Fernando Menis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Multifunctional Concert Hall "Jordanki"
Sacred Museum and Plaza de España in Adeje
Bürchen Mystik
Holy Redeemer Church
Insular Athletics Stadium
Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands
Fernando Menis | |
|---|---|
| Born | 15 June 1951 |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Practice | Fernando Menis S.L.P.U. |
| Projects | Magma Art&Congress Multifunctional Concert Hall "Jordanki" Sacred Museum and Plaza de España in Adeje Bürchen Mystik Holy Redeemer Church Insular Athletics Stadium Presidency of the Government of the Canary Islands |
Fernando Martín Menis, better known as Fernando Menis (born June 15, 1951), is a Spanish architect. He graduated from the Barcelona Institute of Architecture. He serves as the Chairman of the Laboratory for Innovation in Architecture, Design and Advanced Tourism of Tenerife. He is also a professor at the European University of the Canary Islands (EUC) and, occasionally, serves as a guest speaker at International Congresses of Architecture and Universities (such as Harvard, Technische Universität Berlin, Columbia University etc).
Perhaps to understand the professional moment Menis lives in, we have to go back to his childhood where he "used to help [his] father when making [his] own toys with recycled materials", something that later developed in his high school years, as he used to spend hours dreaming of shapes in soft materials, such as wax candles. Menis often describes this as his inspiration to study architecture later in College. He started his University journey in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and finished his degree in Barcelona. Menis remembers those as some very exciting years in his life due to democracy being about to be established in Spain, which made the desire of incredible freedom and collective joy contagious. His two main inspirations where his then professors Pep Bonet and Rafael Cáceres, who "opened [his] dreams and brought common sense and harmony" into his work. Once he graduated, he moved to Paris and started working with Ricardo Bofill in the first period of his architectural studio. This gave him the opportunity to meet new friends and learn from a European world that was very different from what he had been used to in Spain. It is in Paris where he learns and participates in several competitions, such as La Villette, something that stimulates his pleasure of teamwork that surpasses itself in order to offer the best solution for a project. A few years after returning to the island (Tenerife, Islas Canarias), he met Dulce Xerach (a lawyer, doctor in architecture and a crime novel writer) with whom he has been married twice. First in 2003, divorced in 2007 and second wedding in 2014). They live in a house designed by the own Menis, Casa MM, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.His wife has written 3 books inspired in the placed she has visited with Menis for work: Robbery in Sao Paulo, Murder on a London Beach and Kidnapping in Hong Kong, all of the same serie, in which the protagonist is a Spanish police inspector named María Anchieta.
Representative projects
- Tank, garden around the cultural space, Gada Award, New Delhi, Rehinking the future. 2018
- Hatching - The Origination of a City (Venice Architecture Biennale 2014 – Morocco Pavilion FUNDAMENTAL-(ISM)S.).[1]
- Bürchen Mystik (Switzerland, under construction).[2]
- Multifunctional Concert Hall "Jordanki" in Toruń (Poland, 2015).[3]
- Magma Art & Congress (Adeje, Spain, 2005).[4]
- Holy Redeemer Church (San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Spain, under construction).[5]
- Sacred Museum and Plaza de España in Adeje (Spain, 2010).[6]
- Swimming Pool in Spree River (Berlin, 2004).[7]
- Presidency of The Government of The Canary Islands (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain, 1999).[8]
- Casa MM, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife 1998.
- Tank, the cultural space, an industrial heritage tank of oil transformed into a cultural space, 1997.
- Auditorium in Toruń, Poland, CKK Jordanki (2015)
- Public Garden around the Tank cultural space (2022)
