Completed in 1994, the Igualada Cemetery was designed by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos to be a place of reflection and memories. After 10 years of construction, their envision of a new type of cemetery was completed and began to consider those that were laid to rest, as well as the families that still remained.

The Igualada Cemetery is understood by the architects to be a “city of the dead” where the dead and the living are brought closer together in spirit.  As much as the project is a place for those to be laid to rest, it is a place for those to come and reflect in the solitude and serenity of the Catalonian landscape of Barcelona, Spain. More on the project after the break.

Miralles and Pinos conceptualized the poetic ideas of a cemetery for the visitors to begin to understand and accept the cycle of life as a link between the past, present, and future. Embedded in the Catalonian hills, the Igualada Cemetery is an earthwork that blends into the landscape as if it were a natural aspect of the land. The cemetery was designed as a tiered landscape that unfolds into the landscape as one continuous and fluid progression.

The main burial area is part of a lowered excavated part of the cemetery that is surrounded by gabion walls and the mausoleum-like burial plots, which obstructs the visitor’s vision from the surrounding context secluding them in an area where the sky is the only visible entity outside of the central burial area.  Unlike the first tier, the second tier of the cemetery has more traditional burial plots that are separated and spread out rather than the mausoleum-like burial plots below.

Also, on the second level, there is a chapel and monastery that remain unfinished; however, the unfinished aspects are not lacking, by any means, spatially rather they are void of definition and detail.  Yet, the lack of information and detailing compliments the overall sensations of the project where the spaces are open and void to retain the experiences of solitude and serenity.

As one enters the site, one confronts a set of cor-ten steel poles that double as gates to the cemetery – the poles are likened to the crosses at Calvary.  From the main entrance, there is a processional winding pathway that descends into the main burial area; the pathway is lined with concrete “loculi” – mausoleum burial plots – that wrap around the depressed space as a transition from tier to tier.  The windy path is conceptualized as the river of life that moves from a wide open expanse in the Catalonian hills to a secluded memorial space excavated below the horizon.  The circulation through the cemetery adheres to a more processional effect that focuses less on the organization of the burial plots, but rather the experience.

The materials of the Igualada cemetery tie the project seamlessly back into the landscape.  Miralles employed earthy materials of concrete, stone, and wood into the project.  The gabion walls, the worn/aged concrete, and the wooden railroad ties embedded in the stone groundscape evoke the hard and rough landscape of the surrounding hills.  The earthy tones of the materials transform the architecture into a natural aesthetic creating the appearance that cemetery has long been part of the site.

The Igualada Cemetery is in a sense an organic architecture that integrates into the natural landscape as an extension of the Catalonian hills.  It is just as much a part of the landscape as the people that visit it. Even Miralles after his sudden death in 2000 is buried at the Igualada Cemetery, which in a sense completes the cycle of Miralles life: past, present, and future all clinging onto the Igualada Cemetery.

Architect: Enric Miralles
Location: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Project Year: 1984 – 1994
Photographs: David Cabrera
References: archinform.net, and as seen in our last post on the project here.

Architects: Andrés López, Jesús Bozzo, Rosa Palacios
Location: Campus de la Salud, Granada, Spain
Area: 3,405 sqm
Project Year: 2010
Photographs: Jesús Granada

Collaborators: Marcos Plazuelo López
Promotor: Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Justicia y Administración Pública
Structure: Francisco Duarte Jiménez
Installation: Tomás Ruiz de Terry. Insur JG S.L.
Project Managers: Andrés López Fernández, Jesús Bozzo Fernández de Tirso, Rosa Palacios Garrido
Project Director: Rufino Manuel Quesada Molina
Construction: Constructora Hispánica S.A.
Budget: 2,488,176 Euros

The relationship between legal medicine and architecture hasn’t been, in general, very natural, as a consequence of the western culture avoiding matters that involve suffering. Architecture, sadly, doesn’t have magical formulas to avoid this, and our challenge is to contribute, at least, to relieve it. Bright, kind and dialoguing architecture, closer to the citizens, help the staff in performing their essential work, at the same time giving the users the technical support they need so their stay in these kind of centers are more bearable.

Before we started this project, in our minds we had images of nordic forests, associated to projects from Aalto, Lewerentz and Asplund. Places to let the view fly, for reflection and hope. The first sketches of the project tried to find some of this, towards the remoteness of the Alhambra or the bright sunsets over Sierra Nevada. When facing a plot of reduced dimensions in which we needed to accomodate an extensive program, we decided on a compact building, light and transparent, that evoked the snuff dryers of Granada’s Vega. Through a network of concrete, part of this legendary Granada atmosphere will leak into the building, and it’s interior brightness will rescue the cryptic image associated to the character of these programs.

The proposed solar for the new Legal Medicine Institute is situated in an area in process of transformation, visible from the bypass and connections to the coast.

The absence of urban references and destiny of the building, of complex and introverted program, justify the proposal of a clear block, apparently opaque to the exterior, with the facade’s only opening through a great porch that focuses every entrance to the building.

The building is set as a great arch protected to the exterior through vertical concrete ribs that gives the building its blind and hermetic aspect, from the exterior, at the same time bright and transparent from the interior.

The closed and massive character the building will offer to the passer during the day will become open and bright like a torch, during the night.

The building is located 1,30 m over the outer slope, to allow the dependencies located in the basement to have natural light and ventilation.

