Visual constructions: Crossed views from architect and photographer Luis Barragán versus Armando Salas Portugal, José Antonio Coderch versus Francesc Català-Roca

Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th Century, photography-as well as other arts-evolved its techniques and compositions, and became one of the main tools to understand an architectural work: both for the design analysis and its dissemination. Moreover, it has played an important role in the interpretation of modernism. This fact allows us to ask the following question: What are the links between architectural conception and its representation? What are the formal mechanisms the photographer uses to represent a specific architecture? This paper tries to show the role of photography in the visual construction of the space at the design process, and in the other hand, to analyse how photography interprets the design, recognize the construction of its form—of a space that respond to an intentional search for a visual experience—and how this is represented and transmitted. Between both disciplines there is a mutual influence that links the construction of a place and the visual field that represents it. These issues are addressed through the analysis of the parallel experiences of two architects: Luis Barragán and Jose Antonio Coderch, with two photographers: Armando Salas Portugal and Francesc Català–Roca, with whom they interchanged professional experiences, in which common ground and contrasts arise related to their culture and their way of looking.