Enric Miralles (1955-2000) and Carme Pinés (1954—) worked together in a brief but prolific partnership from 1984 to 1989. Their reputation was established through numerous competition-winning schemes for civic projects sponsored by enlightened political leadership to stimulate the renaissance of Catalan culture following the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Although only a few of these schemes were realized, Miralles and Pinés achieved worldwide recognition for their exquisite drawings and for a modest and distinguished body of work.
Enric Miralles was born in Barcelona, where he attended the School of Architecture, receiving his professional degree in 1978 and a doctorate in 1981. He worked with Helio Pifion and Albert Viaplana from 1973 to 1985 on prize-winning competition entries and built projects, including Sants Plaza and Besos Park in Barcelona. Carme Pinés is also a native of Barcelona; she graduated from the School of Architecture in 1979. She was awarded first prize in the Rural Housing Competition of the Ministry of Public Works and Urbanism in 1982.
Completed civic projects for which the design was initiated by Miralles and Pinés include, in chronological order of commencement: La Llauna School (1994), Igualada Cemetery (1996), the pergolas of Parets des Vallés (1986), Hostalets Civic Center (1992), Morella School (1994), the Mina Quarter Civic Center (1992), Reus Rambla (1993), Huesca Sports Center (1994), the Archery Ranges (1992), and the Icaria Avenue Pergolas (1992) for the Olympic Games in Barcelona, and the Alicante Eurhythmic Sports Center (1993). In addition, a private residence, the Garau-Agusti House (1992), was completed. After the partnership ended, one or the other of the newly independent offices subsequently administered the final design and construction of many of these projects.
Although the work of Miralles and Pinés clearly grew out of regional influences, including the surrealism and inventive form of Antoni Gaudi and Josep Maria Jujol, it also distills and carries forward more universally understood themes of 20th-century modernism. Like the work of Alvar Aalto, which moved away from the notion of the building as an ideal type superimposed on a tabula rasa, the formal and material language of Miralles and Pinés may be characterized as topographical, both emerging out of and amplifying the characteristics of the site, program, and culture. Moving beyond the superficial contextualism of post-modernism, the work aspires to be deeply contextual, revealing intrinsic relationships between built form and landform and between nature and culture.
While exhibiting fragmented formal and spatial attributes similar to the work of the deconstructivists, Miralles and Pinés eschewed both the cynicism and theoretical focus of that movement. Maintaining a firm commitment to the inherited social "idealism of modernism," their work reveals a persistent preoccupation with the architectural promenade. The designs feature dramatization of movement, expressed by elaborately articulated stairs, ramps, and circulation routes, derived in part from a strong belief in the power of architecture to stimulate communal interaction and to shape the social matrices of society. It also is derived from a focus on direct physical experience and a corresponding disavowal of the representational aspirations of architecture. A conscious awkwardness and lack of refinement that are intended to distance the work from the technical virtuosity of much late 20th-century architecture exemplifies their emphasis on the blunt physical presence of construction. This is a reflection of the influence of the late brutalist work of Le Corbusier and the subsequent generation of new brutalists, notably Alison and Peter Smithson.
Complexity is another notable characteristic of the work of Miralles and Pinés. Their buildings are open-ended and flexible entities built up of overlapping layers, each with its own internal logic. The plans, rather than being preconceived, express the aggregative order of the work by emerging from the superimposition of many layers of information. In section, a limited range of standard components is subtly inflected to create slightly varying spatial sequences like a series of freeze-frame photographs. The architects conceived structure as dynamic components in equilibrium, and they detailed buildings with multiple layers of material that create highly figured tapestries of surface pattern, light, and shadow. Critics have praised the formal and material inventiveness of Miralles and Pinés but with some reservations. Kenneth Frampton suggests that the work tends toward structural exhibitionism, and William Curtis maintains that its complexity is mannerist in its overelaboration.
Of the built work of Miralles and Pinés, the most compelling project is the Igualada Cemetery (1996), a powerful synthesis of the themes of topography, promenade, blunt physicality, and complex order. Located on an unpromising site at the edge of an industrial estate, the cemetery is a simple cut into the earth that fuses built form with the natural contours of the site. The scheme transforms the banal rock-filled gabion and precast concrete retaining-wall systems of the civil engineer into a richly expressive tectonic language. Igualada is both fresh and timeless; it arouses deep and universal emotions while at the same time being carefully attuned to its own physical and cultural location and reflecting the particular sensibilities of its architects.
Awards for the work of Miralles and Pinés include the Fomento de les Arts Decoratives (FAD) Interior Design Prize for La Llauna School in 1987, the Barcelona Prize for the Archery Ranges in 1992, the FAD Architecture Prize for Igualada Cemetery in 1992, and the National Prize for Spanish Architecture for Morella School in 1995.
After 1989, Miralles and Pinés continued their careers separately. Pinés designed numerous schemes for sports facilities in Spain and completed the Petrer pedestrian bridge and plaza in 1999. Miralles completed projects, including an industrial bridge for Camy-Nestlé in Barcelona (1990), the Social Headquarters for the Circulo de Lectores in Madrid (1992), and the Unazuki Meditation Pavilion (1993) and Takaoka Station Access Area (1993) in Japan. Beginning in 1994 until his untimely death in 2000, he worked in partnership with Benedetta Tagliabue and in 1998-99 won international competitions, including the Music School in Hamburg, the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, and the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice.
Annette LeCuyer
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005 |