The book "Josep Lluís Sert. Conversaciones y escritos. Lugares de encuentro para las artes.", published by Gustavo Gili, and written by Patricia Juncosa, continues the marvellous collection on architects and conversations. Like all the books in the collection, it’s small, and despite being a fast read it’s exceptionally intense, picking up on the subtlest nuances of the brilliant Josep Lluís Sert. His proximity to the art world makes it especially interesting to connect the architect with such important figures as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró or Alexander Calder.

Josep Lluís Sert siempre always felt very close to the art world and defended an intellectual synthesis between architecture and graphic art. Throughout his life, the relationship between landscape, architecture and objet d’art was a fundamental key to the development of his work.

This book brings together a series of texts that illustrate Sert’s thinking and the integration between architecture and art and give an account of his relationship with well-known figures in the art world such as Joan Miró, Alexander Calder or Pablo Picasso. The texts are preceded by a conversation in which Sert looks back on his personal and professional paths as well as the transcript of his speech in the symposium held in The Museum of Modern Art, in 1951. Both texts profile his principal ideas that, over time, will become representative of his work.

JOSEP LLUÍS SERT. Conversaciones y escritos. Lugares de encuentro para las artes.

Editorial Gustavo Gili.
Author: Patricia Juncosa.
Release Date: 2011
Format: 14 x 20 cm
Features: 96 pages, Rustica.
Language: Spanish
ISBN: 9788425224089
Shop Price: 15,00 euros.

Patricia Juncosa Vecchierini is the author of the doctoral thesis ‘De lo anónimo en lo construido. Primitivismo y Modernidad en el espacio de Miró y Sert’ presented at the  Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura Barcelona in 2002. She has continued to research the relationship between Joan Miró and Josep Lluís Sert using Miró and Sert’s own words in publications. Correspondencia 1937-1980 (CENDEAC, Murcia, 2009) and the catalogue of the exhibition Miró, Sert. La construcció d’una amistat (Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró, Mallorca, 2007). She currently resides in New York where she has worked with the curator Paola Antonelli in the Department of Architecture and Design at the MoMA organising the following exhibitions: Action! Design Over Time (2010-2011); Ron Arad: No Discipline (2009); Rough Cut: Design Takes a Sharp Edge (2008-2009); Design and the Elastic Mind (2008); SAFE: Design Takes On Risk (2005-2006); and Humble Masterpieces (2004).

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Josep Lluís Sert (Barcelona, ​​July 1st, 1902 - March 15th, 1983) was a son of aristocrats and a republican who dedicated himself to introducing modern architecture in Spain. During his life he became interested in the work of Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Sert, his uncle.

He was a student at the School of Architecture of Barcelona. He traveled to Paris in 1926, where he studied the work of Le Corbusier, whom he met there. After a year, he joined the studio of Le Corbusier, with whom he collaborated for several years. In the year 1930 he began to project his first buildings. Of this period we can highlight the Antituberculosis Dispensary and the Housing Building on Muntaner Street, located in Barcelona.

Sert was one of the founders of GATEPAC, Grupo de Artistas y Técnicos Españoles para el Progreso de la Arquitectura Contemporánea. The purpose was to be the Spanish branch of the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM). This was constituted by the initiative of Fernando García Mercadal in 1930 to extend the rationalist style that was taking place in Spanish architecture. In Catalonia the name became GATCPAC, Grup d'Arquitectes i Técnics Catalans del Progrés de l'Arquitectura Contemporánea. In addition, Josep was present at the initial CIAM meetings since 1929. Josep, after Le Corbusier, would end up being the president. The most relevant members were José Manuel Aizpurúa, Antoni Bonet i Castellana, Fernando García Mercadal, Josep Lluís Sert and Josep Torres Clavé.

After the Civil War was persecuted by the government of the dictatorship. He was disqualified from exercising his office, so in 1941 he left for the United States. There he created the Town Planning Associates study of architecture and urbanism that worked on numerous urban planning plans for cities in South America, such as the pilot plan for Havana.

He worked as an architecture professor at Yale University. Later he became dean of the School of Design at Harvard University from 1953 to 1969. With his current influence, he set up programs of architecture, landscape and urban design that would enlighten many of the leading architects of our time. He also participated in the Advisory Council of the Grham Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. During that period of time he founded a new architectural firm in Massachusetts, which ended up associating with Ronald Gourley and Huson Jackson. Joshep Zalewski was the Associate and continued to be in the firm Sert, Jackson and Associate founded in 1963. The firm was responsible for a large number of projects known as the Maeght Foundation, the Miró Foundation and a series of buildings for Harvard University as the Science Center, Peabody Terrace or the Holyoke Center. Sert collaborated with Le Corbusier in 1961 in the United States to design the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard.

Work.-
Rosselló housing building (1929).
Duclós House (1930).
Josefa López House Building (1931).
Bloc House (1932-1937).
J. Roca Jewelry (actualmente, Tous) (1934).
Antituberculous Dispensary (1934-1938).
Project City of Rest and Vacation(1934).
Project City of Rest and Vacation (1935).
Pavilion of the Spanish Republic (1937).
Republic Pavilion (Posthumous Reproduction of 1992).
(Old) United States Embassy in Iraq (1955-1960).
Joan Miró's Studio (1956), Sert House(1957-1958).
Holyoke Center (1958-1965).
Maeght Foundation (1959-1964).
Center for the Study of the World's Religions (1960).
Peabody Terrace (Harvard Student Apartments) (1962-1964).
Campus of the University of Boston (1960-1967).
Joan Miró Foundation (1972-1975).
Les Escales Park (1973).
Science Center (1973).
Residence of MIT students (New House) (1973).
Caixa Catalunya headquarters project (1976).
La Porta Catalana (1977).

Awards.-
Gold Medal of Architecture of Spain in 1981.
Gold Medal of the Generalitat in 1981.
AIA Gold Medal of America 1981.
Gold Medal of Merit in the Belllas Artes of Spain in 1982.
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Published on: May 3, 2011
Cite: "JOSEP LLUÍS SERT. Conversaciones y escritos" METALOCUS. Accessed
<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/josep-lluis-sert-conversaciones-y-escritos> ISSN 1139-6415
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