Landscape under 30: Transitional Space by Miguel Fernández-Galiano

Description of the photographic series by Miguel Fernández-Galiano

The "Landscape under 30: Transitional Space" project is demolition journalism: breaking with a previous state, a portrait of new possibilities and illustration of the field work of the architect. It presents eight photographs that depict moments of the transformation process in several different houses in the center of Madrid, all of them carried out by a young architects under 30 years architecture studio (Malta Studio *). Individually, each photograph freezes a moment in the process, showing an invisible from the outside reality: the work, the constructive nudity after demolition, the ephemeral beauty of the unfinished, the transition between two states. On the other hand, these images, arranged together as a thematic report, serve to illustrate the main branch of work of this generation of architects under 30, the reforms and rehabilitations. The renovation of housing is an important factor in the improvement of the quality of people's life and also in the optimization of the energy performance of the buildings and, by extension, of the cities. In keeping with the theme of the Biennial "Reporting from the Front", this report implicitly de-fends the destruction over the construction that in the area of ​​housing implies the defense of rehabilitation over the new buildings. Demolition is an act of rupture with a previous state that discovers an infinite number of qualities that were not visible, and that results in adjustments on initial workplans. These land-scapes under construction have a limited duration, are ephemeral, and they become a place of contemplation and creativity development for the architect that is working in them. Demolition is, in this context, a poetic act that discovers the hidden beauty and attractiveness of the transient: previously hidden, new geometries (dis) continuities, new challenges, future opportunities. This project, as a whole, has the documentary vocation to expose the professional situation of these young architects formed to conceive, design, draw and present large architectural competitions, but now face a landscape that has nothing to do with that for what they were prepared, and they must adapt. Photographs avoid therefore to show the image of the final product to present the work that a whole generation faces, the processes described, and the virtues that can be find in them. It is a generation in transition that is facing a change of paradigm  where,  given the uncertainty about the final product, it is again valued the unknown, the vulnerable, the surprising  processes. The unfinished.