Enric Miralles - Time Architecture
Enric Miralles: Architecture of Time
Luis Diego Quiros, Stefanie MaKenzie, Derek McMurray
Introduction
“There are”, said Lichtenberg, “two ways of prolonging life. The first consists in putting the maximum distance between the points of birth and death, and thereby extending the journey...The other way consists in walking more slowly, leaving the points where God desires them to be; this is the way of the philosophers, who have discovered that the best thing is to walk in a zigzag, botanizing and trying to jump a ditch here, and further on, where the ground is bare and nobody sees them, performing a somersault.”1
It is this zig-zag way that Catalan architect Enric Miralles chose to live and explore in his architecture. Through his career and partnerships with wives Carmen Pinos and, later, Benedetta Taglibue, Enric Miralles was concerned with the relation between life, time and architecture. Or, as this article states, with exploring an architecture of time.
In a time architecture, as Miralles called it, his work becomes “a machine to collect time”. Accordingly, a work of architecture does not exist forever as one specific entity, unchanged. Miralles' architecture lives through constant additions and new variations, because as he stated
To be permanent is contrary to existence. Things are forever changing.2
Miralles also believed that throughout an architect's career, every aspect of his personal and professional life was influential to his own projects. For him, architecture is not about fixed theories or ideas. He understood and believed that philosophy is the search for wisdom, thus, his life and projects are not related to fixed models. Rather, as he said, he became an architect because of his curiosity to discover. As Miralles stated, he simply wanted to learn and change with knowledge:
...architects work by assembling groups of ideas, images and requirements. No project can be produced in isolation. At various stages in an architect's career, each
Luis Diego Quiros, Stefanie MaKenzie, Derek McMurray
Introduction
“There are”, said Lichtenberg, “two ways of prolonging life. The first consists in putting the maximum distance between the points of birth and death, and thereby extending the journey...The other way consists in walking more slowly, leaving the points where God desires them to be; this is the way of the philosophers, who have discovered that the best thing is to walk in a zigzag, botanizing and trying to jump a ditch here, and further on, where the ground is bare and nobody sees them, performing a somersault.”1
It is this zig-zag way that Catalan architect Enric Miralles chose to live and explore in his architecture. Through his career and partnerships with wives Carmen Pinos and, later, Benedetta Taglibue, Enric Miralles was concerned with the relation between life, time and architecture. Or, as this article states, with exploring an architecture of time.
In a time architecture, as Miralles called it, his work becomes “a machine to collect time”. Accordingly, a work of architecture does not exist forever as one specific entity, unchanged. Miralles' architecture lives through constant additions and new variations, because as he stated
To be permanent is contrary to existence. Things are forever changing.2
Miralles also believed that throughout an architect's career, every aspect of his personal and professional life was influential to his own projects. For him, architecture is not about fixed theories or ideas. He understood and believed that philosophy is the search for wisdom, thus, his life and projects are not related to fixed models. Rather, as he said, he became an architect because of his curiosity to discover. As Miralles stated, he simply wanted to learn and change with knowledge:
...architects work by assembling groups of ideas, images and requirements. No project can be produced in isolation. At various stages in an architect's career, each