Roller coaster over Sevilla. Jürgen Mayer, the Metropol Parasol project and how to move on wheels. By: Pedro Livni. 

From project to spread the Yokohama Port Terminal designed by FOA, and the history of OMA for the same city, the projects have used a repertoire of complex, continuous surfaces, have been going on forming an avalanche, which at times has become overwhelming. Generally these projects, aesthetically related to many of the investigations carried out during the sixties, were based mainly on new tools and software that have enabled his generation.
In most detached from the reality of the built work, made of gypsum plasterboard the preferred material for finishing the interiors warped surfaces. Moreover, the outer surfaces have become much more costly and complex as the reality of the material, call formwork, etc., Are not readily adapted to the complexity of these proposed.

Metropol Parasol project -2004 -, located in Seville, the German architect Jürgen Mayer is part of these features. A large hood, which protects a square, concrete and steel originally covered an area of ​​approximately 10,500 m2. Underground housing in an archaeological museum, re-placing the food market that for more than 30 years took on a «provisional» a corner of this central area of ​​the city of Seville.
The project has been cut away from its original proposal, primarily because of the excessive cost of the work, replacing the originally planned structural ribs of steel, replacing a wooden structure. Watching the video of the recently published draft (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ktoOjpE33Y) is calling attention to the literalness of a performance at 1.1 of the models produced by CNC machines.

The umbrellas are made of a succession of wooden ribs – in the manner of the sections of a surfboard, or the primitive structures of ribs of the wings of airplanes. Although the number of ribs will give the whole – a great effort cost structure – a form possessing a certain continuity, the overall result is the construction of an object like the appearance of an amoeba in suspension.
In an interview in the monographic magazine El Croquis, Alejandro Zaera Polo SANAA asked him about the use of curves in their projects. To which these responded, «when we use curved surfaces do with care as the forms are right»-condition to be reviewed in subsequent project for the Rolex Learning Center.
These paradoxes and contradictions in these works, they call into question at least two unsolved. On the one hand, the reality of materials which require to be in accordance with the form designed, not to finish the work becoming a weak simulacrum of a fluid material non-existent, or at best an improbable reality. On the other hand, think the reality from the model – the model – and the tools to build – as is the case for the Metropol Parasol – does not automatically imply the reality of the model move to another stage that constitutes, without no stop thinking from the reality of the work. Thus incorporating all its complexity, accepting it as such, making the model only support for the design of the work. This aspect – the model constructed at 1.1 – is clearly reflected in the premises of Bernard Cache.
For now, the consequences that such practices occur, have resulted almost exclusively in an increase in the cost of works. On the other hand, beyond the formal affinities present derrick seriously investigate the effect of the fluid that has played a faction of the contemporary architectural scene. Where the metaphor seems to be superimposed on the reality of the work. In a move that recalls the initial euphoria that the concept of the fold malcomprendido made by Deleuze, brought about a scene of anxiety about the use of new forms, as was the one that dominated much of the nineties.
A fold flat giving way to a ceiling or vice versa, it immediately implies that one can travel. We do not have wheels.VKPK.

Pedro Livni (Montevideo, 1973). Architect, teacher and artist. Master of Architecture candidate at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (http://www.pedrolivni.com)