Some time ago, we were the first to focus on the activity of young architects who were leaving our country in search of a better future, with more opportunities. This series, of two seasons, in which young architects counted, on METALOCUS, their first professional experiences, experiences outside their country, was a success, with In Treatment I and In Treatment . Now we return to this line of research with architects who, in a permanent or circumstantial way, with more or less intensity, have characterized their professional activity working outside Spain.
None of the interviews will exceed an hour talking. In all of them you can discover the more or less relaxed, more or less stressed, situation of characters versus their daily activity, always accelerated and very rarely paused.
The series begins by taking as an excuse the retrospective exhibition that during these months, the ICO Foundation, in Madrid, is making on the work of this pair of Seville architects.
It was hard to find a place in the busy schedule of Antonio Cruz, in his constant comings and goings to Madrid, nevertheless thanks to the friendly management of his study and facilities given by the architect we managed to realize the interview, that took place in a hotel face El Prado Museum very close to Atocha, a short time before his meeting in the well-known museum and days before that the jury's decision on the extension contest for El Prado Museum, in the old Hall of Realms, was known. One Monday afternoon, two weeks ago.
None of the interviews will exceed an hour talking. In all of them you can discover the more or less relaxed, more or less stressed, situation of characters versus their daily activity, always accelerated and very rarely paused.
The series begins by taking as an excuse the retrospective exhibition that during these months, the ICO Foundation, in Madrid, is making on the work of this pair of Seville architects.
It was hard to find a place in the busy schedule of Antonio Cruz, in his constant comings and goings to Madrid, nevertheless thanks to the friendly management of his study and facilities given by the architect we managed to realize the interview, that took place in a hotel face El Prado Museum very close to Atocha, a short time before his meeting in the well-known museum and days before that the jury's decision on the extension contest for El Prado Museum, in the old Hall of Realms, was known. One Monday afternoon, two weeks ago.
> We wanted to start with your first dwellings in Calle María Coronel de Sevilla, which marked the beginning of a career of wide recognition. Which factors prompted the decision of proposing a formal result such novel as the courtyard gesture? do you believe that being from Sevilla and knowing so well its urban fabric influenced in the proposal's succeed?
- Well, acting in a fabric like that of Seville could not influence, because the proposed typology was very atypical. What it could influence was the will to make a patio, that time's urban ordinance was very bad in Seville, it said that 25% of the building had to be unoccupied, and it was usually left as a residual portion at the bottom of the lot with the only interest of a lost yard. Having made a patio that is the heart of the house, there, in that sense, has had an influence. The novel form, or the somewhat strange shape, also came from the need to expand the light to the different interior spaces without consuming an excess of surface. The patio with a surface of 125 meters (I cannot remember very well) has the required surface ... there are nearby examples of houses with circular elements and patios with that shape that we liked and that we wanted to connect with.
> Regarding your work abroad. Although today we are very used to new generations leaving our country (perhaps too much), your case was pioneer, then, how did you confront such a new situation? How did you manage to transform the uncertainty into the motor of development of your architectural discourse? How have the barriers changed for the new generations of architects who go abroad searching for new opportunities?
- We faced the situation with a lot of excitement, with a lot of energy, because we had been called...we had previously been called from abroad for teaching in Switzerland, where we first worked in education abroad. At that time, and still today, being given recognition abroad is nice, you like to be well considered in societies that we understand as further developed and advanced than ours. We faced it with excitement and with...let's say...difficulties. We understood it was a difficult problem, we had to meet new ways of being an architect... [for a while the conversation is interrupted while we are served some drinks]...it was a challenge too, a new way of being an architect had to be understood, and being an architect in a foreign country is always different. I guess being a doctor is pretty similar, because the human body cannot vary too much, but the architect's role varies depending on the society it responds to. At the beginning you face situations you don't know how to resolve, but step buy step you start understanding what's the architect role in Netherlands, what's the architect role in Switzerland... you keep learning little by little.
> Continuing in that line, the Rijksmuseum project in Amsterdam has allowed you to gain wide experience on the working methods used abroad. Do you find sharp differences with the ones in our country? Which specific aspects shall we import or work to preserve?
- The difference is huge. I mean, in Spain an architect is a professional that traditionally receives (most times, despite things are changing) a full assignment and then he hires engineers or people to do the numbers, a series of teams. You subcontract when there are no big offices offering all the services. However, those roles are usually separated abroad. The client hires an architect, but also an structural engineer, supplies engineer, he does independent contracts. These professionals are sometimes related somehow, they get along well, or form teams that do frequently work together...but the truth is that the contracts are not linked one with the other. Thus, the different responsibilities go to different actors, they do not mix like here, where architects are responsible of everything, from a leak and to a non-working air conditioner...yo become responsible of anything. from another point of view, that great responsibility gives you a lot of authority because you can manage everything, you can manage budgets, you can deal with contractors with authority, and that is also an advantage. Then. what should we learn and what should we leave? Look I don't know but when mi foreign architect friends have any assignment in Span and they ask me how is it working here, i always tell them 'look, it is going to be very different, you are going to have a lot of freedom and much more capacity, but you are also having a lot of responsibility', with that balance between authority and responsibility, there we should take the best of each one out.
