2023. 7. 7 Fr

Barcelona

I would often recall the nooks and crannies of labyrinthian Barri Gòtic or the lusciously green and wide boulevard of Diagonal where I used to walk to ETSAB. Those were the distinctive senses of space, which I often imagined reliving. I was young. I had only just begun to see it - the world - and was rather unskillful about it too. Still, the year here has been lastingly formative, even to this day.

I go to my old neighbourhood Barceloneta. The rent alone for the small studio was 600 or more, and this being ten years ago makes me realise anew how much I am indebted to my parents. Thinking of the guilt of having been too naive and impatient, I walk between the stands of glossy caballas laid out on the ice in the Mercat. The lady would wrap it in paper and I would bring it home and put it straight in a heated pan with enough oil. The ricecooker is steaming and the pot of stew boiling. I loved this meal, the taste of which I could never recreate someplace else. I used to think it was the lingering Geist of the Catalan fisherman who graced my fish.

I’m sitting at one of my favourite spots - in front of the beautifully vertical Roman columns surrounded by distilled air and mint green walls when a few Americans barge in. Their guide in a strong accent says: 2000 years ago Barcelona was founded by the emperor Augustus. After he died, he became a god.

Josep is now the dean of Ramon Llull University at ETSALS. His office has moved & is a bit smaller but still very active. He seems to have found a way to maintain the balance between academia and practice. He says he has changed both the space and the time. By that he means the architecture of the faculty as well as the curriculum; an incredibly exciting project. As I listen to him I say to myself, he is pursuing what I want to pursue. He tells me, ever since he was a student he was interested in the pedagogy of architecture because he had a great professor. This may be our difference. I never was interested in how architecture was taught because I never believed it could be taught. Shown what it is or how it can be yes, but how to do it no. What I want to do instead of teaching is to talk about it.

Josep gives me his recent book about the exhibition he held at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. A small but solid binding of numerous drawings and photos, all of them precisely controlled in geometry and atmosphere. Especially the site plans are very pretty and I cannot help but think of my own project I did with him, through which I first learned about the Eixample.

From his office La Sagrada is not far so I walk a few blocks. I can’t quite discern what parts have been added since the last time I saw it, due to my obliviousness to actual buildings ten years ago. As a student, I was then much more absorbed by the power of drawing, not so much building. I remember Ricardo Bofill saying that continuing this construction is nonsense like drawing a horseman on top of a Velázquez horse because you think the painting isn’t finished. I have to think for a while whether this analogy is just. I am attracted to the idea of ruin as much as he is, but I don’t know if the cathedral should have been left unfinished with the death of Gaudí. In any form, architecture surpasses architects always. So as much as it can diminish after the architect’s life, it can also continue to become.

Eight columns have started to rise at the Glory façade, of which Gaudí is said to have only left a structural study and the graphic plan. The foundation appointed three theologians to advise the architects on how to sculpt it. To conceive Gaudí’s vision of the dignified main entrance with the grand staircase the block at Carrer Mallorca would have to be completely knocked down. Ruination on a par with creation. Or reversed?

From the stacks of books in a small second-hand bookshop next to Envalira I dig up Henri Michaux’s A Barbarian in Asia translated by Borges. Buying a book that one can’t really read is uncouth, remains however my little guilty pleasure.

Envalira is almost empty. It’s not yet time to eat for these people for another three hours. The waiter asks whether I’ve been here before. I tell him I’ve been here ten years ago and order the same things as then; almejas and arròs negre. When I’m finished he asks me again whether it’s the same as I remember. I tell him it’s as good. He says nothing has changed, the suppliers and the cook, and that only he himself has started working recently.