THE HOLY FAMILY AS A SYMPTOM.


snail of the Market of the Merchants. He was studied and he drew. And they inspired and, somehow, copied them to make the scales that rise, to the Holy Family, as far as on top of them. They are the turns of helical axis. Then, we can conclude from the Valencian Market that, structurally, the towers are inherited. Also in these stay he visited the Cabanyal, and of there he inspired and "copied" the use of the brittle one that the cabanyalers sailors used for decorating "modernistic the bases and in some cases of other fragments of the locks of façade. While attempting to avoid he surmounts it of water for capillarity of the subsoil, to be settled next to the beach.

2. Some ten years ago we were to rehabilitating the Hotel Oltra placed in the square of the town council of Valencia about. During some three weeks we started, with the owner, good relationship for that us explaining all the details that there was. The owner, Mr. Oltra, was the grandson of a family of the textile of the city that had had a lot of friendship with a supplier of Mataró. The grandfather Oltra asked for a designer or architect who might make a shop "of this new style" for him and the inhabitant of Mataró sent certain Antonio Gaudí. I refer to the shop of the left, on entering into the Passage Ripalda, from square of the town council. That, by now, it is a kind of Kebap. The decoration of the shop windows similar to a queue of cock peacock and cut glasses to the style of Bohèmia, the walls lined with wood and the scale of wood that he rolled until the attic were design of Gaudí. The grandson, already entered in years, said me that until very little it had the receipt "controlled" that he had made it, it Had fun to his grandpa. He said me that they were 30. - Pesetas. I have not been able to check it out, but the grandson asserted that it was like this.

Apart from the collection of ancedotes it seems to me on the one hand to highlight how Gaudí knew how to hoist from the popular architecture and to re-elaborate contemporarily, although making evolution in universal architecture, important.

On the other hand and as a result of the outline of the train of high (?) speed proposed by the ministry, that it wants that passing near the monument. Connecting the stations of the Sagrera and that of Sants across the streets Mallorca and Provença, since this passes four meters of the foundations of the Holy Family in scarce. With the consequent danger for the monument. The solution passes through moving and creating between both key issues: The |station of Sants and that of the Sagrera an alternative itinerary in the one |which it intends to make the Ministry. Connecting through the middle from the avenues of Aragó and of Rome. Every going for the beautiful half a one, without putting in danger, given theirs wide the buildings of both cheeks. With this exit might be given any Meridian wing the TGV and to accommodate those of surrounding. Moreover it is necessary to say, that the tunnel of Aragó is made of many ago of years. We leave you an outline about this.

In spite of that - moreover- he puts of relay a possible urbanistic solution which he attempts to solve a part of the road cobweb of the metropolitan conurbation which it is the rope that it smothers the city. And if you fly read my article, of frighten present, in my opinion... indescribably. (...)

Published in Levante-EMV Sunday of 29-July-1991. In the supplement TERRITORIO Y VIVIENDA.

Observing the polemical affair -and therefore, of short projection- about the intervention of Subirachs in the Holy Family with 350 km for the half one, he helps us to thinking about the cultural precariousness in what we move. Already if he is it at international level, in this case we see, even, a point of dissubstantiated argument. So much to the press from Barcelona as even the weekly The Time, we have observed that the question stirred among proper nouns. Attacks and self - defence. With a digression: neos and boards (ancient gauche divine) on a side; and neoboards and essentialist (conservatives of the essences of always) for the other one. And it has not been attempted to enter into a debate with contents and minimally reasonable criteria to the question. However, ¿ which the question is?, and ¿ which minimums?
The Holy Family is an architectural construction conceived by a big architect that he improvised more than their contemporaries. And then they made it in blanket, suns it is necessary to revise any of the projects of then. Then, we can not believe in the outlines, scale models, etc that circulate for here. Today the Holy Family does not go from being a great sculpture: there is not internal space -pass us the zevia- concept where he stares and icon fights. On the other hand -and on the fringe of Manifestoes of the sixties, sharp remarks of Bohigas, etc, against any intervention-, the sculpture remains in private hands ready to continue adding pieces (as if it were a cathedral) to it. Both anachronistic realities.
As a matter of fact, the architecture, in 95%, has been to construct about the one constructed, a novel feature of this century being the architecture of new floor.
It would be necessary to ask for some then: ¿ I if this is not intervened, it would be how late to waste, disembowelled how it is and without an effective use, with an index of similar pollution and a constructive technique yes, of the period of the cathedrals in ruin evolution?
The conclusion in this point would be the one of sharpening those selvages in order to intervene in it, and quickly, endowing it with a real use which it keeps the buildings living to usufruct for them the society. It is a matter of finishing an architectural piece that does not surpass the state of sculpture; where the fundamental difference of both consists in what, in have internal space; in the first it can accommodate activities. Therefore, there where Altaió suggests ¿ because Subirachs?, he is worth to say, ¿ because a sculptor?, that is: ¿ a global intervention is necessary or many prompt, as right that be?
Tied intrinsically to the former section, then, not everybody thinks and projects with the same rationality, this leads to us to be ascertained which kind intervention is of suitable. Among the extremes of the mimicry (this is, deep down, the option of the owners of the temple, on choosing Subirachs) and the contrast (while distinguishing on nine from the ancient one) besides the intermediate points of interval we will have to find it out.
Of Gaudí, there is one and is dead, therefore, the more or less mimetic option it is discarded and obsolete to risk of "embunyolar" the Holy Family.
But the work is left, and is quite important in the world-wide architectural course. Tantost, reduces us the contrastive one and its degree that opens us several possibilities:
Performances with a lot of sensitivity where the skill would be combined with it to make the pre-existent characteristics emerge and sink the new work in the existing one how, for example, the Portuguese architect Siza Vieira makes; or, performances with freelance value that they would enter to rival with the existing one but agreed by the technical command, which would be the brave option, like for example Calatrava and Valls that the critics attempt to put in relation to the inhabitant of Reus and just they make evident ignorance of the one and the other one). And from behind to propose an international competition of ideas, which often give few fruits in this kind of operations. As a matter of fact, with a slight intervention in the elements, but strong in the concept, there would be enough: some forged, but open platforms, that they sustained the concept of only room and a laminar cover of ruled areas of little thickness (less than 10 centimetres of concrete) they can give a lot of course in the building. It would be a real homage to Gaudí that I constructed the schools of near the temple of inverting hyperboloids that so much and so much it admired Le Corbusier, and that commune has been made along the century. Finally, there is other discursive lines that penetrate in other points of view, as now, the policeman, topological, semeiotic, etc Feels the subject of that not rest the controversy as a fire of shavings, but as a point of resumption of the constructive debate, that suns he justifies through the action a lot he thinks. Thought (a lot) and made.
How we say in Valencia. Not how we make, really.

Josep Blesa i Morante, architecte.