 So I'm delighted to introduce the guest speakers of the fifth and very last panel of our symposium constructing practice. This panel, Norm Corr, brings together three practices that have seemingly accepted or embraced some of the long-standing rules of the game of architectural practice and in terms have found opportunities and critical modes of operation precisely from within them. We are pleased to welcome our guest speakers, Stéphanie Brue and Alexandre Terriot from Brutère, Paris, Julian Schubert and Elena Schutz from Something Fantastic, Berlin, and Aaron Forrest and Yasmin Vobis from Ultramodern, Providence, Rhode Island. Galle Salomonov from G-SAP will moderate this very last session. So we're ready to start, Stéphanie and Alexandre. This one? Okay, good afternoon and at first, of course, thank you very much for your invitation. Unfortunately, Stéphanie could not come for different reasons so I'm alone just to present the work of the officer just to talk about our practice through this title which is the Neutrality of Technique. So just to introduce, I won't talk so much about the office, I mean how we work but just to talk much more about the topics that we try to deal with day after day. So Stéphanie and I, we only know how to think by making things and it would have been impossible for us to arrive to those discussions and questions today without doing our work day by day. But in our case, daily work never created thesis or corpus. To say it clearly to make is our way of thinking, a way of thinking it is also a way of communicating. And since the beginning of our office, so 10 years ago, so our process is strongly linked with an achieving work but not specific subject nor corpus has ever been predefined. Things just appeared as the work was moving forward, it is the only engine. For 10 years things succeeded one another, text, images, projects, constructions. Three years ago we published the book Introduction, this book which expresses our attempt to settle a day by day established thought. The book can be considered as an iconographic catalogue mixing references, pictures, drawings, plans. Stepping back, it seems to me that this particular way of writing down informations randomly is one of the most important things to preserve. When we are asked why, I do not have any other answers that saying that is the most honest way to do it. Because it has been settled this way and in the end we could not work on another way. So the construction step by step of one single ensemble which tries to be totally free. In our work if there is a plan it is visible only when the journey has been made. The whole singularity of our practice is created by a linear jumble because this is definitely a jumble. Questions never appear right away, they settle and mix during the work process. We are therefore trying to build a current work where projects hold onto each other looking for a common base. So this common base is to build usual object, useful, poetic for a day-to-day use. So we found this image while working on the Berlin New Museum competition in Berlin and this photo montage was made by Francesco Venezia. It places next to each other two iconic buildings, the Acropolis and the New Gallery by Mies. The real subject that simulates us is here, is not really a time nor a style question. It is more about the connection between architecture and programme, between support and supply. In fact, our architecture is thought about, made how it becomes architecture, how it overtakes its spatial condition and its rigidity in time, how it adapts itself in order to avoid obsolescence. This other picture does not talk about function nor programme. Before anything, it defines some user's potential, a possible future. This picture illustrates a central question in our work, the question of my ability, how a building is able to absorb the evolution of uses. Beyond an extremely precise and defined programme, the whole purpose is for us to organise a constructive and structural device. This device will be able to apprehend the reversibility of functions through time, in short to give the buildings the possibility to progress and to offer to its users a form of liberty. For us, every project has to be considered as being part of an unfinished chain. It starts its way before us and will be pursued later on with someone probably carrying other ideas or agenda. In that sense, architecture is directly linked with the other, who completes its, it is intended for someone. It is an intended art, so never finished as a suggestion. In a way, all those pictures do not inform us about a building as an architecture, but about its uses. The pictures you just showed before have been taken in the sport and cultural centre in Paris we completed about two years ago. This building express this ambitious to disconnect form and function and to create the conditions for a flexible and progressive building. The purpose is to create a use incubator, but also a new polarity in the city. Of course, it is obvious that we cannot predict the future, but we believe that our constructions must offer possibilities and as architects, we have to imagine this world of possibilities. For us, to draw a structure is to conceive a malleability of uses. This malleability, it is the main question of exigence that we ask all of our buildings. In short, our buildings have to be strong enough to organise themselves until their own mutation. And then we like to say that the only important programme is the duty of adaptability. Structural irregular irregularities which only exist because of this adaptability priority. The project then puts together in a compact volume a large diversity of functions uses atmospheres, materiality, above all else, you can see a stratification of layers formal and functional in the meantime. This plan is simple, intelligible, it is a square with slightly curved sides. It contains an optimised and simple device, a beam column structure, a serving core and a large free spaces for the largest inhabitability. It is about finding solutions that will find echoes as much into the palace of technology as into a kind of inspired makeshift repair. You are more interested in the question of gathering together of drawing things than in architecture. Here each organ takes part in a global composition of the building. For us all the elements are independent just as layers. It is an autonomous partition of singular elements. Each entity has its own constructive and aesthetic integrity. Some items may appear to have been removed from a catalogue but they are of deliberated choice. From the boards fixing the frame of the metal windows to the profile for the handrails, radiators, metals for nature, panels of tiles which cover some of the walls, all the details relate to the houses. Of course this composition element by element also supports an idea of economy where the bricolage is not far away aggregating elements without any order or any subordination. What interests us is to transmit the functional and economic problems on the formal problems where the economy asserts itself as the decisive issue in the project development. It is the question of brightness that is to say the sign of pragmatism which testifies to an undeniable sense of optimality. Of course we do not underestimate the formal aspect in our project. For each of them the goal is to offer the maximum livability by organizing only two types of space, free space and serving spaces. Here the project is therefore a set of floors, checking off the ground, clearing a public square on the ground and a public belvedere on the roof. You have here a clear illustration of the ambitions of the project where each tray can accommodate any kind of uses. Openable and divisible spaces are achieving sporting event living room, in short a sort of scenography in white. The indeterminacy of those trays should not be understood as an open flexibility that would represent a spatial lesealie. On the contrary a generous framework maximizing spatial qualities, nature, productivity, and creation to improve the collective the unpredictable possible joie de vivre. An optimistic vision in this idea of design and transformation then maybe neutrality is finally freeing yourself from the programmatic constraints. This is the picture of the facade prototype. So from a constructive point of view we are using specific techniques and strategies the aim is to propose thermal efficient buildings without compromising light and transparency. Because we want to bring the landscape in the building to live it and that our buildings are easy to be read. An office project in rehabilitation and extension in Paris, program in reverse, modern and prototypical existing building from the 70s. The concept of maximum capacities is amplified by the incisions of the new structure that follow the logic of the existing. The intervention can be summarized as a kind of micro surgery, a limited but effective grafting game, a corner chamfer turned into a curve, slaps extended, a new bias of simple facade. By following the logic of those decisions it is the whole new constructive and