Taking advantage of the inauguration of Musical Labyrinth, an installation made of Dekton pieces that is a fruit of the collaboration between Daniel Libeskind and Cosentino, we bring the Polish-American architect and the Spanish partners Nieto and Sobejano together at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt. The conversation revolves around themes close to the hearts of all three. Music, for one. Enrique Sobejano and Fuensanta Nieto are lovers of this art – and recent winners of the competition for a center devoted to the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt – and Daniel Libeskind was a virtuoso performer in his youth. Another shared theme is memory, the two practices having coincided in the exhibition ‘Childhood Recollections: Memory in Design’ at the London Design Festival this year.

Enrique Sobejano: Architecture is closely linked to memory, and this not something that is frequently discussed. Memories are in the background of everything we do. When people explain architecture rationally, I think it’s a genuinely useful analysis, but there is always something missing in the explanation, something lying behind which is not always explainable._x005F_x000D_
Daniel Libeskind: We definitely share this view. Without memory, there wouldn’t be any connection made in any kind of work, whether in literature, music, or theater. In music, for example, it would be unimaginable._x005F_x000D_
Fuensanta Nieto: We learned a lot working for Arvo Pärt. You look at his musical notations, which are basically drawings, and you can really see architecture behind them._x005F_x000D_
DL: Absolutely. The connection between music and architecture is not metaphorical. It’s real. Architects also draw._x005F_x000D_
ES: In fact architects and musicians do the same thing: make drawings to be interpreted by others. Speaking of Arvo Pärt, one day he told us: “My music is like white light because white light can only be divided by a prism. And the prism is the spirit of the listener.” What a beautiful comparison!

DL: His music, moreover, is peaceful but also structural, which I think is what architecture shares with music. On the one hand it is tremendously creative, and on the other hand it is scientific, and has to be very precise. An approximation won’t do, it has to be exact, like architecture. It can’t be almost the right tone or height. It’s not negotiable._x005F_x000D_
FN: I know you studied music, and were good at it. Do you still play?_x005F_x000D_
DL: I do not. It’s very hard to be a hobbyist when you’re a professional. At fifteen I was performing with top classical musicians in the big venues of New York. If you read the reviews of that time in The New York Times, for instance, they are hardly mentioned, because I was a phenomenon! I was very short and I had a very large accordion, so large you could hardly see my head and feet. In those days the accordion was considered a folk instrument, not for Baroque pieces of music. It was often associated with gypsies or with poor people, or beggars. But it’s really a highly complex instrument, like a small orchestra. It’s a pity I stopped playing, but I am very grateful I did once play, because if it weren’t for the accordion, I would never have become an architect._x005F_x000D_
ES: That’s interesting. I also studied music: four years of theory, two years of piano. Then I stopped, and forgot everything. I could read notes, but not play them. Now, curiously, it has all come back. This is not to say that I can play again, but when you grow as an architect you start seeing connections and, as you were saying before, they’re not metaphors, but rhythms, spaces, tempos… Which brings me back to Arvo Pärt. He was quiet, very quiet, but his silences expressed so much._x005F_x000D_
FN: When we did his building – in the middle of this Estonian forest, a wonderful environment of huge pine trees – we wanted to be very careful with nature, which forced us to act with precision. I remember being there with Arvo and others from the team, drawing the building on the ground, and as we worked, everyone would look at him, searching for his approval. Then he came to us and said, well, maybe we are too near that house, I would prefer not to see it. We said, okay, don’t worry, we’ll start anew. We moved the building – maybe just five meters – and he came back, I remember well, saying: “Listen, now I understand that we are exactly the same. I never finish my music. I keep wanting to make it more exact. I think it’s the same with your architecture, you’re never finished._x005F_x000D_

ES: What a privilege! Nowadays there aren’t many opportunities to visit a building with the client and change things on the fly._x005F_x000D_
DL: Indeed a privilege. It’s fascinating how in that part of the world, there is such sensitivity toward nature and architecture. I lived in Helsinki for some time and things are very similar there. In a way, it’s very close to the Japanese sensibility – silent, not too many words said. But there’s a certain spirituality in things that we tend to take for granted._x005F_x000D_
ES: I agree. How different from the Mediterranean way of seeing things._x005F_x000D_
FN: There’s something else we have in common. In 1983, we were studying at Columbia and one day found ourselves at Cooper Union for a lecture by someone called Daniel Libeskind, with John Hejduk. This year we were invited to speak there and we were reminded of you. And, talking about memories, I remember the impression I had of the auditorium that first time, including how white it was. Returning there brought me the same feelings._x005F_x000D_

DL: True. People think memories come from the past, but they come from another place, one not necessarily part of the past._x005F_x000D_
ES: Last year we published a monograph titled Memory and Invention, and shortly afterwards I came across a line by John Banville in his book Ancient Light. It goes: “I do not know whether I am telling memories or inventions, if indeed there is any difference at all.” That’s exactly what happens. When you remember something, it’s not just what you experienced, but also what you have been told and what you have read about it… so at some point, memories become inventions._x005F_x000D_
DL: It’s complex, like the brain itself. And there is also memory that’s involuntary, or undesired, which just comes to you, against your will. I think that real experiences are not based on observation. In science, maybe. But I don’t believe anything new comes from observation. It’s there, but not yet molded. The future doesn’t come from the past either, or it wouldn’t be a future. The future has to come from somewhere we know nothing about. That’s why it’s the future._x005F_x000D_
ES: Which is why architecture has such a beautiful word: project. We imagine the future, we project to the future. One could say that this is what everybody does, but in architecture it’s especially clear._x005F_x000D_

DL: It is, and for foundations we have to dig up earth. This is not often talked about, but it’s a very violent act. _x005F_x000D_
FN: You are substantially modifying the place in which you are going to work, modifying the world, and that is a hard thing to do._x005F_x000D_
ES: We have been working a lot underground, also on rooftops. I’m reminded of what Gaston Bachelard said about houses: that they are very vertical objects whose main elements are the basement and the roof, places where children like to play._x005F_x000D_
DL: True. When I proposed, at Ground Zero, to preserve the entire underground, people thought I was crazy because it was very expensive and lucrative, real estate. Maybe this is what you are saying about Bachelard. Being where hardly anybody has ever been, except perhaps construction workers, is an extraordinary experience. It’s important for people to have access to the bedrock of New York because it’s one of the most incredible places. And this has been a very successful intervention because it has to do with going down, in a city where everybody goes upward. It attracts a lot of people. I have been there many times and seen how people are amazed. It’s almost childlike, like a memory. It’s as if it were sacred, a bit like heaven. _x005F_x000D_
FN: A beautiful idea. We often look at the sky and when we only see sky, it’s interesting, like in some of James Turrell’s works._x005F_x000D_
DL: Yes, or like when Albert Camus said that even though you are very poor and have nothing, you have the sky for free._x005F_x000D_
ES: It’s interesting that the sky is free but the earth very expensive; a total division, another way of separating two worlds. I’ve always thought that when you talk about architecture, there’s a constant struggle between earth and sky. The most ancient architectures were bound to the earth, and the most contemporary architecture tries to fly. But I have never thought of it from a money point of view.

