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About the work
of Luis Sánchez Renero and Sánchez Arquitectos
VICTOR JIMÉNEZ
1. It is common
to hear how the great architecs today rival some of the
great fashion designen in the world. Architecture seems to
have reached the game of words that Fierre Bourdieu used in
his essay "High Culture and Haute Couture". The way some
cities announce their Nouvel, Gehry, nr Foster, is similar
to how some women talk ahoul the Chanel, Armani or a Cucci
in their wardroln: Therefore, it is not surprising that
architectural reviews are rhetorically similar to
fashion-show feature writers: architecture is referred to as
"flowing", "liquid" or "translucent" as if evoking a silk
robe. Buildings descríbed as "ironic" or "somber" as if they
were black-tie suits, and towers de scribed with words as "nostalgic"
or "vertiginous are also used when describing a neckline.
Above all, reviews on fashion and architecture are boih
governed by a relativa system where everything is explained
within a network of crossed references inside a closed room.
We may read things like: the museum of Mr. So and So reminds
me ofthe library of Mr. Such and Such, without the conceit;
and that hotel of Mr. So Forth is like the boutique of So
and So, whose "glamour explodes ironically"... This system
of reciprocities never refers to some-thing rhetoric or
banal, but becomes the reason for existence. There is no
reference to modern history, nor will the genealogy of
architecture last forever: what was born yesterday will
dispel tomorrow.
What we don't
have, due to an intelectual la-ziness and not to a shortage
of alternatives, is a language thata llows us to venture
into architecture from a more substantial perspective. The
attempt to recover an analytical prose has become a
chal¬lenge, because we cannot return to the time when
everything was new. Peter Collins ascertained that the
Modern Movement had enjoyed, during the fírst decades of its
life, a son of crítica!l amnesty that allowed it to develop,
grow and mature. He thought that without this períod of
time, the movement would have died in íts infancy. Perhaps
this Brítish historian did not wish to admít to something
that also played an important role here: the overwhelming -weight
o the revolutionary and original thoughts of that time,
which were hard to digest, and had this effect due to the
novelty.
Today that
radical innovation does not exist, and we have reached a
broad plateau where the unusual does not appear with the
same frequency as during those heroic years. This produces a
monotonous effect, and in order to avoid this impression,
the idea was introduced that we have been wítnessíng an
eclectic style, in the past decades, where proposals take
longer to appear than to vanish from our memory. Linked to
this false variety, we now have a fashion review in
architecture as we did during the XIX century, and Collins
knew this better than anyone else. Today we are simply
facing a very oíd phenomenon of architecture, which the
Modern Movement believed to have left behind: fashion.
Walter Cropious thought that architecture was forever
leaving behind the slavery imposed by the loathsome noun "style"
that had ravaged the XIX century. He might have been ríght
ifwe on/y consider the important changes. Yet he did not
foresee that society would need to show, as Gilbert K.
Chesterton warned, "an untiring power of renovation that is
reborn with short spe/ls and penetrales even the smallest
events in the art of construction". The Brítish author
however, saw this in 1909 (during the peak of edectícism),
as a positive trait. Today we are not so certain taht the
strategies of our consumer society are as healthy for
architecture or the society itself.
2.The
architecture conceived for the consumer society survives
daily from a process of naturtal selection in the field of
fashion. This process only accentuates the feeling of having
a vertiginuos specter of methods, whose common denominator
is the easiness with which they can be replaced. It is often
heard that an office of architecs collapses when the atyle
they were using expires: having exhauested the
characteristics that kept them alive. Some architecs have
understood this and completely renovated their repertory.
The arechitec that previously offered us tubes is now
offering pavín stones; architect that specialized in
orthogonal lines, today may be exploring aleatory ones.
