ARCHITECTURE, COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SUSTAINIBILITY 

(000) I want –above all– to thank the organization for the gentleness to invite me to offering a point of view on the requirements of the demand in architecture. I lament to read the text –he’s not an habitual practice in my lectures– but, the disproportion among my knowledge of  English and the precision that I want to give to my words, makes it the option more reasonable.

Let me say some words on architecture, to better know what I'm speaking of: when in a congress it is spoken of pathologies of the stomach –to give an example– there's no need of complementary precisions to know the object of the reports, but, when someone speaks about activities linked to values –not to facts–, it is necessary some precision, if doesn't want to produce or –sometimes– increase the confusion.

Probably, among the people who stay now in this room there are many architecture ideas –fact that must not surprise anybody– and I, also, have a mine; an idea of architecture that I want to sketch to make clear what I will say in this intervention. Nobody should attribute to a lack of respect to the listeners the basic words with which I will begin my lecture: it is only a purpose of coherence what helps me to define well the most elementary bases of my speech. 

Architecture is a constructive practice in genuine sense, that is to say, guided to "order and to connect" physical elements, establishing a system of relationships among them, that it cannot be controlled –by definition– only by technical approaches. In essence, architecture is an activity that is based on technical principles, but that it uses them in accordance with subjective values that transcend the technical criteria. Some values susceptible, therefore, of being recognized by other people, different from the author. But, such recognition will happen only in the measure in that the order principles that characterize the work contain a clear aspiration to the universality. This is – at last– the main condition that permits hope on an aesthetic experience. 

The subjectivity of architecture –of art, in general– is not, therefore, the exercise of the arbitrariness oriented to the surprise of the people, but the subjective commitment in a constructive proposal that must be recognized by the eyes of the spectator that has a cultivated look. It is a similar situation to the audience of a cord quartet that can recognize the formal approaches of their composition –that is to say, their musical qualities– still when it has remained to the margin of your musical elaboration. 

Therefore, the ability to order the matter, according to approaches that tend to the universality, is the essential condition to project an authentic architectural work. The judgment capacity –that is to say, the faculty of recognition of the aesthetic attributes of the object– is the necessary requirement for the existence of an authentic architectural experience, from part of the spectator. 

One of the definitions of architecture that –in my opinion– better recognizes its essentials aspects knows it as the "representation of the construction". A construction known in a double meaning: material and formal. Indeed, the architecture contemplates the logic of the material construction from a systematic perspective that –as I’m said before– transcends the pure technical norms; a perspective that is based on the visual appreciation of a different logic, compatible with the technique one, but irreducible to it: the logic of the construction of form as a whole.

Material construction and formal construction are, then, the two faces of the general act of building, that is to say –like I said before– to order and to connect material and visual realities. The architectural project orders and connects physical elements that the spectator appreciates as visual realities, endowed of cultural sense and formal consistency.  

The visual manifestation of the tension between the two constructive logics that converges in an architectural work defines its formal quality; a quality that has to do with their identity as a genuine object; an identity, only accessible through the vision. The recognition of the set of qualities that characterize this identity of work is a subjective experience, which leans on an aesthetic judgment. A judgment that doesn’t means decision, but recognition of specific values of the work in the frame of the universal ones. 

I hope don’t have abused too much of your kindness, making this schematic sketch of the basis of the architecture: I hope that the following pictures illustrate better the ideas that maybe are been explained too abstractly.

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(002) The Parthenon is presented now like a perfect ruin, logic in its configuration and proportions. (005) Their ornamentation represents a constructive logic based on a system of beams above lintels, supported by the columns. A system that in some aspects is fictitious. (010) This architecture represents –then– a fictitious construction: in fact, it bases their discipline –as is known– on the constructive system of the wooden buildings of the Athenians harbour of the Pireo. 

