If you can read Spanish, even moderately well, I strongly recommend Iñaki Abalos' opinion piece in El Pais, the daily from Spain. In this article, Abalos explains why he's seeing a disconnect between all the sustainability talk and the business city. Instead he proposes Melville's Bartleby ("I would prefer not to"), as in 'do less or even next to nothing.' As exemplars of this approach he talks about Cedric Price and Lacaton & Vassal, and rails against gluttonous spectacles like Nouvel's newest in Madrid. El Pais (gracias Yakubiuk!)
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Perhaps you could provide us with a concise summary Javier. The gist of this screed seems to escape machine translation.
Anyone who is still channelling Cedric Price has got my attention...
xentr0py... ok, I tried to make a little summary of it above... Maybe we can convince a publication like the Harvard Design Magazine to translate it and publish it... What he says basically is that many areas of sustainability have been rehearsed and are failures. He is saying that sustainability, or its so-called experts, has figured out how to appease the capitalist city. Instead he proposes "do less" a la Lacaton and Vassal, who frequently turn in projects for much less than the projected budget and are part of a wave of "Supernormal" designers. (Though he notes that even the term supernormal perhaps tries to hard to be trendy in the spectacular era...)
...and just to interpret that a little bit more... He's not too distant from similar approaches like Deborah Berke's that come face to face with "everydayness" and try to understand it rather than be dazzling...
Much appreciated Javier. Thanks for the added context as well.
I remember reading Hans Ibelings's critique of Ábalos & Herreros work several years ago, and being impressed. Nice to have them back on my radar.
I'm not sure HDM is the right ideological alignment for Abalos' perspective however...
"back on the radar..."? Abalos y Herreros have never left... In the US, they were recently featured in that moma show on Spain and they were finalists in the Orange County Great Park that was won by Ken Smith. Last year in icon
C'mon they have never left, and they r gettin bigger and bigger....anyways is a pleassure to read (and hear when possible) Abalos ironic/sarcastic way to adress always topics in architecture...i love his smart ass attitude... i loved the article
I have just published a translation of this text in the new issue of Plat Journal. You can find it here: https://www.platjournal.com/sh...
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