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Ludwig Godefroy

“the relationship with the emotions you will feel in a space is the very essence of a project”

Raw concrete, old brick and pale gravel glow under the golden light of the sun in Mérida, the capital city of Mexico’s Yucatán state, which is considered as the centre of indigenous Mayan civilisation. When designing Casa Mérida, architect Ludwig Godefroy asked the question “How is it possible to build architecture that reflects and considers the Yucatán identity, to make this house belong to its territory? In other words, how could this house be Mayan?” Inside the decor is as simple as the outside, with wood, stone, and pops of blue which mirrors the turquoise swimming pool at the back of the property.

The site itself has rather odd proportions for a house, it’s only eight meters wide and eighty meters long, resembling a road or pathway more than a traditional plot of land than a home. However, Godefroy has turned this to his advantage, inserting open patios between the buildings to create traditional airflow cooling concepts in a city which is known for its extreme climate and high temperatures. He also references a Sacbé, which is the name for the ancient Mayan road system which would connect the indigenous people’s of the land. “Those straight lines used to connect all together the different elements, temples, plazas, pyramids and cenotes of a Mayan city; sacred ways which could even go from one site to another along a few hundred kilometres.” NR Magazine joins the artist in conversation.

How do you think cultural identity influences design and architecture?

Definitely, it does according to my way of thinking. I always look around me and since I arrived in Mexico, it’s been now 14 years, my architecture changed, became heavier, made out of concrete, stone and tropical wood. Mexico changed my way of designing, I started to look at prehispanic architecture and mixed it with my personal taste, the bunkers from Normandy (where I was born), my European education and background working with OMA and Enric Miralles / Benedetta Tagliabue.

But now, I definitely consider myself a Mexican architect and not a French or European architect anymore. Mexico is the country where I live, it’s my inspiration, and it’s made out of Mexican references and Mexican moments of life. The way I’m building right now is also Mexican, more handcrafted and less industrialised, always integrating locals knowledge and details coming from Mexican vernacular architecture and ways of building it.

My architecture became a bunker from Normandy on the outside, protecting my personal Mexican pyramid on the inside, both connected by the use of vernacular simplicity; vernacular simplicity from my fisherman village in Normandy being, in a way very, close to the vernacular simplicity of the Mexican countryside where I build.

Do you think there is much to learn about sustainability from indigenous’s cultures like the Mayans and which of these methods were used when building Casa Mérida?

It’s a very complicated question, the context of our lives radically changed, and the globalisation as well. But definitely, our relation with nature is the one that suffered the most. I don’t think we have to feel ashamed of building, I mean I’m an architect and it’s my job, but probably what I’ve learned from indigenous cultures and, in my case, more specifically from pre-hispanic civilisation legacy is: what do we want to feel inside of our buildings, how can the atmosphere of my architecture can remain sacred and sensitive?

According to my thinking, the relationship with the emotions you will feel in a space is the very essence of a project, which means once you created emotions in architecture, you don’t need much more. You can naturally step back to more simple architectural elements, made out of simple but massive materials, with the ability to get old instead of getting damaged by time. I want to run away from the “everything throwaway mentality” of our modern society, getting rid of the unnecessary, creating timeless spaces which will slowly change under the action of time, ageing being part of the architecture, an architecture which will get covered by a new coat of materiality: “the patina of time”.

Are there any new technologies in architecture that you are particularly excited about?

Not at all. I really love technology, I need the internet non-stop, computers and smartphones but I still remain a peasant. I was born in Normandy, in a fisherman’s village and I still like what’s most simple in life. I still like to push and pull a switch to turn on and off the light, I don’t need my fridge to tell me what to buy, and I still like to open the curtains myself in the morning. I like the wind, I like the light, I like the heat, I don’t need much technology around me, only music. I enjoy waking up in the morning to prepare a nice black expresso coffee and go to my garden to observe the plants, the trees, the birds and the lizards; it’s my process to start working on my projects every day, contemplation.

Rising temperatures are becoming an increasingly huge issue and you designed Casa Mérida specifically to combat high temperatures without having to use AC. Do you think housing around the world will begin to implement techniques like these in the future or will the majority continue to rely on AC?

No, I don’t think so!  I also understand there are parts of the world where it’s almost impossible to survive without AC, and Mérida, Yucatán is one of those. Casa Mérida is a house designed for pleasure, it’s a vacation house, it’s easier than a main residence, or an office space. I made a project based on natural crossed ventilation to avoid the use of AC, thinking if you offer the option to live in a well-ventilated space, maybe you’ll help people change their minds.

My vision of architecture focuses on changing people habits, rather than looking for technological improvements, towards a more simple way of living with fewer necessities, to minimise our impact on the ecology of our planet. It’s basically what vernacular architecture does and always has done, I’m not inventing anything, but just trying to go back to basics.

You kept elements of the old house including the front facade and the old buildings ‘bones’. Do you think this kind of perseveration is vital when modernising homes like this one?

Yes, I love it. I always think you belong to a permanent work in progress. There were people before you on the construction site you’re working on, and there will be people after you. I see architecture as a palimpsest, when you clean up the lamb parchment, the previous story will never vanish 100%. There is always something remaining from the past story in the back of the new story you are writing on top of your palimpsest.

You have stated that Casa Mérida reflects Yucatán identity, in what specific ways does it do so?

I always design my architecture as a peasant would. I always draw short structures, using short beams, between 4 to 5 meters long; dimensions I know any mason in the world is able to build without any specialised skills. I know this way everything will be local, starting with the workers. A house in Yucatán has to be built by people from Yucatán, It´s for me the first step to start belonging. I want my architecture to respond to local techniques, the stone, the wood I use will always change according to the region where I am building. As I said before, my architecture is always playing with temples and pyramids references. In the case of Casa Mérida, the house is organised along a Sacbé ”white way”, the Mayan roads that used to connect temples and pyramids together, ending in the swimming pool which looks like a concrete cenote.

Blue textiles have been used to mirror the house’s swimming pool which is inspired by cenotes. This reminded me of David Hockey’s swimming pool series, is there any connection or inspiration there?

To be honest no, but I really like the idea! Hockney’s work is beautiful, and I like the way it’s simple, almost naive sometimes, it matches with my architecture I guess.

What challenges did you face whilst working on this project and how did you overcome them?

I would say the concrete. Mérida is not a place where people are used to rough concrete. Rough concrete is something more common in Oaxaca state or Mexico City. So we had to learn together with the constructor in charge, explaining to the workers what we wanted to reach. For a mason rough concrete is unfinished, they don’t catch the beauty of it at the beginning. We had to explain it to them.

But definitely, our concrete is not perfect, This is part of something I totally accept, having un-perfect concrete, trying to get better and better during the process of building. Accident is part of my aesthetic, I always tell my clients to stop looking at Tadao Ando, we won’t make a Japanese concrete, we will make a Mexican concrete, rougher than the Japanese one, A perfectly un-perfect concrete.

What advice would you give to young creatives who are interested in architecture?

Don’t buy books and magazines on contemporary architecture. Only buy books and magazines that were published up until the 80s. This way, with those references, you won’t be tempted to literally copy them, you will have to reinterpret them, so this way you will make them yours.

Are you working on any projects at the moment and do you have any plans for the future?

Yes, right now I’m finishing three houses, one outside Mexico City, one in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca and another one in Mérida Yucatán. I have also one hotel under construction in Puerto Escondido Oaxaca. I’m about to break ground for a new house in Mérida Yucatán, a house/Airbnb hotel close to Huatulco Oaxaca, and another house/Airbnb hotel in Roca Blanca Oaxaca. Meanwhile, we are working on three new projects in the conceptual phase in the office.

Sophie Hicks

“Architecture appears to be moving towards helping human beings live, work and experience their lives better. And if that means the building looks like shit, then so be it!”

While still a student at the Architectural Association, Sophie Hicks founded her London-based architecture firm in 1990. The practice started out designing private housing, and by leveraging her insider insight, it is safe to say that Sophie Hicks has become one of fashion’s favourite architects, with her firm designing stores for the likes of Acne Studios, Chloé, Yohji Yamamoto and more.

Hicks became a chartered architect in 1994, prior to which she worked as a fashion editor for Vogue and for the iconic designer, Azzedine Alaïa. Hicks’s relentless efficiency has allowed her to lead her practice with extensive experience in the fashion world. Particularly strong on design, her approach is both conceptual and practical, and is highly attuned to the zeitgeist.

Outside of her fashion clients, Hicks’s residential projects embody the spirit of their surroundings, and champion honesty and boldness of materials. Subtle yet meticulously considered details are typical of Hicks’s architecture, which is best characterised by her discreet, restrained and durable ways of working.

NR Magazine speaks with Hicks about the ins and outs of her career, and to learn more about what distinguishes her identity as an architect.

What inspired you to change career path from fashion to architecture? 

I think it two things, really. I was very excited about being in the fashion world. From the age of about 17, when I entered it, it was very exciting. I enjoyed being a stylist and identifying new trends and fashions, creating pictures, and putting teams together, but I got to a point where I saw the fashion cycle coming full circle with the types of images and models coming out, and I was only about 26. I felt that it was too soon for me to be getting stuck into a cycle. I didn’t want to be part of a world that was going around in circles.

What I really wanted to do was to be creative and to create something myself. With photography and styling photographs, you are in effect, being creative but you’re putting together teams like a director. You’re grabbing clothes, putting together teams of photographers, models, hair, makeup and inventing a story, but you’re not actually taking the photograph or designing the clothes. I’d always been interested in architecture ever since I was a teenager, and I just decided to completely change paths and see if I could be an architect and create things myself that would affect how people experience the world.

