Each August at the studio we reread someone. This year it was Coderch. The excuse was reviewing Casa Ugalde for an internal exercise, but the reading turned out to be a different one.
José Antonio Coderch wrote little. His most famous line — “it’s not geniuses we need now” — comes from a 1961 text published in Domus. Half the world quotes the line. Fewer people read the whole text.
What the text says is that architecture isn’t made better with brilliance but with honesty, patience and a discipline that isn’t taught in schools. Coderch proposes that a good project is built on five things: the place, the client, the materials, the available technique and the necessary time. If one of those five is faked, the project comes out wrong. If all five are respected, the project comes out well even if the architect is mediocre.
That line followed us through August.
Rereading Coderch confirmed something we already knew but is good to hear again: contemporary Andalusian architecture doesn’t need more brilliance. It needs more craft. More lime well laid. More joints thought through. More conversation with the client before drawing. More time between commission and delivery.
Coderch was talking about 1960s Catalonia. Conditions have changed; the principle hasn’t. Building gets better when building goes slowly.