MBM Arquitectes, Barcelona
AedesBerlin and the Instituto Cervantes are pleased to jointly present the Spanish architecture firm MBM Arquitectes in Berlin. Under the title 'Footprints in the City', the architects Josep Martorell, Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay, Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual will be showing their current urban planning and architectural projects in Aedes East. At the same time, the Instituto Cervantes at Rosenstr. 19, in Berlin-Mitte, will present competition entries by MBM under the title 'Lost Architecture', which did not come to fruition but were nevertheless extremely important for the development of the office.
Footprints in the City
The footprints in the streets make us aware of where we are, in the present and in the past. A present that immediately becomes the past and forms the collective memory of the city. A place of memory that assigns the street its place and its width through the image that the buildings create. By rediscovering the fundamental values of the European city - its streets, squares, gardens and parks and the way they relate to each other, a new chapter has been opened in the intellectual and creative process of modern architecture. This involves the form of the buildings that are part of the city as well as the form of the city itself, which recreate the old structures or create new ones.
This exhibition pays tribute to this new chapter in modern urban planning, independent of all styles, with a selection of new works by MBM, Barcelona.
MBM Arquitectes was founded in 1951 by Josep Martorell and Oriol Bohigas, joined by David Mackay in 1962. In 2000, the team was joined by architects Oriol Capdevila and Francesc Gual. Based in Barcelona, the firm has designed and executed over 500 architectural, urban planning and design projects in the last 45 years. Furthermore, it has won a number of national and international competitions and has been active in reclaiming the role of the architect in urban development. This role was effectively fulfilled in the reconstruction of Barcelona's public space, during the first years of Spain's return to democracy and in the preparation for the 1992 Summer Olympics. Martorell, Bohigas and Mackay were mainly responsible for the design of the Barcelona Olympic Village and the Olympic Port.
Architecture lost
One of the high points of Le Corbusier's architectural revolution was his project for the Palace of the League of Nations, or more precisely, the rejection of his competition entry. This rejection - along with other unfulfilled expectations - had entailed a series of conferences, a book and an international controversy that marked the starting point for the popularisation of his architecture and theoretical principles. Circumstances have changed, but rejections by prize juries are still lessons to be learned.
As a tribute to these lost competitions, MBM presents 34 projects that were never realised for various reasons. Most of them are rejected projects that were influenced by the formal criteria of the competition, by the lack of understanding of the politicians, by the lack of confidence of the clients, by financial problems, by programme violations and, no doubt, by mistakes made by the architects themselves, often due to a lack of realism or unprofessional concealment of deficiencies. However, all rejected projects offer proposals that generate controversies of a more general nature and in all cases are fruitful experiences both professionally and culturally.
This exhibition has taken over parts of the programme of the architecture exhibitions of the Bologna 2000 Città Europea della Cultura, which were shown at the rebuilt Esprit Nouveau de Le Corbusier Pavilion in January 2000. Since then the objects have been to Barcelona, Palermo, Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Dublin, Limerick and Seville.
Speaking at the opening:
Kristin Feireiss, Berlin
Richard Burdett, London School of Economics
José Ignacio Olmos Serrano, Instituto Cervantes<
Oliver Hamm, architecture critic Berlin
Diese Ausstellung wurde ermöglicht mit der großzügigen Unterstützung von:
