Rafael Moneo
Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate
1996
Formal Presentation Ceremony for
Rafael Moneo
The Getty Center Construction Site
Los Angeles, California
June 12, 1996
Click Here To View Video of
Ceremony
Contents of this Page:
Bill Lacy
Executive Director, The Pritzker Prize
Harold M. Williams
President and Chief Executive Officer
The J. Paul Getty Trust
J. Carter Brown
Director Emeritus, National Gallery of Art
Chairman, Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury
Jay A. Pritzker
President, The Hyatt Foundation
(photos will be added to this page)
The location for the 1996 Pritzker Architecture Prize ceremony was in the tradition of
previous awards over the past 18 years, traditional in the sense that sites of
architectural significance around the world have been chosen to pay homage to architects
of earlier eras, or in some cases previous Laureates of the the Pritzker Prize.
The latter was true in this case since Richard Meier, the 1984 Pritzker Laureate, is the
architect of The Getty Center. Never before has the ceremony been held in a construction
site (shown above in an aerial view looking southwest). The Getty Center, a campus like
complex of six buildings that will provide nearly a million square feet of space for the
arts and humanities, is due to open to the public in December, 1997.
The evening began with guests arriving, and riding a tram (shown at left), in operation
for the first time, from the parking area to the building complex at the top of the hill.
Getty Trustee Robert F. Erburu and his wife, Lois, were among the first arrivals (photo at
right), along with the director of the Getty Conservation Institute, Miguel Angel Corzo.
(center).
The 400 guests gathered for the reception on a terrace with an eastern view of the Los
Angeles and Century City (left).
(in the photo at right) Honoree Rafael Moneo (left), Governor Pete Wilson of California
(center), was greeted by Mr. and Mrs. Jay A. Pritzker, and J. Paul Getty Trust Chief
Executive Officer and President, Harold Williams (right).
As Jay A. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, explained to Rafael Moneo (photo at
left), "This is a unique opportunity to see what has already been acknowledged as one
of the most important architectural projects of this, and possibly the next, century.
Furthermore, this is not as something already accomplished, but rather is a work in
progress, with some buildings still in their skeletal state."
Cardinal Richard Mahony (left in the photo at right) of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
chatted with Governor Wilson during the evening. It was announced the day before the
Pritzker Prize ceremony, that Rafael Moneo had been selected as the architect of the new
St. Vibiana Cathedral for the city of Los Angeles.
Among the guests were (photo below left) Richard Koshalek, director of the Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, with his wife. Mr. and Mrs. Eli Broad (photo below right) were
greeted by Harold Williams.
From the terrace reception, guests walked across the plaza (below left) to (below right)
the future restaurant building with a vista of the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean
where the presentation ceremony was held. Following the prize presentation, the group
retired to a formal dinner, walking again through the plaza, up a grand staircase, then
through a construction tunnel to a transparent tent erected in what will be the courtyard
of the museum structures.
Bill Lacy
Executive Director
The Pritzker Architecture Prize
Good evening. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. It's my pleasure to
welcome you here to The Getty Center for this evening's award ceremony. It seemed like a
good idea when I said to Harold Williams: "Harold, why don't we have the party at
your place?" And he agreed.
We are here this evening to celebrate and to honor a great architect,
José Rafael Moneo, and to initiate him into a very select and distinguished company of
architects who have won the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
This is the eighteenth Pritzker Architecture Prize ceremony and I have
been involved with the prize for ten of those eighteen years. During that same time, I was
also the professional advisor to the J. Paul Getty trust when this site was chosen, when
Richard Meier was selected as the architect and when this epic project worked its way
through programming, community and city approvals, design and now construction. It gives
me a great deal of personal satisfaction to see these two clients and cultural forces
co-mingled this evening.
The Pritzker Architecture Prize has achieved its present stature in
the field of architecture because of a superlative jury who make good choices, sponsors
who support and encourage the selection process without interfering with its outcome and a
simple and unbureaucratic system of nominations and deliberations.