(025) The Rucellai Palace, in Florence, bases the composition of its main facade on a flat constructive system, supported by pilasters that preserve its plane. The space between the pilasters is stuffed with a masonry that forms a discharge arch, what allows opening a hole to the exterior. (030) In fact, it is built with a bearing wall, appeased of stony elements that represent the constructive system that I have just sketched.  

However, we can not arrive to the conclusion that architecture is based in the systematic practice of the deceit. Architecture works –as well as the works of the other arts–, often, bases its truth on an essential insincerity. This paradox is well known by the artists of all of fields. The most important principle of art it is not about adaptation of form to any other external reality, but about truth of its constitution. A truth understood as internal coherence of the object. It happens also –as you know very well– with the literary or pictorial works, and –in supreme grade– with the films. 

(035) In the modern architecture seems that the distance between the representation and the constructive system of reference is very short. Nevertheless, the representation is not abandoned, but rather it remains like an essential condition of the architectural value. (040) The single constructive logic cannot offer a concrete image of its products: only the mediation of a subject –the author of the project– will be able to propose a configuration whose visual logic contains the technical reason but, in turn, transcends it: that is to say, will be able to transform the mere material construction in architecture. 

The images illustrate the representative condition of the modern architecture, although a precipitate consideration of some critics allows concluding that the modern architecture is based on the immediate expression of construction. Erroneous conclusion, on which has leaned the incompetent explanation of the architectural modernity that believe big sectors of the society, profession and education.

(042) The absence of a previous system as the provided one by the canonical types of buildings and the classic orders doesn't mean that it is necessary to fall into, either in the determinism of the technique, or, in the individual caprice. The action of a subject that has sense of form guarantees the decisive mediation –assuming, in any case, the conditions of the object– which characterizes the practice of the art and –consequently– the architecture. 

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(045) Let me make some observations about the city, as specific frame of reference of the architecture. The traditional city in a broad sense –that is to say, the city until principles of the XX century– has been characterized by the coherence among the buildings that constitute it. Coherence that is due to the existence of widespread aesthetic conventions, and to the stabilizer role of the tradition. (046) A coherence that should not be identify with the simple homogeneity or repetition, but rather by the formal compatibility and the stylistic authenticity.  

(047) The coherence doesn't contradict the diversity, but rather it counts on it, in the global consideration of the urban space. 

A banal idea of modernism –whose I’ve just referred– refuses the value of coherence, in favour to the systematic novelty, in the same way that denies the form consistence of building, in favour of architect's personal expression. But this attitude is not new: has a certain tradition in the architectural history. (050) At beginning of the XXth century, the “fantastic medievalism” implicit in the ephemeral episode of the modernisme (Art Nouveau, in France), left in Barcelona the popularly called "block of discord", example of urban pathology, since it impose a picturesque variety –tied to a conjunctural and ephemeral notion of beauty–, very far to idea of the city of the Ensanche Cerdà, based on universal criteria, capable of transcend the moment of this appearance.  

(052) Such anomalies, seasoned by the essential idiosyncrasy of Gaudí –attitude that, in the domain of the art, it is always celebrated by people in holidays–, it is probably the reason why big masses of tourists meet in front of it, disposed to appreciate principally the anomaly of the building, in similar way as if they stay in front of a three-leg chicken.

I suppose that you will agree with me that, the immense majority of the visitors of these architectural attractions are not able to notice any artistic values of such architectures: they appreciate the rarity –as frequently occurs in the incompetent criticism– as a geniality of the author. 

(055) In any case, the authentic architectural modernism is not measured by the idiosyncrasy, but for the authenticity of its buildings, and by the subtlety in which they can be inserted in traditional atmospheres: (060) the purpose of coherence –as you has seen– doesn't involve monotony; it doesn't presuppose stylistic continuity, but formal compatibility. This compatibility includes the variety of buildings, not the simple addition of individualistic arbitrariness.

(065) Adopting analogues constructive systems increases the coherence, without falling into the imitation: (070) This building in Pau Claris street, in Barcelona, is inserted in the urban texture of the avenue, without renouncing to any constructive or formal purpose of its author. The aim of connecting well with the environment has served, in this case, as stimulus to approach the forefront of a current program of contemporary housing. 