spatial organization that is being put in place. Finally what interests us is to produce buildings like skeletons, buildings that could even do without skin. It is the play with the current techniques that allows to offer a generosity of surface and use, like this project in construction in Paris which is a residence for researchers. But this glass screen that concentrates uses values acoustic fire thermal constraints, is a culmination of a hard work to preserve this simplicity reconciling the technical palette and inspired rafi-stallage or bricolage. Without going in the technical resolution, it is for us to push the limits by putting back technical or other prerequisites. We strive to work on simple and clearly defined forms. Kelly's worst work shows his obsessions with geometric work on those new ones, which for us translates by the ability of geometry to induce different spatialities. So we claim a spatial neutrality and an obvious and passionate pleasure of the plan, while most elements of the plan are rational, their organization is free and is imaginative, as if the reason and the feeling could go together in the organization of the project. The distinction between servant spaces and served spaces always seems deliberate. There are precise constructions that serve open spaces and clear, minimum structure for maximum use. In those compositions, each element, structure, system, partitions, facade, maintain their old technical and aesthetic autonomy. Last winter, we won with Bauquins from Brussels, a competition for a university building on the campus of Lausanne in Switzerland. So I guess you know some of the buildings that you have on the map. I think this project probably crystallized all our obsessions because all the time we work with our obsessions. A flexible infrastructure that can transform characters and behaviors, induce changes, integrate progress and development. A building has an infrastructure that offers a radical, separate structure and technical facilities in order to allow a total reconfiguration of the trace and to ensure a reversibility of its program throughout the life of the building. Our attention is now focused on the membrane that manages the relationship with the external environment in order to promote the emergence of a collective life that will organize freely of those trace. This space manages the climatic and social transition between inside and outside. In those conditions, the project does not seek to transform its environment, but to continue the evolution of a typology proven on the campus by simply updating its potential as an infrastructure. So as a conclusion, all those constructions have in common our desire to exacerbate contradictions, cultural, technical and artistic contradictions and to make something productive. So you understood we are not theoretical or dramatic architects. The main purpose is to remind from this lecture is that all those images, drawings, make more an attitude of ours that is not so much the search for beauty as freedom. Thank you. Julian Schubert and Elina Schütz. Hello. I am Elina Schütz. I am from something fantastic from Berlin and I actually have my two partners with me. Leonhard Streich who is sitting there in the back wave and Julian Schubert who is at the door. Actually we tried for this, like we took the occasion to kind of self-analyze our office and like us working together and so I am not going to really show you projects of ours. I will only like maybe touch on them to show specific aspects to illustrate how we work but please excuse me if I am not like really going into detail so you sometimes won't be able to really understand the actual project itself but that is how it is supposed to be for the moment. So the financial and economic crisis I think for many of us that have spoken today I think is in some way, in different ways important like for some of us a turning point. For us actually we didn't exist before the crisis so we started our office in 2010 so in a way for us like working as architects we have only worked in crisis or a post-crisis condition so for us crisis or post-crisis is actually like the normal, the zero and I like to think of what was before the crisis which is like obviously for people who have worked in the situation before for me feels almost a bit artificial or like not the natural situation where of course budgets are limited and of course resources are very limited but besides the fact that we are kind of crisis natives I think the actual moment when everybody was talking about the crisis was for us also a moment where a big broader horizon opened. We were just finishing our studies in 2009 and it was a moment when like very big questions were asked where things were questioned regarding their system relevance like when people were thinking about like should this firm or this bank be saved or not like people really asked do we need this or not like what do we really need so this graphic that is about like resources and the globe I think everybody knows these kinds of graphics it's just one of like a typical thing that you would find in the daily newspaper back then when it was not about like like the details didn't matter so much but everybody was really asking what do we want like what do we have to do what is relevant and for us just finishing our studies of course we were also wondering like what can we do what is of relevance and what can we as architects do to be part of this bigger game and we then decided to instead of doing kind of a traditional at our university traditional thesis project which would be like designing a museum or an airport we decided to make a book and actually make this book and collecting all the thoughts and all the interests that we have and also like kind of building a basis for what we would like to work as and what should be the focus of our work in the future and this book came out in 2010 right after we finished our studies and when we started our office maybe also one aspect economically for us starting our office right out of university was also I think strategically a good decision because yeah when you're a student you have a very low let's say like you don't need a lot so starting an office out of this situation is kind of makes you economically very independent and we have been working since then this is our office in Berlin it looks a bit more crowded now this is when we just move in and now in 2017 we kind of at least formally structured our office in two parts and something fantastic which is an architecture firm and in something fantastic art department which is art direction graphic design and other designs so we're generally we're working in a broader field of architecture but so this is I would say maybe the facade or the outside structure when we are looking at what we're doing every day at our office we just sketched this this week like to thinking about what we're what that's actually the time the percentage of time that we're spending in different fields and I think an important part is teaching we're teaching architecture and urbanism at the ETH in Zurich it's a post-graduate master program that is focusing on mostly informal urbanism then there's this part I put the label spatial design like this is also architecture but it's also exhibition design and it's interior design then graphic design which I would say like two thirds is books traditional old traditional books and almost all of them are on architecture and actually the art direction part is the only part that is can be completely um unconnected to architecture while all the other parts are connected to architecture and the tiny size of planning is when we're actually planning a project to be realized this part is also so small because most of the time when we're working in architecture we are collaborating with other firms so we leave like these um the part of the actual realization to other partners I would like to show you a in a way in several ways typical project and also project that where we kind of like the mechanisms and how it's working because first of all we like if we can apply all these different parts of our work in a project so we can like kind of have a like make a a package a wholesome package that is also kind of consistent in itself and the other reason why this project is kind of typical for us is because we were involved in a very early stage and the project is the exhibition at the German pavilion at the Venice architecture by any and for this project that we talked to the curator even before he decided to apply in the competition that is then deciding who is curating and designing the exhibition so we got together and talked about the the topic which is um arrival cities and just so you understand the context arrival cities are neighborhoods in cities um that are mostly used by people who are like by migrants or people who are arriving you in the city from other places from the countryside and those neighborhoods have very specific qualities in helping those people kind of getting established in the new context and what we decided so we were responsible for the exhibition design