EGA (Jul 2021)
In conversation with… Alberto Campo Baeza
Abstract
I think it would be redundant to introduce Professor Alberto Campo Baeza. His CV is known enough to review it one more time. He has also given multiple interviews where many times questions and aspects regarding his work and his person are repeated. For this reason, when Angela García, Editor of EGA, asked me to interview him, I spoke with Alberto and suggested that he carry out a kind of dialogue on topics that I knew were of interest to him. He never says no for an answer due to his great generosity. I will start by explaining that I met Alberto around 1990 when he was going down the stairs of the ETSAB. I believe that he was in a court for competitive examinations and I approached him on a break from the test. At that time he was already well known as a teacher and as an architect. Over the years we have met punctually at events and conferences, a relationship that has intensified over time. The scene was always more or less the same, but with subtle and intense moments that certainly fill me with admiration: he speaking of light and space, of poetry (let’s not forget that his passion for the classics is manifest and well known), that materializes with clear and simple projects where nothing is superfluous and where nothing is missing, explaining them with infinite patience and an emotion that he always transmits to the attendees. Can you ask for more? Oblivious to fashion, but always attentive to any intellectual concern. Very young Full Professor. Currently Emeritus of the ETSAM, member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, and so much more ... But there are two facts that have special meaning for me. The first, his attempt to work with Arne Jacobsen just before his death. The second, while being the director of the School, when he was a visiting professor at the ETSAB leading a 5th year Project Workshop during the first semester of the 2018-2019 period. He did not miss any lesson. He came from Madrid every week. A gift. These aspects are implicit in the text that we share below. Made, as Alberto says, “cup by cup”, at a time invaded by the pandemic and in a come and go of emails. Questions and answers, checks, every two or three days I received news from him. We were exchanging questions and answers in both directions in an enriching dialogue that has been another particular lesson that he has given me. I can only be grateful for this possibility, that of an “atypical interview”, as Ángela García describes it, and which has been delayed in time until we came to find this formula that thanks to technology we could carry out. Thank you very much Alberto.
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