Architecture Towards Nature

What is architecture and what makes a building more than merely a sum of its parts? How does one person inhabit a place? Can buildings peacefully coexist with nature? Should architects strive to create emotionally charged works of art? These are some of the questions that are central to the work of Emilio Ambasz. Architecture Toward Nature exhibition, organized by the New York-based office Curatorial Project. The exhibition examines the whole work of Ambasz; an architect, designer, curator, and writer, designing and building radical green projects for over 40 years.

Ambasz believes that architecture must be pragmatic, but its primary reason for being is to move us emotionally. It is for that reason that his architecture has a very poetic and solitary quality. It does not belong to any particular age and does not necessarily belong to any particular place either. His projects are more like dreams, in which one stumbles upon these fantastic fusions of architecture and landscape. “The ideal gesture would be to arrive at a plot of land so immensely fertile and welcoming that, slowly, the land would assume a shape – providing us with an abode. And within this abode – being such a magic space – it would never rain, nor would there ever be hardships of any other sort. We must build our house on earth only because we are not welcome on the land. Every act of construction is a defiance of nature. In a perfect nature, we would not need houses.”

Together with curatorial project, Fundació Enric Miralles presented an expanded range of projects and visions, intertwined within Ambasz’ historical body of work and creative vision. Exhibiting a shared body of work between Miralles and Ambasz, of projects past future and present, creating a dialog between these two influential architects and their diverse approaches to landscape and nature.