Papers by Sergio Martín Blas
It’s no surprise that Corbu would emphatically praise the monastic virtues – those associated wit... more It’s no surprise that Corbu would emphatically praise the monastic virtues – those associated with the well-known English college model – of a student residence such as the one built in Madrid between 1913 and 1918. Not for nothing had the committed first director of the Residencia, Alberto Jiménez Fraud, visited England in order to study the tutorial model between 1907 and 1909, and one of its tutors, Alfonso Reyes, would refer to the new complex as ‘Oxford and Cambridge in Madrid’. But appearances, as well as declarations, may in this case be deceiving. Planned by architect Antonio Flórez Urdapilleta and later completed by Francisco Javier de Luque, the Residencia de Estudiantes, if undoubtedly sharing grounds with the concept of the English college, also embodied a larger number of features in frank opposition to the latter. First and foremost, its pedagogical approach: the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institute of Education; ILE), which inspired the project, considered d...
La casa: Espacios domésticos, modos de habitar, 2019, ISBN 978-84-17301-24-8, págs. 748-759, 2019
La dialéctica entre casa y monumento ha sido un motivo de reflexión central para los arquitectos ... more La dialéctica entre casa y monumento ha sido un motivo de reflexión central para los arquitectos desde principios del siglo XX, relacionado con la búsqueda del lenguaje, tono y decoro apropiados para la arquitectura moderna. La ciudad de Roma ha sido un campo de pruebas especialmente fértil a este respecto, no sólo por su papel instrumental para confirmar o negar dichas jerarquías, sino también por ser objeto de posiciones extremas durante el siglo XX, desde el monumentalismo más enfático hasta el neoralismo. Esta condición ha eclipsado la ambigüedad de relaciones entre domesticidad y persistencia material de los monumentos que la misma ciudad ha albergado y promovido de manera inconsciente: finalmente, la especificidad del habitar romano puede atribuirse a la yuxtaposición y la infiltración de lo doméstico entre los monumentos, consecuencia de prácticas que pueden ser analizadas y codificadas como fuente de inspiración para el proyecto contemporáneo.The dialectic between monument and house has been a central issue since the late XIXth century, a battlefield for architects in search of the appropriate language, tone, and decorum for modern architecture. The city of Rome has been a specially fruitful testing field in this sense, instrumental to confirm or deny such hierarchies and its validation in architectural practice. Ultimately, this referential place has produced extreme positions, from emphatic monumentality to neo-realism, but has also promoted an often overlooked ambiguity of relations between domesticity and the material persistence of monument. A specificity of Roman dwelling can ultimately be traced in the bleak yuxtaposition and infiltration of dwelling in the remnants of old and new monuments, a consequence of practices that should be understood and codified as a source of inspiration for contemporary housing design
Frontiers of Architectural Research
Rassegna di Architettura e Urbanistica, 2020
A future communal living has been repeatedly devised in 20th century housing architecture, driven... more A future communal living has been repeatedly devised in 20th century housing architecture, driven by the aim to supersede both the old patterns of family or tribal associations, and the rising individualism in urban societies. The tension between imagination (project) and reality arises as one of the constants in that historical experience, together with the tacit search for balances between a sense of participation in shared assignments (communitas), and the rights of personal retreat, exclusion, distance and isolation (immunitas). The article explores such tension as a precious source for collective housing design, starting from the extreme case of the soviet shared apartments (kommunalki) and the subsequent experimental projects since the 1920s. Almost one hundred years later, in 2020, the utopian overtones of modern collective housing, revealed by the pervasive presence of children and young people in its iconography and discourses, must be revised: communal living utopias and their once ideally young dwellers converge again in their old age, pointing the need to find new residential forms and shared living ideals.
Casas en Suiza, 2012
Breve reseña y análisis sobre el método de evaluación del valor de uso de la vivienda en Suiza / ... more Breve reseña y análisis sobre el método de evaluación del valor de uso de la vivienda en Suiza / A short account on the use value assessment method for housing in Switzerland.
paper presented at International Seminar on Urban Form (Guangzhou China), Sep 8, 2009
Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) argued that a strong, "visible, coherent, and clear" u... more Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) argued that a strong, "visible, coherent, and clear" urban image is the foundation of a livable, attractive urban environment. Has the scale and speed of urbanization since 1960 made Lynch’s idea of a clear, unified urban image obsolete? In Managing the Sense of a Region (1976) and A Theory of Good City Form (1981) Lynch anticipates the need for a more complex and multivalent idea of the urban image and proposes a line of research. How do qualities like ambiguity, instability, accident, intricacy, and “unfoldingness” help to create a strong urban image? Drawing upon our research and the work and writings of contemporary architects and theorists including Bernardo Secchi, John Hejduk, Manuel de Solà-Morales, Roberto Collovà, and Carsten Juel-Christiansen, we propose that a lack of morphological clarity does not prevent citizens of fast-growing metropolitan regions from establishing the identity of their city in more complex ways, from navigating by alternate mental maps.
