Project «Spinning the wheel»: Jaime Magén featured in the Pirelli´s Annual Report

On January 30th and 31st, in the Fondazione Pirelli space in Milan, a group of ten up-and-coming world talents, welcomed by the chairman and CEO Marco Tronchetti Provera, took part in a two-day workshop aimed at interpreting and representing, through their talent, the simplest and at the same time one of the most revolutionary inventions in the history of mankind. With ‘Spinning the wheel’, this year the focus is shifted onto talent, with the aim of highlighting the creativity, foresight, commitment, perseverance and passion which shape a successful idea, project or product.

Now, the participation of Jaime Magén in the project «Spinning the wheel» is featured in the Pirelli´s Annual Report, with an interview ant the following text of the english novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi, in charge of the coordination of the event :

«Jaime showed us the importance and magnificence of the circle, of unilateral symmetry, in architecture, from the theatres of the ancient Romans to the campuses of Apple. How it embodies fortitude, elegance and the void – a sense of endlessness, without a point zero.
But it is also represented in the body, in the womb, the head, the mouth and the vagina, places from which there is an emergence and genesis.

Jaime talked captivatingly about the history of circles, how they have the dual faculty of keeping this enclosed while keeping things external too. His own architecture and design seeks to explore these themes, and his latest project an elliptical school, uses the endless exuberance of the circle to encourage playfulness in its central playground. While being a contained space, it eschews corners and angular barriers affording instead a sense of limitlessness and freedom. It offers security within – protecting children – while guarding them from others outside, without being constrictive.

His concepts are functional while being patently philosophical too, and this vivifies his work. Jaime produces not just buildings, but ideas.» [Hanif Kureishi]