COMMUNICATION READ IN GENERAL CHAPTER VI OF EDILICIA CELEBRATED IN XÀTIVA.

Xàtiva, 6 June of 1997.

Distinguished Colleagues:

After having presented an application claiming my will that Edilícia notifies me about any information, agreement, etc in the language in which I write (Valencian) and warning to defend this posture in the Chapter of Xàtiva, on the part of the Court Clerk of the group, Mr. Juan i Vidal.

I have to manifest that I am not a philologist, I am architect and quantity surveyor, and therefore from the architecture, will talk it - in the Valencian meaning of the word: speaking with wisdom and from the reason.

From a point view of the sociological criticism of the art, following Argan, Dorfles, Cirici, etc, each society generates their architecture along the history.
Some particular ways of settlement in the territory, some plotted typical of ways, a location of squares, gardens, etc. A variable concept of housings, but a more or less permanent spatial concept, a treatment of the ones solid and empty of the walls, a location of the decoration or the lack of this, a way of encounters of these with the surfaces of double curvature, a trend of the treatment of the sections, already been Gothic buildings, already been blocks of housings or made industries today. That it makes us think and regret -from the aesthetic point of view- that that is correct and it works.

This means that those that make architecture in that society think that that concedes and it couples to the environment, then we are not constructing in the desert, there is always an insertion in the locus. Therefore, we always intervene in it patrimonial. That is, we work on a world inherited and that it shapes, in short, and with all the chaos that you want, a cosmovision of this society. That vision of the world is conveyed and specifies, by analogy or contrast, through a language. In a historical way, that of this society.

And from a point of view of the materiality:
We find the realization of turn of brick stairs in plan, usually, with a determinate catenary (the ant curve) in some parameters. Ditto you go round in perforated stone or tiles. “Esbiatges” in emptiness that goes in search of the light or of a step half hidden. Web with some certain lays out slopes more or less in the flatness. A resolution own and characteristic of terrace roofs and roofs.

This different use of words among the several societies shapes a different materialization for instance:
When we command to encase a wall we produce traditionally and from the good construction, to make one roughcast to give basis in the ornament and at the same time to make that irregular been for that the following layers him stick better. Afterwards we DIP in batter (it castrates thicker 1 cm or more) and finish with third one that it is a fine and determining layer of stucco, whitewash and dust of marble or simply mortar rich that it is the FINISH or the PURPOSE.
Because of comparison, the Castilian construction, we put for case, it joins the two first layers from antique, the "jarrado" introducing "the roughcast" forgetting that it is an large, lax and confusing term that from their introduction in the general folder of conditions of architecture it shapes the thickness of the fundamental layer of the spreading, being this the what it assumes all the functions of adhesion, mechanical resistance and regularization of the layer final.

For more "inri" a bad and local rule becomes state rule on introducing itself into the rules NTE-RPR 74 and RPG-74. You see the buildings of the city of Valencia and will check out the distinction between the black plaster of the breadcrumbs and roughcast and the white plaster or gypsum of the finish. Consequently, some regulations elaborated by GENERAL DIRECTION OF ARCHITECTURE AND HOUSING is to us necessary and that it was coordinated, obviously, with the homologous organizations of the Islands and of the ITEC.

We have a conception different of the construction of the architecture, or better or worse than the other societies, to work from this society it deserves a respect, towards her, neither folkloric nor romantic, REAL and TRIED hard, in order to intervene in the patrimony, and which happens through knowing and using the language.

Otherwise if there is not a knowledge of the Catalan/Valencian of today, how we can face, success to|in documentation of archives, registries, etc?. Knowing what was made in a certain intervention commented on, for example. And a thousand things more.

If one of the theories that they circulate about the intervention is in a certain moment of the being introduced analysis-him in the soul of the several constructors and craftsmen. ¿ How we can being introduced-us-there if we are absolutely foreign in the country itself and to the culture itself?.

On the other hand, the group has members who are teachers of the university. I ask them: ¿ If they have noticed about the bad one that these lacks produce us?, I say it from the experience of two tough careers from the most absolute immersion in the branch (from the Hispanicize) and environmental mediocrity of the Polytechnic one.

I go to finish with a story in order to that each one do their selection between governor being or native of the patrimony:
They recount that an antique Spanish governor of an American province, during the golden period of the empire, wanted to compliment a relative of his, wanting to make him to arrive a dozen of magnificent melons, harvested in their fields. He entrusted a pair of natives who carried them from there with a letter, and he told them to him: "Not you eat none, because if you made it, the letter will see it and you will be "punished". The bearers of the melons made half of the way without obstacles; but on the 3rd day, the smell of the melons, the seven and the hunger they could more that the threat. However, clever and careful, stopping at the foot of a wall, they took the letter and covered it with stones behind him. Then, sure of not being seen they ate one each one. After, retrieving the letter they continued the way. To the following day they made the same operation. Arriving the day after to house of the relative of the governor they gave the letter and 8 melons. This made them wait while he read the letter, so that it required immediate answer. On reading that they sent him a dozen, he asks them to him ¿ Where they are the 4 melons that are missing?. On hearing this natives ran away agitated recounting everywhere that the letters could see through walls and stones. They did not understand what was a letter, how it worked, for what it was useful. About the use of the language of the country the same one happens to us. Good part of the Valencian architects, seems me, have the same shrewdness and interpretative fineness as the protagonist natives of the story.

While waiting that this affair has been well received and underline OF GENERAL INTEREST him dismisses of you

Josep Blesa i Morante, architect.