first of all and we decided to display this kind of openness and dislike lack of borders that these arrival cities have by opening like opening the pavilion to the outside and like adding additional entries and exits to the pavilions were like actually like architecturally changed the pavilion so we decided where the openings should be we had like some struggle with the local municipality about is it possible to change this building or not and then of course we did all the the 2D exhibition design so we laid out the walls and we decided how also how the content is going to be put on the wall in this case actually we also printed all of the displays on our office printer in our office and I also glued most of it to the walls we also designed the furniture for the pavilion or we chose the furniture in some cases put together the different parts or this is actually a piece of furniture that we designed which is a phone charging station which is of course like inspired by arrival cities and these like yeah phone charging stations that exist in arrival cities then we also designed the catalogs of the of the exhibition and in those catalogs we also designed the way that numbers and statistics and the information is going to be displayed and last but not least we did the CI of the project and the invitations and the digital and the print invitations and these kinds of things we actually also designed the party the opening party and this is this of course gives us the chance in a project like that to be like yeah to make a very consistent body of work and what is important for us that so in this project everything is connected to of course the topic of the exhibition what is not important for us is to create a specific style so we are not interested in creating a formal style that you can then for example recognize and say oh I think I know that this this is most likely by something fantastic I think this is this doesn't work I don't think that this is possible and it's also not wanted by us and I think this is because we like to always adjust to the actual topic and I think another thing that is also that is more important to us than a formal style is something that I now called overlying themes I guess this is actually correctly you would call this underlying themes but I think they're so important to us that I call them overlying themes and these are generally things that that are important to yeah let's say really the three of us it's things that we discuss it's things that we believe in and that we have already believed in for years there are sometimes changing a bit there are sometimes adjusting a bit but it's quite a stable set of of topics that we care about and they're often like combined appearing in a project some one one more appearance and the other one may be more in the background but they're always there I make an example maybe over it's it's one of the like simpler and easier to understand and less complex of them but I thought it makes a point so here you see three projects of ours and the first one is fashion show design we were asked to design a fashion show and instead of like designing a setup and realizing a big setup for the fashion show putting the light putting the music putting the sound we looked in Berlin for just like suitable place that would have already all these features that we thought are the right features and are like just like suitable for the label and we decided on Neue Nationale Galerie and of course because this place is not for rent never and if it was it's not affordable and we decided to just stick to the house rules of the museum and design the fashion show according to those rules so we're not breaking the rules so nobody can really really have a problem with us making a fashion show and this is so now comes the topic minimal means so we are using of course like almost no material means to do the fashion show and also very limited material means actually after the show we picked up some cigarettes that the guests had left and two hours later we were sitting back in our office and we're like yeah did this just happen another example is furniture series that we're this is an ongoing project and it's we're we're developing furniture that can be realized with minimal means and this is not only that the the products that you use to build the furniture have to be available in a local building store but also in the case of that piece that I'm showing which is a modular bar furniture you don't it's designed in a way that you do not have to make any cuts in the material because obviously cutting is complicated so minimal means again and the third example I already told you earlier it's the displays in the exhibition that are done with a a free printer and they're not only done with a free printer but they're also black and white prints and I think this also shows it's not it's not minimal means doesn't mean little means it just means as little as possible and of course as much as necessary and I think everybody who has ever used an a free printer knows that usually the color prints are not very satisfying like they usually don't match and they're not like reliable so we chose to use black and white prints and print on a colored paper which is I think pretty much the best balance of value and beauty that you can achieve again minimal means and of course like the bigger posters they're just put together from multiple sheets and this was already almost it so now then we were wondering okay what would we like to do in the future this is the little wish list and we would like to stay diverse meaning we would like to not become experts we would like to go on working in different parts of the discipline ideally we would also go a bit broader and I think this is then connected also to the second wish which is staying free we would like to be and stay independent from both economical I guess mostly economical limitations and we feel that this is maybe partly also connected to staying small meaning that we do not want to be urged to engage in certain projects just to keep a machine running that we have started we would like to become more professional and then the last thing is we would like to become developers and I think this is has two parts one developers in the actual real estate architecture sense because I think earlier there was also a question of like the architects what do they have an agency I feel like or we feel like architects are usually or often asked to join when already a lot of decisions have been taken so we would actually like to become and we're also working on this to happen we would like to become developers and but actually the second meaning of this is maybe the more important one we would like to become developers in the sense that we would like to start things ourselves and actually ask people to work on projects with us we are not doing competition so in that way I think that was also a question that came up earlier we're not speculative in the way that we're doing competitions but we would like to become more speculative in the way that we would like to start new things and engage in projects that we do not know yet if they are ever going to happen or if they're ever going to pay back thank you so our last guests are in forest and Yasmin Vovis hello first of all thank you Enrique and Juan for inviting us it's been a really really fascinating and interesting day for us in part because we identify with a lot of the struggles and the themes that we've heard so far but I guess to jump right in so we are ultra modern we are a small practice based in Providence Rhode Island from where we teach at RISD but also currently at the Cooper Union and we focus on a range of projects but most of which are public in nature so I think in a talk like this it's quite tempting to try to explain the practice through a set of kind of final published images of projects but I think that you know not only are these images kind of easily available on the internet and so therefore at this point not terribly unique they actually don't do much to explain the various turning points in our work together over the last several years so for this talk we have put together a series of alternate images that represent inflection points in our practice some of them are going to be process images others are images by others that we find ourselves returning to over and over again in the course of our work we find these images important in large part because practice is in its nature contingent upon external events but in the course of rushing around to meet deadlines certain themes have emerged in the work and around which we have started to build something perhaps a little less reactive more coherent and seemingly premeditated in that sense you could say that the following images over the course of several years have constructed us as much as we have constructed the practice my let's take my microphone so yeah so the images are groups kind of by theme or by these these words and they aren't necessarily chronological and they are reflective so it's not like we came up with this list of words when we started the practice