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THE VALENCIAN MUSEUM OF THE ILLUSTRATION AND THE MODERNITY.

AUTHOR: GUILLERMO VAZQUEZ CONSUEGRA.

COURSE OF DOCTORATE: Criticism of architecture. Critical foundations to read architecture.

BACKGROUNDS.

This work consists to carrying out one analyses about the Valencia Museum of the Illustration and the Modernity of Valencia. From now, MUVIM. Work of the architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra.


This work is set in the COURSES OF DOCTORATE. Course of Architecture Criticism. Critical foundations to read Architecture of the teacher Margarita Fernández Gómez, belonging to the department of Architectural Composition of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

This work is structured with regard to transversal readings - not linear, nor canonical-, of the several studies from the different points of view and reading of the architecture established in the course, this is, sociological, formalistic, psychological, symbolic-iconological and historical.

Suns the introduction, as a discursive and descriptive generation of the work, causes a global reading, - in a basic way - sociological. That it creates a basis to relocate and to develop the rest of studies with more depth.

That they are the chapters that agree with the presentation of the ruled work, Power-Point set forth. Hear this:

CHAPTERS

1) SITUATION AND PLACEMENT. URBAN ENVIRONMENT. PRE-EXISTENCES.

2) GENERATRIX IDEAS. OUTLINES. MAPS: PLANTS, ELEVATIONS AND SECTIONS.

3) COMPOSITION. MASSES. FORMS AND SPACE.

4) FUNCTIONALITY AND CIRCULATIONS.

5) LIGHT + TRANSPARENCIES.

6) MATERIALS + CONSTRUCTION.

7) CONSTRUCTIVE DETAILS.

8) EQUIPMENT. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL OF THAT GOING ROUND.

9) BIOGRAPHY OF G. VÁZQUEZ CONSUEGRA AND THE LOCATION OF THE MUVIM IN THEIR TRAJECTORY.

10) BIBLIOGRAPHY. ¿ WHAT HAS BEEN SAID?

GLOBAL INTRODUCTION. SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS.

In the sociological one we will study the work as product of a society and their including and concomitance with the social processes and the ideology of the dominant class. Like always in this one-armed analysis and it suffers of appraising suitably the intrinsic quality of the work of art. Following, nevertheless, P. Francastel we will attempt to find out the signification typical of this piece, in the rest of points of analyses. Here, it is necessary to suggest, that the piece has to have been visited completely to study, to know their environment and history to understand what is explained in a global and generic way, having made an effort of meditation, posterior, on the work that we speak about.

Sociological previous analysis.

