This is Gap Mountain, 100 miles beyond it one finds 'City', Michael Heizer's earthwork in progress since 1972. 100 miles beyond 'City' there is the Nevada Test Site, surely one of the largest known earthworks, comprised of underground laboratories, tunnels, atomic waste repositories and the famous atomic craters. Hundreds of atomic tests were made between 1951 and, surprisingly, 2012.
Robinson Copper Mine, Ruth, Nevada.
Stocktaking America Deserta #8: 50 Is the Loneliest Number
Route 50 was deemed the loneliest road in the US. It is an epithet that works both ways, as a derogatory and flattering qualifier. Driving a few miles West of Ely, one finds the small company town of Ruth, serving the Robinson copper mine. The mine slopes are so perfectly formed and artfully done, that I wondered if the workers, these artisans who worked with bulldozers, were the ones hired by the artist Michael Heizer to build his earthwork 'City'. Forgetting all the human and earth exploitation, it is easy to admire these earthworks formally. In the last decades the mine was bought and sold by various global companies, but throughout most of the C20 it was owned by the Guggenheim family.
Intrepid Potash Mining at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Wendover, Utah.
Stocktaking America Deserta #7: Intrepid Mining
The Bonneville Salt Flats are remains of the vast lake Bonneville of the Pleistocene era. They are well known for the C20 obsession of land speed records. The close surroundings of the Salt Flats are marked by the exploits of the aptly named Intrepid Potash mining company. In recent years, some speed races were cancelled due to the thinning of the salt crust. Intrepid Potash is now required to pump brine on to the flats to mitigate the problem.
Wendover Air Base Museum
Stocktaking America Deserta #6: Stealth
Wendover air base has an open air museum. There's a public drive with plaques informing about the history of the site. These describe objects inside the base, over the fence, like the Enola Gay hangar. Besides they also point at structures that although built as movie props, remain onsite. This is a place where historically laden artifacts and constructed imaginary worlds seem to be presented on the same level. A few old planes were 'parked' close to the fence so that visitors could take pictures. At first, we thought this one was also part of the exhibit. That was not the case.
A mirage or the remains of Bonneville lake of the Pleistocene era.
Stocktaking America Deserta #5: Mirage
The revelation. It happened at Pilot Mountain Road, crossing the vast plain framed by mountains. The sun was high and I remember thinking: 'It must be midnight in Lisbon.' The temperature was 43C. The air was very dry. I realized I was in a state of hyper awareness. The senses stretched without obstacles. In this place of absence one feels as if in infinite purity. In this place I understood the ascetics.
Lucin railroad crossing
Stocktaking America Deserta #4: Lucin
This railroad crossing is the only urban remain of the town of Lucin. It was founded as a watering station for steam locomotives, the Lucin Ponds were reservoirs of the water collected through a pipeline from the melting snows of the nearby Pilot Mountain Range. Where the ponds used to be there are clumps of surprisingly tall cottonwood trees. They are now protected as an important resting site for migratory songbirds, attracted by this small patch of shade and water in the Great Basin Desert. On our way to see Nancy Holt's Sun Tunnels we waved hello to the railroad engineer inspecting this crossing. We had to drive three hours until crossing paths with another car, the driver waved hello and we waved back. I imagine that we too were the first people he saw in hours.
Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah
Stocktaking America Deserta #3: Water Colours
The water at Rozel Point is not bright red anymore, but muted pink. At the time I visited the weather was stormy, the sun was heavily veiled by multiple layers of clouds and rainstorms in the distance. The experience was not of horror, on the contrary, but of beauty. This mobile phone photo doesn't do justice to an environment that seemed to be painted by J.M.W.Turner after having borrowed Agnes Martin's palette. I was still surprised to see such an animated landscape, which changed so quickly. Moments before, crossing the ranches framed by the Promontory Mountains, I had seen a 'dust devil' for the first time in my life, a whirlwind raising suddenly a dancing body of sand, which raised two arms in the air. It seemed alive and wickedly happy.
Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah.
Stocktaking America Deserta #2: The Journey
The Spiral Jetty seems to be a device to promote a journey through a series of historical sites. It has the effect of bringing past events to our present experience, and in that sense is a Kublerian work. Driving from Salt Lake City for a couple of hours it takes us to the Golden Spike National Monument, and the history of the Union Pacific Railway. Smithson built his work on the centennial of the railway connection between the East and West coasts of the United States. Moreover, the first jetty we see when arriving to Rozel Point is the ruin of a former oil drilling site. In 1970, the Spiral Jetty was situated on a terrifying site, with blood red water, caused by the Lucin Cutoff, an engineering 'earthwork' in which a railway line cut the Great Salt Lake in two. The oil prospection at the site continued up to the end of the 20th century. Here we only see remains, but a few decades ago this place smelled of crude oil and was scattered with dead birds.
