Santiago Cirugeda Parejo Architect Seville, Spain Link: Recetas Urbanas Submission: "Interview: 11.02.04" Because his home city of Seville, Spain would not authorize him to build a playground in his neighborhood, Cirugeda obtained a dumpster permit and built a playground that looks like a dumpster. The architect spray-painted graffiti and then occupied official-looking scaffolding (that he erected without approval) while removing the graffiti. He also built and slept in an oversize rooftop crane that others thought was only to move building materials up and down. When asked in a November 2004 interview if he had ever been arrested, Cirugeda replied: “Yes, I was arrested when I was very young. I didn’t know what to do because I was very young and afraid. It is interesting when an artist wants to do an exhibit, art installation or anything else, he can get permission to do whatever he wants and to show it in the street. But as a citizen, even if you ask for permission, you don’t get it, because you are not an artist. Therefore, I work from a citizen’s point of view, because as an architect I can get the permission required for my installation. But really I want to be a citizen. I see architecture as a social art. I don’t want only to appear in architecture magazines that show architecture as beautiful images. I want to be a part of the other pages too, to understand what a city is and what a citizen is.” The full interview will be published in the upcoming Building More, Wanting Less.. book.
Bio: Santiago Cirugeda Parejo exploits gaps in administrative structures, governmental bodies’ supervisory energies, official procedures, and where the law falls short. As Benedicte Grosjean writes in ArchiLab’s Futurehouse (2002): “(Cirugeda) formulates realistic and empirical strategies to push the law to its limits and find pockets of non-law in which to develop a possible habitat.” "Ciudad Bolivar, Bogota, Colombia: 1 police station / 100,000 people" Matias Echanove, “Bogota at the Edge: Ciudad Bolivar,” 2004, HYPERLINK "http://www.urbanology.org/Bogota/" (accessed February 1, 2006).