Episodes
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Our 30th stop is in Berlin (Germany), somewhere between a reconverted building and the next building to be reconverted. In fact, that is were we find B+. In fiction, we might also find them beyond the building, in station.plus. Olaf Grawert will take us through that.
To warm up, Olaf identifies 2 big groups of architects: both aim for “values” and “speculation” but their understanding of these terms is fundamentally opposite.
Should our honoraries be measured out of a percentage of construction costs?
What if “there is more then just building as an answer”?
What if climate crisis are good news for the market? “In our current economic system, a natural disaster is a fantastic thing because the moment you have a natural disaster and things get destroyed, the market grows.”
Is there a correct answer? Are we just giving better wrong answers over and over? “We need to speculate. (…) “Everything that is new, unknown or experimental is not interesting to those who have to sell it”
Sometimes an observation can become a question, and then a movie, and then a publication, and the an exhibition and then a building, and then a law.
Or not.
If you are still thinking about the words “values” and “speculation”…you should listen to our conversation.
“Its pure fiction.”
Guest: Olaf Grawert, b+ (Berlin, Germany)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 29th stop is in Barcelona (Spain), Mexico City (Mexico) and Basel (Switzerland) alongside Pablo Garrido Arnaiz.
Parabase have a very keen eye for picking up things and putting them out of place. At least out of their initially proposed place...to be place in a new place though out by them. “Decontextualisation is something we can find: in almost all contemporary art piece, in most of he songs we listen to, in in writing but in architecture it is not that common.”
Decontextualisation adds layers of meaning to architecture.
Why can’t a sculpture be understood as a column?
Why can’t a roof rotate 90 degrees and play as a facade?
Maybe they can. “Architecture can be read in many ways, and it has a lot of meanings.”
Sometimes, decontextualised ideas come out of absolute casualty “or maybe there is a certain hidden reason of why we have made these decisions” and post-rationalised.
“The social economical system we live in…it is not circular, it is about generating and destroying, generating and destroying.” Meanwhile, they are designing a Housing project made out of, al least, 2 500 pieces dismantled out of a parking lot.
We observe the phenomenon of pavilions made under the aim of biennales/triennials/festivals. Is it the case that all these events are “creating a typology of architecture” as well as “creating a typology of architects”? We wonder.
Pablo says the following quote at the beginning of our conversation…but I feel like taking it of place and putting it as the final message of this episode’s brief:
“To do meaningful architecture and have fun (…) basically this is the ultimate motivation of our work.”
Guest: Pablo Garrido Arnaiz (Barcelona, Spain + Zurich, Switzerland + Mexico City, Mexico)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 28th stop is in Mexico (Mexico), without forgetting Normandy (France) alongside Ludwig Godefroy.
What do pyramids from the pre-hispanic period and bunkers by the northern french sea have to do with each other? How can both of these come under the same architectural practice? “I have started to understand that pyramids and bunkers are kind of similar, to me.”
“Humanity has been doing pyramids for 4-5 thousand years and no pyramid is looking the same as the other one. If humanity was able to do pyramids for such a long time, I can spend the rest of my life doing pyramids…this is like an endless inspiration.”
“This is interesting to me because when you look at something you cannot even copy anymore, you have to reinterpret it. And then it becomes something very personal.”
We talk about modernist and about how NOT (only) modernism some modernist architects were. “Its is also about what part of those architects we are using. I am not using Le Corbusier in the same way that I am using Louis Kahn.”
Ludwig looks up to “the monumentality “out of Louis Kahn, “the detailing” out of Carlo Scarpa, and the “very strange magic” out of Le Corbusier “like he was inventing a new kind of space…beyond words”.
He also looks up to the way of doing out of those who actually build architecture. “This is why my architecture looks a little bit rough. Because part of it is the accident.”
What des an Hotel in Puerto Escondido, a Water Reservoir in Istambul and Álvaro Siza’s Fundação Nadir Afonso have in common?
“In Mexico we don’t have rules, everything is possible. Which means the worst…but also the best.”
Guest: Ludwig Godefroy (Mexico, Mexico + Normandy, France )
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 27th stop is at Boltshauser Architekten (Munich, Germany) alongside Roger Boltshauser.
For Boltshauser, to have an order is a must have.
“I always look for order.”
But is order enough?
“If I have an order, I am happy but I am not happy enough, so I try to find ways out of this order.”
He even puts the words in the right order when he concludes: “Order maybe needs disorder”.
Maybe.
Maybe it’s not the case they are looking for a balance, but rather looking for a strong character “and strong characters are often not that balanced…but they are interesting”.