Perhaps this is why those offices or architecs that maintain
a certain consistency in their repertory through the years
stand out for attention:they know that to survive they must
renovate (and they do or elsethey would be dead). And, they
achieve this renovation without radicalisms or spectacular
travesties. This is the case of the Mexican office known as
Sánchez Arquitectos y Asociados or simply, as we all
callcthem: The Sánchez, Sánchez is the last ñame of two
offive partners (currently the other three are López, Mota
and González) In spite of the exhibitionisnn that
architecture magazines shelter in their pages, purposefully
placed there to sell and contribute to the confusion, modern
architecture (coming close to its first century of existence)
has been capable of maintaining certain continuity. No one
can deny that many of the works dating back from 1920 to
1970 are still completly contemporary in our eyes, and they
are an obliged reference for any modern day architect.
Fernand Braudel would say that we are facing the "long
permanence" meaning that we are facing an architecture that
remains active for a longer time in history, and this is
what lies under the layer of short-term events that only the
public sees. I have written about this previously, in
reference to the Sánchez' office and their architecture as
being "a resistant nucleus of modernity". I am referring to
the most consistent forces of modern architecture, those
that manage to pass from one decade to the next without
diminishing its generative capacity. For example, leaping
back in time, and trying to return to the composition and
decorative languages from before modernity, has been a
complete failure, and no one remembers the personalities of
the time: Moore, Graves, Bofill, the Kriers... Lesson number
one: there are no valid historical "comebacks" in
architecture when you want to reach a time before the Modern
Movement. We may be able to retake solutions, but only if
they respond to the anti-historical styles after 1920. Some
of the avant-gardes that can be adopted, without the risk of
anachronisms, are those that boomed during the decades
around and after 1920, precisely because we are within the
hard nucleus of modern/ty (which is not eclecticism). This
excludes the decora¬tive and neo-vernacular or neo-historiéal
resurrections such as art deco and postmodernism, free from
avant-gardes because they reacted against them, therefore
these movements can be fairly called reactionaries. The need
to rationally satisfy the requirements of the function has
also been disqualified in recent years, and the fascination
we feel towards Gehry, Hadid and other extremists could
easily turn into repulsión within a few decades. The
challenging phalluses of Nouvel and Foster in Barcelona and
London might also provoke derision shortly. The resisting
nucleus of modernity will have survived, without doubt, just
as it has been doing for almost an entire decade. This would
be the safest bet in the field of natural selection of
architectural pieces as long as it does not fall into
boredom and repetition. However, the deepen/ng in the
nucleus of modernity is far from reaching the bottom, or
running out from its own capacity of renovation without
falling into the banality of revival. 3. I suspect that the
Sánchez, López, Mota and González have developed an instinct
to find the resistance axis by a forced obligation. They are
a team, the fact that they sign their work as a Corporation
makes it diffícult, for those of us wríting in depth texts
like this one, to find the authors. Because of this they are
obliged to produce and sustain a common language. tí we try
to imagine what they have been discussing among themselves
for all these years, we can only wonder: whose opinión
weighs more? Who warns them about the risks of repetition?
Or of losing the path? This would happen when they argue
over a line of work that can be defended with good arguments
... perhaps this discussion needs no words, or it is carried
out indirectly when speaking through the blueprints. We have
no way of knowing how rigid the hierarchies are within this
team. It must be very difficult anyhow, for whoever tríes to
advócate for the same formula, especially if it has been
presented at least ten times. Perhaps this is as difficult
as it might be for another to propose an in-novation that
might be considered whimsical by the others. They know that
a single movement may set a new trend. They all have to keep
in mind that both extremes could leave their office outside
of the pfofessional market.
The reality is
that there is a notorious continuity in their projects.They
are conscious of the risks and still they always incorpórate
–here or there some novelty to their own tradition. They do
this more on a small scale, sometimes a bare wink to the
fashion of time but they can also explore more decidedly.
Specifically, they delve into fashion, which their case
leads them to a paradoxical radicalization. 4. First let us
observe the constants of their latest works: the same
cleanlines in the solutions that lead to steel asan anide of
faith, indebted with Auguro Álvarez. No one dares, nor needs,
to question this debt with Augusto Alvarez. We do not
suggest that they are the only "heirs" of Álvarez, although
they are among the most consequential. We can see
photographs of ten of their buildings and we must make an
effort to identify them quickly. The same can happen with
other offices, but with the Sanchez this is more accentuated.
