"The era of light things will come. In the Fontán Building, the architecture follows the sign of the times and is losing weight; it is the constructed story of technical reality, and this story, this epilogue to the Fontán from the present, we write it as a prologue to the future".
Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo.
The project by Perea, Suárez, and Torrelo is designed with the firm intention of providing an austere and unpretentious building based on an architectural design that simplifies construction, energy, maintenance, and safety costs. The outcome is a building where the principles of the spatial conditions, for the building habitability, and the relations of the users proceed to establish a firm relationship with the environment.
After the definitive halt of the construction works of the building of the Theatre of the City of Culture of Galicia, where most of the structure of the eastern part of the Theatre had been built, the Foundation Cidade da Cultura decided to reuse, refurbish and complete the structure already built, in order to give it institutional use, and transform it into an architectural complex called the Fontán Building.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Description of project by Perea, Suárez,Torrelo
Free-hand drawing
In this project, freehand drawing has been cultivated from the outset. A direct connection between the preconscious (where, according to Freud, creativity lies) and reality, reveals issues and paths that the conscious has not yet reached.
Its quality and the beauty of its expression are intuitive symptoms of the result of design research.
A debate in the pedagogy of the project, with advocates of the computer tool as the only, reliable, and fast way, while others consider it to be in its infancy, lacking the investigative efficiency of the free-hand drawing architects.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Coexistence of generations
The fact that three architects from different generations are working together is a very positive experience, increasing the design quality of the result. They have all contributed their skills without any competition to achieve common objectives, each one in the most effective role.
When the Property chose the path between three different alternatives, they were a single architect. One of them, with 55 years of experience, another with 40 years of professional practice, and a female architect in her first stage with 22 years in the profession.
A relationship that has sometimes worked according to the laws of physics (mixing, distinguishing the substance of each one) and sometimes according to those of chemistry (new compounds with unidentifiable origins).
Color, eroticism, and sensoriality
The chromatic finish respects the quality of the natural elements (metal, concrete, industrial wood). The added color is a subtle code that brings optimism to the project.
A chromatic palette, with a mannerist ambiguity, which focuses on the Eros of the place (exaltation of life as opposed to Thanatos, immutable and already dead).
The sensorial experience is amplified by the textures. Stone in the exterior paving (central street), different hardnesses of resin (auditorium, landscaped terraces, offices), industrial wood (OSB boards) for doors, auditorium foyers, or partitions on the top floor.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Intuition vs Rationality
The entire process has swung between the intuitive and the rational (but not the logical). Something evident in decisions such as the entasis on the four volumes of workspaces overlooking courtyards and the west garden, a luminous intuition learned from the tectonics of the Parthenon.
"The culture of the project is defined as ultralight, susceptible to an exhaustive reuse of the materials and manufactured products that we propose starting from the structure and recycling down to the cradle of the non-reusable."
Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo.
Regulations at the service of the project
The prescriptive (Napoleonic) culture establishes a normative system to overcome chaos, applying a methodology.An articulated system establishes the difference between a good deed (permitted) and a bad deed (sanctioned). The result is a legislative culture, widely extended, incapable of taking into account the countless exceptions inherent to human conduct in the face of these strict and inflexible rules.
The British tradition has generated an opposed, performance-based regulation: little prescriptive articulation, replaced by the definition of social behavioral objectives.
The prescriptive, without interlocution between parties or with insufficient solvency of any of them, hinders evolution and progress.
Prescriptive requires solvent interlocution between parties and motivates creative research.
Mechanics and manufacture
The project is approached more like mechanics in a strange workshop, manufacturing, meshing architecture, than as disciplinary architects seeking a prefixed image of spatial space.
Construction, pure and radical construction, especially of what is strictly functional, shows, without hesitation or modesty, the dismantling and the process, perpetuating the intermediate states.
In the engine of an enormous lorry, or ocean liner, an essential beauty awaits the viewer without any theoretical-critical manual of architecture.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Faced with the result
Three different positions.
Elena committed to a meticulous response to project decisions. A legitimate attitude is desirable in a creator responsible for decisions on the human environment.
Andrés reclaims the human condition of the work, its imperfections, and differences between result and definition if they do not have serious social responsibility. They are inevitable and occasionally welcome in multidisciplinary work. Absolute perfection is an illusion.
Rafael agrees, claiming the enjoyment of the visions of the active building (expert and lay) and the surprise of some alterations, noted for future experiences.
Creation and melancholy
Andrés resorts to assuming the melancholy of the creator whose dreams will never have a completely happy ending.
Melancholy like that of the transition from the Renaissance to Mannerism (a foretaste of today's virtual reality?) with small great inventions (the Solomonic column, the Laurentian staircase, Parmigianino's self-portrait in a convex mirror or the trompe l'oeil of Palladio's Olympic Theatre), like that of Dürer's engraving, creative lever and attitude of vital joy (contradictorily) for the decisions of the project.
Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.
Agreements and Disagreements (AP+ES+RT)
Agreement in the commitment to constructive radicalism: construction, pure construction, perfect route to another beauty.
Agreement on a space that exalts the passage of time, mutability, phenomenological transparency, flexibility, immediacy, and austerity.
Agreement on the maximum quality of life for the occupants (25% of their vital time in these spaces). There are no workstations without light and exterior views.
Agreement on a continuum of interlinked spaces. Public-semi-public-assembly-group work-individual spaces.
Agreement on a transition between spaces by the physical or visual superimposition of the consequent or the antecedent, in all possible directions, horizontally and vertically.
Absolute agreement in.-
a) Non-vassal dialogue within the context of Eisenman's work.
b) Evidencing the mechanics of the building (without false ceilings, skins).
c) Invoking nature in the environmental result: changing light of the day and the seasons, the presence of the outside weather in the envelope.
d) The beauty of intermediate states. Form and figuration in transition, unfinished.
e) Eros, existence, present throughout the process.
b) Evidencing the mechanics of the building (without false ceilings, skins).
c) Invoking nature in the environmental result: changing light of the day and the seasons, the presence of the outside weather in the envelope.
d) The beauty of intermediate states. Form and figuration in transition, unfinished.
e) Eros, existence, present throughout the process.
Disagreements in.-
a) Cartesian geometry or not in the design technique.
b) Whether or not perfection is required.
c) Responsibility in the process. When should the architect withdraw, when does the user intervene, and what to do in situations in which we have not been consulted?
b) Whether or not perfection is required.
c) Responsibility in the process. When should the architect withdraw, when does the user intervene, and what to do in situations in which we have not been consulted?
The era of light things will come
The Fontán follows the sign of the times: it loses weight, it is a constructed account of technical reality, an epilogue to the present, which is written as a PROLOGUE TO THE FUTURE.
