Mansilla+Tuñón - Twin Houses, Tarifa 2009. Via.
SUBTILITAS
fineness of texture, logic, detail; slenderness, exactness, acuteness; sharpness : precision
Mansilla+Tuñón - Fine Arts Museum, Castellón 1996. Previously, the story behind the letters in the second image. Via.
Mansilla+Tuñón - Royal Collections Museum, Madrid, currently under construction. Context; surely to become one of the great contemporary museums. Via.
“On a site with such a complex cultural history, to add yet another cultural reference risks trivializing that very history. Instead, the project presents itself as a geological fact: the product of accumulated deposits over time, shaped by the action of natural forces. In this way, Mansilla + Tuñon allow the project to achieve the dignity it requires while still accommodating the complex needs of the modern museum…”
Mansilla+Tuñón - Archeological and fine arts museum, Zamora 1996. El Croquis has devoted their latest issue to the firm’s work, and is in memoriam of the late Luis M. Mansilla. Via, 2.
Mansilla+Tuñón - Study model and rendering for Grand Slam, a multipurpose sports complex for the Manzanares River Park in Madrid, 2004. Via.
Mansilla+Tuñón - Competition winning entry for the Museum of Cantabria, Santander, 2003. Now part of MoMA’s collection. Via.
on urbanism
“New styles of work are emerging, some hesitant, others powerful and militant, in which architecture and urban planning are placed at the service of people and society, instead of serving representation and power; new forms of work that defend the poetic capacity of sustainability, its management and its technology; new forms of work with small-scale effects, fully aware of the undeniable potential of micro-architecture and micro-urbanism; new forms of pragmatic yet idealistic work, the heirs of the radical architects’ proposals in the second half of the 20th century which, from idealistic perspectives, gave us a premonition of something real that was just a future promise at the time.”
- Mansilla+Tuñón, 2009
Mansilla+Tuñón - Competition winning entry for the Museum of Migrations and Territories, Algeciras, 2007. Previously, today.
Trucks carrying the large, precast concrete letters of Mansilla+Tuñón’s Fine Arts museum of Castellón in order of their display in 1999. Previously, today.
“As they moved through the landscape and the towns, the five letters formed a word. The emergence of a word, an intruder, implies a culturization of landscape through thought. A culturization in motion that leaves no lasting mark. An ephemeral action, limited to four hundred and forty kilometres and ten hours of travel.”
Mansilla+Tuñón - MUSAC auditorium, Leon 2004. Perhaps the most celebrated of the practice’s work, winning the Mies van der Rohe award for best European building in 2007.
“In contrast to other types of museums, which focus on the exhibition of frozen historic collections, MUSAC is a living space that opens its doors to the wide-ranging manifestations of contemporary art. This is an art centre that constructs a set of chessboards on which the action becomes the protagonist of the space; a structure that develops from an open system, formed by a fabric of squares and rhombi, allowing the construction of a secret geography of memory.”
Previously, the sad news today. Via.
A regretful post to start the day; Luis M. Mansilla, a founding partner of Mansilla+Tuñón Arquitectos, one of the most influential and important contemporary Spanish architecture practices, passed away last night in Barcelona at the age of 53 (translated). Though the firm will most certainly continue to thrive in his absence, architecture has lost one of its great minds.
Above, the Leon Auditorium, completed in 2002 (via). More of their amazing work.
also:
Plan diagram of the “multi-cellular” geometry of the Lalin civic center, which is a complex series of interlocking and intersecting circles of various sizes that creates some stunning interior spaces (click for detail). Via.
Mansilla + Tuñón - Lalin city council and community building, 2011 (click for big). Floor plan here. Via.
