The Museum of the Iron, Steel and Mining Industries of Castile-Leon presents tomorrow the exhibition Aprendiendo de las Cuencas
Coproduced by LABoral and banco SabadellHerrero, the museum of Sabero will showcase until June 15 the part of Artefactos de la Memoria that was shown in Oviedo
Artifacts of memory. View of the exhibition at the Sala SabadellHerrero, Oviedo. Photo: Courtesy of the curators
Museum of the Iron, Steel and Mining Industries of Castile-Leon opens tomorrow Tuesday, March 18, the exhibition Aprendiendo de las Cuencas (Learning from the Cuencas), a research project around the Mining Valleys of Asturias which has been shown at Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial de Gijón and Sala de Arte del SabadellHerrero in Oviedo until February 28.
Coproduced by LABoral and banco SabadellHerrero, this exhibition proposes a sensitive recovery of these landscapes and intends to go beyond the traditionally negative image of this industrial area of Asturias, where the deployment of the mining and steel activity drastically transformed its closest environment in order to meet industrial exploitation needs.
The Museum of the Iron, Steel and Mining Industries of Castile-Leon, located in Sabero, will host the part of the exhibition that was originally shown in Oviedo, under the title Aprendiendo de las Cuencas. Los artefactos de la memoria (Artifacts of Memory). Starting from the identification, selection and cataloguing of those samples of architecture, buildings or urban elements which represent this singular environment unparalleled in Europe, the exhibition which has been taken to this locality of León is presented as some sort of rite of passage showcasing the results of the documentation and cataloguing work carried out during the research process with analysis and dissemination purposes. The exhibition will showcase bibliographical references of the study, the most important samples of the “artifacts”, a term curators use to refer to the hybrid architectures which are the focus of this study, and the symphonic work of Flores Chaviano, linked to the memory of the Asturian mining valleys.
Coproduction: LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial and SabadellHerrero
With the support of: Principado de Asturias
Research and curatorship: Nacho Ruiz Allén and Sara López Arraiza are members of zon-e arquitectos, an architectural studio with offices in Asturias and Madrid founded in 2001 by Nacho Ruiz Allén and José Antonio Ruiz Esquiroz. Since the beginning, the Studio has been committed with architectural research, focusing on tectonic and energy aspects. The work of zon-e has been awarded prizes in various architectural competitions. Moreover, its built work has been widely recognised, and has received, among others, the XX Premio Asturias de Arquitectura in 2010 for the Social Housing in Cerredo and the Dubai International Award for Best Practices UN-Habitat in 2010 awarded by the Town Council of Noáin. Its projects have been published in many national and international media, such as the magazines Arquitectura Viva, Architectural Review and Wallpaper. The latter included the studio in its 2011 Architects Directory, presenting it as one of the most relevant emerging studios at International level. Furthermore, its projects and buildings have been exhibited at several institutions, both national and International, such as Van Alen Institute in New York City, the Architecture Foundation in London and the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris.
zon-e has developed, jointly with Cultural Landscape Research Group at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (GIPC), the research projects New Dimensions of the Mining Landscape, in 2007 and Analysis and Strategic Assessment of the Mining Landscape of Asturias, in 2009. The first one resulted in the publication of the book Conceptual Actions in the Landscape. Dimensions of Memory.
