Good afternoon. I think the number of
people in this room means I don't have to
spend a lot of time introducing Pezo
von Ellrichshausen. But let me just say that Sofia
von Ellrichshausen and Mauricio Pezo have done a set
of exquisite houses in the stunning landscape
around Concepcion in Chile, which they're going
to show today and have some time to talk about the inspiration,
the conceptualization of those in conversation later,
after their lecture. Just quickly, they-- I
guess you all know this or you wouldn't be
here, but they've exhibited and published,
of course, very widely. But I do just want
to mention they have worked in the permanent
collection at the Chicago-- how is it called? Institute. Art Institute. Art Institute. They were the curators
of the Chile Pavilion and the Venice Biennale in 2008. And of course, it's
very important for us that they were part of Mark and
Sharon's biennial at Chicago just last year. The studio they're
giving is well underway, and the students get
to go to Concepcion. They've taught at-- they're
teaching here this year. They've taught at IIT before
and will teach at Cornell next year. Welcome Sofia and Pezo. [APPLAUSE] Thank you very much
for that introduction. Is this on? Yes? It's working? Yes? Yes. OK. Hello. Hello. Yes, yes, yes. I have to connect here. Everything is-- Well, it's lovely to
be here and to see some faces that we already
know very well for many years, and then all the
new faces we're also getting to know very quickly. Our students at studio
have already made a mark. So we-- normally, it
takes a couple of months to know their names. We've managed to do that in
10 days, which is fabulous. So I don't know-- If you prefer to move over the
center to be more comfortable. Or on this side. Or feel free to cross
here if you want. Well, after-- can we
turn off the lights? Yes? Turn them off. Turn the-- yeah. Thank you. After the invitations to prepare
a studio here, we decided to-- we were invited to do
this talk, and so we decided to articulate
this conversation-- this presentation and further
conversation with a topic we are tackling at the studio. So it's very, in
a way, addressed to our group of students. But also, it extends to
a larger scale of work, and mainly, of ideas. This notion of deciduous
plan refers to something that seems to be very obvious. There is this notion that
comes from the notion of nature as a cycle, but the fact
that we're articulating that cycle, which is associated
with this polarization between, of course, life and death
and day and night or seasons, we think that the moment we
refer that to architecture, we could also read it on-- literally on a floor plan. So the plan literally
means the floor plan that eventually becomes
obsolete or dysfunctional at a certain moment. But also to the very notion
of plan not as a floor plan-- what we understand as
architects, but as a program. As an intention for the future. So a deciduous plan-- a
plan that becomes obsolete-- in a way, for us, is the
intention of doing something, particularly in nature. So this opposition--
this classical opposition that we are discussing
with a group that we consider
to be obsolete-- the classical distinction
between artificial and natural. We think that implies a
certain overlap in time. And eventually, the very attempt
to imagine with this intention for a future-- this program for the future--
this plan of doing something is based on this,
perhaps, illusion of going back to nature,
perhaps, or escaping from civilization
or perhaps even to go to a place to do nothing--
to spend time doing nothing. Our practice has, from
the very beginning, been very rooted in our
dialectic condition. We're a couple and we've been
a couple since the day we met. And so we are always struggling
and sharing authorship. These are some portraits--
reciprocal portraits we did of each other, so I
made Pezo's and Pezo made mine. And then we destroyed the
portrait by completely erasing it-- as much as
we could, which-- and we think it's very-- What you see there is a
leftover of graphite pencil on the paper. You cannot remove
that from the paper. But what we think is
important is that it talks more about the way
we remember things-- about how we
remember a presence, and not necessarily about
our visual stimulus that is only very, very immediate
and imprecise to remember, of course. And this is another series that
we worked on-- were working on, which is a literal exercise
of shared authorship. One of us paints
half the canvas. The other one completes. And then we apply
more and more layers, so it's an accumulation of
layers that are constantly reacting to what
the other one did-- a sort of conversation
that is always trying to find a balance. We only stop when we're
both happy with the outcome. But also, what results are
colors we can never foresee. They're just a blurry
leftover of a process. And in that condition,
we would also argue that in that
shared authorship lies what one might call a
double nature of projection. This projection of subjectivity,
which is precisely what we find is interesting when we
talk about this polarity between artificial and natural. So how to produce the
presence of a building, and also the representation
of that presence as a way of conveying a certain
intellectual construction-- a certain idea of reality. So for example, the
idea that architecture might be read as a form
of interruption of nature. So nature becomes
a continuous field, and architecture is
something that it establishes a degree of discontinuity. I don't know if
you can see there are some figures here for you
to have a scale of that figure. That's my size. So this is 72 feet long-- series of panels. Oil on linen. These are still
under construction, so they're unfinished. And this is a depiction of
a fictional landscape that is somehow not only interrupted,
but in a way, assuming that architecture could also
be an extension of nature-- could complete nature in a way. And in the same way
with the paintings, but this is an art project. We've been fascinated by
this shapeless landscape. The sky is not only
always changing in its colors and its
movements-- in the patterns we can see in it. But we're fascinated by the
fact that it's always there. So our project
consisted of wherever we were, we would just
take a picture of the sky and accumulate all of this. Maybe in an attempt to
manipulate our intentionality with that degree of informality
or that landscape, which is really very much
about figure and ground. It's constantly changing and
you can hardly capture it. We did this for
about three years, and then one day, we
forgot to take the picture. And of course, we could have
faked it and continued with the project, but I think the
beauty of having your own self-imposed rules is to
precisely remain loyal-- faithful to them. So that's where
the project ended. Or actually knowing when to
intentionally break the rules, as well. This is another
serious of drawings we have been doing lately
in which we are precisely tackling the
possibility of making a form without a precise shape. So there are figures
that are floating on a paper that are produced-- and this is something that is
impossible for you to confirm. But we cannot guarantee or
make explicit the degree of intentionality of every
position of the elements-- the position of the
voids, the density, of the gestures around those
voids or the silhouettes. And for us, what is interesting
is that by repeating this gesture that is very
compulsive and fast, the outcome is something that
we cannot avoid reading with a certain degree
of intentionality. So what is fascinating for us is
that there is, in this journey to-- this so-called
vitality of nature, you might start
something that seems to have no control or
