Four kiosks, three spaces, Two materials, one light.   

 

Its not geniuses what we need now. With this phrase Jose Antonio Coderch headed the sincere and torn article, with a certain nostalgic air, published for the first time in the Italian magazine Domus, directed then by Gio Ponti, in the number of November of 1961. However, the text was not Initially thought of this publication: it was written as a passionate declaration of principles, on the occasion of his admission to Team X. In response, another member of the collective of architects, JB Bakema, will send you a copy of Le Petit Prince, of Saint-Exupery, with a heartfelt dedication. Something later, in 1996, twelve years after Coderch’s death, Peter Smithson recalls the original text, commenting on it, describing the master’s work with a good instrument, eg a good pair of scissors .

 

The proposal for these four kiosks in Mérida has something of this: it is considered as an instrument, a support, almost an infrastructure, which proposes as a starting point the basic ideas, sometimes forgotten, of architecture and which Coderch claims in his acquaintance Text, today more present if it fits: the landscape, the road, the crossroads, the limit, the enclosure, the man. For this we propose a first logical action, almost using the scissors before the pencil, an elemental architecture. Do more with less. With order. With geometry. Remembering those secrets that belong to the architecture. Everything should distill serenity and also simplicity. There is no need to experiment with complicated morphologies, or simple calligraphic exercises. On the contrary, it is necessary to elicit patient reflection, quiet intervention, to seek the best, even if it is necessary to act against the current, to limit even the initial requirements and to be guided by a kind of illustrated pragmatism, working with the most objective data possible, Seeking that unstable balance between the means and the ends to be obtained. 

 

Do more with less. Thus, the dialogue between the possible and the appropriate, mediated by an intuitive expressive brevity, has been the chosen path. Always around the idea of simplicity, the challenge is to obtain through a simple lyrical architecture, silent, serene and evocative, and why not, almost anonymous and timeless, that takes advantage of resources and responds to the context without disproportionate technological artifice. Only three spaces. An interior, built the wall with the thickness of the furniture and the people who occupy them. One outside, covered and luminous, where to sit to have a drink or eat and look at who passes, the human spectacle. The third entrerior, halfway between the inside and the outside, a shelter, a niche dug in the rocky entrails of the city under the evanescent cloud of white, translucent cover, luminous shadow.