The Muvim is born of the hand of, him 'then, president of the provincial Regional Government Manuel Tarancon Fandos, member of the centralist party and conservative fruit of a need of counteracting the impulse of updating towards the modernity that had pushed the progressive centralist party to it, before to the power.
It is not a chance that Tarancon, a literate character, does incidence in a period where the deepest change of their history is produced:
the castilianization and subalternization of the Valencian society, against the trend with one certain component "nationalitary" of the former government, where there was some "infiltrated" elements that commanded the avant-garde then, with international connections. Fact that conferred it one component of contemporaneity, a lot in contrast, with the ideological component ones sustained during the Dictatorship.
Curiously Tarancon takes some elements of these, more or less nationalitaries, to shape the ideological mistery of the one that will be the Museum of the Valencian Illustration. Noun with what is born and that afterwards modifying its noun. Adding the modernity to it.
It is worth to say that, in a historical way, the subaltern power in Madrid (progressive and/or conservative) will always sustain positions of confrontation with the University of Valencia. The Polytechnic University of Valencia is always insensitive in Madrid. With the gentle breeze of modernity and internationalist neutrality. That, really, it works as a localist and the sights hardly surpass over there the borders of the Spanish State.
It does not stop being used as counterweight political - ideological at University of General Valencia-Study.
The competition with regard to the established urbanity premises is summoned to the P.G.O.U. of 1988. Without a coherent analysis. With the consideration of space "limit" that has all the round. With an ad hoc study.
It is necessary to mention that then, the PEPRI of the Neighbourhood of Velvet Makers, was being reformulated, with several proposals to the what this zone belongs.
The site, the volumetric and program - very fragmentary- of itineraries came pre-established.
The competition missed in 1997, grants the first prize to itself in G. Vazquez Consuegra. When, really, the majority of the studies of a certain competence had discarded their concurrence.
The jury tends to a "modern" solution of fragmentary character and that bumps into the rest of the environment. Already, as a matter of fact, a lot degraded architecturally, with interventions without a minimum of urban decorum. A strong degradation of the Neighbourhood of Velvet Makers. And that to its limits, with contemporary pieces, they combine a chaotic set. Where the architectural harmony consists to scolding itself some pieces in the other ones. And the piece of reference, -partially cripple-, rest evicted and cancelled, among sparse ruins by land, where the "junkies" are hidden to fill is the Antique Hospital fire on the veins.
Against all what it has been called, it is false, -in ours to understand- that the work of Vàzquez dialogue with the rest. Rest as an autonomous piece. The air of "modern" of the hand of a certain pseudo minimalism, and real cloister it makes that -having taken consciousness- be necessary «to hide» the piece, on to entrust it next- the gardens that they will swallow and they will cover (in mode of the wrightian perspectives) for amending the error, that it comes of a bad conception of the location, since - we think- there had been necessary to place the gardens between the new piece and the antique hospital in peripheral zone of the site, making street-corridor, while letting of pillow and filter, it in far dialog and not confronted, as now it happens. The distortion of the piece in itself is pathetic.
Nothing to see with interventions drenched in sensitivity contemporary how it is the case of the Centre of Culture Contemporaneous from Santa Monica to Barcelona of Piñon and Viaplana, that it would be a parallel case.
It would be more near an intervention strident like the Macba of R. Meier, in the middle of the very middle of the Ciutat Vella Barcelona.
Making an analysis of remembering with the historical architecture we can start from the following requirements:
The invariants, and in short, characteristic of the history of the architecture made in the city of Valencia they would be:
Uniqueness of the inner space, a preponderance of the inner space about the requirement, formal purity, renunciation to the decoration, which if there is some is in very concrete points concentrated.
Circulations: the relationship between inside and outside, in principle, is difficult. Predominance of the mass, towards compact forms. The wrapper, product of the inside, is direct. Not in the open, nor radiant nor divergent, nor acute forms, etc.
The contour tends to being clean and precise. Predominance of the plenum about the emptiness.
The compositions axes: the centripetal trend forces to the suppression of the predominance of somebody of these. The one that provides a balanced ordering.
It runs away from the obliquity, deviation etc. Orthogonal Vision of the space. The wall adopts a horizontal rhythm. The impost is the removing of the window or of the overall, generally, never corresponds to the levels of the ceilings.
The moderate proportion, the trend of the cross-section of the square. The use of interior and outer coatings. Plaster in the inside and revocs in the outside. Without filigree. Taut, terse areas.
The architectural device has been a key element of regulation of the light and the heat (very intense, otherwise, in this meridian zone. Of here the use of closed walls) and the use of jealousies and vegetation (of Arab root) to recirculate the winds, etc. To diminish and to specify their incidence.
The concept of frontage irrigated region in that of garden. And in a subsequent way the use of the water. The northern garden places the water in the bottom while the Mediterranean makes her scholar from above until the bottom. Due to their shortage. In pro of one senior exploitation.
The landscape is not imitated, how it creates it affectedly to the Englishwoman, it does not create theatrical effects of the disposition of axes to the Andalusia, nor frontal importance gives like the Italians, or of clamping itself in symmetrical or radial axes of the Frenchwoman. Its, however, more "tame". In spite of the influences of every type.
In view of the "formal patterns of sociological character" established either we can work in, in the study of the Muvim.
We will set forth the evident facts and will proceed to formulating an argument (share of arguing. Arguing: v.tr.: Examining in detail(a question), to reason about her showing favorable and adverse considerations.

