Product Description

Arquitectura Viva 227 KAAN Architecten

KAAN ARCHITECTEN · DOSSIER CONTENEDORES · RUIZESQUIROZ STRADDLE3 ET AL. · LOT-EK · NORMAN FOSTER: TRAS LA PANDEMIA

Arquitectura Viva 227 KAAN Architecten

Architects design space, but also time. Imagining the city after the pandemic, they strive to reconcile the need for social distance with the convenience of proximity: on one hand, space is fragmented to avoid contact; on the other, uses are gathered to make them accessible without transport. The first feature invites to organize activities over time; the second, to establish a time limit to commutes, crystallizing in the motto ‘the 15-minute city.’ If architecture has been historically considered a spatial discipline, which ‘orders matter in space as music orders sound in time,’ today needs placing time in the center of attention; and not the time of designing or building, but the time of those who live in cities. It will be said that this has always been so, and it is true; but the experience of confinement has compressed space and halted time, altering values and establishing new priorities.
The philosopher Blaise Pascal assured that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” and his contemporary the mystic Miguel de Molinos preached Quietism as a process of spiritual purification not distant from Buddhism; today, the months of lockdown have created the conditions to put these 17th-century recipes to the test. Are we now wiser, more aware of our fragility, freer from sterile worries and restlessness? Maybe not, but the pause in routines has forced to organize time in a different way, and perhaps to perceive its fleetingness under a colder light. Emilio Lledó said that “we live in space, but die in time,” and possibly the renewed awareness of our necessary disappearance has transferred the attention from the organization of space in buildings and cities to the organization of individual and collective time.
Genius loci, the spirit of a place, and Zeitgeist, the spirit of the time, were terms used to differentiate architectures rooted in continuity, and those inserted in the mood of the age; timeless works and works of their time. But the world’s standstill has offered us the red pill of clairvoyance, and we notice that the new protagonism of time paradoxically demands a return to that space with qualities that we call place, and that the spirit of the post-pandemic times is ironically embodied in timeless architecture, in the limitation of space and in the restriction of movement. Jorge Luis Borges wanted to refute time, but ended up admitting that “Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.” Designing time is designing ourselves; thinking about our future and that of everyone.

KAAN Architecten
La austeridad como disciplina
Dossier: Contenedores

Actualidad / News
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Proyectar el tiempo Designing Time
Focho: Estatuas en guerra Cancel Culture
Culturas y cuidados MVRDV, Heatherwick
Obras solidarias Mori, Heringer, Faus
Futuros urbanos Carmody Groarke, ODA, Mendoza Partida
Casas: GRX Arquitectos Calixto House in Granada
Interiores: Barkow Leibinger Fidelio Opera Set in Vienna
Exteriores: AZAB Herriko Plaza in Biscay

KAAN Architecten

Cámara de Oficios y Artesanía
Chambre de Métiers et de l’Artisanat

Crematorio Siesegem
Siesegem Crematorium

Instituto de Ciencias Moleculares
Institute of Molecular Sciences

Arte y cultura/ Art & Culture

Luis Fernández-Galiano

La inquietud teórica
Peter Eisenman, 1932

La técnica humanista
Norman Foster, 1935

Libros / Books

La Europa de la cultura From Fumaroli to Figes
La agenda de la felicidad Architecture and Well-Being
Un tratado del siglo XXI Architecture as a Science
Geometría y forma García de Paredes Revisited
Tradición y sobriedad Monograph on Julio Cano Lasso

Contenedores / Containers

Ruizesquiroz arquitectos
Almacén y oficinas de Amaya en Pamplona
Amaya Offices and Warehouse in Pamplona

STRADDLE3/ Eulia Arkitektura / Yaiza Terré
Alojamientos de Proximidad Provisionales en Barcelona
Close-Proximity Temporary Housing in Barcelona

LOT-EK
Apartamentos Drivelines en Johanesburgo
Drivelines Studios in Johannesburg

Norman Foster
El mundo tras la pandemia
The World after the Pandemic