Times of the Design

authors Iñaqui Carnicero, Carlos Quintánas Eiras
project Spanish Pavilion at the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy
written by Ángel Martínez García-Posada

 

The inspiration for the shaping of the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2016 was one quote by Marc Augé about unfinished buildings and the attractive uncertainty between the past, the present and the future: Unfinished buildings have the beauty of that which could have been. Of that which is not yet there. Of that which might be one day. This thought was reminiscent of the Aristotelian category of potency and act, essential in the artistic practice. We might also recall the famous first part of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot, What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present. This operational reading, contemporary and integrative, which goes beyond regret, which converts the need into a virtue, was also the proactive formula which the commissioners of the exhibition, Iñaqui Carnicero and Carlos Quintáns, wanted to point out, but which, since the opening of the exhibition, was internationally recognized by poetic justice.