(080) The essential tectonicity of the scaffold allows to incorporate it naturally to the urban scene. In this case, there is not representation: the authenticity derives of the constructive rigor of a slight and provisional structure. The absence of stylistic aim is compensated by the reduction to the essential minimum of the elements that make the structure: that gives them the attractiveness of the authentic thing, of the perfect thing in its consistency and precision. 

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(085) The aim of assuring a great success of masses –related with certain psychological peculiarities of some contemporary architects– has stimulated, sometimes, eccentric behaviours, with more resonance in the media than among the experts. The citizens –in general– haven’t another approach that is offer by the mass media: they usually assume that what is presented by the mass media is valuable.

The Sydney’s Opera is a good example of this attitude. It can be considered the good known antecedent of a practice that in the last decades has been generalized with the name of “show’s architecture”. 

(090) The architect believed that he could relate the expressiveness of the appearance with the requirements of the theatre, but the intervention of the acoustic technicians frustrated his illusion: it finished being a spectacular decoration that hides a conventional room, as you see in this sketch. The cost of the material result of this “geniality” has exceeded fourteen times the initial prevision and seems to me that it caused the fall of the Sidney’s government. 

Probably, the commissioning authorities expected a brilliant building, in due to the singularity of the site location, but without defying the common sense and the budget of the work. 

(095) “Show’s Architecture” is the term that defines a certain contemporary building practice that have only a few to do with architecture, meaning in the historic sense of term: instead of transcend the construction with the capacity to order that confers the sense of form of the architect, this attitude consists on building –at any price– an image, generally strange to the program and to your urban situation. A build image whose banality and immediateness guarantee the success in the mass media and –as a consequence– the enthusiasm of a confused and doubtful public.

(100) The press don’t doubt to qualify of "avant-garde" the sky-scrapers of Moscow, probably because the author has insisted in the superficial reference to some visual feature of the Russian pictorial vanguard of ninety years ago. 

(105) Desire of notoriety of some contemporary architects impulse them to purpose a banal and naive doctrine –ephemeral, but with the enough potential impact– called deconstructivism. Without doubt, the Gallicism was used for its avant-garde resonances: to use the habitual term to mean this idea –disassembly– had put in evidence the extravagance of this position. This evident imposture gets –amazingly, during some years– to situate the architecture on the photographic negative of their constructive and aesthetic principles.

(106) Is difficult associate the extravagance of these proposals with an explicit desire of the commitment: perhaps should have –in some cases– a certain expectative of innovation –as commercial strategy–, but I’m sure that the responsibility of their grossness corresponds to my very celebrated colleagues. 

(107) Fifty years ago, some architects and planners have given sample of good humour in their realizations, without compromising the use of the space and, at the same time, without falling into the extravagance: the urban plan of Badía del Vallès (108), near from Barcelona, reproduces with fidelity the configuration of the Iberian peninsula, without representing an inconvenience for the life of their citizens. Probably, it will provoke a smile of who flight over the area and to the addicts to the programs that offer on line an aerial vision of the earth (109). 

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(110) Barcelona has added to its gallery of tourist references some contemporary buildings that the media have defined as “emblematic icons”. It is not casual its photographical association with the celebrated monuments in the city: their role of tourist attraction is practically identical. (115) In the press I read some months ago that the urban singularity of the Agbar Tower is not translated in commercial success: maybe the difference between its image and the reality of its authentic construction is the reason why it has been received with such indifference by the space demand of offices.

(125) In fact, it is an oversized landmark, built in perforated concrete that is shown –finally– like a glazed construction, filled in light colours during some nights of the year. The misfit among their reality of solid work, perforated arbitrarily, and its vitreous appearance, causes a series of complications in its use and maintenance that, probably, have to do with the few commercial success that announces the newspaper.

