It was precisely a woman,
Victoria Thornton,
who created the original
Open House London
architecture festival
30 years ago, which today encompasses up to 50 cities, including Madrid.
The director of the festival in Madrid version, the architect
Paloma Gómez Marín
(57 years old, who also directs the Master of Interior Design at IADE and is a founding member of Ecotech House), says that Thornton, who made architecture guides, noticed that the photographs did not they reflected the reality of the buildings and that they had to be 'brought closer', 'undressed' to the public, to show off their wonder and majesty.
Thus was born the concept of open doors Open House, which celebrates
its 7th edition
in Madrid
with conferences, as well as various visits, whose motto invites us to 'rethink the city'.
What vision does an architect bring to the city today
When
María Langarita
(42 years old, from the Langarita-Navarro studio together with
Víctor Navarro,
and professor of projects at the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid) was eight months pregnant,
her long walks through Madrid
opened her eyes about the insufficiency of benches to rest.
Paloma Gómez Marín is the director architect of Open House Madrid.
In the image, next to the auditorium of the Giner de los Ríos Foundation in Madrid, the work of Cristina Díaz Moreno and Efrén García Grinda, one of the spaces that were opened in the 2020 edition of the festival.
And not only. "As the coexistence between pedestrians and vehicles in the streets is managed, accompanying children in their activities and games is something
of maximum tension.
The vital need for free space or outside the home of a child is
not distinguished from that of of any other person ... ", he
affirms.
The banks are for
Rocío Pina
(38 years old, one of the two parties, with
Carmelo Rodríguez,
who forms Enorme Studio, professor at IADE, IE and UMA Sweden), also about to be a mother, a topic to be discussed, as she understood in a project from his studio with
an X-ray of a plaza,
where it seemed that they were placed on purpose so that no one would relate. "A square should be a
co-design
process
to which more people should be added: neighbors, merchants, the town hall, institutions ...", thinks Pina.
Both for her and for
Fuensanta Nieto
(64, professor of projects at the School of Architecture of the European University of Madrid and founding partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, along with
Enrique Sobejano),
a coherent city
is synonymous with happiness.
Until recently, it was taken for granted that the role of women was in the domestic space and that of men in the workplace and the public, roles now exchanged and interchangeable.
"The quality of the urban space and the conditions of the home or workplace in which many hours of the day
are
spent
are decisive in the search for happiness
and as architects we must transmit this", says the architect.
The pandemic, in addition and inevitably, has changed the way of seeing our environment.
In the street we do not want to be attached to other passers-by, the house is the office ... That is why
"we must give priority to larger, larger spaces
, where you can also work as well as live, with larger rooms, light, ventilation,
to see the street,
life ... ", summarizes Gómez Marín.
The architect Rocío Pina, from Enorme Studio, together with one of her urban projects, Mountain on The Moon, in the Plaza Santa María Soledad Torres Acosta in Madrid.
The architect's eye
Charlotte Perriand
(1903-1999), one of the many women 'behind'
Le Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohe
designing furniture and settings, got fed up with separate rooms in watertight compartments and
redesigned a kitchen
to be open to space of the house and thus be able to control the children.
This anecdote could be a sign that
the architect's eye sees otherwise.
"We tend to be
more pragmatic,
not so technical or technocratic, we have a more internalized aesthetic, we see the role played by children, the elderly or people alone in cities ... We have
a more sociological vision,"
confirms Paloma Gómez Marín.
The approach to people, not only in the uses of the spaces but through the sensitivities
of colors, textures,
imaginary, less masculine and minimalist, is another of the details that the eye of the architect looks closely at.
Hence, Pina, for example, calls for a
female consultancy
in urban and housing decisions.
However, there is also an alternative trend: that being a woman and an architect
are two conditions that do not modify each other,
which is Nieto's opinion, and that each professional, regardless of gender, is different from all the others. , because the important thing
is to put yourself in the shoes of the other,
who is going to inhabit cities or houses.
María Langarita, from Langarita-Navarro, and her Medialab Prado project, in Matadero, Madrid Photos: CE DE CARMONA / IMAGEN SUBLIMINAL
Both male and female architects should, in the opinion of María Langarita,
increase the breadth of their
critical
gazes
.
"I can easily imagine the experience of a space or solution for a woman similar to me but
I am trained to be able to evaluate
and correct my designs under criteria of accessibility, reduced mobility, dependency, security, community ...".
Architects in Spain, from yesterday to today
As the dean of this article, Fuensanta Nieto has witnessed the evolution in recent years: "When I was studying architecture,
there were hardly any female students in the classrooms.
Now the majority are women," she explains.
The data corroborate this, in the 80s in Spain the number of female students began to increase - in a proportion of 40-60% -, and in the 90s the situation was reversed.
The balance in the scale has increased the visibility of
female
architects in this profession, where now
"it is more common to find a project manager",
as María Langarita points out, and it is normal that there are
more positions of responsibility for women,
as in the offices of the Nieto Sobejano.
A big step if we remember that in the 30s and 40s, in the prestigious
Bauhaus,
although women still could not study architecture, there were, they did projects but they signed them for us,
their role was overshadowed.
Today his work is being rescued, thanks in part to a doctoral thesis dating from the beginning of this century.
Fuensanta Nieto 'about' the Cité du Théâtre in Paris, a project by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos.
In 2010, when the youngest of the architects in this report entered the labor market,
the community was reborn
in the face of the idea "of the architect as an individual,
as a 'superstar'
who solves everything, like
a
very masculine
Leonardo Da Vinci
", bill.
Something that benefits architecture itself, since the perspective of enlarging the name of the 'man who solves everything' is lost in pursuit of
groups of boys, girls and even not only architects,
but with the help of other professions that can give your particular look.
In conclusion, as Paloma Gómez Marín points out, "we must not forget that today, in social networks, for example, the image predominates:
if you are good at your job, it is what you see.
Today it is rare that a The project is signed by a name, we have
brands, groups and studios
that are the ones to do it. "
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