3 minutos
Núria Moliner in an episode from Season 2 of Escala Humana.Every Monday on TVE 2 at 20.00, starting on 13 January. That’s the schedule for the second season of Escala Humana, and we’re delighted because this new slot on a day when there’s less sport means we’ll no longer be competing with the Champions League.
The programme has undergone few changes and retains its format, offering thirteen new themed chapters on such varied subjects as wine architecture (the first episode), a tribute to wood and a look at the future of cities. When we say architecture we mean architecture in the broadest sense of the word, encompassing all scales from product design to landscaping and even exploring larger geographical issues like the vast empty spaces of central Spain and the commercial winegrowing sector.
Escala Humana is produced by Costa Est Audiovisuals for TVE and directed by Jaume Clèries. Both Clèries and most of his team started out in the world of book programmes, so they have experience in explaining abstract concepts that were never conceived as TV material. This background has been extremely useful to us, allowing us to move architecture away from its purely visual dimension and introduce a continuity of discourse that goes way beyond a mere collection of projects. It also helps us explain how architecture adapts to such abstract, speculative situations and how architecture and our cities need to adapt to a truly complex geo-economic reality. Our training has served as an excellent starting point when we’ve had to recover, refresh and adapt the visual dimension to the demands of the televised medium, where every second counts.
The programme is a team effort, and only two members of the team are architects: myself (fools rush in…) and Núria Moliner, our on-screen face who is really much more than just a face. Without her discernment the programme would be very different. But the same can be said of all the other members of the team. We haven’t had camera operators, scriptwriters or producers: we’ve had Sonia, Matilda, Candela and Pere, and so many others. Each of them has contributed concerns, texture and depth to the end result far more than their job descriptions stipulate.
In a recent interview with Pedro Torrijos, William Curtis, one of the world’s most important architecture critics, gave voice to one of my pet beliefs by declaring that an architecture review that couldn’t be understood by a 16-year-old can’t have been written properly. Escala Humana is a generalist programme offering a dual discourse, one which is just as understandable and valid for the general public as it is for architects. Because, putting aside the pedantry of idiots who obfuscate their narrative to conceal the fact that they don’t have many ideas with which to back it up, there’s really not much difference between those two discourses other than from time to time having to remind the audience what a specific technical term means. Other than that, they’re identical… and just as difficult to put across in a way that makes them look easy.
And that’s it. Many, many thanks to all those who have shown interest in the programme and helped us: our guests, our colleagues behind the cameras, those who have answered our phone calls, our friends, institutions… and those still to come.
You can view the first season, and the new episodes as they are broadcast, completely free of charge on the RTVE website here.
We hope you like the result.
