The postgraduate course Civilización América: ESPANHA, is the 12th edition of this postgraduate course organized by the São Paulo School of Architecture ESCOLA DA CIDADE, dedicated each year to different countries in the Ibero-American sphere, as a way of approaching and exploring different territories and contexts. It involves a two-month intensive course of projects with a look through architecture to historical, cultural, social and geographical issues of Spain.

On this occasion, the teachers invited to direct the course, Ángela García de Paredes and Ignacio García Pedrosa, propose as an exercise the project of a MARÍA PAGÉS CHOREOGRAPHIC CENTER on the hill of the Alhambra in Granada. The aim of the workshop is for the student to provide a balanced response to the project in relation to the environment, considering the place, the existing architecture, the full and empty spaces of the buildings of the Alhambra and the gardens, investigating everything that affects it, not only in the material but also in the immaterial field. Thus, the objectives to be achieved are multiple: new construction and heritage, consideration of the landscape, consideration of the program, consideration of the materiality, consideration of the impact of architecture on people’s lives and the object of the project are the buildings themselves as well as the gardens and open spaces that surround them.

The students project the MARÍA PAGÉS CHOREOGRAPHIC CENTER with the condition that comes with this art that the viewer participates, surrounds, embraces the dance. With these interventions we also remember the centenary of the Cante Jondo Contest that the musician Manuel de Falla and the poet Federico García Lorca devised in 1922, as an immaterial past for the new architectures.

You can re-watch the talk by clicking here.