Was that scary? The fashion world is such a dynamic and intimidating place to work in. Was it a shock moving into the world of architecture? 

Yes. I quite like having new and different experiences, and I quite like taking risks. Towards the end of my fashion career, I was working for Azzedine Alaïa doing a set of photographs with him of his previous collections from the start until that point in the mid-80s. We were recording all his collections for a book that he eventually bought out. So I was dressed top to toe in Alaïa – the tailored pieces, not the slinky ones, but I was pretty sharply dressed. I’ve never been so smart since.  I swanned up to the Architectural Association for an interview looking like something they’d never really seen before.

They asked to see my portfolio, and I told them I didn’t have one, only my fashion sketches. In those days at fashion shows, you weren’t allowed to photograph the clothes because they were kept embargoed until they actually got into the shops, so if you were an editor, you sat there sketching in your notebooks. You had to sketch extremely quickly because the models would come by quite fast. I showed them these books, and I was sitting there in a black tailored double-breasted suit – I think they just thought I was mad. I heard afterwards that they really didn’t think I would stick it, but they didn’t realise that if I decide to do something, I do it.

But they offered me a place, and on day one, I knew I shouldn’t walk in there all dressed up, so I decided to go completely under the radar and became unnoticeable. You had to absorb yourself and become a chameleon. It was about the second term, when someone turned to me and asked, ‘You’re not that Sophie Hicks who used to be the fashion editor at Vogue, are you?’ and I said, ‘well, yes, I am actually.’ and she said, ‘why do you look like that then?’ it was all quite amusing. I just really enjoyed drawing and making things. We did a lot of work in the workshops – we would weld, cut, saw, and make models. I loved all of that. We did a lot of expressive drawings, which were pre-computer, and I’m not a good drawer by hand, so I’d make a lot with clay, plaster, carving, printing, and etching etc.

We would talk a lot about our ideas. And the Architectural Association is brilliant at teaching design, and brilliant at teaching you how to think. I’m an external examiner there now, which I’ve been doing for the last four years, and it’s amazing how they get their students to think – to a level that I don’t think you get in other schools.

It’s a bit like if you were thinking about conceptual art, I suppose. Thinking about what the concept is, what the meaning behind it is and why you’re doing it. Absolutely everything needs an explanation when you design, and it’s got nothing to do with aesthetics until you know why you’re doing it, then the aesthetics happen naturally. Of course, some people do their aesthetics better than others – some people have an elegance, and some people don’t. But if there isn’t a reason behind why you’re doing something, then I don’t think it’s very meaningful.

I’ve always thought that film directors have a very interesting job, with the way they approach a project and how they set up a team and choosing all the people who are going to gel as unit. It was Grace Coddington who taught me how to set up a team when you’re doing a fashion shoot. The psychology of a group is incredibly important. I took that kind of thinking with me to the world of architecture: thinking broadly, out of the box and about how to set up an architectural project in a way that is more likely to be successful.

What inspiration do you draw from other engineers and architects – particularly with Félix Candela and Paulo Mendes da Rocha? 

They worked brilliantly with concrete. Recently, I’ve used quite a bit of concrete in buildings I’ve made. I think Félix Candela was probably the most brilliant user of concrete who has ever lived. He mathematically worked out how to create very thin, reinforced concrete shells that were very elegant and incredibly clever. And if you can do something very clever, why wouldn’t you? He also did this because he was designing quite simple structures like bus shelters and churches for communities in Mexico. The budgets were very tight, and I believe he even designed some churches without windows. Because of this low budget, he used less concrete, so the building was less expensive. Because of that, he designed these extraordinary floating canopies and canopy rooves, where the geometry is really his invention. His brilliance as an engineer allowed him to do that. There are some wonderful photographs of this, one in particular which has workman standing on top of this mushroom-like roof. It’s about 10 or 15 metres high and incredibly thin. It’s just a brilliant demonstration of history.

Paulo Mendes da Rocha’s buildings in and around Sao Paolo have an incredible force to them. They’re raw and feel very dynamic, as they have so much embodied energy, in that they are incredibly still. The thing about him which I find very interesting, and which I feel reassured by, is when when I hear about architects of his stature that did what I do, which is having an office of one. An architect of his stature, you would expect to have an office of quite a lot of people, but he maintained a very small office. I’ve never had a big office – I’ve had an office of about 10 people perhaps, and I found that I wasn’t properly designing myself. I was spending too much time looking after other people and checking their work.

Everything froze with the crash in 2008, and I felt like I really needed to get back to basics. What I really wanted to do was design buildings, and what I really wanted to do was actually be the one doing the designing, not passing it down. I’ve got the most brilliant kind of situation now, where I work very closely with my colleague Tom Hopes, and we work very well together. He’s very strong on construction, and I’m very strong on design. He’s teaching me construction and I’m teaching him design – we do both and understand both sides. My aspiration would be to continue to work in this way, and to continue to work in the way that Mendes da Rocha worked. That involved only bringing in other team members for a project when you need to, so you don’t have everyone in the office all the time.

The most recent building I did was a house in Northamptonshire, and it was a reasonably big team. We did all the drawings here, with about 10 or so people, but it worked very well because the quality of the design and the detail was that bit higher. We work very closely as a team and get much better results, I feel. But it’s an unusual way to work, so I’m always encouraged when I read that someone like him created really interesting buildings with that same process.

What do you value most about a living space?

That it’s really comfortable, and not just literally. It’s important that you feel relaxed, calm, and able to be yourself in and around it. The word ‘comfortable’ might have the wrong connotations because it makes you think about sitting on squishy chairs, but it’s not that. It’s a kind of feeling – feeling yourself.

When I design for other people, I want to find out what makes them feel right. If I’m designing a house for somebody, I want to know everything about how they live, how they behave, what makes them feel comfortable, and what kind of impression they want that building to embody. With the house that I designed for my daughter recently, which is called House Between Two Lakes, it was really important to her that it wasn’t a show-off-y house. She didn’t want a flashy house. She didn’t want a house that was obtrusive. She wanted something that was the opposite of a designed house, which is why we made something that sat very gently in the landscape, and that is very streamlined.

As the theme of this issue is identity, I thought it would be interesting to know if you’ve ever had kind of ‘identity crisis’ with a project?   

That’s a difficult one, because architectural projects are very long and very complicated, and they involve an awful lot of solving problems. These problems might be thrown up by the environment or by the building problems that crop up during construction. If you’re working on a project where you’re solving problems, an identity crisis is less common.

There’s initial design that you tend not to go forward with until you’ve got the concept sorted out. Projects don’t go ahead if you can’t get that right. It’s a difficult question for me to answer. I know it sounds as if I’m not admitting to self-doubt, but that’s not it. As an architect, you’re a servant of the client, so you need to understand what they’re all about. If you don’t understand what they’re all about, the project tends not to go forward. If you are trying to understand what they’re all about, you carry on until you reach a point of agreement, and during that process, there are often moments where you doubt if you’re ever going to get there. There are multiple points in time where I would be searching for the solution that would embody the character or the ethos of a brand, or the character of the person or thing that they want to embody in the building. It might be some sort of feelings or atmosphere, and I might be struggling to understand what they really mean. And even when I do understand, I have to then find a way of translating that into a built form.

There is a kind of lightbulb moment when you get it right. It happened with the Chloé shop early on for Phoebe Philo. I was struggling with what to do for this luxurious brand, and for its new, young, dynamic designer. She’s got great ideas and a contemporary way of looking at things. At the end of the day, it’s a Paris luxury house, and had stores on fancy shopping streets. I thought about what we could do to bring the spirit of that young designer into the shop environment in a way that would feel how I think she feels about her designs. I really thought we weren’t going to get there. I really didn’t know what I was going to be able to suggest, and then suddenly, we had riots in Bond Street. There were some demonstrations, and the shop fronts were boarded up, and that was my lightbulb moment. We used railing and raw plywood like you would use to protect your front window. We put that inside the shop and used it as the finish for the walls. There’s a real beauty to basic plywood. Not fancy plywood and beautiful veneer, just the bog-standard shuttering with lots of faults in it. I wanted to bring that into this luxury space and offset it with the pink marble and gold-plated metal fittings that Phoebe was working on. We gave it a kind of spin that would tell the kinds of rich women who are going to come into shop, that there’s something else going on here. The spirit of the place is just a bit more rooted in reality.

Your Acne Studios flagship store has a very forceful and distinct presence, reflecting the studio’s designs and aversion to conventional Swedish design. What were the other influences behind this project?

When working with a fashion client or a brand, they have very distinct characteristics and their brand identity is important to them, so it’s about finding an architecture that will embody that character and ethos. When I have a new client, I go and study that person, or that group of designers.

I’d never been to Sweden before Acne Studios contacted me, so I spent a long time shadowing Jonny Johansson during design meetings, hearing how he spoke to other people and absorbing how he works and how he makes his choices. I also spent quite a lot of time travelling around Sweden and going to the islands to gather information in my mind about Swedish light.

