Lo construido: ¿siempre hay que hacer? Acción con lo extraordinario vs. percepción de lo genérico

Abstract

Any project that works on pre-existing buildings involves an act of design that, like any other work, can be approached in very different ways. Generally, the history of architectural intervention has led us to understand it as a process of enhancement of the extraordinary and almost always leading to a major intellectual and material effort. Through several case studies, mainly associated with two exhibitions curated by OMA and the German pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2010 and 2012), this article raises questions regarding an alternative way of dealing with the pre-existing: can such a process also be understood from a contemplative point of view? Is it also possible to recognize value in the generic and in the extraordinary?