ETS de Arquitectura

This afternoon I met Elisa Valero Ramos, a professor in the architecture department at the University of Granada (UGR) and a practising architect.

© Elisa Valero Ramos

In the sheltered basement of her office, we talked about the direction of my research, as well as one of Elisa’s ongoing projects - an Africa-Europe link from Motril. With Spain now taking more immigrants than Italy or Greece and many arriving on Andalusian shores, the issue is far more visible here than at home, and it was interesting to discuss that project as a reactionary enterprise. We ended our conversation on an optimistic note, discussing the work of local support groups and the positive possibilities of projects like ours. I came away from our meeting armed with several potential contacts and Elisa’s frank opinions on immigration from a local perspective.

Afterwards, I paid a visit to the UGR School of Architecture, which backs onto Elisa's office. The school is a beautiful assortment of spaces, mixing the original Nasrid house with additions from the sixteenth through to twentieth centuries, with a final reworking by Víctor López Cotelo. The newest parts have some lovely details - lots of clean lines and shadow gaps. A new exhibition hall opens onto an old courtyard, providing a shady and surprisingly serene space where students were reading and chatting. The whole place gave me great insights into how local Andalusian architecture goes about combining old and new.