The Biennial Mugak will welcome two Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates: Rafael Moneo and Álvaro Siza

2019 August 30

• On its 20th anniversary, the Kursaal has invited the architect from Navarre to participate in a meeting with Iñaki Gabilondo on the 28th of November. Moneo’s building will also host a show created by the School of Architecture summing up 25 years of proposals for the site called Solar K, on which the Kursaal’s two glass buildings stand now.
• The Portuguese architect will appear in San Telmo on the 31st of October, thanks to Peña Ganchegui Archive, taking part in a dialogue with the architect Carles Muro about their experience in church design.
• 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 Basque Country International Architecture Biennial Mugak/ will welcome two guests of honour this autumn: two of the most renowned architects in Europe, Rafael Moneo and Álvaro Siza.

Rafael Moneo has been invited by the managers of the Kursaal Palace, one of his most renowned works, which is celebrating 20 years after its opening. He will dialogue with the San Sebastian journalist Iñaki Gabilondo in the Kursaal’s Chamber Hall on the 28th of November. They will talk about the impact of the Kursaal as an economic driver and a transforming element of its environment, about the development of the building and the evolution of cities, citizenry, architecture and live. Registration will be open on the Kursaal’s web page in November.

The architect from Navarre was the first Spaniard to be awarded the Pritzker prize, in 1996. He graduated from the Superior Technical School of Architecture of Madrid, after collaborating in several projects with Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza. In the 1960s, he worked at Jørn Utzon’s office in Denmark, the author of the famous Sydney Opera House. He has taught in numerous and prestigious universities, such as Princeton or Harvard, won prizes such as the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts or the Mies van der Rohe Award for architecture, an accolade he received in recognition of the Kursaal in San Sebastian. In November, he will be returning to a city in which his architectural mark is present through the Kursaal itself, the Urumea dwellings, the Iesu church and the Diocesan Museum.

The dialogue in the Kursaal will coincide with an exhibition displayed in the same Congress Centre. It shows the result of the research conducted by a group of professors and students of the School of Architecture of the University of the Basque Country. The research work proposes a visual itinerary through some of the best solutions presented to the different competitions launched for the “Solar K” site over a 25-year period, where the present Congress Centre was finally planned and built by Moneo.

Siza and the Three Churches

Álvaro Siza, awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1992, will visit San Sebastian on the 31st of October to participate in the dialogue ‘Três Igrejas - Three Churches’, one of the activities programmed by the Peña Ganchegui Archive in the framework of the exhibition ‘Hiru Eliza- Three Churches’. The Basque Government through Mugak/ and the School of Architecture have also collaborated in the organisation of the show.

The Portuguese architect will talk to Carles Muro, an architecture professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan and the architecture curator of the Serralves Museum in Porto. At the San Telmo Museum (one Mugak/ Biennial’s venues), the Portuguese Pritzker winner will show his personal vision of the present religious space through churches such as the ones he built in Marco de Canaveses and Barão de São João, both in Portugal, or the one in the French city of Rennes.

Siza is the author of many other renowned works, such as the restaurant Casa de Cha da Boa Nova and the Leça de Palmeira swimming pools, both in Matosinhos, the Schlesisches tor Housing in Berlin and the Porto School of Architecture. He participated in the reconstruction project of Lisbon’s historic centre after the 1988 fire. That year, he was awarded the first European Prize for Architecture Mies Van der Rohe in recognition of the Borges & Irmo bank in Vila do Conde (1982-1986). Besides, he won the National Architecture Prize awarded by the Association of Portuguese Architects in 1993 and received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). He is also the author of the Auditorium of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, also know as Bizkaia Aretoa.

Around a Hundred Activities

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.

Mugak/ is promoted by the Department for Environment, Land Planning and Housing of the Basque Government in collaboration with other administrations and entities of the cultural and architecture fields. Among them, we can find the San Sebastian City Council, the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council, the University of the Basque Country through the Higher Technical School of Architecture, the Professional Association of Basque-Navarre Architects, the Basque Country Architecture Institute and the San Telmo Museum, among others.

This time, its main seat will be located in the Basque Country Architecture Institute (IAE), located in the Santa Teresa convent. 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.