no clear intention. But in the end,
it's very hard not to attach a sort of label
or name or interpretation to make sense out of what we
see that, in most of the cases, have not a real purpose. In that case, what we
see here is an object-- a vertical object that we
tend to label as a tower, but we don't know the
context because it's very limited information. We don't know the program. We don't know the
material, the circumstances of its realization. One of the windows--
the upper one-- this is a reverse view
from the interior, and it's a meeting
room where you see alignments of the position
of the table with the opening. And that particular
opening was an experiment to trace something that
was dealing with an attempt to capture that
amorphic condition with unintentional
amorphic condition. So it was a very
simple exercise. Looking through that window,
we captured with the drawing on the glass, one of the clouds
that was passing through. Of course, the moment
you finished the drawing, the cloud is no longer there. But in this explicit
translation-- A transferrance. A transferrance from what we
saw, we went a step further and we wanted to
solidify this drawing, extract it from
the glass, and we built this little tripod that
holds up the drawing in space. And not only that, but also to
exceed the drawing condition to transfer that condition
into a three dimensional object that exceeds human scale. So it's a construction that had
to be reinstalled-- transferred to a different location. And that location was-- it's the campus of the Catholic
University in Santiago. It's almost like a
monument-- a podium for a monument
that doesn't exist, that is so subtle that
it's almost invisible. It could also shift a
little bit with the wind. And it was there, but by
placing it against the sky, it cancels any other possibility
but to see it as a cloud. All of us have an
innate instinct to read that as a cloud. And then there was
a final translation we did back in our studio,
which was to permanently flatten all the distinctions
to make a new painting. It's a painting where
both the reality and the representation--
the presence of that drawing on the glass
and the city beyond is articulated in
one only drawing. And that's a constant
exercise of going from fiction to reality, from physical
to a mental realm. We have discovered a very
interesting possibility, which is actually
what we're exercising in the studio, which is to-- perhaps illusion. The illusion of replacing
the very notion of form by the that of formant. For us, a format is
a general outline-- a kind of field of
action that allows for a certain spatial
structure to be unfolded. So that is structure. This is what we call--
it's a series of drawings and paintings. A very large series of series. This one is 2,187 pieces--
variations of a figure. We call it Finite Format because
we know exactly the amount of variations we
can make in order to have a particular identity
of each one of the cases. This is a fragment
of what it was presented in in Chicago for
Mark's and Sharon's biennial. And again, it's a figure
that one could describe according to dimensions. So factors that
determine the form. But also, the
variations that are achieved by assigning
distinctive sizes-- small, the medium,
and the large. So the combination is finite,
given the amount of variables. In this case, it's
only 243 variations of this L shaped figure. The same figure, but
horizontally, they architecturally become
totally different. So it's a problem of
individual identity-- formal character in
relation to a very precise architectonic size. But this is a notion for us
that exceeds that of typology. It's more-- maybe
closer to the idea of archetype, which just
implies a certain tendency of something. So it's about understanding
not so much its shape, but whether it might
be a horizontal piece or a vertical,
a tower or a strip. And this is something
that, of course, can be taken to the most
elemental volume, like a cube. But of course, when we're
talking about architecture, size is fundamental because
it defines a certain scale. Here, through the
doors, you can see it's, despite having a
volumetric identical character, the scale is fundamental. And we have
systematically explored through many different
series, which we translate into
something physical, these sort of, for us, truths. For us, they're
very, very telling. But all of our theory
comes from practice. We have been building early on. This is a house
we did in our 20s. And we have extracted
knowledge from what we do by contemplating
and very carefully reading what we have done. In this case, this is a very
perfect-imperfect model. It's exactly how this robust
concrete house was built. It's layers of concrete
that were poured-- At once. --at once, one layer at a time. So it's just the stacking
of mass on top of itself. It's a house that is
located on a remote place at the end of a path
on a small peninsula, surrounded by water
on three sides, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. And despite this seemingly
diametric opposition or formal opposition and this
seemingly material continuity between the granite of the
rocks and the concrete, we were really interested in
this sense of gravity, of rest, of a big, monolithic structure
that is resting on the ground, transferring all the loads
directly to the ground. And it's a house that works
with a double function. So all the fixed functions
are in the perimeter. There's a double wall that
contains bathrooms, kitchen, staircases, balconies, closets. All the furniture can be
stored in this thickness, liberating the inner space
for any sorts of activity. Artists in residence
spend time here. And so they can really
transform the space according to their needs. So it's a series
of platforms that descend with the topography
and punctual openings that cardinally connect
to what is around it. But the projections
that have been stronger have been the cultural ones. It's a house that now has
worked 15 years as a residence. And it has become a
strong place of identity, but maybe precisely
because it combines the intensity of doing art
with the intensity of being in nature. One of the corners
of this monolith has a void, a vertical room,
that works as a pivoting place to articulate the
interior with the diagonal of the cliff with the hill. And in a way, it transfers
this feeling, almost a sense of vertigo,
to the interior of the house, an object that
appears almost without scale, or silent on the landscape,
almost like a forgotten object in time. And something of that nature,
that vitality, in a way, was further explored in
this other house, which is a very clearly vertical
format, in which we were somehow celebrating the position
of the building at exactly 100 meters on top of
sea level, and also, the presence of this
massive cypress tree next to the building. But it's really a double format
because it has a podium that anchors it to the ground. The tower is exactly
in the middle of it, positioned in the middle. And it contains three
different programs. It's seven stories that have
an atelier in the bottom part, then house in the
next three stories, and office in the top three. So there's two
independent circulations-- one belonging to the top
office, and the other one is internal to connect the
house with the atelier. And because it has
a small footprint, all the staircases
are very efficient. There are these
spiraling staircases and some cutouts in the
floors that connect diagonally all the floors. And there you see
the double format, that, in fact, is
articulated internally according to the repetition
of modules that are somehow abstract to the functional
performance of the house. So there's six
modules at the base and six modules at the top. And the module is