They usually prefer flat (or surface, recently also curve)
to volume: they are largely indebted with this movement that
is the seldom identified as a powerful influence in Mexican
architecture. Including, among its beneficiaries, none other
than Enrique de Moral, Luis Barragán, Francisco Artigas,
Augusto Álvarez and Ramón Torres with Héctor Velázquez. The
last three names of the Mexican architects acquire
particular pertinence when trying to understand the
genealogy of the work of the Sánchez office. The volumes of
this group are resistant to presenting themselves as closed
boxes, with solid and three-dimensional edges. The surfaces
avoid touching each other as often as possible. They stop
before coming in contact (physical or apparent) and brazenly
flaunt their bi-dimen-sionality overcoming the weight of all
the bodies they endose. They frequently suggest a non-materialism
that challenges the sense of solidily that ought to
characterize architecture, at least in some cases. It is
almost as if the glass, in the Sánchez, would have the
supreme mision to become immaterial, but has no choice but
no remain closed, eliminating as many bleak walls as
possible. A reference to Torres and Velázquez is inevitable
here. The shading or set blinds are always open which
sometimes sacrifice a controllable temperature and these
seem to also fulfill a function of forcefully denying any
limit. It is common to find, in the Sánchez projects, open
gardens wirh skylights, a quiality that makes them habitable
under certain conditions and at times can also be excessive
when trying to transform them into sitting rooms. It seems
almost as if these patios, the total openness of the places
that lead to them and the uninter-rupted views between one
place and another arise from the ancestral seduction they
have pledged on modern architec-ture, especially when they
are oblique ups and/or downs. Also present in their work, is
a fascination for double height ceilings as a resource to
multiply the possible views and as a way to elimínate the
fronts of these patios. This produces the effect of
contemplating the angles in perspective, not drawn, but
forcefully constructed: as is in the genes of the Modern
Movement. Sometimes against all logic, they constitute
an¬other 'reasoning' behind the rpsisting nucleus that the
Sán¬chez have constantly incorporated. 5. Yet some traits
refer to the moment when different projects were conceived.
The Post Gradúate Building ofthe ITAM, for example, owes
many of ¡is projects to the ideas of post mod-ernism, mainly
in the neo-academic compositional scheme (before the non-existent
decoration). However, in the proj¬ects that carne later,
this strategy did not continué. During the years, their
buildings have incorporated oblique angles, and recently
curves, as in Ámsterdam 121. These can be observed more
strongly in the Tel Aviv house. To mention some details,
something similar can be said about the wooden beams. There
isn't any architecture that manages to remain uninvolved
with the seduction that some novelties ofíer, although the
Sánchez prefer to incorpórate these at a distance that
allows them to be rid of them when the time comes. The
wooden beams in the Ámsterdam 121, Citlaltépetl or the Edgar
Alian Poe hous-es can be seen as temporary indicators that
can be replaced for something e/se. The Sánchez proceed with
experimental and discreet accumulations: they incorpórate
this or that element, which does not defy the resistance of
the modernity nucleus. It is an element that is ready to
receive temporary instructions. This is sometimes a
necessary prevention: the retro insinuations that are self-confessed
as deco in Ámsterdam 120, were not fortúnate and sí/'// do
not ruin the context. And above all, the same insinuations
were dropped from future projects without any mayor problems.
The time indicators are always lodged in the details, with
the pos- sible exception of the ITAM Post Gradúate Building
6. One of the
advantages of proceeding by accumulating experí-ences (apart
from the accessories that can disappear at any mo-ment), as
all architects know, is that it leads to the accumulation of
wisdom. A practica! wisdom reflected in the quality of the
details. The swiftness of a solution in the Sánchez
buildings resists a deep analysis and convince us that
nothing has been left unresolved. This virtue allows them to
incorpórate technical refinements that only an experienced
observer would detect. An example of this is the . UNAM
Institute of Engineering or the Headquarters of the Banking
and Commerdal School. The Tower of the Instituto in the UNAM
is one of these successful additions made to the group in
the past de¬cades. The architectural solution in this
project evokes the nature of the building it shelters. A
building constructed to explore technological innovation
could not have a venue that suggested otherwise. In this
building, the high-tech design was much more relevant than
in other high-tech buildings destined for other purposes.
