Juan Borchers' epistolary system: an architectural workshop, 1951/1973

This research aims to reflect on the formation and production of what has come to be called el Taller de Juan Borchers. The Chilean architect and theorist, who gives its name to this organization, dedicated his time to study and critical reflection on science, the arts and the perception of physical reality. With a deliberately ascetic way of life, reason and morality made him reject any figuration and bureaucracy of the trade. In his vital and intellectual journey we find a large number of interests and references that contribute to configure a multifaceted and complex figure. In short, his work is characterized by the ability to harmonize the theoretical and the practical, in order to build an episteme for architecture in the second half of the 20th century. This text analyzes the formation of an architecture workshop whose contents unfold, as a dialogue, through almost three decades of studies and work. We will see how a progressive distancing with Le Corbusier is generated, and insists on the conditions and theories that seek to overcome the limitations found in “El Modulor”. The investigation not only analyzes the journey of our protagonist, but also examines it through the two most intimate collaborators of him. This doctoral thesis aims to show that the thought and architectural work of Juan Borchers would not have been the same without the intervention of Isidro Suárez and Jesús Bermejo. El Taller de Juan Borchers is characterized by being a living organism, which will seek to raise, through historical architecture, the keys to a proper notation for the trade; defending the role of architecture as autonomous art. Madrid stands as a starting point. The year 1948 is the beginning of a choral trajectory that ceases to be continuous with the acquired architectural precepts. The path that begins since then is narrated chronologically and generates a conversation that will be analyzed through the epistolary tool. The letter not only shows an effective communication system, but ends up building a method by which the Workshop and its work are created. This postal exchange is not presented as original or exclusive, rather it represents a reality of the time. Le Corbusier, Gropius and many others were using it as a system for an initiatory relocation in architectural firms. The mechanism is simple: it serves as a possible vehicle to build works and thoughts at a distance. It is Borchers himself who marks the start and end of his own architecture workshop. In 1951, in the “Carta Continua del Escorial”, he argues the need to intensify the epistolary system as a viable articulation to narrate and debate his discoveries. This is where the tool that articulates the research hypothesis begins. The interest of this analysis lies in its evolution. The system mutates and adapts, going through the period where the works are built and becoming a mechanism for disseminating the results obtained. The end is evidenced when Bermejo returns to Europe; It is in 1973 when the workshop closes. The objectives go through testing how an architectural thought ends up being built through the communication tool of the letter. Intelligence developed, slowly, through the handwritten texts between the protagonists is claimed; versus contemporary instant digital communication. This epistolary system generates a working method that concludes with the elaboration and use of what Borchers calls the “Cubic Series”. It is the will of this work to vindicate the ideology and teachings of the Juan Borchers Workshop, as well as to generate the concern that enables the approach towards his work and thought.