The Spanish Pavilion, curated by Iñaqui Carnicero (Madrid, 1973) and Carlos Quintáns (Muxía, 1962), has won the Golden Lion to the Best National Pavilion at the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Its title, ‘Unfinished,’ and its central theme, architecture after the crisis, seemed to announce another critical, if not masochistic, analysis of Spanish architecture today, but fortunantely it hasn’t been so. On a shoestring budget Carnicero and Quintáns have managed to highlight the general theme of the Biennale directed by the latest Pritzker Prize laureate Alejandro Aravena – with his emphasis on modest projects, his defense of the social role of architects, and an inevitable focus on Latin America –, but most importantly, they have managed to spread a positive message about Spain, and make it get through: the idea that beyond the critique of excess, architects have adapted to the at first glance unrewarding context of small refurbishments, adaptations, or grafts, without giving up the quality that once seemed to be exclusive to large public buildings.
_x005F_x000D_ Optimism has in this way made its way into the Spanish exhibition, a sober and attractive installation featuring fifty works carried out with a tight budget and an evolutionary purpose, grouped into nine categories that take stock of the recent architectural scene in our country. With the pavilion as backdrop, and still showing undisguised joy after winning the golden statuette, Carnicero and Quintáns talk about the purpose of their exhibition, and about the challenges they had to face to convey an at once critical and hopeful message without falling back on the clichés associated with the crisis.

Carlos Quintáns (CQ): The truth is that coming to Venice is a beautiful adventure. Of the three biennials Spain takes part in (the Spanish one, the Ibero American one and the Venice Biennale), I think this one is the most intense and stimulating, because it allows to convey the message beyond local frontiers. In this particular edition we were fortunate to have a general coordinator for the three biennials, one who has made the effort of arranging the contents, trying to find the way of offering an original and complementary message in each one of them. _x005F_x000D_
Iñaqui Carnicero (IC): Pachi Mangado has managed to construct a fitting argument for three very different biennials, and we must also mention the role of the Biennale’s director, Alejandro Aravena, who has chosen to share rather than to display his own work, and has invited us all to do the same. Thanks to this we have been able to hear about the problems in each country over the past years, learning a lot in the process. The collective has prevailed over the individual in this exhibition. In all areas. _x005F_x000D_

CQ: The primary focus was to show a collective project, to transform all those sad years into a ray of optimism. This is, I think, what has drawn more attention in our installation: how it shows the potential of so many Spanish architects, of so many works. We wanted the world to discover buildings that we know well, all works of high quality, which in Spain we take for granted. The Venice Biennale had to be a showcase of this effort. _x005F_x000D_ This showcase is a simple structure of galvanized steel frames that take up the space provided by the powerful architecture of the existing pavilion, creating a grid where photographs and plans are placed (one photograph and one axonometric drawing per work). The result is a sort of chaotic cartography that bombards visitors, but also captures their attention. _x005F_x000D_
IC: Many people didn’t understand it at first. They thought we were criticizing the situation, when it was quite the opposite. The selection of photographs, aside from documenting a harsh reality, is filled with optimisim and highly suggestive visions. The images call to action, they are innovative proposals that have managed to discover revealing actions in these architectures._x005F_x000D_

CQ: At first we feared that handling so many works and projects could produce a complete cacophony with no sense of unity. The challenge was to convey a sense of unity. _x005F_x000D_
IC: Yes, this was the most complicated thing. I remember that the first thing we did was to visit the pavilion in order to establish a dialogue with the existing and a balance between the amount of architecture we had to produce and what was already there. What people understand after visiting the pavilion is that it is a very good building, a space that works as it should, and also, that the exhibition is carried out with very few means. _x005F_x000D_
CQ: It was surprising to hear someone comment that this exhibition had managed to give the building, or the perception of the building, a dignity that in other exhibitions had remained hidden. In our view it was the best container possible for this exhibition. _x005F_x000D_
IC: It is fantastic because it is very versatile. I remember when we decided that we didn’t want a static exhibition, so we brought in the idea of movement in some components, and added the small motor that lifts the whole structure of the photographs. Today, the exhibitions hall is transformed into an impromptu assembly room for debates, talks or roundtables, favoring the exchange of ideas that this biennial encounter promotes. _x005F_x000D_

CQ The height of the central space is extraordinary. We were lucky to find it completely bare and have the opportunity to discover its possibilities. _x005F_x000D_
IC: This links up with a subject that comes up often of late: the danger of falling on a povera aesthetic, an aesthetic of ruin, on something more banal. At the beginning we wanted to bare the walls to expose the brick, but now, months later, we feel it would have been a mistake, don’t you think?_x005F_x000D_
CQ It would have been a mistake, and a fiction: jeans are best worn out by use, not by trying to make them look used. _x005F_x000D_ Powerful and intuitive thanks to is synthetic and direct character, the exhibition of photographs and drawings might seem a bit succinct, but in fact the information physically presented in the artistic installation is only the tip of the iceberg, and there is actually a huge amount of data and works gathered after an open selection process that can be explored on the pavilion’s website, so there are several reading levels. _x005F_x000D_
IC: We wanted the message to be read at different speeds: some people want a clear message from the beginning, graspable in less than thirty seconds, but others prefer to delve into the works and learn from them. I am quite pleased with the three levels of perception, which begin at the pavilion and end on the website. _x005F_x000D_
CQ There was a lot of information, that is true, and we had to be very generous with that information. That is why we have to analyze how the website has worked over these days, to understand how the exhibition has worked. _x005F_x000D_
IC: There are controversial and tough subjects, perhaps without a clear answer. While visiting the pavilion Rafael Moneo pondered on an issue that had been very important for us from the beginning: finding a format in which all the works are displayed at the same level. We chose a photograph and an axonometric drawing. He wondered to what extent this information could be enough to understand a project, and we on the other hand had not doubt that overall unity was more important than hierarchy. _x005F_x000D_
CQ Exactly, feeling that there was a shared course of action. _x005F_x000D_
IC: We didn’t want to show a specific architect or school, but to convey a message: a positive message, open to our present time and to the complex future ahead. _x005F_x000D_

Rem Koolhaas, winner of the Pritzker Prize in the year 2000 as director of the Dutch architecture studio OMA and of its research and design branch AMO, held a dialogue at the Baluarte of Pamplona with the also architect and renown professor and scholar Richard Ingersoll, born in the United States but Italy-based.

Richard Ingersoll: Delirious New York remains a masterpiece, a text that introduced to architectural discourse a new level of narrative. But this story of the “culture of congestion” can be attributed to laissez-faire capitalism, which at that moment in the first half of the 20th century still had claims to breeding citizenship. But today the same laissez-faire system produces only big symbols, inequalities, and a damaged planet. So where do you stand? You often lead us to the conclusion that this is the system we have to work in, and we can’t leave it.
Rem Koolhaas: There is really something very fundamental in the issue of reporting, which is what I have always been doing, but I also think that I have been systematically very critical of the laissez-faire situation. I mean if you read the Harvard volumes we produced, you realize that they are a critical warning about the hysterical level of consumption. So there is a big difference between my political position and my role as a reporter.

