UB professor Miguel Guitart selected as guest editor of Revista de Arquitectura No. 26
Miguel Guitart, associate professor in the UB Department of Architecture was selected as guest editor of Revista de Arquitectura No. 26, Memories of the Ground.
BY KELLY SHELDON
Published May 1, 2025
Once per year, the School of Architecture at the University of Navarra in Spain releases a prestigious peer-reviewed publication titled Revista de Arquitectura (RA). This past year, Miguel Guitart, associate professor in the UB Department of Architecture, had the honor of serving as guest editor of the most recent edition, No. 26.
On a sunlit spring afternoon, I joined Guitart in his office in Hayes Hall to reflect on his experience. Grateful to be chosen for this important role, he acknowledged the esteemed reputation of the university and the publication’s ability to provide a respected platform for discussion around a topic of his choosing. “The university is known for its intellectual rigor,” Guitart reflected. “That made the project very exciting because I knew the people behind the Department of Architecture had a long trajectory of intellectual capacity and rigorous pedagogy.” According to the publication’s website, RA seeks to nourish the perception of architecture so as to not lose sight of its dimension as a cultural discipline.
In late 2023, a call for papers was issued requesting articles focused on a topic that Guitart has been interested in for quite some time, Memories of the Ground. As he and I spoke, I noticed a set of three artistic representations of the ground adorning his desk – a testament to his passion for this topic. These depictions of layering and erosion were created by students using natural materials extracted from the ground outside. “They were kind enough to let me keep them,” he explained.
Met with enthusiastic approval by RA’s Scientific Advisory Board, Memories of the Ground explores material memory as it refers to the capacity of physical environments to apprehend and archive different forms of memory, focusing on the ground as it accrues layers of past memories that become integrated with new architectural interventions. The ground performs as a critical palimpsest capable of recording, preserving, revealing, and concealing the memory of places – and ultimately their identities – through the experience of their material attributes over time. This issue critically examines the physical, perceptual, social, political, and ethnographic implications of the material memory inherent to the physical ecology of the architectural ground and the loss of material memory caused by manipulation.
"Ultimately, it's about understanding our work in the continuum of time, looking at how we insert ourselves in the larger history of places, and how the ground is the common milieu to all."
“I believe it’s very important to reflect on how architecture engages with a site and its memory through the materiality of the ground,” Guitart explained. “I proposed this call for papers because these are critical issues—how architecture is properly grounded, not only physically in a site but also historically or socially engaged through the proper understanding of the layers of memory that the ground has been able to archive.”
The process of compiling and editing the issue spanned a full year. The call for papers brought in more than 40 submissions, all of which were thoughtfully reviewed by Guitart; 17 were ultimately selected. From there, a collaborative process with the authors began between Guitart and each scholar to refine their contributions, ensuring a comprehensive and cohesive final product.
Seventeen articles by scholars and researchers are featured in Memories of the Ground.
The result is a 372-page issue available in both Spanish and English that features a wide variety of reflections on “memories of the ground.” Guitart chose to open the issue with a work by David Leatherbarrow, emeritus professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. In his essay, “Relief from Nature,” Leatherbarrow examines examples of terrain throughout time where it is presented both as a result of creative work as well as a basic resource. The prominent placement of this article by Guitart was very intentional. “David Leatherbarrow is an incredible scholar in this country and worldwide,” he observed. “He’s been quite a reference for me as a researcher and an author… I was really happy with the alignment in the interests and sensibilities that I found in his work and his thinking. I thought it was incredibly generous of him to send this contribution and, of course, elevate the quality of the book with his work.”
The subsequent pages explore an array of subjects related to the overall theme. In “What the Land Knows, Fill Remembers,” Alison Creba traces the evolution and implications of changing definitions of infill through its application in three artificial landscapes along Toronto’s waterfront. In “Memory, Thickness, and Identity in Two Modern Architectural Landscapes,” Lara Redondo González and Daria Álvarez Álvarez study how the Acropolis and Philopappos Hill in Athens and the Capitol of Chandigarh in India generate a layer of updated architectural memory that seeks to define a new identity about the sites. In “Topography and Memory, C.Th.Sørensen Open-air Theatres in Denmark,” Carmen Martínez Arroyo, Rodrigo Pemjean Muñoz, and María Dolores Sánchez Moya utilize Danish open-air theaters designed by Sørensen to examine the hypothesis that proposals are more intense when they respond to the cultural memory of the place. And in “110/120 rue de La Réunion, The Story of a Gypsum Quarry where a Natural Garden Sprouted,” Carlos Ávila Calzada presents the transformation of a small and hidden Parisian wasteland into a natural garden whose history was overlooked when conceiving a project that would combine social, technical, and political debate with the memory of place.
Flipping through the pages of the final product, Guitart expressed his satisfaction with the diverse range of responses included. While he had directly contacted some contributing scholars, whose work he was already familiar with, the submission process was open to all scholars and researchers, and several articles were submitted that explored the topic in unexpected ways. “It’s not about doing a job that you know one hundred percent,” he noted, “but opening up ideas that are shared through the content of the journal. I think that was one of the most exciting aspects of the guest editing process; I learned so much from so many scholars and so many topics and case studies and ideas that were offered through the different articles
RA No. 26, Memories of the Ground was published in October 2024 and is available on the . Guitart hopes that the content of the book will prompt further conversations about the memory of places – where we go, where we live, where others have lived, and how we engage in our continuous history. “We’re not isolated, but we belong to a much larger sequence,” he concluded. “I think it’s important to understand how we engage with places and how others will engage with our interventions. Ultimately, it’s about understanding our work in the continuum of time, looking at how we insert ourselves in the larger history of places, and how the ground is the common milieu to all.” RA No. 26 serves as a poignant reminder of that bigger picture.
The volume contains 17 contributions from scholars in Spain, Canada, United States, Italy, and Peru, including David Leatherbarrow; Jean Pierre Crousse; Martin Hogue; Israel Alba; Alison Creba; Patricia Fraile-Garrido and Inés Martín-Robles; Lara Redondo González and Darío Álvarez Álvarez; Carmen Martínez Arroyo, Rodrigo Pemjean Muñoz, and María Dolores Sánchez Moya; Giulia Anna Squeo; Carlos Ávila Calzada; María Gilda Martino and María Murillo Romero; Santiago de Molina; Javier Antón Sancho and Víctor Larripa Artieda; Ana Muñoz López; Mario Galiana Liras; Santiago Rodríguez-Caramés; Eduardo de Miguel Arbonés and Carme Bosch Villar.