October 17 · Architects' Day in El Salvador
“Congratulations to every architect on your day. You draw the homes we grow up in, the schools where we learn and the squares where we meet.”
With love, Sylvita
Sylvita picked twelve architects whose buildings changed how we live, from Barcelona to Iquique. One per sheet, in order of birth.
“My client is not in a hurry.”
He studied how trees grow and how a chain hangs, and from that came columns that branch and arches that hold themselves up. He worked on the Sagrada Família for 43 years. It is still being built.
“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
He put the house on top of the waterfall. The terraces reach out over the water, and the rock of the stream comes up through the living-room floor, beside the fireplace.
“Less is more.”
Two white slabs, eight steel columns and walls of glass. The house stands above the ground so the river can pass underneath when it floods.
“A house is a machine for living in.”
He raised the house on slim columns, ran one window along the whole facade and put a garden on the roof. Those ideas are in most of the buildings put up since.
“Any work of architecture that does not express serenity is a mistake.”
Tall walls painted pink, a long pool and the sound of falling water. In 1980 he became the first Latin American to win the Pritzker Prize.
“What attracts me is the free and sensual curve.”
He designed the main buildings of Brasília, the capital Brazil built from scratch between 1956 and 1960. His cathedral is sixteen curved concrete columns that open to the sky. He kept working until he was 104.
She hung the museum from two huge red frames and left a 74-metre open plaza underneath. The city uses it for fairs, concerts and marches.
Salvadoran sculptor and architect. He covered the church with one concrete arch that rises from the ground and filled the bands of that arch with stained glass, so the light inside comes in every colour. National Culture Prize, 2019.
On October 17, El Salvador celebrates its architects.
“For everyone a garden.”
He turned his McGill University thesis into a real building: 354 concrete modules made in a factory and stacked by crane for Expo 67 in Montreal. Almost every home has a garden on the roof of the one below.
He was a boxer and taught himself architecture by travelling and looking at buildings. In this church the cross is a cut in the concrete wall that lets in the sun. Pritzker Prize, 1995.
“There are 360 degrees, so why stick to one?”
Born in Baghdad, in 2004 she became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize. In Baku the building rises from the square as one white surface that folds into walls and roof.
The budget covered half a house. He built the hard half, with the structure, kitchen and bathroom, and left room for 93 families to build the rest themselves. Pritzker Prize, 2016.
“To the architects in our community: thank you. If you have a studio, I would love to have it on InfoSylvita.”
Sylvita