Chora (GB/NL) Raoul Bunschoten (1955)
Architect Eduard Bru has a Ph.D. in architecture, and lives, works and reaches in Barcelona. He is in charge of the "Large Scale" city-planning postgraduate course at the ETSAB, and was appointed head of this school in 1997, following in the footsteps of Manuel Solà-Morales. He has written several books--in particular, Three on the Site (1997), New Territories/New Landscapes (1998), Coming from the South (co-author, 2002)--and his work focuses mainly on contemporary urban and territorial phenomena. He is more specifically involved in the "sustainable" development of Greater Barcelona, and in this capacity was the author of the Hebron Valley urban plan (1988), in preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games. Given the various territorial, ecological and environmental issues which architects have to deal with on an urgent basis, they must, in Eduard Bru's opinion, refuse the easy solutions of "green architecture", which disguises its existence beneath vegetation, and opt for a "precise architecture", where ecology rhymes with economy. In speaking out against the inflationary danger of forever building new things, he proposes an architecture and city-planning based on the on-going metamorphosis and recycling of materials, forms, and uses.
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