Abstract
In the 70s and 80s hot trading with architectural drawings started thanks to the role played by Schools and Institutions that, throughout publications and exhibitions, opened their treasures to the public. The postmodern cultural context for the celebration of the Centenary of the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 1977 was particularly specific in Spain due to the period of the political transition and the crisis of the architectural school. This paper will focus on how through an ideological use of drawing the reading of history in graphic terms could be used to propose a critical renovation of the architectural school rooted in what has constituted the discipline as so: the disciplinary drawing.
“The historical articulation of the past does not mean to know it “as it has truly been.” It means to seize a memory as it flashes in a moment of danger. (…)”
Walter Benjamin. Angelus Novus
“(…) –Moderation is a fatal thing, lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
Oscar Wilde. Una mujer sin importancia
This chapter was the Spanish title (“El Discurso de los Mil Trabajos”) given by Lluís Doménech in his article about the exhibition in Arquitectura Bis in 1977.
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Notes
- 1.
The book was edited in 1979 in collaboration with Geneviève Monnier, curator of the drawing cabinet of the Louvre Museum, and Bernice Rose, curator at the Drawing Department of the MoMa in New York.
- 2.
It could also be added the essay by Oriol Bohigas published in 1970, “Las Escuelas Técnicas Superiores y la Estructura Profesional,” edited by Nova Terra within their collection of “Debate Universitario.”
- 3.
Magazines as JANO Arquitectura, CAU, Arquitecturas Bis or serveral articles in La Vanguardia commented on the celebration of the School Centenary.
- 4.
The content of the exhibition would be divided in three chronological stages according to the development of the city of Barcelona: “Hacia la Nueva Barcelona” (1875–1917), “Hacia la Mayor Barcelona” (1917–1953) and “Hacia la Gran Barcelona (1953–1976)”.
- 5.
He will go on saying, “in this sense it is obvious that the Latin culture (in the Mediterranean, South America, including Cataluña) has predominated authors devoted to both, criticism and history, whereas within Central European and northern cultures (specially in Germany and England, including Madrid) the work of criticism has been dissociated from history” (Montaner 1999, 23) Criticism, following Montaner, will appear towards the end of the 18thC and it will continue in the 19thC “due to the diversity of interpretations and the pluralism that followed the crisis of the unitary world proposed by the classic tradition” (Montaner 1999, 12).
- 6.
The grid, as Rosalind Krauss has defined it, announces the will to silence and its hostility towards discourse, “they are spatial entities, visual structure that explicitly reject any kind of narrative or sequential reading.” See: KRAUSS, Rosalind. La Originalidad de la Vanguardia y Otros Mitos Modernos. MADRID: Alianza Editorial, 1996, p. 6.
- 7.
Toni Negri explained in his book Arte y Multitud. Ocho Cartas (1988) the change of paradigm between the place where beauty lies. For modernity it is within the “essence” of things, but with the postmodernity beauty lies within the “excess,” beauty is search in the “excess of being.” This consideration is believed to be important because the approximation to the study of the graphic material would change, in the sense that signs of identity would be looked for in this “excess,” that would now become valuable. Also aspects as colour, density, etc. would be valued in a drawing, whereas the drawing of the modern genious aspired to enclose beauty within the essence of the line.
- 8.
Although finally the National Palace would be restored by Gae Aulenti in the 80s (Barral i Altet 1992), some people asserted that, seeing its evident stay of decay it would be better to let it turn into a ruin, since “if it were not for the Museum inside, it would be better for it to fall into piaces” (Barral i Altet 1992, 11).
- 9.
In the 80s, Rafael Moneo pointed to the eclectic ambience of the School of Barcelona. See: MONEO, Rafael. “Designing and teaching. The reoganization of the school of architecture.” In: Lotus International, n. 23, Rizzoli. New York, p, 74.
In the same way, Denise Scott-Brown will argue in favour of this attitude at IAUS Forum after the Beaux-Arts exhibition at the MOMA in 1975 by saying that “a thoughtful reassessment of the Beaux-Arts architecture could be a stimulus to new architectural sensibilities for our time, and an important contribution to a nondoctrinaire, humanist, late twentieth century architecture.” In: SCOTT-BROWN, Denise. Forum Beaux-Arts. In: Oppositions 8: Paris under the Academy, Spring 1977, p. 166.
- 10.
Some writing from ancient professors of the School would be rescued and actualized as the situation of the end of the 70s. This way, Elies Rogent would be remembered when he wrote in 1901 that “we know that the doubt and vagueness which devour us do not let us return to the lost traditional past … so, we must be eclectic, i.e., continuously in search for the unknown.” In: ROGENT, Elies. 1901. Consideraciones sobre la arquitectura de Barcelona desde el Renacimiento, in the Anuari d’Arquitectes of 1901, p. 160.
- 11.
At the Forum followed by the Beaux-Arts show, afterward published in Oppositions, Paul Rudolph (1977, 164) characterized the exhibited drawings as the “petrified” ancestors of the commercial images so much valued by the American architects. Ulrich Franzen (1977, 162) would also remark, following Jean Paul Carlhian’s testimony (student of the BeauxArts), that those beautiful drawings were not executed by the students, but by other specialized people. In: “Forum BeauxArts.” Oppositions 8: Paris under the Academy, Spring 1977.
- 12.
So, in the same way that the drawings of the BeauxArts exhibition were valued because of their “graphic appropiateness” by Denise Scott-Brown, from the subject of Dibujo II at the ETSAB special meticulousness in the realization of the drawing would be required to the students of Barcelona, so they could study in depth the drawing techniques, which required a slow learning. This techniques had disappear in the last years and their lack “had provoked in the students serious damage when expressing themselves at the time of design.” See: Programa de la asignatura Dibujo II de la ETSAB, Plan 1979.
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Álvarez García, M., Naya Villaverde, C., Jiménez Caballero, I., Villanueva Fernández, M., Fernández Salido, L.M., Larripa Artieda, V. (2018). “The Discourse of the One Thousand Works”: The Seduction of History and Politics of Excess. In: Castaño Perea, E., Echeverria Valiente, E. (eds) Architectural Draughtsmanship. EGA 2016. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58856-8_56
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