The prize is also strengthened by the requirement that the jury see
actual work by architects who are under consideration and by drawing attention to the
importance of architecture by the choice of distinctive locations like this evening. We're
delighted to be here in this spectacular architectural setting and the gentleman who
agreed to let us visit this historical site, before it was historical, is the next
speaker. A man who has guided the trust to its present position of cultural importance and
has been the mastermind behind the realization of this west coast monument of the arts.
It's my pleasure to introduce my good friend, Mr. Harold Williams, CEO and President of
the J. Paul Getty Trust.
President and Chief Executive Officer
The J. Paul Getty Trust
Thank you, Bill, and good evening. Governor Wilson, ladies and
gentlemen, it's a pleasure to have you with us tonight. For many of you, this is a welcome
to Los Angeles as well. It's an honor for us to host such a prestigious event and to join
in the celebration of the art of architecture as we acknowledge and log the distinguished
career of Jose Rafael Moneo. And so it's only fitting that The Getty Center is a venue for
such an event, and essentially for our first public event in the still to be completed
Getty Center. We hope The Getty Center will become an architectural landmark in its own
right for Los Angeles and the world. We anticipate that the center will be open to the
public late in 1997, and I'm sure that you'll be invited to celebrate that with us.
The Getty is an institution unique in the world, the only one
dedicated to the visual arts and culture that brings together so many aspects of the
visual arts as equal partners. At this Getty Center, we will for the first time unite on
one campus all of the organizations that make up The Getty. The one you know best, the J.
Paul Getty Museum, but also The Getty Research Institute for the History of the Art and
the Humanities, The Getty Conservation Institute, The Getty Education Institute for the
Arts, The Getty Information Institute and The Getty Grant Program.
We expect that The Getty Center will attract and serve a broad public
as well as create an environment for promoting collaborations among The Getty
organizations. We're building The Getty Center to be a cultural resource as well as a
significant work of architecture for the city of Los Angeles. We hope that its visibility
for many parts of this city will serve as a magnet for visitors, and more importantly, as
a reminder of the vital role the arts play in our lives and in our times.
We intend for it to attract and serve a broad public. People from Los
Angeles and from around the world, young and old, who will come here to enjoy and study
art and cultural heritage in an inspiring and stimulating setting. Your presence here
tonight adds great distinction to The Getty and The Getty Center. We will hope that you
will come back in late '97, when construction has been completed, the museum's collection
has been installed and the central gardens are in full bloom.
Now this is Rafael Moneo's evening, but given that this event
acknowledges and celebrates architectural achievement, I have to have a footnote as a
client to what, Richard Meier has created here for us. I think you've been exposed to the
exceptional beauty and sensitivity to it as indeed a work of art; sensitivity to a very
special view that takes full advantage of the site and unusual distance over the Los
Angeles basin.
But there is so much you cannot appreciate in one visit. In part, how
it embraces and enhances the environment that we endeavor to create for visitors to the
museum, for scholars and researchers who come to work here. The intimacy with the works of
art that the museum visitor will experience; an environment that we feel will enhance
their experience in unusual ways. And like any great work of art, it takes time and
immersion and frequent visits to appreciate it fully.
I, still, as I walk the site and walk the buildings, am amazed
continually at the vistas, at the unique ways of framing and surprising the visitor and
the very special architectural niceties, if you will, that make this a very, very special
place. The unusual use of stone, unlike any that's been used before, and undoubtedly, some
aspects of it that I haven't yet encountered myself. So with that, I would like to
personally acknowledge our architect, Richard Meier.
Chairman of the Jury
Pritzker Architecture Prize
On behalf of the Pritzker Jury and my fellow jurors, I wanted to add my accolade to
our prize winner and our thanks to Harold Williams and all of my friends here at The
Getty, including my former colleague, John Walsh, for the fabulous opportunity to be in
this site when it is all still crackling and happening.
This is what architecture is all about. It's about building, and here we're part of
the process, not simply handed the product. And Richard, our hat is off to you. I think
there is not oneof us that hasn't felt the tingle of being on this site and in this
setting.