Every project is part of a bigger process. Which means that some issues from a particular project might find it’s answer in an project yet to come. Sometimes “we have already built the answer but we still can’t explain it in a racional way. The brain is not ready o understand but you still think it should be the way to go”.
The strange thing comes when you have to build it…you did something…and now you have to build it even tho you are aware that some questions remain unanswered.
“Sometimes the brain is not there yet”.
I think this is a nice way to put it.
Guest: Roger Boltshauser (Munich, Germany)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: Duo-Thermo
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Our 26th stop is at Enric Mirrales Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT (Barcelona, SP) alongside Benedetta Tagliabue.
Sometimes, EMBT are attracted by something very simple. Therefore, they allow themselves to be a little bit like a child just to permite these ideas to emerge. “Maintaining the lightness of the first idea is a very very tough work”. And that is exactly what they work for “Projects, specially if they have a very long time or have many people involved, they have a tendency of getting diluted.”
“Enrique used to consider projects as alive beings, as a child. (…) So, in a way, projects need this attention as if they are people, they need to be looked after, they need to be helped in the difficult moments of their growing.”
Did you know that some projects are selfish, a good kind of selfish?
Did you know that some big roofs were supped to be even bigger then ended up being?
Did you know that some projects are “nearly finished” and “have been nearly finished for 5 years”?
“You need a lot of strength to maintain things into its pureness and beauty.”
Guest: Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT (Barcelona, Spain)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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On episode 25 we think architecture alongside SO-IL, in the voice of Summer Liu.
SO-IL are constantly pushing the boundaries...literally the physical boundaries...with them we learn boundaries are not just made by walls or windows. Just when you think they've reached the limit, their next project pushes it even further. They have the right amount of madness to pursue things outside of architecture until that one moment they surrender and become into architecture form.
“Once you have an intuition, its about working with the real world knowledge and then learn from the people that will eventually make the thing.” When you do so, you can find a way to make metal mesh rings relevant for architecture, against all odds (for it’s weight, for it’s scale, for it’s production…). “It’s like Avatars, they just touch each other and then see what happens there. You have to find a bridge that equalizes the two pieces of information.”
“There is physicality to the abstract questions we ask.”…and it shows in every project.Guest: Summer Liu - SO-IL (New York, USA )
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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On episode 24th we’ll Learn from Denise, which means we’ll be learning from Las Vegas…and South Africa…and Italy…and England…and Philadelphia…and every single street and person she has passed by. “Do you know the word “serendipity”? It means something that happens unexpectedly and that could be a great thing.”
We talk about how the almost demolished “Fisher Fine Arts Library” has brought together the super duo of architecture: Venturi & Scott Brown. “I would say we’ve have a big influence but Le Corbusier had an even bigger influence”
Did you know there are 2 ways to think the city? Denise says the first is made by donkeys, the second is made by grids. After all, both are molded by "form, forces, and functions”. She even adds “in the end, the donkey is the functionalist.”.
Actually, there is much more to function than to have the bathroom next to the bedroom. “It’s wonderful to make something beautiful. And you hope you can make it both.”.
Oh Denise…what a mannerist <3.
“Sometimes I want to be as beautiful as princess Margaret. You take this pretty princess, you take her a photo (…) and she is wearing diamonds…only when you get near her you get that the diamonds are celofane paper.”
“Sometimes you have to break things.”
Oh Denise…what a mannerist <3.
I took notes of a little something:
“Remember your memories as a baby, they are valuable to you in your architecture. Don’t forget those, take them with you.”
I kept this advice in my pocket. I hope you do too. Learning from Denise.
Guest: Denise Scott Brown, Venturi+Scott Brown (Philadelphia, USA )
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: Vicaima
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Let’s travel to both Berlin (Germany) to meet the architect / drawer / collector of drawings / museum director Sergei Tchoban.
Sergei Tchoban has a sery simple trick to discover architecture, he asks one simple question: “Would I want to draw this project?”
In fact, he draws a lot and for a number of reasons, one of them being: to remember “to draw by hand is a way to later remember certain proportions when we are drawing our own projects”.
Unlike what we might think…it might be easier to draw historical buildings than contemporary ones. In the former, any mistaken line can be understood as a detail of the facade of that building. Meanwhile, in the later, in a contemporary building you either have the line right or wrong.
We talk about cats in Le Corbusier’s “Swiss Pavilion”.
We talk about toilets in Nicolas Ledoux’s “La Rotunde du Parc de Monceau”.
We also talk about possible connections with Piranesi’s dystopias - but with a positive intake instead - and the very curious framings of Pietro di Gonzaga.
“It is a mise-en-scène, architecture is an important part of mise-en-scène”.
