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The third edition of Mugak/ will start this week

  • It will be inaugurated on Wednesday 27th with a conversation between Carmen Pinós and the Biennial's curator, José Ángel Medina. The Catalan architect will star in the central exhibition of this edition, starting on Thursday at the Basque Institute of Architecture in San Sebastian.
  • Two other exhibitions will be presented on Thursday and Friday: one on the Peña Ganchegui Award 2021 and 'Arantzazu 70 urte', by COAVN, respectively.
  • The Biennial will extend its activities, all of them free of charge, throughout the month of November in the three Basque capitals.

The third edition of the Basque Country International Architecture Biennial  Mugak/ kicks off this week. Under the slogan 'Heritage and modernity', the great architecture event in the Basque Country will begin this Wednesday and will run until 30 November. Organised by the Basque Government's Department of Territorial Planning, Housing and Transport, and with the participation of 21 entities and associations, Mugak/ will offer almost a hundred cultural activities -all of them free of charge- in San Sebastian, Bilbao and Vitoria-Gasteiz.

The kick-off will take place on Wednesday 27 October, with an opening ceremony at the Teatro Principal in San Sebastian, which will host a conversation between the Catalan architect Carme Pinós and the Biennial's curator, José Ángel Medina. Access will be free for the public (with 50% reduced seating capacity) and with prior registration from tomorrow Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. on this link of the Donostia Kultura platform.

The talk will serve as a prelude to the opening of the main exhibition of this third edition of Mugak/, entitled 'Estudio Carme Pinós - Context and Concepts', which will open to the public on Thursday at the Basque Institute of Architecture.
 
Pinós is one of the few women to lead an architecture studio of international stature. The exhibition, which will be open until 27 February, will give the public an insight into her creative process, from the initial ideas or sketches to the construction process of each commission.
 
Two other exhibitions will be presented in San Sebastian this week. On Thursday, 28 October, 'Peña Ganchegui 2021 Prize for Young Basque Architecture' will open, organised by the Peña Ganchegui Archive and installed outside the Basilica of Santa María. On Friday, 29 October, it will be the turn of 'Arantzazu 70 urte', organised by the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos Vasco Navarro and installed in the D'museoa. 
 
Architecture will continue to spread throughout Donostia the following week. More exhibitions will open, such as 'Thinking the city', an exhibition and citizen participation project by Museum Cemento Rezola; the results of workshops such as 'Domos', by Espacio Réflex, whose participants will build a wooden dome in the cloister of the San Telmo Museum; and the first speakers of this edition, such as the Catalan Óscar Tusquets or Alberto Veiga, from Barozzi Veiga, will pass through Mugak/.
 
Bridges to Bilbao and Vitoria
 
This third edition of Mugak/ will take its exhibition programme to the three capitals of the Basque Country for the first time. Bilbao's turn will come in the second week of November, when the bulk of the Biennial's activity will be concentrated. Thus, the week of the 8th, the Biscayan capital will host exhibitions such as 'Las arquitecturas bilbaínas de Juan Daniel Fullaondo' (The Bilbao architectures of Juan Daniel Fullaondo) and visitors will be able to enjoy talks by great architects such as the Swiss Christian Kerez at the Bizkaia Aretoa or Fermín Vázquez at the Guggenheim Museum. 
 
Vitoria will be the focus of the Biennial's activities afterwards. The week of 15 November, the exhibition 'Housing the Basque Country' will be presented in the capital of Alava. In addition, Habic will bring its travelling exhibition 'Artesanos del diseño' to the Plaza del Machete, as well as screenings of its documentary, which tells the story of those who made design furniture a new industrial sector in the Basque Country.  In addition, the BiBat museum will host a conversation between the architect who designed it, Patxi Mangado, and the journalist Paco Valderrama.
 
The week of 22 November Mugak/ will once again focus on Donostia, where free activities will continue to bring architecture closer to the public. Among them, the exhibition 'The architecture of cinema in San Sebastian', by Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, or the children's workshop 'Trazados', by Maushaus. The Biennial will come to an end on the 30th, with the end of the Euskal Hiria congress at the Palacio Europa in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
 
All Mugak/ 2021 activities are free of charge.


The Programme is being prepared