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Selling Bricks and exposing architectural avant-garde
Antonio Giráldez López and Pablo Ibáñez Ferrera, text by HJ Darger

Selling bricks is a photobook that captures avant-garde architecture and cases of special spatial relevance represented in urban music video clips in Spain. The publication brings together 89 cases of relationship between urban music and architectural object. It also contains an original text by the journalist, researcher and audiovisual critic HJ Darger.

Face tattoos, dancing arses, gold chains, abs, spilled bottles, tracksuits, sneakers, autotune, constant background hi-hats, and 'perreo' are, today, the most effective vehicle for dissemination and popularization of architectural heritage -relegated, otherwise, to the tedium of Academia and the DOCOMOMO, and the opportunistic approach of specialized magazines. In a subversive way, making a frontal attack on the aesthetic codes of photographers and architects, this imaginary has also endorsed contemporary Spanish architecture. Can you find a better way to visit the work of Sáenz de Oiza than with Ms Nina's 'perreo'?

This is not a new or exclusive subversion. MACBA's stairs - designed by Richard Meier - became an international reference point for skate lovers with the publication of Thrasher magazine's mythical cover. Architecture took on a new role that moved away from the design decisions of the New York-based architect. The city and its architecture were read by the skaters -as then parkour, 'botellón', graffiti and other urban spatial practices did- with new eyes, looking for the best hotspot to nail their trick.

Today, a wave of young YouTube natives have made the video clip their best speaker, and contemporary architecture a recurring scenario to set their audiovisual pieces. This reading, in opposition to the functionality of the previous ones, privileges the aesthetic and symbolic dimension of architecture. Housing blocks, the crudest street, coexist with the most spectacular and avant-garde architecture. Single-family villas, brutalist buildings, skyscrapers, obelisks, public facilities or simple textures and high-tech facades are systematically repeated scenographies in YouTube videos and Instagram posts. With an impact that no architectural media has ever had, these snapshots are reproduced by millions of people and build an extensive visual atlas of relations between public space and urban music.

Bio Bartlebooth is a publishing and research platform that examines contemporary spatial practice, founded in 2013 and led by Antonio Giráldez López and Pablo Ibáñez Ferrera . The project has been awarded by the BIAU in 2019, the BEAU and Arquia/Próxima in 2018. It was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale and in 2021 they will curate Caring Assemblies. Positions on space-to-come at the Portuguese Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. Antonio is a PhD architect and holds a MSc from ETSAM. Pablo is an architect and holds a MSc from ETSAM. They teach at SUR Escuela (CBA, Madrid) and are currently residents at the Het Nieuwe Instituut and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

2019, Softcover, 105x148mm, 198 pages, full color digital printing

Authors Antonio Giráldez López and Pablo Ibáñez Ferrera, text by HJ Darger
Location Lugo and Madrid, Spain
Publisher Bartlebooth