a plan, which is a very neutral square, divided
with an asymmetrical cross. And for example, this
is the social realm of the house, that is, the
addition of three times that module, but also with a central
alignment of openings that increase the size
towards the west, so going down within the hill. And that generates a
distortion of the perspective, because the openings, the
thresholds, change in size. So the first one is maybe
40% bigger than the last one. So it generates an
extension in one direction. And foreshortening-- short-- A compression, yes. --in the other direction. But the upper part, the
upper realm of the tower, which is to work--
it's an office space-- it's more introspective. It's all exposed
concrete on the floors and painted gray wood on
the walls and the ceilings. Here, you can see that the
floor plans of the tower. So it's five floor plans
that are very compact, and as Pezo was saying, divided
by that asymmetrical cross. But the openings, or the
relation of the spaces within, is completely different
in every floor, hence, completely changing the
perception of the space. All the furniture is
thought of in a position, and openings respond to that. Therefore, the porous
surface of the outside is the outcome of what
is happening inside. It was all built in concrete. Chile has a very strong
earthquake regulation. It was in-situ concrete. And the only finishing
was a slight demolition of that facade, that reinforces
the layers of concrete, of pouring of the concrete,
and erase everything else, and give it this very soft
edges in all the windows. And also the corners. But also, the appearance
is almost scalar, so there is a kind of
uncomfortable or difficult presence because you
don't know if it's really a house or perhaps too
tall to be a house, too small to be an office building. And this is an
earlier house, where we were exploring the
ultimate horizontal extension by capturing an existing
beautiful garden. So it's a house that
extends in one floor. It has nine courtyards
that capture, as you saw in the
picture before, trees existing in
this beautiful garden. But also, these nine
[INAUDIBLE] regulate the light that that goes in. It's a series of rooms,
an addition of many rooms, some of which have a roof,
and some of them don't. So the house really
is constantly alternating between interior
and exterior spaces. The sequence is to
look through, make it look like a much bigger
house than it really is. And this is a drawing
that we got from the son after the house was finished. And we kept it, and
we like it very much. Rogelio is the son. Of course, his room is the
biggest, the farthest most-- [LAUGHTER] And you see, these
are without name because the mother was pregnant
with twins without a name yet. So it's a very, very
precise drawing. And we like it a lot. We think it's a very precise
and naive description of his understanding of space. And this is what
we consider to be the spatial structure, the
primitive understanding of space. This is the front
pages of a publication of spatial structure
is going back to the topological
understanding of space instead descriptive
or analytical, which is how to
understand relationships within a spatial system. So together with the essay
published in that book, we made-- and we're still doing, because
this is an ongoing research-- a series of oil-on-canvas
paintings where we are depicting a spatial
system where architecture is reduced to the minimum,
to the very minimum, walls without thickness,
the position of openings, a very careful study
on proportions. And mainly, to confirm how
relative certain architecture notions are. For example, the notion
of size, what is small and what is large, is relative
to what is within the system. Or the relative
notion of direction, those rooms that are centralized
and others that are clearly with a certain tension. Or the relative
notion of continuity, despite the opacity
of the walls, just by placement
of openings, they are [INAUDIBLE]
within the system. But also the idea of what
is regular within a system and what is irregular
or singular. And ultimately, at what
point the depiction of architectonic
space could convey a certain degree of scale. So when we see the openings,
we relate to an experience. This is a house we did
a couple of years ago. It's in a rural land. It's a house that
extends horizontally. But then the roofs extend
in all four directions. And it's just 10
equivalent rooms. They're organized in two rows. So all the private
quarters, bathrooms are aligned in one row, and
the social area is in another. And just the
placement of openings defines degrees of privacy
or friction between spaces. The amount of doors for every
room, one, two, or three doors per room. So there's a lateral
alignment of doors in the private quarters,
which allows for closure and an interruption,
versus a central alignment with the social areas
that creates this larger interconnected room. So the system is qualified
by a very simple alignment to the north. So one side is
open to the morning light, and the other
one to the sunset. And that qualified completely
the relationship between-- for the experience of
using this temporary house. This is another temporary
occupation of the landscape. It's a house we
built five years ago. Yes. Five years ago was finished
in Spain, near Barcelona, two hours from Barcelona. And for us, it was
really relevant, the very idea of the journey,
of getting to a place after a trip. After a plane, after a
car, you arrive to a place. And the house is located in
that square, the black square. And the other square
is the parking. And that line that
connects one with the other is a very long
staircase that somehow exaggerates that anxiety
of arrival by-- there are 100 steps. No-- 100 meters. 100 meter long staircase. So at that moment of-- the transition from
a linear experience into a circular,
perhaps, circular time on top of a landscape. The arrival occurs like
this, under the forest, from below, to this
bicephalous staircase. And the house has
a double format. It has a podium below,
and then a platform on top, which is
Pezo was saying. It really converts
the linear arrival into a 360-degree experience,
equivalent in all directions. And that base is
blind, totally opaque, whereas the upper
part, the platform, is crystalline, open and
transparent, containing an opening in the very center,
which in itself contains a volume of water. So that's the swimming
pool of the house. And with a very simple system
of openings at the very center in every direction is
totally symmetrical. So up to a point that you get
lost when you go from A to B. That's the podium. This is where I was showing
the bicephalous staircase. It's really irrelevant
which side you take. Both doors lead
to the same place. It's this dark interior podium
where you circulate either on one side or the other--
can I have the pointer. It's around a volume of water. All of this is water. And there are some
openings there. Diagonally placed, and
then a circular staircase. Those openings
are into the pool, so there's a voyeuristic moment
where you might see someone already inhabiting the house. Someone naked,
floating on the water-- But you can go-- --if you're lucky. --on either way. [LAUGHTER] You can go on either way. And everything is this cave-like
blue light from the water. But also, it
regulates your eyes, so that very gradually,
you emerge again to the very center of the
house in the courtyard to be up on the platform. So you get into the house by
accessing into an exterior room. So it's a kind of contradiction. And then you go up. You emerge in that corner. The staircase is the-- [WHISPERS] But then
you're enclosed with the only room that is
actually defined with walls, but open to the sky, the
