On our 31st stop, we are travelling east, direction Brussels (BE)…or rather, to “ouest” to meet Stephan Damsin and Jans Harens, the duo behind “ouest architecture.” ouest architecture thrives in the spaces left unfinished and unsolved, " there is a room for unsolved things and for a bit of ambiguity”. In their vision, not every problem has to be be fully solved. “We are interested in ways to repair stuff without hiding that it has been repaired,” they explain, a philosophy that calls for...

Our 30th stop is in Berlin (Germany), somewhere between a reconverted building and the next building to be reconverted. In fact, that is were we find B+. In fiction, we might also find them beyond the building, in station.plus. Olaf Grawert will take us through that. To warm up, Olaf identifies 2 big groups of architects: both aim for “values” and “speculation” but their understanding of these terms is fundamentally opposite. Should our honoraries be measured out of a percentage of...

Our 29th stop is in Barcelona (Spain), Mexico City (Mexico) and Basel (Switzerland) alongside Pablo Garrido Arnaiz. Parabase have a very keen eye for picking up things and putting them out of place. At least out of their initially proposed place...to be place in a new place though out by them. “Decontextualisation is something we can find: in almost all contemporary art piece, in most of he songs we listen to, in in writing but in architecture it is not that common.” Decontextualisation...

Our 28th stop is in Mexico (Mexico), without forgetting Normandy (France) alongside Ludwig Godefroy. What do pyramids from the pre-hispanic period and bunkers by the northern french sea have to do with each other? How can both of these come under the same architectural practice? “I have started to understand that pyramids and bunkers are kind of similar, to me.” “Humanity has been doing pyramids for 4-5 thousand years and no pyramid is looking the same as the other one. If humanity was...

Our 27th stop is at Boltshauser Architekten (Munich, Germany) alongside Roger Boltshauser. For Boltshauser, to have an order is a must have. “I always look for order.” But is order enough? “If I have an order, I am happy but I am not happy enough, so I try to find ways out of this order.” He even puts the words in the right order when he concludes: “Order maybe needs disorder”. Maybe. Maybe it’s not the case they are looking for a balance, but rather looking for a strong...

Our 26th stop is at Enric Mirrales Benedetta Tagliabue - EMBT (Barcelona, SP) alongside Benedetta Tagliabue. Sometimes, EMBT are attracted by something very simple. Therefore, they allow themselves to be a little bit like a child just to permite these ideas to emerge. “Maintaining the lightness of the first idea is a very very tough work”. And that is exactly what they work for “Projects, specially if they have a very long time or have many people involved, they have a tendency of getting...

On episode 25 we think architecture alongside SO-IL, in the voice of Summer Liu. SO-IL are constantly pushing the boundaries...literally the physical boundaries...with them we learn boundaries are not just made by walls or windows. Just when you think they've reached the limit, their next project pushes it even further. They have the right amount of madness to pursue things outside of architecture until that one moment they surrender and become into architecture form.  “Once you have...

On episode 24th we’ll Learn from Denise, which means we’ll be learning from Las Vegas…and South Africa…and Italy…and England…and Philadelphia…and every single street and person she has passed by. “Do you know the word “serendipity”? It means something that happens unexpectedly and that could be a great thing.” We talk about how the almost demolished “Fisher Fine Arts Library” has brought together the super duo of architecture: Venturi & Scott Brown. “I would say we’ve have a big...

Let’s travel to both Berlin (Germany) to meet the architect / drawer / collector of drawings / museum director Sergei Tchoban. Sergei Tchoban has a sery simple trick to discover architecture, he asks one simple question: “Would I want to draw this project?” In fact, he draws a lot and for a number of reasons, one of them being: to remember “to draw by hand is a way to later remember certain proportions when we are drawing our own projects”. Unlike what we might think…it might be easier...

#22 Harquitectes (SP), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD Our 22nd stop is in Sabadell, Spain alongside Harquitectes, in the voice of Josep Ricart Ulldemolins. Harquitectes have the ability to design precise things with an abstract approach and abstract things with a very precise approach. I would risk to say that, for them, it is the same to draw a brick as it is to draw temperature. Every project is a new hypothesis on constructed conditions combined with natural phenomenon. “When all of...

#21 TEN (CH+SRB), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD Our 21st stop is both somewhere in-between Zurich (Switzerland), Belgrade (Serbia) and an online group chat. TEN is many things…and during our conversation we try to uncover even more of what TEN can become. How can the idea of a boat give the name TEN to an architecture practice? How would it be like to have an architecture practice like a record label? What about a football team? Is doing "what interests us” a realistic thing to...

Our 20th stop is in Mexico and/or New York (UK), alongside Edgar Rodriguez, with whom we develop on the idea of media, transmedia and intermedia.  Let’s picture architecture as a system, not a perfect system but one that incorporated chance - it is always being fixed, improved, broken apart and put together. “Its all about focusing on the process and the different variations that could result from those processes.” “Every project has its own system, with its own set of rules and then...

