For me to be sharing this evening with you, in this magnificent room with our exhibition as a backdrop, has a profound significance. It is a dream come true, something that would have been unthinkable for our work team just a few years ago. And at an event such as this, what feeds the illusion and confidence in our project called “WOMEN WHO BUILD”, from the interest in explaining our architecture for the creation of links between professionals, wishing to take part in the construction of the part of the world where we have to live and want to take care of. We understand the practice of architecture as a service to society, who we should theoretically serve but from whom sometimes we find ourselves detached.

INTRODUCTION
I would like to take advantage of this moment, which is much awaited and unrepeatable for me to transmit to you a multitude of ideas but time is limited and, while preparing this small chat, I asked myself where should I begin, how could this initial bridge be stretched between you m and me, what would I like you to remember that had something to do with Spanish architecture, with Spanish lady architects.

Modernity? Our evolved society? Our past? Our history? Our roots?... our colleagues Marta Dalmau and Carmen Fiol will speak about modernity tomorrow, Cristina has already spoken about the roots we have in common. I am going to begin with something that we always share, something that has remained unchangeable for centuries, I shall start by speaking about

LIGHT
The light of the Mediterranean, our Mediterranean, about which Alberti would say: Sparkling blue, sacred cradle of light, of precise profile, of plastic arts, of harmony... That light that shrouds this city, the one that, from the first moment I set foot here, I felt at home... And Alberti went on: "On the Mediterranean coasts, out of all the five senses, sight and touch are the most acute, deeper, flatter. To see, see and see even more: Painting, to see and touch: sculpture. To see, feel and penetrate, even more that by touching with your hand, with the incisive edge of the retina: Architecture".

Let us talk about the Mediterranean light, about the architecture that shapes this light, joined by poetry, of the intangible and everyday occurrences that take place in the spaces that we construct...

DEMOCRATIC SPAIN: BUILDING A COUNTRY
Professionally I have had the privilege of developing my career through a very interesting moment in the History of Spain. When I finished studying, my country began to consolidate democracy, after 40 years of dictatorship, and society was firmly marching towards a promising future. These were complicated years but also years full of new ideas and enthusiasm and I believe that between us all, we helped to build the modern and democratic country that Spain is today.

The Public Institutions, from both the Central Government and the 17 autonomous governments that form the Spanish State, initiated policies directed to providing public support for all the services pertaining to modern society. This included the development of an important activity concerning the design and construction of public buildings in all sectors: education, health, justice, social housing, as well as public spaces, cultural spaces, restoration of national heritage, etc. And those that would be destined to housing newly launched institutions: Town Halls, Councils, Autonomous Governments, etc.

Although this was not our intention, the exhibition “Women Who Build” presents a great majority of works promoted by public institutions. All this activity was accompanied, in a good many cases, with concern about providing quality architecture. Numerous autonomous governments drew up design guidelines and good practices for the development of not only social housing, but also education and health welfare projects.

Different autonomous government institutions, headed by the Ministry of Public Works, through its Department for Architecture, initiated in the 80s a policy supporting architecture, consolidated through more than twenty years of promotion and funding of exhibitions, contests and publications that are already classics in the Spanish cultural panorama. Thanks to the continuity of this policy, we are here today. During these years I left my home city of Madrid and moved to Andalusia, in the south of Spain, to take part in pioneering experiences that began with designs for those responsible of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia.

Young eager architects were needed to become involved in autoconstruction programmes, the restoration of historical buildings such as social housing, new housing as well as the construction of Centres for Social, Cultural and Health Services to organise a network of primary care in all the important municipalities. It was by accident, without any preconceived idea, that I opened a studio in a small inland city where no architects ready to work on such projects were to be found.

I already knew this part of Spain but it is not the same to visit a place as to live there.