RI: But you have a very large corporate office, following in some ways a corporate structure in order to participate in the system.
RK: I would say yes, we are participating, but as critical participants. Only in this way will we be in a position that occasionally allows us to interfere and get into situations where we can really make a difference in buildings. A project such as the Garage Art Museum in Moscow makes a difference, taking a type of planning from an earlier period and reusing it. I don’t think it has anything that is architecturally ingenious except the commitment to reusing the past. But to have an office like this allows us to do projects such as investigating the energy futures for the EU, up to the year 2050, studying in geographical terms which sort of energy will be most efficient in each region, yielding a serious proposition about the distribution of energy in Europe. For right now it has become a sort of blueprint of a blueprint, entering into the archaeology of policy making.
RI: Does your work in architecture correspond to these concerns for energy?
RK: I don’t know if what I do is better or worse, but I think that the entire architectural profession, in general, is doing a much better job of reducing energy needs, and we are part of this overall trend. If the impact of buildings on global warming is 6%, we are collectively working on lowering that, and I am part of the trend. I don’t make overt claims about it, but I feel I am equally serious in confronting it. That’s what you can do as an architect on a case-to-case basis, and nothing more. And to the extent that I am often working on larger issues, I am involved in a more political way.

RI: I find that scale has become a crucial question for you, something you once dubbed as ‘Bigness’: the economies of scale, the scale of urbanism, the scale of architecture, the scale of the office.
RK: But by asking this, are you presuming that the large scale is irredeemably connected to unsustainable practices? Or do you think the scale is a precondition for sustainability?
RI: I think I should have asked you that question, which you rephrased in a better way than I stated it. But if I had to answer, I would say big scale is a big problem due to the power of corporate structures, which operate with a top-down mentality, as in the planning of Masdar City, whereas if we started at more intermediate scales, with more commitment to identity and place, I think we would come up with better solutions. And now where people are living, if 50% is urban, is not in concentrated cities, but in sprawl, which requires excessive transportation, leading to 14% of greenhouse gases.
RK: Yes, so you could say it no longer permits a typology of the culture of congestion, and how wasteful that has been in the last thirty years. But the idea of congestion remains necessary as a sort of compactness in terms of more equitable use of resources. And here there is a deep connection between scale and density. I don’t think you should be so skeptical about projects such as Masdar, because the numbers and the time frame impose artificialities, even though rhetorically and emotionally it is acceptable that you could start with a situation that is given and then kind of moves slowly. And we have done many projects like that, particularly in preservation in places like Dubai, where we tried to gain the responsibility to preserve urban situations and change them over time, which seems incredibly resistant as a realistic utopian project despite the current economy. Political change is necessary, and it’s really a promising moment considering the economic crisis is still there and does not seem to be healing itself, and is probably getting worse if you observe the increase in inequality, which is leading to unbelievable tensions and populism. It’s a crunch moment that also has positive potentials. For instance, in non-western societies, particularly in Asia, you find a healthy increase in the middle class and a rise in confidence and gaining of access to things that were previously totally unthinkable. So it’s very hard to generalize and you cannot say point blank that poverty has increased.

RI: But the levels have changed, and the 1% that owns over 50% of the wealth is a definite increase.
RK: And nobody is for that!
RI: Well, I think the 1% is, and they usually control the lobbies of the political system.
RK: But the fact that the growing awareness of the inequities of the 1% has drawn so much negative critical attention is important in that it forces them to prove their integrity. There are many indications that it is no longer business as usual, in almost any profession. But you have to stop moaning about the previous condition. It was an excessive situation. A lot of irresponsibility, corporate greed, and neo-liberalism led to ruin, so now there is a kind of necessary reconstruction period, where we could play a positive role.
RI: If we can see the enduring economic crisis as an opportunity of some sort to change policies, to change lifestyles, a kind of natural degrowth, as Serge Latouche has called it, could we see the impending environmental crises of floods, droughts, crop failures, as an opportunity? Could we be like Svante Arrhenius, the first theorist of the greenhouse effect, who presumed a rise in temperature would be beneficial?
RK: There has been an enormous amount of natural and man-made negative outcomes, leading to a collective sense of what happened and who is to blame, and how we could afford it. It is so blatant, it’s in the air. So without sounding too much like Voltaire’s Candide we could state that there is an amazing global awareness. With a lot of people fishing in troubled waters. So it would be absurd not to try to use this moment as an opportunity.

RI: In Rotterdam, where you have your office, there is an agency devoted to a climate change adaptation strategy, which in the last two years has been exporting information to other cities, such as New York. By the end of the century it is predicted that 90% of the world’s great cities will have seen dangerous changes in water levels, similar to Venice’s acqua alta. There is also a new public plaza in Rotterdam, Benthemplein, proposed as an urban sponge to assist in such situations. Should we learn from Rotterdam?
RK: I don’t think I need to take a position on Rotterdam, but let’s say that the whole of the Netherlands provides an example of what you can do in a dire situation of changing sea levels. And it’s an experience that shows the crucial nature of collaboration, as well as the potential for disaster if ideology becomes more important than objectivity. The degree of collaborative consensus is critical to confronting complex situations. And that is why I am so interested in the European Union, which in a way is like a bigger Holland, and also needs to establish a culture of consensus that can be detached from political colors, addressing communality and shared values. That’s a very Dutch mentality.

RI: In your statement for the Venice Biennale (2014) and in your talk in Pamplona you singled out the problem of a ‘digital regime.’ We are all increasingly participating with mechanisms that substitute our own thoughts with external memory devices. It seems a big problem humanistically that we will start to lose contact with the intelligence inside of us. The technology is moving so fast that we are completely unaware of how pervasive it is becoming. There is a real danger of the means becoming the end in themselves. Should we attempt to counteract, or slow things down, or at least feel that we are in control of them?
RK: I would not put it that way, even though I agree, as it sounds too nostalgic. There is something to be said about how easy it has become in just a short time to acquire an unbelievable amount of information. But to transform this information into knowledge is of course an art. I frankly do not see people getting more stupid, even if I am worried about the culture it implies. The commercial momentum that is behind current paradigms like the Smart City are very interesting in the sense that their proponents seem to be hiding the speculative incentive that is behind more general narratives. Whether this will result in social control or manipulation remains to be seen. But my difficulty with your kind of critique is that in a way, I can never fully endorse it, even though I think you are not altogether wrong. I think that the way you formulate your analysis is so incapable of seeing anything good in what is happening today, and I cannot agree with that. I share many of the same concerns, but find that the anti-modernity behind them is an elitist position. I do not think we are in a situation where 10 billion people can be anti-modern. Maybe the few who are lucky to have a farm in Tuscany can afford to be anti-modern. So that would be my answer as well on the corporate issue. I still think that we are condemned to modernity and that we must try to make something out of it.

The ever diminishing role played by theory and thought in professional practice is, according to Frampton and Moneo, one of the principal challenges that contemporary architecture is faced with. Add to this the great transformations taking place in society, the economy, and architecture itself, thanks to which the traditional discourses, based on concepts like Zeitgeist, rationalism, and faith in progress, are ineffective. Not to mention the precarization of the labor market, with its terrible effects on young people. In this situation Frampton and Moneo call for a more critical reading of globalization, and also an ethic of resistance grounded upon the principles of the architectural discipline.