The observer's attention is driven to the refinement of
details rather than to any proof of technological
inspiration. We can also add the Zaragoza Station to this
list, a station of extraordinary lightness and luminosity. I
quote both examples because the clients of these buildings
must val¬ué, above all things, their practical virtues. It
has been the ability to continue and allow for technological
innovation, which has opened a way for the Sánchez to stay
in the real avant-garde. tí this was true, and it probably
is, the buildings of great technical refinement will
withstand the passing of time, due to their caution and
aversion for exhibitionism. They meet the expectations of
what the authors consciously chase, and this is no small
feat. We also agree with what they have proposed, and in
their own terms it is difficult to speak about an
insufficiency of results. The one problem the Sánchez could
face would probably be in another direction: for example, in
the fear of taking risks. Surprisingly, within their own
terms, the Sánchez risk more than we would give them credit
for and obtain astounding results. The Edgar Alian Poe 219,
Tabasco 93 and Lafontaine 79 buildings could be admired as
sculptures made by Rietveld. Sculptures with autonomous
unfurled planes and an articulation that take them to the
limit of immateriality. This was another turn of the bolt
when it seemed to be set tightly in place, and it is what I
referred to previously as deepening, implying a paradoxical
radicalization that takes place in a terrain ruled by
moderation. In the two first cases, the interiors are white
in the style of Meier, a sassy chromatic experíment, which
we nor-mally see in Legorreta. In the third case we are
surprised by the extreme depuration that has taken place.
Upon second glance, the deceivingly plain exteriors can
evidence a virtu-ous quality that is difficult to overeóme.
They are sculptures of pure geometry and they do not suggest
fragility, but insinu¬ate lightness and transparency. They
are mature designs that border on perfection. Since we are
on solid ground we will not have to tor¬ture the language of
architectural reviews to speak about tríese projects.
Fashion is absent in them and we can drop the metaphors that
describe clothes and not buildings. We can now proceed
philologically and venture into what the mature works of
Sánchez, López, Mota and González can offer modernity in
Mexican and international architecture. The names of
Rietveld, Álvarez, Torres and Velázquez surface as the
legitimate predecessors of this particular way to conceive
modern architecture. What does this consist of? It consists
of the refinement of the surfaces that endose the volumes,
without precise limits, through the assembly of floors,
walls and windows. An assembly that multiplies the effect
thanks to the transparency, smoothness and reflectivity used
when choosing the materials. The result captures server's
interest, making it impossible to control the impulse, and
thus decipher the riddle. Although this could produce
restlessness not because it ¡s balanced by the extreme
rationalíty and a construtive logic that rules reason. We
don't always find the solutions to find, or those that we
are used to, but what we do find is lógical, although they
challenge our expectations. There is a high level
architectural poetry here, which Bruno Zevi recognized as
the neo-plastic architecture. Throughout history we are able
to ra architectural modernity continúes its path, resisting
permanence nears its first century of existence. 7. The
Sánchez have also taken other paths when the condit demanded
so. As in the case of projects where modernity reaches the
most common solutions of contemporary architecture in these
cases they knocked on the doors of Enrique del Moral or Luis
Barragan, as many others do in our country. They turn to the
colorful flat walls and rocky or wooden materials. They are
good at this, search to approach their own technological
language. Two examples of this are the anonymous Painters'
House or Las Garzas, in San Allende. In similar
circumstances, where the oíd architectw new extensions meet,
we find the offices in Flora Street or tht Cuanajuato Street.
A separate case, but still with in this genre, would be
residence, where the predominance of the flat walls and
wooden blinds could have dangerously pushed the solution ni
fortable tradition. But a blind wall, the basic feature,
runs acn in an enormous semi cirde - which almost occupies
the entin of the residence, and places the project closer to
a more garde scenario. However, the Sánchez have taken a
risk and\ be criticized for that.
Sánchez Arquitectos web site
Author:
Álvaro Mutis
Author:
Jorge Tamés y Batta
Author:
Humberto Ricalde G.
Author:
Víctor Jiménez
Author:
Xavier Guzmán Urbiola
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