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Spain Pavilion at FIL 2024

BAJO EL MISMO SOL (UNDER THE SAME SUN)

“Este Sol de justicia en toda parte, sin hacer división o diferencia, su clara lumbre de piedad reparte, a ninguno negando su presencia” —Emblemas morales de Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco (1610) /This powerful Sun shines everywhere, without separating or distinguishing, its clear light of mercy it does share, denying its presence to no one.” — Moral Emblems by Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco (1610)

The 38th edition of the Guadalajara International Book Fair FIL, held in 2024, featured Spain as the Guest of Honor. Under the theme “Camino de ida y vuelta” (Round Trip), its participation, coordinated by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), sought to portray the image of a plural, diverse, and multicultural country that serves as a communication link between Europe and South America—a bridge connecting both sides of the Atlantic.

We drew inspiration from an emblem by Sebastián de Covarrubias Orozco, where the same sun illuminates two shores, two cities, two countries, the entire world. This image invites a contemporary interpretation that speaks of generosity, empathy, multiplicity, and universality. Diverse cultures, seemingly distant, share common resources and traditions. We understand the “camino de ida y vuelta” as the natural condition of this deep connection: cities facing each other yet close, gazing at one another across the sea, a field, and a shared sun. Our pavilion design stems from this idea of shared space, opening into two cities, two grandstands, and two interconnected labyrinths that mirror each other, creating a place for meetings, dialogue, interaction, community rest, and exchanged perspectives.

The omnipresent and powerful sun in Covarrubias’ image also reminds us of the collective anxiety about global warming—an urgent call to reduce the impact of human activity on the planet. For this reason, we propose a radically sustainable pavilion built with systems and elements based on recycling and circularity, aiming for zero waste. Its construction uses sustainable and reusable materials sourced from local industries and economies (construction scaffolding, recycled cardboard, lightweight wooden frames), as well as materials recovered from other exhibitions and local building sites (such as carpets used in previous fairs, repurposed here for sound absorption).

The pavilion’s design reinterprets the wall-like architecture of Mexico and Spain, using lightweight materials and a structure that favors transparency, interplay of light and shadows, and overlapping perspectives. Rather than a fixed form with specific dimensions, we aimed to create spaces and atmospheres that encourage connection. The proposal was conceived with flexibility in mind, allowing the dimensions of various elements to adapt to needs, content, and available resources.

Although part of the program is planned for the upper level, all public activities are fully accessible on the ground floor. Additionally, the design includes the possibility of installing a lifting platform to ensure accessibility.

The choice of standardized and locally available elements facilitates both the assembly and disassembly of the pavilion, enhancing practicality and reducing its environmental impact.

La Vallita Mágica

La Vallita Mágica is both an urban activism strategy and a prototype of civic design, which would allow many public schools without much space, located next to squares and parks in congested urban environments, to use part of these as one more playground for their students.

Many of the public schools in the center of Madrid have small playgrounds, sandwiched between buildings. They are noisy, without views and without sunlight, conditions that have a negative impact on the health and development of young schoolchildren. Buying lots to expand these patios does not seem economically feasible given that the center of Madrid is dense and expensive. This same situation can be extrapolated to other cities in Spain. For those schools located in squares and parks, La Vallita Mágica could be a feasible and almost immediate solution.

In this sense, the Pi y Margall Center for Infant and Primary Education in Plaza Dos de Mayo in Madrid is a good case study: at the same time that children are at school, the square that gives access to the school is practically empty, and it will be empty until the end of the working day, when it will be filled with people having a drink on the terraces or in the square. The school is publicly owned. The square is publicly owned. Couldn’t a part of this square be prepared to serve as a school yard just when this square is empty, and do it in conditions in which the privacy and safety of children can be guaranteed?

The squares need street furniture, which, if not placed, will end up privatized in the form of terraces for bars and restaurants. The squares need seats and shadows that can be vegetation or in the form of pergolas that, in addition, have a structure capable of mounting solar panels and other useful elements for the city.

In Plaza 2 de Mayo, we could have pergolas that would shade its central part, play with the trees and perhaps add a little more green to the whole. During school hours, when the square is empty, the pergola lowers and closes a section of the square, becomes a fence and allows the school to use part of the square for outdoor activities.

It would be a series of standard mechanisms, already commonly used, tested and safe. They only need small design adjustments to adapt them to this new use.

www.lavallitamagica.uno

El borde de una herida

El borde de una herida curated by Juan Guardiola, as a co-production between Centro Centro and CDAN could be defined as a “poetic and political reflection on the migrant’s journey from the perspective of contemporary creation.” The exhibition opened on February 16, at CentroCentro in Madrid and stayed open through June 4 2017.

The exhibition design of OSS supports the curatorial discourse and facilitates the tour of the exhibition. One single element of the intervention is perceived and concentrates function and meaning: it is a fence made with scaffolding and greenhouse fabric, which describes a slightly zigzag path, located in the central section of the exhibition. In a first level, the function of the fence is to guide the visitor in a space that is confusing as well as to separate an area of light from a darker one in which audiovisuals are shown. This contrast in light levels also makes a reference to the dramatic play of darkness and visibility at play in the most controlled borders. A second reading may reveal that this fence guides while forcing the visitor to navigate a narrower and more delineated path. It looms threatening and uncomfortable between the room’s walls and reduces the personal space of the visitors and their movements. The materials used refer to two sectors of the economy where most immigrants usually work in Spain: construction and greenhouse agriculture.

