Architectural papers announces the Issue 6: "Middle East 1: Positions." This first instalment of these unpublished documents comes as an intermediate moment in a broader context of research currently under way into contemporary project conditions in the Middle East. “Positions” gives an initial account of ideas and actors.

In architecture, designing means imagining a better future, defining something new and necessary. In this respect, our work, in this research, shares in this hopeful view of the future that is the basis for architectural praxis.

Next Issue
The next Issue 7 will be "Middle East 2: close ups" and will come in the near future.

Recent history has moved the “architectural” idea of the Middle East from that of a petrified place where nothing changes to that of a site of immense opportunities where everything is possible, albeit not without great perils. A selection from the material collected during the one year research and study trips to the area depicts some of the many facets of places that do not rest in the domain of decent origins of our profession any more.

An example:

POSITIONS 1
a collage from interviews with Yaşar Adanali (Istanbul), George Arbid (Beirut), Rami Daher (Amman) and Wael Samhouri (Damascus) by Marianne Baumgartner, Krunoslav Ivanisin.

An extract of written interviews made during our seminarweeks to Beirut and Damascus in automn 2010 and to Istanbul, Amman and Petra in spring...Read more.

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Josep Lluís Mateo was born in Barcelona (1949) and graduated in Architecture in 1974 from the ETSAB and gained his doctorate (cum laude) at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia in 1994.

Mateo’s practice is based in Barcelona, and he is currently involved in a number of local and international projects such as the new Film Theatre of Catalonia in Barcelona, the new headquarters for PGGM Pension Fund Company in Zeist, Holland and the office building on the former site of Renault factories in Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris, among others.

With each of his projects, Mateo seeks to connect the practice of construction with research and development in both intellectual and programmatic terms. He works in the area between the sphere of ideas and the physical world of reality.

Academic collaborations and teaching:
Josep Lluís Mateo has been Professor of the Architecture Department at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zurich (ETH-Z) since 2002. He has also taught and lectured at numerous institutions around the world, including Princeton, Columbia University in New York, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, ABK Stuttgart, UP8 Paris, OAF Oslo and ITESM Mexico. He was Visiting Scholar at the Jean P. Getty Center in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1992. Josep Lluís Mateo is President since 2009 of the Board of Directors of the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. He has been a member of a number of juries and expert committees, including the Quality Committee of Barcelona City Council (2000-2008), and for prizes such as the European Landscape Award and the Thyssen Award.

Recent exhibitions and prizes:
The practice’s work has been exhibited on numerous occasions thanks to its international influence. New York’s MoMA devoted a space in the exhibition “Spain: On Site” (2006) to its apartment building in Valencia for the Sociopolis Project. Individual exhibitions include those at Ras Gallery (Barcelona, 2009), Architekturgalerie Aedes (Berlin, 2004), Architekturzentrum Wien (Vienna, 1998), Col•legi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya (Barcelona, 1998),Galerie Fragner (Prague, 1998), Galerie Aedes (Berlin, 1994), Architekturgalerie Luzern (Luzern, 1992) and Architekturgalerie Munich (Munich, 1991).

The work of Josep Lluís Mateo has been awarded many prizes, including:
- Top International Purpose-Built Venue 2008, First Prize. Best International Convention Centre category.
Organized by C&IT magazine, London. Project: CCIB-Barcelona International Convention Centre
- 2008 Archizinc Award, First Prize. Collective Housing category. Project: Sant Jordi Students’ Hall of Residence, Barcelona
- European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture - Mies van der Rohe Award 2005, Runner-up. Project: CCIB- Barcelona International Convention Centre
- 15th Award of Grupo Dragados de Arquitectura.

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Published on: February 15, 2012
Cite: "Architectural Pappers. ISSUE 6 - MIDDLE EAST 1. Positions." METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/architectural-pappers-issue-6-middle-east-1-positions> ISSN 1139-6415
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