Baladrar House

In recent years, architectural practice has undergone deep transformations. In countries with a strong artisan tradition, as is the case of Spain, the old model of studying architecture that could lead to being in charge of projects of very different scales has been substituted by vast engineering projects which blur the role of the classic creator in favor of market profitability. This new situation has been further aggravated by the serious socioeconomic crisis suffered above all by countries in the South of Europe, resulting in the new generation of architects facing work conditions that are very different from those of their predecessors, on many occasions installed in a new precarity of economic means and materials.

The young Madrid-based architecture studio made up by María Langarita and Víctor Navarro have confronted this new situation, so alien to the practices during those years of plenty which, on the other hand, they never managed to experience. They developed their work in the new precarity that arose with the economic crisis and they naturally adapt themselves to any kind of commission or conditions, from the urgency of ephemeral installations (such as the Red Bull Music Academy or constructing sets, exhibits or food stands) to competitions with a certain weight (such as the Medialab-Prado in Madrid) or single family dwellings. A large part of these works are performed upon existing buildings (another sign of the times), without leaving permanent traces, with the conviction that their intervention is only understandable as part of a sequence of actions upon what has been built that each generation contributes.

This issue of 2G is the first monograph to focus on the work of Langarita Navarro. The presentation of their work is preceded by three articles, from the German critic and editor Florian Heilmeyer, and the Spanish architects Daniel Fernández Pascual and Roberto González García. The nexus section includes a reflection by Langarita and Navarro themselves about the fact of building on the already existing ("Working with Time Machines") and a conversation between the architects and the author Andrea Valdés and the artist David Bestué.

2G 70 LANGARITA NAVARRO is available on visualMANIAC, Zinio & iBookstore (only digital)