Adventures in Conceptualism

ADVENTURES IN CONCEPTUALISM Kristoffer L. Weiss in conversation with Aaron Betsky Bjarke Ingels Dan Stubbergaard Farshid Moussavi François Blanciak Kamiel Klaasse Kim Herforth Nielsen Kjetil Trædal Thorsen Peer Teglgaard Jeppesen Essay by Boris Brorman Jensen BIG

COBE

FARSHID MOUSSAVI ARCHITECTS BLANCIAK

NL ARCHITECTS

3XN

SNØHETTA

HLA

BBJ

ADVENTURES IN CONCEPTUALISM

ADVENTURES IN CONCEPTUALISM

THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED WITH SUPPORT FROM

AUTHOR Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss

The Dreyer Foundation

EDITOR ASSISTANT Tanne Schlosser Søndertoft GRAPHIC DESIGN Cecilie Nellemann & Stefan Thorsteinsson, Atlant TRANSLATION Tanne Schlosser Søndertoft PROOFREADING Dorte Herholdt Silver PUBLISHER Marie Arvinius

Realdania

Nykredit

Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Architecture Grants and Project Funding

PRINTING AND BINDING Knudtzon Graphic A/S

THANKS TO Alex Holman, Cecilie Overgaard Rasmussen, Tanja Ina Kjøng

ISBN 978-91-87543-40-1

For August and Veronika

PUBLISHED IN 2017 BY Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing AB Olivecronas väg 4 113 61 Stockholm Sweden

COPYRIGHT This book is protected by the copyright law and international treaties. All rights are reserved by copyright owners.

No part of this book may be reproduced in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, digital, photographic, mechanical or otherwise, without prior written permission from Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing.

Phone: +46 8 320015 info@ao-publishing.com www.ao-publishing.com © 2017 Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing © Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss All rights reserved

ADVENTURES IN CONCEPTUALISM Kristoffer L. Weiss in conversation with Aaron Betsky Bjarke Ingels Dan Stubbergaard Farshid Moussavi Franรงois Blanciak Kamiel Klaasse Kim Herforth Nielsen Kjetil Trรฆdal Thorsen Peer Teglgaard Jeppesen Essay by Boris Brorman Jensen

PRODUCTION OF SPECIFICITY Introduction by Kristoffer Lindhardt Weiss

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This book, Adventures in Conceptualism, investigates a very simple claim.

It all began with the rather trivial observation that among a group of internationally acclaimed architecture firms, there seems to be no deep commitment to a specific stylistic language or style doctrine when one views their production over time. It is really hard to ignore the clear family resemblance among the members of this group when it comes to the elusive question of architectural method and the effects it produces. From offices such as Snøhetta, BIG, NL Architects and Danish HLA, to name a few, the production of formal diversity shows an apparent devotion to a free and experimental practice, cutting across regional differences and stylistic modes. Every new project seems to reinvent the formal language, responding individually to different programmatic and contextual conditions. Their commonalities of their practice have essentially more to do with attitude and conceptual analytics and method than with a specific affinity for any local, national or regional style. The reasons for this are many, but the common denominators are significant enough to justify a comparative study of their practices, including both similarities and differences. In an attempt at a common definition, by necessity broad, I will call this shared methodical approach conceptualism.

The offices included in this book thus, despite all their apparent differences, embrace a seemingly coherent methodology of formal diversity. Does this mean that their works in unison express a coherent design ideology? In no way.

There seems, however, to be a common method at play in their work, manifest in a celebration of hybrid typologies and programmatic complexity and a preference for diagrammatic analysis. It represents a very eclectic sampling culture that is clearly indebted to the playful and rebellious attitude of the postmodernists, eager not to be constrained by their time but transcend it by accentuating “the presence of the past� and to reflect critically on the modernist heritage, which can be a heavy cross to bear. Conceptualism, however, goes well

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beyond the strained and desperate effort of constantly trying to reformulate modernism, as it exercises the freedom to experiment stylistically and adapt to different contexts with different answers every time. The modernist dead weight of the International Style, recognizable by its one-size-fits-all formal ideals is useful to this group of studios when it can be reassembled in surprising new configurations. Does this constant search for diversity and specific responses, rather than the progressive unfolding of a fixed style language, represent a complete absence of any stylistic or formal preferences? The answer is both yes and no. Style in itself, or the function of style, has changed meaning, liberated from the straitjacket of particular compositional preferences based on classical ideals, which constitutes such a core value, for instance, in Scandinavian modernism. It is tempting to ask the simple (perhaps even simplistic) question whether this approach really constitutes a well-defined method or attitude towards architectural production, or whether it is simply powered by coincidence and opportunism. The contours of a persistent, yet unwilling, movement are certainly there.

