Perhaps now — while we are all in mourning for the loss of our friend — is not the right time to speak of the architectural work of Enric Miralles. There was something all-embracing in his character that made one tend — mistakenly — to confuse it with his works. He believed that his view of architecture could help bring about a freer and more beautiful world, and he devoted every effort to producing such a world. Without doubt, in my own mind, his work and his character are bound together — because I have always been under the spell of the memory of how he came to this profession. But the main object of these lines is to discuss Miralles' work. I am well aware of the risk in that task; at the same time, I imagine Enric would have liked to know what someone who once had the great honour of being his teacher, and then his friend, makes of his work.
Let me say at the outset that Enric Miralles' architectural method — which reveals the very substance of his searches — is already visible in his early works. What he learned at the studio of Piñón and Viaplana — mentioning this origin is, in this particular case, necessary — helped him to take up a kind of architecture in which, above all, the fullest possible use of the environment is valued; and it trained him in bringing this very point out in schemes where slanted, deflected spaces predominated. Some of his works in competitions — in which Miralles took part as a collaborator of Piñón and Viaplana — among them the Plaça dels Països Catalans, the Valencia College of Architecture, the Besòs Park, and the town halls of Alcoi, Alcañiz, Quiona and Lugo, are images of a kind of twofold architecture: on the one hand, the overall scheme of the building's parts marks his rational commitment to economy and brevity; on the other, their urban face goes beyond mere structural function by tying the project into the neighbourhood and the city.
These projects were, to a degree — but not wholly — a prelude to the path Enric Miralles would later have to travel. The style of his work is already clear in those early projects: the La Llauna school, the Igualada cemetery, the Parets del Vallès bandstand, the Hostalets social centre, and the Morella boarding school. I have referred only to works that, as far as we know, were built in collaboration with Carme Pinós. These works contain audacious innovations; one of them — which, I believe, encompasses everything to the utmost — is essential for grasping his way of work: the certainty that architecture will not be sacrificed to its surroundings was a thought that occupied him throughout his professional life. Enric Miralles' architectural world was a living, passionate world, a world folded and branching. In my view, he held it a duty to activate space, and for that reason avoided every kind of stillness and stasis.
What was the cause of his tendency to dissolve the building into its environment and to do away with every sort of bond to fragments? What does it mean when he writes, "In my projects, you can seldom take the result as arising from the shape of the parts"? Using wholly formal explanations — which will have to be set out in the next stage — one might say: his aim from the start was to attain a grasp of architecture from an all-round perspective. He wanted to change architecture — the whole. An architectural work, a building, is only a beginning for changing the environment around us.
"What interests me is a kind of adding. An endless blending and integration — adding from one side and integrating from the other." This sentence — with which his interview with Alejandro Zaera ended, published in the 1995 El Croquis monograph — appears in his earliest works. In a project such as La Llauna, the old industrial building becomes home to elements such as stairs, partitions, diaphragms, and so on, which, with criteria very loosely related to the overall order of the existing structure, are transformed upon a surface, and only when we reach a difficult unity do we see that the argument between these two is the birth of a new experience, one that can hardly be called architecture. It is the fruit of Enric Miralles' very "adding." In Igualada and Morella too, the situation is the same — although the scope of the scheme in these two cases makes us speak of a transformation or a new reading of the environment. In this reading, the environment is both the point of departure and the end of architecture.
Enric Miralles was well aware of this monism that inspired his architecture. This monism — which has deep roots in Western culture after Spinoza — allows us to say that architecture always tends toward absolute creativity. In my view, the boundlessness of Miralles' generous, ardent personality is evident in the works that must be taken as witnesses of his monist view — in many of his works — and it binds structure and nature together.
Enric did not intend to wait for his trees to grow up. He had fully recognised that he could not. Consequently, from the start of his professional career, he filled empty spaces, the entrances of railway stations and other public buildings, with dead plants made of iron and wood. It is enough to recall many instances where he insisted on this peculiar manner of "planting": he probably first tried it at the Parets del Vallès bandstand, and then continued it in many other places — the Huesca sports hall, Icaria street, Unazuki square, projects for the Hanover and Frankfurt exhibitions, the Takaoka station entrances, and so on.
The tendency to mix the architectural creation with its surroundings meant that the way his projects were executed was wholly unique and all his own. Miralles, in his interview with Zaera, pointed to the core of his working method: "I never have a preliminary scheme or idea of what I want to build. I always work from horizontal drawings, not from three-dimensional sketches or section drawings." It is quite clear in every published work of his that we are dealing with horizontal plans. His books include plans like those of a geographical atlas. I am certain he would have liked his drawings to be compared with a cartographer's. Through these very plans we can find, in his compositions, the trace and mark of what he learned in his school of architecture: linear structures, parallel systems, the definition of between-spaces with curved arcs, and so on — all these elements connected and bound together by capillary structures.
