Mediterranean Sea
Latitude: 39.35 N
Longitude: 2.39 E
Palma de Mallorca
Mallorca
Balearic Archipelago

The new Centre of Interpretation in Palma’s old town and its link to the open public space of El Baluarte del Príncipe and the Porta d’es Camp Square rise up from the sea shore, just as they were conceived.
The Centre of Interpretation seeks to be part of the shore and thus takes reference from purity and innocence barely 120 metres away – from the delight of a few children crouching down, fascinated as they observe how the waves cross the sand around shells they have carefully placed in the wet ground after satisfying their eager desire to collect surprisingly similar, yet surprisingly different mysterious objects.

The stretch of land is furrowed by a hollow which crosses Gabriel Alomar Vilallonga Avenue diagonally to reach Baluarte del Príncipe. The hollow thus forms a very natural link between these two elements in such a way that the link becomes a new area of activity between the three centres being developed. It is accessed from the sea front via a gentle ramp, thus avoiding a strenuous climb of 2m. On the city side of the hollow, partially covered and on the exterior, are the Visitors’ Welcome Centre and the Centre of Interpretation. Here use is made of the difference in height between the sea front and Joan Maragall street to offer a large reception area and a direct link via escalators and lifts to Joan Maragall street, from where the centre can also be entered directly from the city itself. This side also houses the Palma Observatory Headquarters, an independent institution, but directly related to the two other centres.
On the sea side of the hollow is the Centre for Enterprises and Commercial Innovation, which includes its two more open spaces on the lower level and its more compartmentalised ones above street level along the sea front. However, the top only just reaches the height of Joan Maragall street, meaning it boasts sea views from the upper level of the premises.
The lower level offers a large parking area for cars and buses, which is directly linked by stairs and lifts to the foyers in the different centres.

The fascination of the children, some inhabitants of the old city, some visitors who stroll through the upper streets of the city, others travellers who fly over the city, or users who look to the sky through shells with the same fascination, all see how an amalgamation of mysterious pieces sketched by Haeckel, similar, yet all different, cover a dynamic, interconnected, harmonised space which lets the light from the Mediterranean filter through between its ribs.

[No 5B. HABANERA IN HARMONY].

JULIAN
Where are you going in a Manila shawl?
Where are you going in a chiné dress?

SUSANA
To show myself off and see the verbena,
and later go off to my bed.

JULIAN
And why did you not come with me
after I pleaded with you so much?

SUSANA
Because I am going to pay at the chemist’s
for the things you made me suffer.

JULIÁN
And who is that most handsome lad
you’re going out with afterwards?

SUSANA
A person of dignity and
honour who is just how he should be.

JULIÁN
And what if it didn’t please me
for you to take his arm?

SUSANA
Then I’d go with him to the verbena
and to the bullfight at Carabanchel.

JULIÁN
That so? We’ll see about that right now.

(He throw himself at Hilarión to beat him,
the girls hold him back and shout.)
Manila Shawl, to show off and see the verbena.

Where are you going in a manila shawl? Well … The history of the Manila Shawl is the story of a one-way journey which now returns as the thread of a song. Where are you going in a chiné dress? Because …. the Manila Shawl is the story of a journey and is also the story of how cultures very distant in time and space are able to communicate with another and exchange characteristics. Manila Shawl displays a surprising link between the most immemorial of Chinese traditions and one of the most authentic Spanish garments. In the 16th century Spanish merchants in Manila were fascinated by the silk shawls brought by Chinese merchants and shipped them to Spain along the Philippines-Seville sea route via Acapulco. From that moment on these garments, originally Chinese, became known throughout the world as Spanish shawls or Manila shawls. The world is all mixed up and turned inside out, a perfect hybrid where flower motifs grow in size and adapt to the native flora with roses, irises, carnations, sunflowers … and lotus, so as not to lose the hint of the orient which gave, gives and will continue to give it an exotic touch which its success is based on. Because, after all, that Manila Shawl does want to go to the Shanghai Expo in 2010 to show itself off and see the verbena and perhaps not go off to its bed later.