So, why frame this discussion on the meaning of method as a debate about conceptualism? In a time when the profession long since stopped producing manifestos, and isms have completely fallen out of fashion for their lack of ability to grasp the complexity and variable speed of our times, it seems awfully dated to reintroduce isms as a point of theoretical reference. Well, this is a disclaimer, then. For all it is worth, conceptualism as a term is more a hypothesis used to frame a debate or an examination than a programme for a manifesto. Just – as the printed book is a much more viable format than many like to claim, isms are still a potent way to initiate a discussion about central architectural features and tendencies. Isms require a certain timeliness to settle into a programme. And our current times seem simply too restless for isms to emerge as culturally defining trends. Still, however, in this case, it is overwhelmingly easy to identify common denominators,

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mapping out a field of interrelated offices working to further and promote closely related ideas about the value and meaning of architectural production. And this is not an architecture strictly based on composition, the “wonderful play of volumes”, balance and figure; instead, it is primarily concept-based. Conceptualism does in fact exist as more than a journalistic simplification of a very complex architectural reality, resting on an expanding number of hard-to-grasp conditions from globalization, technology and the upheaval of nationalistic policies. Especially in the global architecture community where the availability and circulation of ideas and designs have accelerated massively. Today, many offices have shaken off all the symptoms of economic (and hence, in Western societies, and cultural) crisis and ventured into new territory, liberated from the constraints of prudish architectural minimalism. This development rests on the fundamental insight that the visual culture of our current media reality is helping to define their work.

Architecture is increasingly influenced by cultural studies and philosophy and by media catapulting architecture in search of new social, economic, political and cultural contexts. This new condition is converted into concrete formal, spatial and material specificities in every architectural project, and the phenomenon tying it all together is the unifying character of an overarching conceptual mindset.

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STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS As any long-standing profession, which stands on the shoulders of the giants of the past, we are still deeply embedded in the modern era (will we ever leave?), whether we think so or not. Modernity is still incomplete, unfulfilled. Somehow, the work of the offices included in this book come across as a version of next-step hedonistic modernism – where among other things, the hybrid, in all its postmodern glory, has taken centre stage.

Committing themselves to a paradigm of restless non-conformity, pluralism and an abandonment of the constraints of conventional styles. Seen under one, as a “style

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assemblage”, perhaps better described as a cluster of stylistic concepts. To some, this signifies watered-down versions or weak echoes of something once great. To others, it represents the actual practice of anti-authoritarian architectural and cultural freedom as an indirect comment on the stringency of the modern masters. To completely shake off the powerful gravitational pull of modernist thinking seems impossible, and that strategy was, and is, ill conceived. Instead, the DNA of modernist architecture become a code to be manipulated. Since it became an integral part of the construction industry, it has become necessary to find ways to hack the power spaghetti of modernist formalism. The rejection of fixed styles puts an acute emphasis on process and analysis, invention and flirtation with the spectacular as cultural form, whenever it seems convenient.

Complaining, as some do, about the icon and negating it with “anonymous”, iconoclastic civil architecture runs counter to the desire and belief of concept-based design thinking. Conceptualism rests on a belief that design, in all its glory, in itself produces differences. Like a chain novel, the aspirations of the moderns masters to make a difference on a large scale seem to live on, albeit in new and unexpected ways and by other idiosyncratic means.