A TRIP TO THE PAST: ANDALUSIA
The magic of Andalusia fascinated me, the "duende" (magnetism) as the people from Seville call it, and I reckon this has a lot to do with its profound Arab inheritance. Evidently, the areas without any architects were the small inland towns of provinces such as Granada and Jaén, brimming with History and with an impressive Architectural and Cultural Heritage. Regions that, in those times, were very backward in some aspects compared to the rest of Spain.

From that moment I changed the bustling streets of Madrid for the dry landscape of the olive groves in Jaén, those olive groves that, by multiplying themselves until infinity, cover the hills of Sierra Mágina and Sierra Morena with their geometric tapestry; the olive groves whose happy silence captivates in the summer nights the singing of crickets, the hooting of owls or the scent coming from jasmine planted in the courtyard of one of the very white farmhouses that are scattered there...

The summers are torrid and blinding, the winters, harsh. Its history and architecture, the most beautiful.

Absolutely filled with enthusiasm I approached my first commission: To locate and negotiate the purchase of run-down historical buildings and then to proceed with their restoration, converting them into social dwellings, destined for people with limited economic resources. The company could not be more interesting, the buildings themselves that had filtered through the elapse of centuries and the challenge of giving them a new use. Before me were two magnificent cities, Úbeda and Baeza, full of vast heritage from both the 10th Century, in the Arab era, up to the 18th Century that marked the decadence of them both.

LISTENING TO SILENCE
I transported myself from the great city to the silence of buildings that had been abandoned for years, courtyards covered with undergrowth, wells, orchards with their former Arab treadmills ... it was a trip that took me back in time and a magnificent lesson of architecture. I learned to listen in the places, to search for something secret, in the not evident, in the not immediate, to look for whatever was essential and not to destroy it...

I visited and studied more than forty buildings for sale in both cities and finally proposed the purchase and restoration of three of them, which met several acceptable conditions regarding typology and price. One of them is the “Palacio de los Marqueses de Villarreal” (the Palace of the Marquis of Villarreal), a project that I have chosen to present at this exhibition because of the fond character the whole process has for me. It was a team effort in which not only politicians, agents and architects but also the teachers and pupils of the Baeza School Workshop, did our utmost in preserving a beautiful building that would have been lost forever if an imaginative policy had not converted its destiny into such a singular use as social housing.

The building represents an example of Baeza-style architecture between the 16th and 17th Centuries, by constructed different rooms side-by-side on the former Arab plot division in the heart of the old city, next to its imposing Cathedral. There are two bays, the second of which opened onto the courtyard - interior garden, in typical Baeza-style, with no perimetral gallery surrounding it but with an area of rear orchard on a higher level. The streets are narrow, life is understood from within. The entrance hall, an intermediate room between the courtyard and the street is placed at an angle in order to preserve privacy. A gallery with columns, orientated to the south, finishes off the top floor.

After several years of work, restoration was finalised and 12 dwellings that had been projected were handed over. The building quickly came back to the life that had been kept in suspense over the last decades. All our efforts were recognized when we were awarded one of the Europa Nostra prizes that Spain received in 1992 and that the European Council grants every year to the most interesting restoration works.

Another building that was refurbished was the “Casa de los Morales” (House of the Morales Family or House of the Mulberry trees), a typical 16th Century Úbeda building, that had maintained its typology intact, with regard to a closed courtyard with its wooden gallery. Six social dwellings and a craftsman’s workshop were projected for this property. Operations of this type were undertaken by different teams of architects from all over Andalusia and that I reflected in research work funded by a scholarship from the Ministry of Public Works entitled "Restoration as an Instrument in the Creation of Housing".

In parallel with these restoration projects, I have undertaken several autoconstruction works in different villages in the province, in which the neighbours contribute with their own work in building their houses. The “Junta de Andalucía” (Governing Body of Andalusia) finances the materials and the architects’ fees and this money is refunded by the users through loans at very low interest rates. For many years a magnificent Lebanese architect called Camile Nahara has been at the head of the Autoconstruction Service of the Andalusian government.

Likewise I have constructed Health and Social Services Centres in other towns in the province of Jaén:
- The Centre for Social Services at La Carolina.
- The Health Centre at Martos.

