Architectures without a place

The feeling of discouragement that the recent loss of an important architectural project has produced in the office, after all the effort, time and enthusiasm that we had invested in it, has brought to my mind an anthological exhibition from 2009 at the Santa Monica Arts Center in Barcelona entitled Arquitectures sense lloc (Architectures without place).

The exhibition brought together, in the same space, 200 models and projects by different authors that were never built or that no longer existed. According to competition prizes, unrealized commissions and disappeared works. The title, without a doubt, evoked that feeling of nostalgia that is produced by knowing that what someone imagined and planned will never see the light of day.

Juan Luis Arsuaga, paleoanthropologist and director of the excavations of the Atapuerca sites, speaks passionately about the capacity to imagine of Cro-Magnon man, our most direct ancestor. As he explains, it was the most notable difference from Neanderthal man; the characteristic that ultimately made it his descendants that prevailed. Cro-Magnon dreamed and was capable of creating mental images of a non-existent reality, developing a more advanced symbolic intelligence than that of Neanderthals. This allowed him to plan and share projects or abstract thoughts that had the unconditional support of the community until their achievement. An unbeatable capacity and ambition compared to other species.

Arquitectures sense lloc highlighted this genetic legacy that we received an eternity ago and that still continues to distinguish us from other living beings: our imagination. Human beings inhabit the present world while we invent the future. Through drawing and abstract representation, the human imagination is capable of living these spaces, of reconstructing them, in the same way that a musician is capable of listening to music written in a score. We invest enormous amounts of energy in designing fictional worlds that will be our habitat of tomorrow. Perhaps for this reason, not seeing our projects realized generates a frustration that is difficult for us to digest. It is as much as giving up on a future that we had meticulously designed.

These ideas are worth very little or nothing. The brick culture values ​​only what is built

However, the exhibition at the Santa Monica Center for Arts hid a less obvious side than that of simple nostalgia or disappointment.

The truth is that architects conceive many more projects than those that finally become reality. We have not been able to find any other way than to summon many ideas to be able to choose between them, and this was something that was evident in the exhibition. The problem is that, in our country, these ideas are worth very little or nothing, and this is where the real discouragement lies. The brick culture values ​​only what is built.

We could say that a firm with some success in competing in architectural competitions manages to win between 10 and 20% of the projects in which it participates. This is the same as saying that it loses between 80 and 90 out of every 100 of those in which it competes, and this requires using a lot of energy, but also a lot of money that it does not receive.

Our French, Swiss or German neighbors are clear about it: the initial ideas have served to issue a value judgment. They are an intrinsic part of the construction of the building, one more part that must be paid for. There, a firm with little built work but accustomed to presenting its ideas in competitions or participatory processes is able to survive economically in a dignified manner. The opposite is to promote precariousness in the sector. Poorly paid collaborators and an inability to invest in technological advances or in the necessary continuous training if we want to be competitive and face challenges such as adapting to climate change or incorporating artificial intelligence into design processes. That our ideas do not become bricks does not mean that they are worthless.

A paradigm shift is necessary where public administrations and professional groups such as the College of Architects and other creative fields establish the foundations of a system that recognizes the value that ideas bring to the design process.

A fairer system where not winning is not synonymous with losing.