In my view, this is not as similar to a roof beam as it is to a line. In a project one must know how to connect many lines, and many branches running in many directions. This kind of view — describing the world as a set of lines, like a world of railway-junction points — makes the overall scheme dominate the volume. The horizontal plan does away with sections. Section cutting is an outdated form for showing vertical elevations — unless we wish to work by the classical methods, with foundation and capital. Enric Miralles considers his particular space as the space produced by the overlapping of surfaces, and describes his way of working thus: "From the very first steps I draw the plans on different levels, and the surfaces are definitely built accordingly. The three-dimensional form comes only at the end of this work and never gives a shape before the surfaces are completed." This building method in architecture — which he used throughout his professional life — he invented in the very earliest stages of his career.
It is a mistake to equate his work with the discovery of a new production mechanism and to use his invention instead of a defined design process. The definition of new structures — at which Miralles was very adept — was done on the basis of more complex, subtler personal qualities. His architecture has an astonishing physicality. Rarely can one grasp the endless persuasion of an architect in bringing ideas to manifestation as one does with Miralles' work. "In my work, ideas are a physical product." One of his constant preoccupations was to show the nature of the materials he used. His strength in making us see the nature of the materials employed is among the most valued features of Miralles' architecture.
From the beginning of his career, he insisted on making the value of the materials employed come out: wood, steel, brick. He enjoyed finding a way to make materials appear, and in some cases this even became the most striking aspect of his architecture. Above all he liked to make it possible for materials to be put to new uses; this sometimes led to "invention," and Miralles truly became an inventor of materials. Looking again at the Igualada cemetery, one will notice that Miralles was the first to recognise the value of the gabion wall and the stone net, and those materials have since been widely used. On the other hand, one of his last works — the Mollet house — shows how brick can still create new textures. Fundamentally his architecture strives to avoid simulation and, above all, to be a real experience.
What Enric Miralles pursued was the activity and the product of the architect's work. Thus he could tell us: "I feel I am a partner of a tradition that, besides thinking, also values action and making." His beautiful models — some of which can truly be counted as works of art — must not be mistaken for sculpture. They should be the driving force of architectural construction. Miralles himself said plainly that his drawings and models were construction documents. His architecture, without subtraction, is born of these very documents. He drew; he built models, so as then to think about architecture. The space of his parts is three-dimensional. His architecture has a particular, non-centralised state; visualising it — if not impossible — is very difficult. In place of visualisation, there is the document.
Line is the reversal of shadow; a truth that could not be drawn by shadow. The lines of his works and models want to be documents, and at the same time they may count as the hand of an artist. "I work by structural criteria, not objective criteria. For that reason repetition is very important to me, because every new overall scheme performs an abstract act, and the laws that arise during the process have a kind of inner coherence. For this reason geometry — as a tool for binding parts in very special situations — matters greatly to me, because it allows me to forget so that I may make things in a way that is less recognisable. There is no doubt about geometry, but structure and construction are of the same kind." One might say that geometry, structure and construction are chained by the architect and make the thought behind the curtain so much in accord with the laws of art: ornamentation.
Evidence of this may be found in the joists of La Llauna, the slanting pieces over the entrance door, in the Igualada cemetery, in the light-wells over the Igualada concrete beam, in the stairs and ramps of Morella, and so on. Using Panofsky's term, we can say that symbolic triangulation is dominant in Enric Miralles' architecture. For geometry, structure and construction — as he told us — are not merely instruments: they are also, and perhaps in the first place, symbols and signs. "My attachment to geometry, structure and construction as instruments for realising the project is greater than to image and ornament." In corners of his richest achievements, the trace and importance of ornament — which is still a matter of method and routine — disappears under the influence of poetic allusions. The various parts of his architecture, like the words of a poem, step out from the dry realm of function and building and take us to lands where architecture has not hitherto dwelt.
Miralles' architecture reaches its peak. Once more the Igualada cemetery expresses my point well. The comparison of life to a river that bears us toward death is fully felt at the Igualada cemetery, the moment one notices that the paving has turned the environment into a dead, standing current. Walls of containing stones — like the bed of a current that has ceased to move. The boards that cover the ground surface are silent witnesses to the coming-apart that death brings. The Igualada boards make us feel the presence of those who were once with us, and in this way make the space sacred and spiritual. When one notices the standing-still of this current — and it registers in our mind through boards as numerous as those buried in the enclosure — the concept of life eludes us. The poetic spirit — which can only be the legacy of the word — is often visible in Enric Miralles' work.