1. SITUATION AND SITE. URBAN ENVIRONMENT. PRE-EXISTENCES.

Situation: site of the Antique Hospital of Valencia and its vegetable gardens. Neighbourhood of Velvet Makers.
The site: the footprint given as a hypothesis of entry of the competition.
Environment: chaotic and degraded architectural and social.
Patrimonial pre-existences: of height 0'00 in up, the pavilions of the Old Infirmary of the antique Hospital, today devoted to Public Library. On height -3 '40 m. a fragment of the antique Arab wall.
It does not exist, for a lot that us said the "knowledgeable aulics architects" that there is a formal purity. There is a twin between two bodies a cube and an oblong parallelepiped, a lot given by an error of approach of origin of the competition that left the footprint marked from the General Plan and which afterwards nobody knew how to reorient and that he rectified. As a matter of fact, we consider that it is a fault that all their will suffer gestation, and that despite everything, the author of the futile winning project having the sensitivity to give solution to a nonsense, how it was the urbanity approach of the competition.
We can not understand like a spatial piece where the uniqueness prevails. Except for the case of the atrium or hall, the space flows, without being able to understand it of a strike.
The perception works in inverse meaning to this customary feature. In the same way it spends for us in the space of the temporary exposure, where the space is immersed without contemplation in the inferior part, to lead to two rooms. The space escapes to us, simply.
The relationship between the inside and the outside, is not difficult, but inexistent. It will be necessary to wait to the realization of the gardens of the Hospital to have a fulfilled idea about the set. For the time being almost piranesianes is a tragic show, the ruins “ça” and “llà”, beside a piece of contemporary bill.
Pathetic. At least.
There is a predominance of the wall about the emptiness, obviously. The perforation in half a body, to safeguard the second cruiser that was overthrown in 1972, if from a point of view it is a find and success of Vázquez Consuegra, but that in return, the secondary accesses are hidden and are not perceived the entries. The one that makes, everything, that him denies the urban condition of the street Guillem de Castro.
If the zone of public is due to a tendency section to the square, the disposition -compulsory of itineraries of the permanent exposure it forces on a lengthened section.
There is not moderation in the proportions,reasonably. Not even of the tester that opens up to c/ Guillem de Castro that, a simple sharecropper, is a rectangle.
Either the urban environment is a space evocative, that not even improves it nor that worsens it. It acts as new fragment of the "col•latge" without any dialog with the rest.
Either the urban environment is a space evocative, that not even improves it nor that worsens it. It acts as new fragment of the "col•latge" without any dialog with the rest. Only the glazed wall of background, which with sentences is discovered behind the trees, on the alley, between the building of housings and the Muvim, acts as façade. The main access places on the transversal pedestrian street to c/ of Quevedo. No dialog with the centre of ceramics. No dialog with the antique hospital. Only the axis of the interior pillars of the library they "cut" the canopy of the main entry. For the anonymous observer it is imperceptible. It is cut about an axis on half a cloth between the centered door and the edge. The furniture is that of the author. The wastepaper basket, the bank, the protection of the “garola” of the trees, etc… and the street lamp the ones same than those of the maritime Walk of Vigo. The dialog and the unit of criteria with those of the town councillor of public lighting sr. Jurado they are totals, how it appreciates itself with the naked eye.
The insertion of a strange, but necessary element, due to the insertion of the
Assembly Hall in the height -5 '20 m: the English courtyard.
The horizontality is remarked by the boards of the formworks of the seen concrete.
Curiously the pieces are not horizontal. They sustain the slope of the itineraries in fall. Which it surprises us. On not seeing a piece that could be perfectly parallelepiped. The insertion of a natural lighting about the body of offices about the stair of functional dependences of the museum, they convert this zone into a greenhouse that this precinct that is unbearable puts in 40º.
Ditto error that in the Palace of the Music, on opening the bookshop to speaker, where there is one over dimensioned, in number and diameter, of the nozzles of expulsion of the air conditioning.
¿Which meaning a canopy of access directed possesses, from the sociological point of view, towards the north in these latitudes? In the original project it did not exist how it can be checked out. It is an element added later.
The walls do not dip in batter. In rough. The insertion of the right feet holding the big wall of concrete, shapes the antithesis of the architecture made in this city.
Only the nuance of the light of the hall of entry, the massic character of the piece, the lack of decoration holds moderately some criteria and sociological features. The contortions of the piece - and he is not the only culprit Vázquez-
make the architectural artefact like an intervention consider out-sider. Autistic.
We are in the face of a case similar to the realization of the Title Page of the irons of the Headquarters for Konrad Rudolph. Where the walls break or are made "alabejats" are a work of foreigners.
It will be precise, to compliment the analysis to see made the garden, already that it has project from 2001. A solution of incidents accumulation, typical of the City-Collage.
¿ An anastilosi coarse of the sparse columns shaping a room hypostyle•la?
A Cartesian plot will sort unitarily, according to the orthogonal axes of the arms of the infirmary of the antique hospital, today Municipal Library, all milestones and surviving collection of anecdotes scattered over the site.
Luck we will have, that under the wood, that rest well hidden the lack of dialog among architectural milestones that are scolded some in the other ones.

