Patent Constructions
In our knowledge society, progressively higher value is being put on innovative thinking and inventions, which are viewed as a fundamental asset to all industries in the global economy. Often, though, present day architecture can become trapped in a situation where the discipline is regarded merely as the handmaid of other enterprises. New approachesand ingenuity are looked on as risk factors impeding a project’s realisation.
This exhibition focuses on the exceptions, the occasions when such projects have been successfully realised, and it bears witness to Catalonia’s potential as a centre of architectural ideas. Earlier too, the region has been a nursery of experiments in form, but these works make possible a combination of visions, professional knowledge and technical expertise, innovative changes or improvements to the human habitat. In this perspective, architecture is segregated from its artistic side and instead presented as a serviceable and productive knowledge system, a network of thinkers and doers engaged in a common endeavour.
The exhibition is divided into four thematic parts, according to the scale and character of the invention, namely structure, skin, habitat and landscape. These afford guidance to the programmatic, spatial or technical solutions created by architects in Catalonia over the past five years. The 30 projects range from solar screening systems to urban spaces. Although they have been devised in a particular context, their value lies in their transposability to a new situation.