One of the most important things for that Seoul flagship store was the kind of light you get in Sweden. In the summer, you get a very strong and completely engulfing flat light. Light is very important in Sweden, because for many months of the year they don’t have a lot of it, and then they have a lot of it all at once in the summer. Something I noticed from studying Jonny and the other Swedes in the office, is that they were very private and keep their cards quite close to their chest. Seoul is a very dynamic, outgoing place in comparison. I thought if I were going to make a building in this very dynamic city for a brand whose culture is much more reticent, then I would like to make the building sit as a quiet, almost brooding monster. Monster isn’t quite the right word, I know, but there’s something very still about the concrete frame within that building. It’s very grounded and permanent, but then it’s held inside this misty white box. With this misty white box, you get no hint of what’s going on inside until you enter. I also had no idea that the light was going to be as good as it was until we built it. I thought it would be nice, but it really is extraordinary. All the daylight comes through this white polycarbonate material, and it makes you feel as if you’re in a white cloud. It’s quite odd and does strange things to your perception. I think that aspect of it is the Swedish part – this sense of unreality and dreaminess that is present in Sweden, particularly in the islands, that are so silent. It embodies that quietness of the Swedish character.

So it’s kind of in opposition to Seoul, but then all the air conditioning and all the services, we had piled up on the roof. All the rooftops in Seoul are a mess of air conditioning units, so we did that as a nod to Korea, but in a very neat and tidy way. This also allowed us to keep the space inside the building free, without any dropped ceilings or internal surfaces hiding anything. I don’t like finishes and I don’t like hiding things, so I don’t like having to build internal walls to hide services. I like the internal finish to express the structure of the building.

How did you go about combining both Japanese and Parisian aesthetics and design principles with your Yohji Yamamoto store?

I knew Yohji anyway, as I’d seen his first shows in Paris when I was working at Vogue, so I knew how he was when he landed in Paris. He landed with this extraordinary new vision that was completely different from anything that had come before. I knew how he’d been incredibly shocking to the Parisians and the world of fashion entirely. I also knew how he’d become comfortable over the years in Paris and opened one of his design studios. He had a big office in Paris and worked quite a few months of the year there, so I knew he’d become much more embedded in Paris than say Rei had – she was much more Japan-based.

When I was working on his project, I basically shadowed him. But with him, he didn’t like anyone close, so I’d be observing and studying from a distance. He’s a very private person, and Japanese shopping culture is very sophisticated. They don’t like to show off. It feels very wrong to put a mannequin in a window for a Japanese client.

I decided to include glimpses, and he was open enough to be able to show glimpses into the store from the windows, so we used a kind of Shoji screen. We played with the idea of things on axes, like in formal French gardens. You get glimpses through the screen, and as you get closer, you can see into the shop. We included without heads, so basically had all the dresses floating in the space. And when you entered, you’d have a series of glimpses that would start from a kind of corridor of wooden folded screens. As you move down this corridor, the view suddenly opens up, and that’s when you can tell a story about menswear and womenswear. It was all to do with opening up really, which I think is a very French thing, and then through showing his clothes in a progression – that’s how I tried to make the link between him and Paris.

What qualities of materials do you think lend the most atmosphere to a space? And what do you enjoy working with the most?

For an interior space, I like the structure of the building to be expressed internally. I want to be able to see what the structure is, and it’s the expression of those structural materials that I think gives character and atmosphere to the space. That’s one reason why I don’t like decoration. With House Between Two Lakes, we had one or two internal walls, as we had to divide the space somewhat, and it needed a surface finish. I hate decoration so I didn’t know what to do.

Because the roof is made from precast concrete planks and the floor is cast in situ concrete, decided to do something related to those two materials. We used render with some pigments to give it a more interesting colour, and it was very important to me that the sand and cement render was done by the plasterer. I would have hated it if someone else came to do a clever finish. We wanted to keep any expressive movements. We chose the colour to relate to the earth. That piece of land was a brick quarry at one point, so we chose this brick red colour. This was the only way I could find to do a finish that would be as far away from decoration as possible.

I’m also slightly allergic to tiling in bathrooms, so we put a waterproofing agent into the mixture, and put it in all the bathrooms. I’ve done tiling in other projects, I’ve done lovely marble bathrooms and stone-clad bathrooms, but for the House Between Two Lakes, it is a house in the mud. It’s unbelievably wet there. The house is supported on pairs of steel piles, that go something like 16 or 18 metres down into the ground to anchor it into the mud. You basically want to smear the mud on the walls. Fancy things wouldn’t make sense – it just doesn’t read visually.

Is there anything you consider to be an architectural faux pas?   

I don’t know about faux pas, but over the past decade I’ve noticed a tendency for architecture to be sculptural, or a tendency for a piece of architecture to be a bold statement about form and glamour. That is something I don’t feel comfortable with, so I’ve been biding my time hoping this moment will pass, and I think it has.

This year’s architecture biennale in Venice was very much on a different track. Architecture appears to be moving towards helping human beings live, work and experience their lives better. And if that means the building looks like shit, then so be it! I much prefer that. Of course, they never do, because if you make a building that really functions beautifully for human beings, then by definition, it’s going to work and be a wonderful piece of architecture. I think it’s a great moment for architecture to get re-grounded and not be concerned with making a flash statement.

Some of the South American projects are fantastic. They’re more left wing and democratic. They have a history, that is not so far buried, of making buildings to serve the people. I’ve been sucked into this world of clients who aren’t really serving the people. I know that most of the projects I’ve been commissioned to do are projects that may be wonderful, and I may be pleased with them, but they are projects that aren’t necessarily needed. You don’t need a fancy store. I happen to enjoy designing a store, because there’s an intellectual exercise of trying to identify what the ethos of that brand is.

I think brands are moving more towards the social and cultural changes that we’ve experienced in the last two or three years. They are recognising them, reacting to them, and bringing something of them into their shopping experiences. I watch with interest to see if any of the big luxury brands react to this, but at the moment, I haven’t really seen anything that makes me think that they’re willing to break the mould and allow people to shop in a different way. I have various theories about it, and I’ve had a couple of potential clients in the last year who might have gone for it but didn’t in the end.

How important is sustainability to you? 

It’s very important. I’m very ‘waste not want not’, so it is in my nature not to throw things away – I like to reuse, and I like things that are very durable. What I’ve realised is that I’ve been creating buildings in the last 4,5,6 years, that are going to be incredibly hard to demolish. They have these big concrete frames that express a kind of solidity which I love to use in contrast to a lightness. I like the solidity and I like the delicacy as well.

The Earls Court House that I built for myself, has a basement which must be, by definition, constructed out of concrete. So, I decided to bring the concrete up to grow out of the ground and combine it with the delicacy of the glass. Mass concrete is incredibly comfortable to live in. It very slowly and gently absorbs heat or the cold, which means that you have a very constant temperature, so you can avoid using lots of electricity for heating. It’s very sustainable for electricity usage, because what you don’t do is use a lot of electricity for heating.

When you manufacture concrete, you use a lot of energy and you disturb the land because of the quarrying, so it is disruptive, but if you if you use concrete, and you don’t intend to demolish your building, it quite quickly becomes sustainable. I think there’s a balance. I think until a building has lasted a certain number of years, it’s not sustainable, but once it’s been in for a certain time, and you factor in the reduced energy usage, then I think it’s reasonably sustainable.

With the House Between Two Lakes, I reused joinery and doors from previous buildings that had been demolished and stored. The bronze front door for example – I think it’s quite rare for architects to reuse old parts in new buildings like that.

I think in the future, what I would really like to do is make a building where we use materials that are available very close to the site, whatever that might be.

What do you anticipate for the future of your work? 

I’d love to do housing development, rather than one-off housing. I would love to be approached by a developer who wants to design some sort of group of houses that is particularly suited to life now – perhaps family life.

Discover more here sophiehicks.com

Practice Architecture

“It’s this kind of interdisciplinary weaving together that is going to make change happen”

Founded in 2009, Practice Architecture is a London based firm adept at delivering various acclaimed cultural, community and residential projects. The firm has established itself as one that creates exceptional structures with a strong sense of place, and has a hands-on approach, getting involved from a design’s inception through to a structure’s completion, and help to curate both space and the activity it houses.

For their innovative Flat House project, the firm worked alongside hemp farmers and with sustainable methods of construction to construct a zero-carbon home in Cambridgeshire from prefabricated panels, all in just two days.

Their smaller scale Polyvalent Studio project was created within the parameters of the caravan act, meaning in most contexts it does not require planning permission. It was designed by students from London Metropolitan University and constructed within just 12 days, exemplifying the possibilities of low embodied energy design and the benefits of a collaborative working process in the industry.

Practice Architecture is currently working with food growing workers cooperative OrganicLea in developing a 10-year plan for the expansion of the infrastructure at their main site Hawkwood. The project will deliver substantial new educational buildings and volunteer spaces alongside a large community hall and kitchen, and the project will be built from natural materials as a self-build, working with the volunteers on site.

NR Magazine speaks with Practice Architecture to learn more about these projects, how they incorporate sustainable methods into their practice, and their ethos as a firm.

What inspired you to start working with cultural and community projects?

We started making things in London in a very informal way. We worked a lot with our peers and what we were doing was really part of a broader DIY culture within our community. In the absence of institutions that spoke to us, we made our own spaces in which to explore our own culture. This kind of work was only possible under the provision of it being temporary, but serendipitously, almost all the places we built in this era are still here.

We made our buildings in a very hands-on way, going on site ourselves, with friends and volunteers to build a project and used very basic tools and equipment to do so. This experience continues to feed into the work we do now, our understanding of materials and the way we design with others.

More designers are using hempcrete at the moment, and I’m familiar with artists using it on a small scale with pottery and sculpture, but nothing like on your Flat House project. What was the process like when building with this material on a larger scale?

