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Issue 16 - Identity & ModernityMateo Josep LluísEssays

Identitiy and Modernity

by Josep Lluis Mateo

At the present time of globalization, the identity-modernity dialectic reappears, though in a different way to how it was addressed in our recent past.

On the one hand we have the defence of the specific, the local, of landscapes that are perhaps not so diverse but, like the climate, permanently...

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Issue 15 - FireMateo Josep Lluís, Sauter FlorianEssays, Studio

Elemental Conditions

Lecture by Josep Lluis Mateo

We are dealing with fire in a very specific spot: the island of Stromboli, Europe’s last permanently active volcano. Here, we are going to relate to fire in three ways.

First, as a physical presence, as a phenomenon that can be intellectually analysed or sensually perceived. Through...

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Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

On Teaching

by Josep Lluis Mateo

Our mission is, of course, to teach people to design: to imagine in physical terms a new reality and, further, to be able to make it possible, to build it.

My interest is more methodological - abstract, instrumental - than stylistic and is situated between awareness of the student’s freedom of...

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Issue 9 - PREVI revisitedMateo Josep LluísVideos

PREVI EXPERIENCE

by Josep Lluís Mateo

The relatively little known PREVI project is important for several reasons. First of all, it was set in the context of the overall logic of the informal city. The self-constructed city, comprising houses built by their occupants, played a major role at the time, especially in that particular...

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Issue 7 - On CanettiMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

Loss of Weight

by Josep Lluís Mateo

The last semester we were involved in a project that tried to connect literature – written knowledge – with architecture. Of course, knowledge has been transmitted until very recently or until now by books, by letters, by printed forms invented in the Renaissance. So, the fact that books have...

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Issue 4 - CinemaMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

ARCHITECTURE and CINEMA

by Josep Lluís Mateo

The relationship between cinema & architecture is mentioned in many occasions and it's partially true. In fact, the architecture in the cinema appears as a background of the scene, as a background of the action. As, happens with photography, the cinema is giving us a specific point of view...

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Issue 3 - On GiacomettiMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

narrative and physical facts

by Josep Lluís Mateo

Our Giacometti project deals with a very important question that is the meaning of the word context. What is a context? Which is the context?

Of course the context is connected with the physical facts, with the geography, the topography, with the climate, the snow, the temperature and also...

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Issue 1 - After Crisis Mateo Josep LluísEssays, Studio, Interviews, Reviews

AFTER CRISIS

In architecture, designing and constructing mean implementing a way of thinking with a view to action in an active relation with the changing conditions of the contemporary world. From our position in academia, in terms of our pedagogical practice (the place where Architectural Papers are produced),...

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Issue 14 - AirSteinemann Ramias, Sauter Florian, Schmidlin Chasper, von Mackensen Till, Mateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

Meteorological Observatory

by Josep Lluis Mateo,Till von Mackensen, Chasper Schmidlin, Ramias Steinemann and Florian Sauter

PAINTING WITH AIR
At an artistic level, the picture could be painted with the remains of the sky;
making the enclosure ready to receive and...

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Issue 15 - Firevon Mackensen Till, Mateo Josep Lluís, Steinemann Ramias, Hotz Anna, Schmidlin ChasperStudio

A Guesthouse on Stromboli

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Anna Hotz, Till von Mackensen, Chasper Schmidlin, Ramias Steinemann

DANGER & DEBILITY

Fire certainly can be dangerous and out of control, destructive and aggressive.
In these conditions, architecture can...

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Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep Lluís, Sauter FlorianVideos, Studio, Essays

Pedagogical Ambition

Lecture by Josep Lluis Mateo

We try to teach how to design, how to produce, how to think and make buildings happen. For me, this is closely connected to the dialectic between concept (abstract conditions) and matter (physical conditions). This kind of synthetic duality is the starting point of our profession, in which an idea...

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Issue 12 - EarthSteinemann Ramias, Sauter Florian, Obiol Cecilia , Jakob Michael , Mateo Josep LluísReviews, Studio

INTERPRETATION CENTER: THE SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE OF THE PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

by Josep Lluis Mateo, Cecilia Obiol, Florian Sauter & Ramias Steinemann

Isabelle Ramseier
The project derives from the typology of the ruins. A ruin generally keep contact to the earth. The more distant part as the roof...

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Issue 1 - After Crisis Mateo Josep LluísEssays

FRAMING DUBAI

by Josep Lluís Mateo

Dubai has, in our recent past, been a paradigm of both possibility and delirium. Eulogized by the ever-present messiahs of modernity, whose jaded voices once again announced their tired proclamations of a supposed creative apocalypse; reviled by moralistic social leftist critics, constructive events...

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Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep LluísStudio

Models and Images

by Josep Lluis Mateo

Models and images are tools or instruments that provoke the transport or passage of abstract ideas to physical reality.

MODELS

1 Volume
All buildings have a volume, some kind of shape or sculptural presence with a certain definition of the relations between voids and mass. In...

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Issue 4 - CinemaMateo Josep LluísVideos, Studio

FILM THEATRE OF CATALONIA

Lecture by Josep Lluís Mateo

PROCESS
Constructing a building can be a long process. This is one of those cases.

OPEN SELECTION. SUMMER 2004
The first step was to produce some brief reflections. On the basis of these, plus curriculum and similar documents, the Jury selected five teams.

My initial interest was in...

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Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep Lluís, Concheiro Isabel, Hotz AnnaVideos, Studio

Building and Teaching

Interview with Josep Lluis Mateo

Could you talk about the relationship between your academic activity and your professional practice? In what way do they influence each other?

I consider myself a professional architect. Having said that, I have to point out that this has not always been the case. At the start of my career...

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Issue 16 - Identity & ModernityMehrotra Rahul, Mateo Josep LluísInterviews

The Context of the Context

Interview with Rahul Mehrotra

JLLM The first question is about the dialectic between the terms identity
and modernity. The typical understanding of modernity is the creation
of a kind of layer that is added to a place. For instance, Rem
Koolhaas’s ideas about China twenty years ago again introduced
this excitement about...

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Issue 17 - PedagogyMateo Josep LluísEssays

"Sharing is the other side of Discovering"

by Josep Lluis Mateo

1 Idea and Matter

Our mission is to teach students to design—that is, to imagine, in physical terms, a new reality, and then to know how to make it possible, construct it.
My interest is more methodological—that is, abstract or conceptual—than stylistic or formal, and it...

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