GSD Talks: Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, “Things as Holes”

Sergio Lopez-Pineiro was the 2014-15 Daniel Urban Kiley Fellow in Landscape Architecture at Harvard University. He is the founder of Holes of Matter, a design practice that explores the gaps between social structures and spatial organizations. His projects and writings have been featured in arq: Architecture Research Quarterly, Places, Bracket, 2G, MAS Context, and the Boston Globe, amongst others. Lopez-Pineiro graduated from ETSAM (Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid) in 1998 and received his M.Arch. degree from Princeton University in 2004. He has previously worked with Foreign Office Architects in London and No.mad in Madrid, and has taught in the US and Spain.

Lopez-Pineiro’s work as the 2014-15 Kiley Fellow has revolved around urban voids and the argument that cities—as places that accept and encourage multiple representations—need empty and undetermined spaces to act as platforms for unregulated situations. Two ongoing book projects are the primary result of this research: a glossary and a primer. The glossary includes over one hundred terms and spatial denominations (including definitions, usages, and synonyms) that have been used during the last thirty years to describe urban voids. The primer focuses on the recognition, generation, and protection of voids emerging from everyday spaces.

As a collection of design precedents as well as Lopez-Pineiro’s projects, the primer argues that, despite common disciplinary positions, six spatial properties (neutrality, homogeneity, blankness, enablement, emptiness, and amnesia) can open up everyday spaces, transforming the quotidian into a source of spontaneity.

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