Announcements have come thick and fast in the last 24 hours, and we all know that
Harold as announced that some time, way off into the future, he will no longer be in
charge of this institution. That is very hard to envision. I think that we all recognize
that part of the architectural process also includes the patron. And Harold has been a
fatastic patron. What you see here is also largely due to him. So thanks for having us
here, Harold.
I am also here to remind you that the Pritzker Prize is very much by intention an
international one. And tonight, I think this is reinforced. It's interesting to see that a
Richard Meier, an architect from the United States, is asked to do buildings in Spain -- a
fabulous msueum in Barcelona -- or in Frankfurt, or in Rome. Now, Rafael Moneo, from
Spain, is being invited more and more to design buildings in this country. In fact, we
have patrons of his here from Houston, where he is doing an addition to their Museum of
Art, and an about-to-be patron, Your Eminence [nodding to Cardinal Mahony], who has
commissioned a new cathedral for Los Angeles. I think that is very exciting to rcognize
how this global village we now live in has become so international.
Moneo, as some of you may know, studied in Rome for a couple of years and has done
work in Spain which dramatizes the extent to which Roman culture populated the Iberian
Peninsula; and one is reminded constantly of the wonderful reverberations back through
time that architecture can give us. We have it here. What from the model I thought
originally would be rather Greek, as a hill town, I think once we're here, and feel its
grandeur, we recognize is rather Roman.
We have a Moneo understanding the past and that great Latin tradition,
which is also part of the American tradition. I think his cathedral will bring us into a
realization of that in this city, which was named after all Los Angeles, and is a city
that very much represents the wonderful catholicity that our nation of the U.S.A.
embodies.
It is appropriate that in a City of Angels we should be celebrating
great patrons. And there are among us two of the greatest patrons of today, because it is
to them we owe the Pritzker Prize. Cindy Pritzker is very much a part of this team. Cindy,
why don't you stand? I think we should all thank her.
Some of you were at the ceremony at the National Building Museum a few
weeks ago, when the prize this time went not to an architect, but to Mr. and Mrs.
Pritzker. It was a very moving evening, and we had many Pritzker Laureates come and doff
their caps. And so this podium is now rightfully turned over to the President of the Hyatt
Foundation himself, a very international-minded man, Jay Pritzker, our angel.
President, The Hyatt Foundation
Governor Wilson, Cardinal Mahoney, Mr. Moneo, distinguished guests.
You've probably heard enough thanks to The Getty Foundation for being kind enough to
permit us to hold this ceremony here. We also have to thank the Dinwiddie Construction
Company because they've done an absolutely incredible job of preparing this for our
meeting in such short order. Having some first-hand knowledge of building projects, I know
what kind of sacrifices are involved and the costs thereof.
Each year we've attempted to honor architecture of the past and the
present, by choosing architecturally significant sites around the world for the ceremony.
We held the ceremony at Todai-ji Buddhist Temple in Japan, which is the largest wooden
structure in the world. Last year it was at the palace of Versailles, which was an
incredible venue, needless to say; Palazzo Grassi in Venice; Prague Castle in the Czech
Republic and a number of museums in this country.
Tonight our being here not only honors architecture, but underscores
the significance of this complex as a cultural resource for Los Angeles, the west coast
and the world. Our gratitude to Richard for having designed and built this incredible
structure. It was only twelve years ago that he was a Laureate, and at that time, the jury
lauded his accomplishments, but called them "mereprologue to the compelling new
experiences anticipated from his drawing board." Almost within days of receiving the
prize, the commission for this new Getty Center was bestowed on him.And
in that tradition, it was announced just yesterday by
And in that tradition, it was announced just yesterday byCardinal
Mahoney that Rafael Moneo has been selected to design the new cathedral for Los Angeles,
which of course, will have considerable impact on Southern California.
