As part of "Time Space Existence" at the Venice Biennale -- the exhibition which has brought over 100 architects, including Norman Foster, Eduardo Souto de Moura, and Ricardo Bofill, together -- the young Spanish architect, Alejandro Beautell, presents the installation: "about architecture_without capital letters."
Beautell's video, which explores his recent works completed in the Canary Islands (including ArchDaily 2014 Building of the Year, St. John Baptist Chapel), provokes the viewer to consider the essence of architecture, smaller scales, and the tradition inherent in the architectural profession.
Enjoy the video above and make sure to revisit Beautell's stunning Building of the Year, the St. John Baptist Chapel.
about architecture_without capital letters
“what a young architect has to say, isn’t really important, but i would like to respond to this invitation and i do it being fully aware of my limitations.
as an architect, you need a place, without a place there cannot be architecture. you have to make that place yours, knowing it intimately.
i am worried about buildings’ character, a house is a house. it shouldn’t be anything another than that. its density and weight will be a house’s density and weight. its materials and its textures will be those that are required. those that are accurate.
when you learn to read a space, you can appreciate its essence, the fundamentals, the inherent forces to certain places and proportions. in this unknown territory music and poetry also exist.
i think there is something important in the way that the different elements of a building contact each other. the secret is in the junction and in the transition, in the way that the walls and floor meet, or in the manner two bodies from the same building find each other.
by drawing a section of a wooden window you can understand this, the magnitude of the contact between different elements. sometimes they shouldn’t touch, you have to separate them, shadows must be created.
geometry and its power: i cannot understand it. i need to go and find it, wonder what it is like, how it works. it is a balancing game. beautiful, difficult.
matter, time and space are architecture’s tools. the unstable activity between them, always in the limit. questions that await an answer arise.
we don’t need genius, said an old architect. i learnt it from my father; there is still a live tradition.
architecture is old like the sea, modern like its waves.
i am interested in simple things, and here, in the island where i live, the horizon is blue”.
-- Alejandro Beautell, architect
