If externalities are the negative impacts that an activity has on the environment, internalities will be the opposite—the way to reduce them. In the case of architecture, this implies a reflection on the characteristics of the construction process and the territory in which it is framed, as the architects Roi Salgueiro and Manuel Bouzas showed at the Spain Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Their exhibition (or research, or treatise, or experiment, because it is all of these things) achieved international success and is now on display at the Galician Centre of Contemporary Art, in Santiago de Compostela, until May.
The theoretical approach of these two Galicians earned the respect and curiosity of the most insiders, but also drew a great deal of attention from the general public that crowded the Spanish pavilion in Venice, because the way they tell it is didactic and escapes the elitism and insularity that architecture has yet to shed.
They achieve this thanks to the topic’s urgent relevance and the stunning photographic work, in large formats, which seems to embed the visitor in the landscapes being addressed. The point is to internalize where the materials or energy come from, and to perceive how their extraction and processing affect the territory.
That is why they present the exhibition in a very simple way: on the two pans of a balance rest a building and its surroundings, and both must always be level. The balance represents the justice between a building and the landscape. It is the consciousness of the architectural discipline, which must reflect on its own foundations, from obtaining materials to energy production, construction processes, waste and the derived emissions.
“Part of our team, the intellectual and conceptual origin of the project, is Galician, which is why we wanted the first tour of Internalities to take place in Santiago. But it is also a declaration of advocacy, because Galicia does not usually receive proposals of this magnitude and we want to spark an international debate centered in Santiago, and for that to have an impact on the political agenda when talking about industry, education, housing…,” Bouzas told Condé Nast Traveler.