THOSE INTANGIBLE AND EVERYDAY ISSUES
After having been employed for so many uninterrupted years in such fields, and especially, after having returned to the buildings at a later date, having spoken with the occupants, I would recommend something to many companions in this profession, because of its healthy cure for humility. It is the fact that I realized just how important and necessary it is for architects to analyze the repercussion of our decisions when actually drawing up projects, asking ourselves why and for what reason are we creating these shapes.

Sometimes I think that we have forgotten our best kept secret, that secret transmitted to us by our masters and, by concealing it so proudly, we are unable to remember those formulae that allow us to build with limited means, magic spaces where the protagonist was not the architect but the inhabitant, affordable places for everyone and that arose from the understanding of what is vital in permanent communication with the emotional and affective world.

Andalusia has spoken to me about entrance hallways, about courtyards, about galleries, about walls, about small gardens... vine arbours, jasmine, syringa (orange blossom), lilies ... wells, fountains, vaults of stone, churns used for keeping oil and wine, sunny areas in which to hang out the washing... Spaces that belong to the domestic domain, spaces in which the tension between indoors and outdoors is solved so pleasantly.  

- Spaces that are not imposing but that suggest the essence of architecture, the meeting between function, being and beauty, places with their own microclimate, their own light, their own life ...
- Spaces that invite you to dream, to reminisce, to reflect... features that are so present in traditional architecture and sometimes so forgotten by modern architects.
- Spaces where the house, the building, start to appear, allowing us to become aware of its mystery although it is not explained to us...

At our Faculty of Architecture nobody told me about it, but it was all there and I received the most interesting lesson in architecture from the past. I am interested in architecture that is deeply rooted to the land, to the place itself, to the inhabitants living there. Holderlin said that “man inhabits this land only as a poet”. This concern in searching for a poetical sense of space is the gift, given to me by such a fantastic land, the land called Andalusia.

MEMORY
I believe that modernity cannot devastate our memory, because human beings need to bury their roots in History. Culture is our heritage, it is the inheritance bequeathed by those who went before us, the fruit from the effort of many men and women who worked to open new paths of thought, new ways of understanding the world, new forms of life...

We have a commitment with our era: to take care, to enrich and to deliver to those who come after us a better world than the one we ourselves have known.

And it is within this reflection about the social duty of both male and female architects, that has led me to motivate, together with Cristina García-Rosales and other lady architects, a project on the issues of WOMEN WHO BUILD.  

We are in line with understanding the research on the habitat as a contribution to the evolution of a culture, trying to distance ourselves from aesthetic conceptions that exclusively appreciate formal values, moving away from inventing whatever the cost, looking for what is original, in the sense of what has never been seen before. We want to invent in order to solve authentic problems; to build a thought based on the approach of architectural practice, from a few ethical values, within a rational comprehension of the resources available.

MODERNITY
My landscape has changed, I no longer live in Andalusia, I am now living and work in Tres Cantos, a nearly created town on the outskirts of . Madrid, a town that was designed in three stages, by the Autonomous Community of Madrid, in the seventies.

My everyday landscape is now made up of green public spaces, walkways, co-operative societies promoting the sale of houses and important educational and cultural establishments. Quality of life is high, due to the fact that great effort was taken in planning with regard to the idea of CREATING A TOWN.

The existence of this important volume of establishments deeply influences the integration of people from different levels of social life.

I am going to end this presentation by showing my last work that was inaugurated last October and it is the Municipal Centre 21st March at Tres Cantos. Work consisted of providing 4,500 square metres of open-plan areas for housing various municipal establishments such as the School of Dance, the local radio, the Youth Centre, Employment Centre as well as the headquarters of several local associations. When I enter these courtyards that articulate the building, I think about my Andalusian courtyards and wish that, with the passage of time, they will also  ... keep the secrets of every afternoon hidden within their walls.

And this is how I believe that there are WOMEN WHO BUILD.

Ana Estirado Gorría, architect.

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