The Domaine de Boisbuchet founder, Alexander von Vegesack, and its director, Mathias Schwartz-Clauss, sit down for a conversation at the Norman Foster Foundation in Madrid.

Alexander von Vegesack never thought to go in for design, but he was a collector from early on. He founded the Vitra Design Museum, and worked with Vitra for much of his career. His life, marked by a postwar German childhood, was always bound to the values of living and working together, so it is not surprising to see them crystallized in Domaine de Boisbuchet: a castle in the southwest of France that each year gathers artists, designers, and

architects in multidisciplinary workshops. Internationally renowned not only for the attendees, but also for the caliber of the lecturers, these workshops are only part of an experience that involves close cohabitation and intimate engagement with nature. Mathias Schwartz-Clauss has directed the workshops since 2013, and in the following interview helps us trace the origins of this ambitious project.

Mathias Schwartz-Clauss: I would like to begin the conversation with the future instead of with the past. Do you worry about your legacy? About what will happen to Boisbuchet in ten or twenty years? And are you happy with what we have achieved so far?

Alexander von Vegesack: I think neither of the past nor of the future, I prefer to think of the present. I’m very much interested in what I can do now to secure Boisbuchet’s future. But its future development will be taken care of by younger people, like yourself, and others following up, and will keep changing, the only constant in life is change.

MSC: Alright, but if you look to the future and simultaneously to the past, back to your childhood, what would you say were the most important steps that led to this project? I feel that it would be a kind of summary of your work.

AVV: I was always very curious, and indignant when people would not allow me to follow my curiosity, so I learned to pursue my interests, and although in this I was not always successful (mainly for economic reasons), I learned an enormous amount from the different activities I did, and exposed myself to many experiences, for which people then appraised me. But if we focus on the period of the Vitra Design Museum, I would say that it was from my period in Hamburg that I really learned a lot. We organized a theater and many social experiments that would be of great help in my first Vitra exhibitions. So I would say that this ongoing curiosity has been the red thread of my life, and that the experiences derived from it are the foundation of what we are doing today.

“Ongoing curiosity has been the red thread of my life, and is the foundation of what we are doing today”

MSC: It’s interesting that you mention the social experiments, and it seems to me that the way you lived and worked in the Hamburg factory became an important part of how we do things at Boisbuchet, which gradually became a community.

AVV: In my view, community was the small family in the beginning, and continued when I was in boarding school. Sixteen people in the same room doing everything together created a system I relate to even today. All the projects that came my way were done with friends, living together, working together, taking risks together…

MSC: At some point in your childhood you also began to take an interest in objects. At that time, these were not objects of ‘design,’ the word ‘design’ did not exist in your world, so how would you say this admiration for objects came about?

AVV: I was born in the last two months of the war and we were living in Düsseldorf, surrounded by houses in ruins. Like all children, we liked to go through the ruins to see if we could find something, like gold diggers. Once we found mosaic in what had been a church. I didn’t know about mosaic floors, but was fascinated by those small pieces. It was part of the curiosity that has stayed with me all my life.

MSC: Düsseldorf is an example of your work, in general, which is ultimately the telling of a story through an object, contextualizing it to create a bigger picture. Sometimes you invent part of the narrative to create a new reality for these things.

AVV: That’s true, but I haven’t finished: years later, it was in flea markets that I continued my search for objects. You could find just about anything, and most interesting were the stories people told about them. You might come across an identical object 50 meters further down the alley, and the dealer would tell you quite a different spiel. I continued doing this in the Netherlands and later in France… and always tried to learn something not just about the object, but also about the people, who they were and how they tried to go about their business. They often made up stories, but there was always some truth to them. I think that part of it rubbed off on me.

But the serious collecting started with the Thonet pieces, when we needed furniture for the theater. I remember finding a lot of pieces, some damaged, some broken… but we would use spare parts to complete and repair others. One day a guy came by and told me about the technology of the chairs, and I was fascinated. So much so that I traveled to Czechoslovakia to visit factory places and learn more. In those days it was strictly forbidden to go into the factories if you were a foreigner, as there was a lot of industrial espionage going on, but eventually I managed to get in, and found lots of catalogs and information. To cut a long story short, this led me to do several exhibitions, many of them in the United States. During one of my trips there I read that William Wyler had died, and I thought it was Billy Wilder. I knew that the film director Billy Wilder had a large collection of pieces of bent wood, so I contacted his family to see if I could buy some.

