The Architecture Biennial MUGAK will organise over a hundred activities in San Sebastian

2017 October 16

• Specially relevant are 25 exhibitions, most of which will take place simultaneously, 30 conferences, 13 workshops, 7 meetings, 4 round tables, 2 interventions, 2 seminars, the congress of the School of Architecture and a photography competition.
• The programme, which was presented today, includes the attendance to the opening lecture on the 7th of November of Rafael Aranda, from RCR Arquitectes, and the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. Also of note are Alain Tavés, one of the two disciples of Le Corbusier still alive; and the Paraguayans Solano Benítez and Gloria Cabral.
• The Miramar Palace, main venue of the event, will host 10 exhibitions simultaneously, which will be opened on the 6th of November.

 

 

For several weeks, San Sebastian will be flooded with architecture. The International Biennial MUGAK has put together a programme for its first edition with over a hundred events: exhibitions, lectures, round tables, workshops, installations, seminars, a congress and a photography competition. All of them will be accessed free of charge.

Some previous activities are already taking place in October, but the real take-off will occur on the 6th of November, with the opening of the ten exhibitions simultaneously hosted in the Miramar Palace, main venue of the Biennial. Another 15 exhibitions will be located around the city, in venues such as Koldo Mitxelena, Tabakalera, the Professional Association of Architects (COAVN) headquarters in Gipuzkoa, the Higher Technical School of Architecture of the Basque Country University UPV/EHU, the Museum Cemento Rezola, the Santa Teresa convent, and another five art galleries in the city: Altxerri, Arteko, Ekain, Kur and Vetus Art.

Rafael Aranda, one of the three partners at RCR Arquitectes, winners of this year's Pritzker award, will be attending the opening on Monday, the 6th of November. He will personally guide the first tour in the exhibition of the Catalan studio, ‘Creatividad compartida’ (Shared Creativity). He is also in charge of the opening lecture of MUGAK on the next day.

 

High-profile speakers

The main lectures of the Biennial will take place in its opening week, from the 6th to the 10th of November. Other relevant speakers besides Aranda are the Paraguayan Solano Benítez and Gloria Cabral, Gillermo Zuaznabar and José Manuel López-Peláez (all on Wednesday 8th). Alain Tavés, one of the two disciples of Le Corbusier still alive, will offer a promising lecture on the morning of Thursday 9th, followed by Igor Calzada, Professor at the University of Oxford.

The closing day of the week, Friday 10th, is reserved for the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, one of the most renowned young talents of the latest international architecture.

Other young modern architects will also offer talks in a more dynamic format, such as Javier Puldain, François Chastanet, Ibon Salaberria, Jon Begiristain, Ignacio Quemada, Iñigo Beguiristain, Juan Mera and Atxu Amann.

 

25 exhibitions

Miramar will host 10 exhibitions at the same time. In addition to the one featuring RCR Arquitectes, the Palace will be shared by the finalists of the Peña Ganchegui Award to Young Basque Architecture, ‘Un refugio frente al Cantábrico’ (A hideaway in the Cantabrian coast) from the Peña Ganchegui Archive, ‘Basoa’ (The forest) by Maider López; ‘La Isla de los Faisanes. Un umbral en el tiempo’ (Pheasant Island. A threshold in time) by Guillermo Sánchez Arsuaga, ‘Habitar la frontera’ (Inhabiting the border) by Juan Aizpitarte (Espacio Reflex); ‘La Rivière du Bidassoa’(Bidassoa Riviera) and '7 zelatari eta dorretxe bat’ (7 sentinels and a tower house), both by Gillermo Zuaznabar. Besides, two further exhibitions sponsored by the Cluster Habic will be displayed on the second floor of the Palace: ‘Harremanak-Relaciones-Relations’ and ‘Exposición, Fotografía y Arquitectura’ (Exhibition, Photography and Architecture), a work by Jorge Allende. All of them will be simultaneously open for the public since the 6th of November.

There will be other exhibitions outside the main venue, several of them in the Koldo Mitxelena: an exhibition of the 10 best exercises of the COAVN awards 2016, the project ‘ENvejezando’ (ageINg) by Paz Martín and ‘Gipuzkoa Brutal’ (Brutal Gipuzkoa), organized by the School of Architecture (ETSA-EHU), among others. 

The Museum Cemento Rezola will offer an exhibition entitled 'Concrete World', by Elisa Valero. The COAVN Gipuzkoa headquarters will exhibit 'biziMUGAK-vivirMUGAK’ ('livingMUGAK'), the best works of the photography competition organized in the framework of the Biennial. Moreover, five art galleries in San Sebastian will join the exhibition tour: Altxerri, Ekain, Arteko, Kur y Vetus Art.

Among the hundred events distributed in fifteen different locations in the city, there will also be some space for dialogue. Two round tables with distinguished thinkers will take place in the Miramar Palace: on Tuesday, the 7th. of November, the concept ‘Mi ciudad’ (My city) with be discussed with Harkaitz Cano, Bernardo Atxaga and Fernando Savater as interlocutors; on Wednesday, the 8th., the journalist Soledad Gallego-Díaz will moderate a round table on ‘La ciudad amenazada: despersonalización, masificación turística y gentrificación’ (The threatened city: depersonalization, mass tourism and gentrification' with Josep María Montaner, Manuel Vicent, the writer, and Igor Calzada. 

The congress organised by the Higher Technical School of Architecture - besides moving all students to the Miramar Palace during the opening week -, several workshops run by the Association Atari, the travelling cross-border library ‘mediateca transfronteriza’ by Espacio Reflex, the films shown in Tabakalera and San Telmo, art interventions, several music concerts and many other activities will partner San Sebastian with architecture until the end of January.