Josep Lluis Mateo Book : Information

PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK OCCASIONS AND THE OCCASIONAL CITY INSTALLATION by Josep Lluis Mateo (15 to 19 September 2009) Josep Lluis Mateo presents his book Occasions, which contains the architect's projects, talks and reflections over the last five years. To coincide with this launch, the practice has devised an ephemeral installation, Occasional City, comprising models and documents of recent projects. image : Ferran Mateo The book, published by Actar, will have its public launch on 15 September at Barcelona's Galeria RAS, the venue of the installation of models and audiovisual material. The book is published in Spanish and English, and will be distributed in over 20 countries. It includes contributions by Stan Allen, Dominique Boudet, Vicente Guallart, Jose Luis Guerin, Marta Poch, Carlos M. Reis de Figueiredo and Jordi Teixidor. The ephemeral installation will be open to visitors on 3, 4 and 5 September only, at Galeria RAS in Barcelona. "Don't finish this building (the Catalan Film Theatre). The outline is always much better than the finished product. It's lovely, Josep Lluis." Jose Luis Guerin, film director "Josep Lluis Mateo is one of Spain's most influential architects and a guest in Nice at this first lecture of 2008. He is an architect with an atypical career. (...) It was a hard training, but one that allowed Mateo to forge his exceptional urban savoir-faire" Dominique Boudet, Director and editor in chief of AMC French magazine "I try to ensure that my participation is in proportion, establishing a balanced relation between the way I see and feel the commission and the overall project (...) .less painting, more architecture." Jordi Teixidor, Painter "(...) reflection on the profession also forms part of the practice of an architect, and that this activity should not necessarily be given up to professional theorists or academics." Stan Allen, Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University THE BOOK: OCCASIONS Occasions refers to the specificity of our actions and puts distance between itself and the generic approach. Operating as an architect, I have to go up to phenomena; I cannot merely explain them from the distance that renders them uniform and dilute. I am interested in the viewpoint that causes experiences and ideas to materialize in a unique, special way. In consequence, rather than proposing a practice of general, abstract, generic architecture, Occasions seeks to understand it and to describe it as the product of an intelligence and a specific sensibility. Occasions points out that our work is always an opportunity to understand and establish active relations with the world. Josep Lluis Mateo EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: THE INSTALLATION: OCCASIONAL CITY OCCASIONAL CITY is an ideal city consisting of fragments of cities in which we have been invited to work. It is global and local, comprised of order and hierarchy (despite being fortuitous), and it organizes our responses on the occasions when we have been asked. The installation is made up of a fragment of this ideal city that contains actual models, screenings and audiovisual material in a programme that will be publicized in August 2009. Photomontage with fragments of cities represented by Josep Lluis Mateo's Occasional City: The installation will be open to the public from 15 to 19 September 2009 at the RAS gallery in Barcelona. The opening will take place at 8 pm in the evening on Tuesday 15 September. RAS is at number 10, Carrer Doctor Dou in Barcelona.