In spite of all the jokes about Los Angeles being a region of hot dog
stands and car washes, it is becoming architecturally significant. The skyline we saw
earlier this evening, that unfortunately disappeared in the fog, is ample evidence. You
have works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Schindler, Eames, Saarinen, Frank Gehry, Isozaki,
Neutra, Pei, and Richard Meier. We can't begin to name them all. But in addition, there
are many other talented architects who design and build well. Many of them are here this
evening. Ricardo Legorreta is here from Mexico City. He did a home for us in Rancho Santa
Fe that we think is wonderful.
There seems to be so much architecture that we tend to take it for
granted. That anonymous aspect of this profession, which we are attempting to do something
about, goes back to the days of the Acropolis and the pyramids.People
today are
People today are becoming more aware of the buildings that surround
them. This mother of all the arts was one of man's first expressions of creativity serving
the need for shelter, but it's no longer an orphan. I would like not only to mention the
laureates, but also the men and women who have selected each year's honorees.
Carter Brown presides over an ever-changing international panel whose
integrity and dedication to excellence has resulted in a worldwide acceptance of this
prize. Another founding juror, J. Irwin Miller, and Xenia Miller are here this evening.
They made Columbus, Indiana a living architectural museum. They helped guide us in
creating this award through the years.
Although the members of the jury have changed over the years, the
quality of their selections really haven't wavered, nor have they ever been predictable. I
keep trying to guess who the next year's winner will be and so far I'm batting zero. One
of the things for which the media has praised the jury is the fact that they never go for
the obvious, or fashion or fad, nor have they been provincial. The prize has honored
almost equally architects from this country and abroad. I think it's now, nine to ten; ten
from outside the U.S.; nine Americans.
It's not surprising that architecture inspired writers throughout the
ages. John Ruskin wrote that: "Architecture is the printing press of all ages and
gives the history of the state of society in which it was erected. When we build, let us
think that we build forever."
These words are echoed today providing architects with encouragement
through this prize. Rafael Moneo considers himself "a maker of buildings," and
he encourages his students to be the same. He influences a large audience, not only
through his works, but at Harvard's Graduate School of Design where he served as chairman,
and still is a visiting professor, as well as at Madrid and Barcelona Universities.
The jury in praising his work said: "Each of his buildings is
unique, but at the same time uniquely recognizable as being from his palette. Each of his
designs has a confident and timeless quality indicative of a master architect whose talent
is obvious from the first concept to the last detail of the completed building."
The Pritzker Architecture Prize honors Rafael Moneo for his parallel
efforts in theory, practice and teaching, not only for the past and present, but the
future as well. Rafael, would you step up here, please? Richard Meier will join us on the
podium.
Architect of the Getty Center and
1984 Pritzker Laureate
I just wanted to say that this is really a great day; a great day for
a truly great architect. I first met Rafael about twenty years ago. He was the most
genuine gentleman in the true sense of the word I'd ever met. As I got to know him, I
realized he was not only a gentleman, but he was an architect who understood something
which is very important to me — that is light and how light affects the quality of
life, both literally and figuratively. Those of us and those of you who know his work know
how it is luminous. It has a very special presence. I can think of no one who is more
fitting and more wonderful than Rafael Moneo and I'm pleased to be here to congratulate
him and to be here at The Getty site in which light is so important. Rafael, I have a
special presentation for you. It's conceptually, a piece of The Getty. [Presenting him
with a block of travertine marble, one of the key construction materials of The Getty
Center.]
1996 Laureate
Thank you. What can be said after such kind words, after all these
words of praise from friends whom I have loved and respected during so many years. I am
touched. I am overwhelmed because I don't know why, but for some reason my fate has become
entwined with the city of Los Angeles. I am waiting for the next four or five years to see
why this has occurred, and to find out what fate was looking for in bringing Los Angeles
into my life and what fate was asking me to do here.
I am indeed quite touched by both Jay Pritzker and Carter Brown, and
Richard Meier, because of this present [referring to the marble block of the Getty that
Meier has just presented to him] that will indeed hold memories for me of this
unforgettable day. But I don't want to extend myself too much. My feelings are probably
evident. Let me read what I have prepared. I will try to brief.
