Square, Interchange, Housing

The technical question posits itself in Abalos & Herreros' works as the alternative to the problem of language -as much from the textural-stylistic perspective as from the contextual-historical- as the repository of the “significant” values of the architectonic project. Technique, which has also been throughout the course of this century, the object of a succession of “metaphysical” or “essential” overtures -in the search for a “centered structure” as guarantee of the project's signification- is apprehended in Abalos & Herreros' work from an instrumental perspective: not as the essence of architecture, but as a medium on and from which to act. La cuestión técnica viene a plantarse en el discurso de la Abalos & Herreros como alternativa al problema del lenguaje – tanto desde la perspectiva textural-estilística como desde la contextual-histórica- como depositario de los valores «significantes» del proyecto arquitectónico. La técnica, que también ha sido objeto a lo largo de este siglo de sucesivas aproximaciones «metafísicas» o «existencialistas» – que buscan una «estructura centrada» como garante de la significación del proyecto, se configura en el trabajo de Abalos & Herreros desde una perspectiva instrumental: no como la esencia de la arquitectura, sino como el medio sobre y desde el que actuar. And yet this focus on the technical question as seen from a pragmatic viewpoint affords Abalos & Herreros an escape not only from the ontologies but from the phenomenologies and the existentialist narratives. Technique, as opposed to style, possesses a facet that is intersubjective, and thus, communicable, not simply constructed on the ground of individual experience or the evolution of events.