central volume of water, and this very precise alignment
of openings in the center. But the perimeter
is all the opposite. It's more in the proportion
of a balcony, very narrow, with this reversible
condition in which the panels, the
glass of the facade, can actually be
sliced and moved. And it becomes a real balcony,
a real outdoor experience. This was also all
in-situ concrete built. So it's [INAUDIBLE] beams, the
height of the entire platform so that all the loads
really are transferred to the four walls
of the courtyard and then down to the
Earth through the podium. So really what you see
as a massive column is holding inside a tensor. Are the loads are being
taken up to the roof, and then from the
roof, backwards through the courtyard. So it's really very
physically suspended by this. But as well, we like
to think that it's a conceptual suspension. Because of its very
centralized plan, you lose your sense
of orientation. And you can use the house moving
around it, either escaping from the strong sun,
or looking for it. And this really, I think, is
the beauty of leisure time, that you really lose
track of yourself. In that search for a sign
that identifies opposition and the centrality
of being on a place, we have been exploring further
with the notion of format by doing something that
is a repetition that pivots on top of itself to
mark that position, that place. So these are drawings
for pavilions. We're not showing pavilions
today, only houses. But they explain, in
a way, the capacity for a plan to highlight
and to be almost literal with the notion
of the centrality, of being a sign of itself. This house is, yes, what we
call sort of a repetitive format, a sort of inverted
[? indices ?] that has a smaller footprint
below and then grows in a repetition
of its floor plan so that it really has the
highest social areas on top. And again, in a
seismic country, this was a very important challenge
to maintain this stability of the whole structure. Everything is
reinforced concrete, poured in-situ, with a
system of rigid frames that are four rigid frames,
one in every direction, with a system eight
continuous columns. So the columns are multiplied
by two in every corner. So the columns are not
exactly in the crossing point of the beams, but
displaced from there. And that allows for an
even more stable system. And so there is the
base, a shaft, a capital, with a reverse distribution
of the program. The roof is a panoramic
terrace on top of the height of the trees. And then, of course,
there is a basement that works as a counterweight
for the whole system. And these are the
three floor plans. The lowest-- sorry. Can you see? The lowest to the highest,
they progressively grow. But also, the definition
of the plan, it's first floor, small rooms. Then there are the main bedroom
with a diagonal partition. And then on top is just an
open plan with furniture that is a social area of the house. But what is also important
is this displacement of columns that start creating
corner rooms within the floor plan. With the character
first of a balcony and then of a proper terrace. So that's the upper floor,
where it's an open plan, informal open plan. But the columns define
subspaces within it. And the corners
also have sliding windows that can disappear. There is, of course,
a railing there. Glass there. But you create in
all the corners an outdoor condition,
a protected terrace, that happens in every floor
in all the four corners. With the house casting
shadows on top of itself in every floor. And then, all the
concrete structure is completed with
a very light infill of wood for the
floors and partitions, and glass for the facade. This is the open view
on top of the house. It's 12x12 meters, wooden
deck, all the way to the ocean. And this is an exhibition
we did in Paris with a series of paintings. We're doing in
parallel many series. This is one where we've both
been painting large format paintings. So the format would be more or
less the size of this screen. Yes, it's important
for us that they have this immersive condition. They are large. They're about, I
think, 6 feet by 8 so that they really have
a relation with your body when you're standing
in front of them. And they're not about one
particular room or space. They're about fragments
or zooms into spaces that have fragments and
moments of intensity. So we're not interested
in designing a space, but creating an atmosphere. It's about these spaces that
maybe belong to all of us, that remind us of memories
that are almost universal, not only by seeing
the paintings-- you not only see something visual--
but, at least for us, they trigger something
that goes beyond. We might even understand
the temperature of that room or the smell
of that stuck on the wall. But always dealing with the
conflict of [? figure ?] and ground, the
foreground and background, and how elements
become scaleless in that transition, which is
something that, actually, we have explored, very
aware of the consequences of distorting the scale. This is our latest project,
and actually the smallest we've done, the smallest house. It's located here. We showed before
this, the Poli House. So it's-- First and the last, yeah. Yeah. And so it's really two houses
that are across the bay from each other, overlooking--
they're on these cliffs and overlooking
the Pacific Ocean. And this is Poli, and this
one now, two concrete pieces. One is very cubic. The other one is very elongated. And we feel-- there's a
gap of 15 years from one to the next one. But probably the topics
are very much the same. We keep running in circles. And the format is,
as Sofia mentioned, of a disproportionate one. It's closer to the perception
of a retaining wall that is perpendicular, sticking
out of the topography, with very few
openings that define a very monolithic, and very
opaque, and very mysterious presence. And the only thing you
see approaching the site is the roof and these
cultural objects on top of the roof, which is
the ventilation for the chimney. These are some paintings of
moments inside the house. The house, apart, of course,
from its perimeter wall, has no vertical
partitions inside, except these steps and columns. So that's the floor plan. It's a very elongated room. It's only about
10, 11 feet wide. And then it has three
over-dimensioned columns that contain basic
functions and six platforms. As the terrain
descends, the house also staggers downwards,
creating in this large room just different
degrees of intimacy, depending on how
they want to use it. There's no prescribed
function for any platform. It can just be occupied at will. So this is looking
upwards in the steps. And this is downwards. There is a series
of bridges that cross the space that are
structurally important, but also, they become
these attic spaces where their kid can go climb
up and have her bed up there. And again, the
whole construction is reinforced concrete,
poured in-situ, with many fragments
and details inserted into the concrete,
openings and stones, and with this
massive column that turns the whole linear plant
into a very asymmetrical endpoint in one extreme. And the last house we're
going to show is this one. It's a house we built
on a remote island in the south of Chile. And again, the attempt to
capture the sense of arrival to a center after a journey,
after a linear process, with a degree of containment and
protection from the elements. It is a house that
could be described as the intersection
between a cylinder, a cone, and a rectangular volume. So you can see the
setting on the island. It's a house that is facing
the inner ocean, if you want, looking towards the Andes. It's for a solitary inhabitant. He's very private. He sometimes has guests. And it's a house that contains
that courtyard Pezo was just now showing, with
