THE PECULIAR CHARM OF WALDEN7 CLUSTER WORLD / RICARDO BOFILL - TALLER DE ARQUITECTURA

A present day vision of Walden 7

José María Carandell

November 1974

 

It becomes increasingly obvious every day that the smallest social cell is not the family but the individual. Art, somehow, should reflect this phenomenon. To prove, let us for example, take the case of architecture. But before we begin to look at the symptomatic work chosen Walden 7 by Taller de Arquitectura, it might be worthwhile to remind readers that the social and cultural process of individualization is traced far back in history. It began XII-century Europe with the appearance of towns in Italy.

 

From that epoch onward, as a result of Martin Luther‟s Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the bourgeoisie, social and class structured by traditions have continued to fragment and atomize, right down to the unit of the single individual. In the Middle Ages, man was born into a world that was organic and organized, his life structured in advance by tradition. It was possible to foresee one‟s whole way of thinking, including one‟s behavior, within the bounds of Catholic Church and the fief.

 

The cities, in contrast, obliged man for the first time to think and to provide for himself, since he found there none of the sure rules imparted by tradition. And, as the world as expanded, it has become more difficult for the individual in his particular context to find a vision of the world, and a law, which is communal rather than individualistic. Just as the XIX century, saw the breakup of the family clan, the period since the French Revolution, has witnessed the transformation of the individual into the primary social unit.

But that is only the theoretical formulation. For the bourgeoisie, which appears to uphold individualism, strongly adheres to the idea of the family, or rather, to what remains of that word‟s previous significance. In any case, the only true individuals within the family are the fathers; it is quite a different story for women and adolescents,

 

not to mention children and colonized peoples. In the XX century, the individual is not only a theory, it is a fact. And it is exactly now that we are beginning to feel it as a reality. The slow, effective and inevitable liberation of women has gradually transformed a society made up of a collection of households into a floating population of individuals. 

 

Of course, the family still has considerable force and cohesion, but this grows less each day: dual- career couples, free unions, young adults tending to leave the parental home earlier … These tendencies, which before were accidental, are now becoming increasingly normative. But what sort of architecture corresponds to this individualized society? A visit to Walden 7 gives us the opportunity to see how architecture – and here we are dealing with true architecture and genuine art –has rendered individualizing trend in a 

clearly radical way. Radical in the way that it incorporates this sociological evidence referred to above and provides them with a formal solution.

 

Walden 7 is an urban and mix-use development on the site of a former concrete plant. Three gigantic buildings –of which only one completed – occupy the vertices of a virtual triangle that encloses some of the remaining industrial facilities. Two low-rise elongated buildings are placed on two sides of the triangle; the buildings are connected via passage ways at ground level. The space inside the triangle and surrounding the buildings are green areas. The first one of three blocks is a 14-storey building whose shape may evoke the image of several oval bodies squashed together vertically. As one gets closer these oval shapes clearly reveal a similarity with the reticule of a honeycomb design.

 

The “cell”, as the members of the “Taller de Arquitectura” defines it, is planned for a single person. In the interior of the building, we see at once that all the cells differ from one other. Not only does each have a separate entrance, but the location of the entrance door ensures visual privacy. In other words, it is not a question of dividing up a large building into as in the traditional manner, but of creating a series of individual cells which form a block as a result of their combination. As if the architect – which is more or less the case – had taken wooden construction blocks and assembled them up and beside one other to obtain an organized, yet organic, unit while still maintaining their independence.