I would like to tell all those who are here, witnesses of my
happiness, how profoundly I am touched by feelings of gratitude and joy. I owe my
happiness to architecture; to the activity that I have dedicated the best part of my life.
And I should start today by saying directly how much I love architecture. It has taught me
to look at the world seeking to understand why animals, tools, plants, mountains, the
clothes we wear and naturally the buildings, appear to us in their specific forms.
Learning about the reasons behind the form helps the architect to
produce his work, the buildings which ultimately constitute the background where men and
women live. The opportunity to create the reality which surrounds us is the greatest
privilege that we as architects enjoy. I am immensely grateful to architecture for
allowing me to see the world through its eyes.
After declaring my love and my respect for architecture tonight, I
would like to remind you what Alberti, one of the greatest architects and theoreticians in
history thought about architecture. For him, architecture had to provide beauty as well as
satisfy necessity. These, indeed, are two objectives which architecture used to accomplish
and that today are, let us say it plainly, often forgotten.
Beauty is not today familiar in an architectural vocabulary.
Architects seem to be absorbed by the idea that architecture is simply the reflection of a
culture at a specific time. So many architects now seek to manifest motion instead of
stability, the ephemeral instead of the perpetual, the fragmented instead of the whole and
the fictitious instead of the real. Even the city which could be considered the most
valuable contribution that architecture has made to humankind is today endangered by the
dispersion brought by new means of communication and transportation. The increasingly
familiar concept of "virtual reality" speaks about a new idea of reality that
has little to do with the real world architecture helped to shape throughout history.
Years ago, Luis Barragan, asked for beauty in his address to an
audience as this one of today when celebrating the second Pritzker prize. I quote:
"The invincible difficulty that the philosophers have in defining the meaning of this
word, beauty, is unequivocal proof of its ineffable mystery. Human life, deprived of
beauty, is not worthy of being called so."
I understand and I share Barragan's difficulties in defining beauty.
Obviously, it does not mean to me that architecture is fixed to an immutable canon. It
means rather to believe that the buildings are able to be masters of themselves. Aristotle
spoke of pleasure when talking about beauty. Augustin was looking for truth. When the
building enjoys being itself, both concepts are still pertinent and then pleasure and
truth engender the feeling of plenitude that seems to me to be felt when we are close to
something which emanates beauty.
Architecture is not today so simply connected to necessity as it was
in the past. Once upon a time buildings were close to the idea of tools which helped men
and women to survive in the rigorous, natural world. Necessity was the great architectural
ally that united appropriateness both to the accomplishment of the programs and the use of
building techniques. Even more, in the past the act of building implied the manipulation
of the most elaborate techniques. Today, these techniques have become trivialized gestures
with the help often of remote and sophisticated industries.
The fact that we live in a society where the rights of an individual
prevail has had a tremendous influence in architecture. Architecture seems to be the
ultimate expression of the individual's freedom. This has brought today's architecture so
close to the arbitary that it seems to have lost the specific condition it enjoyed until
now. And while I am aware that form is not the result of a set of deterministic factors
and that men and women have always been the ultimate master of form, I, indeed long for
the times when necessity was inevitably connected with architecture.
Why am I taken by this reflection about architecture tonight? I think
that I know why it happened. I declared and I tried to explain how much I love
architecture. I am aware of what doing architecture means today. I indeed resist the idea
that architecture is different from what it used to be. By recognizing that architecture
still could and should include in its agenda the concepts of beauty and necessity, I am
expressing my most profound wish that architecture possess a long life ahead.
I realize that buildings have changed and even the profession of
architects is today quite different from what it used to be, and yet architecture, as it
was once understood, remains. The fact that those attributes of beauty and necessity still
are pertinent would be the proof. I would not like that to be simply the expression of my
desire, but the result of this everlasting way of looking at the world that architecture
has provided throughout history.
It is time now time to express openly all my gratitude. I would like
to start with all the people who taught me to love architecture; those builders whose work
constitute the world I love so profoundly.
