Segovia 2017

The House of Hungarian Music, a landmark centre dedicated to music in Budapest's City Park and one of Sou Fujimoto's latest works, opened its doors to the public in January. Martha Thorne, Dean of IE University's School of Architecture, prominent urban planner and former Executive Director of the Pritzker Prize, will welcome one of Japan's most famous award-winning architects to Hay Festival Segovia. Fujimoto has received important awards in his field, and is known for projects as outstanding as the Serpentine Gallery the Pavilion in Kensington Gardens or the Final Wooden House in Kunamoto, Japan. The architect, who perceives his projects as an understanding of the relationship between architecture, nature and the human body, will discuss his work with Martha Thorne. They will also explore their shared passion for design, creativity and the cultural heritage of architecture.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Currently Budapest has Europe’s largest and most ambitious urban cultural development, the Liget Budapest Project. An urban and cultural development plan that has transformed the Hungarian capital, involving internationally acknowledged architects, like Sou Fujimoto or Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA). With five new buildings and half of the park area completed and three more to go, the project’s visionary, Laszlo Baan, also director of the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, will be at the Hay Festival to explain and elaborate on the project, and how it relates to comparable projects in Europe.

Isabel Fuentes, PhD in Museology of Natural and Human Sciences, has spent twenty years working in scientific communication and cultural management in institutions such as the Residencia de Estudiantes, the National Museum of Natural Sciences and the La Caixa Foundation. She is currently the director of CaixaForumand an expert in the transformation that a museum can bring about in the city inwhich it is installed.

Baan and Fuentes will talk with Miquel Molina, journalist and writer, assistant director of the newspaper La Vanguardia.

Event in English with simultaneous translation into Spanish and vice versa

The Munch in Oslo is one of those new pieces of architecture that are establishing Oslo's image as a capital of sustainable, egalitarian and civilised modernity. It is the latest work by Spanish architect Juan Herreros, whose career includes other art-related creations. The verticality of the museum is one of its most outstanding features. "A disruptive idea, like hanging paintings along a spiral ramp," say the studio's directors, referring to Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim in New York. This Hay Festival, Herreros will speak about architecture, design, sustainability and interaction with the environment, as the dynamic nature of this centre allows visitors to discover both Munch's work and Oslo; the scale of the city further revealed the higher you go.

He will talk with Martin Braathen, architect and Senior Curator of Architecture at the National Museum, Oslo, M.Arch in Architecture, PhD in Architecture history (2019), formerly editor of journal Arkitektnytt, and acting director of Oslo Architecture Triennale. Braathen has many years of experience as freelance architecture critic and writer, curator.

The event will be presented by Edgar Gonzalez, Associate Dean at IE School of Architecture and Design.

Picture: Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design

Event in English and Spanish with simultaneous translation into Spanish and English.