Guest: Sergei Tchoban (Berlin, Germany)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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#22 Harquitectes (SP), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD
Our 22nd stop is in Sabadell, Spain alongside Harquitectes, in the voice of Josep Ricart Ulldemolins.
Harquitectes have the ability to design precise things with an abstract approach and abstract things with a very precise approach. I would risk to say that, for them, it is the same to draw a brick as it is to draw temperature. Every project is a new hypothesis on constructed conditions combined with natural phenomenon. “When all of these come together, it is more then just a basic survival experience, it is something closer to the extraordinary.”
In the beginning of the office, maybe, their approach to the vernacular was one of aesthetics. But they’ve gradually started to discover the hidden reasons behind the vernacular look.
“We don’t produce nothing new…maybe a new experiences, maybe a new typology but…”
But isn’t this producing something new?…I wonder.
“When you don’t plaster the brick, you get the memory of someone placing one brick over the other. That is why our buildings never have the feeling of something new, you have, at least, the time of the construction.”
Maybe vernacular is not a thing of the past, maybe we are the vernacular of tomorrow.
“I hope that we are producing some new vernacular.”
Guest: Josep Ricart Ulldemolins - Harquitectes (Sabadell, Spain)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: Duo-Thermo
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#21 TEN (CH+SRB), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD
Our 21st stop is both somewhere in-between Zurich (Switzerland), Belgrade (Serbia) and an online group chat.
TEN is many things…and during our conversation we try to uncover even more of what TEN can become.
How can the idea of a boat give the name TEN to an architecture practice?
How would it be like to have an architecture practice like a record label? What about a football team?
Is doing "what interests us” a realistic thing to do?
In other words…how can we develop a project to resist for 500-years when no such client or brief will ever request us such a timeframe? “No-one is thinking about having building which is so resilient, and so much wanted, that it can last 500 years: it’s way over the generations’ lifespans, over the organisations’ timelines.”
“We should be the ones that are on the edge, projecting a vision and thinking more than just a service. This is where architecture can thrive.”
We talk about structure, but not necessarily about that kind of structure buildings have.
We talk about an idea for a tower, images of a tower…but was this tower ever constructed?
“We are happy to contribute to the discourse in our profession. We don’t have to take it as a kind of “did we build it first? or last? Actually, we want to be taken over by others more often.”
“By making it public someone can pick it up and do it again and again and again.”
Guest: Nemanja Zimonjić, Scott Lloyd, Lukas Burkhart , Fabian Launer, Cyrill Wechsler, Tijana Mačkić , TEN (Zurich, CH + Belgrade, SRB)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 20th stop is in Mexico and/or New York (UK), alongside Edgar Rodriguez, with whom we develop on the idea of media, transmedia and intermedia.
Let’s picture architecture as a system, not a perfect system but one that incorporated chance - it is always being fixed, improved, broken apart and put together. “Its all about focusing on the process and the different variations that could result from those processes.”
“Every project has its own system, with its own set of rules and then the final result is only one instance of that combination of elements (…) It is not a singular instance that is the right one, it’s wherever you decide were the process ends and you move on to the next stage of the project.”
Have you ever thought about building a fictional building for real?
What about building a fictional building?
What makes an idea relevant to architecture after all? Can a House without an interior be an architectural idea if no space is being defined?
Looking around, or onto social media, Edgar notices something I have never heard anyone say so directly “it’s almost like all the architects are the same architect and we are all producing the same type of work.” Are we all just producing many instances of the same project?
Guest: Edgar Rodriguez, operadora (Mexico, MX + New York, USA)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: JJTeixeira
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#19 Tony Fretton (UK), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD
Our 19h stop is in London (UK), alongside the architect Tony Fretton, with whom we learn how to look, notice and absorb things. “I look at things and I can get a lot from just looking at things.”
“Like a paintier is interested in the history of painting, I am interested I the story of architecture. I am interested in the way buildings have evolved and the way it does things.”
Fretton opens up about the UK's demanding architectural scene. And he might tell us 1 or 2 things no-one talks about in the architecture school: “One is: how to have people listen to you. The other is: how you get work? These are the two major aspects of being an architect.”
“There is a problem with architects, you know, a feeling that everything we do is very important and that everything has to be maintained in the way that we wanted it.” But he admits that the “use and misuse” of things interests him…it might be the needed shift of perspective.
“Paintings are in galleries, you can go and see it. Buildings are in the streets, you can go and see it. Buildings are unavoidably generous.”
To look at buildings, noice buildings and absorb buildings…is probably the best we can do.
