Anna & Eugeni Bach . photos: © Josema Cutillas
Sticks & Stones for Concéntrico 06.
In the middle of the Calado de San Gregorio a strange device has appeared. It is, at first sight, a wooden wall that blocks the passage and occupies the entire barrel-vaulted section of the space.
It is clearly an external element; it is made of plywood, and some wooden supports tell us that it is somewhat unstable, and probably temporary. It seems light and removable, both because of its shape and construction and because of the material it is made of, although on the other hand it is in the same shape as the space it occupies, which is instead stony, heavy and stable.
Close up, one discovers that the wooden wall allows a passage through. It has been moved to one side to be able to cross to the other side. There is a curtain that has to be moved aside to be able to enter and suddenly, the space from which it comes changes completely… the ashlars, the stone, the vault… the fretwork becomes something else; a light, festive, ephemeral and tectonic space.
Through this new space you can pass to the other side, and when you leave you can see that the fretwork remains where it is, immutable and stony, although in your mind you have already retained the altered environment that you have crossed.
After this experience, both spaces, the stony and the textile, the heavy and the light, the vaulted and the catenary, the severe and the festive, the stereotomic and the tectonic, overlap and allow us to understand the fretwork both from its reason of being and from its opposite.
As in Lewis Mumford’s famous book on the history of American architecture, once space has been apprehended, in essence, everything can be summarised in what it is made up of: sticks and stones.
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