Silk Fabric, construction and post-Expo strategy
The long voyage started with ancient technology which extracted threads from the cocoons made by silkworm larvae without damaging them. Here it has now become a process where a modular, prefabricated fabric is produced. The structured surface is based on hendecagons which form a grid over spaces. A series of equal-sized pieces made of thin metal bars make up the structural space of the building, walls, framing and supports. The hendecagons are webbed over with aluminium and glass panels on the outside, thus showing the structural fabric on the inside of the building. The result is a surface which on the outside imitates the sensual movement of a Manila Shawl draped over the shoulders of a gracefully dressed Sevillana woman, now crystallising in a texture which suddenly vibrates due to its way of reflecting light.
The building uses a prefabricated system with individual pieces being assembled on site. This enables thorough checks to be carried out and work to be completed very quickly while also allowing the building to be taken down without damage to its parts once the event has finished. In order to recycle the raw material used, there is a scheme to reuse the hendecagons in structures throughout Spain once the exhibition is finished, something which is possible thanks to the system’s versatility.  They could end up part of a sculpture on a roundabout, a bus shelter, a tourist office, or a sports centre.

Shanghai Expo 2010. In operation.
The proposed building will be built on the Expo site and will provide a large amount of shade to protect the public area and the more public, more animated areas of the exhibition. Wide escalators will take the visitor up to the upper level, which houses a large, transverse atrium which overlooks the river. The atrium leads to three large areas. On one side are three exhibition halls –  a fourth hall is situated on the ground floor to enable visitors to tour all four by walking around from the inside to the outside or the other way round. On another side are the smaller rooms for facilities such as offices, storerooms, toilets and changing rooms. The remaining side houses another escalator to access the top level, a large balcony overlooking the atrium which sometimes acts as a foyer for the function, press and multipurpose rooms. The function room can be merged with the press room to create a large open room surrounded by vibrant roof pillars.

When they called us to propose working with ceramics, the first question which came to mind was – What can’t you do with ceramics? It’s most probably a strange question to ask, but that’s what we thought. Anyway, that’s how we started thinking about what a material represents , a material of any type. This led us to believe that materials are pretty real substances which are very reluctant to be absorbed by the latest trends. In other words, there are no old-fashioned, passé or avant-garde materials. However, there are avant-garde, old-fashioned or slipshod uses of materials. Just like people – bad people as such probably don’t exist, but there are horrifying deeds, actions, and attitudes. You may not experience them, but they do exist.
Let’s get to the point – ceramics don’t move. Music can’t be seen. Our dreams won’t come true. We pause to weep for a moment …. Stop now. The Quartet of electric motors in 3.5-1 m, opus 1, known as Ceramics in motion, is a proposed project which gives physical shape to an imaginary mental space in the form of a ceramic surface interpreted by four 1,000 W electric motors which move the surface at a pace of 1 m every 30 seconds. The two front motors move along a space of 3.5 m while the two rear motors move along a space of 1 m. Thus begins a gentle, cyclic choreography confined by the limitations of the material, where the motors play at waiting for one another, at getting ahead and re-finding one another in order to show that ceramics don’t have a fixed time in space either. Now the ceramics move, music becomes visible and a mental space materialises before our very eyes . E pur si muove!

WHERE: Casa Decor 2007. Antigua fábrica Fabra i Coats, Segre 30, 08030 Barcelona.
WHAT IT IS: The ASCER show pavilion.
WHAT IT IS LIKE: A surface of ceramic tesserae which rises and folds on itself with the help of four motors which guide its movement .
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION:
There are seven main parts of 92 x 10000 cm, each made up of sub-parts of 92×92 cm in a sequence of 4+2+4. Tesserae have been attached to each of these subparts on 9 30.5×30.5 cm sheets. The substructure of all these main parts and subparts is made up of a 5×5 cm mesh of 4 mm rods soldered together. A 8×40 mm rail has been soldered to this mesh to hold the seven main parts together in a line.
This mesh hangs from 4 pulleys which can hold 1,500 kg each, making a total of 6,000 kg . The pulleys are controlled by an automaton and cover a distance which varies between 3.5 and 1 m. They are situated 4.40 m above the ground on a steel trestle made of 4 HEB-300 pillars and 4 IPE-300 beams. Just to make really sure.
This whole framework forms a structure of 22,680 tesserae with 13,608 more tesserae attached directly to the ground, making a total of 36,288 tesserae . Each one of them is 50×50 mm in MC-19 white, is called Logos and is made by Equipe.

