Congresos Líneas

It opened the series with an uncomfortable question taken from Neil Leach, whether meaningful discourse always loses out to seduction. At the round table Víctor Cañas argued that architecture is more about space, light, color and texture than form, and Jaime Rouillón and Carlos Jiménez discussed how quickly we consume images today. Before the lectures, the Colección Líneas issue devoted to Isaac Broid was presented.

Light as the material of the project. Alejandro Aravena came at it from the opposite side and spoke about shadow, about looking for the most irreducible trait of each commission and about architecture answering questions that matter to society as a whole. The round table revolved around a phrase by Mies van der Rohe on the qualities proper to each material.

Inspired by the exhibition Informal, le génie du possible by Cecil Balmond in Bordeaux, it proposed reading together the new expressions of the international avant-garde and the guiding lines of contemporary Latin American architecture. Four lectures, an introduction by Luis Diego Barahona and a round table for 250 people.

The work in relation to its place, with four architects from Paraguay, Colombia, Spain and Mexico who work under very different conditions of climate, materials and culture. The day included the launch of a book from the Colección Líneas.

Housing as the piece that builds the city. Architects from Peru, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Costa Rica, together with Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, discussed how to redefine the way people live in Costa Rica without further extending urban sprawl.

Density and mixed uses as a response to a city that keeps growing outward. Luis Fernández-Galiano, Carlos Jiménez, Giancarlo Mazzanti and Oliver Schütte showed cities on three continents and Luis Diego Barahona brought the discussion to San José.

A question to close the series, how to add positively to a city that never stops growing. Three more questions followed from it, how to make the city more integrated socially, more sustainable in a country that had set out to become carbon neutral and more affordable in the middle of the global post-crisis.