2. . GENERATRIX IDEA. OUTLINES. Floors, sections and elevations. Formal analysis.

The point of being snatch it is the careless footprint for the P.G.O.U. It is worth to suggest, that demeanour in touch with the study of Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra, it has not been wanted to us to facilitate the maps coming from the project, nor the outlines. For personal prescription of the author. Nevertheless we have tracked down some of the outlines turned up in several magazines and to reorder them chronologically. On pages 109 and 116 of the monographic Vázquez Consuegra. Proyectos y Obras. 1996-2001. Ed. ICARO. C.O.A.C.V. València.2001. it is denoted that the initial idea is volumetric. The overhang already appears, it is rectangular, but the basis of the footprint is in the form of hook or of and lower case. A big window appears in the place, where now, the rectangle of steel Korten turns up.
The third image corresponds to the section of the big hall. Outline of page 106. Where the elevator was in the inside and not in the outside how he has ending up constructing.
The bridge of step was on the upper and outer side and there was a step in mode of brise. The English courtyard already appears and the general organization is already half an enviable towards the final result. The rough of page 110 already is more orderly about the final idea. The tearing of the ceiling appear joint in the parallelepipeds of changing slightly lighting.
The formal study, of the Muvim, from a contemporary perspective, is inserted in the context of an architecture, without place, coming from the five points of Le Corbusier. It is includes itself in the new baking of architects coming from the post modern one, which several component ones, a synthetic purification, find in the creation of a personal poetics by shuffling. That is, els Ferrater, Campo Baeza, De las Casas, Del Rey-Magro, Garcia-Solera, etc.
The implantation is carried out about the footprint obligatory and pre-established to the competition that the Regional Government of Valencia of whom depends summoned the museum.
The circulations come given, depending on the permanent exposure to insert.
The gestation in the form is born of the cross linking of two bodies. One parallel to one of the arms of the library (the parallelepiped) and the other one, the cube, of expensive parallel to the construction pre-existent to the constructions existing in the pedestrian street.
That it is the element that suffers the distortion and a little rudimentary and dramatic coupling with the other body.
No relationship with the Center of Pottery (Work of Joan Añon) that yes stood in relation to the alignment of this street.
However, we consider that the given assets are a good find continuity in the street that very soon will open up from the street Quevedo and that leads to the mixed access of the two bodies, as passage, towards the gardens of the antique Hospital.
The access, which really works as such, is that of the canopy of steel. A little hidden, this yes, in front of the Center of Craftsmanship. It drowns, with this the possible accesses of other points. Like from St. / Guillem de Castro.
The floors, elevations and sections are included in the exposure Power-Point.