Stocktaking America Deserta #1: Pure Beauty
While in NYC, in transit to Salt Lake City, I was lucky to see John Baldessari's exhibition 'Paintings, 1966-68'. It comprised a series of paintings that Baldessari showed in his first solo show at Molly Barnes Gallery in 1968. I primarily went to see 'Painting for Kubler', Baldessari's homage to the simultaneously famous and arcane historian, I thought that this painting would set the beginning of the trip. In retrospect, I can see that 'Pure Beauty' was surprisingly present in many instances of the journey.
Travels in America Deserta
I am happy to announce that I was the recipient of the Fernando Távora Prize 2016/17 in the beginning of April.
The prize consists on a travel grant for research purposes. I proposed an itinerary between Salt Lake City and White Sands, which was extended to Marfa and Austin. I will be following the footsteps of Reyner Banham and George Kubler, among others.
The winner presents the results of his travel in a public lecture in October on the occasion of the World Architecture Day.
I will pe posting about the trip in this blog and on my instagram page.
The Shape of Plain: Exhibition Booklet
The exhibition booklet The Shape of Plain is sold out, so I decided to make it available online for those of you who want a copy. You may download it here.
Ad Reinhardt's Travel Slides: Robert Storr
The last event on the occasion of The Shape of Plain exhibition was a lecture by Robert Storr entitled "Compare, Contrast, Conflate and Confound the Wise. Ad Reinhardt’s Subversive Slide Talks."
Round Table: Plain Arts
The second event related to the exhibition The Shape of Plain took place on December 14, a roundtable with the participation of Joana Cunha Leal, João Vieira Caldas, Jorge Figueira e Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues.
Architectural Ambiguities: Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
The Shape of Plain exhibition hosted the first of its program of open lectures last week. The talk was given by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen of Yale School of Architecture. It illuminated on the influence of George Kubler's book The Shape of Time had on American architecture in the 1960s. Most specifically on the work of Eero Saarinen. Attention was placed on ideas about hybridity and ambiguity, that are present in Robert Venturi's 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.
Please bear in mind that the next event will take place on December 14, at Museu Gulbenkian. It will be a round table where the idea of 'Plain Arts' will be discussed by João Vieira Caldas, Joana Cunha Leal, Sérgio Fazenda Rodrigues and Jorge Figueira.
The Shape of Plain: Video
Here is a short video showing the space of The Shape of Plain exhibition. You may see it at the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon until January 9 2017.
MORE: International Conference on Architecture and Gender
Together with a wonderful group of scholars, architects and artists, I will participate at the Third International Conference on Architecture and Gender, this time aptly titled MORE: Merge, Open, Resignify. Expand.
It will take place at UniFi School of Architecture in Florence on 26-28 January 2017. I am looking forward to this conference, since I have participated in all International Conferences on Architecture and Gender, and it is wonderful to see this project unfold.
On the conference's website you can read several interviews to some of the participants, including Núria Lombardero, Joyce Hwang, Patrícia Pedrosa, Martha Thorne and myself among many others.
Dear Mayor...
This is the beginning of my letter to the mayor of Lisbon, part of the event and exhibition 'Letters to the Mayor' curated by Ivo Poças Martins and part of the Lisbon Architecture Triennial 2016. All participants in this year's Triennial were invited to write a letter to the mayor of Lisbon expressing their concerns and/or desires about the city.
'Letters to the Mayor' is an initiative of the Storefront for Art and Architecture to catalyse the dialogue between designers and political authorities. Since 2014 this event has happened in various cities, such as New York, Panama City, Mariupol, Bogotá, Taipei, Athens, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and São Paulo.
If you wish to read my letter you may do it here. You can read all the letters at the city hall Paços do Concelho, until November 20 2016.
The Shape of Plain: Teaser
The design team of the Gulbenkian Museum made this wonderful teaser trailer for the exhibition "The Shape of Plain."
Opening: The Shape of Plain
The opening of the exhibition The Shape of Plain, will be today at 6 pm at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
CAA 2017: Session Listing
Together with Susanne Bauer, I'll be chairing a panel in the next CAA 2017 Annual Conference in New York City. Here is the schedule:
GLOBALIZED REGIONALISM AND MODERNIST AESTHETICS IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
Time: 02/15/2017: 10:30AM—12:00PM
Location: Gramercy B/East, 2nd Floor
Chairs: Susanne Bauer, Federal University of Uberlandia; Eliana Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra
Doxiadis’ “entopia”; an Early Version of Globalized Regionalism
Costandis Kizis, Architectural Association School of Architecture
Crafting Modernities: ‘Vernacular’ Architectures in the Interwar Years
Theodossios Issaias, Yale School of Architecture
From Knowledge Transfer to Knowledge Flows: Non-Western Modernist Models
Mónica Pacheco, ISCTE-IUL
The Uses of Regionalism in (Post-)Yugoslavian Discourse on Mass Housing
Lea Horvat, University of Hamburg