The process began with the drilling of the seeds in the 30 acres of field that surround the house.  This was overseen by Joe Meghan, a hemp farmer who had supported Steve Baron the client and founder of Margent Farm in getting a licence and specifying the appropriate subspecies of plant.

Hemp is a very resilient crop, with long tap roots that help to rehabilitate and condition soils that have been degraded through industrial farming practices. It has a short growing season of 3-4 months, after which we were able to harvest the seed and stem and process it into usable oil, fibre and shiv (the woody core of the stem).

The project makes use of each element of the plant, with the oil being used by Margent Farm in health and body treatments, the fibre being made into a cladding and the shiv into the hempcrete insulation. Each element of the plant went through a different process, with the fibre being felted and blended with a sugar resin and the shiv being chopped and mixed with a lime binder.

We designed a cassette-based construction system using structural timber with hempcrete to form an insulated panel, refining the construction details with Oscar Cooper from Lignin Builds. The panels were constructed in a factory and dried before being brought to site and lifted into place over two days. The cladding was made a few miles down the road with the impregnated hemp fibre matt pressed to form corrugations. The cladding is very easy to work with as it’s light and can be cut using a simple hand saw. We were lucky that with so many elements of experimentation, everything went very smoothly, and the building came together as anticipated.

Aside from sustainability, what were the other aims and inspirations behind your Flat House project?

We wanted to demonstrate how, what are often thought of as traditional materials, can be applied in a very contemporary way using the latest construction technology. The project celebrates the simplicity of its construction and how few materials went into making it. The key thing with Flat House was not just to develop a building, but to develop a whole system that could be replicated at scale across the country.

The project has led to the establishment of Material Cultures, a research organisation that explores natural materials in the context of offsite construction. Could you talk a bit more about that?

Yes, Material Cultures is now doing the work of scaling up these ideas and applying them to large scale housing and commercial projects. We are working with a variety of clients and housing developers – people who are interested in doing things differently. Alongside this, we carry out research projects with a number of universities, developing full scale mock-ups and looking at the broader cultural context of the work we do.

Material Cultures is exploring how regional specificity and a relationship to regenerative agriculture might shape the evolution of new housing typologies. The low carbon construction industry is still relatively embryonic, which means working across many fields and disciplines simultaneously to make things happen. That’s why we are really excited to be working with Yorkshire and the North East and ARUP to develop a regional strategy for a transition to a bio-based construction economy.

It’s this kind of interdisciplinary weaving together that is going to make change happen.

What does collaboration mean to you as an architecture firm?

For us architecture has always been as much about process as it is about built form. The design is material and construction led, which means really understanding how something is put together. 

“Each project is an opportunity to connect with different disciplines and expertise, to learn and test something.”

We have been really lucky to have amazing long-term collaborators such as Henry Stringer – one of the most inventive makers of things – and Will Stanwix who has over 20 years’ experience of working intuitively with natural materials.

We generally make places directly with the people that use them, whether that be through getting everyone on site during the build or developing genuinely engaged co-design processes.

How do you go about balancing space and intimacy with a project?

We are really interested in spatial qualities and the different ways in which we are acted upon or made to feel by a building. We look to create balance, often pairing close and intimate spaces with more open ones. Material plays a large role in this. Arriving at the Straw Auditorium project in Bold Tendencies you move from the harsh open floor plates of the concrete carpark into an intimate womb like space, enveloped by the tactile warmth and smell of an organic material.

What inspired you to work with cellulose-based materials for the Polyvalent Studio project?

The Polyvalent Studio project was developed with David Grandorge and students at the London Metropolitan School of Architecture. The project was a continuation of Practice Architecture’s work exploring natural construction at Margent Farm and shares a lot of the material technology developed with Flat House.

The building is designed within the caravan act meaning it can be moved in two independent modules and that it could be built without planning permission. It touches very lightly on the ground with timber footings that penetrate the soil line. These are made from Accoya, an acetylated timber product that can far outperform other timbers and represents exciting opportunities for the substitution of traditionally high carbon materials in exposed areas.

The studio was designed and built by students at London Metropolitan School of Architecture. What was it like working with students and completing the project in such a short space of time?

Building the studio together with the students was a really amazing experience. They brought so much energy, passion, and commitment. It is mournfully rare for architecture students to get an opportunity to use their hands and build things at scale.

“Building things is one of the most direct ways to learn how to design things, and the lack of genuine understanding of construction by architects is what leads to many tensions between professions.”

This project was established within the context of your research into natural materials and low carbon construction techniques like with Flat House. What other kinds of innovative solutions to sustainable construction are you hoping to work with?

We are always looking to learn about new materials. Currently this means exploring innovative straw and mycelium construction and looking at the role of chalk within structural and civil engineering projects.

With the theme of this issue being Identity, I’d love to know how you feel the firm incorporates sustainability and education into its identity.

For a long time, sustainability was something we did by default, but we didn’t really talk about it or have a way of articulating what we were doing. We saw our work as predominantly socially driven and about process – and the architecture and materiality as a means to an end.

It’s been interesting over the last few years to begin redressing and articulating an underlying intentionality behind our approach to how things are made. Underlying the design is a deep concern for how the things we make fit within a broader cycle and ecology of things. Where do the components come from and where do they end up? How can we be resourceful and responsible? It’s been great to begin to articulate these things and situate what we have been doing within other conversations around things like regenerative agriculture and the logic of global supply chains.

How important is adaptability to you?

We want to make buildings that can respond to their users. This means they need to be able to adapt and evolve. You can design in a way that either makes this very difficult or enables it. By keeping structure exposed and close to the surface and making the construction legible, it empowers residents and users to add, change and adapt.

Working with a food growing cooperative, your Hawkwood Plant Nursery project also champions natural materials and community collaboration. Could you talk a bit more about the aims for this ten-year plan?

It’s really exciting to be working on a number of large-scale food growing projects in London. These kinds of spaces are so important and so different from other types of green spaces such as parks.  They offer the opportunity for a genuine connection to soil and to land – one that is mutually nourishing and that brings you into contact with most important natural processes that we all depend on like the water cycle, photosynthesis, composting and soil formation.

Hawkwood and the other Market Garden City project Wolves Lane are leading the way in setting a precedent for socially and community focussed food spaces. We are looking to embed genuinely circular principles in the project, working with the resources available on site and integrating locally sourced natural materials wherever possible. The principal being that anything we are bringing onto the site can ultimately return to those natural cycles itself, in the form of mulch and compost.

Credits

Images · PRACTICE ARCHITECTURE
www.practicearchitecture.co.uk

Isamu Noguchi

“to be hybrid is to be the future”

The art world, unfortunately, has a certain reputation for snobbery. Everything that is deemed as ‘art’ must, of course, be well thought out, aesthetically intriguing and completely unaffordable for anyone who isn’t part of ‘the rich’. Anything that is actually affordable for people who aren’t part of that income bracket is deemed as ‘low art’. Low art is defined as “for the masses, accessible and easily consumable.”

Over the years this definition has often been criticised alongside the common phrase “art for art’s sake” which was born from definitions like these and “is so culturally pervasive that many people accept it as the “correct” way to classify art.” Thus, it is rather surprising to see such definitions being alluded to in reviews of Noguchi’s exhibition at the Barbican as the artist himself was not a proponent of “art for art’s sake” according to Barbican curator Florence Ostende.

Japanese American designer and sculptor Isamu Noguchi was of “the most experimental and pioneering artists of the 20th century”. His exhibition at the Barbican displays over a hundred and fifty works from his career which spans over six decades and explores his life, work and creative method. The best way to describe him is a ‘creative polymath’ as his work straddled a multitude of disciplines.

The exhibition itself is on two levels and upon entering the space you are directed upstairs. This first section is divided into spacious alcoves and display different periods of the artists work. There is a slight feeling of disconnect here and one finds oneself peering over the railing to the floor below, which appears from above far more engaging. However, this part of the exhibition provides an important overview for those who are not so familiar with Noguchi’s work. It maps the artist’s collaborations with the likes of Brâncuși, Martha Graham and R. Buckminster Fuller, in addition to charting Noguchi’s activist work, protesting racist lynchings, America’s internment of its Japanese American citizens during World War II, and fascism.

However, it is on the first level that the exhibition becomes a real delight, a rambling hodgepodge of stone and metal sculptures and his world-famous Akari lamps that makes one itch to play amongst this minimalist wonderland. Noguchi was committed to creating accessible public art and playgrounds, or playscapes, were a fascination for him. He designed these playgrounds as a way to “encourage creative interaction as a way of learning.” Indeed this interest in play and playfulness is echoed in the exhibition’s main space.

The star of the show is certainly the Akira lamps handing like softly glowing space ships, seemingly emerging from the floor like some strange luminous creature and arranged in clumps like brightly coloured mushrooms. Noguchi designed them after visiting struggling post-war Japan as a way to revitalise the economy. He took the Japanese bamboo and rice paper lanterns and modernised them as a way to bring industry back to the war-torn country.

These lamps became popular in Britain in the sixties and are still available, albeit in a slightly changed form, in IKEA. Because of this they are instantly recognisable and have led to some likening the Barbican exhibition to a ‘high-end lighting showroom.’ However, this brings us back to the discussion of ‘art for art’s sake.’  As I wandered around the exhibition I was drawn back to childhood memories of visiting B&Q with my parents, (they were the only shop in my hometown that had escalators and thus was an infinitely entertaining playground). Playground is the keyword here, I was allowed to roam the aisle alone in delicious freedom and explore this wonderland of light, metal, wood and a multitude of other textures, shapes and materials. To my childlike understanding, all of this was art. Interestingly Noguchi’s philosophy was rather similar. In creating the Akari lamps he aimed to “bring sculpture to everyday households”.