Urban Space Station

A prototype for the general invasion of rooftops and other residual spaces with high biodiversity, redemptive ecosystems, USS-s serve as seeds, catalyzing a natural recuperation of the city’s surfaces. Their uses range from scientific and educative to recreational, while they capture carbon emissions and generate oxygen. ETFE’s double skin allows for the structure to be lightweight and creates a heat exchange. Rainwater accumulates in underbelly bags, while the texture design of the structure itself helps channel the airflow to generate electricity. Secondary use as ultra-fine particulate collector has demonstrated capable of passively cleaning street-level air near host buildings. A 40% of this prototype (USS 1.0) was built and tested within the exhibition Souls & Machines, Digital Art & New Media, held in 2008, at the National Art Museum Reina Sofía in Madrid. In 2016, a 1:1 prototype was built for the Art Triennial Emscherkunst. Placed on top of an existent building, docked onto the air conditioning of the surrounding buildings, it created a cleaning circulation; the building’s waste air and warmth were filtered by the USSs plants, cleaned, and enriched with oxygen before it was led back into the building.

Factoria Cultural Madrid

Factoría Cultural is the adaptation of a hall in Matadero Madrid to house an incubator of creative industries start-ups. We used very few, cheap, and easy to install materials, and we tried to achieve with them as many different and distinct work areas as possible, adapted to different needs. Three volumes near the entrance organize the space, folding and compressing the circulations around it. This creates a gradient, from compact to expansive, from busy to silent, that helps achieve variety in workspaces. In a little less than one month we built a reversible, vacuum-packed, 105-eur/m2 work, adaptable to the multitude of situations the client asked for.

To house the needed 120 workspaces in a 399 sq. m. floor area (that needed to be further reduced to 340 sq. m. in order to maintain a public pass-through) was impossible, unless we found more space using the height of the hall. This created additional problems since there was not enough money to achieve the construction of a second floor by traditional means. We decided to use very simple building systems: the cheapest local pine lumber, all in the same standard size, which simplified the supply and construction of the structure, and multi-wall polycarbonate, very lightweight and in large sheets, which allowed for the walls to be finished in just one day. We were able to achieve 85 more sq.m and crucially to split functions in two levels, which allows for more flexibility in use that the client is now making very good use of.

Spanische Spione

At the exhibition Spanische Spione everything is dominated by a capsule which can be reached by going up the stairs. This capsule raises over the usual level of artistic enjoying, playing with the idea of the art as an instrument of elevation or social ascent, which is what gives the name to the piece: AAAEE (Art As An Elevating Experience). The position of the capsule turns the directors of the art gallery into pieces of their own venue, since one can watch them in their office trough the methacrylate. AAAEE was first shown in 2004 at the International Art Fair ARCO Madrid, where the installation converted the art fair into an art work, by the appropriating of the general view of it.

City Display Barcelona

This generative public art installation was assigned to us by Abalos & Herreros, architects of the Barcelona Urban Waste Treatment Plant, which was the main facade of the Forum de las Culturas de Barcelona in 2004. It seemed interesting to use the opportunity of the large waste treatment machine to produce a prototype of a new contemporary façade that would interact with people and allow them dialogue in a public space. Visitors to the Forum de las Culturas could write messages with their mobile phones live, in a size of 55×16 meters, which made them a public mode of communication. Another board would be located in the moving urban landscape that constitutes the Barcelona ring-road, providing a fleeting show to thousands of drivers: 440 blue LED bulbs would serve to monitor the plant’s sensors, making visible environmental data related to their own garbage to the citizens of Barcelona or any other type of information in a graphic, fast and intuitive way or even retransmissions of the sea that is behind, blocked by the same Waste Treatment Plant that serves as support thus becoming sort of a huge X-ray screen.

AAAEE 2

The AAAEE (Art As An Elevating Experience)’s second version was developed with a similar concept to the one we had designed for the 2004 edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair ARCO Madrid. It was another opportunity to convert the art fair into an art work, trough appropriating a general view of the fair. The visitors were elevated over the ground level. Art is converted into AAAEE, in a literal way, physically, into an elevating experience. This is also a fairground and a journey. The piece turns the fair’s space into a “Playtime” with a Mars orange tone, into a colorful landscape that contrasts with the extreme clarity of the object’s perception and the people inside.

AAAEE 1

The director of the International Art Fair Madrid ARCO asked a chill-out space. The purpose was to produce a rest space where you had to do more exercise. In first place, the rest was produced by forcing the body to leave the horizontal movement and to climb onto to the back of an object 6 meters high. The object is an architectonical element, an out of place stair leading to nowhere. Depending on the moment and the height, the stair changes into a viewpoint, a meeting point, bleaches from where to see a show, a fashion runway, a place from where to look out and a place where to be seen. In second place, the rest was for the eyes and the sight under. The void of the pavilion was recovered and used in order to see from above. Art seen from 6 meters up.

Speedwall

SpeedWall critically plays with the relationships between high-tech, typically associated, when about construction, with metallic finishes, and its caricature as low-tech using a simple domestic aluminum foil roll. Aluminum foil roll preserves food, but here it preserves the museum’s or art gallery’s white wall. This project came up as an installation for the Family Abad’s Beach House located in Cabo de Gata. The aluminium bands emphasize the land off speed of the inhabitant to the near sea and dissolve the wall texture and its gravity.