Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD Ana Catarina Silva

Our 11th stop is at Lütjens Padmanabhan (Zurich, CH) alongside Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Pahmanbhan.



They experience the joy of building when they draw or build a model. To draw a line over a paper, to fold a paper into a model or to build out of folded metal sheets, is the exact same thing 



Oliver and Thomas are extremely faithful to their 1:50 models, in their office, there is a saying: “The model is always right”. So, if anything deviates, the question must be “why is our drawing not as good as the model?”. These models are tools NOT to overthink, we’ve come to realise.



Probably, their platonic love for thinness arose “out of laziness” (their words) from their first model in which "the skin of the building became thinner and thinner and that became into a theme that has stayed with us ever since”. To add up, insolation (and so on) doesn’t allow us to build in a monolithic way anymore “that is the new culture we need to embrace”.



Thinness is a language. “We think that if you use language, you should be serious about what you are saying. But it occurred to us that when you say serious things, you may as well say them with a light tone in your voice.”



“Architecture is self-conscious about it’s own fragility”. Name a more beautiful thing.



“If you are a painter or a musician and you fail, there is not much left. It is really risky. But we still have toilets and a dishwasher that works, and you can cook and sleep and it doesn’t rain in. So, we have a safety net. We can reach net level or we can go beyond it”. Or go beyond it, I repeat.



"You don’t pay us for the architecture, the architecture you get for free.”





Guest: Oliver Lütjens + Thomas Pahmanbhan -  Lütjens Padmanabhan (Zurich, Switzerland)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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Our 10th stop is at Studio Muoto (Paris, FR) alongside Gilles Delalex.



Do you remember the last time you did something for the first time? “When you do something for the first time is when you have the most fun, so we are always hoping to touch new subjects.”

“The brief is a good start, but it is not the end.” So, even if the brief comes with a functional intent, it says very little about its outcome. So, a bathroom is not a bathroom, “you have a million ways of doing a bathroom”. And “a stair is not just a device to go from one floor to another, I hope.”



Structures last longer than it’s functional propose. So, structures must be rather “open for occupation”. “You can go to an empty stadium or go to a stadium during a football match and it is a really different space. And then you can play an opera and it will be different again. And the public will be different.” So yes, let’s use the word “occupation” instead of “function”.



“There is usually a moment where he project becomes so clear, so perfect, that it doesn’t call for anything else but itself. We want to keep them in a state where it’s slightly before the perfect symbol, before architecture closes on itself. (…) We are on an attitude trying to scape architecture, most of the time.”







Guest: Gilles Delalex - Studio Muoto (Paris, France)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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Our 9th stop is in Munich (Germany) alongside Max Otto Zitzelsberger.



“Thinking about architecture can also be architecture”, so Max shares his visions through multiple drawings, paper models and eventual constructions.



Do you know those spaces you hold in your memory, yet you are not there anymore? Those spaces…are they space? It is not a space one can use but perhaps it is. “All the ideas you have in your head are potential spaces and potencial architecture.”



But what is architecture? “No one knows. For you it’s something different than it is for me. And if you ask me next week, perhaps I’ll have a totally different answer. Perhaps this is what makes it really interesting. No-one can say what it is.” But we keep on doing it anyway.



We get to talk about copying and about references and about thinking…we talk a lot about thinking.

Have you ever been flashed by a project you saw on Instagram? These inputs are amazing but can be very tricky. “Perhaps, one reason why I don’t build so much is because one moment I am really sure about something and the next moment I am not.”



What if this is all a coincidence in which “the right idea, at the right moment, comes to the right person and then there is a person near by which understands…”





Guest: Max Otto Zitzelsberger (Munich, Germany)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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Our 8th stop is at Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter (Frederiksberg, Denmark) alongside Sebastian Skovsted.



They seek to bridge the gap between building processes and architectural values by mixing ideas and techniques...and techniques and ideas. They give particular attention to detail, material assembly and the meaning of structure. But to be clear, they “don’t do structure for the sake of structure”. “We enjoy building spaces that are far more than just solving load bearing forces that we can get from the engineer.”



Johansen Skovsted don’t need much to get loose for hours under this architecture game: “a wall, a column, a beam… for us, it is a good starting point”.

But how to start from there? They have a strategy, at first, they ask “how would they do it if we would not be here? how are they already doing it?”. After this analyses they take action and try to influence it. “We know that if we tried to come up with something completely different, then it would never happen.”



Did you know that some structural elements…are not really as structural as they seem to be? “It is very interesting to have something optimised and to have something extravagant, as a contrast, in the same project.”





Guest: Sebastian Skovsted  - Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter (DK)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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Our 7th stop is at Buchner Bründler Architekten (Basel , Switzerland) alongside Andreas Bründler.



Their practice puts all the common concepts into question: context, interior and exterior, in-between spaces, materiality, old and new...but all these general concepts are treated in a very specific way. In a way, archetypes turn out to be prototypes. “To make space is one of the major architectural topics. To think about space and the quality of space is our main source of thinking and doing. It is the secret value of architecture.”



But suddenly “the idea of architecture is not as simple as it was.” 



“How does the architect deals with the overall questions, with the new questions, with future questions?”, one might wonder. “We could try to continue but we are convinced, already, that this cannot continue. We have to be inventive and we have to bring new ideas into form.”



“We have so many conversations with clients and constructers because they are afraid that the surface might not be perfect.” And this is a topic worth talking about.





Guest: Andreas Bründler - Buchner Bründler Architekten (Basel, CH)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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Our 6th stop is at Jo Taillieu Architecten (Ghent , BE) alongside Jo Taillieu.



His architecture is as an open engine as every project deals with the logics of construction right from the beginning and might be even left exposed. “Every project has to be a new research” and these discoveries should be left in plain sight. I suspect that if he was a doctor he would easily do open heart surgeries and I am not sure he would sew up the skin again.



Throughout our conversation we realised it is all about precision. Precision I the key word. “Sometimes you have to be precise in the definition to accept the openness of the outcome. But if you are precise in giving the tools to make it, it can lead to a very precise outcome.” But how to do it, we ask? Jo says: “skipping conventions is extremely important to be precise”.



“To see what is there is one of the most important steps on the design process” but the question in architecture is not to solve problems but to create opportunities. Or is it?



One thing is for sure, “architecture is a process and finding the interest in that you are doing is the only interesting outcome.”





Guest: Jo Taillieu (Ghent , BE)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)



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