In our current environment of late-stage capitalism, Noguchi’s quiet and thoughtful philosophy’s on purpose, sustainability and environment are perhaps exactly what the art world needs. He saw commercial forms of design “as a way of escaping the art market and working with more freedom and fewer constraints.” While we might criticise the society we live in unfortunately we must still exist within it, however Noguchi “believed in the idea that even in mass-production, individuality is still possible.”  We must adapt and innovate within the framework we have because after all, to quote the artist, “to be hybrid is to be the future.”

Credits

Images · Isamu Noguchi
Noguchi at the Barbican is open from Thu 30 Sep 2021 —Sun 9 Jan 2022. For more information visit https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2021/event/noguchi
 

Photos

  1. Portrait of Isamu Noguchi, American sculptor, the latter’s special assistant planner, July 4, 1947 in New York City. (Photo by Arnold Newman Properties/Getty Images)
  2. Bronze plate
  3. Noguchi, Isamu (1904-1988): Humpty Dumpty. 1946. Ribbon slate. Overall: 59 ◊ 20 3\4 ◊ 17 1\2in. (149.9 ◊ 52.7 ◊ 44.5 cm). Purchase. Inv. N.: 47.7a-e New York Whitney Museum of American Art *** Permission for usage must be provided in writing from Scala.
  4. Terracotta and plaster

DGN Studio

“Light is always the starting point for all our projects”

Founded in 2016 by Daniel Goodacre and Geraldine Ng, DGN Studio crafts customized objects and spaces informed by utility and the context of their surroundings – an approach to design that is instilled with a deep sense of care and attention to detail. The architecture studio aims to enhance the everyday living experience of their clients, and advocates for a carefully considered use of materials. 

The studio’s 2020 Concrete Plinth House project is located in the London borough of Hackney, where a dark Victorian semi-detached house has been transfigured into a sleek and leisurely brutalist-inspired home. The terrace is grounded on a dense concrete base, yet feels light and serene, featuring clean, minimalist surfaces. Commissioned by a young couple to transform the house into a modern family home, the project extended and opened the property to include lighter-touch renovations that show off the beauty of the materials used, such as concrete benches and wooden beams, all working in a simple aesthetic and functional harmony.

NR Magazine speaks with DGN Studio to get a deeper insight into their design values and to discuss the details of the project.

For this project you were tasked to create a versatile and leisurely space – what initially sprung to mind when you began to conceptualise the house? 

Making a space that could accommodate gatherings of different sizes seemed to require a degree of flexibility. We had conflicting thoughts at the outset. We wanted to make a space that could be used in different configurations, but also a desire to create something with weight and mass that felt very firmly grounded in the site. 

In the end the flexibility was achieved not by moving things around, but from being able to occupy the edges of the space – the steps, perimeter walls and benches which provide lots of options for how they might be used. This allowed us to really explore the feeling of permanence created by these various concrete surfaces and plinths. 

We also had an early idea about the timber frame as a kind of screen or filter between the interior and exterior spaces which in this instance seemed a more helpful concept than that of placing windows in a wall. 

What was your approach to working with the original features of the house? 

We wanted the new addition to resonate with the existing house in a subtle way, such that it could have a definite character of its own. 

The best rooms in the existing house had a tall proportion and we liked these spaces as distinct rooms that suggested specific purposes or activities. We wanted the new spaces and layout to maintain this feeling of a series of rooms while also opening up long views throughout the house, pulling light further in and creating a better flow through the spaces. The level changes in the floor and ceiling help distinguish the different ‘rooms’ of the new space. 

We paid attention to the details of the house such as door handles, window furniture, and curtain rails and commissioned Dean Edmonds to design bespoke pieces that sat comfortably in both the new and existing parts of the house. 

The sash windows running along the side elevation are a nod to the original glazing and add to the resonance between new and old. 

Were there any influences for the project? 

There is no overarching reference point – there are loads of influences that come in at different points of the project for specific reasons. Mostly it is about identifying a particular atmosphere that is right for the space. 

Developing the project is about navigating a course through the different parameters that emerge at each stage – starting from conversations with the client about their lives and desires, to their budget, planning restrictions, and then developing the details of how the building is put together with the skilled craftspeople who actually make it. All this time we are trying to hold onto that desired atmosphere and make sure that this still emerges at the end of a very long process.

You can really sense a harmony and a celebration of materials with the project- was this something that was particularly important for you? 

Absolutely – the material palette is really the stuff that the building is made from (predominantly oak and concrete). We were keen to keep the number of finishes relatively limited, and for the different materials to contribute to the serene atmosphere of the new space. 

We generally favour a relatively subtle material palette not because we don’t love colour, but because we tend to find that colour comes best from all the life that takes place inside the space rather than from what we have designed. The building is not the main event! 

How did you go about prioritising light and space with the project, especially in an older building and a tight urban site? 

Light is always the starting point for all our projects. How the sun moves around the site and how to choreograph spaces in relation to this. 

Extending a house can create problems with light due to the resulting depth of the plan so it’s really important to consider how the existing spaces will be affected. As a result, we have opened up views through the house so that you can see the garden from a number of locations and pull in as much light in as possible. There is also a considered contrast between light and dark spaces passing through the dark snug that sits between the living room at the front and the kitchen/dining room at the rear enhances.

We were also very conscious of not overexposing the interior, and the positioning of the glazed panels in the extension was carefully considered to get the balance of lighting right and to prevent the feeling of being in a goldfish bowl.

Were there any existing structures or materials that influenced the design? 

There’s a whole library of projects floating around in our heads – the ones that rise to the surface will depend on the client, the brief and the site. We also try to resist becoming diverted by all the things we’re looking at and trust our intuitions which are of course built on all the things we’ve seen and appreciated. 

How do you get inspired when starting a new project? 

There’s so much to draw from in any new project, no matter how small it may be – every site has its own history, and every client has their own unique story – trying to get under the surface of how the clients live (or would like to live) is really important and provides lots of starting points. 

We’re also really inspired by the city we live in and how it has developed over the centuries – just a bus ride through it is enough to generate a whole raft of ideas. Of course, inspiration often comes in more oblique ways through art objects, music, books, landscapes…

What’s your usual process in developing a design concept? 

It always starts with a plan and lots of sketching to try and explore the intuitions that we have about the project. From there we like to try and get as quickly into making models as we can – often digitally first, but we always like to make physical models as well. So much is discovered and can be tested in the making of them, and they always resonate well in describing ideas to clients. 

Throughout the process we also like to have workshops with clients – sitting together around a table and discussing the ideas – the project is always a collaboration, and this is fundamental to the way projects develop.

DGN Studio is currently working on a number of residential projects across London, as well as designing and making furniture and interiors.

Credits

Images · DGN STUDIO
www.dgnstudio.co.uk 
Photography · NICK DEARDEN FROM BUILDING NARRATIVES

Collectif Scale

“We don’t have the pretense to guide people younger than us, because we can also learn a lot from a new generation, born « connected »”

Rods of light twirl and twist, a line of hula hoops loop around each other in a mesmerisingly technical dance, a gallery space is transformed into a kinetic universe of projected images, all to hypnotic soundtracks of electronic and classical music. Collectif Scale is a group of artists and technicians based in Paris who pool their respective knowledge and experience to create cutting-edge augmented installations. Since their beginning, they have “questioned the links between music and the visual, light and architectural design, entertainment and contemporary art, nature and the future, man and machine.” They seek to provide the answers to these questions through their installations. NR Magazine spoke to the collective about their practice.

Your CODA installation has been described as ‘the ballets of robots’. How do you feel about this description and do you think it’s accurate. 

The starting point of CODA was to work around with the idea of a choreograph of lights and create a piece like a dance show or a ballet, where we would replace the body of dancers with robots and light. But even if many people see in CODA a reference to pop-culture, such as Star Wars or video games, our first idea was to produce a ballet of lights, more than a ballet of robots.

You state the collective does not individually define themselves as artists. What do you define yourself as?

Scale is just the pseudo of a visual designer and this designer happens to be a collective of friends.  As we produce different kinds of installations, from scenic scenography for live shows to pieces for art exhibitions, we don’t like to describe ourselves as artists but prefer to consider ourselves as creative technicians or just scenographers.

You have said that the current health crisis has complicated presenting to the public. Would you consider making outdoor installations? 

Since the crisis, most of the festivals or productions try to match with some new rules (outdoor exhibition, outdoor festival, etc…) In order to continue showing installations, we have just finished our first outdoor and waterproof installation. We also have decided that our future installations must be outdoor compatible in any case.

Do you draw inspiration from other artists or creatives when conceptualising your work? 

Not really. Most of the artists and collectives are connected, like us, to these social networks, so we can see what is produced all around the small world of new media art. When we are looking for a new idea, in general, as much as possible, we try to imagine something that has never been produced. In the end, we can say that the work of the others allow us to create new things because we don’t want to reproduce something existing.

What was the most difficult project you worked on, what are some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? 

