‘When a building looks like a flower vase, it's because we've done it upside down,’ argued architect Jonathan Benhamu. What he intended with this statement was to emphasize the importance of relying on technology to make good architecture. ‘Good technology has to follow the building.’ But, how do you teach technology for excellent architecture?, he asked himself, going on to point out that this will be one of the objectives of the Building & Architecture Institute (BAI), the future center for industrialization and robotics applied to construction and architecture promoted by the Government of Navarre in 2021 and which it leads in collaboration with the Government of Spain. It will be physically located in the former home of Talleres Iruña, on Tajonar Street next to the UPNA (Public University of Navarre).

‘It will be an academic institute of excellence,’ as Patxi Mangado describes it. Mangado, together with Andrea Deplazes and with the support of Benhamu, will direct the postgraduate programme that the center has launched and which will include different training offers related to the professionalization of construction industrialization at various levels. The opportunities are enormous. This past Tuesday, at the Baluarte Congress Center, Deplazes offered as an example what a group of students achieved in Switzerland at an altitude of 2,883 meters, between the glaciers and the imposing peaks of Valais: the new Monte Rosa Hut. The project – carried out over six semesters by a large interdisciplinary team of professors and students from fields as varied as architecture, engineering, and the environment – managed to combine architecture with the avant-garde, high technology, and sustainable development, turning the shelter into a kind of laboratory for testing everything from energy efficiency to construction technologies in the Alps.

"The technologies that emerge now, far from being a drawback, will be very useful. We architects are becoming a kind of aesthetic advisor, but nothing could be further from our goal. If we are not able to master and control these tools we will not be able to serve society and do architecture. We want to train the best architects to make the best architecture," claimed Mangado, who did not hesitate to confess during his speech that the Swiss experience had helped him realize that it is not necessary to be very big to become an example. ‘In Navarre we don't have the trains and airplanes, but we have the University of Navarre, a competitive public university, top-level research centers, and an exciting business sector.’

Diario de Navarra: El refugio suizo del Monte Rosa que inspira al BAI