and just said that's what we're going to do but the the first one which is really quite important for us is the word structure both of us worked at different times for the structural engineer Guy Nordenson and as a result became quite interested in the way that structure can be understood as a kind of proto-architecture the kind of bare necessity for creating a framework within the actions of various kinds can play out and working the other really important thing for us about working with key it said it showed us the power of a kind of more impersonal approach to the creative process one in which the design is valued for what it enables rather than a signature style and importantly this isn't an approach that devalues aesthetics it just kind of reformulates the terms on which beauty is judged but the the word has a second meaning referring to order or organization or social structure and we've come to see these two definitions of structure as in constant dialogue with each other creating a kind of productive friction between what is built and what's possible in every project and looking back this interest in the relationship between material order and social order informs even our first built project which was a cross laminated timber pavilion built in Boston in 2014 which is probably the least norm core of our projects it's this moment when we were still kind of working with geometry as something that was present in the practice more so than recently so actually I'm going to go back I think that that project kind of clarified a lot of things for us and I think one of the things that it helped us understand was that this kind of complex geometry ended up really kind of strongly prescribing the social interactions that could take place and so in subsequent projects we've really kind of tried to focus more on action rather than on form so we at some point started looking back at this set of images that we actually made when we were in school together in grad school seems like a long time ago now but so what they were is that there was this webcam installed at Bryant Park and we figured out that we could start collecting images off of that webcam every 10 minutes and so we started making these kind of digital averages of the space right so this is we would take a full day or we would take a week in this case it's a kind of full year long exposure of the park and I think what was what's intriguing and looking back at this work is that you really start to kind of see human and architectural activity kind of blurring together we started to see the kind of material and the social as kind of co-equal elements playing off of rather than interfering with each other the image also kind of makes us think of architecture as a kind of framework for actions you know not as a kind of spectacle itself but as a way to embrace multiple timescales and multiple publics and looking at the city in this way we started to understand the necessity and perhaps also the pleasure of embracing these kinds of generic and generous frameworks for open ended actions and so we thought of this kind of overlay of activities in our subsequent projects often with drawings like these that kind of project potential inhabitations and where activities and furniture are just as present and as solid as the kind of traditional architecture which itself is kind of reduced down to a lightweight spatial framework we also working more with photography started using kind of multiple exposures as a way to photograph our models to understand them through layered and shifting patterns of inhabitation and so thinking of the architecture as a kind of simple framework was crucial to make a kind of large scalar shift a viable proposition like in this project where the kind of simplicity of the approach really allowed for a kind of maximum generosity and this is a good example of a term that that is definitely retrospective and isn't even our own. We were interviewed a little over a year ago by an intern at the architectural league and she said oh I think your project has a lot to do with boundaries and we were like yeah that's that sounds good so it did become important that this kind of interest in action and habitation and social organization structure have some kind of material consequence and so this actually led at first kind of unwittingly and then later more more kind of intentionally into this multi-year series of investigations into different types of boundaries and this photograph of the rooftop of Alejandro de la Soto's Maribies gymnasium has always kind of spoken to us about the power of a simple boundary to differentiate between inside and out. The chain link fence here speaks to this kind of veiling of the playground from the adjacent city which then sets up a space of separation for these new forms of play to unfold and the space itself is just this kind of bare concrete slab and it's the boundary that actually makes that the actions possible and we were as a side note we were introduced to the work of de la Soto by some Spanish studio professors we had in grad school for myself in Yaki Abla and for Yasmine Luis Mancia and Emilio Tugnion and they're very kind of influential in our way of thinking partly because they just at a moment when architecture was really focused on kind of iconic form they showed us how a kind of more simple and humble approach could kind of produce work that was more even more powerful and beautiful than the things we were seeing on the internet and the magazines at the time and so through a series of experiments first with models and and then at full scale we began to explore how a boundary could begin to kind of shift definition by doing something as basic as taking a giant piece of fabric with some holes in it and draping it low enough that it would create a new datum separating floor from ceiling while the holes became rooms in which people could congregate and socialize or taking a rectangular box and just lining the perimeter with giant swing doors instead of just one single door and which through opening and closing would allow varying degrees of openness for different types of gatherings and performances well at the same time dramatically kind of deepening the distance from inside to out or in distributing a grid of tightly spaced vertical posts could start to create a field that operates somewhere between a kind of column and wall condition radically extending the boundary and perplexing the kind of notion of the interior. Now I want to talk a little bit about I guess the context of Providence where we moved three years ago and that was really the time when we were able to really start the practice in earnest and I mean just to put it out there I mean we both love New York we lived here for many years but I think that moving away from New York was incredibly liberating I mean by comparison you know time and space and Providence are cheap and I think it's allowed us to take a lot more risks and to kind of construct a more let's say experimental practice than perhaps we would have here but the context of Providence also includes RISD, Rhode Island School of Design and where we've both taught and you know RISD it's a bit of a cliche but it has this kind of emphasis on making things of kind of thinking through constructions and being in the context of an art school which was actually incredibly different than our own education has really forced us to reconsider both our working methods but also our education and to think of practice really not as a kind of foregone conclusion or a kind of premeditated manifesto but rather as a laboratory for testing ideas and so you know for each of our projects we work through many physical iterations with physical models and this really allows us to engage in questions of how things are made and how they're made to stand up. We also make a lot of full-scale tests you know working often with rather conventional forms but unconventional materials so for example here is a roof mock-up made entirely out of insect screen without any supporting structure so with through mock-ups like this we really ask questions like how do you discipline a material that is so inherently floppy something that so clearly resists any kind of architectural definition of firmness and so this notion of a kind of laboratory for testing things really allows us to also kind of absorb things into the discipline of architecture that would typically kind of resist it and I would also add since we have this image in front of us that the kind of possibility for failure is incredibly real in each of our projects but I think that's kind of what keeps things interesting and so often we also think about how the kind of construction process is part of the architectural idea and I think this in part comes from I think working with Guy Nortonson so where we we kind of think very directly about these kind of very pragmatic issues and in that sense the kind of aesthetic of our projects is tied to questions of construction and kind of questions of production and we often think about these existing processes as a starting point you know whether it's