CODA was probably the most challenging project because it was our first project using motors. After 10 years of using video and LEDs, it was quite difficult to appropriate a new medium. Using motors, bots and mechanics involved a lot of physical constraints (torques, gravity, collisions, kinetic, etc..) We had to work and learn a lot to produce CODA and be able to control robotic arms in real-time and on stage. It reminded us of when we were in school. You open a book, you read, you learn, you try, you experiment, etc…

In the end, CODA is a perfect synthesis of the last 10 years of learning and experimenting. Even if we had the idea 3 years ago, we could never have produced it before, because of our lack of skill and the accessibility to those robotic technologies. We are happy because it really marks the end of a period and the start of something new and very exciting. CODA is maybe our best cocktail of poetry and technology.

You have said it is possible to live with technology but not nature. Are there particular patterns or structures in nature that you reference in your work? 

When you’re using robotic arms like CODA, it’s a reference to nature because a robotic arm is a bad copy of the human body’s mechanics. Beyond this idea, we think that nature is, in any case, very inspiring. From an artistic point of view, nature always produces the most beautiful things one can see: a dancer will always be more beautiful than a robot, an eclipse will always be more impressive than a projector.  From a technical point of view,  physics, mathematics and sciences are there to explain and decode to us how nature works, because nature is always more advanced than human knowledge. We feel it’s natural to draw inspiration from nature more than other artists, and also there’s no problem with copyright.

You mention the group’s love of video games and that there is a level of interactivity between your work and the public. Do you have any plans to create fully interactive, game-like works in the future? 

For many years, we’ve talked about the idea to produce an art piece that looks like a game, including levels, gameplay, etc… We still haven’t found the right idea but we’re working on it. More than video games, we are also very inspired by roller coasters and amusement parks. It would be a dream to customise a roller coaster, to make it interactive and for it to become an art installation.

What was the most exciting project you worked on as a collective and why? 

In the beginning, each new project seemed more exciting than the previous one haha. It’s only after several months that we realise if that one project was really exciting or not. The most exciting one was probably when La Gaité Lyrique, a famous place for digital art in Paris, asked for us to produce an entire exhibition, our first one, in 2014.

Do you have any advice for young creatives looking to create ‘augmented art’? 

We are still young ;). We don’t have the pretense to guide people younger than us, because we can also learn a lot from a new generation, born « connected ».

Are you working on any projects at the moment and do you have anything planned for the future? 

We have just finished a new installation the last week. The tours, festivals and exhibitions seem to be starting again in few weeks so we will probably be on the road once more, and will try to show something in real life.

Fabian Oefner

“discoveries in science and technology have always been a catalyst for the arts”

Destruction and creation go hand in hand in Swiss artist’s Fabian Oefner’s work. Everyday objects are sliced up and then reconstructed in resin or placed between the pages of a book, allowing the viewer to see the secret inner workings of a Nike shoe, a voice recorder, a camera and so on. Sports cars appear to have been caught mid-explosion, with cogs, gears and screws floating in chaotic unison, but are instead the combined product of hours of individual photographs. Drones map out the changes to a glacier over the last hundred years in eerie long exposure photographs. Oefner’s work straddles the so-called divide between art and science highlighting the interconnectivity of the two subjects.

You are most well known for combining science and art in your work, but do you not think that all art requires an element of science and vice versa? 

Absolutely. To be quite honest, I always found it strange to be identified by combining art and science. To me that’s the most natural thing. If you look at the history of art, the combination of art and science has always been there. Da Vinci and Michelangelo’s close studies on the anatomy of the human body allowed them to create their masterful paintings and sculptures, Vermeer’s use of a camera obscura resulted in these marvellous compositions of his, etc. The list goes on and on.

“I believe that discoveries in science and technology have always been a catalyst for the arts.”

How did you decide on the objects you used in Heisenberg, you mentioned that they were all connected to memory but was there any other criteria you used to select them? 

Memory definitely has been the most important deciding factor. But I also have to add that the series is not done yet, those are just the six initial objects. I would love to expand the series to about 12 sculptures. Objects that might be included are typewriters, a violin, the first Mac computer and a Moog synthesizer.

Much of your work requires hours and hours of time to complete. Do you consider the lengthy process part of the work, a kind of performance art as it were? 

That’s an interesting thought…one of my favourite quotes about art is one by Yves Klein who said: “My works are only the ashes of my art” I can relate to that. To me, the art is hidden somewhere in the process. But

“I think to a certain degree that process is manifested in the final sculpture.”

With your exploded car series you had the opportunity to work on a real life-sized car, have you ever considered working with something even bigger? 

I have, yes. I would love to create a Disintegrating image of a Blackbird SR-71, the fastest plane ever created. Since this plane is more than 30 feet long and the few surviving examples are all in museums. So the challenges to create the image are tremendous. But I guess that’s one of the reasons I want to and eventually will create this image.

What’s the most challenging project you have worked on and why? How did you overcome those challenges?

“Timelines”, my work on the changing landscapes in the Alps has been very complex. The technology to create these images is still in very early stages, so you have to be very flexible in adapting to what’s possible and what is not. Also, the environment in which these images were created was a challenge, high up in the mountains, during the night, with wind gusts at 100 km/h and snowfall. At this point, you sometimes question yourself why not choosing something simpler to do.

But in the end, those projects are always the most rewarding, the ones, where it’s just one obstacle after the next. But

“if you persevere and keep that vision of yours in front of you, then eventually you will succeed.”

What advice would you give to young creatives who have an interest in both art and science? 

To believe in their work. That it means something to the world, that you are creating it. And to not look left or right, worrying about whether their work is Instagramable or not. Sooner or later, you will find the right people, that will appreciate what you do.

You consider your practice as a form of modern archaeology and you mentioned finding a note in one of the cameras you deconstructed. Have you ever found anything else like this? 

I cannot think of something tangible right now like the note, but I often wonder about what the story of all those objects is, for example, the cockpit voice recorder. How many parts of the world has it flown over, what conversations between pilots it has recorded. It would be fascinating to know the answer to these questions.

Much of your work involves deconstructing and examining man-made objects, have you ever considered doing the same with forms found in nature? 

No, this is something I haven’t considered for my work. I use a different iconography than objects from nature to convey my ideas.

What was the artwork that you felt the most connection to and excited you the most? Why that one in particular? 

It’s the series of sculptures I am working on now, which are called “Momentum”. The objects will be published later this year. 6 sculptures that depict a moment in time in three dimensions. I loved them so much because they are taking everything I learned so far to the next level. I cannot wait to share them with you.

Credits

Images · STUDIO OEFNER
https://fabianoefner.com/

Atelier Caracas

“we consider it an exercise in design and investigation to see what can happen when you decontextualize architecture’s components”

Founded in 2015 by Julio Kowalenko and Rodrigo Amas, the Venezuela-based architecture studio Atelier Caracas explores a range of formal, aesthetic and cultural attitudes across the realms of architecture, furniture and fashion. The studio claims strong influences from found objects and pop culture and utilises them to craft captivating spaces that are charged with the energy of the city of Caracas. 

Submerging their visitors in other-worldly and carefully stylised spaces, Atelier Caracas works with a unique vision, emboldened with colour and personality that speaks to the passion and creative vision of the studio. 

NR speaks with Julio Kowalenko to learn more about the studio’s innovative projects 2020: A Spa Odyssey and Fun Maze.

You mention that Atelier Caracas operates as a platform that spans across furniture and fashion – how much do these elements inform your architecture?

We like to think of architecture as a medium through which we communicate our ideas towards contemporary problems. These problems could be related to anything, not necessarily just architecture. Although we’re both architects, we’ve always shared an affinity for fashion design and furniture – it’s an important source of inspiration for Atelier’s design process.

There is a sense of freedom behind fashion design and furniture that we envy (in a good way). This freedom trespasses the boundaries and formalities of the architectural practice and focuses on expressing ideas about social, political and cultural issues – we try to channel this in each one of our projects.  

Jan Kaplický once said “We don’t want to be fashionable architects, but we are interested in the idea of fashion”. That’s exactly how we feel.  

What would you say are the main influences from pop culture on your creative practice?

We embrace pop culture in a very Venturi/Scott Brown kind of way, in that we have a fixation with ordinary things. We like to state that our architecture doesn’t always come from architecture itself, but rather emanates from ordinary or simple things. Every time we approach a new design, whether it is a piece of furniture, a building or even a garment, we always have mood boards that are a compilation of images, sometimes very incoherent, but once forced to coexist on the same canvas something starts to appear – a new language, a new construction detail, a new possibility that might have once been thought as a flaw or failure.

80s Punk flyers, NBA logos, Mid-Century Venezuelan Architecture, Shiro Kuramata (among other design heroes); these are all things that for us, in terms of hierarchy, have the same weight as references when it comes to conceiving architecture. We like to think that things carry a DNA – whether that be a texture, a chromatic palette, or a certain detail of a building – that we like to extract and construct into our own universe.

“It’s a sort of clinical dissection of popular imagery as a design strategy.”

One of my favourite projects of yours is the 2020: A Spa Odyssey. What attracted you to Stanley Kubrick’s film or science fiction in general, and were there any other conceptual inspirations?

When we were asked to design the spa, we were told explicitly to “make something out-of-this-world”, we took that very seriously.

Immediately we started searching for and filing images related to outer space exploration and science fiction. NASA, Isaac Asimov, Akira and related cinematography became constant reference sources in our studio during the design process. It wasn’t long before we knew that 2001: A Space Odyssey would be the definitive reference pool for inspiring us during the development of the project.

The dissection of the film became a fundamental part of our design process, even to the point that the Spa’s name is a play on words. Studying Kubrick transcended into something greater, and we understood the project to be a succession of scenes that use colour, light and symmetry to engage with certain sensations and things the filmmaker applied in many of his works. Ever since we did 2020: A Spa Odyssey, we utilise this in all our designs. 

