 | Perhaps because there are so many assertive buildings strutting down the runway, I was drawn to a couple of the more modest projects. They are easy to miss. The Portuguese Pritzker Prize winner, Álvaro Siza, has built a small and wonderfully understated apartment and office building in an old part of Granada; it is both modern and contextual—no mean feat. The projected Museum of Andalusia, likewise in Granada, by Madrid-based Alberto Campo Baeza, is another deceptively simple design. The partly underground rectangular building surrounds an ellipsoidal outdoor court. From the court, one sees the facade of a bank building (at right) built by Campo Baeza five years earlier. On the other side, an eight-story administrative slab shelters the museum from a nearby elevated highway. This straightforward composition is enlivened by two ramps that overlap and spiral within the court, providing a sculptural foil to the rigorous rectangular geometry of the building. It's all done without fanfare and with great skill. |  |
Museum of Andalusia (Estudio Arquitectura Campo Baeza). Image courtesy MoMA, New York. |
|  |