The interior natural brightness is even bigger in the heart of the building thanks to the interior emptiness that opens to the sky through a transparent cover.

Light filters through an overhead structure that reconstructs a fictional city, a perfect downtown, recovered from the noise diagram from the bottom of the universe commissioned by the SETI, whose mission evokes the origin, nature and existence of life in the universe.

For this architect, there is an indiscernible line between art installation and building.  Alexander Brodsky studied architecture in Moscow, while working on art installations and drawings both independently and in collaborations with other artists. Brodsky admits that his career path was unconventional, that he felt unready to take on the responsibility of building.  Instead, Brodsky’s approach to architecture is through the lens of art: occupiable, room-sized installations that test spatial and sensory boundaries.

More after the break.

Having graduated in the 1970s, Brodsky continued working as an artist.  It was not until 2000 that he became an architect.  His architecture reflects a similar approach that his installations have in that it intentionally pushes the boundaries of comfort, creating experiential moments that can turn the elements of the architecture into a work of art.

Get to know Alexander Brodsky and his work in this video as he prepares for an installation at the Architekturzentrum Wien in 2011 in Austria.

A new Kickstarter campaign is hoping to raise a goal of $3,500 to fund the second annual MAPEO Borderless Workshop – a workshop that focuses on community mapping and brings diverse people and minds together to think about cities within the US-Mexican border region. By rallying individuals from different disciplines with different backgrounds, MAPEO aims to “learn more about our own cities, evaluate urban challenges and come up with ideas on how to improve our life in cities in a very quick and meaningful exercise.”

The MAPEO Workshop examines the urban conditions and challenges facing Northern Mexican cities of the Chihuahua region during an intense four day period of work that brings together 12 students from different universities as well as professionals and experts in architecture, regional planning and anthropology. The process is characterized by research, conversations with guest experts and the exchange of information and ideas about local water resources and systems, manufacturing industry and economy, mobility and ecology and other topics.

The funds raised by the Kickstarter campaign will help to support the workshop itself, as well as the production of a video to show the world its processes and findings. Last year’s video gives a glimpse into the landscape and lifestyle of the Chihuahua region and highlights the collaboration necessary to understand and confront this area’s complicated and interconnected circumstances.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more information on the MAPEO Borderless Workshop, visit their site here; to donate to the program, click here.

Reference: Kickstarter, The Borderless Workshop Tumblr

At just a little over 50 years old, the University of California San Diego is one of the younger college campuses in the United States, but despite this it is one of the most architecturally fascinating universities around. In the official UCSD campus guide, Dirk Sutro emphasizes that “UCSD does not have a single example of the historical-revival styles prevalent at other University of California campuses… and at San Diego’s two other major universities”. The history of UCSD architecture is one of ambition, which has made the campus a display case of modernism in all of its forms from the last half a century.

Thanks to photographer Darren Bradley, we can now share this history and a selection of the exciting structures it has produced.

Find out more about the UCSD campus after the break

UCSD has its roots in the 1950s, when the City of San Diego offered a large section of land to the University of California. The new campus was positioned to include the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which had occupied a site on the coast since the early 20th century. What is now known as the Old Scripps Building was designed by Irving Gill in 1910; even at this early time, Gill had eschewed historical styles and his concrete design set the tone for the approach occupied by the new campus 50 years later.

The original master plan for the campus was designed by Robert Alexander. It consisted of 12 colleges, each with a distinct architectural character, joined by a grand pedestrian boulevard inspired by the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The plan was heroic in its ambition: the focal point of this grand boulevard would be a huge plaza “rivaling the Piazza San Marco”, and a 6000-seat amphitheatre with a 360-foot bell tower at its center. A library “as compelling as a Mayan Pyramid” would complete the ensemble.

Alexander oversaw the construction of Revelle College, the first of the 12 planned colleges, as well as the medical school and a number of standalone facilities such as the Gymnasium, with its delicate folded roof and the deceptively simple glass Natatorium. Revelle College is particularly notable for adopting the approach of the overall master plan, designed with strong forms and a large plaza at the center of the college.

In order to encourage the different architectural character called for in the master plan, the university hired architect Robert Mosher to design the second college, and got more than they bargained for. A disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mosher believed in humanistic design and was worried about the excessive scale of Alexander’s plan, likening it to the totalitarian architecture of the Nazis – entirely inappropriate for the progressive liberalism that characterized the student population of the 1960s. Mosher convinced the university’s administrators to ultimately abandon Robert Alexander’s plan, then designing Muir College, a more intimate collection of buildings than Revelle College.

At around the same time, the university hired William Pereira to design the main library, who disagreed with Alexander’s plan to situate the library at the edge of the campus, and convinced the university that a site at the center of the campus would be better. Reacting to these betrayals of his vision, Alexander resigned from his post as consulting architect – but if nothing else, he got his wish for a library “as compelling as a Mayan Pyramid”. The remarkable Geisel Library (named after Theodore ‘Dr Seuss’ Geisel) is the focal point of the campus and the star of this architectural show.

Since its rapid expansion in the 1960s and early 70s, construction at UCSD has slowed down a little, but now with six colleges and a much expanded student village near its center, there are still plenty of architectural gems to be seen, such as Moshe Safdie‘s designs for Eleanor Roosevelt College (2003), the Price Center East by Yazdani Studio, and the Housing & Dining Services Administration Building by Studio E Architects.

Check out the gallery to see the impressive collection of buildings at UCSD.