The journalist and historian Anatxu Zabalbeascoa writes regularly on architecture in different media (newspaper, blog and weekly extra) related to the newspaper El País, contributing to better understanding and dissemination of the last works in this field as well as in the design. In “The Country Weekly”, October 9th, she wrote an interesting article entitled “Performance at the periphery” which reviews a number of exemplary interventions from the point of view of their “singularity” – a concept that is undergoing reformulation, seeking a new life with other values, solid and permanent, as transformation, research, price, maintenance, location, visibility, sustainability, etc.

At a time when architecture must operate under the bad associations created by decades of excess, “architects in Spain are still willing to talk out loud. They have just moved their stages and found another public. Being the cherry of the top of the conversion of the cities, flashy and extravagant buildings have switched to other territories and intentions. To begin with, they moved to the peripheries. They intend to get closer with the young, comunicate transformations and, despite the crisis, to serve as investigacion laboratories. The visibility is the common seal between a good part of this new architecture.  The surprise and the visual forcefullness  are the heritage of the past, that refuses to die and makes the effort to find new reasons to be.”

Among the works discussed one can find some that look familiar. We are glad to see here the Macarena Cibercenter, built in Seville by Marta pilgrims and Fernando Perez. A building that, according to Anatxu Zabalbeascoa, “speaks, at first glance, about new uses. And about modern times. Its red façade seems to invite younger users. Also for the most anxious ones: those who do not reject the new. Both designers believe in architecture of ‘rather presence then permanence’, it means, they clarify, more for the funcionality and accion then for the resentation of the institutions or of the architects. Thus, far from the traditional view that associates architecture with persistence, they ensure that the architecture is for them “a phenomenon in transit’ in the meaning that it moves and changes with the use of citizens. ‘We want the capability of stimulation that the architecture offers’, they say.”

On the other hand, the construction of museums, far from being aware of their spectacularity of their own architecture, is ilustrated in both works of Nieto and Enrique Sobejano Fuensanta. Projects that we appreciate and know very well. “The two veterans in museums´construction have proved that with time and experience one can become even braver in his/her proposals. They have been so, experimenting with the not very cartesian forms and very materic skins. If in their recent Extension of San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian, they converted the building to become a part of the hill by dressing it in metalic fabric, the new Interactive Museum of History of Julyo fuses vegetation and weathereing steel to create a landscape of oxygenated circles in the middle of a green meadow. Nothing is fanciful. The cilinders act as torches iluminating the interior of the museum. They perforate the building with circular patios at the same time raising in the exterior a subtle and elegant metaphore of the towers and defence walls still present in the momories of the inhabitants of Lugo.”

We would like to cheer Anatxu Zabalbeascoa in her informative work that we find of great importance. We value her judgment and recommend her Blog, where she covers diverse works of architecture and design in all their scales, with the inmediacy and discipline of a journalist.