“Good architecture is summoned to transcend its own time. Diamonds, like works of art, are made in a given moment, but they never age. The reason for this timelessness is clearly explained by Azorin’s words: “Everything that is simple and primary does not change: everything is transformed in its irreducible permanence. What is reduced to its simplest expression is unchanged.”
This quote by Elisa Valero, taken from her theoretical manifesto “The Diamond Theory and the Architectural Project”, which has already been translated and published in different languages, could sum up what we observe and deduce from the architectural expression of her work.
A stripped-down work, not in the ascetic or aesthetic sense, but in the sense of its reason for existing. In order to remain legible according to its purpose and only its purpose. The restricted means of her buildings affirm an intellectual freedom, which launches the resonance of a subtle but clarifying language, with which her work communicates with the world, in a crystal clear way.
Sustainability is a design of the whole, playing a key role in this design, the very sustainability of the form.
In other words, its main reason is precision, stripped of noise, alleged originality or very artistic volunteers. The curious result (or not) is that the buildings, in their frugal materiality, become intense, the spaces become impressive and beauty becomes the natural protagonist of its architecture, whose humanism appears to be irreversible. Because you can also always sense a certain informality, which gives her constructions a peculiar naturalness.
This uniqueness and sensitivity of her work led the jury of the prestigious international award, the Swiss Architectural Award, to nominate and award it to her in 2018, making Elisa the first woman in history to receive this distinction.
Contrary to all current academic bureaucratic logic, Elisa Valero has an intense project practice, holds a doctorate and is a professor at the University of Granada, a guest professor at the Mendrizio University in Switzerland, author of disciplinary writings that permanently cross her official authorship with conceptual themes, assuming architectural research as inseparable, rather a casual connection, from the intelligence of her project work:
In summary and to end in the same way I started, quoting Elisa herself: “This profession is for rebels”.
Elisa, thank you very much for accepting our invitation to join our PhD profile, on “theoretical design practices”. It would be difficult to find a more appropriate curriculum to teach this course. The floor is yours.
Nuno Brandão Costa, 11th February 2022