A meal, a dinner in a Chinese restaurant in China. We don’t even remember what we ate. What we haven’t forgotten is the number of times a toast is proposed during a Chinese meal to show appreciation. The key word is gang bei, which is none other than the equivalent to cheers, á votre santé or prost! To your health. As you can imagine, after partaking in such a sociable custom as gang bei quite a few times, you become far more talkative and the sense of perceived wit and relevance reaches new heights. This is when the talk about the project for two towers and adjoining buildings on the banks of the Qiantang in Hangzhou comes to its orchestral climax. Speakers utter a stream of frenzied sentences which never seem to reach a conclusion. These sentences are punctuated by an exact choreography of hands accompanied by a gesticulating of arms, appearing to wave to someone in the distance. But nothing could be further from the truth, because the focus of attention and comments is several drawings and models of the aforementioned towers scaled down from a height of 220 m. These fit quite easily on the table surrounded by clear evidence of a sumptuous meal. Beaming from ear to ear, one of the speakers is saying over and over again how much he likes the shape of the towers and their elusive way of relating to one another. His words are accompanied by an incessant twisting of hands, which reminds one of the diners of a very well-known dance. Suddenly, the word FLAMENCO escapes from his lips. That’s it. It’s just like flamenco. Everything else flows out naturally and thus the buildings become the FLAMENCO TOWERS.
Alongside the technical development and assessment of requirements, the human element or personal relationships turned out to be fundamental to christening the project in such a way that the name itself, FLAMENCO TOWERS, provided new drive and a fresh, energising point of reference for the project. From then on, there was a clear, powerful image which inspired both those who saw the project for the first time and those who were developing it.
The chosen site is the Yangtze River Delta, which is one of the largest urban areas in the world with a population of over 80 million. The region includes two provinces with two of the highest GNPs in the country, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, as well as the municipality of Shanghai, which is the main city in the region. Other important cities are Nanjing and Hangzhou, followed by the smaller Ningbo.
All together, the urban area is made up of 14 municipalities with a high degree of autonomy. Shanghai’s dominance is undisputed, but the other municipalities are continuously competing against each other to attract capital so they can expand. The FLAMENCO TOWERS are in Hangzhou.
Hangzhou lies 180 kilometres southwest of Shanghai and can be reached by road, motorway, or high-speed train. A planned magnetic levitated railway will reduce the journey time between the two cities to 28 minutes and connect Hangzhou to Pudong International Airport.
Being so close to each other has meant Shanghai and Hangzhou have a long tradition of complementing one another – the former as an ideal of urban management and the latter as an example of how to conserve the countryside, culture and history.
In this respect, Hangzhou has committed itself to a brand of urban growth which recognises the value of the countryside and history which have characterised it, particularly as regards its famed West Lake. In order to reduce congestion in the present city centre around the lake, new land has been sought out along the banks of the River Qiantang. The official slogan is Urban development to the east, tourist development to the west. Effort is thus being made to preserve the beauty which attracts over 12 million visitors every year by focussing development along the river in the districts of Binjiang and Xiaoshan. Growth in Binjiang, where the airport is located, is turning the district into a new urban centre, a bridge between Xiaoshan and the city which grew around the West Lake. This is the precise strategic position of FLAMENCO TOWERS.
FLAMENCO TOWERS are planned to be built along the riverside in Binjiang, with their 55 storeys reaching 220 m in height and the 4 storeys underground adding a further 12 m. The project will be carried out in two phases, which together will account for a built-up area of 125,000 m2. One of the initial towers is being developed into a hotel and spa covering 35,000 m2 and the other one will provide a mixture of residential apartments and offices covering 25,000 m2. The plaza which joins the two together will hold a shopping area of over 15,000 m2. The second phase will include four additional residential towers of varying heights covering an area over 48,000 m2, which will form a complex around the towers. The whole complex will be interconnected via the parking facilities and the shopping area.
The final project is not completely etched in stone yet, however. This is where balloons come into the story along with a return to the human element in the shape of the Mayor of Hangzhou. Anxious to preserve its realm, the city’s government is thinking of preventing high buildings from being observed from the lake.  To do so, they have come up with the idea of raising balloons to the same height as the planned towers in the area where they are to be built. If a balloon is seen while a city official is rowing quite peacefully on the lake, then the building has to be a few storeys lower. If nothing is seen, the building can go ahead as planned. We are thus hoping for the city’s characteristic fog to appear, which usually reduces visibility to less than 200 m, so that any of the city’s fathers who happens to be rowing on the lake won’t see the balloon which symbolises FLAMENCO TOWERS. Let’s hope it has the flamenco spirit.