Vicente Iborra Pallarés

Drawing a New Architectural Paradigm

The innovative use of the photomontage technique in the Smithsons’ proposal for Golden Lane competition in 1952, as a strategy of celebrating the ordinary in a destroyed post-war London’s East End, allows them to discover their source of inspiration in reality “as found” and to turn it into a new architectural paradigm. The Smithsons’ turn in the use of photomontage towards a subjective energy is more typical of collage. Golden Lane shows the competition environment as it is, with tragic remains, with its ruins and basements, reminiscent of the buildings that disappeared under the bombs. However, people emerge to give a new life to the existing, to celebrate the ordinary and the public realm. For this reason, in this image the building almost disappears, giving prominence to the environment and the people. The important thing, we see, is reality: the existing reality and reality created by architecture. The collage allows to superimpose the three layers of the new reality in a single drawing: the existing reality, the proposed intervention and created reality (represented by real people cut out from real photos and pasted above the rest). Reality “as it is” or as coined by the Smithsons “as found”—imperfect, devastated, tragic—is finally ready to become the new paradigm.

The Representation of a Built Setting Sun

Mansilla + Tunon Architects proposed in 2007 a building with a circular profile placed on the so called Madrid Cornice to host the International Convention Center of the City of Madrid. While the brief of the ideas competition raised the question: How should be the new congress center of Madrid?, the Spanish office proposed (with their images and drawings) a different question to the jury members, that taking into consideration the result of the contest, was much more interesting for them: Which can be the new image of Madrid? This paper aims to show how the authors of the winning proposal used a whole series of graphic resources, mainly in the documents submitted to the first phase of the contest, which showed the main communicative strategy of the proposal: the allusions to the Cornice and to the skies of Madrid. These elements, constituents of the public image of the city, were easily recognizable by at least 9 of the 12 members of the jury.

Los Smithsons en Golden Lane: la simultaneidad de hechos en el fotomontaje como construcción de lo real

The innovative use of the photomontage technique in the competition proposal for Golden Lane in 1952 by the Smithsons, as strategy of celebration of the ordinary within a physically and psychologically destroyed postwar London’s East End, will allow them to discover its inspirational source in reality “as found” and to turn it into a new architectural paradigm.