Kenneth Frampton (KF): We have known each other since the mid-70s, a time in which theory was very important for architects. Forty years later, the role of theory and the dimension of architecture is sort of diminished in the current debate…

Rafael Moneo (RM): I think that the attempt to make architectural theory uphold architectural practice is nowadays completely gone, the battle has been lost. In the 1970s, Peter Eisenman and others probably had the idea that the pure visualism that was still embedded in building after Colin Rowe could be extended. Nowadays we say that theory fell into the hands of writers inspired by post-structuralism, French writers above all. It doesn’t at all have the presence that it used to have. Therefore it ought to be recognized that even in the entire second half of the 20th century, the true way to try to find out what architectural theory means ought to be figured out by reading historians. In a way, historians are depositaries, they have defined the paradigm of what could be considered ‘modernities,’ something that has changed radically in this new century.

KF: Yes, I think that’s right.

RM: The description of what architects have sought is in the hands of historians. You need to go through the reading to extract what actually matters: the way history has been told isn’t anymore as useful to what is happening today. That would be the point.

KF: This is why I think that philosophical discourse would be more useful. The question of whether the old city can sustain any continuity, given the modern reality, is really a deep problem. And one of the deep problems associated with it is the idea of progress and the question of whether that idea has real validity anymore, not only from the point of view of architecture, but altogether. The question of belief in progress is a problem.

RM: We are no longer able to think clearly in terms of progress.

‘Zeitgeist’ and Utopia

KF: I studied architecture in the 1950s in London, and within the British welfare state. It was possible then to think that the idea of progress was modernity, that modernization could only have a positive outcome for society. It was a naïve moment. I think that this is still reflected in the first edition of Modern Architecture: A Critical History. But, for whatever reason, it took me ten years to write it, and my views already had been modified – by coming to the States, as a matter of fact. The States was a big shock for me.

RM: I think that the big difference between what is happening today and what happened, say, in the period between the two great wars and developed in the 1950s and 1960s, is that in the 1920s we still had the sense that progress could be designed. You were able to think utopically in terms of how the idea of city could be. Now, I don’t believe we are able to foresee how things are going to be. And yet everybody believes in the future, but a future that is formless. Nobody knows exactly how this future is going to be. Therefore, architects are unclear today about times to come. I believe that the future is going to happen in a positive way but I wonder if we are able to foresee, and therefore to design, and therefore to think about ideas like Zeitgeist, now. That has been such a crucial word to talk and think about. How many times has it been said that we should be the spirit of the times? Right now, who is able to decide what today’s spirit is? 

KF: I think one of the things that we haven’t quite yet embraced is to recognize the limit of the question of progress. And one of the things that have replaced the idea of progress, in my opinion, is the idea of maximization. So that in medicine, agriculture, and many fields, above all of course in late capitalist development, maximization is the driving instrumental force in society – such as to maximize agricultural production, maximize the direct treatment of sickness through pharmaceuticals, maximize development of cities in the sense of capitalist development. When you think of all these high-rise buildings everywhere, like London, they are so meaningless from the point of view of culture. They are simply machines to make as much money as possible.

RM: What comes together with this is that we have lost confidence in the value of the word ‘reason.’ We have to give reason another, different way of being understood, because, for instance, at this moment in time, that which can be rebuilt is reasonable. People often talk about architects who build, architects with a commitment to reflection, but where are the discussing architects nowadays? Architects now spend more time discussing the means of production at all the design moments. For instance, it would be difficult nowadays to establish the bridge between the work of artists and the work of architects.

KF: I think that one of the problems is that art itself, also, is becoming commodified. And commodification is one of the problems because architects tend to think of their work as large art. The problem with that is there is not the same dialectic between architecture and art that there was in the 1930s. When architects think in terms of building as large art, they run the risk also of the general commodification of art. That is the problem today.

Shaping the Void

RM: You used the term ‘commodification.’ It’s true that when architecture becomes that, it enters another order of things that doesn’t fulfil the duty of serving reason. Something that happens a lot nowadays and didn’t happen before.

KF: Somewhere, early on, Van Eyck, for example, says this aphorism about how architects can build if the society does not have form? How can the architect build the ‘counterform’ if it doesn’t have form.This is almost a prophecy because when you said that, it was thirty or forty years ago, but this is the problem now!

RM: It’s true that once the expression and the description of what architecture thinks about how it should proceed is in the hands of historians, you need to tell historians that the narrative they have followed is no longer valuable for explaining. 

KF: That’s the problem. And you feel it. You feel it when you talk to students. There’s this gap. I try to cover the gap but it’s not easy.

RM: It has also to do with this respect or attempt to give the word ‘continuity’ a positive meaning instead of a bad one, in this case following the hints given by the place itself, by the reading of how this piece of land had been 200 years before… I still believe that you have to be careful about wasting…

KF: There’s this funny figure, an Argentinian Marxist, who had a big impact on me. He says somewhere (maybe Tomás Maldonado quoted him) that you can’t make anything without waste, this is distinguishable from ideology of waste. It’s an amazing statement. And this is really what we are facing.

RM: You always need to build. Building is an act of force that always means leaving something damaged somehow: no doubt about it. Besides, it’s impossible to repeat things. It’s impossible not to move. The more you know about architectural history, the more you realize how rapidly changes happen. It seems like a long period of time for evolving a type, and yet you have an alert eye. You see changes every year. But new architects are unable to go through this scheme of strict repetition.

KF: For the young generation, the whole question, for instance, of security of employment, is no longer so evident. There is no stability. The opposite, society is very unstable. And this is why I, however pathetic, think in terms of resistance. Not in the sense that one shouldn’t change, but in the sense that architecture still has that potential to give to human beings, in their own short life, some kind of ground. Otherwise there is no ground. Somehow here there is an ethical question.

RM: Even though we don’t know what the true expression of the Zeitgeist is nowadays, it is difficult to believe that what we do is outside what society wants done. From this point of view, it is not difficult to understand what the world will build. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t accept that what is happening probably reflects, whether we like it or not, what is happening in the world as a whole. 

KF: But I think somewhere there is this issue of class, because in a way you could say that the project of the Enlightenment is a middle-class project. And you could also say that the belief in democracy is also a middle-class thing. And when the middle class is eliminated, or suppressed, or when you don’t produce a middle class, you can’t have democracy anymore. This is the kind of situation we are in because all this money that is going to the top of the pyramid is also part of a movement that means to destroy the middle class. That is the danger of the moment.

RM: It seems that today the middle class is almost destroyed, and yet that means that the new proletarians have been taxed on many of the most valuable things culture and history has produced… You have to admit that never before did people have such a sense of fulfilment, of arriving at valuable things of life…

KF: The paradox is that when you begin to commodify, though, like everything, then the value desired starts to fall as something desirable. This is a funny kind of strange enigma.

How was the beginning of your career?
Ron Arad (RA): I never thought of it as a career. I mean I’m doing the same thing now that I did when I was 8 years old. It also had to do with the pencil and drawing and talking. My mother was a painter, and every time she saw me doing a fantastic drawing as a child, she didn’t say: “He’s going to be a good artist.” She said: “He’s going to be a good architect.” She was afraid about art. She thought – she was wrong! – that architecture was more solid as a profession than being an artist. How wrong she was! But when I came to London in 1973, it was a time when no one was building anything in London. Absolutely nothing. So the AA was more like an art school than the art schools because there was freedom from reality – from building, from budgets, from contractors, from floor slabs. Everything was on paper. This was before computer renders and computer modeling. It was the period of airbrushing. In the period when I was studying, the final product was not a building, but a drawing. Of course things change. But I always saw myself as an outsider to the profession. I love architecture, but I don’t love the profession so much because it’s a profession of compromises. There are always lots of negotiations – with the fire brigade, with the police, with the contractor, with the neighbors, with the husband, with the wife… It’s not like when you go to art school. When you finish, you do your art, you don’t have to consult with anyone, you are not accountable to anyone. I managed to set up a studio in that sort of mode.