#19 Tony Fretton (UK), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD Our 19h stop is in London (UK), alongside the architect Tony Fretton, with whom we learn how to look, notice and absorb things. “I look at things and I can get a lot from just looking at things.” “Like a paintier is interested in the history of painting, I am interested I the story of architecture. I am interested in the way buildings have evolved and the way it does things.” Fretton opens up about the UK's demanding...

Our 18th stop is in Feldbrunnen (Switzerland) alongside Céline Bessire and Matthias Winter. If you ever feel like discussing difficult words like “parallax”, they are the perfect counterpoint. Things are not what they seem, “things carry an ambivalence within themselves” and Parallex is all about shifting perspectives, “what we are trying to find is the parallactic qualities within the everyday spaces (…) It’s not about changing or shifting meaning but changing what they actually are.” The...

#17 HANGHAR (SP), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD Our 17h stop is at HANGHAR (Madrid, Spain) to meet Eduardo Mediero, he shares with us the intriguing philosophy of a firm that thrives on the ticking clock of a ten-year deadline, all activity will be ceased on 31st December 2030. Throughout our conversation, we dissect how HANGHAR is flipping the script on real estate norms by designing apartments free from the constraints of traditional room functions. “I am very interested in how very...

Our 16h stop is at aoa (Seoul, South Korea) to meet Jaewon Suh. To say “aoa” is the same as to say "architecture of anyone, anything and anywhere”. For aoa, architecture is nothing. “When I say that architecture is nothing, it means that it is a very fundamental thing”, like air, for example.  As a reaction to  Valerio Olgiaty ’s “non-referencial architecture”, a self-explanatory “hiper-referencial architecture”. “I want to be inspired by our reality not ideality”. Feel free to see a cat /...

Today, we cross the globe. In this episode we talk with the architect Richard Stampton. Whom consciously decided: not to go into competitions; not to extensively show his work (which is different from hiding it); as well as to resist the urge to think further then what he is actually drawing. Did you know this also a possible approach? “I was very conscious, when I started my practice, to be small in a meaningful way.”, he claims. Do you know what it means to be “ramen profitable? I...

Our 14th stop is at GAFPA (Ghent, BE) alongside Floris de Bruyn. GAFPA is recognisable for it’s pragmatic approach. But there is much more to it. Somehow, they always manage to uncover the specificity that hides behind generic approaches. It’s about “trying to make something specific with a generic tool”. For every project, a primary structure. But what is this “primary structure”? “The primary structure, when you dismantle it, it is a very pragmatic structure, but at the same time it...

Our 13th stop is in Porto (PT), alongside Elói Gonçalves, and in Zurich (CH), where António Mesquita is currently at. A fast and furious architecture, not just because…but because the fast pace has excelled the competition, fast pace is eminent anywhere. Things are always very fast, as so, the faster you adapt…the better you keep up. “Change and adaptability is part of our genetics”, they claim. What we might expect from them is exactly what they expect from materials: António and Elói...

Today we travel the longest way so far, today I am really honoured to welcome architect Takefumi Aida, born in Japan in 1937and, for 86 years, has never stopped playing. I bring good and bad news. Bad news first: age won't bring us certainties. Now the good news: age won't bring us certainties. After over 60 years thinking about architecture, Takefumi Aida confesses he is “continuously thinking about what architecture is”. Maybe…this “thinking about what architecture is” is...

Our 11th stop is at Lütjens Padmanabhan (Zurich, CH) alongside Oliver Lütjens and Thomas Pahmanbhan. They experience the joy of building when they draw or build a model. To draw a line over a paper, to fold a paper into a model or to build out of folded metal sheets, is the exact same thing  Oliver and Thomas are extremely faithful to their 1:50 models, in their office, there is a saying: “The model is always right”. So, if anything deviates, the question must be “why is our drawing not...

Our 10th stop is at Studio Muoto (Paris, FR) alongside Gilles Delalex. Do you remember the last time you did something for the first time? “When you do something for the first time is when you have the most fun, so we are always hoping to touch new subjects.” “The brief is a good start, but it is not the end.” So, even if the brief comes with a functional intent, it says very little about its outcome. So, a bathroom is not a bathroom, “you have a million ways of doing a bathroom”. And “a...

Our 9th stop is in Munich (Germany) alongside Max Otto Zitzelsberger. “Thinking about architecture can also be architecture”, so Max shares his visions through multiple drawings, paper models and eventual constructions. Do you know those spaces you hold in your memory, yet you are not there anymore? Those spaces…are they space? It is not a space one can use but perhaps it is. “All the ideas you have in your head are potential spaces and potencial architecture.” But what is...

Our 8th stop is at Johansen Skovsted Arkitekter (Frederiksberg, Denmark) alongside Sebastian Skovsted. They seek to bridge the gap between building processes and architectural values by mixing ideas and techniques...and techniques and ideas. They give particular attention to detail, material assembly and the meaning of structure. But to be clear, they “don’t do structure for the sake of structure”. “We enjoy building spaces that are far more than just solving load bearing forces that we...