The Catalans are a good-humoured bunch.
So they won’t take offence if I try to sum up the
mood of the Alicia Foundation with an anecdote
about an Italian and a Catalan. “The two are discussing
cooking and food. What’s the outcome?
The Italian makes a TV programme on the subject;
and the Catalan puts up a building.”
Two Mediterranean cultures steeped in the
inexact science of food, on which their respective
economies and geographies are nourished, react
with two genetically different attitudes to its vital
importance. On one side the chatter, windbaggery
and small talk that pervades half the eternal
Italian television time, with yet more recipes
for aubergines à la parmesan. On the other, the
entrepreneurship and guts, adventurism even,
that have transformed Catalan gastronomy into
one of the new spearhead cuisines on the global
food market. In the front line is Ferran Adrià, with
his deconstructionist recipes, three Michelin stars
and world renown. Nor is that renown in any way
marred by certain eccentricities, such as having
participated in an edition of Documenta Kassel
– the only chef to have done so in the history of
that unmitigated avant-garde art festival.
It is not surprising, then, that when Adrià’s
much-desired Alicia Foundation commissioned
a functional space in a large pavilion on a green
site, the architects called in to stage it were
Lluís Clotet and Ignacio Paricio (together with
Abeba Arquitectes), who are two old acquaintances
of eccentric contemporary architecture
in Spain. Clotet hails from a veritable saga of
design culture in Barcelona: first with the PER
group (Clotet, Tusquets, Bonet and Cirici) and
later with BD Ediciones, which produced several
masterpieces – or archetypal objects – of world
design. Unassuming in his rightful fame and ever loyal to a modern idea of space and its objects,
never anxious to leap too far ahead into the role
of superstar, Clotet has stubbornly continued his
rigorous practice of “critical modernism”, going
into partnership with Ignacio Paricio in 1983. In
the rarefied landscape of the new Barcelona, the
landmark of their residential towers has for some
time now stood out at Illa de la Llum, an ironically
gutted concrete mass that looks as if it had been
nibbled by geometrical rodents.
In the Món San Benet area, 40 minutes from
Barcelona, the task might have appeared easier:
a rural landscape dotted with old buildings. The
brief came from an institution – financed by Caixa
Manresa – set up to handle not only gastronomy,
but above all food-related research, education
and training. It is particularly attentive to health, to
people in straitened circumstances, and to synergies
arising between food projects and existential
design. While the message was to open outwards
as widely as possible, to nature and people, the
metaphor of transparency chosen by the two architects
could not have been more simply interpreted.
The building’s free form moves through the landscape
(and close to that designed by Bet Figueras
in the Huertos, cultivation of local varieties) in a
constant play of reflections and visual crossreferences.
Featherweight perimeter supports set
at regular intervals (1.2 metres, corresponding to
the window joints) punctuate the glazed surfaces
and convey the feeling of a mock forest. Like slender
trunks of possibly inedible species of trees, but
no less useful to a thoroughly explored meaning of
nutrition, the representation of nature married to
invention seems perfectly accomplished.
Not so in Italy, and Milan in particular. After
more than a year of pointless political turmoil,
nothing has even been thought of yet – let alone
realised – for the structures and schedule of what
ought to be a whole world Expo dedicated precisely
to the theme of food. But then of course, if
a shortage of ad hoc buildings should occur due
to objective time limits, guided tours of the Alicia
Foundation could always be laid on instead. After
all, the Foundation is already built and operative.
After all, Ferran Adrià’s legendary El Bulli was also
the Pavilion G at the last Documenta, where every
evening a table at the unreservable Cala Montjoi
restaurant hosted two visitors to Kassel free of
charge (including travel expenses), extracted in
surprise draws by director Roger Buergel. And after
all, not far from the Alicia Foundation, Ferran Adrià
cooks at the L’Angle restaurant in the Hotel Mon
– which is part of the San Benet complex. Another
Pavilion G for the next Documenta?
Fundación Alicia: food, science and transparency
Clotet and Paricio have built a transparent garden of delights near Barcelona for the teachings of Ferran Adrià. Design Lluís Clotet, Ignacio Paricio, Abeba Arquitectes. Text Stefano Casciani. Photos Lluís Casals.
View Article details
- 11 March 2009
- Sant Fruitós del Bages