How do you see the relationship between architecture and design?
RA: Look, the approach is the same. For me, to design is to do something that doesn’t exist before you design it. It could be a small thing, it could be a huge tower. If you look at the tower that we are working on together now, it’s an upside-down tower, if you wish. All the plants that people normally put on the roof, I put on the floor. There are lots of things, when we go there, that are for me different for architects. I don’t do a lot, but when I do something, I have to be curious. The same goes when I design, for example, eyewear like this we designed. The whole thing about it is that it’s not like your glasses. It doesn’t have any parts, it doesn’t have any screws, it doesn’t have any hinges. It is one piece. And it’s flexible and light. For me there’s no point in just styling, in making another RayBan, another Tom Ford. For me it has to be something that I’m interested in, that I’m curious about. [Puts on glasses.] From now on the interview will be with the glasses. Or not. I don’t know. We’ll see.

What would be your advice to young designersw or young architects in terms of how to begin their careers?
RA: My advice would be: don’t listen to advice. Don’t try to be the new Frank Gehry. We don’t need a new Frank Gehry. Frank Gehry has already done a lot of work. Don’t try to be the new you-name-it. Try to do what you can make a contribution to, what satisfies you… Well, I’m giving advice now. I didn’t want to give advice. Satisfy your own creativity, your own curiosity, and what is special to you.
You were born in Tel Aviv… How is your relationship with your home country?
RA: I think that a bit of the answer is in your question. You didn’t say “you were born in Israel.” You said “you were born in Tel Aviv.” I love Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv is in a very typical place in a difficult country in a very difficult area in a very difficult world. But when I grew up in Tel Aviv, for me it was the center of the world, and what I didn’t know was not worth knowing. And we knew everything. When I now hear the Beatles song Strawberry Fields Forever, it doesn’t take me back to Liverpool. I’ve never been to Liverpool. It takes me back to Tel Aviv, where I grew up. When you are growing up, you are sort of a captive of your language, your culture, your landscape, your environment. Then in my early 20s, when I moved to London, I started working and people wanted to know the influence of being from somewhere. I think the big influence is being from somewhere else, being an outsider. It gives you the difficulties of an outsider, but also the freedom of an outsider because you don’t have any aunts and neighbors to please.

Would you say there is globalization in design?
RA: Well, there is. You know, the world is small. People talk about British design, Israeli design, Spanish design… But it’s not football. You’re not running around with flags. I’m interested in individuals. They can be from Spain, from Catalonia [laughter]… Yes, when you grow up, you grow up in a place, a language, and a culture, which helps, but you have to claim freedom from it.
Let’s talk about materials. Your experience in materials is wide, versatile, and very innovative. Often the material itself becomes the concept. What comes first, the concept or the material?
RA: It’s a two-way thing. Sometimes you see materials and processes and you think: “What can I do with it? This is so amazing. What shall we do with it.” Even this morning, during my visit to the amazing city you have here that is all about materials and processes, my mind went: “What can I do, what can we do…” Sometimes you have an idea and you think: “What will be the best material to use? What will be the best process? Who will be the best fabricator?” Which in a way is why we’re here. We designed the part that we’re going to use before I knew the word ‘Dekton.’ You designed it before I knew of your existence. And with a little research, we found ourselves here. And now we’re here and seeing what we can do, and it will mean that we can do other stuff that we haven’t done yet, that we don’t know about. So it’s a two-way thing.
Let’s talk about Spain. This country you are in right now! You have been here several times. You built the seventh floor of Hotel Puerta América in Madrid. And for your recent exhibition at Ivorypress. What is your relationship with this country? How have you found working here in Spain?
RA: I also had a really nice exhibition on the Ramblas, in Barcelona, because I had won some award. But Spain is also my favorite place for holidays. I’m a neighbor here, I go to Formentera. It was introduced to me by Javier Mariscal many years ago. We did an exhibition to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Pompidou Center. They chose ten designers to represent all the different directions of design. I represented ruinism because I was playing with concrete that I broke, don’t ask me why. Mariscal and I were the youngest. There were all sorts of Mendinis… We had no choice, we became very good friends because we were the little boys. And then Mariscal started charming us and pulling us to Barcelona, Formentera… He did a very good job.

Do you compare your work with your contemporaries?
RA: I believe so. I believe that everything you do, if it is visible enough, or visible at all, and if it offers something new, is part of a dialogue. When I go to an exhibition or I go to see something, and I’m not jealous, it’s not good. I mean for me, going to an exhibition and there’s no jealousy, I think: why am I wasting my time here? At the same time, when I have an idea, I think: is it good or not?  If I saw these glasses in a gallery or, since this is not art, in an optician’s shop, would I be jealous? If the answer is yes, then I go ahead and do it. But if the answer is no…
 

Luis Fernández-Galiano (LFG): Everybody knows you love flying, but I wonder how it has inspired your architecture. When you turned 75, you recollected how many different models of aircraft you had piloted, and they happened to be exactly 75… 
Norman Foster (NF): It was one of those extraordinary explorations. I got all my log books, in which I’d noted every flight in each type of flying machine, and discovered I had piloted 75 different craft – microlights, aerobatic monoplanes, vintage biplanes, military fighters and business jets. It is interesting that professional pilots rarely cross the boundaries between these different flying machines. If the pilot of a light aircraft has to make a landing without an engine into a remote field, then an emergency would be declared with calls of “mayday” to alert the emergency services.
However, for a glider pilot that would be a normal procedure when running out of lift on a long-distance cross-country flight. Similarly, the worlds of fixed wing and helicopters are normally quite separate as the skills are different, even if the flight environment is the same. I have been very fortunate to enjoy an extraordinary cross-section of aviation experiences, to have been able to fly so many types from spitfires to racing sailplanes. It crosses my mind that there are parallels in my attitude to architecture. Similarities in the sense that either by virtue of interest or passion, most architects and engineers, like pilots, tend to specialise in their chosen fields. I realise now that in design as well as in aviation, I have crossed conventional boundaries. As a designer I am just as excited by the challenges of high architecture for civic events as by low-cost construction for a mass audience. Infrastructure also inspires me in the same way as buildings or even furniture. So for me, flight and design are both universal activities.
 

