A wooden dome presides over the cloister of the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian
2021 November 2
- The 'Expanded Architectures' project, promoted by Espacio Reflex together with MIDOMO, organised two participatory dome-building workshops over the long weekend.
- A total of 25 participants of different ages and nationalities have built two domes in San Sebastian: one in the San Telmo Museum and another in the Altxerri art gallery.
- This week the Mugak/ Biennial will bring internationally renowned architects to San Sebastian: the French Rudy Ricciotti, the Catalan Óscar Tusquets, the Galician Alberto Veiga, the Mallorcan studio TEd'A Arquitectes and the Donostia-based VAUMM?
The 'Expanded Architectures' project organised two citizen participation workshops this weekend in San Sebastian to learn how to build wooden domes or cupolas. Both have resulted in two structures: the first, in the cloister of the San Telmo Museum; the second, in the Altxerri gallery. This initiative of Espacio Reflex, together with MIDOMO, as part of the Biennial Mugak/, has organised three days to teach participants how to build this type of geodesic structure.
This past weekend, 30 and 31 October, work was carried out in the cloister of the San Telmo Museum in Donostia. There, people of different ages - from young people to retired people - and nationalities - there were participants from Mexico and Colombia - acquired some theoretical basics about the domes. They then moved on to practice, building a wooden dome seven metres in diameter and three and a half metres high.
Yesterday, Monday the 1st, a second day of the workshop worked on the domes in the Altxerri Gallery, where the participants built a second dome three metres in diameter and 1.70 metres high. Both structures will be installed until 20 November.
"The domes are spaces that make us reflect on another way of living and inhabiting, that put us in relation to the context. The dome protects us and, at the same time, presents the world to us as a celestial dome. It reminds us that we live on a sphere, which is the Earth", explained the director of Espacio Reflex, Juan Aizpitarte.
Mario Turégano, from MIDOMO, was in charge of the workshops: "With this course, the participants acquire the minimum knowledge to be able to build their own dome. When we finish building the whole, at the end of the workshop, they all climb on top of it and experience the energy and the capacity of this structure to generate links and synergies", he emphasised.
Proliferation of expanded architectures
The third Mugak/ Biennial arrives in a scenario of new normality after a pandemic that has shaken the world. Social relations, ways of working, leisure and all aspects of life have been questioned; this has also been the case with art and architecture.
The workshops were part of the project 'Expanded Architectures', the proposal of Espacio Reflex for this third Biennial. The starting point is the idea of decentralisation of the city, the flight to the periphery, the rediscovery of local autonomy. An example would be the baserris (farmhouses), the smallest and most traditional production unit in the Basque Country. The project deals with the new relationship between the architectural dimension of the expanded farmhouse and the way of life in the areas bordering the urban and the natural, "areas where yurts, tippis or domes, ancestral structures, are proliferating to provide new uses to cover new post-pandemic needs. We wanted to teach this phenomenon, which allows us to reconnect and become aware in order to learn how to manage primary needs", explained Aizpitarte.
In addition to teaching people how to build their own dome, a lecture on how film and television have shaped the idea of 'city' was held on Saturday at the Institute of Architecture by audiovisual producer and professor Andrés Hispano. In addition, the film 'Drop city', about the largest community ever to live in domes, specifically metal domes in Colorado, was screened.
New week of Mugak/
The Biennial kicks off its second week. This afternoon, the activities move to Tabakalera, where the meeting 'Confluencias x MAYRIT: prácticas fluidas' (Confluences x MAYRIT: fluid practices) will take place. Mayrit, on the one hand, is a biennial design event, a platform for generating content and a network of opportunities and care for the collective of designers in Madrid. Confluences' is a programme that accompanies Mayrit between editions, which seeks to generate a map of the ecosystem of thought in the national context and not lose the connection with the essential agents on the scene. In Tabakalera, you will be able to enjoy talks by Ainhoa Garmendia, Igor Bragado and the Moduz collective.
More conferences will bring prominent architects from the international scene to Donostia. This week they will be concentrated at the Basque Institute of Architecture, where the VAUMM and TEd'A Arquitectes studios will be present on Wednesday 3; Alberto Veiga, from Barozzi Veiga, on Thursday 4; and Óscar Tusquets and Rudy Ricciotti on Friday 5.
One of the European architecture events will also take place this week in San Sebastian. It will be at the Kursaal, where the Europan Europe congress will begin on the 5th. This is the 'international forum of cities', which accompanies each edition of the competition and serves to analyse and debate the substance of the issues raised in the light of the proposals received in each edition, and also the specific advances of the winners of the previous edition, already underway by the young promises of European architecture.
This year's first publication, the book 'San Sebastian from A to Z', by Maushaus, will also be presented on the 5th at the Institute of Architecture. It will be in a format that aims to break with the frontality of this type of event and involve those attending by means of a workshop and a tour of the Old Part of San Sebastian.
For professionals in architecture, design, specialised media or the manufacture of solutions for offices, among others, who would like a space for participation, the Habic cluster is organising the workshop 'Designing workspaces' at Tabakalera on the 3rd.
In addition, a new exhibition will be inaugurated: 'Thinking the city', by Museum Cemento Rezola, which can be visited from the 4th at its headquarters in Añorga.