by Ana Maria Torres
Lyrical and evocative in both concept and form, the work of Catalan architect Carme Pinós is notable for its uncompromising embodiment of the physical, historic, and metaphoric qualities of its sites. Pinós explores the landscape personally, drawing from it a vocabulary of forms -- lines, planes, curves, arches, containers -- and an often geometric grammar of assembly. Her materials -- earth, concrete, steel, wood -- are deployed with sensitivity to the exigencies of structure, uniting in compositions that are at once delicate and aesthetically dominant. First in collaboration with architect Enric Miralles and since 1991 as principal of her own firm, Pinós has developed an architecture of eloquence and strength that is attentive to the identity of the place and to the experience of the individual visitor or inhabitant.
A comprehensive presentation of the architect's oeuvre, Carme Pinós: An Architecture of Overlay features twenty-one projects, built and unbuilt, in photographs, models, and Pinós's uniquely intricate drawings. Among the designs are the enormous JVC Cultural & Business Center and the Puerto de Hierro office building, both in Guadalajara, Mexico; La Serra High School in Lérida; a waterfront promenade in Havana; single-family and community housing; and numerous sports and recreational facilities throughout Spain. Contemplative yet cutting-edge considerations of the dualities inherent in architecture -- nature and culture, history and modernity, standardization and variety, intellect and emotion, reason and intuition, time and timelessness -- these works emphasize in equal degrees the formal and the functional, the natural and the human-made.
