Madrid is in luck because only the city of Los Angeles has previously been honor guest at the FIL, Guadalajara Book Fair (Mexico), the largest annual event of edition on Spanish, to be held from November 25 to November 3 December. This year is 30th edition, consecrating as the second largest publishing fair in the world after the Frankfurt and the largest annual meeting of the publishing sector in Spanish, with more than 2,000 publishers and 400,000 new titles presented in this edition.
As a guest city, Madrid will have an own pavilion of 1,800 m2, where there will be alternating literary forums, meetings of the publishing sector, gastronomic days and events of promotion of the capital. Under the title: Ganarás la luz, Campo Baeza, comments,
 
"A large black cylinder on the outside and white on the inside, with a ceiling full of light. Inside that large cylinder will rise some white bleachers, creating an amphitheater, an agora, crowned at its top with a band of full shelves Of books," said Alberto Campo Baeza, in the written presentation of the project, adding "it will be an agora full of light, the light that provides wisdom through books."

Light, as an essential argument in the work of this architect, is used as a chisel which forms the pavilion that he has designed to host the activities that the city of Madrid will perform, as guest of honor, in the next edition Of the FIL in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The design of Campo Baeza corresponds to the motto that the City of Madrid has chosen to present the city at the fair: Ganarás la luz. "It is the title of a book by León Felipe, a Spanish poet who died exiled in Mexico. And it works as a double metaphor. On the one hand, it expresses the victory of light in the face of darkness thanks to knowledge. And on the other, it refers to a physical fact well known by anyone who has visited Madrid: its light clean and bright. With the addition that our central square is called Puerta del Sol, which in some way also refers to light," said Luis Cueto, general coordinator of the Madrid City Council.

The commission process seemed to go to be torturous and entangle in a controversy similar to the previous Plaza de España contest, however, thanks to the generosity or intelligence of the architect, finally were solved all administrative complications, by Alberto Campo Baeza resigning to the € 60,000 of project fees. The construction will also be free because will be sponsored by the company Acciona.
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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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Published on: May 3, 2017
Cite: "The Madrid light goes to Mexico in a cylinder. "Ganaras la luz", by Alberto Campo Baeza" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/madrid-light-goes-mexico-a-cylinder-ganaras-la-luz-alberto-campo-baeza> ISSN 1139-6415
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