an intimate scale, with a sense of totality
when you're occupying it. But really, it has
a double scale. Upon access, it's this
fortress-like, much more massive volume. Also, the prevailing winds
come from this direction so it's protecting the space,
the used space from it. And then it completely
reverts into another scale, which is the scale of
the user of every day, of going out to this courtyard
that is enclosed and sheltered. And the inner logic is
very simple and complex at the same time. There is the intrusion of
this rectangular figure within the logic of a
cylinder and the cone. So you can see
that there are only three rooms in the house, two
extremes that are equivalent, one facing the north,
therefore, it's warm and very-- Our north is your south. Yes, so it's movement
of the south. And the south is the opposite. So he can choose which one to
use according to the season. And then you see that
the rectangular figure is interrupting the cone. And the closer it gets to
the back of the building, to the cylinder, the
highest the ceiling inside, and the opposite to the center. So that generates a
lower part of the ceiling inside in the very center
of the social area. So again, towards the court,
there is this double wall. We call it the inhabitable wall,
with all the technicalities of living. And all the rest is just
space in between the roof. You feel the weight
of this construction almost like being under a boat. And the lowest point is
in the very center there. And the extremes are punctuated. So there is a very
compressed moment of transition from one room to
the other in the very corner. Everything was made out of wood. Out of wood. This island in Chile is known
for buildings with wood. It has-- don't know how many-- 15 or so and UNESCO
Heritage churches, but also, as any island, a very good
knowledge of boat construction. So we employed all
of that knowledge into the construction
of the house. It's entirely made of
wood, native woods, found in the island. And then clad, the structure
is clad with native wood inside and outside,
with these shingles that were cut with an ax. They're more or less this size. So they're individually
made, one by one, with these fat columns
in every corner, somehow framing the landscape
in these protected terraces. And this very small project
we're going to show you is very modest,
but also ambitious. It's a game that we play. We carry it with us. In fact, we have it
here, whenever we travel. It's about this big. It's a block of
wood with 15 pieces. So as you can see, the pieces
are inversely proportional. There's one which is
5 by 5 centimeters 4 by 4, 3 by 3, et cetera. And we play with it
using three rules. The rules are, we have
to use all the pieces. The second one is, all
the pieces have to touch, so they have to be
a continuous whole. And the third one is, they have
to touch at a 90-degree angle. And with this, we go
out and start using it. And we think it's a very
architectonic device because it has a strong internal logic. But also, its material
and formal consistency allow it to react to all sorts
of unpredictable circumstances. So one could say it's
autonomous by definition, but contextual by necessity. And every time we
intervene or we use it, we are creating a small project. But the addition
of these projects creates a larger
reading of any place. And we are very interested
in that larger understanding of work as it accumulates. And understanding that, as we
mentioned at the beginning, since we work both in
art and architecture, we want to believe
that this practice is a form of knowledge. We use it as a device
for us to read reality, to understand reality, to
project our subjectivity into reality for
eventually someone else, share the same sensibility
to read it in that manner, but also assuming
that what we do, of course, has to solve
many problems of the world. But it can also, or
we have the right to read it as a
problem in itself. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] [WHISPERING] Chairs. That's the usual. That's usual. And then I'll run around
to people in the audience. [CHATTER] We spoke 45 minutes? It's perfect. So we will go 40
minutes next, maybe 30. Yes. With this many people,
there may be [INAUDIBLE].. We're good. Yes. So Sofia and Pezo,
thank you so much. Thank you so much. Let me just say to the
audience so you can plan, the plan here is--
what I would like to do is first, in a
kind of fragmented way, try to characterize or propose
a characterization generally of the work. I have then some questions
maybe about maybe going forward with the work. And then I will try very soon
to open it to the audience. And we won't go past 1:30. We may not go until 1:30. But we won't go past 1:30
so you can get to class. So if you don't mind, let me,
with some different examples, try to characterize my
impression of the work, none of which have
I seen in person. And I want to, by implication,
propose or even argue, is that I think the
work, on first gloss, would be something
that, in current and recent
architectural discourse, would obviously tend toward--
and the is a kind of cliche-- but the phenomenological
side of the discourse. People like David Leatherbarrow,
Mark and I were whispering, would be the people who
would respond positively. And what I would
propose is that-- what I want to, by
implication, argue, is that that's a mistake
to categorize it that way, and especially a mistake
insofar as usually, the phenomenological discourses
take the kind of experience that we can imagine
in these houses as a positive,
substantial, good thing. Right? That it's substantial
and positive, right? What I want to
suggest is actually something more profound,
but the opposite is going on, is that
there's actually, through a depletion of meaning
and a depletion of-- if I can say the word-- phenomenality,
a kind of depletion of a fullness of
experience, but a much more intense materiality, but
one which is not meaningful, but which holds something
out of reach, some certainty. By holding it out of reach,
makes it even more profound and desirable. And let me give some
inadequate examples. Or maybe actually, I think
around this exhibition, inscriptions that Andrew Holder
and I did, maybe some of you have heard this example before,
but I want to repeat it. In a book of essays by
Wordsworth, the poet, they're called Essays on
Epigraphs, an epigraph being an inscription
memorializing somebody usually. And he says something like,
the epigraph assumes a stone on which it is inscribed. And the stone is not-- worry, assumes a monument
on which it is inscribed. But he doesn't mean
"monument" in the sense of a grand edifice. He means a kind of inert surface
stone on which an epigraph is inscribed. And what's interesting
there is this "assumes." But what is it that-- first of all, it's
the moment right before language and
architecture separate. At that moment, there can be no
language without architecture, and there is no architecture
without language. It's like that the pyramids
waiting for the hieroglyph is the other side of the
epigraph assuming the stone. They are two sides of the same. And at that moment, language
and architecture exist. But what happens is,
there is no present voice. What is an inscription? The haunting quality
of an inscription is that who inscribed it, who
is saying, it whose voice is it? Often it's the voice of death. In a grave, It is
the voice of death, or it is the mark of
the person who has died, who no longer exists. And it's this haunted
absence rather than-- and that certainty
being held out of reach, to me, which I
find more in your work than a fullness of
substance and phenomenality. That's what I mean. Because phenomenality
is always risk cliche. How many times can you stand-- how many times can