the lifting motion of a crane or the maximum dimensions of mass timber that can be kind of trucked to a site and then how one could also reorganize these givens into kind of alternate and cohesive realities that is also say I think that we kind of we kind of believe that without construction there is no architecture and that the exchange of ideas and practices with labor and craft are kind of fundamental to our discipline and so while the previous images start to construct an idea of what our interests are and how we got here one thing that's really kind of fundamental in each project is that within the kind of apparent simplicity they're able to accommodate and kind of varying levels of contradiction and in contrast with a kind of orthodox minimalism I'd say that they're rooted more in friction rather than effortless resolution and these images that we're sharing are important partly because they're able to at once embody those frictions and to clarify them that is they become productive and instigators for architectural thought so the idea that a simple pairing of a technological concept a very large flat roof made out of wood suspended by 13 point supports can be combined with a simple idea of leisure a couple resting on a picnic blanket an image lifted from an Eames film to push a project beyond the symbolic and turn it into a kind of typological challenge that's ultimately the question that we keep returning to which is how to take a few seemingly simple innocuous ingredients and combine them in a way that begins to allow for complexity so looking back at the project grid but with the kind of critical process images substitute for the the final images you can these images are in some ways kind of functioning for us as diagrammatic agendas for each project so each one can be understood as a combination of some kind squaring material conditions against the conceptual the technological and the social and for us this is an approach that values this kind of simultaneity of the architectural project and shouldn't necessarily be understood as a pairing down or removal of architecture as much as an opening up in an effort to respond to the complexities of everyday life thank you hello everyone I'm I'm Gallia it's so good to meet everyone first thank you and Ricky and Juan for putting such a great group together today it's been um as a non-young practitioner uh it's fantastic uh it's ultra modern uh to have a group of people that have so much um to to offer uh I would start by saying that um if this same intention the same idea of a panel was attempted 20 years ago um I feel that the group would have been very different and one of the characteristics that I think your presentations have is that um none of you are defensive you present your work in a very matter of fact you know this is what I do and it's it's a more self-assured way that what I remember people presenting years ago I also feel like there is a uh commonalities common things uh maybe people travel more maybe people teach more maybe people go to Bayanians more but I my first question to you is um when you see today the trajectory of today and you compare that with the trajectory you know with a similar group of practitioners being presented to you in lectures when you were students um as a group do you see any um any coincidences or departures that are significant to you from today to 20 years ago or when when you were a student yeah 20 years ago it's too long um that's a that's a great question I mean I think uh there there are some commonalities and there are some some major differences uh one of the commonalities I think is the interest in trying to do something out in the world I think that um when we were in uh in in school you know between basically 2000 and 2008 what are you saying where was that yeah Princeton University yeah um the um uh I think that uh architecture at that moment was uh was in a recovery of a different kind in the sense that uh the the um academia had become so focused on issues of theory and absent practice that there was a whole new generation many many of whom are here today actually um who were saying no we actually have to make things out in the world and I think that was a big uh certainly an inspiration to us as students that we were interested in in that version of um of what was happening in the academy uh rather than the one that maybe proceeded at 10 years earlier yeah um that said I think that there uh you know every every architectural moment seems to be a kind of reaction to a previous moment and at that moment the reaction to to kind of um that that relentless focus on theory was to just make a lot of architecture and to really kind of emphasize the the design and the designer's role in making incredible things um and I think uh for us um we wanted to kind of take a step back from that and think how can architecture um especially you know if we're if we're not working uh you know we're just starting out we have very small things available to us in terms of projects how can we do have a kind of maximum impact with the minimal set of things that that we do have at hand um Elena when you talk you you talk about you know you had the the world theory in the background almost in throughout the presentation uh and and uh and it was in the context of work theory work theory work theory um what do you what do you say has that um would that work um enlarge in importance over the years in your in your eyes or would would put the emphasis in practice at a certain point require that you become more pragmatic and theoretical as a firm so I think um our office uh touching theory is mostly in our teaching like the part where we do like research and display our research and um the second part is um that we work actually a lot on displaying ideas and theories often not ourselves but other peoples um so I don't even know if in an academic context what I consider theory would be accepted as theory yeah because it's something quite um alive sorry yeah but if if we define theory as everything that is not practical making um I think um it is something very directly connected something that has always been parallel in our uh work yeah um Alexander you you show that image of Ellsworth Kelly and then your plan immediately after and and so one of the things that um you also mentioned uh I think everyone had the word beauty at some point mentioned in your presentations and um and so I I was wondering on uh and you ended your presentation saying that you were in search for beauty and freedom like you wanted to preserve beauty and freedom um not beauty only freedom not beauty only freedom not beauty only freedom so that's okay so from my misunderstanding of uh of your statement let's make that into a question uh I you know I as a practitioner today I many times I have the choice whether to do something beautiful or something new and to me doing something beautiful it's uh it's important it's it's kind of like a motivation uh and freedom is a second it's not so important so for you freedom it's a yeah sure it's it's a it's a theme I mean that's the main I mean I mean it depends about the the the topic are the relationship between what and what and just the freedom is at first in the way to practice I think it's really important and that's I think that's what we are looking for all of us I mean that's what is so interesting in our different practices just to find your own way I mean whatever the it's going on in because our three countries when the context are really different I thought that's absolutely I mean the idea that the the the conditions of architecture are strongly linked with the context I mean about the economical situation and then you talk about this I mean you started with this question but this is not only the economical context so you have all different so for example uh I mean this is our situation so we did only competitions and all the project we built we won through competition we never succeeded to get a client like a direct commission maybe our maybe we had but we didn't succeed to keep the client because we don't like so much to talk with the clients it's just uh when you want to compete when you win the competition then the project is the client shoes the the project then there's no talk are of course you can adapt some parts so that's really important for me that that but I think that's what I like so much through the different presentations this idea that the conditions of architecture are really linked with the context uh not only economical one so that's uh the the first one the first thing uh the other thing about uh the the freedom is um that's what I tried to explain uh uh in the beginning of the the lecture is of course I mean in our situation with Stephanie we don't care so much about uh the aesthetic result I mean the yeah I mean it's a result it's not a goal I mean if it's if we succeed I mean of course you have a form and then you have a result and then you have an aesthetic approach uh but this is not the target for us I mean uh the way to develop the project we try to keep a certain distance with aesthetic not to say yeah