What was the process like when creating the furniture for the spa?

A tight budget and “outer space” artifacts didn’t seem to be synonymous at all. This led us to the idea of conceiving furniture made from ready-mades.

With the ‘other worldly’ theme we wanted the furniture to underscore and exalt the project’s narrative potential. Thus came about the idea of a ‘meteorite’ floating in space for the reception desk. Something heavy like a rock lightly posed and acting as a fulcrum disturbs the notion of gravity in space and throws the viewer off balance and out of the immediate environment, which is a very busy area of Caracas.

Our approach is particularly scenographic when it comes to designing space and furnishings. This project, with its obvious cinematic reference, was the perfect opportunity to test all our ideas about generating a narrative through design. 

Are there any subtleties of the design of the spa that you’re particularly proud of?

Something that pleasantly surprised us was the visual and spatial effect of the translucent plexiglass panelling. It gives off an indefinite boundary and a ‘spacey’ vibe to the massage cubicles.

Also, considering that the Spa is located in a particularly busy area of the city, we’re very happy that the project acts as a pleasant hermetic bubble, an airtight space isolated from the noise of the city and where the often-polluted environment seems to simply disappear. 

How much does the Venezuelan landscape impact your work?

Very much, in every single way. For us, Venezuela and above all, Caracas is an ever-present muse. Born in the 90s and growing up in the 2000s we’ve been through a lot of political and social turmoil. We consider this to be a formative and educational phase in our lives.

Living in Venezuela has taught us that good design has no limits when it comes to budget and scarcity of means. 

Understanding landscape as something that can transcend into a cultural concept, we’re very proud of our artistic and cultural legacy, and we seek to express that in our work. The presence of small gimmicks and intentional references within our projects (what we like to call architectural quoting) serve as small respectful homages to the masters of Venezuelan architecture. More than a ‘copy-paste’ kind of architecture, we consider it an exercise in design and investigation to see what can happen when you decontextualize architecture’s components. 

“We never did our post graduate studies, so this is also our way continuing to study architecture.”

Another design of yours that stood out to me was the Fun Maze. What were your aims and inspirations for the project?

Fun Maze is a motor therapy and rehabilitation centre for children with mental disabilities, so our main goal was to humanize the doctor’s consultation office, to eradicate the cubicle and use it as a way of promoting alternative ways of socialising amongst visitors. 

The idea was to create an infrastructure that transforms therapy spaces into lineal parks where parents, therapists, pets and children can reimagine how their bodies can relate to and interact with scale, light and space. 

In terms of inspiration, this project has two main references. First, we intentionally evoked the universe and code of forms in John Hejduk’s architecture, especially his exercises and explorations in Diamond House C, where a series of biomorphic volumes have a dialogue with an orthogonal space system, creating residual spaces for phenomenological narratives. And secondly, creating a covered boundary space with the dimensions of a long corridor immediately recalled the architectural work of our deceased professor and mentor Joel Sanz, especially his exercise on “El Techo de Sol/Techo de la Lluvia” (“Roof of The Sun/Roof of The Rain”), and his seminal project “Casa de mi Madre” (“My Mother´s House”).

How important was shape and colour when designing this space?

For us, colour and form held a key role in the design process. Having a space with no windows forced us to be precise about how we utilized natural light. The roof, the coloured biomorphic volumes and the terrazzo flooring were crucial in how sunlight enters the building and can then be reflected through the different therapy modules.

Since we were on a tight budget, we started experimenting with textures with similar materials. The whole project derives from variations of cement stuccos that take on different textures at different times of day under natural light. The sunlight hitting the interior walls generate a range of chromatic and sensorial experiences.  

The pastel colour palette was also used for both psychological and functional reasons. Through our research we found that bright colours boost creativity, productivity and self-awareness, and as a functional aspect, it helped to reflect sunlight and generate a fresh environment inside.

What’s next for Atelier Caracas?

We’re currently finishing a lot of projects that we’ve had under construction, so hopefully this year we’ll be publishing some of them on several digital and printed platforms. 

We’re also planning to launch our second furniture collection with design gallery Studio Boheme by the end of this year. We can’t reveal anything yet, but as a teaser all we can say is that it is called VENUS. 

Credits

Atelier Caracas was nominated for the Royal Academy Dorfman award in 2019. Their work has been featured internationally in Domus, Architectural Digest, Dezeen, Frame, Divisare, Vogue and more. 

Images · ATELIER CARACAS
https://ateliercaracas.com/

David Caon

“equally useful, simple and beautiful”

CAON is a multi-disciplinary design studio based in Sydney, Australia and founded in 2009 by David Caon, a graduate of Industrial Design at the University of South Australia. Specialised in industrial, transportation, aviation, product, graphic and interior design, CAON provides innovative solutions. From aircraft interiors, tableware to furnishings for the workplace and home, Creative Director David Caon has mastered the art of applying design thinking to industrial design across different disciplines. The CAON philosophy is simple: precision analysis and bespoke response lead to unique outcomes appropriate to each individual case. Collectively, they believe that in the right hands design has the power to heighten human experience and enhance quality of life.

NR delves into the studio’s projects and partnerships with the likes of Qantas airlines on multiple occasions (whether it has been or the airline’s tableware or its fleet’s interiors), the studio’s take on sustainability as well as their plans for the future.

CAON is a multi-disciplinary design studio specialising in industrial, transportation, aviation, product, graphic and interior design. Did you study anything related to any of these fields? Did you study product design, architecture or interior design?

I studied Industrial Design (product design) and commenced a masters of transport design which I left after about 3 weeks in.

Caon studio seems to be very focused on industrial design. What led you to create your own practice? What is it that you are exploring or tackling with your work?

My ambition in the early days of my career working for designers was always to one day have my own studio. I spent my initial years working in Europe. Once I returned to Australia, I decided to realise my goal after working for a large multinational architectural practice. I realised that I liked being part of a smaller, more familiar unit. My focus is to create designs that are equally useful, simple and beautiful. I’m trying to create things that avoid trend and thereby stand a chance of being timeless. You can’t create something that’s timeless, you stumble upon it by chance, which I kind of like. But you can try for it.

This is not the first time that CAON is doing projects for Qantas Airlines (for instance the Qantas Airlines Economy Seatings and the interior of Qantas A380). How did the collaboration come about? As a designer, do you enjoy doing collaborative works?

I’ve worked with the airline in some form since about 2003. My first introduction was whilst working in the studio of Marc Newson. Once I started my own studio, they were almost my first client. So there has been a wonderful consistency and evolution in the relationship. As a designer, having a long term collaboration with a client is a wonderful thing, and in some ways a bit old school. When it comes to new projects, it means that we are already on the same page, speaking the same language. The brand also means a lot to me, it’s been such a big part of my career for so long. I want them to do well out of every collaboration. 

The colour palette and material palette both feel very relaxing and wellness focused. Was this something you wanted to make a point of? Travelling does take a toll on the body but well- designed spaces can heighten human experience and enhance quality of daily life and it feels that the Qantas First Class Lounge Interior in Singapore has achieved that. How did the collaboration with Akin Atelier unfold?

I try to limit the interior design projects I take on because I’m very detail-focused which isn’t necessarily efficient when designing spaces. My general design approach is guided by industrial design practice, so I’m quite aware that I’m biased towards smaller scales. I know its best if I collaborate with designers that are able to take a broader view. The collaboration with Akin was born out of my friendship with Kelvin Ho, who is the director of Akin Atelier. These projects are important to Qantas and I want to make sure they are as good as possible and as enjoyable as possible, so bringing Akin into the project ensured that and also meant that I had a sounding board. The feeling we have tried to create was a conscious decision to make the space feel more like a sophisticated lounge room, part Sydney, part Singapore. Functionally, space is very food oriented as well because lay over times tend to be short and we wanted to give the passengers as much opportunity to refresh and reinvigorate before the next leg.

What have been some of the responses to your projects? Is there a particular project you have worked on that was particularly well received and did this inform your future projects? As your method of design seems to rely or be influenced by the relationship between people and their surroundings, how does the way people react to work affect the way you create? You have also designed tableware products such as bottle openers and furnishings for the workplace and the home, which is a nice way to connect people to the things they use in their daily lives.

The Premium Economy seat for Qantas was really well received but it didn’t mean that we didn’t think it could be evolved when we came to update it for the A380. It’s funny, as a designer, people are a bit reticent to tell you anything that might be wrong with your design, but I’m keenly focused on progressing our process and honestly evaluating our work. I’m wary of praise and I try not to rely on it as a measure of whether a design has been successful. So I guess I’m saying that no, reaction to one project hasn’t driven the direction of another project. I try to involve my colleagues, from across a range of disciplines, in my design process, as a way of stress-testing ideas. And when I’m designing I tend to think of my friends and family, people that I know well, and imagine how they might use the objects or what they might think.

Do you have a particular effective method to approach projects as they seem to be quite bespoke and tailored projects?

The basic structure of our methodology is quite a traditional one. Research, ideation, prototyping and development. Given that we are often heading into unknown territory, we try to learn as much as possible about the type of product or object or space that we’re working on. With a lot of our projects, especially the more specialised transportation projects, design is a cog within a system, so we are working within a framework. Critically, I think our role is push beyond that framework somewhat so that we can introduce new ideas and find space for innovation. Depending on the structure of the project and our role, we will adopt our process.

How has been in Australia influenced your design method?

