ON BUILDING Matter and Form

by Josep Lluís Mateo, Ed. Polígrafa. Barcelona, 2012.

On Building is an action that moves towards the future. It involves imagining another reality, another world, different to this one. The project requires data about existing conditions. (…) Yet the Project distorts this data (and must do so). (…)

Building is a long journey through the present continuous. The past exists as an echo, as a phantasmal form that is no longer discussed, and sometimes even its origin is forgotten.(…)

Finally, the building appears. Despite the slowness of construction, suddenly, the building is there. (…) And so we see it: whole, new, young, brilliant. Very soon, we will leave it. (…)

This book describes that initial moment of a series of buildings, beyond their origins and their physical constitution (both issues, idea and matter, however, based on my work). Here, the objects are presented, captured by Adrià Goula, as visual forms, as compositions of planes and surfaces that form volumes and also as a dialectic of the
light and shade that define spaces.

The idea, however, is to convey the initial, fresh force of the objects when they appear. Witnessing these brief moments is, in part, what motivates our work.

Josep Lluís Mateo