‘Obra oberta’: the processes that shape Josep Lluís Mateo’s architecture

Every architect finds their own way of thinking about space during the creative process. In some cases, drawings, sketches, and models are as interesting as the finished work, although they are not always available for the public to see. This well-known but less visible aspect of the profession is part of Obra oberta, an exhibition that the Col·legi d'Arquitectes de Catalunya (COAC) is presenting until next Sunday (22) at its headquarters in the center of Barcelona. The exhibition brings together more than three decades of work by architect Josep Lluís Mateo (Barcelona, 1949) and arrives in the year that Barcelona is World Capital of Architecture. “The world without architecture would be unintelligible,” writes Mateo in the introductory text that opens the exhibition. The exhibition takes this statement as its starting point to present architecture as a process in constant construction. Drawings and sketches are digitally transformed and gain precision with the help of models, which allow volume and space to take shape. Then come the exterior views and, finally, the project materialized in the photographs of the project. At this point, detail takes center stage: “looking with precision, almost with a microscope, becomes indispensable.” The exhibition space is interesting for any curious audience, but it also offers the possibility of extending the classroom for future architects. In front of one of the initial sketch panels, a small group of three students stops for a few minutes. They approach the drawings, point out structural details, and quietly discuss technical solutions while the accompanying professor explains some details. Among the projects on display are the Toni Catany International Photography Center in Llucmajor (2023), the Filmoteca de Catalunya (2011), the remodeling and expansion of the Ninot market in Barcelona (2015), the Barcelona International Convention Center (CCIB), the housing in Tolosa-Blagnac (2013), the residential building on the Borneo pier in Amsterdam (1999-2000), and a single-family home in Mallorca (2023). The tour is organized in an almost chronological manner, although it does not attempt to define a closed trajectory. The projects are presented as “loose strokes” without setting a single direction. Panels with original drawings, technical plans, photographs of the work, and models allow visitors to follow the transition from idea to construction. Also included is the restricted competition for the remodeling of Camp Nou (2007), presented as an asymmetrical stadium with an outer ring. In the case of the Filmoteca de Catalunya, the exhibition highlights the spatial organization around two movements: the descent into the theaters and the ascent toward the light. In the Ninot market, the intervention preserves the light roof and reorganizes the interior, incorporating new services without altering the volume. The Toni Catany Center, meanwhile, combines the restoration of the historic façades with the creation of a contemporary museum space that, according to the exhibition, should be “radical and clear, abstract.” A specific section, entitled Josep Lluís Mateo Collection. Fragments, addresses the relationship between architecture and photography as “a way of looking at the object, a point of view, a light, a space.” The selection includes works by Manolo Laguillo, Francesc Català-Roca, and José Antonio Coderch (the latter in his role as a photographer) and establishes a relationship with the four elements of the pre-Socratic tradition (fire, water, earth, and air), present in the material reading of the world that runs through part of the collection. The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Obra oberta, edited by Puente Editores, with texts by Mateo himself and authors such as Enric Miralles, Ignasi de Solà-Morales, and Agustí Obiol. Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Design at ETH Zurich and founder of Mateo Arquitectura in 1991, Josep Lluís Mateo has also developed a career in teaching and research. In Obra oberta, this career is presented as an open process, like his own history, in which each project is understood, in the architect's own words, as a work “to be discovered.”