TAC! Festival opens in Donostia the first of the three pavilions of the fourth edition of Mugak/

2023 October 10

Photo: Mikel Blasco

• The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA) and the Arquia Foundation in collaboration with the International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country Mugak/, presented this morning in Sagüés Lost Forest, the winning pavilion of the competition of the second edition of the architecture festival, the work of the architects Julia Ruiz-Cabello Subiela and Santiago del Águila.
• The pavilion, built with burnt tree trunks, aims to transfer the reality of forest fires and their consequences to the urban environment, raising awareness of this problem.
• This architecture festival, which will be held in Donostia-San Sebastián until 13 November, will host a multitude of cultural activities under the pavilion, which will become a meeting point for contemporary architecture and sustainability.
• The second edition of TAC! Festival of Urban Architecture is being held in parallel in Valencia and Donostia-San Sebastián under the premise of exploring the role of architecture in the face of climate challenges in the urban environment.

The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA) and the Arquia Foundation, in collaboration with the International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country Mugak/, presented this morning the second edition of TAC! Festival of Urban Architecture at its headquarters in San Sebastian. The event kicks off with the inauguration of the temporary Lost Forest pavilion, the work of the Madrid architects Julia Ruiz-Cabello Subiela and Santiago del Águila, which was chosen through a public competition and will remain installed in Sagüés until 13 November.

TAC! Festival of Urban Architecture is holding its second edition this autumn in two Spanish cities, Valencia and Donostia-San Sebastian. The initiative, promoted by the General Secretariat of Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA) together with the Arquia Foundation, seeks to explore in this edition the role of architecture in the face of the impact of the climate emergency on the urban environment, providing solutions that help mitigate its consequences. In addition, the Festival also enjoys the collaboration of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

In its San Sebastian edition, the festival is collaborating with the Department of Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport of the Basque Government, the Habic cluster, the Basque Institute of Architecture and the Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country. The latter is hosting the fourth edition of the programme of public activities that will take place under the pavilion.

Lost Forest, the winning project through a public call aimed at young architecture professionals, now occupies the Sagüés esplanade, a place between the urban and the natural where sea, mountain and city converge. The pavilion aims to bring the reality of forest fires to the urban environment and draw attention to this problem head-on. The proposal is inspired by the morphology of Mount Urgull, a sculptural symbol and lung of the city, to confront it as an iconic structure made up of burnt tree trunks. 

Iñaqui Carnicero, general secretary of the Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture of MITMA and promoter of the initiative, wanted to emphasise that architecture can address some of the great challenges facing our society, such as the climate emergency, energy efficiency and people's health and well-being.

"The climate crisis we are facing or the pandemic we have suffered in recent years have shown how architecture can address issues related to health or climate change, especially if we take into account that 40% of CO2 emissions are produced by buildings," he said.

"The young architects of our country, who are highly valued internationally, are fully aware of this potential and therefore the administrations must support them through initiatives such as the TAC! Festival of Urban Architecture", he stressed.

For her part, Nuria Matarredona, Director General of Architecture and Urban Agenda of MITMA, stated that "it is essential to promote innovation to face current challenges, such as the climate emergency", who also stressed the importance of initiatives such as TAC!, "which generate opportunities for young talent, offering them the chance to build their first high-impact public work".

 

Architecture to help mitigate the effects of climate change

In its second edition, TAC! has proposed as a central reflection to address the challenges of architecture to help combat the climate emergency in our cities. This was the theme under which the public competition for ideas for the construction of the pavilions in Valencia and Donostia-San Sebastián was opened in March. 

The result of the call for ideas was a reflection of the great sensitivity of the new generations of professionals, receiving highly innovative solutions to the challenge posed. The use of sustainable and reusable materials, the renaturalisation of the city, the dialogue between landscaping and architecture, the economy of means or the reinterpretation of traditional architectural elements usually used to mitigate the effects of climate are some examples of the great diversity of themes explored by the projects received.

