The thriving Latin American architecture will be represented at the Biennial Mugak/ by Sandra Barclay, Jean Pierre Crousse and Tatiana Bilbao

2019 July 30

• The first internationally recognised lecturers have confirmed their participation in the edition that will take place this autumn in the Basque Country and dedicate its main exhibition to the Ulm School.
• As a prior activity to the Biennial, the Housing Department of the Basque Government will be organising the summer course “RE-Housing - I Housing Lab in the Basque Country” from the 17th to the 19th of September in the Basque Country Architecture Institute.
• The official Mugak/ programme will take place between the 10th of October and the 12th of December and include over a hundred activities in Donostia as well as in Bilbao and Vitoria-Gasteiz.

 

The second edition of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial, Mugak/ is taking shape. After the announcement that its main exhibition will be devoted to the Ulm School (1953-1968) — a unique show focused on modern industrial design —, the first renowned figures of modern architecture that will participate as lecturers were published today.

Latin America will be represented by a large number of its main exponents, such as Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse from Peru and Tatiana Bilbao from Mexico. The former will offer a talk on the 17th of October at the Basque Country Architecture Institute, located in the Santa Teresa convent in San Sebastian, while Ms. Bilbao will take part on the 23th of October through one of the Biennial’s collaborating entities, the Cluster Habic.

The Peruvians Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse share a studio founded in 1994, which is located both in Lima and in Paris. Their ambition to explore the links between landscape, climate and architecture has won them several accolades, such as the first ‘Oscar Niemeyer Award’ or the ‘Premio Latinoamérica’ [Latin American Prize] given by the International Committee of Architectural Critics (CICA).

Barclay and Crousse have already attended several Biennials. In fact, they represented their country in Venice in 2012 and four years later, they acted as curators of the Peruvian Pavilion at the same Italian event. Besides, Sandra Barclay received last year in London the ‘Women in Architecture’ prize awarded by Architectural Review.

Tatiana Bilbao is another great name of the thriving Latin American school. Her work aims at “understanding architecture from a multicultural and multidisciplinary point of view to create humanised spaces that react before global capitalism with the aim of opening up niches for cultural and economic development.” With this idea, she has created spaces like the Botanic Garden in Culiacán, the Master Plan and the Gratitude Open Chapel in the “Ruta del Peregrino” [the Pilgrim’s Route] in Jalisco or the new UDEM building in Monterrey.

The Architecture League of New York mentioned Tatiana in 2010 as an ‘emerging voice’; she was also awarded the ‘Kunstpreis Berlin’ in 2012, the ‘Global Award for Sustainable Architecture Prize’ by the LOCUS foundation in 2014 and, more recently, the ‘Marcus Prize Award’ in 2019. Now 47 years old, she has an extensive experience as a visiting professor at universities such as Rice, Columbia, Yale and Harvard.

 

A summer course in September

The official programme of the Biennial Mugak/ will start on the 10th of October, with the prize-giving ceremony of the Peña Ganchegui Award 2019 to Young Basque Architecture. As in 2017, this year’s edition will offer about a hundred activities including lectures, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, street activities, etc.

This time, its main seat will be located in the Basque Country Architecture Institute (IAE). Nevertheless, the Biennial will expand to many other seats, in the main city of Gipuzkoa as well as in Bilbao and Vitoria-Gasteiz. The largest number of proposals will be concentrated on the central week, between the 21st and the 27th of October.

Some other activities have been planned prior to the official opening date. The IAE will host a summer course under the title ‘RE-Housing: I Housing Lab in the Basque Country’. It will be organised on the 17th, 18th and 19th of September by the University of the Basque Country through its Higher Technical School of Architecture, and by the Department of Environment, Regional Planning and Housing of the Basque Government, which is also promoting the Biennial as a whole. 

The course will be closed by Anne Lacaton. She is the founder of the French studio Lacaton&Vassal, which won this year’s ‘Mies van der Rohe Award’ given by the European Union. In fact, her work is part of the exhibition ‘Tabula non rasa’ which has been shown in recent months at the Basque Country Architecture Institute and will be exhibited again on account of the summer course in September.

Moreover, the course will gather a large group of professor as lecturers, such as Xabier Monteys (Barcelona), Gloria Ariztegui (Bordeaux), Zaida Muxi (Buenos Aires), Josep Ricart (Vallés), Plácido Lizancos (A Coruña), Fiona Pia (Lausanne), Alejandro Giménez (Barcelona), Eva Morales (Málaga), Kathrin Golda (Karlsruhe), Antón Pagola, Ibon Telleria, Jon Begiristain (UPV), as well as  Miriam Varela, Guillermo López, Jon Asua, Paul Basañez, David Juarez, David Bravo, Loic Geronnez, and the Director for Housing and Architecture of the Basque Government, Pablo García Astrain.