I'd like this or I'd like to put the window uh a little bit more on the left or a little bit more on the right that's absolutely not a topic and we try to protect ourselves from that kind of preoccupations because this is not really objective uh elements so that's uh and also about the the way to use or just to live in the buildings that's uh quite important just to create the conditions of freedom for the people who will use the buildings they probably leave them and that's really important just to preserve this idea that's I think that's my okay this is our job or this is our uh a really huge preoccupation to create that conditions of freedom in the buildings now freedom it's it's also a subjective as a category you know there are degrees of freedom and so maybe we can discuss that also for example competitions getting your work through competitions in France where there is a wealth of competitions it's different than getting your work through competitions in the United States where there are much less competitions and so can we kind of circulate around the table and talk about these specific you know freedom freedom in your case is the freedom to respond to a project in the way you see feet um but um and you also uh uh Elena talk about freedom in the context of the Venice pavilion and and and the premise for that project and in this the future of the office as being developers and not being uh the people that come at the end of the process but becoming uh being in charge of describing the the process from the beginning um so can can you Elena explain or either of you what uh freedom in the context of your work is um maybe I say something shortly so this is maybe also connected to your first question when you ask like how did how was it where did architecture practices function like 20 years ago and now I think in a way there is not really a default way of architecture practice so of course that also leaves you with even more decisions when you're like jumping in after university then you have even less orientation on what to do but on the other hand it also does give you a freedom because you I think everybody has to at the at first invent what his or her profession for the next 20 30 40 years is going to be like and this I think is maybe the already a starting point for that freedom and and maybe you want to say something a bit more practical or not practical I don't know if you if you already mentioned it in the presentation but I think for us the this freedom in an also an economic I mean we have the feeling that practicing architecture at least in Germany is a very economically very precarious thing to do so for us the freedom means to to exactly to be diverse to have a diverse set of things so whenever we we work on a project we could you know we could lose this client and all the clients that know that client because also we do other things and and I think that for architectural firms that is difficult and once you have this background of or you have an office in the background that you have to feed with projects it's difficult to stay free you know that's our feeling from our context from from the people we talk to and from I mean practicing architecture in Germany also seems to you actually deal more with lawyers than with construction site like with the construction industry and so I agree it's very different in different contexts and and so whatever the country is it's a fight I mean I mean to preserve this freedom I mean to decide what you want to do I mean what you said about the the the students I think it's also something which is quite important I mean because at the end all I mean what is so important is just to decide the way that you want to build I mean that's really I mean when maybe I don't know now we teach for a few years maybe two or three years so it's something which is really new for us but what is so important for us to not to teach because I don't know if we really succeed to teach architecture but we teach some elements and maybe some we try to open some doors it's much more to help everyone to find its his own way I mean his own obsessions his own preoccupations and that's what is so important in teaching whatever the matter is and it's interesting that you're talking about teaching and practicing going back to Aaron's point of how it's different now than 10 years ago or 15 years ago in Princeton just to back up a bit you know the people that taught me you know 20 something years ago had a very strict separation between practice and theory and so for them practice was for them theory offer freedom writing offer freedom practice was the dirty thing you know practice was like you go and work for som you go and work for KPF and so people that were teachers of mine you know 20 something years ago would would advocate for the architect and the teacher the teacher of architecture as a theoretician not as a practicing person and and and that started to break I would say you know probably in the generation so let's say you get somebody like Bernard Schumi here and that person starts kind of merging the sense of practice may offer things that theory may not and so then you get people like Stan Allen that then goes to Princeton I imagine in the ETH you got people like you know Greg Lien at some point or some of those group of practicing architects that were also theorists and that struggle between the world of let's say Peter Eisenman on one side and Bernard Schumi and things like that and and and then you get the next generation the generation that influences influenced by the large theory practice offices like OMA where you get people that are totally on the other side of the spectrum practice practice practice as you know big or I would say MBRDB was like a very 20 years ago MBRDB would have been in this partner advocating for for practice and the freedom in practice and so things have changed dramatically but what I see is that you are going to a point where you can reconnect these the smaller practice you know you're not here giving statistics about how many countries you have traveled in the last six months how many employees you have how many square feet you're doing it's it's the skill it's important to you and the skill it's important to you why because it offers freedom it offers the ability to do something specific that is that it's that that requires your care why is or do you aspire to a 200 people office at some point no but I there's a lot of interesting discussions so I want to take a step back and just say I don't think that it's I don't think that beauty and freedom are in opposition with each other whatsoever one of the things that was really important about us leaving New York was to go to somewhere with a less strong design culture and to a place where where there's lots of interest in doing good interesting things but there aren't architects there and and or there are but they're they're focused on doing things in the way that they've always done them and it was a huge opportunity for us to go and and say we have to be straightforward at some level because we don't have a lot of money for these projects but but we also can can do something that's much more beautiful than they would get spending the same amount of money with another another designer just a contractor or something like that or buying a shed from depot but in terms of scale I think we we we're always fighting against the small scale we're actually saying like this this is we're not doing enough for this project how do we make it bigger how do we make it do more and I don't think we're that interested in staying you know just a couple people in the office at one time I at the same time I think there's a I think that the kind of boutique offices that have scaled up to hundreds of people are incredibly problematic for our world of architecture and I think that it's important to to think about that it's not just small versus large but there is a kind of small to medium scale that I think can be extremely effective without necessarily getting totally impersonal are there questions from the audience yeah trying to you know it's you know part of a very important thing about Salish in fact there are some pretty interesting things over the course of today with firms with words like welcome and local and gray and but this panel in particular and this is not addressed to a founder but I find it actually even a little bit ironic that the names of you know on this particular panel that's discussing this sort of architecture well in our case something fantastic is a combination of positive and undefined not knowing exactly what but it's good like we're we're optimists yeah we just kind of like that it the positive sound of it but without saying exactly what yeah and I guess in our case I should say that the name was chosen when we were much younger when you're still in school and we were quite obsessed with this Robert Smith's an essay called ultra modern and which is this kind of beautiful rereading of a given situation and so we always felt like that was a kind of great premise for a practice I think in thinking about it over the