Eladio Dieste’s Principles
The following text briefly summarizes the prin- ciples on which the engineer based his work.
About the great structures of the past or present. These works move and attract us not only because of their di- mensions, their audacity, or their constructive finesse but also because they are mysteriously expressive and seem to open up a kind of endless path of understanding and communion with the world. For this to happen there must be nothing free or neglected. Nothing careless and wasteful; only in this way can we achieve what we call economy in a cosmic sense, which implies agreement with that elusive mystery that is the universe. Economy. Healthy architecture cannot be produced without a rational and economic use of building materials. Rational use of human effort and avoiding the waste of material is necessary, behind which, ultimately, there is also human effort. The opposite is simply a lack of adequacy of what is projected for a country´s overall reality. A lack of modesty and seriousness in the face of its problems. Simple people have historically placed more importance on beauty than on the primary comforts that obsess the modern world. It has that taste that already transcends itself, but it also has things that are worth much more: innocence and a fresh appetite for the flavors of the world. Technique and precision. Knowing that something can be done and what is the first and biggest step. Anyone who might think that the insistence on precision of shapes and dimensions is a kind of mania and that these errors are not perceived by those who have to use the work should be reminded of the wonder of fairness, precision, and ex- pressiveness of farming instruments and spontaneous structures, which were made by simple people, with the unperverted taste for the pseudo-culture with which we are stunned by the mass media. The end. An architecture with a strong personality has never been the result of proposing it as an end. It is not easy to have a clear image of the end, but it is easy to have a clear image of the principles that should guide it. That is why it is a radical mistake that "the end justifies the means." We do not know what it is; we know what it must be faithful to. Productivity and efficiency are not ends in themselves. Man´s full achievement is.
The path. Fortunately, man has the generosity to embark on paths in which he feels a solid intimate congruence. In structural matters, we tend to proceed as if the field of knowledge were completely defined and it would be enough to delve into what is already known. That is false in this field of technique and surely in all others. The time spent in reflecting with a clear head on the problems that reality puts before us is much less than the time spent on continuing to study what has already been studied by others. If an interesting path presents itself to us, we must venture down it with measured confidence; that is what the technique creators we admire so much did. Modern architecture. The architecture that we call Modern arose in countries with social, cultural, and above all indus- trial development that was completely different from ours. Its response to these societies´ problems seems to me to be almost always incomplete; it is usually more adequate from a technological point of view, but adequate for them, not always for us. The surprise. Like all art, architecture helps us to contem- plate. Life wastes our ability to be surprised and surprise is the beginning of a true world vision. Reinforced ceramics. If I had to synthesize what has led us in our search, I would say that it is the resistant value of the surface as such, which represents a change compared to the orientation that construction has had in recent times, which tended to seek the resistance of the rib, beam or arch. Tradition. Our construction methods have a lot to do with the traditional ones, they are imposed by the material, but they have to be seen without copying them. This is the way to be faithful to the deep roots of true tradition, always the source of the revolutionary, in this and everything. Space in architecture. The intense happiness that I feel in the old European cities and unexpected and little-known places, such as the old part of Panama, is due to the fact that space, that very inexpensive thing, has been handled wisely and humanely.
This text has been provided by the Dieste Foundation through Esteban Dieste.
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Movimiento Moderno / Modern Movement
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