3. COMPOSITION. MASSES. FORMS AND SPACE.

Against all what it has been called, we believe, that the project hoists in the Theory of the chaos. Due to the hypotheses of entry. Urban logy. New conception of a museum. Not of objects to, to marry but of ideas, materialized in itineraries. It is the itinerary drenched in images, stages, literary references and proto-industrial gadgets that shape the nerve of the museum.
The compositive element of the second period of Vázquez Consuegra, the rectangles, the squares, segments of circles, etc are already platonic Figures in floor that, they always end up being distorted to make the suitable connections.
From here the chaotic character of many of their works surprises us. That we always suggest: yes but...
We could make an assumption that it uses a set of plans that keep on shaping the cover of the spaces. That they give in yes an image of masses that are superimposed itself, with holes that cover with nothingness, like the passage or glasses of big formed.
Here, sense charges the corbusiana idea about architecture, prey of the illuminism “boullenià”, as a magisterial, magnificent and correct set of the masses joined by the lights (and shadows)...
Although the history of the precedents is the history of never not to end we do not resist to point out the cramp of the Courthouse of Chandigarh (1950) and a certain brutal lecorbusierà of the '50, like the outer images of the Museum of Tokyo of 1957-59.
The inner space is concentrated in the central hall, as magnified space and of best empathy, fluid across the itinerary of the cramp and the courtyard to the Englishwoman as a solution in front of the exits of emergency of the assembly hall, which it connects with the itinerary of the Room Parpalló.
What gives life and meaning to all the spatial composition that derives from it hears this space and the itinerary.
The continuous itinerary of the exposure has brought to creating some forged with slope. New element and not at all undervaluable.
The one that is not understood is the transport to saying slope in the outside and inside with the cut screens. That it does not stop being a reflection of the purism "as it is the inside, such it is the outside".
How alone more of urban distortion makes introduce an element than it was necessary. Or yes?
Those that create a meaning of order are the boards among plaques of concrete and the "shotguns" of the formworks that bear them, and because of that same, they highlight the irregularities.
An innocent question: ¿ what it would happen if the block of the cube, he 'designed had, looked the entry, with the cloth of glass looking at north, this is towards the Center of Craftsmanship?
The space of the fluid library with the zone of study of the investigators, for their proportions, simplicity and the lighting specified through skylights is one of the more achieved and remarkable spaces.

4. FUNCTIONALITY AND CIRCULATIONS. THE IDEA ABOUT SHOPPING.

- Let's not consider lucky the option to hide the main access. That rest indefinite.
- The hall works and means like a Hallenkirchen.
- It induces to the shopping: there is direct connexion with cafe and the bookshop.
-Subsidiary to the knowledge: the itinerary of the Illustration.
- Sporadically to the art of research: the exposure of the Room Parpalló. Enrolled individuals alone.
- The circulation of public is mixed. Descendant. Cramps + panoramic elevator.
- Access to the room Parpalló for height 0'00 is mediocre and imperceptible.
- All the administrative apparatus is well solved in a piece and of scientific research in the block contiguous to the Hall. And it works independently of the schedule of public. With the split of parallel circulations. That in principle it is an error of design and here is a virtue.
- The traffic does not work between both blocks.
- The stair does not work climatologically on duty that on to be glazed in north, but also for above, the stair converts into an unbearable greenhouse.
- Ditto the bookshop directed at west. Solvable problem with trees of the gardens in half deadline.
-Ditto former: the incidence of the sun of the morning in the exposure of basement floor of the room Parpalló to which it has forced to placing an awning to protect the pieces.
- We consider well solved the location of all the machinery in the covers, behind the parapet that conceals them.
We want to make one summarized of the courses of doctorate celebrated at University of Harvard co-sent by the architect Rem Koolhaas called Harvard project where the city. The conclusions published, in the form of book, for the Arch in réve. Center of architecture. Bordeus.2001.
... The museums become in shopping to survive. The European traditional city attempted to resist the shopping, now however, it is a vehicle for the consumerism to the American style. The architects "aulics" despise the world of the trade but they use their configurations to project museums and universities... and more... freed from every light or ventilation natural, with which the dust has been eliminated and one has created at the same time a mechanical ventilation that it is better because it brings clean air, and an artificial lighting of more uniform and pleasant results... In many meanings, the elimination of the windows is added to the beauty and efficiency...
The window - and any other connection with the requirement, if we leave apart the access for customers- be considerate unnecessary, if non hostile...
It’s evident that this museum has just not fallen down in such a way in this dynamics, but the generatrix idea about the NET OF MUSEUMS depending on the Regional Government, if it goes for these footpaths.