> In which country would you like to work?
- Well,... any... in the United Stated we would like to have an assignment...en Europe... well, we are happy with what we have had in Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands... are two very good countries to work as architects. we don't know how England , Great Britain, would be, we have no clue, but we certainly would like to work in the USA more than any other place.
> The exhibition at the ICO Foundation is letting us observe your entire works as a whole, rather than individually, which is how we have experienced it through time. It is almost unconscious to make a comparative analysis between works and to look for a common discourse. In which ways has the experience of observing your entire career at a time, make you think about it? Have you made any discovery regarding possible obsessions, overall discourse along your career that you hadn't been conscious of before?
- To us the exhibition does probably not say as much as it does to those who see it from outside, because for us our story has always been perfectly present. It doesn't surprise us, for you to understand me. It causes surprise to see how much you have worked (he giggles), that does, what a lot, what a lot have a worked. That does cause surprise. The guiding thread of our work is probably the unexistance of it, I believe our work reflects that every occasion is different, something we have given a lot of importance: to find the hidden opportunity that each assignment has. That opportunity, that... 'here... here the material can be crafted, here we can fork the structure, here we can make a reconsideration of the function...' Depending on the commission, there is a hidden opportunity to be discovered.
> What would you tell the Cruz y Ortiz of the 70s if you could?
- Not much, right? (laughing) Well sure, now we are way more mature, we are faster than we were...but the truth is that a couple days ago I was reading an interview to Philip Roth, where he said 'I have right read my entire works and I can say I am not unhappy'. More or less.
> La Peineta project was a huge success at its time, but it is also a project to which you have had to come back in the past and again now. How do you face that process of coming back to a project that is somehow 'closed'? Do you take it as an opportunity to apply new knowledge you have acquired, as a continuation process; or as a fully new discovery of the work?
- Well, the project was never closed, it wasn't closed because it was a project that from the contest was determined to be enlarged in the future. But it is true that we somehow closed it, we don't forget that...The contest said that the project was for an audience of 20,000 that had to have the capacity of increasing that number. Every time one thinks of an extensible stadium he thinks 'well ok , I will then do a low building and I will grow it after', but for many reasons we didn't do it that way for many reasons, and I could keep talking about it a lot. We used a piece that was somehow closed. And it has had to be extended, but I also think we have done it in consequence with the preexistence...I always say that in this project there are two challenges, or to wishes: one is that anyone can keep recognizing the original building, as a piece, and we are working on that; the other is to not make the building a result of the coexistence of two things , but to make an harmonic conjunction. That is the big challenge. There are things, regarding continuity, curious things, for instance, right now the ceiling canopy is being set, and there are two pillars, at La Peineta there are only two pillars, but the loads of those pillars where already calculated. In the original project we left those two pairs of pillars with a a foundation and structure powerful enough to receive any potential loads that might come at some point. In the end they came, and in the end the pillars are there and are withstanding the roof.
> In relation to that, and having commented before how in Spain it is the architect who chooses the engineering and technical teams; we also know that in addition to acting in La Peineta twice, you have also twice worked with the same engineering team. Once with Julio Martinez Calzón and nowadays with MC2, the company he founded. How has that relation being, being the 'architect-engineer fight' known by anyone? What have been the fundamental contributions made by the dual work? Has working together been something planned or just a confidence?
- With MC2? Well, there are two engineering teams there. There is MC2 and Schlaich, for the roofing system. We do rarely have troubles working with engineers, we get along together actually. I think we like structures, we know them...not calculating them, but designing them , we know how to generate the idea of the building's structure. And in all those buildings the structural concept is not the counterpoint of a formal idea, structure and shape are rather mixed and linked. both in the concrete area and the roof. .. with Julio Martinez Calzón we contacted because, when we won that contest, we understood that we needed a prestigious person, a good engineer, that we could not collaborate with the ones we were usually being collaborating in seville. The relationship was good. Regarding Schlaich, it was at the moment when we decided to make the cover of the Sevilla Stadium with a cable and membrane structure, we looked for a prestigious engineering firm that had the habit to work with this kind of structures. We contacted them and the same, until now the relation has been very productive, of giving and taking.
> Not only in the ICO exhibition, but in any other media showing your work, handrawing ,models, sketching, are tools that are always present. Now, perhaps unfortunately, this fact isn't so evident among architects. Which important issues you think have been lost in favor of the new technologies and what view do you take of this change in relation to the quality of the projects developed?