LFG: Your piloting being so important to you means perhaps that you enter every field with a sense of discovery and a sense of risk…
NF: Yes, I think that the same curiosity that drives me to explore different experiences, whether aviation, cycling, or cross-country skiing, and my fascination with the marathon – the cross-country skiing marathon as a race, the marathon bike ride with colleagues – is perhaps mirrored in building projects, which also assume marathon-like experiences. A building such as the Monaco Yacht Club was a 12-year haul, and the same was true for the Carré d’Art in Nîmes. How do you lead a team and keep fresh over that long a period, so you don’t lose the design plot along the way? With some projects, you have to keep focused and sharp, pacing yourself over a long period of time, just like in a marathon race. Of course you can also have the polar opposite, in those megaprojects which can happen surprisingly fast, like Beijing Airport. It’s the biggest in the world and was realised by 50,000 people in five years. Or Hong Kong Airport, which involved moving mountains and creating land from the ocean. But for every one of these epic journeys, there is an honourable series of projects which are smaller – do not command the headlines – but are equally important. I am reminded of the anonymous tradition in architecture. Bernard Rudofsky draws attention to this in his book Architecture Without Architects, which accompanied the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibition of the same name in the 1960s.  It illustrated the so-called vernacular stream of buildings which in a past before the age of cheap energy were elegant and ingenious responses to local climates. These ranged from benign Mediterranean regions to the extremes of desert heat and the intense cold of polar and Alpine locations. The resulting structures were formed from the materials at hand and were always in harmony with the landscape. We cannot attribute names to the authors of this vast body of indigenous work which spans continents and is not considered as architecture in the conventional sense by most writers on the subject. However, for me, even as a student, it has been an important and inspirational mainstream. For example, our zero-carbon, zero-waste project of Masdar would not have been feasible without applying the timeless lessons learnt from traditional desert building which go back several hundred years. Such works as our school system for Sierra Leone and the winery for Château Margaux are appropriately local in their response and this back-to-basics approach. Perhaps it is in the nature of the media to be moved, as I believe we all are, by the biggest, the longest, the tallest – we are all stirred by the epic dimension, that’s human nature. But it should not cloud us to the importance of buildings which are smaller in scale.
 

LFG: But projects like Trafalgar Square have also commanded attention and they’re very silent.
NF: Yes. I am often asked which of our buildings in London are the most important. Almost as a reflex, I say Trafalgar Square and the Millennium Bridge, because in terms of their importance to the community – whether locals or visitors – and on the capital city, I think they have had far more social impact than any single building. That is not to underestimate the importance

of the British Museum or many of our other built projects, but it is about the greater significance of the infrastructure of public space, routes and connections. When I move in this city of Madrid over the next 24 hours, the lasting impression will be of its public spaces. Of course I will have a recall of this building as well as my apartment. But the big picture will be the infrastructure of Madrid: its spaces, routes and connections, the journey from the airport, the walk to the restaurant…
 

LFG: You once said that you had been much influenced by buildings, but not as much as by libraries.
NF: Books have been one of the most powerful influences in my life. I would say that without books and access to a public library, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. I might have ended up as an office clerk or a manual worker somewhere in the north of England, certainly not an architect. There are all kinds of interesting links between the past and present. At the time that we won the competition for the New York Public Library, I decided to revisit the local library of my past, in an obscure corner of an industrial suburb of Manchester, and discovered in the foundation stone that it was made possible by the same benefactor who funded the New York Public Library system. As a youth in Manchester I discovered on those library shelves books like Towards a New Architecture, by Le Corbusier. I was inspired by the juxtaposition of the Caproni hydroplane and the Acropolis. In that sense Corbusier is a kindred spirit, not just because of such beautiful buildings as the chapel at Ronchamp or his Unité in Marseille, but also for his fascination with the romance of flight and machines. The way he would draw parallels between these flying machines and architecture fired my imagination as a young man. As you and I move around the

spaces in this Foundation and look at models and drawings of projects as well as objects, I can start to make visual connections between flight and our architecture, even if it is indirect and subconscious. The furniture that I worked on at the time of the lunar landing module touches the ground as lightly, almost seeming to hover over it. 
LFG: And the result is expressed through drawings. Drawing, for you, is very important, even as a way of thinking. 
A: I sketch for different purposes. There is the personal dialogue to explore an idea on paper which might exist in my head or surfaces through an intellectual exchange with others. Often I am drawing at the same time as talking – this can even be in a presentation or a conference. I might also sketch my response to a design proposition by colleagues. Other times I might be creating diagrams which communicate the generators behind a design – a kind of validation. The pencil or pen, like a computer, is a tool. My obsession with sketching is in no way to deny the parallel importance of the computer. But like the pencil it is a tool, albeit wonderfully sophisticated, and so far only as good as the person operating it. Thinking about it more, the sketches annotated with notes combine the best of both words and images, and I use this format constantly.
 

LFG: So for you, drawing is almost like breathing.
NF: For as long as I can remember I have been sketching, since I was a child, and it is one of the reasons why I wanted to become an architect. I was willing to pay for the privilege to study, to work to be able to pay the fees and sustain myself. For me, the practice of architecture is still pure luxury. The downside is that with the larger entity of an international studio come all the other things that have to be done. But I still get pure joy out of designing. 
LFG: Now I know that you do not want to discuss legacy, that you would rather leave that to historians, but since your first project in Manchester, you have kept all your drawings and models, so somehow you do see that there is a whole body of work that may have substance and importance for the future. 

NF: This body of work, which is organic and expanding, embraces many parallel themes. One of these is the nobility of making things – pride in construction, and not just buildings. This tradition is not a fashionable opic in our newly found digital age,  but even in the world of virtual reality there is an ever growing need for cities, buildings and the movement of people between them – by cars, planes and trains.
The quest for quality is a reminder of that tradition – not just the actual manufacture but the initial conception and its later appreciation. To explain the importance of a personal approach to design, I tend to repeat the mantra that “quality is an attitude of mind”. In the creation of a building there are three resources: money, time and creative energy. It is always the creative element that determines the quality of the end product, never the amount of money or time. Some of the best buildings in the world have been achieved in record time, and often on shoestring budgets. Some of the worst have taken forever and cost a fortune. That is not to deny the wisdom of investing wisely in more enduring materials and craftsmanship. Paying more to do something well once, without having to take it to pieces and try again (and sometimes yet again), is, in the end, sound economics. It is the same in aviation, where “the price of safety is constant vigilance” – nothing can be taken for granted, everything is to be questioned. Continuing this theme, there is a direct link between questioning and innovation. So for me the most interesting projects are those where we have challenged preconceptions.  For example, before our bank headquarters in Hong Kong, every skyscraper was a ribbon of space around a solid central core. I challenged this and consequently reinvented the tall building by fragmenting the core and displacing the smaller bits to the edges of a clear open space, from which you could look out in all directions. This created a much better place to work, to uplift the spirits of everyone in the building.
The Hong Kong project was born in the same decade – the 1970s – as our Willis Faber building in Ipswich. The innovations in that design similarly raised social levels, as well as the flexibility to accommodate the new digital technology without having to resort to a new programme of building.
The story of London’s third airport at Stansted is a similar one of innovation or reinvention. In the quest for a new generation terminal we literally turned the previous model upside down to create a radical alternative which has since become the norm and been adopted by other airport planners and designers worldwide.  It seeks to bring back the joy and romance of air travel as well as improving the efficiency of its operation. 
I could give you other examples from our body of work which are revolutionary, although most of our projects could be termed evolutionary. In other words, they build on our earlier pioneering projects or they are further developments of an otherwise existing model. Beijing Airport is a good example at an epic and celebratory scale, made possible by Stansted and the interim achievements of Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok.
In response to your question, I could also demonstrate links from my student interests in the anonymous traditions in architecture to the present day – our recent works in places as far removed as the vineyards of Bordeaux, the Arabian Desert, Africa and even outer space. All of these examples are rooted in improving the conditions of today, but pushing the boundaries of the possible to serve the needs of the future. This as a journey is surely important?

