Ud19 t22

UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA

udd

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federico soriano Textos 2014-2015

22 Furnishings AMADEU SANTACANA en Words, CTA-ETSAM, Madrid, 2012. p-98-103.

The differential value between furnishings (“mueble” - movable) and property (“inmueble” - immovable) is clearly shown by the dates the actual words appeared. Furnishing (“mueble”, from the Latin; mobilis) is already registered in Spanish in 1030 while property appears some 300 years later, more than a semantic necessity, as a negation of what was previously meant by furnishings.

The necessity to name this new concept also clearly indicates certain changes in social behaviour, moving from more portable structures to increasingly more sedentary settlements and acquiring a desire for the appropriation of permanent possessions. Even so, 1000 years later, we are much more familiarised with property than with furnishings.

The slow but unfailing move towards sedentariness of our societies has/have brought us dangerously closer to the denial of the “furnishing” (movable) than to the transitory. Apparently we have come close to stationary. Apparently, because it can be observed that the value of the properties does not depend on our relationship with these but on other market factors which regulate the value (not only economic) of these physical properties. However, we assign our “prices” according to our relationship to these objects. We establish different types of relationships, but even so, a large majority of our preferences are towards the most transitory, the most short-lived.

Value is given to what disappears to what can be displaced, to what can be transferred. As in heraldry the characteristics of “mueble” (figure) defines the 1

form of the coat of arms. The figure which is in transit, which moves along the rigid frame and the infl exible bands of the shield. The figure which can mutate, which can disappear, but at the same time that which endows meaning, signifi cance.

The furnishings, because of their genetic condition, are what we take with us; a part of ourselves. It is, in fact, that which we have closest to ourselves. It is the clothing which accompanies us. It is the clothing which identifi es and capacitates us for certain actions.

Paradoxically, the most transitory and mutable, the most lightweight, is what most capacitates us for particular actions, what makes us specific to particular situations, just as the lightest prosthesis exponentially increases the potential of our own body. Furnishings are the direct relationship between our body and its potential and ambition. They are the link between ourselves, who we really are, and the physically permanent.

Property (“inmueble” - immovable) has only the characteristic of a support, a blueprint, a music score. That which is static becomes an inert guide which establishes variations in the whole but with certain undetermined tangible specifics. It establishes relationship guidelines without conditioning what will happen in each delimitedspace - the relationship fi eld. The battle fi eld which only becomes meaningful when the characters appear, equipped with their clothing specialised for action. Furnishing (“mueble” - movable) has the specifi c characteristic of a designated activity. The furnishing is the element of relationship and connection between user and space. It is the device which prompts the user to make a specific use of an indeterminate space. It is the signal which sends the command to set a situation in motion. Furnishing is the clothing which allows us everything. The clothing which allows us to work, eat, rest... For the Japanese the bed is the clothing they “wear” to sleep. Japanese culture squeezes its characteristics of mobility to the limit and transfers all the properties of the transitory to the permanent.

obviously facilitates this huge variety of uses. In sum, 48 spaces are confi gured in the initial ideogram, their dimensions not committed or linked to their respective activities. The areas and the size of the rooms have an element of indefiniteness which leaves them open on a programmatic level. Neither do the specific characteristics of their materiality and position defi ne in the least their subsequent use. The continuity and connections between the different rooms are arbitrary and permit a great degree of freedom in movements from one to another. In the ideogram previous to the project and the subsequent model, the only material which configures the programme is the furnishing. The elements of furnishing are what make possible the actions the inhabitants of this house will engage in. The propertyfurnishing (“mueble”-”inmueble”) dichotomy is taken to its limits, leaving all the programmatic capacities to the furnishing, to the transferable or portable.

The furnishing sets in motion all actions that will occur, from the most recreational to the most vital. The furnishing and its configurations are the architectural programme, and due to its implicit mobility it gives the programme a condition which is much closer to our actions, with a capacity for flexibility and variation much more real and contemporary, endowing the whole (inhabitant-furnishingshabitat) with a great many possibilities which auto-regulate and adjust themselves constantly.

A good example of this is the House in China by Ryue Nishizawa in 2003. It is an exploration of the expansion of an ambitious domestic programme in a location of vast proportions. The project is located in an large residential complex, of dubious pertinence, with an urban plan by Riken Yamamoto, in the outskirts of Tianjin (China). The house, of approximately 620 square metres, is confi gured on only one level. This considerable vastness of surface means that activities which in a small house would have had to be overlapped or excluded, could be contemplated; activity areas such as an art gallery, a basketball court, a greenhouse, a tea room, a breakfast room, a studio, a patio with swimming pool, a gymnasium, a sauna, a music room, a video room, a spacious dining room where it is possible to dance and hold parties. The great number of rooms 2

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