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MEDIUM AND PLASTICITY
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Juan Elvira
Professor of Urban Workshop and Design Critic, FTP-DSVII, TOTAL IBERIA 1.0, IE University
In order to address the architecture of extreme landscapes, we first have to determine the meaning of this natural category. Extreme landscapes are not just riverbeds or high mountain lakes. They can be any place where architecture seems unconceivable: like a mountain cliff, inside a body of water, or the rocky heart of a geological formation. In an extreme landscape nature is perceived as an unlimited extension, where architecture is not only absent, but forgotten. The central quality of designs that operate in them is their landscape dimension. For two reasons: first, because they intervene in a natural surrounding and their presence is significant on a territorial scale. Second, because they reproduce the characteristics of those natural spaces in their interiors. Extreme landscapes contribute to the idea of landscapes within architecture. Independently of their scale, these designs combine architecture and infrastructure. They take on certain qualities of territorial infrastructure, but they also incorporate a capacity for functional reprogramming, which is characteristic of architecture. They are flexible; they are open to change. That is where one of their greatest potentials lies, since they propose appropriations and interventions that are open to different uses—a condition that infrastruc118
JUAN ELVIRA