Unfinished: Ideas, Images, and Projects from the Spanish Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale

By Iñaki Carnicero and Carlos Quintáns

Spain was one of the countries where the practice of architecture has been most affected by the economic crisis. There are few places on earth where such large numbers of buildings were built in such a short period of time. The lack of reflection over whether these projects were necessary or valid resulted in the subsequent abandonment of many buildings when their completion or maintenance was discovered not to be economically viable. Their appearance throughout Spanish territories has generated a collection of unfinished buildings where the factor of time was eliminated from the formula for making architecture.

The publication gathers examples of architecture produced during the past few years, born out of renunciation and economy of means, designed to evolve and adapt to future necessities and trusting in the beauty conferred by the passage of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Actar
• Release date: Mar 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638409304

Iñaki Carnicero

Active in both the academic field and a professional practice, Iñaqui Carnicero has been an associate professor of design at the School of Architecture, Polytechnic University of Madrid since 2000. A year after graduating Carnicero earned his first commission through a competition for the construction of a university building in Madrid, which was accompanied by his participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2000. Carnicero has won several competitions and completed many projects, including CEU University, social housing, a high school, the restoration of an Arab tower, a district attorney’s office in Madrid’s City of Justice, a cultural multi-use center in a former slaughterhouse of Madrid, and the Pitch´s house. He is cofounder of the architecture platform “Symmetries,” relating roman and contemporary procedures. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi’s discoveries in Rome regarding the perception of size in architecture.

Book preview