His attitude to being — as something which has not reached its final form, and as a truth whose most distinctive feature is continual evolution — made him say: "I firmly believe that projects never end; they only enter successive stages which perhaps we do not control." It seems that such an understanding of the project was the expression of his experience of architecture — shaping a world by gradual evolution. This perhaps explains why his work turns away from limit and is wavy, flowing and open. His work has a beginning but knows no end. What is interesting here is the dawning awareness of the age, which in any case finds expression in every built physical entity. "Your work does not end with creating a physical entity in a moment; every physical entity that was already there and shaped the place must also be considered."
His view in this respect is like Frank O. Gehry's. There is an essential difference: for Miralles, the unfinished and not-yet-completed character of work was not an aesthetic matter but the only possible way. His understanding of the world and of life had pushed him to this belief — or one could say, his understanding of time. "We build something at a given time, but what we build will soon demand another form." For this reason, in conversation with Militenon and Luis Moreno, he said, "Any structure that wishes to endure against the passage of time is, by definition, a continuous dynamic."
All the ideas set out support the assumption that when examining Miralles' architecture, one must take all his works together, and not as separate projects. In other words, I want to regard all his works as a single whole, as if all his works and achievements belonged to a single, permanent project. When Miralles published his works in a book edited by Benedetta Tagliabue in 1996, he stated: "[...] In going beyond an abstract and comparing these projects, I want to show that they are repetitive operations. A fluid flow takes them in entirely, and, by forming common themes, adapting individual situations and weaving together different programmes, it binds them in a shared flow. The newer projects connect with the older works in this way: they want, through the precise construction of a visualisation, to give concrete form to the stuff and substance of a solution."
In the recent days that I have been studying carefully the published documents on Miralles' stunning works, it seems very difficult to me to want to mark out their differences. The project has always been one and the same — what the transparent, unique vessel of his architectural ideas dictated to him from the very beginning of his work. This explains the constant movement of elements from one project to another, which he himself described clearly: "In my work there is always this movement of information from one project to another, as if the research work were taking place simultaneously in different areas." Or when, in an interview, he confesses that "[...] projects, as they come to an end, remind you of things that you have also used in other situations."
For Enric Miralles, design and architecture meant a generous tribute to life, to the world, to the discovery of materials, to their injection into the flow of structures, and to placing them in the transparent space in which he loved to live. His works and his buildings have been left unfinished, but this should not dishearten us. The hand of fate has deprived us of the pleasure we should have taken from his future works. Those of us who admire his work are certain that at least the Scottish Parliament and the Venice School of Architecture will soon come into being; many others will remain only as projects. Enric Miralles' works, like his own expectation of his projects, are unfinished. But this does not mean that his passionate lessons are not yet formulated: they are present, one by one, in all his projects, and streaks of perfection may be seen in his works.
Edinburgh Parliament, Scotland — 1998, First Prize
"A parliament belongs to a land. Scotland is a land, not a collection of cities. The parliament must be the future of the entire face of its land. We will not forget that the Scottish Parliament is being built in Edinburgh, but will belong to the land of Scotland.
How will this building differ from the other parliaments of Europe? Rather than a great, striking building — important only for its dimensions and original forms — we looked at this project psychologically. What is the mental image of the new parliament? How will the new parliament be evoked in the minds of us citizens?
The parliament must embrace a wide scope. Its place should not matter so much. The parliament building must have clarity and strength — a strength that can carry the building's political standing. In the minds of people, a parliament is a place for gathering, sitting and thinking; it differs from a building inside a park or garden. This image is vital to grasping the possibilities and capacities of the place.
The land itself is counted a part of the materials — the physical materials of the building. The parliament building differs conceptually from Holyrood Palace: just as the palace is founded on landscape and is related to the tradition of gardening, so too the parliament must be founded on the land."
Hamburg Music School, Germany — 2000, First Prize
The music school is organised in two settings: an open setting — including the cafeteria, corridors, etc. — and another precinct devoted to the classrooms and the administrative wing. The two are connected by a single ordinary entrance.
The open setting is made of several free, independent spaces, and from this form gains high flexibility. The cafeteria faces a park within the courtyard; the existing green space can also be joined to this precinct. A ramp connects the cafeteria and the corridors in front of the classrooms. Classrooms and the administrative wing lie in one part of the building, separate from the other parts, while maintaining their acoustic insulation and functional independence. Practice rooms sit like a pool among the trees. The administrative wing is concentrated in one part of the building.
At first glance the thought comes to mind that construction has been blended with the plant and natural structure and has not destroyed it. The building appears unfinished without the enclosing structures around it. As the plans show, the new buildings must be so arranged that future changes in the state of the existing trees remain possible.