"The aim is to bring architecture to the street, to turn it into a living and adaptable experience, and to cultivate a deep sense of belonging to the place among future generations," said Sol Candela, director of the Arquia Foundation. In this context, "TAC! becomes a tool for learning and experimentation, where visitors are active creators of the work, allowing for constant evolution and a living space".

In this sense, Javier Peña, artistic director of TAC! Festival of Urban Architecture, emphasised that "knowledge about the climate crisis and the need to bequeath a better planet are issues that young people are aware of TAC! becomes a tool that allows them to experiment".

 

Lost Forest, a pavilion of burnt trees to raise awareness of forest fires

The Lost Forest pavilion, by the Madrid architects Julia Ruiz-Cabello Subiela and Santiago Del Águila, was the winner of this year's ideas competition open to young professionals, to which 125 projects were submitted. To build the pavilion, burnt tree trunks have been used to create a structure inspired by the morphology of Mount Urgull.

Sculptural in nature, it is also a space of refuge that seeks to remain in the memory of those who visit it and to question our disconnection and distancing from this reality, bringing a fragment of Lost forest closer to the city in the form of a passable monument.

The temporary building has been constructed by grouping 4-metre-long stacked trunks to form a volume of about 1,000 stereos, the equivalent in weight of about 500 tonnes. The species is laricio pine from the eight fires that devastated almost 15,000 hectares in Navarre in June 2022. "We understand our pavilion as a place of transit and contemplation, a sensory stroll through the majesty of nature which, although burnt, continues to create spaces for reflection", emphasised Julia Ruiz-Cabello Subiela and Santiago Del Águila.

The jury highlighted the proposal for "its singularity in incorporating a relevant theme, such as forest fires and their consequences in the current situation of the climate crisis, through the material and a modular system that gives it an iconic character. The pavilion offers at the same time a space for shelter and contemplation, in dialogue with the large scale of the Sagüés esplanade, the city, the sea and the mountain". 

 

Activities under the umbrella of the Mugak/ Biennial will open up a reflection on architecture, sustainability and public space.

Within the framework of the Mugak/ International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country, organised by the Basque Government's Department of Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport, the pavilion will host a programme of free public activities until 13 November. María Arana, the curator of the biennial, commented that "the Sagüés space is complex due to its size, but it has a clear positive aspect, and that is that it is a space with little design, which allows many things to happen". She also recalls that "architecture has to recover its social function because it has many capacities to reconnect us not only as a society but also with the current environmental and social context".

For his part, Pedro Jauregui, Deputy Minister of Housing of the Basque Government, pointed out that "the collaboration between the fourth edition of Mugak/ and TAC! Festival comes at a time when the International Architecture Biennial of the Basque Country is maturing to become the benchmark event in the Atlantic Arc in terms of dialogue between architecture and the public and other disciplines".

In addition, Marisol Garmendia, Second Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Economy, Local Employment and Ecology, stressed "the commitment of the city of Donostia-San Sebastián to ecology and the climate crisis. We at the City Council want to improve the lives of citizens and we participate in projects that seek to minimise the impact of our actions on the environment. In this pavilion, we will be reflecting on public space and climate change". 

The main challenge of the programme, hosted within the Mugak/ Biennial, will be to experiment with public space and its integrating potential through open activities that have as a background the reflection on sustainability and architecture.

The pavilion will be the venue for several talks such as the one to be given by Mónica Parrilla, a member of Greenpeace, on major forest fires or on wood week, a workshop given by José María Torres Nadal under the title 'Ecologizar es dar visa a la cultura de la tierra', the premiere of the documentary Elementuak by Impro Films, hosted as part of the cultural programme of the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the EU, and a performance by the artist Koldobika Jauregui.

The programme is completed with an exhibition at the Espacio Añarbe, where a selection of outstanding projects submitted to the ideas competition will be on display, both for its Valencian and Donostia headquarters, a set of projects that have provided highly original responses to the challenges of the climate emergency.