Those who were my teachers and fellow students at the School of
Architecture of Madrid where I spent those early years of learning and to those architects
in whose offices I worked. Those schools where I taught, Barcelona and especially to the
Graduate School of Design of Harvard, where I still enjoy the contact with those who work
to become architects; those who were my clients, and all those who worked in my office
throughout so many years. Without their generosity and faith, it wouldn't have been
possible to sustain my career.
And above all, I would like to manifest my recognition to my family.
My mother, Teresa, and my sister, who shares the same name, are here tonight. I deeply
regret the loss of my father, Rafael, who helped me with the decision to become an
architect and who so attentively followed my career, and the loss also of my brother,
Mariano, a civil engineer with whom I worked together on some of my most beloved projects.
I feel an infinite gratitude to my wife, Belen Feduchi and our
daughters Belen, Teresa and Clara Matilde. My wife, who comes from a family of architects,
has helped me with her acute advice dictated by the love we share for architecture. She
and my daughters always accepted this condition of an architect's life today, which
is that of a nomad. Without their general support, I couldn't have done my work and I
wouldn't be here tonight.
I would like to thank too, The Getty Foundation for providing such a
magnificent place for today's ceremony. It has allowed all of us to foresee what this
remarkable complex will be when finished and without a doubt, it can be said we see here
the new standards for museums and cultural institutions in the century to come.
Obviously, I feel the most profound gratitude towards the members of
the jury whom I respect so much and whose decision I receive with a mixture of immense joy
and deep sense of responsibility. I am thrilled thinking that my work deserves such
recognition and that my name will be together with those others who have been awarded with
the Pritzker and whom I admire so profoundly.
And last, but not least, my gratitude is addressed to the Pritzker
family. If I have said I love architecture, I would like to extend my love to all those
who share the respect I feel towards this discipline. The Pritzker family has wanted their
name to be associated with this prize that works above all to honor architecture. I don't
know a better endeavor, and it deserves all of my recognition and all my sympathy. I want
to declare that publicly. In so doing, I end my words tonight. Thank you very much.
by
Robert Campbell
Architect and Architecture Critic, The Boston Globe
Winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for criticism
When you visit a building by Rafael Moneo, you are intensely aware of
the architecture. But you are equally aware of yourself as a presence within this
architecture. You find yourself turning and climbing. You emerge onto a high bright
overlook, or descend into a darker cave. You feel yourself to be traversing a path, a path
that is never fully mapped out but instead offers choices. Having to choose, you explore,
you witness, you quest.
When Moneo writes of his buildings, he behaves like a novelist. He
tends to establish a point of view from which the experience of the architecture is
perceived. The point of view is that of the visitor to the building, a fictional character
imagined by Moneo. Seldom does he describe a building as an autonomous artifact. Instead
it is an event in the life of a witness, or more likely a sequence of events. For example:
At the Davis Museum: "The stair becomes the home of the
viewer...inside the stair, the viewer becomes the owner who possesses the
collection."
At the Miro Foundation: "The visitor following [the entry path]
will be surprised to find a beautiful, ample square. From here he can go on to explore the
garden."
But Moneo's tendency to create fictional character goes beyond this
invention of an observing consciousness. The building, too, has feelings.
Of the Miro Foundation: "Sharp and intense, the volume ignores
its surroundings or, better still, answers with rage the hostile buildings that have worn
down the previously beautiful slope."
Of Davis: "And indeed, this Museum tries to reflect on, and to
give testimony, to, this particular collection."
Finaly, writing about the Museum of Roman Art, Moneo describes
"the wish of enclosure that is always present in the architecture of the
Museum."
In this architect's mind, what is taking place is a social and
intellectual encounter between two characters, the building and the visitor. They meet,
they exchange glances, they inquire of one another.
And like all meetings, this one occurs at a particular time and in a
particular place.