5.LIGHT AND TRANSPARENCIES.

- The ceilings of the room of the Hall.
- The ceilings of the room of the Library.
- The vertical ornament south of the room of the Hall.
- The ceiling and vertical ornament (partially) of the stair on duty.
- The ornament botched of the longitudinal block that illuminates the basement of the room Parpalló.
- The passage that joins the two vegetal elements under the high step that joins both blocks, they shape a transparency and visual connection.
- The transparency of the bookshop and the cafe they constitute a common element, seen from outside.
- The rip that illuminates the replateau of the cramp, joint in the elevator, it constitutes a good solution, and re-qualifies the space in appealed long theirs.
- The rips (skylights and skylights) of the ceilings specify the light, making it insinuation.

6. MATERIALS + CONSTRUCTION.

- Concrete made seen.
- Laminated glass.
- Made glass.
- Mate glass.
- Corten steel.
- Stainless steel.
- Steel of galvanized together plating. Painted, or not, later.
- Basaltic black stone.
- Wood of make in library and grounds.
- Partitions of cardboard- plaster (pladur)

The construction is from dry board, that is, of industrialized character. Everything is left joined through welding, rolled, you are. And finished: covered and stamped with silicones. The gamma of materials is short. But in spite of the industrial tone their nobility is vindicated. Even there are details of unlucky syntheses as now, the steps of wood of resinous proteges with skirting board of aluminium or steel, which is totally incoherent. A way like another of épatter the bourgeoises.

7. CONSTRUCTIVE DETAILS.

In the Muvim there are two classes of details. The structural element carried out, in situ, in concrete made seen. Leaving the seen brand of their construction, how they are the boards of the plaques of the formwork and the shotguns (buttonholes of step of the axes of fastening).
And the rest of elements that are coming of the industry.
The cover is solved with alveolate plaques. The one that is creating some problems of important leaks; since, at the same time of letting fall down about the support they have been chipped. Therefore, it would be necessary to have solved, deck, etc, it with inverting one.
The skylights with grecades plating. The conception of the constructive details has the realization of boards as a basis all of a sudden. That is, the use of industrial elements.

8. EQUIPMENT.

On it being about a very personal work. Of a personality already consolidated. The same as the big "patums" keep on implanting joint in their piece works of their designed repertoire.
Here we see, in the outside, the wastepaper basket of galvanized steel platens.
The lantern lamp, which it so badly "combines" with the rest of lanterns lamps implanted at the last times, of character Second Rules Parisian of the sr. Jurado.
One can, also, observe the bench of steel galvanized of a foot with after laths of wood of teka. Coming from the projects of the building of the Maritime Captaincy of Ayamonte (Huelva)(2001) and the ordering of the maritime Walk of Vigo (1995-2001). Both contemporary projects, if it makes it does not make, as the Muvim.
In the inside, the minimal ashtray and the exhibitor of tensors curved. The tri-square bench of wood curved of cherry tree with side tables in the lateral ones. They seem design of the architect himself. It will be necessary to confirm such extreme.

9. BIOGRAPHY OF G. VAZQUEZ CONSUEGRA.

The biography of Guillermo can be read in any monograph. Therefore reference to her will not be made. In return if that it is necessary to remark that we can understand three periods in their trajectory.
A first stage of training and of research that goes from their exited from school 1972 until 1984. That finishes with the Uhtna Hus House in Mairena.
A second period of transition that it begins with the multifamily building to c/ Ramon y Cajal, in Seville until arrives at the Expo '92.
By this period the realization of a qualitative jump of the level of the orders is characterized, thanks to the universal event. It is equally a period marked by the concurrencies in great number of competitions. We can finish this period as a maximum milestone the realization of the Pavilion of the Navigation.
The third period of maturity, consolidation and recognition that he combines simultaneously arrives at our days, on creating a personal way to conceive, and applies his personal stamp there where futile. As a matter of fact his items, like can being the furniture, urban and interior, keeps on moving and goes their realizations.
Like this we see the simultaneity in Ayamonte, Vigo, Valencia, etc.
The Muvim is inserted in this period of maturity and recognition, with a way to make staff, that its meaning finds in the whole of the work of author, in the set of their trajectory, not in the unitary pieces.