Guest: Tony Fretton (London, UK)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: Meireles
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Our 18th stop is in Feldbrunnen (Switzerland) alongside Céline Bessire and Matthias Winter. If you ever feel like discussing difficult words like “parallax”, they are the perfect counterpoint. Things are not what they seem, “things carry an ambivalence within themselves” and Parallex is all about shifting perspectives, “what we are trying to find is the parallactic qualities within the everyday spaces (…) It’s not about changing or shifting meaning but changing what they actually are.”
The first sep is to understand the potential of the Parallex, secondly…you unleash its potential. Céline and Matthias have a bag full of ideas to argue on this topic.
“We realised that we can change things also by not physically changing things.”
After all, “It raises the question of where a project end and where a project starts…if it actually does end or if it actually does start”. If we weren't already uncertain about everything, even the a priori data isn't sufficiently solid to remain unquestioned.
Question everything, be sure of nothing, a beautiful “strategy of how we can unlearn something that we are used to do.”
We might also welcome Georges Perec’s “Species of spaces” to this cloud of ideas. Was he actually putting things inside boxes? Or was he attempting to make us (paralleticly) think out of the box?
“It’s quite delirious to attempt to make categories, it can only be limiting.”
Guest: Céline Bessire + Matthias Winter (Feldbrunnen, Switzerland )
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: JJTeixeira
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#17 HANGHAR (SP), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD
Our 17h stop is at HANGHAR (Madrid, Spain) to meet Eduardo Mediero, he shares with us the intriguing philosophy of a firm that thrives on the ticking clock of a ten-year deadline, all activity will be ceased on 31st December 2030.
Throughout our conversation, we dissect how HANGHAR is flipping the script on real estate norms by designing apartments free from the constraints of traditional room functions. “I am very interested in how very defined and very structured sets of rules or decisions opens up and frees it’s way of lIving.”. The superimposition of the grid might have a word on that…listen to find out the secret.
Ok…ok…I might reveal a little bit about that:
“Our work is always focused on a sort of architecture that could somehow fight agains te veracious speculation of our city. That’s when spacial grid apartments started to happen in which we were asked to renovated apartments but we didn’t know what the final owner is going to be. Creating an apartment that had no rooms no, bedrooms, no master bedrooms, no dining rooms but just this sort of spaces that the market was unable to define.”
Geometry as an abstraction tool…only for those who know how to use it.
Guest: Eduardo Mediero (Madrid, Spain)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
Sponsor: JJTeixeira
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Our 16h stop is at aoa (Seoul, South Korea) to meet Jaewon Suh. To say “aoa” is the same as to say "architecture of anyone, anything and anywhere”.
For aoa, architecture is nothing. “When I say that architecture is nothing, it means that it is a very fundamental thing”, like air, for example.
As a reaction to Valerio Olgiaty ’s “non-referencial architecture”, a self-explanatory “hiper-referencial architecture”. “I want to be inspired by our reality not ideality”.
Feel free to see a cat / a minecraft game / a Sol LeWitt’s sculpture, where there is a house. “To the children, my building looks like an ice cream. It’s a way to connect people and architecture.”
“I think autonomy of architecture has to be destroyed by our culture” and as you listen to this conversation you’ll understand the meaning of these strong words. “Some banal things destroy order but I intentionally use these things as a satire of society.”
In the end “the most important thing is how to organize the elements with each other to make a system. (…) Architects make a building using a column, a slab, a stair…very fundamental elements. We only do that.”
Guest: Jaewon Suh, aoa (Seoul, South Korea)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Today, we cross the globe. In this episode we talk with the architect Richard Stampton.
Whom consciously decided: not to go into competitions; not to extensively show his work (which is different from hiding it); as well as to resist the urge to think further then what he is actually drawing.
Did you know this also a possible approach?
“I was very conscious, when I started my practice, to be small in a meaningful way.”, he claims.
Do you know what it means to be “ramen profitable? I didn’t either.
Richard confesses his pursue for a deeper understanding on the haptics as well as the essencial counterpoint of letting go certain parts: “a building often gets to a scale where there needs to be a blanc wall”.
Do add up to the equation: “The building you do, if it it made out of cardboard or if it is made out of gold leaf, it should still work. The design should work almost regardless of the material.”
As simple and complex as that.
This is a triadic situation between: what the client wants, what the author thinks, what the world needs.
Truth being told, “the level of control an architect has is usually highly exaggerated…throughout history. Architects don’t make cities.”
“I love that there is a limitation over what we can control over a project.”
Guest: Richard Stampton (Phillip Island, AU)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 14th stop is at GAFPA (Ghent, BE) alongside Floris de Bruyn.
