GRAPH PAPER. In Treatment [T]

The orthogonally and the well-marked distances gave to the possessor of a pencil an unusual power. You lose the fear of a white space, to the Nothing. With this horizontal and vertical code bar it seems that the ideas flow by themselves. The structured grid gives to the concepts a capacity almost dogmatic and irrefutable and almost instantly looks like you just solved all your concerns.

My last few weeks have been like a graph paper. A few months ago we were asked to design a house. We all know the enthusiasm and the excitement that a young architect experiences developing a single house, especially in these crisis times.

Having recognized the concerns of the client and the house program it begun to appear the first ideas. Such is the illusion after the last time until you did something similar that you draw it as if it were a basic project, trying to get fluency, views, orientations and the customer guidelines fitting all together.

It arrives the moment to print the pdf and to send it to the client, looking forward for his answer. As a student after submitting their work to judgment I open the mail with his response. And that's when I find an attached document, some lines on a graph paper.

After analyzing it, and despite of not sharing his proposal I thanked the customer aim to be so involved in the development of the house project and caught a couple of concepts that could help to develop a new idea.

Days went by. By now, the score is 4 proposal projects to 5 graph paper.

Something strange happened in our profession. The faith and trust that architects used to deserved, now available only to so few consecrated architects or well-known studios, have turned out in being just pure administrators for public and private clients matters.

I'm not talking about a snob or elitist point of view, I am just talking about how much it costs to convince a client about a singular solution that works better than the one he has on his mind. Better not talking about the exterior concepts...

A lot of times, going through our geography, I hardly believe how many constructions some professionals did, even they passed a lot of years in an architecture school. Their solutions have esthetic and formal signs from the last century, instead from the XXI.

Provably money is stronger than personal architecture satisfaction. And at this point we have to hold on in surviving and quitting to any architecture proud.

Mine-while I'll thinking about it wishing that you won't receive any graph paper.

P.D All this, in short terms, are just my weekly fears and I explain to you as I 'll do on a real “Treatment”. So don't blame me.

See you soon!.

TO BE CONTINUED... NEXT WEEK MORE!! > > "FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER"

IN TREATMENT - METALOCUS.

DIRECTOR: JOSÉ JUAN BARBA. COORDINATION: INÉS LALUETA. ORGANIZATION: INÉS LALUETA, PEDRO NAVARRO. ENGLISH VERSION: KAREN SIMPSON. GUESTS FIRST SEASON: JOSÉ JUAN BARBA, MARINA DIEZ-CASCÓN, SERGIO DIEZ-CASCÓN SOLER, LARA FERNÁNDEZ GONZÁLEZ, CARLOS GERHARD PI-SUÑER, MONTSE PLA GARCÍA-CASTANY, XAVIER NICOLAU CUYÀS, FERNANDO RIAL PONCE, VERÓNICA ROSERO.