Place de la République. Restricted Competition from Josep Lluis Mateo on Vimeo.

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Restricted competition

2009 - Paris

Place de la République as public space

Transforming a traffic junction into an urban space means, firstly, reducing the impact of road traffic. Having addressed the traffic, the challenge is to transform the place into an urban space.

Pavements and plaza

We propose a substantial increase in pavement space, concentrating all specifically urban flows (buses and taxis) around its edge. The pavement, transformed into a boulevard, would then be able to accommodate both pedestrian traffic and the kiosks and galleries that house the overflow of ground-floor businesses, as well as being a place for people to sit and rest.
The central plaza, also enlarged, would be of a different nature: a space for demonstration and representation that can coexist with the more domestic, ludic presence of nature. Monument esplanade, garden.

The plaza: unity and diversity

The plaza, a long space running NW-SE, takes in three different urban moments. These characteristics call for specific attention to create a figure that is designed to be unitary but also special, contextual and varied.

 The small salon
At its north-west point, the plaza meets the pre-Haussmann city, with its finer grain and less geometrical monumentality. Our response is the small salon; earth makes an appearance at ground level, with emphasis on the urban continuity of bvd St Martin-rue Boulanger.

The idea of the paving is to establish continuities between the city and the plaza. Traffic, though a real presence, could be studied and eliminated at certain points to ensure pedestrian continuity.

The centre of the monument

The centre of the place, at present a small island amid the flow of traffic, is marked by movement. We propose constructing a base for it, a podium which, with a slight slope, accentuates the volcanic composition of the object and allows people to walk around it, establish a direct relation with it and rest in its shelter.

The esplanade
The most abstract boundary would be on the three-pronged Haussmann layout: bvd Voltaire, République, bvd du Temple. This is the site of the big demonstrations that characterize the place. We propose the construction of a great petrous esplanade.
The great esplanade constitutes the dialectical counterpoint with the small salon, at the same time ensuring continuity with the symbolism of the monument.

Competition 2008-2010

We were familiar with Canberra because of its exceptional urban layout. The new capital with its centres of power set in a circle radiates the streets outwards from the centre.
Our site forms part of this system of lines and curves. We therefore envisioned the new official residence with a layout in the form of a countercurve that dialogues with the sequence of rings organizing the map of the city.
The new residence formalizes the façade to the exterior and divides the site into two areas: one is more private and representative, and the other, to the rear, is more closely related with the everyday activities of the embassy.
The building comprises a continuous lightweight roof that is set down on the site, establishing an interrelation with the movement of the topography and forming a single figure.
In our memories, Australia is wide open spaces and wild nature. The garden will therefore use local vegetation in domestic form.

Josep Lluís Mateo, 2008

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A phantom, a place and a space.
Josep Lluís Mateo, September 2009. Banco Sabadell, Diagonal Tower.

Ground-floor lighting for Banc Sabadell by Maurici Ginés

The basic approach of the architecture project and choice of materials was to return to a clear layout of the floor where, in a visually open space, the materials, seen as matter, texture and colour, laid out areas according to different uses or functions. Objectively and subjectively, the materials used bring quality, transparency, reflection and an intelligent composition of space and calm.

The concept of light creates this zoning, highlights the subjective values and communicates the materials—matter, texture and colour—by bringing contrast, balance and a luminosity that is natural, not forced.

Photo: Pedro Pegenaute

The entrance sector is the most contrasting and heterogeneous in its lighting, with spots that generate ordered patches on the floor and ceiling, drawing users inside.

The dark, continuous, high-quality material of the waiting area, along one side, alternates with translucent lighting strips in a crescendo of increasing warmth.

A spherical light suspended at the centre of the great spiral stairway serves to restore the balance of light throughout the space.

The client service sector, marked by a large expanse of slightly sloping false ceiling, a translucent glass triangle, brings texture and artfully natural brightness to the space and the essence of containing a large outdoor space.

Within the architectural project and the intelligent spatial composition, the translucent lighting material, in some cases coloured, acts as a connective element with its different forms and arrangements in the space. Subjectively, the triangle and the sphere, basic forms, generate the balance of lighting throughout the space.

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Coinciding with the publication of Occasions, Josep Lluís Mateo’s latest book, the installation “Occasional City” took place at Galeria RAS in Barcelona in September. This ephemeral installation (lasting four days) served to exhibit a meticulous selection of models of some of the practice’s major recent projects.

In addition to models, the installation included videos about projects by mateoarquitectura that are currently at the construction phase, and interventions by Josep Lluís Mateo in lectures and conferences.

The installation devised for the event recreated an imaginary city made up of various real cites.