I don’t know if there was complicity between the corporation and the architect in the main aspects of the building. I don’t have any doubt that the decisions that determinate the essential elements constructive, figurative and visuals of the building are completely responsibility of the architect, with a minimum intervention of the owners. 

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(130) I apologize you for listening patiently this initial discourse on architecture, but –as I have told at the beginning– architecture works with facts that depend from values; some values that will be or not assumed, but never demonstrated.  

How do we receive –or we perceive– the requirements of the client, that is to say, the conditions of our activity? Thirty years ago, the architect Alejandro de la Sota said that the architects, normally, give "hare for cat". When he was tried to amend the error –the Spanish sentence is to "give cat for hare"– he always responded: no, no, "hare for cat"; I know what I’m saying! 

Don Alejandro has already comprised that habitually the demand doesn't request of the architect the main qualities on that they base its activity. At most, they are demanded the functionality of their products, but only a few times, their visual quality or historical sensibility. Under those conditions, the architects usually offer more than what they are required.

Naturally, the technical competence and the functional solvency of the building are considerate as essential conditions: they are the “basic requirements”, in front of other values that impose the artistic dimension of the architecture. A dimension that is inseparable of the visual quality and historical sense of the building. 

Until the sixties, the modern architecture was based on a series of technical and stylistic conventions that facilitate a professional practice characterized –in many cases– by a remarkable quality and a reasonable technical solvency. It was not difficult –under those conditions– to identify the requirements of the project: to the inertia of the constructive systems was necessary to add the continuity in the ways of life or, better, the capacity of the housing types that the modernity has generalized, to accept the most diverse catalogue of human variety.  

The capacity of adaptation of people, together with the perseverance of its more common life habits, determines that the requirements that intend to satisfy the architects have had   –in general– more to do with the space quality of the building, that with the own functional conception of the house. The satisfaction of the function is –as I called before– the basic condition of the project, usually doesn't constitute an explicit requirement, in a similar way that doesn't constitute it the stability of the building.   

Under these conditions, it seems logical to focus the emphasis on the requirements related with the aesthetic quality and the technical rationalization of the construction. The basics requirements –functionally and stability– will be outlined by the demand, because of their own nature. 

There is not doubt that, in the fifties an sixties –when the architectural modernism culminates in a constructive and aesthetic system–, the architectural project reaches a remarkable grade of social satisfaction and aesthetic quality in relatively wide sectors of the profession.

Starting from the seventies, the architecture begins a vertiginous climb of ephemeral doctrines that force the professionals to change of architectural approach every eight or ten years. The new conditions –generalized during the last third of the XXth century– obstruct hardly professional activity, impeding the construction of a system of cumulative knowledge that can serve as reference general that propitiate communication between architects and clients.  

The paradigm of the novelty –essential condition of the consumption and fetish imported from the dynamics of the technological companies– are assumed without conditions in the field of the architecture. Anyway, the innovation –not in the real meaning, but in the appearance– acts like bridle of the aesthetic process of form, therefore, as element of decadence in architecture: in fact, the renounce to the values of the modern tradition separates the user and the architect. This situation of mythification of change cancels the capacity of judgment, in the measure that imposes the novelty as absolute value.  

In fact, legitimate the interference of a commercial myth in a production process and sale of living space. A living space that is a product characterized –as the gasoline– for an inelastic demand, that is to say, that it continues being bought, even if the price ascends and the real satisfaction diminishes.  

The citizen buy a house in any situation, and for any price, except –naturally– in periods of patent economical crisis: each builder believes that know the secret of the success of sales, when in fact the success depends on the types of interest and of the terms of paying-off of the mortgages, determinate by the banks. This situation determines that, in the real building market, there are not intermediate situations: there is a sequence of alternatives between times of big benefits and other –as the present one– characterized by the absolute crisis. 

The architect changes –practically, without transition– from a time characterized for giving "hare for cat", to a salad of commercial tendencies to choose, without any other criteria that obtain a commercial novelty through the expression of his state of spirit.  