Lotus International Issn 1124 9064 2011 Vol N 148, 2011
Published in: Lotus International, 148, 2011, p. 90-101
Published in: Cavallo, Roberto et al., "New Urban Configurations", IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2014
VIVIENDA OBRERA EN LA CIUDAD INDUSTRIAL DEL SIGLO XX, 2015
Publicado en: Álvarez Areces (Ed.), Vivienda Obrera en la Ciudad Industrial del Siglo XX, TICCIH ... more Publicado en: Álvarez Areces (Ed.), Vivienda Obrera en la Ciudad Industrial del Siglo XX, TICCIH España, Gijón, 2015
VIVIENDA OBRERA EN LA CIUDAD INDUSTRIAL DEL SIGLO XX, 2015
Publicado en: Álvarez Areces (Ed.), Vivienda Obrera en la Ciudad Industrial del Siglo XX, TICCIH ... more Publicado en: Álvarez Areces (Ed.), Vivienda Obrera en la Ciudad Industrial del Siglo XX, TICCIH España, Gijón, 2015
From John Ruskin to John Turner, from PREVI-Lima to the Argentinian experiences of the 70s (Vícto... more From John Ruskin to John Turner, from PREVI-Lima to the Argentinian experiences of the 70s (Víctor Pelli), from the Elemental projects (Aravena & CO) in Chile to recent Do-it-yourself housing in Europe, this paper aims to shed light on the idea of freedom for the user-builder and the architectural definition of social housing.
Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) argued that a strong, visible, coherent, and clear urb... more Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City (1960) argued that a strong, visible, coherent, and clear urban image is the foundation of a livable, attractive urban environment.
Has the scale and speed of urbanization since 1960 made Lynch’s idea of a clear, unified urban image obsolete? In Managing the Sense of a Region (1976) and A Theory of Good City Form (1981) Lynch anticipates the need for a more complex and multivalent idea of the urban image and proposes a line of research. How do qualities like ambiguity, instability, accident, intricacy, and “unfoldingness” help to
create a strong urban image? Drawing upon our research and the work and writings of contemporary architects and theorists including Bernardo Secchi, John Hejduk, Manuel de Solà-Morales, Roberto Collovà, and Carsten Juel-Christiansen, we propose that a lack of morphological clarity does not prevent citizens of fast-growing metropolitan regions from establishing the identity of their city in more complex ways, from navigating by alternate mental maps.
Books by Sergio Martín Blas
Publicado en Segovia, Marrades, Rausell, Abeledo, "Espacios para la Creatividad, la Innovación y ... more Publicado en Segovia, Marrades, Rausell, Abeledo, "Espacios para la Creatividad, la Innovación y la Cultura", Universidad de Valencia, 2015
Publicado en Burgos, F., Garrido, G., Porras-Isla, F. (Eds.), Paisajes en la Ciudad: Madrid Río: ... more Publicado en Burgos, F., Garrido, G., Porras-Isla, F. (Eds.), Paisajes en la Ciudad: Madrid Río: Geografía, Infraestructura y Espacio Público, Turner, Madrid, 2014
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Papers by Sergio Martín Blas
Has the scale and speed of urbanization since 1960 made Lynch’s idea of a clear, unified urban image obsolete? In Managing the Sense of a Region (1976) and A Theory of Good City Form (1981) Lynch anticipates the need for a more complex and multivalent idea of the urban image and proposes a line of research. How do qualities like ambiguity, instability, accident, intricacy, and “unfoldingness” help to
create a strong urban image? Drawing upon our research and the work and writings of contemporary architects and theorists including Bernardo Secchi, John Hejduk, Manuel de Solà-Morales, Roberto Collovà, and Carsten Juel-Christiansen, we propose that a lack of morphological clarity does not prevent citizens of fast-growing metropolitan regions from establishing the identity of their city in more complex ways, from navigating by alternate mental maps.
Books by Sergio Martín Blas
Has the scale and speed of urbanization since 1960 made Lynch’s idea of a clear, unified urban image obsolete? In Managing the Sense of a Region (1976) and A Theory of Good City Form (1981) Lynch anticipates the need for a more complex and multivalent idea of the urban image and proposes a line of research. How do qualities like ambiguity, instability, accident, intricacy, and “unfoldingness” help to
create a strong urban image? Drawing upon our research and the work and writings of contemporary architects and theorists including Bernardo Secchi, John Hejduk, Manuel de Solà-Morales, Roberto Collovà, and Carsten Juel-Christiansen, we propose that a lack of morphological clarity does not prevent citizens of fast-growing metropolitan regions from establishing the identity of their city in more complex ways, from navigating by alternate mental maps.