The history of this documentary begins in 1993 with the celebration of the congress in facilities transformed today, whose entrance was produced by the street Valldonzella Street, while the C.C.C.B. remained in works. From that congress, a documentary was taken, over twenty years ago, and in the bookstore of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, Barba discovered it as a videotape in its black and white version (the reader can find some loose fragments of the colour video, in a lower resolution).
"At first, I thought I had only found one interesting document. But, with the passage of time, its value has been increased, because it not only remains relevant for its contents but for the reactions of surprise or interest that, systematically, produces in those who view it."
José Juan Barba
Filming is also a document of extraordinary value that helps us to know a reality hitherto unpublished. This is because, as is often the case when editing the content of the congresses in an attempt to transcribe what happened in them - in this case, the work was done a year later - the interventions were noticeably transformed: because they lost much of the argumentative content of the conferences because they marked their relevance, or because they emphasized aspects different from the original ones.
The lectures and the topics discussed and addressed could be raised tomorrow, which conveys its current validity. Borders, walls, identity, violence, women in architecture, the shape of architecture, places and people that give meaning to architecture, were some of the topics talked about and discussed.
In all this, the reader and viewer will also try to see the intelligence, contradictions, doubts, successes and mistakes that both at the time they occurred show a debate about the architecture that catches you, as well as its validity, and the relevance of proposals of many of its participants, who have conditioned and marked the architecture of this last quarter of a century.
It provides a fundamental vision to understand the process of architectural criticism and its paradigm shift in the 1990s, the basis of the current one.
The Anyway congress took place at the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) on June 4, 5 and 6, 1993, as part of a set of annual congresses, organized by the architects; Peter Eisenman, Ignasi de Solà-Morales i Rubió and Arata Isozaki between 1991/2000, held every June in a different city.
This is an exceptional audiovisual edition because the congress referred to was the platform used by different architects to expose activities, thoughts, project processes and subsequent realization of their works.
It is a living document that reveals how writings, ideas and speeches interact in the real world, with errors, omissions, with the necessary improvisation to respond to the unexpected.
The participants, the protagonists, are referents of our contemporary culture with recognized trajectories. They are especially relevant because they have shaped, with successes and contradictions, the culture in which we have formed and continue to form.
