In Spagna, a vista. Per un’immagine integra dell’architettura

Starting from the themes explored by the Spanish Pavilion at the 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice – Internalities, curated by Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas – the essay reflects on a design season that began in the Iberian Peninsula in the 1990s, characterized by a specific attention to materials, energy, waste, and emissions. The projects discussed share a common language, a recognizable grammar of “exposed” materials, without cladding, exhibiting an expressive richness that exploits the intrinsic qualities of matter to reduce environmental impact and energy consumption. The buildings by Carles Oliver and Xim Moyá, TEd’A arquitectes, Peris+Toral, 08014 arquitectura, Harquitectes, Alventosa Morell and TAKK showcase a clear approach to sustainability, rooted in the use of local materials and the rediscovery of traditional construction techniques. They demonstrate how honest, almost “brutal,” material and design choices, together with typological precision, can reduce environmental impact and support local, more economical building processes, restoring a decisive role in the creative work to the human intellect and its ability to make choices in response to specific places and climates.