The embodiment in architecture of time and place is Rafael Moneo's
deepest concern. It is not a fashionable concern today. To many designers and students,
the idea that a building should respond to the past, or to its physical surroundings, is
regarded as passé. We live in a single worldwide culture, it is argued. A new
scale and a new kind of architecture are required. Indeed we may think of ourselves as
existing not in time and place at all, but rather in cyberspace — that electronic
universe of signals and impulses which, ideally at least, is both timeless and placeless.
Being so, it must also, of course, be immaterial.
Moneo is perhaps the single most important figure on the opposite side
of this question. For him, architecture does not exist except as built of sensually
apprehensible materials. A Moneo building is deeply embedded in its time and place and is
expressive of them. Architecture thus becomes a way of knowing. Again, the best way to
illustrate is to quote the architect, whose writings are among the most eloquent by any
artist of this century.
"News, films, TV, advertising — everything pushes us towards
a life understood as a continuous consumption of information received through images. No
wonder that architecture, in today's world, no longer represents power. The media are the
vehicle of power."
"For others...the reality of the building will be sought in its
lasting tangible presence, which speaks about the architectural principles behind its
construction. That is where I would like to be."
"The site is an expectant reality, always awaiting the event of a
prospective construction on it, through which will appear its otherwise hidden
attributes."
"The shadow of anywhere is haunting our world
today...architecture claims the site from anywhere...Architecture is engendered upon
it...The site is where architecture is. It can't be anywhere."
Architecture has traditionally served to help us achieve presence in
an otherwise frightening cosmos. Within the infinite universe of time and space,
architecture creates one moment, one place. Moneo wishes it to continue to perform this
function, to be a prop to our identity, to our knowledge of where and when we are, and
therefore of who we are. A Moneo building creates an awareness of time by remembering its
antecedents. It then layers this memory against its mission in the contemporary world. And
it creates a perception of place by seeming to look around it, exchanging signals with the
neighboring world as ships at sea might flash semaphores.
All these qualities are embodied in the Museum of Roman Art
(illustrated in the photos on this and the following three pages) at Merida in Spain, a
work that is so powerfully itself as to reduce the labels of criticism to nonsense. It is
implanted in its site in the most literal way, woven among Roman foundations and roadways
and connected by tunnel to the remains of an ancient theater and arena. Rising from this
past, Moneo builds his walls of Roman brick. But, as is typical of him, he evokes a
simultaneous sense of the present by suppressing the mortar joints to create a modern,
crisp, abstract surface: the wall is a memory, not a replication. As always, the handling
of interior daylight is masterful, here an ever-changing golden wash. The light contrasts
with the ghostly paleness, therefore the pastness, of the antiquities on display, which
continue to bear witness when we are not present. Beyond all this, Moneo constructs an
astonishing conceit of time and place. His museum, rising from the actual ruins, appears
itself to be older building that has been renovated for its present use. Modern concrete
slabs span between the arches, and balconies of steel thread themselves among the walls of
Roman brick as if they were recent inserts in a previously existing fabric. The brick is
deteriorating by spalling and chipping—not an intended effect, perhaps, but one that
adds to the sense of the great masonry shell as something that has lived a long time and
experienced both decay and renewal. The museum is thus a conceit that expresses three
eras: a genuine past, a fictive past, and a candid present. One detail is especially
evocative. At a turn in the ramp that descends to the lowest level, an actual Roman
foundation is exposed and floodlit as an artifact. Right beside it, presented in exactly
the same manner, is the exposed concrete footing of one of Moneo's own columns. The
architect is presenting his own work as archeology. He intensifies your awareness of time
and materiality by proposing a metaphor that spans two millennia. This is, indeed,
architecture as a way of knowledge.
Rafael Moneo is a warm, unpretentious, immensely likeable man who is
neither awed nor self-impressed by winning the Pritzker Prize, which arrives at a moment
when he is perhaps only coming into his full powers. His buildings are still youthful,
filled with invention and risk, yet grounded in a depth of intellect and scholarship rare
among practicing architects and even rarer among those to whom the material world means as
much as it does to Moneo. The world is now beating a path to Rafael Moneo's door, and his
future work should be something to see.
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