Coral Courts Lecture: Fuensanta Nieto

Fuensanta Nieto—a founding partner of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, with offices in Madrid and Berlin, and a professor at the Universidad Europea de Madrid—will deliver the annual Coral Courts Lecture, titled Art, City, Landscape, as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series.

Lecture Statement
Our works are conceived independently, at different times. They are the result of varying conditions, places, and programs: at first glance one is undoubtedly more attentive to what sets them apart than to what may unite them. Only when grouped together, like pieces of an imaginary puzzle, do they seem to reveal what unconsciously connects them: fragmentary processes that suggest perhaps fictitious, but not unreal, orders. And yet, precisely because architecture is always the result of an interpretation of multiple and apparently unconnected circumstances that end up resembling one another, the projects are a reflection of one another, like an unforeseen result of an endless play of mirrors. The lecture will present the ideas, projects, and works as a dialogue between art, city, and landscape.

About Fuensanta Nieto
Nieto graduated from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the GSAPP at Columbia University in New York. From 1986-1991 she was the editor of the architectural journal ARQUITECTURA, published by the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid. She lectures on architecture and participates in juries and symposia at various institutions around the world. Along with being widely published in international magazines and books, the firm’s work has been exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia in 2000, 2002, 2006, and 2012; at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, in 2006; at the Kunsthaus in Graz in 2008; and at the MAST Foundation in Bologna in 2014. They are the recipients of the 2007 National Prize for Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage, the 2010 Nike Prize (BDA), the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2010), the Piranesi Prix de Rome (2011), the European Museum of the Year Award (2012), the Hannes Meyer Prize (2012), AIA Honorary Fellowship (2015), the Alvar Aalto Medal (2015), and the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts (2017).

Their major works include the Madinat al-Zahra Museum, the Moritzburg Museum in Halle, the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián, the Zaragoza Congress Centre, the Martin Chirino Foundation in Las Palmas, the Joanneum Museum extension in Graz, the Contemporary Art Centre in Córdoba, and the Arvo Pärt Centre in Estonia. Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos is currently working on projects in several countries, among them, the extension of the Archaeological Museum in Munich, the extension of the Museo Sorolla in Madrid, the Montblanc Haus in Hamburg, the Archive of the Avant-gard in Dresden, the Carmen Thyssen Museum in Girona, and the Cité du Théâtre in Paris. Four monographs have been published on their work: Nieto Sobejano. Memory and Invention (Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany, 2013), Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano. Architetture (Mondadori Electa Spa, Milano, Italy, 2014), Nieto Sobejano Arquitectura 2004-2017 (TC Cuadernos 131/132, Valencia, Spain, 2017), and Arvo Pärt Centre & Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos. A Common Denominator (ArchiTangle GmbH, Berlin, Germany, 2020).