This situation culminates –in the last decades– in the public explosion of the "show’s architecture”, constructive practice based on the banality and exuberance, and located clearly in the land of the publicity. In fact, is evident your commercial atmosphere, as much in the conception as in the distribution of the building product. The current successful architecture –and, for, extension, the one that takes it as a model– is not concerned about any problem related with the aesthetic quality, with the habitability of the buildings and with the quality of the cities: just attempt provoke surprise to a citizenship perplex and disorientated. 

Naturally –and fortunately–, the “show’s architecture " is not the whole architecture projected and built at the present time, but its presence in the mass media –and the complicity of the politicians– transforms it in the most widespread emblem of the architecture for a great part of citizens. 

Anyway, the architect's perception of the requirements is located in the field of its moral convictions, so it crosses with the other great topic whose consideration is an object of this congress: the sustainability. 

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(135) Fifteen years ago, the sustainability was a call of judicious attention to the responsibility of some citizens that identify the progress with the benefit; an admonishment to some companies that identify the production with the abuse –without limit– of human and natural resources. Today, the sustainability is the last ideological fetish of a society that –paradoxically– is based on a consumerism hedonist and irresponsible.  

In fact, sustainability is not a new concept: their origin is in the old practical reason –the ethics– that tries of regulating the human behaviour, with the purpose of preserving the coexistence between the human beings. The difference consists –nevertheless– in that the sustainability assumes focus the emphasis in the relationships with the physical environment. One could say –in definitive– that constitutes a kind of intent of make objective the ethics: the human relationships are based on values that are necessary presupposed, while the indexes of CO2 can be measured. 

The sustainability would be –from this point of view– a part of ethics referred to the production, whose observance –as happens in the general ethics– is not referred to the goodness, but to the intelligence: who acts in an unsustainable way, as who acts against the coexistence, is not an evil or an asocial being, but simply a stupid. He is not capable to imagine the effect of the generalization of their clumsy behaviour, as well in the field of the human coexistence, as in the horizon of territory conceived as common scenario.  

While the sustainability will be associated to the CO2, the society will follow its process of progressive decline, simply pending of how the negotiations go on country commitments to reduce its level of emissions. 

No; the sustainability cannot detach of the personal practice, since it is not a technical problem but moral –that is to say, intellectual–, so intellectual must also be the way of confronting it. 

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 (140) Is not difficult to verify how contemporary ecological mythology is used as another reason to irresponsibly attack the modern architecture, generalized scenario after the last fifties: so, is common spoke of the essential unsustainability of the “glass architecture”; naturally, Mies van der Rohe should be the major responsible of the modern perversion. The essential anachronism of such attitude discredits the objectors and, at the same time, contributes to increase the confusion: (145) effectively , the Farnsworth House –absolute reference between the modern houses– is completely unsustainable at the present time, trusting the climatic control to the use of the air conditioned. However, in the moment of their construction, the use of technology to dissipate the sunning heat was a reasonable attitude that demonstrates the effectiveness of the technique to control the climate effects: the same attitude that fostered the construction of highways and airports, to mention only two products of technology. Is convenient don’t forget that the barrel of raw petroleum costs in those years three or four dollars: so little was the pressure of the demand on the production. In this moment was difficult thinking that such energy resource could increase your price till the actual levels.  

(150) "Living in the nature" with the only physical limit of the glass that guarantees certain climatic control, is –as is known– a genuinely objective of the modern space that in the Farnsworth House reaches its maximum concretion level. This scope has determined great part of the modern architecture that should be also unsustainable, from the optic that I coment.

(155) Between the ways of solar control in architecture of glass that I propose to my students of architectural design, there is this solution for the Bacardí Building, in Mexico DF, of the Mies van der Rohe. (160) The proposal consists in installing a superior band of filter glass, separated fifty centimetres of the building glazing, space occupied by some vertical bands –also of filter glass– that substitute the original steel profiles, to complete their original resistant mission. (165) The building is clearly similar to the Farnsworth House –that has a similar sunny vulnerability–, and the solution doesn’t difficult the visual relationship with the exterior, but rather even increases it, when substituting the vertical metallic profiles for glass band that support the superior screen of glass. 