years I think that the name has taken on other meanings for us and I think that also given the context of school you know we're we're taught by people like Sarah Whiting there was this kind of reevaluation of modernism and this kind of rethinking of some of those principles and I think that we are still working through some of those issues today hey thank you I was curious in each of your practices there's a sort of decision to be very disciplined I think with bruther I think that window conversation was pretty clear about being disciplined like not making giving yourself the ability to not make a decision basically and I think ultra modern similarly there's like this really restrained stripped down do as most as possible with the least and I think something fantastic the a3 printer is like the ultimate discipline and the black and white so just does that like trigger anything for you guys or do you have an idea about that I mean do you know do you mean this disciplined like really not like no um no I don't know I think uh the guy the gentleman from a local office earlier said that he liked to work smart not hard and that that sounds really good I can't say that we work that smart but um there is always this moment when you're designing something and you feel like you're just working too hard or trying to figure out something that's just too difficult and it turns out there's another answer that's much more straightforward and does everything that you wanted to in a way that the more difficult answer couldn't and that's something that we um we try to keep in mind and it usually we only figure it out like tonight before deadline usually but it's but it is a kind of important thing as a for us as a practice maybe I want to add something because I first misunderstood a bit I thought it's like about the discipline of architecture and I think that is something that may be coming back to the topic of our panel the norm core and I think norm core is a is a term that I mean it doesn't it actually doesn't mean normal core but norm according to the norms and I think our discipline sometimes has the problem that it is that whenever we build something new and we here in this room discussing at the colombo university we do something that that that becomes or or tries to become part of a piece of architecture no and then it also to many people I'm afraid it looks like a a piece of architecture which is for them totally different to a house or a building and I think that's something that that at least bothers us where we think we we should maybe we have to practice differently in order to to not just contribute pieces of architecture to the discipline of architecture but to actually contribute to the city with a lot of houses or know what I mean I think this is this is maybe just a sort of conclusion but a comment to to this norm core question and actually doubting that we are norm core or we are trying to fit into this kind of disciplinary body of work I think it's really important what you said I mean just because I mean it was just a starting point or maybe the topic of this conversation and I think about aesthetic I mean there was something which was written in the the the summary I mean in the booklet and I think that's really important I mean just the posture or what is the attitude in front of a certain context I mean we just react and try to find a way I mean so I'm not sure I exactly understand your question but about the discipline or but whatever I think that's really important just to to focus on this idea I mean just about norm core I mean that's really important just to maybe to watch each each practice through this lens lens yeah it's really important I mean that's just what is I mean the idea just to do the present the three presentations the idea on the backside is this one so it's and I think it's a really good lens absolutely and I think our organizers probably can take it from there right because as a closing remark we are going to ask you for a last sentence to add your presentation after listening to the 15 presentations of your colleagues no so we have one microphone here and you formulate the question yeah well basically part of the the attempt is to basically go back to one's preliminary provocation to each one of you in terms of very severe rules as to how you would basically respond and present but with the acknowledgement also that the let's say in we can definitely see where you stand in every one of the practices as a project whether or not it was a deliberate decision or whether or not you're willing to embrace it as a deliberate decision but in the interesting thing is that basically the definition of a practice is probably something that happens retrospectively more often than not when architects start a practice have to pretend they have one until they have one just as you have to pretend the building is being built so that it does get built so so it is in fact a something that could easily be discussed in retrospect so so we by the same token we thought that basically since the event the event has been I mean needless to say an extraordinary event on many different levels and for very different reasons the sort of section across sort of the the architectural debate worldwide a sort of insight into the work you're actually doing and in fact an extraordinary response to the provocation of how you conceptualize on rethink your your practice so but in since the event is sort of over is that we're actually ready to start in other words now it's the perfect moment to discuss what what was basically what is at stake with deliberately with your with the practice I mean we saw bits and pieces of that would be fascinating to basically discuss I'm personally always interested in declarations of exclusion like when when you really but that's I mean going back to Gaglia a generationally when I see an exclusion I see a project so I saw no competitions no public space because we don't do it well no New York which I thought was a really very accurate one by the way so it will be interesting to basically engage you again in one last point you'd like to make about your practice now that the event now that you basically everyone has listened to everyone else very short sentences you know our presentation was so much into explaining our locality and now after listening to everyone else I just wanted to started to travel again a lot to fit ourselves with these other contexts as well so I guess I look at how final would be like trying to be you know between the local and the global that's exactly what we're looking for you know in the in the time sort of leading up to participating in the in today I was sort of very self-focused on what on earth my practice actually you know is and what has been super sort of inspiring about today sitting you know with all of you is just the kind of diversity and openness of what architectural practice can be today and so I think that that's really what I would like to to leave on I think for us it's been largely unintentional but the one thing I think we have focused on with a bit of foresight was to try and create a network of people who share our values whether they're in New York whether they're in Mumbai artisans crosswinds technicians engineers that as and when you know the question of scalability as and when an opportunity comes along that it's a phone call a Skype message of you know an airline ticket whatever it is that you can call on and draw on those resources as a way to defer having to make a decision about how you want to practice I would say I really enjoyed the diversity and and if we if we have something in common maybe it is also the fact that not talking about your own projects and only talking 15 minutes we all have some difficulties with but I think the I mean the contexts are are so diverse that also the practices are diverse so I would love to learn more actually about the contexts I'll just say it was really wonderful that I agree with everyone saying that seeing the diversity of practices is great and I think we were all maybe or speaking only for myself kind of intimidated by the prompt which means it was probably a good one in in in that sense and so so I think we all thought very seriously about what is it that we do and what's important but I think that one thing that I took away from seeing all of these diverse practices was that it seems like everyone really enjoys what they do and I think that's a very important thing about practice is that it's extraordinarily enjoyable despite some of the kind of difficult parts and I think that's something that we tried to try to kind of think about in every project is it is it going to be fun and I think it's a kind of simple thing about practice we're trying to read into what everyone has been talking about today what strikes us and we talked about that before I think is that for us all the all the discussions deal with the the conflict that that I feel that our generation has today which is being torn between wanting to do a lot because there are also there are a lot of structural problems that architecture and planning can