10. BIBLIOGRAPHY: ¿ WHAT HAS BEEN SAID?

Erudite Concrete

Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra builds a whole museum urban heart of Valencia. Cultures magazine, Thursday 4th of October of 2001.
From beginnings of July of this year one more museum of the wide net (Net Museum), which since some time ago come weaving in the Valencian Community, the Generalitat, Regional Government and Town Councils can be visited in Valencia. With the Museum of the Illustration of Valencia (MUVI), the Mediterranean city continues bidding for a bigger attention in the contemporary cultural panorama in what refers to architecture, in the face of more consolidated alternatives.
Guillermo Vázquez has managed the construction of the work, winner in a competition celebrated in 1997 and whose authorship he shared with the architects Pedro Díaz and Iñigo Casero. In the bases of this competition besides the museum program, it was obligatory to stick to the perimeter of the site, situated in a peripheral area of the historic center of Valencia. The place of the city that would lodge the MUVI was an block limited by an urban round, a street that the one that was the Hospital of the Poor Innocents fed of cars to the previous one and a regular and very wide shapeless space in which there was even their demolition, piece that was part of an interesting architectonic ensemble.

Doing City

With this material the MUVI is born like inlays. The complexity of the assignment is extended with what is vast of the program that incorporated to fight with the material pre-existence of other architectures and other times, without forgetting the hazardous urban consolidation that had the area. To this the secular agnostic (psychic blindness) of the editors of the urbanity decrees is added it, that inflexible tattoo the perimeter of what the building should be, convinced of the only and true possible destination being that: a form.
It is obvious that for Guillermo Vázquez the architecture is understood as an artificial phenomenon, complex in their bases and tools, defining in their commitment with the construction of our physical means and binder of professions, voices and very different visions, stuck inevitably to what is urban. Because of that I define the MUVI as it inlays attentive to urbanistic, sociological, programmatic, esthetical, constructive, anthropological, political, historical and even archaeological calls, which talk about an outstanding fearlessness at the time of facing the complexity of the palimpsest of disciplines that there are after an assignment of this importance. To this the architects we call it Do City.

Doing Architecture

I had the occasion of seeing the scale model of the project in the hall of the museum, one more jewel of the workshop of Jorge Vázquez, itself: a solid block of aluminium without polishing, with the form that the urbanistic decrees dictated, situated on a hexahedral hollow base of steel in which there were two rectangular perforations that they let see the interior. Nothing else.
The form of the building answers first the conversion in perimetric wall of the building, of the limits of the site, breaking transversally this wall in the level of the ground and another street leaving the bridge and great flight that he invents in this absence for the city. Two rectangles, one longer than another with a small relative obliquity, have the permanent contents and the administrative program, once both through the big hall of entry have been brought together and the three of them are grouped together in a sinuous form. The permanent program is organized as a hermetic drop, without light and in zigzag, of slight and continuous inclination, developed in the longest part of the museum. The temporary program on the contrary uses the natural light as almost unique argument. The holes that I described them in the steel of the scale model are the “lucívoros” hollows that will take the caress to the rough concrete up to the basement and the light that will convert the object exposed in food for our retina.
We could talk about a hieratic building (if the buildings could to be it) that it talks however (if the buildings could do it) with the dual city of a necessary enlargement and a hazardous and inherited urban plot. Thus, before that repetition beheaded of the architectonic element of composition, before that the multiplication up to the infinity of a box in another box, before that a semantic epiphany, Guillermo Vázquez in this work opts for an iconoclastic attitude in which any longer there are not things that mean others: the doors not only do not seem it but are not seen, part of the Museum is a street, and part of the street is the Museum, what is seemed window is wall and what is wall only is part of a big shell that contains a building, and what seems a building only in a bit of city, can it be asked for less?. To this the architects we call it Do Architecture.

