Espacio Reflex

The Neoberri project is the result of two views of our environment coming together. One is based on architecture, and the other comes from the art world. Atari and Reflex decided to open up for submissions for International Neocaseríos, with a photography contest format, whose first edition took place the summer of 2013. There was, and still is, a double objective: on one hand, to collect information architectural typologies that are on hybrid, modern and traditional all at once, with Basque roots or style. On the other hand, to reveal and disseminate: putting anodyne and everyday architecture in the spotlight.

The drive behind this contest is to create a documentary database of singular buildings and to show an autochthonous, traditional architectural style with an eternal vocation and resonance, yet having been recently created. We want to show examples of buildings that reveal this relationship between the past, present and future. The intent of this contest is to make people aware of certain trends in rebuilding Basque cultural identity within the architectural field.
Our landscapes are full of avant-garde hamlets, with all sorts of technological progress. High Tech hamlets, with a built-in garage, entire communities and neighbourhoods of neo-hamlets, as well as skyscrapers, residential buildings, sports centres, bars, factories, etc. All with a hamlet-like appearance.

There was a wide range of responses to the contest, showing the huge number of examples of Neoberris that must still be documented. The sample highlighted by the awarding jury for this 2nd edition demonstrates the variety of situations and types that one might find.
The Neoberri phenomenon calls for many interpretations and readings…cultural sensitivity, respect for tradition, a patrimonial vision, heritage architecture, contextual architecture that still manages to maintain collective imagination, identity architecture, indigestible modernity, local post-modernity, architectural reductionism, anachronistic, simulated and pastiche architecture, a kitsch view of what it means to be Basque… architecture for a theme park?
Most likely, all of these interpretations are valid, or at least partially so. What is surprising is the lack of theorisation and conceptualisation in this regard…this phenomenon goes unmentioned.

To a certain extent, it is a taboo issue, especially invisible to architects. But it does exist: a large part of contemporary Basque architectural production in recent times has been marked by the “Neoberri” phenomenon. Not by historical Neo-Basque styles, nor by erudite interpretation of traditional architecture, but rather by an everyday architecture based on the proliferation of a certain formal vocabulary that is often deprived of its semantic content.

If, as often stated and commonly assumed, architecture express the spirit of a society and its time, what does Neoberri express?

VIDEO PRESENTATION OF THE NEOBERRI 2015 CALENDAR