“I always tried to learn not just about the object, but also about the people behind it”

MSC: So you called the family.

AVV: Exactly. I called and the man who answered was very astonished. I expressed my condolences and proceeded to explain who I was and what I wanted, but he interrupted me saying he was Billy Wilder and that, no, he wasn’t dead. He asked if I had paper and a pencil to write with, and gave me an address. That’s how we met, and we became good friends. One of the first things he did was introduce me to Ray Eames, who was a big help in the beginnings of Boisbuchet because, among many other things, it was she who put me in touch with Rolf Fehlbaum, Vitra’s director, with whom I would work for many years.

MSC: I remember that at the time we met you were working in the creation of the Vitra Design Museum, and I – aspiring to help out in the project as an intern without knowing a thing about design – was fascinated by the passion with which you spoke not only about the future Vitra project, but also about Boisbuchet, which then was just a bunch of farming sheds. But at what point exactly did you, an expert in creating collections for museums and organizing exhibitions, decide to shift your focus to workshops?

AVV: It’s closely connected to my origins. I had always wanted to keep up the groupwork I had started in Hamburg, and I wanted to share the experience, an experience which gave form to my life, with others, so that many more people could live it too. So here, again, we link the past to the future.

Luis Fernández-Galiano meditates about 2020, the pandemic and C:Architecture and Everything Else in its latest issue: C18.

2020 will remain in our memory as the year of the virus. This is already the given title of a crop of chronicles and reviews of a health crisis that has also devastated the economic fabric and caused dramatic social damage. The emergency has put us to the test, placing institutions, businesses, and individuals before an unprecedented challenge, which has brought out the best in us while at the same time exposing our handicaps. Today we are more aware of the fragility of our communities and our lives, but also of the close ties that connect us in a tight web of communication, solidarity, and affection. Despite all this, these provisional accounts are still so close to the events unleashed by the ongoing pandemic that they inevitably lack perspective. The best testimony of the plague London suffered in 1665 – A Journal of the Plague Year – was published by Daniel Defoe in 1722, and it might be a while before the most timeless narrative of our year of the virus appears. In the meantime, covid-19 has left us the task of closing the gaps and healing the wounds of this tragic year, attentive more to the regeneration of social structures, collective projects, and personal expectations than to the intellectual and artistic record of a time of pain, abnegation, and uncertainty. The Ecclesiastes reminds us that for everything there is a season, and ours is not a time to tell but a time to cure.

In 2014 Cosentino embraced with Arquitectura Viva the challenge of drawing attention to the “innovations, designs, and projects that contribute to making the world more sustainable and beautiful”, and this joint effort, under the title C: architecture and everything else, has materialized in 15 issues of which both parties feel legitimately proud. As with many other cultural initiatives, the pandemic hit the pause button in our printed communication with readers, and as much Arquitectura Viva as C went through a period of remote editing and digital publishing. However, a commitment to continuity has made it possible for both magazines to offer the print version of their digital issues, and this is precisely the purpose of this volume, which gathers the already distributed C16 and C17 with the contents of the new C18, presenting under one cover the publications of this ‘year of the virus’, a period we will be unable to forget, and which we can hardly consider history when the pandemic still disrupts everyday life in territories and cities. But this is not a time to tell but a time to cure, and to heal the editorial wounds of a magazine engaged with the planet’s health, with technical innovation, and with aesthetic excellence: these are the strands that weave together this testimony of a year whose somber threat we have faced with tenacity and humility.

Architects Carme Pinós (1954) and Izaskun Chinchilla (1975) meet at the offices of the Madrid-based magazine Arquitectura Viva to talk about the role of women in history and in architecture.

