Building an Icon

Johan Wentzel and Grete Van As, co-founders and principal architects at W Design Architecture Studio, talk about how Spanish architect ALBERTO CAMPO BAEZA's concept of THE BUILT IDEA, as realised in his DE BLAS HOUSE near Madrid, has influenced their work.

- JOHAN WENTZEL AND GRETE VAN AS

IN APRIL 2000, WHILE WORKING FOR A LARGE COMMERCIAL ARCHITECTURE FIRM IN LONDON (and before the availability of social media or online design platforms), we saw an article in Wallpaper magazine featuring Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza's De Blas House near Madrid. Although the text was concise, the concept of "the constructed idea" forever changed our approach to design and architecture. It's a philosophy that allows for the creation of iconic buildings, which are both fundamentally rational and deeply connected to their surroundings.

Architects tend to reveal the keys to architecture in their drawings, their philosophies, their floor plans - and also in their writing. In his book The Built Idea, Campo Baeza conveys his deeply held ideas and convictions. "The reasoning on which one bases one's work in their attempt at architecture is what is going to be reflected consciously or unconsciously," he says. "Realising the ideas expressed in words in built works is the best proof that the ideas are valid, and the words true."

THE THEORY: IDEA, LIGHT AND GRAVITY

"The history of architecture, far from being a history of forms only, is basically a history of built ideas," says Campo Baeza. "Forms are destroyed over time, but ideas remain and are eternal principle of Stereotomic + Tectonic = Architecture - an understanding that part of the building wishes to belong to the earth (stereotomic), and that part also separates itself from the earth (tectonic). It recognises that the entire building works in continuity with the earth, establishing minimal contact with it, and therefore helping in the production of a new architectural organism.

STEP 1 A mountain and a tree - the natural surroundings, the context.

STEP 2 Establishing a platform - a base.

STEP 3 Carving a space into the platform - the stereotomic, the earth, the solids, the gravity.