MIRADES FORANES, lectures ibèriques

THROUGH FOREIGN EYES, Reading the Peninsula

FAD Ephemeral Architecture 2007 Award – Finalist

Exhibition at the Headquarters of the Official College of Architects of Catalonia, Design and Documentation

Exhibition Catalogue, Research and Documentation

The exhibition was part of a series held over a period of a year. Each one related to a different aspect of the Iberian Peninsula. It encompassed the visions of a far-reaching selection of artists and thinkers, both historical and contemporary including, among others, Luigi Boccherini, George Sand, Le Corbusier, Ernest Hemingway, Miles Davis, George Orwell, Inge Morath and Robert Hughes.

Among the materials used in the design and fabrication of the modular exhibition (prepared to travel to other Iberian cities) were pine studs, birch plywood and metal and glass cases. A state-of-the-art technique was used for photographic printing directly on wood using a large flatbed digital printer. We were fortunate to have a number of guests contribute original work to the exhibition among which were:

Osservatorio Nomade from Italy, professors Maurice Aymard and Jacques Simon from France, the photographer Michael Moran and the writer Fernanda Eberstadt from the United States and the chef and cookbook author Sam Clark from England.

Excerpt from the catalogue introduction by the curator, Daniela Colafranceschi:

How we have been seen in the past, how we are seen today; how this reality is interpreted and what impression people have of us from the outside, an outside that is very close and very distant – ultimately, a foreign point of view.

Images of the Iberian Peninsula produced by shared segments: a Collection of ‘snapshots’ of this cultural, social, physical and territorial reality, that all speak to each other.

The structure we proposed for the exhibition is the narrative.

The expository sequence of the materials, in the catalogue, too, follows an itinerary in journey form that places visitors in the same conditions as someone preparing for the experience of a journey and setting out on it.

La exposición presenta un punto de vista foráneo de nuestra realidad, qué impresiones tienen de nosotros más allá de nuestras fronteras. La exposición se engloba en el ciclo “Espanya podria ser diferent”, una mirada sobre España desde Catalunya.

COAC Barcelona, 2006

Comisaria: Daniela Colafranceschi, arquitecta. Diseño de la exposición: Liebman Villavecchia Arquitectos.

Photographer, Michael Moran, Liebman Villavecchia and COAC