On Thursday, May 24, at 7:00 PM, the Espai Alfaro will host the opening of the exhibition AlfaroSiza: Ideas encontradas, which brings together and exhibits, for the first time, works by architect Álvaro Siza and sculptor Andreu Alfaro. The explorations of both in sculpture, drawing, and architecture, along with the undeniable and striking relationship between their creations, serve as the exhibition's main draw.

In Spain, the implementation of integrated kitchens in homes has become increasingly common in contemporary architecture. Although there are various configurations and designs that are applied according to the customs and cultures of societies, as we saw in Argentina or Uruguay, the essence of conceiving the kitchen space as a hub of activities and a gathering space among its inhabitants and visitors is a common factor. This has led architects to try to find innovative ways, technologies, or materials that achieve an aesthetic and harmony capable of providing functionality, spaciousness, and flexibility to homes.

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In Her, a 2013 film directed by Spike Jonze, a lonely writer develops a love affair with the virtual assistant of an operating system. Brave New World, a book written in 1932 by the English author Aldous Huxley, fabricates a dystopian society whose cult of efficiency and rationality creates a humanity that ignores hardship and pain but also represses love and freedom. In Mary Shelley's 1818 book Frankenstein, considered the first science fiction novel, a life is artificially created, producing a monster with human characteristics: wills, wishes, and fears. Whether describing the fear of artificial intelligence, the uncertainty produced by industrialization, or the limits of science, science fiction works reveal less about the future and much more about the moment in which they were created; they speak of the fears and hopes of their own time.

When we explore urban visions of the past anticipating the future, it is common to find exaggerated and even funny predictions. As for the promises of architecture and, consequently, of our cities, it is not an easy task to predict future developments clearly either. By looking at industry trends and using all of our imaginations, could we tell what cities will be like in tens or hundreds of years? Their materials, their appearance, their way of building and thinking? Will it be a more pristine and minimalist future or a more organic and complex future? How will new technologies and building materials affect the shape, aesthetics, and prosperity of the cities of tomorrow?

“A House is a place (…) as physical as a set of feelings. (…) a home is a relation between materiality and mastery and imaginative processes, where the physical location and materiality and the feelings and ideas are united and influence each other, instead of being separated and distinct. (…) a house is a process of creation and comprehension of ways of living and belonging. A house is lived, as well as imagined. The meaning of house and the way it materially manifests itself, it´s something that is created and recreated in an unceasingly way through every day domestic tasks, which are themselves connected to the spacial imaginary of the house”¹ 

The sentence above is the starting-point of the current reflection, in an exercise that will mark meaningfully my approach to the way of projecting houses. 

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Videos

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Without a doubt, it is interesting to enjoy architecture from a new perspective. Minimalist photography, characterized by clean compositions where geometry and abstraction take center stage, is one of the most popular trends when it comes to documenting architecture. In celebration of this distinctive photographic style, we have selected 14 minimalist images by prominent photographers such as Joel Filipe, Sebastian Weiss, and Nelson Garrido.

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Videos

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