David Leatherbarrow stand in front of a window,
and feel profundity? At some point, it's
just a window, right? And I think you, in some
ways, you push that. The other example I would give-- when I say push that, you push
that fact that it is a window. It is deeply a window. But it's not meaningful. It's somehow beyond
language, like Mike DeMarco. The other example I give is,
I don't know if you ever did-- this may betray something
about my childhood more than it makes an example. But I used to say my name
over and over and over again. And if you say it your
name over and over again, just keep saying it,
it starts to lose meaning. I felt like I started to float
because it becomes pure sound. At some point, it
just means nothing. It's just like a chant. It becomes pure sound, and
you sort of start to float. But literally, the name
Michael Hays, Michael Hays. Well, just Michael. Michael, Michael,
Michael, Michael. If you keep doing it-- you have to do your
own name because you have to do your own. It can't be somebody
else's name. And you will start to float. And there's
something about that. There's a what I
would again call a pure materiality of sound. It's not a sound of something. It's not a voice. It's just a pure materiality. So this is what I'm trying to
get at in this experience here. And I'll just give
one more example. Actually, I think this
happens, not a lot, but in some modern art,
and particularly, maybe music, where someone
strives for pure sound, like John Cage's prepared piano. But Neil Levine once told me
a story about Donald Judd. And I think Donald Judd is an
interesting comparison because of the obsessive precision. You guys are obsessive. You know that. And the obsessive precision
of measurement, of material, of placement. And Neil Levine has some
sketches that Donald Judd did, where he would write
what is apparently a random series of numbers,
12, 17, you know, da-da-da. And it would go
on and on and on. And then he would scratch
out one and put "no" and start over. Why is it no? It was totally random. Why isn't-- what happened in his
mind that he was going through a series of numbers, and
something went wrong, and he had to start over? And I feel like some of your
iterations, some of your-- how did you call them? Finite-- Formats. Finite formats are kind of that
same obsession of just marking. And it goes back to the
idea of a mark which, by holding meaning away, becomes
a kind of pure experience or a pure materiality,
rather than an experience of some phenomenon. This is-- I don't know if
there's a response necessarily. Yeah, no, and it's
interesting that you bring to the conversation
David Leatherbarrow because, in fact, he did visit
our work in down in Chile. And we were discussing about
the problem of perception and the problem of assuming
that architecture is part of a broader phenomenon. But in our work,
we have been always aware of how that dimension
is, in a way, partial. It's not the whole thing. Of course, we can't
describe the whole thing. It would be impossible. But we're even more interested
in the translation of that, of course, initially by perhaps
intuition, or by our senses, by our perception, we
have an experience. But it's not only that. It's not only the
experience, but also the mental construction,
the memories, and also the even the
symbolic aspect of what we imagine about the things we do. It's the degree
of interpretation. So that's why we
talk about knowledge, which is not only
the experience, but the understanding
of a certain reality. And that exceeds the phenomenon. So perhaps I would dare to call
it a more existential approach than phenomenological
because it involves, in fact, this dialectic condition
of being living together, and doing projects
together, projecting our individual subjectivity. That's a conflict. It's always we're
dealing, running in circles, chasing each other,
escaping from each other. And that is an
existential phenomenon. It's not only the
presence of things. It's not only the matter. It's not only the window,
but the understanding of the implications of all
of that, which could be also fictional, a fictional
understanding of fears or desires and so on. Well, I like the way you put
it, that it's existential rather than phenomenological, or rather
than merely phenomenological. And I think that's
exactly the point. The thing about the
inscription of Wordsworth that I like and think is
relevant here is that there is a kind of desire behind-- the desire to mark is
a desire to be there. It's a desire to,
in a way, I guess, represent that I am here,
or I was here, or something. And that's a kind of
existential desire. But also, again,
we work together, and we share everything we do. We share our academic practice,
our professional practice, our life. And we really cannot
make a distinction. And the conversation
is a continuous one that just flows into different
roles that other people see. We don't necessarily
see any rupture. But I think also perhaps we
understand our activity very different to what
normally is understood in architecture, architecture
as a service to someone else. And we very early
on started using it as an expression of
our own existence, our own way of
trying to understand what was happening around us. And of course, many times,
whatever we're doing is not enough with what fits
into the label of architecture. And therefore, we have
been very easily expanding into whatever feels
comfortable or at hand to materialize
those ideas to us, but to also communicate
them to each other. So yes, I guess it's
extremely personal in the way we have always faced it. I understand that. But it's something else. It's surely something
about the work that is exactly not
personal, that is to say, that it's so precise and so-- I don't know how to call it. I try not to use the
word "universal," but all of us in this room,
no matter where we're from or what our perceptual
conventions and tastes are, understand or feel that work. Yeah, but I would extend the
definition of "precision" to that of not a 90 degrees. When we made the Poli House,
we made an exhibition together with this big models because
were opening together with the house a new
cultural institution. So it was a cultural
event in itself. And we published a
book called 89, 91, which is precisely one degree
more and one degree less than 90 degrees. And it was a kind of homage to
this degree of irrationality or imperfection, and
homage to something that exceeds our control
or even our understanding. So if there is something
that one might call universal or that exceeds-- I don't know-- regionalism or
the pure experience of a place, maybe it's because we're aware
that the rational explanation of reality is not enough
to convey the complexity of the architectonic artifact. - Yeah. It's a great example. Sofia said earlier
about the model, it was perfectly imperfect. And this is 89, 91. It's perfectly imperfect. But to me, you're verifying
my hunch that I proposed. But I want to compare that,
since Scott's in the room, and his work is so present here. And the work seems
so very different. I mean, it's totally different. But the thing that I find
in common with your work and Scott's is that rather than
giving the 90-degree angle, rather than giving symmetry,
in Scott's case, that the idea of symmetry is
marked by holding it away. The idea of perfection
becomes more profound when it's perfectly imperfect
rather than just perfect. Right? So again, it's this
idea of holding out something that makes you desire
it more or something like that. So I have just a
couple of questions. I'm afraid they're
going to sound rude. And I don't know you well
enough to be rude yet. Good. Good. Do it. Do it. [LAUGHS] But the first has
