Rowing towards the future, remembering the past

"Rowing. An extraordinarily difficult period for architecture in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands has seen the emergence of a new generation of architects trying to make their way through the turbulent waters of the present towards the future, with a knowing nod to the past."

The idea of moving forward towards the future while learning about, remembering and re-thinking the past is a good maxim for reflecting on the transformations that have taken place in architecture over the past five years. It is a different way of viewing the past, critical and yet pessimism-free, establishing what we can learn from years prior to and since the real estate bubble and what we should cast aside in order to refocus on a kind of architecture that is more accessible and valid for today's times. In order to achieve this, curators Félix Arranz and Jordi Badia have selected, for Vogadors, the Catalonia and Balearic Islands Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, nine works with various common nodes, including materiality and permeability, tradition and contextualisation. Working out how to delineate the desired message and the characteristics to convey is hard, and this is why Arranz and Badia have focused on the architecture of one generation, young architects who have achieved recognition for work that is painstakingly executed, regardless of its scale.

Among the wide variety of pavilions and exhibitions at the Biennale — tackling a range of often very diverse themes and sometimes causing an information overload that is hard to assimilate — Vogadors is notable for its narrative consistency; it is easy to grasp the pavilion's line of argument as soon as you start to walk around it. The entrance corridor presents a vertical mosaic titled "contexts", which contains a selection of 150 works by various architects, welcoming visitors and showcasing the different kinds of architecture in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, while simultaneously paving the way for the main exhibition. The mosaic includes works by architects such as Enric Miralles, Josep Llinás, Marta Peris, Carme Pinós, RCR Arquitectes and Eduard Bru, as well as many others. These are architects with local origins, but whose work extends into the international sphere, having carried out their projects at different times and in various places.

The end of the corridor opens out onto the main hall, presenting the teams who make up the Vogadors (Catalan for "oarsmen") exhibition, in a clear commitment to the future. The curators' selection is based on works that display a shared sensitivity for the materials, processes and means of architectural creation, far removed from the star-system and the most traditional, headline-grabbing and renowned projects of recent years. Instead of the mass, decontextualized production that we have become used to over past decades, the aim of this show is to highlight attention to detail, the close relationship between client and architect... the simple sobriety that marks to some degree a common denominator among young Catalan and Balearic architects.

The works are: Casa Collage (Bosch Capdeferro Arquitecturas), House in Bunyola (Francisco Cifuentes), Nursery in Pratdip (Nuria Salvadó and David Tapias), House for three sisters (Blancafort-Reus Arquitectura), La Seca (Meritxell Inaraja), Can Ribas (Jaime J. Ferrer Forés with Antoni Vilanova), Swimming pool, changing rooms and sports hall (Olga Felip and Josep Camps), Extension of Josep Sureda i Blanes Secondary School (SMS Arquitectos) and School of Art and Design in Amposta (David Sebastian and Gerard Puig).

This way of creating architecture has traditionally been linked to the earth, to materiality, and this is why the exhibition includes a table that runs along the side, almost as long as the venue itself, which is used to display materials in their original state — earth, plants, seeds and small rocks, which all recount the inspiration and motivations for each project. In contrast to these materials, a black and white isometric presentation strips each project of all texture and surrounding, contradicting the exhibition's message, and possibly becoming the only element that could be removed from the pavilion without affecting its narrative. The scale models and audiovisual resources complement and help render the visit more dynamic.

The show's intellectual approach is strengthened by a range of publications in various formats. Particularly noteworthy is the work that has been done to present all the projects in digital format, with iPads that can be consulted in situ (the pavilion has wi-fi, making it easy to access the apps). This makes it possible to find out about each project in greater depth, expanding the graphic documentation about each of them. This resource is unsurprising, given that both curators have experience in the publishing world, and a large part of the curator's job is also based on the importance of research when creating architecture.

Marking a change in spatial dimensions from these nine presentations, the exhibition closes with a selection of 20 works, which the curators regard as the "background" to the nine previous projects comprising the main body of the exhibition. They describe this background as: "The permanent and living thread in the cultures of the Mediterranean. It is not a break with the past. On the contrary, it relates to a tradition of Catalan and Balearic architects who share the values of respect for and understanding of what is already there, to places and their inhabitants, professional and research skills along with the expressive power of the most exciting kinds of architecture."

In today's volatile and constantly-changing times, it is clear that the Vogadors pavilion is not just an exhibition of architecture, but rather an almost literary journey that tells us a story. It is interesting to reflect on how contexts, the projects and their background coherently reflect the leitmotiv of the pavilion, inspired poetically by the words of Jorge Oteiza: "Whoever makes progress, creating something new, does so like a rower, moving forward, but rowing opposite to the direction they are facing, looking back to the past, to what already exists, so that they can reinvent its foundations ". Ethel Baraona Pohl (@ethel_baraona)