- Well, it is an instrument, nothing beyond an instrument and... although for us it's unthinkable, we see some young architects in our studio who draw on their computers directly, without previous handrawing which seems much more immediate to us... Well! Sometimes it has been said that there is a certain architecture which owes the use of the square and triangle for example, and that the fact that the architects had these instruments made a specific shape arise. What has happened now is that the computer allows a huge - sometimes pernicious - formal freedom. It allows to imagine anything and to start to do it, introducing it formally. When we have done some curved shapes buildings, as in Doña María Coronel street (in Seville) or in the Huelva's Bus Station... La Peineta also has curved shapes, but it has a more definite geometry, a circles one, there is geometrically more controllable however in these other two buildings there is a handrawing geometry, that later "made a fair copy", let's say in a very... very manual way, with an abscissas and coordinates axes and fixing a number of points. Today we work with poly... non polylines, with first, second and third grade curved shapes. Anything can be done...
> The existence of this new technological universe, how has it influenced the functioning of your study, the communication way...?
- Well, it has influenced as it has influenced everywhere. Above all, it has given much more quality to the work we can do. That is, it has given a chance of change at any moment. In a project, when you have substantially all drawn, it allows a last minute change very easily; while when we were in those other processes, there was a moment from which you couldn't change. Even when you were doing a competition. In a drawing process which took many days, at the last minute you couldn't change... you can do it in another drawing, but the rest of them were incoherent... you could not do it all again. In that sense, it has given much more changing capacity and much more quality in the product that is finally delivered. With the same staff. And although today you can do more work, with the high quality that the society demands, in the end you need the same staff, there's no saving. Therefore, the economic saving in production has been offset by a much higher quality in the delivered document.
> On a different note about society, towards the context we are facing... how much do you think...
- I don't want to watch the time very much, but at 8:10 - 8:15 we have to cut...
> No problem. How much do you think the users understand the decisions that each built specific architectural answer and how do you think the architects could collaborate so that the citizen understands them better?
- The first thing I want is the user feels comfortable. I want people not to sit down... eh... let's say embarrassed by an architecture piece that imposes on them 'you have to look here, there'. Especially when you work on public buildings, in very functional buildings such as a stadium or an station, the main thing is to use the buildings with naturalness, without the need of think, finding the things that are needed. And on the other hand also happens that the people - in general - is maybe more attracted by 'shouting' or 'self-speaking' buildings than by soft-tone buildings. I was recently in a Dutch town: Arnhem. And there was a train station that seemed astonishing to me, tremendous, formally complicated, as a third-hand Zaha Hadid. However, the people of Arnhem is delighted, because there - in a small town, a 40-50.000 people city - it has been done one thing of these they think that... They're delighted... It happens a lot and I don't want to mention names, it happens with other architects of which everyone wants to have a 'so-and-so' or I don't know what. And to me, therefore... I don't know, it is difficult to people to understand that other way of doing thing less... in which the architect is less protagonist.
> And have you encountered any experience in your career in which - when talking to users - you have noticed issues that you had no projected or that you had not been aware of? How did you added them into later projects?
- It's been a bit of everything in so much career. We have encountered many situations. Surely the most important one has been in the Rijksmuseum work, when we had the controversy with the cyclists. In that they finally succeeded and made us have to change the project and modify important things. But well, the project nevertheless resisted and it has been very welcome. Sometime you accept it well, sometimes you accept worst because you think they aren't right, but well, the architect's work is not like that of the painter or a pure artist, who doesn't have to respond to anyone. Our business has to be in dialogue with economy, society, users, the city, urbanism, with so many things! Is a...
> Fortunately as well, right? It's funnier.
- Yes, yes, it's such a complex object in which so many people takes action that, well, you have to be aware of that mediatized-by-reality art.
> Where do you think architecture is pointing now? At a time when the world is clearly taking a turn, when the citizen demands changes and the system begins to - maybe - 'collapse'. How should we the architects react? How to adapt architecture to the coming new world?
- Well, there are two ways. Facing the reality, there are to ways to approach it. As a friend of mine said: 'You have to resist the reality, but just a little' (laughing). I mean, you can run behind reality, or you can try to bring reality closer to what you think. The politicians' dilemma, what does a politician have to do, find that idea that will received more votes because it's underlying at that moment or to have his own idea and convince that that is the one, and if you have fewer votes, then fewer votes? Never mind the fact! I don't see we have to work against public opinion... But neither is the public opinion which should dictate you way of doing things, but you have to ensure public opinion accepts your ideas in the end, what you're proposing.
> And in that sense, what would be your position regarding these new participatory architecture forms in which people comment on, you respond and such?
- We're not interested in that.
