The new realists, an exhibition that opened last night at the Dhub, represents the new generation of Catalan and Balearic architects. According to its curators, Joan Roig and Carme Ribas, it is not another generation, but the “most powerful and cohesive” since the eighties, which adds a new link to the chain that goes from modernism to the school of Barcelona, passing through Gatcpac or Group R.
Roig and Ribas place the first manifestations of this generation in 2008, the year of the financial crisis. Its members, who are approaching their fifties, had just graduated a few years ago and had studied during a boom period in iconic architecture, with the predominance of professional success parameters that are questioned today. When they entered the labor market, they found a bleak panorama: the COAC recorded a 95% drop in professional visas in one year, which forced almost half of the Barcelona studios to fold their sails. They were, therefore, forced to investigate, to open their own way, to sometimes group together in offices of collective format.
HArquitectes, Peris/ Toral, Bosch/Capdeferro, Claudi Aguiló, Maio, Carles Enrich, Lacol, Josep Bunyesc, Nua, Ted’A Arquitectes, Francisco Cifuentes or Carles Oliver are some of the thirty long names gathered in this exhibition, in the which do not emphasize personal lines, although there are some, but rather shared convictions and an attitude. They all defend environmental awareness, the reduction of energy expenditure and the impact of architecture on nature; the recovery of traditional materials (such as wood, ceramics, earth, etc.), preferably local and often presented in their natural state, without coatings; the review of the needs of the program and the adjustment of the comfort patterns; also a strict control of costs, from the phase of choosing materials to the containment of the subsequent ecological footprint.
A good number of these authors trained at the Escola Técnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Vallès (ETSAV), where they had professors such as Albert Cuchí or Xavier Monteys, decisive in their orientation, and to which many were destined for being from outside Barcelona. This fact has determined another common characteristic: the dissemination of his studies throughout the Catalan and Balearic territories, with offices in Sabadell, Girona, Olot, Lleida, Tarragona or Palma, unlike other stages in which Barcelona was the Catalan architectural capital without discussion
The new realists offers the visitor a collective approach to this new generation, and it does so with austerity in line with that of its protagonists. It opens, behind its facade of pop-style portraits signed by Poldo Pomés, with a pine tree structure, designed by Amarar/Aulets, which reflects the constructive potential of wood without the help of screws or glue, and complemented by an installation by Albert Faus. It continues with rooms on the cooperative phenomenon and the client’s participation in the project; on the recovery of materials (which, incidentally, has given new impetus to manufacturers of hydraulic flooring or blinds); on the interiors, photographed (by Adrià Goula and José Hevia) and exhibited like a Pompeian frieze, in which tunes stand out, in addition to plants and a few models, or on the windows and the intermediate spaces.
These rooms surround a central one, where thirty projects are exhibited, schematically documented, according to the curators, the most interesting of the last fifteen years. On the floor, a carpet reproduces the innovative layout of Maio’s “110 rooms” project.
The exhibition ends with a manifesto from Societat Orgànica, an architectural cooperative that helps many of those gathered to optimize the sustainability of their works. In the manifesto they allude to the essential transformation of the model that still governs construction, and which now wastes energy, water and materials, and generates a lot of waste. Summary in five points: frugality, eco-efficiency, relocation, circularity and compensation. Or, put in other words, a synthesis of moderation and ingenuity; a Van der Rohe-style “more is less” in an ecological key; a commitment to nearby materials and energies, the transformation of waste into new resources and the correction of the damage caused.
