“Abstraction serves as the means to integrate a small-scale element into the vast dimensions of the territory. This abstraction does not stem from aesthetic demands, but rather from the necessity to provide shelter, protect against the sun, merge with natural elements, and respond directly to the specific characteristics of the place.”
Sandra Barclay e Jean Pierre Crousse
Photo credits: Marco Introini
Few certainties characterise the work of Sandra Barclay and Jean Pierre Crousse, the recent one as the past, a minimal alphabet that originally resolves every conflict, every internal contrast inherent in the questions posed by architecture, every solution that responds to demonstrated needs, within a happy formal dimension that alone represents the desired outcome. No stratagem, no obvious answer defines the internal narrative of projects that for over thirty years have demonstrated the possibility of still considering architecture today as an autonomous discipline capable of finding within itself, certainly not without interdisciplinary suggestions, the main path of a true knowledge journey built in balance between South America and Europe. An original trait that assumes, intertwines, and demonstrates different attitudes that always start from the knowledge of places – of an extensive landscape – from the attitude to research of one’s own sensitivities of often remote territories, up to the most well-known urban centres.
Photo credits: Marco Introini
A critical capacity that, without compromise, chooses strategies and values to emphasize in a direction that favors traditional knowledge with a future perspective. Original terrains and consistencies, cultural values, and modes of applied knowledge thus enter the projects, presented as a rare example of deep earth reading and wisdom derived without rhetoric or self-reference, in a sequence of emblematic projects capable of setting a standard in an era of solitude. The sequence presented discusses six different themes that stimulate as many schools of thought, which, starting from the proposed themes, demonstrate alongside the built forms the sense of a possible operational theory; ex post cornerstones and strategies that, in close connection with the cultural landscape always at the centre of the project, reveal links with the evident aptitude for typological studies, expressive space compositions, and the ability to adapt to a hostile environment often tamed by the elementary forms of design. Enjoy the experience, with enduring praise for such a rare ability to embrace design strategies long before emblematic sections materialize into journeys to be made across Peru.
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Article by Alessandra Coppa for Artribune
Architettura come microcosmo. (available only in Italian)
An interview with architects Barclay & Crousse, whose exhibition is coming to Milan
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Flyer
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Exhibition room Sheet
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