Carme Pinós and Izaskun Chinchilla broach issues like architecture, the ecological crisis and the future exhibition on the work of Pinós at the Museo ICO, but in their conversation the gender issue comes up insistently, and that is the part we are recording here.

Izaskun Chinchilla: To start, and if you agree, let’s reflect together on how the gender factor affects architecture. I am asking first because not everyone feels comfortable discussing this issue.

Carme Pinós: Yes, I have things to say, and for several reasons, because the more you delve into history, the more you realize that it is told from a very male point of view.

IC: It’s true: history has been violence and strength, but many of the other things that have happened are not part of the official history, right?

CP: Yes of course. I think we have made great progress and, in this sense, I believe that when humans became sedentary, divinity – previously represented by the mother goddess – went on to become the god of war, and this gave birth to the concept of heritage, of patriarchy. The system was turned around: matriarchy gave way to a system based on the succession of heritage conquered through violence, and this was so despite the fact that, ultimately only the woman knew for certain who her son’s father was. As women were left out of war, of a world sustained by force, our gender was relegated, and the foreseeable result is that the history of humanity is written by men.

When I say that, in spite of this starting point, we have improved a lot, I refer to the fact that now war, violence, and the use of force that have traditionally sustained patriarchy do not occupy the absolute position they had before. Different aspects of women’s emancipation have contributed to this, such as sexual freedom, birth control or the rise of women to prominent social positions. This is a big step, but it is only the first. Other actions must be taken, like making men get more involved so that women can step fully into world management, or simply acknowledging that this world needs women. The world needs women because we are less arrogant, we have developed a greater capacity for listening and empathy, probably because we have spent thousands of years taking care of others, something that men have a hard time doing. In traditional societies, a woman listened without being able to act; she tried to understand; if a son became a murderer, the father disinherited him, rejected him as son, but a woman would still consider that son her flesh and blood.
The world consists of many things, many contaminated things, and that attitude imposed by patriarchy, and which women had to accept, has its positive side. In my architecture, for instance, I always try to make sure there is a dialogue between two or three elements, and not just one imposed discourse. I am sure that this attitude has to do, in part, with my being a woman. I work with men, and at the studio there are more men than women, but fortunately women are occupying stronger positions at my office, and are gaining more strength in the field. In any case, the most important thing is to favor dialogue and avoid impositions.

“In my architecture, I try to make sure there is a dialogue, and not just one imposed discourse“

IC: You have said several things. The first is the vision of official history as masculine. I would put it differently. I think that male history is the official one, the history you find in books, in museums… But throughout this whole ‘official’ time there were changes in food and gastronomy, in people’s way of dressing, sexual habits and hygiene changed, the idea of medicine also changed… and I think that in these aspects of private life women were extremely important. From writing letters to creating a comfortable home, women have played a leading role in the greatest events in the history of humanity, although the official history hasn’t paid attention to them. In my view, there is a reassessment of the roles of gender in architecture, an acknowledgement of those aspects in the heritage of humanity that seem minor details in the discourse of major academies or museums, but which are essential to social progress. Those who went to war were able to go because someone had taken care of them when they were little, had provided them health, an education… In all those tasks women have played a prominent role.

That is why I think that perhaps another perspective of art and of history could make us see that we do have a female heritage.

CP: The relationship between architecture and feminity offers interesting examples. A Victorian house can seem very feminine, in the sense that it is very legible, filled as it is with human traces, footprints: you can immediately figure out where the reading, smoking, and cooking took place. It was the product, all of it, of an ethic of detail that followed a discourse, which could be linked, at the same time, to the female universe. Later on the house became more abstract: with Le Corbusier the dwelling became a ‘machine à habiter,’ but after that it was not even ‘for living,’ but simply a pragmatic way of tackling a program erasing all discourse. I would say the world has gradually given in to abstraction because the market has set more abstract guidelines and less connected to women’s traditional universe, which is more specific and has to do more with caregiving.

