José Baganha, winner of the 2017 edition of the Premio Rafael Manzano

The sixth Rafael Manzano Prize, which in 2017 was extended to include works done in Portugal, has been awarded to the Portuguese architect José Baganha

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KlNnuvp9zk  

José Baganha’s career

The work of the 2017 Rafael Manzano Prize laureate continues to be guided by the same objectives and principles as ever: trying to incorporate the positive aspects of current developments and to adapt typologies to the changing world to help keep traditions alive. These are becoming increasingly appropriate today, as they face the adversity and dangers that greed, ignorance and fanaticism cause on an increasingly terrifying scale.

Tradición y contemporaneidad son inseparables

It’s not possible to understand one without the other. This fact has been forgotten, or even ignored, in recent years, but it is in this relationship of reciprocity that he bases his work. In the words of Joseh: “every day I am more convinced that this is where the answers to the questions asked by humanity are found, confused by the unbridled globalization and the supremacy of money over human beings as a predominant factor that is imposed in every choice“.

Creating Architecture is a pleasure, or it should be

Pleasure, happiness, comfort, taste, aesthetics and elegance are concepts that must always be recognized as inseparable from good architecture. These, along with the other two Vitruvian qualities of design, firmness (firmites) and utility (utilitas), have guided their own trajectory. The projects that he carries out since he began to work up to those that he is developing today, are diverse in their programs but, despite this diversity, have in common their concern or their persistence in integrating them in the context in which they are inserted, in the typology, in the formal, historical and, more broadly, in the cultural aspects. Another common point in these houses is that they are the result of the attention paid to the desires and dreams of their users, seeking the best way to deal with those anxieties through the specific knowledge. This eclecticism, or this diverse range of typologies, is largely due to these two factors: cultural integration and individualized design.