It doesn’t so much influence our method as it does the reality of our business. Design studios in Australia do not necessarily have the immediate connection to the broader world of clients, whether they be furniture houses, big iconic brands like Nike or the tech giants like Apple. We’re in a funny time zone and quite remote. And its a shame really because due to those limitations, studios here tend to be quite inventive. We have to manufacture a lot of our own work in order to have an output. I think this approach could bring a lot to the bigger clients out there.

Sustainability has been very much on a lot of companies’ radars in various fields whether it be fashion or design and architecture. As you are dealing in a few of your projects with an airplane company and air transport, which is one of the most polluting means of transport and thus has a consequential environmental impact, what are your thoughts on incorporating a more sustainable approach?

I’m 100% for it. Air transport is a challenging arena for innovation because of how careful manufacturers and suppliers need to be around safety. So innovation happens slowly within the bounds of certification and the like. Introducing new materials is a complex process, something I have tried on a number of occasions with limited success. That said, there is a desire to be more sustainable across the board which is palpable. We are making things as light as we can in order to be more and more efficient, burning less and less fossil fuels. I think the industry really does need a couple of technological step changes to really begin to contribute to reducing pollution.

What are some of the projects that you are working on for 2021?

There are a few things. CAON operates two brands in-house at the moment and we’re busy developing new products for those. Additionally we’ve established a brand in partnership with my friend Henry Wilson called Laker. Laker has been in the works for a number of years but we officially launched at the end of 2020. We’re also doing a new restaurant for Neil Perry in a beautiful part of Sydney called Double Bay. We’re doing that in collaboration with our friends ACME. Finally we’re continuing our explorations into the future of transport with a couple of research projects. 

Credits

Images · CAON STUDIO
https://www.caonstudio.com/

John Pawson

“I have always thought that a house should be a collection of spaces in which to dream”

John Pawson CBE has spent over thirty years making rigorously simple architecture that speaks of the fundamentals but is also modest in character. His body of work spans a broad range of scales and typologies, from private houses, sacred commissions, galleries, museums, hotels, ballet sets, yacht interiors and a bridge across a lake. His method is to approach buildings and design commissions in precisely the same manner, on the basis that ‘it’s all architecture’, incorporating minimalism and rigorous simplicity mixed with function.

NR discusses with the renowned British architectural designer about his career, some of his key works, his most recent project Home Farm, a space in which family and friends can gather, as well as his future plans for 2021.

John Pawson, it is an absolute pleasure to be interviewing you. Thank you for taking the time to be a part of this issue. How are you doing in those strange times we are all living in?

My wife Catherine and I have spent most of the various lockdowns at Home Farm in Oxfordshire.  I am used to being pretty much constantly on the move and being still for so long has been a revelation.  At any one time, some or all of our three grown-up children have also been here. One of the few upsides of the current situation has been the opportunity to live alongside one another again for extended stretches as a family, when normally we are scattered.

You have always been revered for your taste for minimalism and rigorous simplicity mixed with function in your design approach. 30 years ago minimalism would not be used as much as it is now, by architects and designers. Although some like Louis Khan do talk about ‘a society of spaces’ and about how the rooms not solely accommodate specific uses and functions but they create spaces and places encouraging chance encounters and unplanned meetings. This is something we can find to some extent in your work as it shows that a building is intrinsically linked to the quality of life within it and enriches experience. Do you think about that a lot when you start working on a project? About enriching or bettering the visitor’s or the inhabitant’s interior experience and engaging all of our senses, almost like a tactile reality?

When I start working on a new project, my thoughts are focused on the place – the immediate site and its surroundings – and on the people that will use the spaces I am designing.  A huge amount of thought goes into refining the function and the choreography,  but in the end it’s about making atmosphere and about ensuring a quality of sensory engagement.

Minimalism has now become a life style which is something we can all thank you for as you have helped coined this new phenomena. In your body of work can also be found a certain inclination for idealism and purism rather than materialism. 

When and where did you find your attraction for simplicity and how did your search for it, began?

I think that my interest in simplicity was always there, even as a child. My parents’ values and the treeless landscapes of the Yorkshire Moors where I grew up helped reinforce these innate preferences.

Who or what inspired you to start creating and designing?

What are some architects’ works or designers’ works that you really like?

It had been at the back of my mind for a long time, but the person who gave me the final impetus to pursue a career in architecture when I was in my late twenties was the Japanese architect and designer, Shiro Kuramata.

Alongside Kuramata, the people whose work I have always admired include Mies van der Rohe, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin.

I studied Interior Design at the Royal College of Art in London and your name came up frequently during my research as I was very interested in spaces that have a positive influence on the spirit and mind, spaces in which one is able to daydream and contemplate without any distractions. I am sure you know of Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. I find some similarities between your manifestos most specifically in relation to day dreaming, thinking, imagination and presenting the space we inhabit as a cosmos of its own. What are your views on Bachelard’s philosophy? 

Like Bachelard, I have always thought that a house should be a collection of spaces in which to dream. The potential for dreaming comes when the mind and body are at ease.

The Valextra store was not your first retail project. You had been commissioned before to design stores for Calvin Klein in previous years. Could you tell us a bit about your decade-long relationship? How do you feel the world of fashion collide with the one of architecture and interior design? If you could pick one contemporary fashion designer that you would want to work with, who would that be?

The first store I designed for Calvin Klein actually opened more than two and a half decades ago. I think that the relationship between fashion and architecture is a naturally resonant one, even though the creative timeframes are so very different – the cycles of fashion are measured in weeks and months, where a single building can take many years from conception to realisation.

For me, it’s ultimately very simple: I’ve always tried to make stores where the clothes look good and people feel comfortable. Since Calvin, I have designed stores for Christopher Kane and Jil Sander’s creative directors, Luke and Lucy Meier, with whom the architectural collaboration is ongoing.

Obviously I imagine that it would be quite difficult to provide a short answer to how you find ways to approach fundamental issues revolving around space, proportion, light and material. But could you give us an insight into how you achieve such balance between those elements? 

The balance between the defining elements of my work – light, space, proportion, surface and scale – is always the result of a long, slow process of paring away.

The St Moritz Church in Augsburg is a standout example of bringing out the inner beauty of a space, a sort of humble beauty. I have not visited it in person (not yet) but I can imagine from the photos that the visitor would feel sheltered and protected. Could you tell us about the process of refurbishing such place? 

With the St Moritz church we inherited a building that was already the product of many earlier interventions, over the centuries. My intention was to simplify things a little –  to achieve a clearer visual field, where the primary physical experience for people entering the building would be of light and space.

What places around the world have been particularly inspiring for you and your craft? You have cited Milan for example as one of the most influential cities in terms of craftsmanship, manufacturing and culture. What are some other places you have really enjoyed visiting and that have nurtured and influenced your work?

I am always energised by visits to quarries, to choose stone for a project. I’ve gone deep underground in marble quarries in Vermont and the north of Italy, where you find yourself entirely surrounded by a single material. For someone interested in the condition of seamlessness, it is utterly exhilarating.

You’ve mentioned in interviews before that you use photography as a tool alongside your sketches which to me highlight how architecture can be a multidisciplinary field. You have also released a photography book titled Spectrum through Phaidon a couple of years ago. Could you tell us what other mediums you have used before to complement your work process?

Photography is a critical design tool for me. I use my camera in the same way that other designers use a pencil and sketchbook. I also find physical models very helpful as a medium for exploring ideas – both in the early stages of a project and later on in the architectural narrative, when it’s more about understanding the impact of the details.

You must get a lot of different reactions to your work. Do you rely on how the exterior world perceives your work and if so how do those perceptions inform your future projects?

My work is never going to appeal to everyone. I have been fortunate that there have always been people for whom my architecture makes sense and that some of these people are in a position to commission me to make more of it.

The theme of this issue is Growth and your countryside retreat, Home Farm in Oxfordshire is a project I felt resonated with it as you have successfully created a space that enables peace and tranquillity. How did the idea come about? 

Do you spend a lot of time there?

It was really Catherine, my wife, who was originally keen to find a place in the countryside. Now, of course, I could not imagine life without Home Farm.  The idea was to make a home with space for the wider family and friends to gather through the year, but also somewhere Catherine and I could live in a slightly different way than is possible in the city. In normal circumstances we move back and forth between London and Oxfordshire, but over the past twelve months I’ve relished the chance to immerse myself in the place – in the architecture and in the surrounding landscape.

We have a number of architectural projects on the drawing board and on site, but one of my ambitions this year – fuelled by this immersive period at Home Farm – is also to develop the inventory of domestic objects.

Any book recommendations?

A book I never tire of is ‘Architecture of Truth’, Lucien Hervé’s black and white photographic essay of Le Thoronet, a twelfth century Cistercian abbey in the south of France.  Hervé captures the different spaces and surfaces of the architecture across the passage of a day, inspiring Le Corbusier to write at the beginning of his preface to the book, ‘Light and shade are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, tranquility and strength’.

What will you be working on this year?

We have a number of architectural projects on the drawing board and on site, but one of my ambitions this year – fuelled by this immersive period at Home Farm – is also to develop the inventory of domestic objects.

Any book recommendations?

A book I never tire of is ‘Architecture of Truth’, Lucien Hervé’s black and white photographic essay of Le Thoronet, a twelfth century Cistercian abbey in the south of France. Hervé captures the different spaces and surfaces of the architecture across the passage of a day, inspiring Le Corbusier to write at the beginning of his preface to the book, ‘Light and shade are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, tranquility and strength’.

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