IC: Yes, I think the market is perhaps accountable for that shift towards the abstract, but also towards the epic: that situation in which only the great possession, the great feat, the great emblem, the great achievement seem to count, and less attention is paid to the details, to the elements of everyday life. As you were saying, the Victorian house is an example, and leaves traces everywhere of its daily activities. And that is what modernity has eliminated completely. I’d say the market has managed to make the most of that trend, but this has happened in complicity with the academy, culture, and architects in the sense that we still think about Ornament is Crime: we still deny that those everyday aspects are relevant.

CP: Sometimes I ask myself why the architectures I dislike deny their ties with people and things: buildings that, not by coincidence, are photographed without people. That’s why I always say that I look for a contaminated architecture, I want to photograph architecture that is alive, which reflects how people move, how they feel inside it. What’s sad is that these architectures that exclude the human are incredibly successful, also among everyday people, which makes me think that perhaps people are in need of that epic you are talking about.

IC: I have the feeling that precisely that praise of the more epic aspects, that denial of the importance of details and of everyday life, is somehow the origin of that separation between civil society and architecture as a profession. There is a temporary factor – we’re in an economic crisis, a crisis of the production model, an ecological crisis – and maybe the way in which women have been educated, their culture and their way of acting is part of the solution. This is not a call for protection, but a call for an opportunity and a strategy. I always say there is a first and a second feminism that advocate equal rights for women and for men: the right to vote, the right to take on public posts or the right to have a political role in society. And, next, the right to be part of an executive committee or of company management: the possibility of being part of the decision-making groups in society, but trying to make sure that equal rights involve equal roles, that is, making the woman perform like a man. We are in a situation in which there should be a revision of feminism associated to the idea that the environment and nature put us, as human species, in our place: a more vulnerable place where we might not want to be men. Perhaps I have no interest in being president of a political party or of a company if that means I won’t be able to balance my private life and my public life, if that means I’ll have to give up maternity…

“The way in which women have been educated, their culture and their manner of acting, is part of the solution“

CP: But society too, and not just men, maintains the traditional gender roles. Today we know what type of feminism we need to defend, but I don’t want anything given to me, so to speak. I don’t want to be chosen for a post just because I’m a woman. I consider myself a better architect than many other architects. I have a vision of the world that is complemented by other visions of the world. History, culture, genetics, or biology have led us to perceive things in different ways. In this context, women must claim the essential and active role of the female condition. I don’t want to be given half of something: I forgo charity and don’t want to be labelled or pigeonholed. I see life as a whole, and in life there are aspects that respond to a male vision and others that come from a female vision. So when you say you wouldn’t want to be a company director because you would have to give up many things in life, I think no one who steps into that role should be expected to give up certain things. That’s why I say that, in the end, the market is the winner in all this: the only thing that counts is productivity, short-term benefits which demand huge sacrifices… This is what we should fight for: a fuller life with multiple and complementary visions.

IC: Joining messages, I think that the transition of women into the labor market is a collective advantage, not for women, but for society as a whole. It’s a matter of vindicating, reasserting the value, and placing at the service of society a series of tools – which have been acquired and naturalized – for work and for dialogue, as well as a cultural heritage which up to now haven’t been part of the conversations about public life. Do we give immigrants permission just to live in our country or do we let them change the rules? Because maybe the right thing is not only letting them live like we do, but letting them change some of our rules so that society can evolve towards greater cosmpolitanism.

CP: Every time there has been a rise in knowledge, diversity, cross-cultural contamination, it has brought moments of peace and also of prosperity. But cultural exchange has always needed mutual involvement, otherwise the result is isolation, and, when you close yourself to the world and to others, prosperity ends. That’s why I think exclusionary nationalisms only lead to conflict.

How façade expert Friedrich Scharl reduced weight and costs with Dekton on KAP WEST in Munich

The façade of the new office complex at the Hirschgarten in Munich has a modern, urban look. The original plans using concrete or artificial stone, however, would have made it difficult to meet the tight schedule and to keep within budget. Façade expert, Friedrich Scharl, found an alternative which impressed the architects and developers: the ultra-compact surface Dekton by Cosentino.

Mr. Scharl, you did the technical designs for the façade on KAP West. What was wrong with the original plans?

