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June 2020

Unpublished

Housing in Chemnitz, Germany

A cube, with four façades.

Two, urban: hard, stony.
Two, organic: soft, with wood. Turned towards the park.
In these two, a balcony that floats and is fixed by a great weight, an iron ball that hangs from the ceiling and gives it stability.

Close to the building of the German Central Bank (Bundesbank), also our work, it had to dialogue with it, go unnoticed and relate to the park around it.

Josep Lluís Mateo

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Velserbroek, in the distance

Sometimes there are works that, though you can appreciate them and you devoted yourself to them like all of your works (it is not in my interest not to involve myself), somehow remain on the fringes of your career. This is the case of Velserbroek, a small residential building in Holland.

Josep Lluís Mateo

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Ephemeral

Moray

Projects and their construction mean facing a long period of time, which can seem eternal.

For this reason, I sometimes feel like fast experiences—go in, come out and leave them behind.

The competition for a hotel at the Inca archaeological site of Moray, in Peru, was one such case.

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Theory

Josep Lluís Mateo reflects on the darkness in Toni Catany’s images

Surveying Toni Catany’s images of the Venezuelan estate of El Silencio and reading his text on the subject, while listening to Frederic Mompou and his Silent Music (“The silent music, the sonorous solitude”, John of the Cross), I thought of a related theme, directly associated with the photographer, which this series clearly tables.

That theme is light. And, in the hands of the artist, its opposite, darkness, as the ultimate expression, by contrast, with lightness. Without darkness, without light, without shadow, there is neither knowledge nor perception of the physical world.

Josep Lluís Mateo

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A Break for Critical Thinking. Physical Confinement and Freedom of Imagination

The global pandemic has concretized the crucial call for alternative ways of thinking and acting. The current confinement is teaching us that imagination is our ultimate mode of freedom.

Juhani Pallasmaa

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