In these cities, the architecture of Josep Lluís Mateo has found the Occasions to construct, in some cases, or design others. Hence the name of the installation: “Occasional City is an ideal city consisting of fragments of cities in which we have been invited to work. It is global and local, comprised of order and hierarchy (despite being fortuitous), and it organizes our responses on the occasions when we have been asked.”
(JLLM)

Photos: Pedro Pegenaute

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mateoarquitectura has updated its website to exploit all the potential of the latest digital platforms. It leaves behind its former site, an extensive archive of information containing detailed documentation about all its projects, to make way for this new and much more practical project.

You might wonder what has happened to all the documentation that used to be available on our website… We decided to post it on the applications that the Internet now offers us; on Flickr, Delicious, Vimeo, YouTube etc., you’ll find information in small packages, not forgetting that the publications by Josep Lluís Mateo and mateoarquitectura are the most complete references.

As of now, this is our official website, where you can read up-to-date news, related contents, texts by Josep Lluís Mateo and his team, and reviews of the publications, lectures and conferences in which Josep Lluís Mateo is involved.

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mateoarquitectura won first prize in last January’s international public competition for the reconstruction of the historic centre of Sibenik in Croatia. This is the first time a Spanish architect has won a competition in Croatia.

According to Josep Lluís Mateo: “our project defines itself as a topographical, volumetric strategy in the place, leaving the materiality of the architecture as an open issue.

The empty space between the islands draws an axis that continues on dry land, on Draga.
The location is marked by a geological structure that produces empty and full spaces.
We choose to respect, continue and construct it.

We build on the limits of the place. Volumes to either side consolidate the topography.
At the far end, following the axis, our buildings construct the street, forming a gateway to the whole.

The centre is empty public space that receives various treatments, moving gradually from the greater urbanness of the plaza beside the street to the increased presence of nature where the project meets the sea.”

Reconnaissance of the sea, the islands and the coastline

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Josep Lluís Mateo presents his book Occasions, which contains the architect’s projects, talks and reflections over the last five years.
Occasions. Ed. Actar. Barcelona 2009.
ISBN: 978-84-96954-97-7

Occasions refers to the specificity of our actions and puts distance between itself and the generic approach. Operating as an architect, I have to go up to phenomena; I cannot merely explain them from the distance that renders them uniform and dilute. I am interested in the viewpoint that causes experiences and ideas to materialize in a unique, special way. In consequence, rather than proposing a practice of general, abstract, generic architecture, Occasions seeks to understand it and to describe it as the product of an intelligence and a specific sensibility.
Occasions points out that our work is always an opportunity to understand and establish active relations with the world.

Contributors:
Stan Allen, Dominique Boudet, Vicente Guallart, José Luis Guerín, Marta Poch, Carlos M. Reis de Figueiredo y Jordi Teixidor.

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Architectural Papers IV: Iconoclastia. Ed. Chair of Prof. Dr. Josep Lluís Mateo, ETH-Zurich. Switzerland 2009.
ISBN: 978-84-96540-71-2.

In the past, buildings and other constructions representing singular moments for the community were called monuments. Their origin was expression of power, celebration of ritual or collective affirmation. In the contemporary world, a project that aspires to be exceptionally expressive is commonly called an icon. Etymologically, an icon is the representation of divinity throughout painting with a strong coded style. They were regarded as the presence of God and the Saints on earth. But the tradition of Icons has its antagonist incorporated. The iconoclastic movement destroyed all the representation of divinity pleading that it destroys its very essence. The publication begins with a series of general texts on themes that vary but all share a common critical look at the role of the iconic on the recent architecture scene. Student projects also deal with this subject. Some of the texts were produced at a seminal symposium organized by the Chair of Professor Josep Lluís Mateo.

Contributors:
Krunoslav Ivanisin, Hans Ibelings, Fredy Massad, Alicia Guerrero Jeste, Florian Sauter, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Yannis Aesopos, Daniel Kiss, Naoto Fukosawa, Jasper Morrison, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, Peter Sloterdijk .

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Global Housing Projects. 25 Buildings since 1980. Ed. Chair of Prof. Dr. Josep Lluís Mateo, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, 2008.
ISBN 978-84-96954-47-2.

Josep Lluís Mateo’s Architecture Chair at the ETH Zurich looks at the last 25 years of evolution in housing in terms of the economic, social and cultural phenomenon of globalization by means of a selection of 25 representative, innovative, influential projects.

The volume features analysis and texts by various architects, including Charles Correa, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Jean Nouvel, Alvaro Siza, Rem Koolhaas, Riegler Riewe, Hans Kollhoff, Kazuyo Sejima, MVRDV, Lacaton Vasal, Dietmar Eberle, Herzog & De Meuron and PLOT, and proposes new and important guidelines for modern domestic architecture. “The basis of an anthology is always subjectivity (in this case shared: many different agents have been involved…)” Josep Lluís Mateo, in “Contemporary Historicism”, Introduction.