Introduction | Biography | Backgroung & Realizations: the projects | The Most Iconic Projects | Special Project: House of infinite | Alberto Campo Baeza Awards
Alberto Campos Baeza is a Spanish architect and Head Professor of Design at the School of Architecture of Madrid ETSAM since 1986.
He has received a great amount of awards for his projects, also his works were exhibited in the most important cities around the world and published in top architectural magazines.
He focuses in exploring new construction techniques to produce minimalist spaces.
He was born in Valladolid, where his grandfather was an architect, from the age of two he lived in Cadiz. From his father he inherited a spirit of analysis and from his mother the determination to be an architect. He has taught at the ETH in Zurich, the EPFL in Lausanne, the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Dublin, Naples, Virginia, Copenhagen, the BAUHAUS in Weimar, and at Kansas State University. Alberto’s works have been widely recognized, he has been awarded the HEINRICH TESSENOW GOLD MEDAL in 2012. In April 2013, Alberto has been awarded BRUNNER PRIZE IN ARCHITECTURE.
He lives in Madrid, where he went to study Architecture. His first professor was Alejandro de la Sota, who imbued in him the ESSENTIAL architecture that he is still trying to erect. He also had Julio Cano Lasso as professor, who very generously invited him to collaborate on some works. As well as Aburto and Cabrero. He wrote his Doctoral Thesis with Javier Carvajal and entered as a PROFESSOR, by the hand of Sáenz de Oíza, in the Madrid School of Architecture, the ETSAM UPM.
Background & Realizations: the projects
Baeza’s work is pretty neat and clean, he uses heavy materials but he just thinks about everything in a project in order to make it minimalist.
Spanish Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015
About light. Solid when light passes through the translucent light. This project reflects on the light in architecture. We can move forward on how to use the light , investigating new possibilities to control light precisely.
Light is the most luxurious materials architects work with and it is, most of the times, no valued. There can be no architecture without light, as there can be no air Music : Architecture Architecture sine luce nulla est.
The well dosed through holes in the upper horizontal plane , open skylights in the roof , or through holes in the vertical planes , the open windows in the walls , strong sunlight tight space created by the architect.
ALGHURAIR ALMINAR
A white tower in Dubai
Alberto Campo Baeza and his team was asked to design a 60-storey tower with a residential program of one, two and three bedroomed apartments with their corresponding facilities. A spacious terrace was suggested, given the climate of the city of Dubai.
The architectural layout is composed of strips arranged in a square floor plan open at the four points of the compass. An exterior terrace strip measuring 2.5 meters wide. A strip of living quarters and bedrooms 5 meters wide. A strip of service areas 2 meters wide and an interior strip for circulation 1.5 meters wide. All this is organized around a central square fitted with stairs and elevators for vertical circulation. In a crosswise direction the layout is arranged with a width modulation of 6 meters for the living quarters and 3 meters for the bedrooms.
The structure is simple and based on a central resistant nucleus connecting to a more capillary structure suitably arranged, as far as the facade. The installations, designed for residential use, are dispersed as much as possible, with each facade fitted with areas availing of direct external ventilation.
The facade is to be in translucent white glass with nuances depending on the various functions required. Where it has to cover opaque areas such as the floor structures for each storey it will be a more opaque white. In the exterior enclosure of the terraces it will be in a very translucent white capable of providing the terraces with both light and shade.
The terraces will be spacious and with luminous shade. The living quarters and bedrooms onto the terrace will be fitted with large sliding windows in transparent glass. The external finish of the terraces will be in white translucent glass in horizontal bands. We wanted the terraces to be reminiscent of “jaimas”, as if they were tents of white canvas. They should be a specific response to the climate of Dubai where they can be used as living areas for most of the year.
The tower will appear like the purest white translucent prism of the most elegant.
SISYPHUS
The weighty boulder above the head of Sisyphus provides us with an image that materializes the concept of gravity.
