Book Review: AMP Arquitectos
AMP Arquitectos by AMP Arquitectos
This small, apparently self-published book on the Canary Island-based AMP Arquitectos (formerly Artengo Menis Pastrana, though now without Menis yet keeping the acronym) collects 17 built works, four projects on the boards, and two under construction, spanning from 1982 to the book's publication in 2006. These range from a filling station and swimming pools to parks and a college. To date the firm's best known works are the Presidential Headquarters (incorrectly attributed to another architect at the linked page) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Magma Arts and Congress Center in Adeje, Tenerife. These large-scale works are indicative of their design ethos, what David Cohn in the book's introduction articulates as "an architecture which returns us to a material, existential world of existence and being."
This being is achieved via a strong relationship to place, and in the case of Tenerife, it is to the volcanic crater that lies at the center of -- and gave life to -- the island. Some of their projects appear to be like lava solidified in mid-flow. Even when their designs are more restrained expressively, they always appear rooted in place, especially via the superb articulation of concrete and stone that give the buildings a weight many contemporary buildings lack. One of the projects under construction embodies this rootedness stronger than any previous design, and it promises to make the projects more well known: the Estadio Insular de Atletismo, a stadium in the Tincer district of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Not only does the bowl of the stadium resemble a crater, its gently-sloping, stone walls give the impression that the building grows from the landscape, that it has always been there, like the stadium was carved from an existing mound. It's a project that is a fitting extension of the office's work, presented here solely in photographs, sketches, and models (no drawings or explanatory text accompanies the images), an unfortunate situation that will hopefully be remedied by a full-blown monograph on the Tenerife architects in the future.
This small, apparently self-published book on the Canary Island-based AMP Arquitectos (formerly Artengo Menis Pastrana, though now without Menis yet keeping the acronym) collects 17 built works, four projects on the boards, and two under construction, spanning from 1982 to the book's publication in 2006. These range from a filling station and swimming pools to parks and a college. To date the firm's best known works are the Presidential Headquarters (incorrectly attributed to another architect at the linked page) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the Magma Arts and Congress Center in Adeje, Tenerife. These large-scale works are indicative of their design ethos, what David Cohn in the book's introduction articulates as "an architecture which returns us to a material, existential world of existence and being."
This being is achieved via a strong relationship to place, and in the case of Tenerife, it is to the volcanic crater that lies at the center of -- and gave life to -- the island. Some of their projects appear to be like lava solidified in mid-flow. Even when their designs are more restrained expressively, they always appear rooted in place, especially via the superb articulation of concrete and stone that give the buildings a weight many contemporary buildings lack. One of the projects under construction embodies this rootedness stronger than any previous design, and it promises to make the projects more well known: the Estadio Insular de Atletismo, a stadium in the Tincer district of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Not only does the bowl of the stadium resemble a crater, its gently-sloping, stone walls give the impression that the building grows from the landscape, that it has always been there, like the stadium was carved from an existing mound. It's a project that is a fitting extension of the office's work, presented here solely in photographs, sketches, and models (no drawings or explanatory text accompanies the images), an unfortunate situation that will hopefully be remedied by a full-blown monograph on the Tenerife architects in the future.
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