Five offices, ten architects, fifteen cities
13th International Architecture Exhibition, Biennale di Venezia
The exhibition celebrates the achievements of recent Spanish architecture, but also tries to reflect the dramatic current situation of the profession. In the last decade, large public investments and the competition system have made it possible for a new generation to build a considerable number of unique works all over the country. Included here are fifteen, in fifteen different cities, carried out by ten architects – seven men and three women between 50 and 55 years of age grouped in five offices based in Madrid, Basque Country-Navarre and Catalonia. However, the foundations that have allowed this flourishing of excellence have collapsed with the financial, economic and fiscal crisis that began in 2008. The bursting of the real estate bubble has cut the number of housing units built yearly from 800,000 to 80,000, and the austerity plans launched in the public sector have frozen the investment in new projects: half of the practices in Madrid and Barcelona have closed down in the last year, and young professionals are emigrating massively. To address this situation, all the exhibition budget has been used to bring to Venice two hundred architecture students, who will hold models of the buildings and explain them to visitors. On one hand, the installation makes reference to the classical iconography of mythological figures, saints, bishops, kings, patrons or even architects carrying models of the works they promote, design or donate; on the other, it evokes contemporary performances – from Santiago Sierra to Ai Weiwei – where mass labor is used with a critical purpose. Spain mon amour is indeed a celebration of a period, its architects and its buildings, but also an elegy for a time that has come to an end, a gentle manifesto against a dislocated present and an invitation to think the future in a different way.
Luis Fernández-Galiano