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(170) In any case, to try to conserve the values of the architecture, avoiding those aspects of the climatic control that the evolution of the society has made impossible, is not the generally attitude of witch as proposed the first visual references of the sustainable architecture. (172) In fact, similarly to the purpose of “living in the nature”, it was developed –at the same time–, with particular emphasis in the Mediterranean environment, a modern architecture that bases their special quality on the use of elements of solar control with great historical tradition: (175) this interior of the sixties, recuperates the environmental quality of the traditional interior that you can see (180).

Anyway, this is not the dominant attitude:(185) it’s frequent to see like some authors utilize a descriptive outline of the air’s currents to refresh an atmosphere –to refer a case–, as example of sustainability, as technical excuse (190) to a proposal of constructive devices that focus their visual interest in the infantile complication and notoriety of the your elements of solar protection and with the technical component of their solution.

In other cases, the technical ideal is associated to romantic positions, of an evident rudeness and a calculated ingenuousness: in the three cases, it has been decided to install a small “park” in the balcony, probably, to reconstruct the situation that the human beings used to enjoy in their natural ambiance. (200) As you can see, there are organic positions; (205) another, even, more rational, and (210) others that coordinate the peculiar nature with the construction high tech. 

I won't dedicate one more minute to denounce the ridiculousness and the insensibility of such a type of proposals that –with little variants– they threaten to become the style of next years. 

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(215) The unsustainability of the current architecture is due, then, to the abandonment of the commitment of make order that characterizes the architecture of the last three thousand years, to offer a strange kind of building that provokes surprise precisely for its banality. The pictorial vanguards of principles of the XXth century inaugurated an order approach as precise as the classicist, although no longer determined by the hierarchical symmetry: an approach that substitutes the symmetry by the balance and the equality, by the equivalence. From this point of view, any form approach is capable to resolve the different situations without renounce to the consistency, like has made obvious the best architecture in the last eighty years.  

(220) At this point, I want to make a brief reference to the computer science's contribution to architecture: as long in the prefiguration of their visual reality, as in the description of the characteristics of the architecture’s elements. I hope, in some way, to answer some questions on the requirements –at least, referring to architecture–, central subject of this event. 

I don't want to hide that computer science's irruption in the field of architecture has being in a moment of clear decadence of the practice of the project. This situation has propitiated a perverse use of the computer, making it accomplice of all type of malformations and extravagances. It has contributed to extend the impression that the computer science can compensate –even, to replace– the limitations of capacity of the personal conception of form.  

Independently of the aberrant use of the computer, the computer science has in fact supposed a revolution in architecture in the sense contrary to which I have just referred. The computer science can’t –by definition– to substitute the absence of criteria of some palates anesthetized by the relativism of the consumption. Rather, on the contrary, it improves the capacity of visual recognition –then, of judgement–, that has a decisive importance in the basic stages of the architecture project. 

I don't refer, of course, to the creation, rectification, repetition and automatic administration in the ways that produce the automation of the process of digital representation: I refer to the improvement in the conception that permit the possibility of recognition of form that propitiate the techniques of digital simulation, still in the previous phases of the project.  

In the moment of the description of the project, a drawing assisted by computer allows –for example– to have a simultaneous knowledge of the two essential aspects of the architecture work: those that make reference to their material nature –that respond to the question: how is it?– and those that refer to their aspect, and, therefore, respond to the question: how is it perceived? With a simple movement of a finger is possible change the perception of the object from 1:1000 scale to 1:1 scale. This grace of the simultaneous vision, until some few years ago it was attributed only to the gods; and I don’t now if to all of them. 

