Projects

These models were located within a space created by polystyrene formwork that reproduced a corner of the building at 1:1 scale. We were interested to explain at the college our experiments with the polystyrene moulds, so we included them in the exhibition for visitors to touch them, measure themselves against them, and understand the elements and construction method of this concrete façade.

The exhibition showed Building 111 for the first time, inviting visitors to relate to the different scales of representation a building goes through prior to construction, with the full-scale fragments helping to experience more fully what was on show.

Visitors moved from a view of the project from outside provided by the small, general models, to inhabiting parts of the full-size building. Enormous photographs of the building both completed and under construction enabled them to “enter” the built spaces.

One of the Picasso murals served as a partition wall for the housing unit reproduced in the exhibition. On the dining table there were four menus on offer: four blocs containing, in chronological order, all the sketches and drawings that formed the draft project, basic project, executive project and works documentation for the building. Drawings and photographs of the process models and photos of the

work under construction, together made up a very complete document that went over every step of the evolution of the process.

This table represented the densest section, which took the longest to visit in the whole exhibition, and enabled those who had time to get to see archive material that is normally neither ordered nor on show. The plates and menus on this table were a reference to our friend the artist Miralda, who works with food and language as a possibility of cultural exchange.

For the closing event of the exhibition 111 Crossed Sights, we invited the artist Miralda and chef Montse Guillén, founders of FoodCultura, and the playwright Toni Casares, director of the Sala Beckett, to discuss the social characteristics of Building 111 from their various perspectives.

Miralda presented the Fiesta Anual Ritual project, a banquet to be held in the central courtyard of the Building 111, with the aim of connecting the residents from the different stairwells through the exchange of dishes. Toni Casares discussed a text by the playwright Benet i Jornet, An old, well known smell, and the relationship he found between the spaces described in the book and the central courtyard of the Building 111.

Montse Guillén and Miralda prepared a snack based on pine cones gathered in the wood near the building. The pine cones were filled with tasty things, and could be carried by hand when visiting the exhibition. The weekend before the end of the exhibition, our studio moved to their workshop to work.

Two hundred bases for the pine cones were baked, and Miralda drew the letters 111 with squid ink on wafers, which were inserted at the top of the pine cone, like a crown. Through working with Montse and Miralda, the process of preparing the event itself became a celebration.