FS: The weight and the costs. The building was designed with a ventilated curtain façade. The parts of the façade with triple glazing and stone-covered pilasters would have been completely preassembled before delivery to the site and put into place – it’s a typical process that requires a lot of planning and efficiency. The original plans envisaged the pilasters to be covered by 30 mm-thick, fibre-reinforced concrete or artificial stone. This would have meant that each part of the façade would have weighed approximately 1.5 tonnes. With so much weight, handling becomes difficult and the risk of damage increases. In addition, you need an elaborate substructure. In our case, this would have put the time frame and budget at risk.

So you started looking for a lighter façade covering?

FS: Correct, we needed a material with a high-quality stone look, but one that was thinner, and therefore lighter – and all things considered, at a lower cost. And finding a reliable supplier is not as easy as it sounds. Then we discovered Dekton. This ultra-compact surface is extremely stable and at 12 mm thick, weighing 32 kg/sqm, comparatively light. Even thinner material would have been available too. However, we needed this thickness to insert an undercut anchor on the back. With this it is possible to secure the plates firmly and invisibly on the façade.

What was most convincing material wise?

FS: As well as our chosen design options we also needed approval for the façade. Dekton is certified in accordance with ETA 14/0413 and CE 1220‐CPR‐1459. During tests it was proven that the material can even withstand a scale 7 earthquake. The fire protection class is A2. What was perfect for our project was: If a plate cracks, an integrated glass fibre net ensures that the broken piece is held in place. Thanks to its ultra-compact structure, the material takes in very little water. This means extra protection against weathering such as cold, heat and thermoshock as well as increased shape stability which allows for very close tolerance gaps of just +/-0.5 mm each. As well as the quality of the material, the quality of the supplier was also important to us. Would they be able to delivery 13,000 sqm “in time and quality”?

What impressed you about Cosentino as a supplier?

FS: We went there, together with the developers, the architects and those building the façades, as well as the people from Cosentino in Germany. The production facilities in Spain particularly impressed me. Dekon is produced there at a size of 3,200 mm x 1,440 mm in a continuous process, which means that the plates of one batch have the same quality, texture and colouring. Then follows the individual cutting and post-production work, which in our case means working the edges, mitre cuts, setting the undercut anchors and the clasps. The pre-assembled parts were then stored and delivered to those building the façade piece by piece – this was extremely reliable and in the correct order, which when working with 400 different elements and approximately 15,000 covering parts is a true piece of logistical mastery.

What effect did using Dekton have on the façade?

FS: Dekton looks aesthetically pleasing and is very good functionally. With the low weight of the façade covering, even the subconstruction could be made more simply and lighter compared to the original plans. It is now self-supporting. Using the façade building app in Germany, the aluminium profiles from Wicona were planned with the glazing and insulation, the sun screens and the electrics. Finally, the prefabricated Dekton plates were hung and secured. Each part of the façade is now about one-third lighter than at the beginning of planning. Instead of 1,500 kg, the weight is just 1,000 kg, which made transport and assembly much easier.

Were you able to keep to schedule and within budget?

FS: We had two teams on site, each with three employees. They worked parallel on different parts of the building and crane-operated, placed and assembled the elements in 20-minute intervals – 2,000 elements for about 12,600 sqm of façade in just seven months. It was just like clockwork. In addition, by using Dekton instead of concrete or artificial stone, we were able to reduce the cost by about 20 percent per square metre. The developer is happy since by doing this we kept to budget and schedule.

Mr Scharl, in which situations would you advise planners to take Dekton by Cosentino into consideration in particular?

FS: Dekton should always be considered since it offers a large range of design possibilities and is lighter than stone or concrete. The ultra-compact material is also more resistant and sustainable than glass or sheet metal. What really impressed me was the ability of the company to produce around 13,000 sqm of material with the same quality, colour and texture in less than a week. Not only the production, but also the technical and logistical coordination, as well as the communication with those building the façade and us as the technicians and the architects, was very good and reliable. This is extremely important on a big project like KAP WEST, where planning security in a short time frame makes all the difference and helped all involved do a super job.