David Chipperfield is a world renowned, Pritzker prize-winning architect with major buildings in cities across the globe from Berlin to Beijing. But with a long career behind him he has changed the emphasis and ambition of his practice. Susan Marling joins him in Compostela in Galicia, northern Spain, as he opens a handsome new home for his foundation. The Casa Ria, in a converted health sanitorium in the centre of town, is about looking at architecture differently. It is not about designing and building new buildings, rather it is about improving people’s quality of life. Working in a series of coastal and rural towns north of Compostela David and the team address issues of town planning – to bring public space back into focus, to reconnect communities with the sea and to deal with traffic that pollutes town centres and makes them dangerous.
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
You are actually radioactive and everything alive.
Is Unexpected Elements from the BBC World Service.
Search for unexpected elements wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
This is Santiago di Compostela in northern Spain, famous of course as a place of Christian pilgrimage.
But I've come here to meet up with the world renowned Pritzker Prize winning architect, David Chipperfield, whose buildings have won accolades from Berlin to Beijing.
Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.
I'm Susan Marling and in this edition of in the Studio, I'll be discovering David's new approach to architecture, which isn't so much about making more beautiful big budget art galleries or high rises, as looking at ways to improve people's quality of life in towns and villages.
And his brand new headquarters for that venture is in this handsome restored building.
Yes.
Okay, we have a view of the.
The Casarea is the soon to be opened new home for David Chipperfield's architectural foundation.
With workmen still on site, David and the team are organizing the photographic exhibition that will occupy the big entrance hall.
But it's late in the day.
What happens at the end of every project?
You're trying to do all the things you should have done two weeks ago.
So there's a bit of cleaning of the floors and the ground floor.
It's a panic to the end, but exciting as well, I guess.
Then Friday, the mayor will open the building.
It's going to be a week of presenting the project to the public.