Little that to say and a lot that to feel

The bad habit of understanding everything as a language was before an American popular experience a European intellectual fashion: language of the time, space language of the, gestural behavior formal and even a language of the social treatment besides the fático language of Malinowski, or the anthropomorphic one of Zevi.
Its theoretical or academic formulation does not interest me as much as the diffuse but large public conscience that of them is had, not only in the daily sphere of a psychology of masses but in the profession that it occupies for us: the architecture.
Its theoretical or academic formulation does not interest me as much as the diffuse but large public conscience that of them is had, not only in the daily sphere of a psychology of masses but in the profession that it occupies for us: the architecture. I am convinced that on architecture there is very little that to say, that this little is difficult to say it and besides the ways of doing it are limited. The children are philosophical because the same question is always done as they face something new, the essential question: What is this? and are approached and touch it, weigh, knock and look until its own definition of what before did not know what were is done. Something like this should happen with the architecture, which obliged us once and again to doing us the essential and afterwards airless question, exhausted of feeling, thrilled, we ran to have to others ours "that".
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The budget of construction of the Museum of the Illustration is shot and it surpasses the 2.500 million

The PSOE claims the regional government that clarifies the situation of the project, which it qualifies as «failure»

J. R. S. Valencia.
More than two thousand five hundred a million pesetas. That is the quantity that has been destined until now for the starting of the Valencian Museum of the Illustration and the Modernity (MuVIM), according to data that the socialist group of the Regional Government of Valencia considers, by the Regional Government of Valencia.
If the initial award of the construction of the museum in the building designed by the Sevillian architect Guillermo Vázquez Consuegra was in its moment of nearly 900 million pesetas, the subsequent modifications have situated him at the moment about the 1.600 million pesetas. The rest of quantities has been destined to pay for the payment of the permanent collection -a succession of virtual facilities and decorated that it has cost 400 million- and to other expenses that have kept being incorporated and whose financing has kept coming out of gradual modifications of loan approved by the regional government. The global quantity of construction of the center will have to be added to about the 600 million pesetas more, that it is the money that is foreseen will cost the residential development of the about the building and to the construction and rearrangement of the interior garden, which will be paid for among the Regional Government of Valencia itself, the town council and the Conselleria de Obras Públicas.
«It started as an illusionist project that» has been «deflated», the socialist representative Josep Renau, who announced that his group will ask the representative of Culture, Antoni Lis, that rinses which situation is found the project and in that he explains «the from side to side» that the project has kept giving throughout the last years, stated yesterday East-EMV.
«Now only he can be talked about the failure of the Museum of the Illustration», said Renau, who assured that in no moment the ones responsible for the regional government have invited them to know his facilities and who indicated that the data that have on his contents have them thanks to the media.

Change of contents

The Museum Valencian of the Illustration has gone changing their task as the time has gone by. It started by being a project that it would unite a didactic function -to explain the evolution of the history of the thought- beside the creation of a center of studies and a special library that they had to manage, respectively, Antoni Mestre and Agustín Andreu. Approximately one year ago, as he advanced LEVANTE-EMV, it was when the regional government started to design a reform of the Institution Alfons the Magnànim and it was thought that the best thing was that the center of studies was assigned to the Classroom of History that manages Antoni Mestre. Like this it was made.
With regard to the library it was thought that the best thing was that it was linked to the Valencian Library. In the face of the monumentality of the building and the lack of contents, the regional government started to introduce alternative proposals that they hardly had to see with the initial idea. First it changed the name to the museum and modified its initial logo -presented publicly some months before- and converted it into Museum of the Illustration and the Modernity. Afterwards it was decided that the newly created Net of Museum of the regional government moved to the new museum, also as the Institution Alfons the Magnànim itself, as well as its library. It was also agreed that what its showroom was temporary went shared with the Consortium of Museums of the Generalitat, which since months ago has a planned plan for such a necessity. The last thing was the appointment of the room Parpalló, which will leave the Cultural Center of the Beneficence and will take up a small space in the building situated in the site of the Old Hospital. Thus until today, date on which the political silence about the MuVIM starts to be worrisome.