GAFPA is recognisable for it’s pragmatic approach. But there is much more to it. Somehow, they always manage to uncover the specificity that hides behind generic approaches. It’s about “trying to make something specific with a generic tool”.
For every project, a primary structure.
But what is this “primary structure”? “The primary structure, when you dismantle it, it is a very pragmatic structure, but at the same time it already includes both the identity and the generosity of the gesture.”
Everyday is complex enough, so “it’s important not to invent complexity”.
“You just do exactly what is needed and , somehow, nothing more then that.” but this is not the same as to say that “heritage” is the only possible path to follow.
“We like to compare different things in series, because we like the evolutions, the steps, the mutations, the discussions of how from one idea you step to the next. Because when you understand this logic, you can apply it yourself. When it is an isolated reference the danger is that it becomes model.”
Guest: Floris de Bruyn - GAFPA (Ghent, Belgic)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 13th stop is in Porto (PT), alongside Elói Gonçalves, and in Zurich (CH), where António Mesquita is currently at.
A fast and furious architecture, not just because…but because the fast pace has excelled the competition, fast pace is eminent anywhere. Things are always very fast, as so, the faster you adapt…the better you keep up. “Change and adaptability is part of our genetics”, they claim.
What we might expect from them is exactly what they expect from materials: António and Elói are amused by materials that have unlimited possibilities - “materials that are always ready”, as they call it - as so, unlimited possibilities is what they explore.
After all, “Architecture is like this...It is about being always ready”. “We don’t know what is going to happen in the the afternoon or the next day or in the construction site. So, being always ready is kind of the only possibility.”
Let’s picture, in our minds, the beginning of a project: the client has a plot and a program and maybe some ideias; the architects also have some ideias in their mind.
One thing is for sure: none of these is what the project is going to be.
“We have no idea of what we are going to do, but we are sure that we are going to find a lot of things.”
“Architecture is like chocolate for people that like chocolate, you could eat it forever.”
Guest: Elói Gonçalves + António Mesquita (Porto, Portugal + Zurich, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Today we travel the longest way so far, today I am really honoured to welcome architect Takefumi Aida, born in Japan in 1937and, for 86 years, has never stopped playing.
I bring good and bad news.
Bad news first: age won't bring us certainties.
Now the good news: age won't bring us certainties.
After over 60 years thinking about architecture, Takefumi Aida confesses he is “continuously thinking about what architecture is”. Maybe…this “thinking about what architecture is” is architecture itself.
It’s polemic…but the probability that "architecture is not 100% expressed in the realised architecture” is a strong possibility. Fortunately, its guaranteed we find Takefumi Aida’s full intent out of his models and drawings.
“The importance of architecture is in the thinking. The building is one kind of result.”
He has approached architecture with a 3D kind of though, playing with Toy Blocks.
He has approached architecture with a 2D kind of though, playing with cards and parallel walls.
Currently, “I want to design architecture by a one dimensional thinking way. (…) I have started to think about that but I haven’t yet developed a design method for it.”
I bring more bad news: “There is not a single project that I am satisfied with.”
I also bring more good news: “I still have the same motivation I had when I was a young child. That is why I don’t stop.”
Beautiful.
Guest: Takefumi Aida (Tokyo, Japan)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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Our 11th stop is at Lütjens Padmanabhan (Zurich, CH) alongside Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Pahmanbhan.
They experience the joy of building when they draw or build a model. To draw a line over a paper, to fold a paper into a model or to build out of folded metal sheets, is the exact same thing
Oliver and Thomas are extremely faithful to their 1:50 models, in their office, there is a saying: “The model is always right”. So, if anything deviates, the question must be “why is our drawing not as good as the model?”. These models are tools NOT to overthink, we’ve come to realise.
Probably, their platonic love for thinness arose “out of laziness” (their words) from their first model in which "the skin of the building became thinner and thinner and that became into a theme that has stayed with us ever since”. To add up, insolation (and so on) doesn’t allow us to build in a monolithic way anymore “that is the new culture we need to embrace”.
Thinness is a language. “We think that if you use language, you should be serious about what you are saying. But it occurred to us that when you say serious things, you may as well say them with a light tone in your voice.”
“Architecture is self-conscious about it’s own fragility”. Name a more beautiful thing.
“If you are a painter or a musician and you fail, there is not much left. It is really risky. But we still have toilets and a dishwasher that works, and you can cook and sleep and it doesn’t rain in. So, we have a safety net. We can reach net level or we can go beyond it”. Or go beyond it, I repeat.
"You don’t pay us for the architecture, the architecture you get for free.”
Guest: Oliver Lütjens + Thomas Pahmanbhan - Lütjens Padmanabhan (Zurich, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)
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