Author Description

Solano Benítez ́audacious brick structures are hand crafted, rough, minimal and of strikingly beautiful elegance like the best engineering structures at all times. The featured Abu & Font house earned him the prestigious Swiss BSI Architectural Award in 2008. Like pioneers he and his team boldly conquer new fields of construction even if using familiar and traditional products. Javier Corvalán ́s fine sense of observation results in incredibly stimulating and flexible spaces - be it a private house, a cultural center, a library, or his own house and office. The intentional informality of the plan is consequently and successfully transformed into experimental plastic configurations. A subversive dismissal of traditional definitions of an object not to mention a building, its meaning and its technical representation is key to the chosen tectonic order which more than once relies on transformations of ready-mades or trivial construction methods. With this fifth OŃeil Ford Duograph, The Center for American Architecture and Design together with the OŃeil Ford Chair in Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin are publishing another set of buildings by two architects from one country in South America.