III Congreso Internacional de Arquitectura 2014: Arquitectura necesaria

III International Congress of Architecture 2014: Necessary Architecture

PAMPLONA, PALACIO BALUARTE | 11, 12 & 13 JUNE 2014

The motto of this event, 'Necessary architecture' has two meanings, and both reinforce each other. On the one hand, it proposes the necessary architecture as opposed to the disproportionate or excessive; on the other, it demands the necessary condition of architecture as opposed to those who judge it as dispensable or superfluous. The first interpretation emphasises containment and measure, favouring austerity and laconism over material and symbolic waste: an architecture that saves on resources and gestures; the second interpretation emphasises the essential nature of this public art, which cannot be reduced to mere construction: architecture as a means of displaying and transmitting cultural values.

Manifesting itself both against excess and defect, the two senses of the motto converge in the defence of a measured and responsible architecture, equally aware of the limits that sustainability sets and of its role in orchestrating sociability. Thus, the necessary architecture; but not less than necessary. During his time, Tatlin defended 'neither the old nor the new: what is necessary', and this desire to save architecture from changing tastes in order to establish the permanence of necessity perhaps forgets that time and circumstances alter what we judge to be indispensable; but it also illuminates with its flash of light the supreme aesthetic elegance and the exact ethical responsibility of necessity.

[Written by Luis Fernández-Galiano]

The viewing of the audiovisual materials in this series at arquia/film library is possible thanks to the collaboration and authorisation of Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad.