AMAG 43 BEAR | HANGHAR

Bear uses colour, pattern, narrative and deconstruction; Hanghar prefers white, repetition and subtraction (...) Yet beneath these apparent oppositions lies a shared conviction. Both practices seem less interested in programme than in the autonomy of spatial structures, pursuing an architecture that exists before use and persists beyond it. In Hanghar’s work, the room returns as architecture’s fundamental particle (...) Architecture approaches the condition of a model at 1:1 scale. And almost all in white, a very specific white. Bear arrives from the opposite direction (...) The result is rich and full of flavour. Paradoxically, both practices share different expressions of something increasingly rare: optimism (...) They still believe form matters. (...) What seems refreshing today is the reappearance of architecture as an autonomous cultural project (...) Contemporary Spanish architecture remains one of the few places where such differences are not merely tolerated, but actively cultivated. In a first world increasingly obsessed with consensus, Bear and Hanghar remind us that culture advances through divergence. Spain, once again, seems to know this. Portugal, watching from next door, remains slightly jealous.

FILIPE MAGALHAES