Founded in 1994, Progetto CMR was born from the meeting of three professionals whose main goal was to provide flexible, efficient and sustainable design. At present, under the leadership of architect Massimo Roj, Progetto CMR continues to grow and has over 150 employees. 


On the occasion of Progetto CMR and Cosentino Group recent collaboration during Milan Design Week 2018, Massimo Roj, leader of the first one, tells us about Inhabits details and how both Smart Squares and urban technologies are closer than we think.

 

Is Smart Square design on human scale?
Absolutely yes. I wrote that book many years ago, the title was design on human scale, the man is the center of our thought. All the projects must be designed around the person that will use the space that we have to design. 

How do people interact with Smart Square?
This is a square, first of all. The square is the place where humanity grew during the time. So it is part of our history, part of our background. And this square has some tools. Some important tools that are in line with the actual era, so it is a smart square. Smart Square means that people can meet here, they enjoy, that is the most important element for the square, they can use technology to improve their life. So some technologies are based inside the bench. There are technologies on the floor using different materials and different elements to let the people enjoy better their life in the square.

What is important for you when you choose materials?
Materials are, really, important technologies, and the evolution of them are part of our thought. So every time we have to design something new we try to find new elements, new materials and new technologies. It is really part of our design; the research and development is really an important tool for our company.
Every time we have to proof the quality of our products, our design, so we need to find the best solution for each project. Each project is different because each client has different needs, has different mind and different dreams, and our job is to transform in reality the client dreams.

Dekton® Radium is a sustainable material made out of up to 80% recycled material in its composition. Did sustainability influence your choice of Dekton®?
Absolutely yes. Sustainability is a must, it is not anymore a marketing tool, it is the only way to design. We start designing green, let me say more than 20 years ago, and now all the projects are really related to the sustainable material. When we talk about sustainability we cannot talk only about technical elements, we have to talk about the sustainability for the human beings, for all of us. And materials if they are composed by recycled materials it is one of the most important elements. We just designed a few products in the last year, done all by recycled materials, so it is a really important tool.

Progetto CMR is an architects’ studio that works globally, with its headquarters in Milan, Italy. Do you consider Smart Square global architecture or Italian architecture?
We are living in the globalization era, but in my mind we have to remember our roots, we have to remember where we are when we design, so this square is a Smart Square, but it is done in Milan and is for Milan. Each place has their own elements. So we have to remember our origin, our background our culture. So when we design in another country, we try to understand better what is their history, before trying to find a solution, so finally this is the place for this square.

What is your top design?
The best design is always the last. Every project is like a baby, and when you start thinking about the project you start defining all the elements, if it is a glass, an object, a tower or a masterplan in a part of the city, it does not matter. At the same time, it is the most important project.

May be here in Milan the most visible project of ours are the two first green towers in Italy, we call them Garibaldi Towers. They were designed some years ago, but they are still the best project of ours here in Milan.
 

The French designer, internationally known for winning 4 times the ADI Comasso d’Oro Award, has a great experience in the sector with projects such as the back protector of the motorcyclist, presented in the permanent collection of the MOMA in New York, and his Mite lamp for Foscarini, selected to form part of Beaubourg museum in Paris. 
Dekton®, Cosentino’s innovative ultracompact surface for the world of architecture and design, was the material selected for the worktop of the GranGusto kitchen created by the French designer Marc Sadler in collaboration with the Italian furniture maker Riva 1920 for the Milan Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2018.

French citizen, born in Austria and living in Italy. Can we say you represent the core of European design?
Yes, I think so. I love Europe, but I love France, Italy, Spain… I think there is quality all around Europe, yes.

Gran Gusto is not the first kitchen you design… What is special about Gran Gusto?
Maurizio Riva gave me this opportunity to work together in making a kitchen using this fantastic material. It is really about food preparation, about quality and about doing things big. So, we wanted to go back to what our parents used to do, by a piece of furniture which is nice and beautiful. This piece of furniture could be for all life, I mean a piece like this, may be in a 100 years still there. We give it to our children and so on.  So it is not the kitchen which is on demand and measure you know. There are single pieces put together with a high tech product.

When you choose materials for your designs, what is relevant for you?
Well, in this case I have this fil rouge, which is the wood, which is this quality wood, which is beautiful. And we treat the wood also in a table, we burn the wood and with this strong surface, this is why also I chose another high tech material by Cosentino (Dekton®), because by contrast it speaks very loudly, you know, because I want to avoid to have conflict with the materials, so we have this original material which is wood and this high tech and new future material which is (Dekton®) Cosentino.

Why did you choose Dekton® Sirius ultracompact surface for Gran Gusto kitchen?
Well, I thought that this material speaks slowly. The colour is close to the materials that we see in the kitchen. This black/brown is very soften, would be something that could last also in time, and live very well with this burned material that we have on the wood and this natural material that we have all around.

How has your experience been working with Riva 1920?
This family Riva, we lived together several business adventures, I’d say. And it is more about passion and I don’t work alone when I do a kitchen like this, I work with a family and it is an exchange of ideas, exchange of inventions, there is a few pieces like this with our hands made, that we have designed and decided in the factory with these brothers and friends and workers, it is not something just on the paper with renderings.

What advice would you give to young designers who are starting their careers?
Well, I think to be humble, to be able to listen, to your partners when you are working, which are, could be your customer, could be this person who would do the product with you and help the product to go on the market. I think this is quite important.

Your Top Designer?
I love Buckminster Fuller, which is an American engineer who used to invent a lot of things, he is not very well known but he is an important guy.
 

Nacido en Tel Aviv, Levy se formó en el Art Center Europe de Suiza. Desde su estudio parisino ha viajado hasta Madrid para participar en un conversatorio con Vicente Porres (Noviembre Estudio) sobre el proceso del diseño. Al evento asistieron clientes y colaboradores de Cosentino y se organizó en colaboración con la revista Room Diseño.
Arik Levy:
“La creación es un músculo sin control. Vemos demasiado, pero no sentimos suficiente, así que cuando diseño intento sentir lo que me conecta con la mente.”

“Mi material preferido es la emoción. Si pongo una sonrisa en la cara de alguien, entonces es que algo bueno ha pasado.”

Interviewed in his home and workshop at Punta Nave on the eve of turning 80, Renzo Piano and Luis Fernández-Galiano comment on the first steps of his career and his latest work, the Botín Centre. 
Luis Fernández-Galiano: Thank you so much for receiving us in your home here in Punta Nave, near Genoa, your hometown, where you were born almost eighty years ago. You turn 80 in September, and this is perhaps a good moment to go through your biography. An asteroid was recently named after you. Only Buckminster Fuller has something like that, a molecule named after him. An asteroid is larger, 5 kilometers in diameter!
Renzo Piano: I think everybody has a star somewhere.
LFG: You were telling me before that everybody needs an inner compass, as ships do, to guide them in life. I would say that your inner compasses are building on the one hand, and people on the other. Building for people. Were these your two references in youth?
RP: I use the word ‘compass’ because I like the idea of boats, and I like the idea of a compass you don’t even see because it’s inside your body, and can’t be disturbed because it’s well protected against magnetic fields. ‘Compass’ refers to many things. It’s not built-in, but self-built, something you build yourself, from childhood and teenhood, through experience. 
 

