SPATIAL POSITIONS 4 - Space+Matter: Life+Place, an exhibition displaying Catalonian architect Toni Gironès' work, winner of FAD 2013 and awarded a prize in the XII BEAU (Spanish Biennal of Architecture and Urbanism), opened yesterday at SAM in Basel. This is the fourth of six exhibitions in the series Spatial Positions which takes place between May and September 2013. The next two exhibitions will be The Land Worshop and Lina Bo Bardi: Together.

SPATIAL POSITIONS is the name of the new exhibition series at the Swiss Architecture Museum. On display will be the work of contemporary architects and artists as well as interpretations of historic architectural positions from a contemporary point of view. The projects and installations reach the boundaries of the architectural discipline. It is not the intention to define a groundbreaking direction or style, but rather to define a subjective investigation far from the trend towards a global cultural uniformity.

What are the key functions of architecture? Is it still, or once again, socially relevant? How does the role of the architect change in a strongly visually perceived world? To which point can temporary structures still be regarded as architecture? The aim of this exhibition series, which will be continued in the following years, is to further foster the debate on the extended definition of architecture.

Fragment of the memory of Seró project.

“… Finally we start entering to the room of the steles… a spiral tour with an almost imperceptible slope… surrounded by ceramic pieces that lets in the dim light, the air, the smells of the countryside… light intensity goes down, the ceramic pavement disintegrates, and to get to the camera the overhead light focuses the eye on the etched surface of each of the stele… silence… slowing time in a space of accurate contemplation, in a horizontal plane of clay powder showing the footprint of each visitor… quietly and in reverse start to go out with no possibility of crossing with other… gradually we go back to outside, where the horizon of a wheat field comes to find us and takes us back to the common agricultural landscape of the area.”

Text.- Toni Gironès.

Venue.- SAM Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum. Steinberg 7, CH-4001 Basel, Switzerland.
Dates.- From 20th July to 18th August 2013.

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Toni Gironès, Toni Gironès Saderra (born in Badalona, 1965) is an architect who graduated from the Vallès School of Architecture (ETSAV) in 1992. He earned his doctorate in 2016 from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) with the thesis "Spontaneous Architectures: Reflections on Constants in Architecture: The Cap de Creus Peninsula, a Topography in Time."

He taught architectural design at ETSAV until 2005 and has since served as Head of Architectural Education at URV. He was also a professor and coordinator of the subjects Projects and Drawing I-II (2005–2011) and Projects and Urbanism II at the Reus School of Architecture – URV (2011–2012).

Since 1993, Gironès has worked as an independent architect. His work has received numerous accolades, including the Spanish Architecture Award in 2019 for the Climate Museum in Lleida, as well as recognition at the IX and VIII Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism for the Transmitter Space at the Dolmen of Seró and the 80 Social Housing Units in Salou, respectively. Among other honors, he has been awarded the Young Architects of Catalonia Award (1996), FAD Award (2007), Puig i Cadafalch Award (2011), Bonaplata Award for the Restoration of Historic Buildings (2011), and more. In 2013, the Swiss Architecture Museum (SAM) in Basel dedicated a monographic exhibition to his work, titled "Space and Matter: Life and Place."

He was a professor at ETSAV from 1993 to 2005 and later at the Reus School of Architecture at the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), where he also took on academic coordination and management roles. Between 2009 and 2012, he was a board member and professor at BIARCH – Barcelona Institute of Architecture.

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Published on: July 20, 2013
Cite: "SPATIAL POSITIONS 4 - Space+Matter: Life+Place. Toni Gironès" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/spatial-positions-4-spacematter-lifeplace-toni-girones> ISSN 1139-6415
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