and should deal with but also wanting to do less because we know we are in a time where there is a huge environmental crisis and in a way I think it struck us that no no one spoke about it we didn't either and we all flew here and but but at the same time you can really feel that it's it's you can say latent or I think in latent in in everyone's presentation and I think it really represents also the struggle that we have the internal struggle between the problems that we need to solve and and the fact that we really need also in a way to change the way we do it but we don't we don't really know how and I think it's maybe that the fact that we don't dare to speak of it is is also interesting and should be discussed with students later what I'd like during this day is probably to just to try to catch the questions that everybody tried to define and I think that's probably the the the most difficult thing when you start your own practice I mean what you want to do because you can the the word is so I mean the the directions are so you have so many so many directions and so that's what I like and and I think it's not so easy to define it and just to to get the those questions what I mean I'm not talking about the result and about what each of us we did but much more about the questions that they are on the backside of the of the practices and that's so that's really yeah quite stimulating and more as you said before I mean 15 offices and 15 ways to practice and to try to define an approach and to define in a certain way what is architecture and that's really important for me so thank you yeah sir okay partly it's my turn now I'm really thankful for being here because it's been quite interesting and at certain moments somebody asked how do we see ourselves in 20 years as a practice I think it's very interesting fact that you're young practices like we've been practicing for less than 10 years so since this question appeared I just can't stop thinking of myself or my practice or even your practices and wonder how these practices will be in like four years or maybe there's another constructing practice for people with more than 50 years in the practice so that would be nice to be there to see it I have I have to say that for me it's being a very surprising and kind of yeah surprising experience totally unexpected I felt that with every presentation there were like mirrors coming up every now and then and this been this been really kind of releasing for for myself at least because I have to say that in the context of Mexico at least because our office is mainly based in Mexico we feel very often very alien to to the to the local practices and to and to the discussions there and it's been very refreshing to see that other practices in opposite points of the world are dealing with similar situations as what we are dealing of obviously with very different projects very different approaches but almost in parallel ways I mean it's a very strange feeling I don't know if if you share this but yeah this is my my opinion okay no more we have okay can I talk Christmas okay yeah so what I was gonna say I think um it I arrived a few days early from Joberg and walked around New York for a couple days and I kind of at the end of that I was like what seeing everything that's going on here what the hell could I possibly contribute to this to this conversation because it's to the conversation what could I say that would be new or interesting and then arriving here unfortunately being quite late in the day realizing how you know similar and I'm gonna trust you when you when you guys say that these are the 15 you know there was a short list of 160 practices and this is the the cross section but it's it's amazing how similar the themes are and I feel encouraged um yeah and I think it's coming from Joberg as well it's easy easy to bullshit I mean you know most none of you've been there so yeah I could be talk could be lying so I purposely tried to be honest and I'm happy I did and yeah we appreciate that thank you I'm just going to say that we usually work okay um we usually work in Uganda or in Japan so we sometimes feel kind of loneliness so we are only working in that country but it's the today's very it's kind of the happy moment so 15 firms gathered here and we can find out some similarity or sympathy within the diversity so it's very happy to share that moment so well I'm still digesting this intense day of looking at different practices and context I think it was really amazing what happened and I just want to think about like the format that you proposed because it really encouraged us to throw out like the basic of what we're doing and not rely just on the projects and on the buildings which is what we usually do in this kind of context and discussions and that's a yeah it's a threatening in a way to start talking about ideas in a much more specific way than just through photos or floor plans which is the norm okay thank you well not much to say it was a great journey and I thought that we learned a lot and I'm very grateful for being here I think it's the same for more and I don't know if you want to say some words and well as sorry your name again she said the this feeling of travel and so I think this is a great thing that for me too and go to see these things that we saw here today good I have a similar comment about how grateful I feel because in China also we feel quite quite isolated as architects from the rest of the world even though you know that the country is closely very closely related in many other ways but to have a chance to discuss ideas in this way is extremely rare so this this has been fantastic also I think there's this notion of the global and the local I just also find it very encouraging that I share so many of the values of the work that I've seen even though I do feel a lot of distance from a lot of these places of practice but one one other thing I want to mention is I feel like there's a really true authenticity I think to a lot of the work that was shown and I think one thing I've realized recently is that architects really aren't risk takers in so many ways and what I saw today I think was really risky risky stuff and I think that's something that's worth thinking about really what are the risks that we are taking because I think in order to develop our practices there are a lot of barriers I mean I mentioned a lot of those some of those barriers but I think we do have the I think from today I feel very encouraged that that you know those are things that we can deal with but it requires a sort of rethinking of the the way we practice but also with us you know start a practice that is not very old it's hard to have that confidence and this this gives me confidence first of all I think to us I think it's such a great opportunity to revisit New York after 10 years actually that's how I was here 10 years ago and I think a lot of things that already changed but I think in a good way secondly I think because we also I haven't traveled abroad since I we have these young kids for three years already so there was a lot of dialogue and talks within inside China but the topics are they're completely different from today so I think we are really enjoying the mental exercise to me today and showing such a diverse scenery I mean all over the world for the young practice I think it's such a good thing the final thing is I think after today we should go back to your office and really seriously start to learn about crisis in a positive way thank you I don't usually do this but can we take a portrait of everyone in front of the screen so the we should have one yes the big one it's a lot of work can you go back to slide 15 please because we have a diagram with a mix of all the practices presented here today and the moderator so about the anyway the last remark is an expression of gratitude to all of you for accepting the rules of this difficult game to create your own work and until the story in 15 minutes the conclusion is that be sure that these things are not happening you because you are young I think the whole discipline is having the same problems and for any reason your offices are being now the laboratories where these changes are happening and so I think them also the people here in the room who have all practices have learned a lot and have recognized themselves in your discourse so it's wonderful that this has happened it's fantastic that the concerns of architects all around the world continue being the same or less uh independent of countries context technological situations or or universities pedagogies etc and thank you for these 15 different english accents and for bringing I think the vocabulary of the session will be fixed in in in the in the notes that all we have in our papers so that's it here you have all of you and your moderators and I think the density of the of the different biographies are quite similar and it demonstrates that there is an invisible and a latent network of less than 10 years established offices redefining the practice around the world and that is we celebrate absolutely that thank you very much