to do a little bit-- so perfectly imperfect also-- I was going to use
the word "distortion" because the effect of some
of the houses comes from, let's say, the perfection, a
kind of geometric perfection that the either the proportions
or the size and scale have been distorted to
make a slight disturbance. And I actually think the
more the work goes on, to me, the more that
starts to happen, the really, really
thin house that's 10 years after the
not thin house, and then the last
project you showed with the circle,
where it actually becomes a little
uncomfortable to occupy. So I think distortion in
this perfectly imperfect is, to me, something
that's happening. The question-- I don't know
quite if it leads, obviously, or not. But to me, the
question of ornament, if you will allow
distortion, and if you will use a spindle
column, if you use the spindle column rather
than a proper cylindrical [INAUDIBLE],, why won't you
experiment with ornament in the sense of a
surface pattern, or something applied to
the surface, or something decorative? Why won't you allow that? Why don't you
experiment with that? Well, I don't think that's rude. [LAUGHTER] I don't know. We have many times debated about
this kind of ethical position towards the production
of spatial sequences. And in our view, the mere
arrangement of rooms, and the mere placement of
openings to articulate rooms and to relate themselves,
and all of that that implies, of course, an experience,
an understanding, and perceptual problems,
is more than enough. We don't want to distract from-- So it's interesting
when you were mentioning inscriptions that
some kind of invisible agent. And it's interesting for us to
assume that architecture could be both sound and noise,
this kind of a figure around and background. So it's something that it
appears at certain moments that it captures your attention. And at certain moments,
it totally disappears. It becomes just a background. And sometimes, the
inclusion of this kind of decorative elements, in our
view, could be distractive. It could be always
present there. And for us, it's more important,
the proportion of an opening, the position of that opening,
the thickness of a wall, the position of a glass
within that thickness. And we think that's complex
enough to deal with. I don't know if you agree. I agree. But no, also, early
on, we started working in that part of the world. We both are from the
south of South America. And maybe a little bit like-- there's a very nice-- I cannot quote it exactly,
but a very nice phrase, referring to Borges, the writer,
who always said it's a very intelligent move to take
whatever is imposed of you as your choice. So early on, we were
working with a very restrictive or scarce means. And so perhaps that's also what
shaped our preference to do things, realizing if we cannot
do more than the bare minimum, let's try to have
control of that. And of course, a lot
of our architecture now, even though we might
have the choice of adding more to it, we think
it's enough to be-- [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, if we feel
ethically correct, and we think it's doing enough. I don't know. You could understand
it in different ways. But many times, when we are
designing a new project, we are constantly
not trying to reduce, but trying to synthesize what
we're doing so that we can, with as little
means as possible, get to what we're aiming for. No, I think the use
of in-situ concrete and then later wood, given
the Chilean situation, it's a beautiful thing. And also, the objects, given the
Chilean landscape, obviously, this leads precisely
to my last question, which is those objects
need that landscape. And when you went to
Spain, you managed to find a landscape
that looks like Chile. [LAUGHS] And I can imagine that
if you went to Asia, or India, or other parts of Americas-- I mean, imagine the
American West, just this side of the
Rockies, what you could do in those landscapes. But if you get a
project, a commission, for a commercial building in
a city, will you refuse it? Well, we-- no. You did. No, no. But you know, we
get this question. Especially this
presentation today, we were specifically showing
mostly for the students. And so it's not that everything
we do is in these places. And it's not that we have a
disdain for anything urban. But it's also quite an
unfair question, you know? And many times they
ask us, what would you do if you get this tiny
site in a very dense Tokyo neighborhood? If you're running
for Supreme Court, you just say, that's
a hypothetical. I won't answer. No, or I can answer. I'm going to do wonderfully. Who knows? But still, many times, there
is this presupposition-- is that a word-- that building in
nature is easier than building in urban fabrics. I didn't mean that. No, no, no, but
many, many times, you can read it in between
lines in almost everything that is communicated. And we do not agree with that. We think there is an enormous
responsibility in operating in any natural setting that
has been untouched because it's already in balance. And whatever you're
putting there, you're-- You're disturbing. --you're disturbing
that balance. We feel extremely
burdened when we get that, whereas in urban
conduct, many times, we feel, OK, we are already operating
within other rules, where it's already chaotic. It's already-- Dirty. --dirty, or yes, or
contaminated by the artifice. So we're just adding a
little bit more to that. But again, all
our work is trying to identify what
are the problems and how to make
the relations work. So buildings work as
artifacts that are really like magnifying lenses. We just try to have them
connect interiorwise and in the outside as
well as an integral piece. I think if we were to operate
within an urban context, we would just as
well try to identify, what are we trying to connect. And I don't see much difference. Probably the pictures would
look very less stunning. But-- Yeah, well, but we
are also working now in different contexts,
in Australia, and Greece, here in the States,
and now, in Italy, Milan. And the context always
informs what we do. That's why the final
exercise with the game, with the 15 pieces, is OK,
autonomous by definition, but contextual by necessity. So you need to anchor
ideas to a reality. So you cannot be
purely existential. You need to be
slightly pragmatic as well to solve things,
to fit intentions with a given context. Yeah. That's beautiful, by the
way, autonomy by definition, contextual by necessity. That's the title of
the next book of work. So let's turn it
to the audience. Paige will be a
runner, mic runner. Thank you. I was stricken by a very strong
dichotomy in my response. And I wonder how will
you react to that. On the one hand, sculpturally,
this is exquisite. This is wonderful. Really, you explore
things that-- it's so beautiful. On the other hand, you're
parents and middle of life. So it seems to me that
two things I can say. One, this suits healthy
people in the middle of life. You are parents. A child has so
many possibilities to kill themselves
from an accessible roof without the banister. This is forbidden
for Jews, by the way. The Bible doesn't allow that. You must have a
banister, a protection. I'm growing old. The old are in fear. You can't get sick in
many of the cultures. You can't have friends who
might be a little bit in fear. And It's also very stark. I'm Israeli. And I've seen my
share of bunkers from the Second World War,
and on news and deserted. And it somehow looked
frightening, almost, some of the things. They reminded me
of those bunkers. And I wonder what you
have to say about that. Yeah. It's interesting that you
cannot get sick on a place, because, in a way, you
could remain healthier. That could be one option. But it's interesting
because, for example, the vertical house, the