Some simulation programs –with good levels of fidelity– allow, also, step inside the building, still in the designing phase, advancing the experiences that until recently alone could be achieved by the built work.  

 However, a remarkable fact is the appearance of modelling programs, where the construction of its form is similar to the process of the material construction of the architecture. These programs allow taking decisions, to verify and correct almost instantaneously. This circumstance increases the power of conception capacity and –at the same time– it facilitates the visual verification of the project.

As usually happens, the biggest contribution to the automation is the possibility to make most responsible the subjectivity, that is to say, the machine, far from avoiding the judgement, facilitates and improves it, to the point that it makes more accurate the visual control of the reality of the building. 

I must recognize that the use of the computer that I propose is not the most habitual one: indeed, generally, it is reduced to an instrument of which its capacity of automation is valued in the repetitive processes; so –practically– the benefits I have just mentioned are ignored. In other ways, the computer is used–as we have previously seen– to obtain some notoriety by means of capricious manipulation of elemental forms.

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Behind this acts of arbitrary manipulation there are probably some people that try to present themselves as imaginative, probably for the intimate conscience of their difficulty to imagine. 

In fact, the abandonment of order –of consistent form– is an option that responds principally to the limitations of the "star architects ", to the incompetence of the critics that exalt them, and to the insensibility of the politicians that use their services. It doesn’t depend of a rigorous commercial position, as one might think. The society probably is not in its best moment –mainly, in its sensibility for the art–, but this does not justify its underestimation of your sensibility that suppose to offer to the people authentic aberrations as heroic genialities.   

The congenital unsustainability of the “show’s architecture”, is not only due to the big budgets that are involved, but also the fact that it needs such resources to be built is fruit of the deficiency of the project: the recent "icons" built in Spain have had a final cost four or five times superior to the initial budget that, probably, already overcame the reasonable cost. A deficiency that is due to the perversion of its own process: a purpose of giving material entity to an attractive image, without any another requirement that content –in many cases, with notorious difficulty– a functional program previously defined. Everything depends on that goal, even if it’s necessary to pervert the technical resources and the budgetary forecasts.   

The “show’s architecture” –in short– only responds to the anxiety of notoriety provided by their affectation and extravagancy; an affectation that cannot only be criticized because it forces the technique and the budget: it is not a moral objection to a work of art, but to its abusive way of obtain celebrity. My repairs are not of ethical character, but aesthetic one. I don't criticize the eventual dishonesty of the author’s behaviour –in this cases–, but the lack of intelligence of their responsible ones: what makes it unsustainable is not what some architects squanders; I think that they squanders and forces the technique, because they part of an aberrant statement followed by an incompetent development. 

I’ll don’t abuse from your gentleness a more minute: I’m convinced that my discourse is not at all the best way to begin a sunny day of September in Barcelona, but my intellectual responsibility impedes me to be more condescending with the sector of the contemporary architecture’s reality more celebrated by the media.

I’ll be satisfied if you has listened this morning –although just one time– that the well architecture is not the most publicized one, and that I’m not sure that the excess and mediocrity of the “show’s architecture” is a direct consequence of the formal requirements of the promoters, publics or particulars ones, but of the uncultivated audacious of some “star architects” and your little court of critics and politics.

There is another architecture orientated to the quality –not to the compulsive novelty, as the commercial fashion–, complex but clear, careful but intense. I talk about an architecture whose compromise with the innovation begins on the aesthetical sensibility, and with the assumption of the historical and social responsibility. I talk about an existent architecture that really satisfies to the people, when people have an opportunity of know –and live in– your realisations.

This architecture is clearly modern, and continues the long tradition of the great architecture of the history, because is based on universal values. Architecture –at least– that today coexists serenely with the “emblematic icons and expressive symbols of the show’s architecture”, but, in moments of spiritual decadence and social crisis as the present, will must to wait till the clouds roll by, to assume in a hypothetical future its real possibilities in the construction of the world.

(225) Thank you, and have a nice day!