SPATIAL POSITIONS 4 - Space+Matter: Life+Place. Toni Gironès

SPATIAL POSITIONS is the name of the new exhibition series at the Swiss Architecture Museum. On display will be the work of contemporary architects and artists as well as interpretations of historic architectural positions from a contemporary point of view. The projects and installations reach the boundaries of the architectural discipline. It is not the intention to define a groundbreaking direction or style, but rather to define a subjective investigation far from the trend towards a global cultural uniformity.

What are the key functions of architecture? Is it still, or once again, socially relevant? How does the role of the architect change in a strongly visually perceived world? To which point can temporary structures still be regarded as architecture? The aim of this exhibition series, which will be continued in the following years, is to further foster the debate on the extended definition of architecture.

Fragment of the memory of Seró project.

“… Finally we start entering to the room of the steles… a spiral tour with an almost imperceptible slope… surrounded by ceramic pieces that lets in the dim light, the air, the smells of the countryside… light intensity goes down, the ceramic pavement disintegrates, and to get to the camera the overhead light focuses the eye on the etched surface of each of the stele… silence… slowing time in a space of accurate contemplation, in a horizontal plane of clay powder showing the footprint of each visitor… quietly and in reverse start to go out with no possibility of crossing with other… gradually we go back to outside, where the horizon of a wheat field comes to find us and takes us back to the common agricultural landscape of the area.”

Text.- Toni Gironès.

Venue.- SAM Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum. Steinberg 7, CH-4001 Basel, Switzerland.
Dates.- From 20th July to 18th August 2013.