Cien House, this inverted T, we heard many times people
passing by and asking, what is it, what is it. And it's like, come on, a house. But it was interesting,
the perception from outside, how the
presence of this figure had somehow a
cultural implication beyond its privacy, its site. But there was a moment. There was a German passing by. And he stopped, and
he asked, what was it? And that was a beautiful,
beautiful moment, because it was extending
the understanding of a place as something that
is more complex, so the memory of a bunker,
or of a silo, are-- of course, it's the
projection of subjectivity. And that's something that is so
wide and complex that I think architecture is a repository
for that complexity and for that range
of possibilities. Interpretation, in a way. Yeah, but, of course,
apart from the reading the practical
aspects of function, I'm totally aware
that, of course, these houses do not suit
every single person. And I am sure if we were
to do a kindergarten or, I don't know, an
airport, which I don't know-- I don't think we'll ever
do-- but of course, we would have to articulate
other considerations. But on the other
hand, we're strongly in favor of the
non-standardization of experience. I think this is a
big problem nowadays that because everything
has to work for everyone, it somehow tends to
look all the same. And we are in favor of trying
to pull a little bit away, when the circumstances allow for it. And we are aware that
maybe a house that is organized in seven
stories will serve a couple until some moment. And then we're
also perfectly OK. We understand that architecture
stays, and people can move on, and it can become
something else. That same envelope can
then contain a bunker-- or I hope not-- or a silo. Or a church. Or a church. You know? So we like to use, whenever
possible, the possibility of exploring, of
taking it further, of understanding ourselves,
how can we live differently. Of course, you know, the
100-meter-long staircase is quite perverse. But it does do
something for the people who arrive to this house, who
have to finally leave the car, really take the journey
out of their experience. Once they arrive
up there, the house is perceived
completely different. Yes. There was-- But sorry. Can I add one more thing? But also, in terms of that, I
think if it were for safety, you know, we should immediately
close down Venice, for example. Venice is criminal for
drunk people and children. And you can drown
around every corner. And still, we all agree that
it is a fantastic experience. And we need to have
places that allow us to expand the spaces we know. Hi. I was wondering. All the construction around,
or your construction, around the concept
of format, to me, it sounds like it's a
very parametrical approach to architecture. I just wanted to know what are
your thoughts about computation in architecture? Yes. Good question. We don't have any
real attachment to any computational tool. We barely use the cellphone. We do use it. No, but it's interesting
as an idea, as an idea that you have a field that
is determined by factors that then you can dissolve, or
distill on a linear process. But we don't-- it's not that
the tool what we're looking for. It's not the technology
what we're looking for. And it's not even
the transformation. Of course, all the drawings,
all the paintings you saw, are originally traced
on the computer, and then transferred
onto a canvas or a paper, and then transformed
into an original by hand-painted or drawings. But it's more the
idea of having control over a system, of knowing
that you can redeem yourself as an author from the
responsibility of being an author, by knowing, from
the beginning, the amount of variations you can make. So it's free parametric
in a way in the sense that the parameters
and the rules are so limited, so basic that
the amount of permutations is also known from
the beginning. But you need to confirm them and
turn them into a unique reality case by case. And what we do, for example,
with spatial structure paintings, that's
an open series. So that's the infinite motive. And the other one
is a closed series. So I think it's also a part
of an existential problem. So what finitude-- so it's
more conceptual than technical. Do you think-- I don't know. This might sound bad. But in order to practice, to
have a contemporary practice, maybe those tools, referring
competition primarily, may add something to
this line of thought. For some people, for sure,
it's extremely necessary. But to give you an example,
now for the Chicago Biennial, were presented this
series of 720-- Nine. --29 variations of this inverted
T format, so horizontal, vertical in the very center. But that was produced--
and actually, the very notion
of format came, I would say, three
or four years later after the completion of the
house, the Cien House, which is the inverted T.
And therefore, we didn't employ the system,
these permutational, or these so-called
parametric transformation. To define, to arrive
to a result is not part of a process to
produce architecture. It's a part of a
process that allows us to think about architecture,
not with a particular case, but to the idea of
an archetypical case. Therefore, in that case, we
would have selected number, 127, to fit the program. But it's more the
mental elasticity to find the proper conditions,
the right balance-- Within this format,
a format, this is something we were
discussing yesterday with our group of students--
is this invisible frame. It's a mute outline. And so it's passive, in a way. It's not active
within the process. I have time for one more. I don't know who was first. OK. Hi, Sofia. Hi, Pezo. My question is, what
are the different roles of photography and painting
as the representation of your work? And is that related
to the dichotomy of reality and fiction? We do a lot of our own pictures. Actually, the ones we
showed, most of them-- All of them. All of them are done by us. So they serve
different purposes. Of course, the photography
you're seeing is documentation. Well, actually, you're
seeing all photography. You're seeing the documentation
of our work, a built building. And you're seeing the
documentation of a painting. You're not seeing the thing
in original in any way. We are interested in both
those things in the buildings and in the paintings
as the thing. We're not interested-- our final
result is not to document what we do or to-- and of course, this
is very difficult because we're all trapped in
this loop of communication. And there's no other way
we can show you our work. Of course, if you're coming
to Chile, you'll see it. But yes, we are very
aware that photography has a point of view. And we're very
careful about that. We like doing photos
of our own work because we choose exactly
how we want it to be frozen. Of course, it's not
fair to the work because our works are very
much about a dynamic system, like most architecture. Nowadays, I think this is a big
confusion for younger people. They produce architecture for
the image of that architecture and not necessarily for the
real presence of things. But both in the building
and in the paintings, we explore very similar topics. Again, the painting
is a static element. And therefore, we try to explore
other ideas that cannot happen in the architecture, or that
maybe will then be embedded in the architecture, but
not necessarily perceived in the same manner. So many of our
paintings are not-- We'll never, despite being
made paintings of building, can never be perceived
in the building. So they're about a different
dimension that will never-- so that they can become
additive to the understanding of the building. We are so happy
that you're here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
