Text by Alberto Campo Baeza.

I met Andrés Perea as a brilliant professor and assistant to Julio Cano Lasso at the Madrid School of Architecture, the ETSAM, in 1967. Andrés had the aura of having been born in Bogotá as a good son of exiles. As a teacher, he was magnificent, with a fluent verb and a positive sense that appealed to all of us. As an architect, he is of the first order. All his buildings have a great interest and a certain research character.

Later, a series of good friends of mine were his direct students: Miguel Martín Escanciano, José Manuel Sanz, and Antonio Más Guindal. All of them continued as professors at the ETSAM. And always very close to Andrés Perea.

And now I am asked to critique one of his buildings. The Fontán building is located in the Cidade da Cultura in Galicia, in the arms of Peter Eisenman's building.
I must admit that, at this point, it is not at all easy for me to be convinced and to like an architectural piece. And this Fontán by Andrés Perea convinces me, and I like it a lot: it is gorgeous.

We, architects, know how difficult it always is to build a building between party walls, one without the freedom that an isolated construction allows.

And in this case, it is a building in between. Like between party walls, but without them, not attached to them. Peter Eisenman's building is fine, but Andrés Perea's is superior, much better. Not only does it dialogue on an equal footing with the American master, but it also puts it in value. It is an extraordinary dialogue. For it is not at all easy to be embraced by a very singular architecture and to emerge victorious from the onslaught. Just as it is economically to succeed with a budget ten times smaller than expected, a miracle!


Elevation sketch by Andrés Perea. El Fontán by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo.

From the very first drawings by Andrés Perea, it is clear what is coming. The sketches, being very Andrés Perea, are so universal, magnificent. And they translate very well not only the wisdom of a master but also announce very well what is to come.

To propose a free but precise structure, simple but effective, to support this beautiful roof, which I would insist, using a language in keeping with that of Peter Eisenman, is not easy. An arborescent metal structure with capitals that support the roof beams. It is an exemplary structure.


Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Ana Amado.


Fontán building by Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo. Photograph by Manuel G. Vicente.

Andrés Perea achieves his aim with few but beautiful words. It seems as if he had had on hand the little book by Strunk and E.B. White, the American linguists who sum up everything in omit needless words. Because that, the omission of unnecessary words, is what Andrés Perea has done, with a splendid result. He accomplished, in his own words: "the beauty of the intermediate states in the final result." Less is more in the most profound sense of this architectural principle.

The skylights, like a piano keyboard, arrange and project a marvelous light into the covered space.

I recommend you to visit this beautiful space of contemporary architecture. You will thank me for it.
Text by Alberto Campo Baeza.

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Architects
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Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez, Rafael Torrelo.
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Location
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Fontán Building, Ciudad de la Cultura, Monte Gaias, Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.
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Photography
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Ana Amado, Manuel G. Vicente.
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Alberto Campo Baeza. Born in Valladolid (1946), where his grandfather was an architect, from the age of two he lived in CADIZ where he saw the LIGHT. From his father he inherited a spirit of ANALYSIS and from his mother the determination to be an ARCHITECT.

He lives in Madrid, where he moved to study Architecture. His first professor was Alejandro de la Sota, who instilled in him the ESSENTIAL architecture that he is still trying to erect. He is a PROFESSOR at the Madrid School of Architecture, ETSAM, where he has been a tenured professor for more than 25 years.

He has taught at the ETH in Zurich and the EPFL in Lausanne as well as the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And in Dublin and Naples, Virginia and Copenhagen. And at the BAUHAUS in Weimar and at Kansas State University. He spent a year as a research fellow at COLUMBIA University in New York in 2001 and again in 2011. He has given many lectures and has received many awards like the TORROJA for his Caja Granada building. And he was awarded the Buenos Aires Biennial 2009 for his Nursery for Benetton in Venice and his MA Museum in Granada. He has recently been nominated by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for the prestigious Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize of 2010.

His works have been widely recognized. From the single family houses Casa Turégano and Casa de Blas, both in Madrid, to Casa Gaspar, Casa Asencio and Casa Guerrero in Cádiz. And the Olnick Spanu House in Garrison, New York, the Centro BIT in Inca-Mallorca, the Caja de Granada Savings Bank and the MA, the Museum of Andalusian Memory, both in Granada, and a nursery for Benetton in Venice. And Between Cathedrals in Cádiz, and just recently a building for Offices in Zamora (2012). And the construction of the new Offices for Benetton in Samara, Russia, which is about to begin.

And more than 20 editions of a BOOK with his texts “LA IDEA CONSTRUÍDA” [THE BUILT IDEA] have been published in several languages. A fourth edition of “PENSAR CON LAS MANOS”, a second compilation of his writings, has just been published. And just now “PRINCIPIA ARCHITECTONICA”, a collection of his texts written during his sabbatical year at Columbia University in New York in 2011.

He believes in Architecture as a BUILT IDEA. And he believes that the principle components of Architecture are GRAVITY that constructs SPACE and LIGHT that constructs TIME.

He has exhibited his work in the CROWN HALL by Mies at Chicago’s IIT and at the PALLADIO Basilica in Vicenza. And in the Urban Center in New York. And at the Saint Irene Church in Istanbul. In 2009 the prestigious MA Gallery of Toto in Tokyo made an anthological exhibition of his work that in 2011 was in the MAXXI in Rome.

Act.>. 04-2012
 

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Andrés Perea Ortega (Bogotá 1940 - Madrid November 16, 2023) was born in Bogotá, due to his family's exile during the Spanish Civil War.

A Spaniard, he studied at the ETSAM, graduating in 1965.

His long professional career has allowed him to share with countless architects collaborators in constructive production, and students of Architecture here as a teacher, researcher, and understanding of architecture, always as creative work.

An effort that has earned awards and distinctions, and also failures and mistakes as the human being he pretends to be.

Madrid, Bogota autumn 2022.
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Perea, Suárez, Torrelo, for the Fontán building project, the architects formed a team: Andrés Perea, Elena Suárez Calvo, and Rafael Fernández Torrelo.

The crossing of paths has been fortunate.

The ambitious youth of modelled spaces and freedom with two patrollers of the profession.

One of a long journey in search not of the sources of the Nile... but of beauty. The other in the fullness of his vigour.

Coming to the rescue.

Holding the course.

A beautiful, unforgettable journey through invention and reality.
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