA-AR 2014 principios: Lacaton, Mangado, Sejima”

[copyright]

First book of the scalae architecture + architects international ebook collection. In conversations from 2005 and 2013, Oriol Bohigas explains how he envisions himself: his family, career, the MBM arquitectes studio, the role of the architect, his relationship with society and his city, Barcelona, and his thoughts on the indispensable and the unacceptable, politics, Spain, and equality. Original drawings, references, and an invitation to participate in the debate make up the rest of the issue.

The ebooks that make up the scale architecture + architects collection are free and cannot be resold. If any reader who comes across these free books would like to express their satisfaction with them in a material form, we suggest they make a donation to support the work of Arquitectes Sense Fronteres. [Architecture without Borders]. Copies distributed by Amazon as Kindle ebooks or paperbacks may involve minimal costs (and thus a small cover price) that are directly related to Amazon’s digital community services or to the processes of typesetting, printing, and distributing the books. For more information, visit scalae.net

(cc) 2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (by-nc-sa). You may not use this work or any work derived from it for commercial purposes. Any resulting work may only be distributed under a license identical to this one.

Table of Contents

SCALAE | ORIOL BOHIGAS | ...by himself

[collection credits. 2017]

[scalae international ebook collection]

[issue credits. 2017]

[conversation]

a certain humanistic or historiographical air...

no-one talked to you about architecture until...

our tradition is dialogue...

for better or worse, we created a school...

political struggle and cultural management...

my whole life in Barcelona...

OB

[nuances]

fundamental principles: the third generation...

processes: changes in scale...

results: like a city...

everything else: equality is...

OB

...Working with Bohigas. Challenges and opportunities.

[expression]

...originals

1955 Pallars

1976 Canovelles

1976 Helicoidal

1976 Salavedra

1988 Maquinista Barceloneta

1988 Vila Olimpica

2002 Museu del Disseny

2013 Fish: It's a hake!

[referencies]

QRs

[net & fractal map]

[notes]

[collection catalogue]

[copyright]