Miquel Lacasta on Air Corners: From Campo Baeza to Cerdà's Barcelona

In a conversation with Adrián Gasparoni for Beat Revista, architect Miquel Lacasta reflects on the concept of 'air corners' in architecture, focusing on Alberto Campo Baeza's office building in Zamora, Spain. The project features two contrasting corners: one of stone and one of glass. Campo Baeza describes the stone box as a 'Hortus Conclusus' with a cornerstone inscribed 'HIC LAPIS ANGULARIS MAIO MMXII POSITO,' and the glass box as a transparent volume with a single-piece glass facade (600×300 cm) joined by structural silicone, with a glass corner inscribed 'HOC VITRUM ANGULARIS MAIO MMXII POSITO.' Lacasta contrasts this with Ildefons Cerdà's 19th-century Eixample district in Barcelona, where chamfered corners at 45 degrees create concave urban spaces that form small plazas of about 2,000 m² at intersections. He compares Barcelona's concave, welcoming character to Manhattan's convex, expulsive nature, calling Manhattan 'masculine, challenging, ruthless' and Barcelona 'feminine, regular, medium.' Lacasta argues that the difference between the two cities lies in the corner.