The Big Bang
Author(s)
García-Abril, Antón
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Abstract
The Music Studies Centre and the SGAE Central Office in Santiago de Compostela, completed in
2004 and set in a masterplan by Arata Isosaki, sets out three walls which confront one another: a
monolithic stone wall of irregular ashlars of variable geometry and size which allow light to break
into the building; a translucent glass wall facing the street; and an interior wall made up of CDs. García-Abril describes his project, the Truffle, as ‘a piece of nature built with earth, full of air. A
space within a stone that sits on the ground and blends with the territory.’ The project involved
digging a hole and using the soil to form a dyke around it. This they filled with hay bales and
poured concrete over it, topping it with the soil. Once hardened, the resulting shape was exhumed
and sliced open, exposing the hay, which a cow spent a year eating, leaving the hardened shell to
make a comfortable if quirky holiday home. His latest project, the Cervantes Theatre in Mexico City completed in 2001, is buried underground,
marked only by a large metallic structure above ground. The excavated spaces are expressed as
a sequence of theatre lobbies at different levels open to the sky and protected by the symbolic
metal structure.
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Date
2013-11-20
Extent
98:44 minutes
Resource Type
Moving Image
Resource Subtype
Lecture