A gas station in Iturrama, the Pamplona City Hall Animal Care Center, a logistics depot in Landaben, a Japanese vending machine next to cafeteria Otero... The workshop'Bicycle Sheds, Petrol Stations, et al.' brought to the forefront those architectures that often go unnoticed and unnoticed; those non-iconic and non-monumental spaces, Structures 'everyday' that do not attract attention and become the common denominator of life.
After 5 days of workshop, the students of 3rd, 4th and 5th of Degree in Architecture, as an activity framed in the 'International Seminar' of the accredited specialization in management of the project Creative Management, materialized this project in a exhibition.
The 'International Seminar' is an intensive week of classes in which students develop a project organized by a professor of the School together with a visiting professor. The three mentions participate: management of project Creative Management, management of project Urban Management and management of project Technical Management.
In this case, the project of the accredited specialization at management of the project Creative was led by School professor Alvaro Velasco and guest speaker Georgios Eftaxiopoulos. Georgios is Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of internship architecture and design urban EO. Previously, he practiced in Belgium and Switzerland and taught at The Berlage, the Royal College of Art, the Aarhus School of and the Architectural Association, where he coincided studying and working with Professor Velasco.
On the left, Professor Álvaro Velasco; on the right, guest architect Georgios Eftaxiopoulos.
For the development of project , 12 buildings were selected from campus or from the vicinity of the University of Navarra. The selected buildings had to be those that we usually do not see, even though we pass by them, because they are insignificant or "invisible". These buildings can be placed in what Georges Perec described as "infra-ordinary". According to Perec, the infraordinary "designates an everydayness that requires a kind of quixotic or excessive attention".
Through measurement, photography, drawing, collage... the students applied a "ruthless systematic attention" to these spaces. At the same time, through a burlesque exercise, they superimposed these spaces with the most 'extraordinary' current architectural representation. They employed graphic languages labeled as 'cool' and 'trendy' to explore and challenge their power to disguise architectural thinking, ultimately seeking to written request reveal those dangers of stylistic commodification and aestheticization and escape from a graphic and architectural anesthesia.
The exhibition was the result of the students' work . In it they showed the different media used to communicate: videos, animations, models, printed material, photographs and more. Naomi Nicolau, a 5th grade student, commented that "as architects we understand that representation is important; when you present a project and how you represent it says a lot about the idea".