LFG: You started to build this inner compass in childhood? What kind of a childhood did you have? Your father was a builder.
RP: A small builder, not a big builder. That makes a big difference. Big builders are business people, small builders have real ground, they are craftsmen. My father had ten or twenty people working with him and I would spend my free time with them, on the construction site, sitting on sand. When you grow up in this atmosphere, you start to build a little compass somewhere, watching how things become a building, sand becoming a column, bricks becoming walls. Pure magic to a child of 6, 7, or 8. All this stays with you. Another thing is the harbor, which is a magical city, where nothing touches ground. Ships float. Buildings levitate. And the cranes… Everything flies! 
LFG: But besides these influences, there’s the family. What role did your parents play? Did they want you to be an architect?
RP: Well, my father was a builder so he told me I should be a builder, but it didn’t really matter, he was a very tolerant man. I told my mother that I thought I should be an architect. She said I would have to explain it to my father. So I went to him. He said, why an architect, you can be a builder. A builder is something more than an architect. My brother, ten years older, was also a builder. The truth, I didn’t really want to be an architect. I just wanted to run away from the family. That is what you want to do at 18.
LFG: So you left the family in Genoa, and went to Milan.
RP: And before that I went to Florence, which is beautiful, but too beautiful. And if you’re 18, 19, or 20 and learning about architecture, and you go to a place like Florence, you feel paralyzed by so much beauty and perfection. At some point I said, this is too beautiful, I have to go to a place that’s much less beautiful. I went to Milan, which was less beautiful but more interesting, socially speaking. It was the beginning of student occupation of schools. I led a double life for at least two years. During the day I worked in an atelier, with Franco Albini, which was fantastic. I was learning to be an architect, drawing and all. In the evening I was joining in the occupation activities. But all these things contribute to the making of a little compass, a treasure in life. This self-compass has different names. And it’s not just about one’s profession. It’s about life, about people, about commitment, about politics in the real sense of the word. And there’s another thing, more difficult to touch on: sense of beauty. It’s not just about people, it’s also about color and light. If you grow up by the Mediterranean, you absorb something from this water. This sea is full of light, vibration, voices, and perfumes. Somebody said that the water makes things beautiful. It’s quite true.
 

LFG: When you say that your final home will not be in Paris or Genoa or New York, but on a boat, I can understand it, given your Mediterranean roots. But let me now ask you something about your education. Did you learn more from Albini than from the teachers in Milan? You always speak of him with great devotion. 
RP: I went to university really to ‘occupy,’ not to study, so yes, I learned more from Albini, but also because he was a real craftsman, someone who took pleasure in doing things, checking, controlling, making prototypes, making pieces. It was a good school, but you know, I wasn’t very good at school when I was a child, so I grew up with the idea that, by watching people, you learn. You don’t grow up with the arrogant attitude of thinking you know enough. On the contrary, you grow up with the idea that you have to learn because you’re not good enough.
LFG: So you were like a sponge with Franco Albini.
RP: Albini was one. Also, there’s a non-romantic aspect of things and events. I was born shortly before the war. I’m the child of a storm.
When the war ended, I was 8 years old. So I grew up with this feeling that things would become better in time. Every day, every week, every month, the street would be a bit cleaner, my father would come home a bit more relaxed, the food on the table was better. I grew up with the idea that the passage of time improves things. It’s mad, but it gives you the optimism you need to be an architect. I grew up with this idea, and even now I think that tomorrow will be better than today.
LFG: Yes, we all know that you can’t be an architect unless you’re an optimist. 
RP: Optimistic from every point of view, especially if your work is to make places for people, where they can come and stay together. It’s about a civic duty. Then the world is a little better each time, it is. It’s little by little, drop by drop, day by day, but you’re doing something to make a better world. If you don’t believe in the capacity of architecture to change the world, if you don’t believe in the capacity of beauty, and civic life and civic values, to make a better world – for me it’s not just utopia, but a real possibility – then you had better change profession, you’re in the wrong one… 
 

LFG: I want us to wrap up this conversation discussing your recent project in Santander, where you have finished the Botín Centre. That’s good news because in Spain before, you had only built a small base for Luna Rosa, in Valencia.
RP: I never really worked in Spain so I’m pleased I’ve been able to do this. It’s fantastic for a number of reasons. First, I learned to love Santander, which has a double identity: one towards the Atlantic, and one on the bay. The first one is rougher, breezier, with the waves coming. The other one is like a lagoon with light which is very similar to the light of Venice. The Jardines de Pereda look south and at the bay… the light is fantastic. I saw the place after Emilio Botín came to us, and I was seduced by it… but also by the family, especially Emilio Botín. We became very close quite quickly. I never thought of him as a banker, but more as a dreamer. He was quite a tough banker, I guess, but he was also a man who was in love with education, with the new generations, with Santander… and with the idea of building something there. The Jardines de Pereda were separated from the bay by a busy road, and the decision to take the traffic down so that the Jardines could reach the water became very important. It was made with the family, with Emilio, with the mayor, and of course with the community. So it was, again, a story of love for public space. It was not about rhetoric or about showing muscles. Emilio Botín wanted something with a presence, but without standing out too much in the place. And that’s why we made the building fly… because we have the trees there, so when you come from the city, you go through the park, so by putting the building on columns, like trunks, the building actually disappears. You see through the leaves, the ground floor is free. If it rains you go there and you’re in the shade if it’s a sunny day. Then you go up to the Plaza, a kind of space between the two buildings.
LFG: You imagine it full of people moving up and down…
RP: As soon as it stops raining in Santander, everybody goes to the Paseo. This building is right at the end of the Paseo, where it joins the Jardines… so of course people will be a sort of fourth dimension. There are not just three dimensions, there’s a fourth one: movement. This is also true at the Pompidou, with the escalators. It’s about movement. Even the Whitney, with those stairs. It’s about people moving. What I expect from Santander, from the Botín Centre, is that the ground floor, the plaza, and the stairs will be full of people moving, resting in the bar or just sitting… This will also be very good in the summer because we’re in the shade. And the magical thing there is the light. When you look southward, the light touches the water and rises. The skin of ceramic pieces, 270,000 pieces of nacre, mother-of-pearl, reflects the weather, the light. So it’s a bit organic, like a fish jumping out of the water.
LFG: With shiny scales…
RP: There’s a reason for this. We wanted the building sparkling and playing with the light, gray light or sunny light. Even in the rain. We wanted a building that would have a kind of sparkling skin. So I cross my fingers. I think it’s going to be loved… A good building is one that’s loved, adopted by people. A place like this is what makes cities good places to stay in, because it’s about tolerance, sharing, values, enjoyment, community. This is important. The greatest joy of architects is to see their buildings loved by people. So, whether in Rome or New York or Paris or San Francisco, if I see people smiling and enjoying my building, it’s a joy.
LFG: That’s a good way to end this conversation about the points of the inner compass that has guided you since childhood. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince has an asteroid, as you do, so now you can join the little prince up in the stars…
RP: When they called me about this, you know, I asked if this was a safe asteroid. They said, of course, we’ve been checking for ten years, don’t worry. For how long, I asked. They said, for at least two million years, the asteroid is safe!