Raquel Fernandez
Corrubedo (A Coruña), Mar 17 (EFE).- David Chipperfield (London, 1953) has returned to Corrubedo (A Coruña) for a few hours, to his house, as one more neighbor after winning the 2023 Pritzker prize for architecture. There, Evelyn Stern’s husband has done what he always does, attend to his commitments and have a drink at the bar that he bought and reopened.
With a glass of wine in hand, in that local hotel, the Bar do Porto, he shares in a conversation with EFE that “it feels good to be back in Galicia”, although, when he sees the downpour outside, he is accompanied by laughter to point out: “when the weather is good, ha ha!”.
The weather did not accompany the Briton during his stay on that Galician coast, but it does not matter after an acknowledgment that he assures was not expected and now it is “a pleasure” to have.
“All the awards are a great recognition”, believes “sir” David Alan Chipperfield, who is affectionately called “Chippi” in this natural paradise of dunes, water and birds, which he enjoys like his countrymen.
And Chippi, in that casual environment, confesses to being very aware that a distinction like the one that has fallen on him entails a great responsibility.
That is why this urban planner and activist, who boasts of not knowing how to work without time, focuses on the “symbiotic” future in which architecture and sustainability will coexist.
“We have to be more cautious and think in a completely different way about building and, therefore, about how we develop our cities,” he reasons.
He accepts that what he poses is an ambitious challenge, which seeks to air “global” issues such as all those that concern the consequences of “global warming”. And he knows that on this path, which is his, one runs into “existential” problems that those of his guild, as it happens with any other, or as it happens with any other human being, can have.
Be that as it may, “the landscape” and the “authenticity” of the people of Corrubedo are for this designer a magnificent starting point in contrast to “London life”, “always busy”, where rhythms become “complicated”.
Such is his perception that he admires that the Galicians have somehow managed to “keep their priorities” clear, in what refers to family, community and territory. Although he qualifies on this last point that in the last four decades “not everything has been done well.”
From the RIA Foundation, a non-profit strategic territorial planning initiative based in Galicia, tries to alleviate it, promoting increasingly “more projects connected with the environment” in an attempt to “support local administrations” and encourage, to the pair, “the consideration of development.”
Development in which “not only the materials” influence, but also “what we build, where and how”, specifies this persecutor of the timeless line that he perceives as nonsense that in Galicia there are “a lot of desert towns”, “empty buildings in the cities” and, at the same time, construction continues on “natural lands”.
“This is not a sustainable approach, neither for construction nor for the use of nature,” says this “Nobel Prize” in architecture.
Behind the architecture, “everything is changing,” he adds. Individual issues such as “what do we do with our waste, how many flights do we take, how do we reduce energy, how to save materials” are extrapolated, Chipperfield considers, to the collective and also to the professional field.
“We cannot consume our resources in the same way that we did before”, points out this defender of a civic, sober and innovative architecture.
In his vision of the cities of the future, he warns of an architecture precisely whose development will depend “more on sustainability than on aesthetics” and where “innovation” will undoubtedly come from “materials”.
According to this humble genius, with a strong link with Spain, this will result in “new ways of building, which will be more modest and cautious.”
Not for that reason alien to what we already know, since another of the maxims of this architect resides in “giving priority to the things we had before”.
As an example, he mentions the charming towns, the pretty streets and, as the father that he is, “those places for the children to run around”.
In short, “looking back in history to look forward,” he concludes. And empty the glass.
The Pritzker Prize, instituted in 1979, recognizes the work of a living architect whose work shows talent, vision, commitment, and has made a consistent and significant contribution to humanity.
It was established by Jay A. (1922-1999) and Cindy Pritzker, under the firm conviction that such a prize would stimulate greater public awareness of buildings, together with greater creativity among professionals.
Chipperfield had been in the pools for years. EFE
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