Building with stone is building with gravity, as Architecture has always done. So when architects discovered they could also build with light, that they could dominate it, they began to derive enjoyment from architecture, because it was then that the miracle occurred of light conquering gravity. Gravity and light, the two central themes of Architecture.
In this pavilion for PIBAMARMI we want to highlight the value of gravity, of the weight of the boulder over a man’s head: the myth of Sisyphus.
We placed a very large low-hanging stone suspended in the air under which the visitors to the pavilion must pass. An enormous stone measuring 4x4x1 m floating mysteriously and provocatively in the air.
We surround it with light with a veil of taut white silk forming a semi-cubic figure
Guerrero house
To build a well-balanced house full of light and shade. Campo Boeza and his team built very tall, 8 meter high, walls around a 33 x 18 meter rectangle and covered the central strip, 9 x 18 meters. Raised the ceiling of the 9 x 9 central square to the same height as the 8 meter high outside walls.
To fill this central space with shade, they opened it to the front and back, creating 3 meter deep porches that protect these openings from the sun, tempering the light. To either side, bedrooms and baths.
In the front courtyard, the entrance to the house, four orange trees mark the central and main axis, flanked by low walls that hide service areas. In the back courtyard, another four orange trees are similarly aligned. And at the end, carved into the ground, a trough like pond stretches from side to side. The house is the construction of a luminous shadow.
LITTLE WHITE BOX
Next to the “cubic white cabin” Campo Baeza built a little white box.
Some time ago he wrote a text entitled “Boxes, little boxes, big boxes”. And his first box-project that he created and built was Turégano House, in Pozuelo-Madrid, almost 25 years ago. A white cube measuring 10x10x10 meters: a “cubic white cabin”.
So now to celebrate the event after all these years Roberto Turégano y Alicia Sánchez, who are now more friends than clients, have asked him to build this new piece. Alicia Sánchez is one of the leading actresses of the Spanish stage and Roberto Turégano one of our foremost graphic designers. And this little piece will be his studio at the foot of his house.
The result is very simple: a little box measuring 10x5x3, as if it were a quarter of that cube. The new piece is in line with the existing one in its external walls and the use of the same stone floor ensures continuity with the house inside and outside Thus the two pieces are in complete harmony. The short external walls of the new white box are entirely open, transparent and continuous. A large circular skylight in the ceiling is the counterpoint to this spatial arrangement.
Special Project: House of infinite
House of infinite is a very special Project by Campo Baeza. It is located in Cádiz, Spain, facing the infinite sea. A house that is a podium crowned by na upper horizontal plane, bare and denuded. To materialize this elevated horizontal plane, which is the main living room of the house, it was built a large box with 20 meters of frontage and 36 meters deep. And under those first 12 meters we excavated two floors in the solid rock to develop the whole living space.
On the denuned stone platform, three walls surround us and protect us from the prevailing strong winds. Sometimes it is as if had opened a bag containing the winds Aeolus.
The images speak for itself, it is a great Project and full of thought:
2014
Full Member Section of Architecture
Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando
Spain
Mention. Spanish Architecture Award 2013
Office in Zamora
CSCAE
Spain
Architect of the year
Architectural Digest Awards
Spain
RIBA International Fellowship
Royal Institute of British Architects
London
2013
Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize
American Academy of Arts and Letters
USA
Tessenow Medal
Heinrich Tessenow Society
Hamburg
XII BEAU Award
Spanish Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism
Offices in Zamora
Ministerio de Fomento. Spain
Former Student of the year
Former Students Association
San Felipe Neri. Cádiz
Work of the year. Finalist
Offices in Zamora
Archdaily. Chile
AR House Awards. Highly Commended
Rufo House
The Architectural Review. London
Sources:
arch2o.com
archdaily.com
Roland Halbe
Javier Callejas
Fernando Alda
thesuperslice.con
forums.cgarchitect.com
trends.archiexpo.com
www.metalocus.es
wikipedia.org
fire2.net
archdaily.net
archdaily.com