The sheer number of explorative designs, liberated from the constraints of rigid stylistic dogma, is baffling. The Norwegian office Snøhetta proclaims the ongoing experimental nature of the design process: “Our projects are examples of attitudes rather than designs. They are samples in a series of contextual examinations rather than isolated masterpieces. They are associative rather than symbolic. They are comments rather than statements. Every story told is a shared experience of contemporary conditions set within a given frame”.1 It becomes very clear that the fundamental mode of inquiry into architectural problems in conceptual design thinking is driven by responsiveness. By a focus on how an architectural solution is manifested and cuts across problems of specificity, and how it is informed by knowledge of society and eventually a clear

1 Snøhetta, Norway, 2017, PR.

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project-based storyline. An attitude and an approach that seem to always be searching for a bespoke response to a given contextual problem, whether at the scale of the urban environment or the individual building.

What matters is what effects (or affects) it produces. Does it produce a spatial alternative, resistance, or does it simply comply and shy away from confrontation? When the conceptual approach is most polemic, it represents an exorcism of a certain kind of architectural mysticism, opting instead for an open, argumentative, non-sentimental and playful demeanour. The term radical postmodernism is often applied, not in a stylistic sense but understood as the commitment to a radical version of the demand for freedom of expression – the basis of an architecturally critical position, constantly producing both new answers and questions to the urban condition. In that ambition, it shares a great deal with the basic thinking of the American pragmatist philosophical tradition from James Dewey to Richard Rorty.

There is no ultimate truth about the world to be found and build on, only continuous informed doing.

A VIEW FROM NOWHERE? What one often hears is the objection that the conceptual framing of a spatial problem exemplified in this book, with its emphasis on analytical, diagrammatic rationality, somehow stands in opposition to a more sensuous and emotional creative approach and, consequently, a more profound architecture; that the theoretical basis of conceptual intellectuality undermines the foundation of architectural sensibility and poetry in all its diverse forms. Some may see concept-based architecture as a superficial idea-driven endeavour, typically contrasting it with the authenticity and seriousness of critical regionalism. This constitutes an architectural and urbanist standpoint that emphasizes the sanctity of genius loci and represents general resistance to the advancement of both modern and contemporary urban thinking. Seen in that light, conceptual thinking produces the opposite of the specific and grounded. In this sense, the architectural icon is a beacon of the

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directionless society. It represents a view from nowhere. However, the claim that critical regionalism is somehow more profound, in sync with and capable of producing a more authentic spatial – almost metaphysical – architecture is unfounded. On the contrary, the fine-tuned method of conceptbased architecture produces a sensitivity to local context. The real enemy of critical regionalism and all its fanatic proselytes and associated value set is corporate hyper-modernism in its most degenerated form, manifested directly in the vulgar skylines of many a megatropolis around the world. The basic explorative nature of conceptualism in this context represents something completely different. Sure, it does not succumb to the feudal virtues of unconditional architectural and material loyalty to tradition and context or the sentimentality of the neoconservative version of critical regionalism. Critical regionalism, and the relentless search for a stable identity, however well-meaning it may be, often means that progressive spatial politics turns reactionary instead of truly critical. This is obvious when one looks at the Danish design tradition and the lengthy mutation of Scandinavian modernism, which was based in part on classicist notions of composition and balanced proportions fused with the International Style adopted from the great modernist masters. By now, it has turned into a mythical, too-perfect figure. What we have learned is that the contemporary conditions of the profession demands agility, and it profoundly changed the understanding and nature of contemporary Nordic architecture. Some only see the caricature of the signature, the ridicule of the iconic, the fading of the star architect system, calling for a more self-inflicted humbleness.

Conceptualism is a rejection of this otherworldly exclusiveness of untouchable, pure architecture that only deals with the world in a characteristically disengaged manner or when it absolutely has to, understanding the ideal world of architecture, as something that goes above and beyond the dirty realism of the profession it is engulfed by.

This version of critical regionalism leads to iconoclastic tendencies, bashing the merits of so-called signature architecture

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and the absence of history and relatedness.

Conceptualism, on the other hand, with its restless urge to experiment, redefine, and disrupt is not (only) a reflection of a neo-liberal market-oriented opportunism or the option-based lifestyle of an architectural office; at its best, it represents a true production of diversity that is strongly embedded in regional and local contextual obligations, on both a functional and an ideological level.

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IT IS FICTION What is obvious in the work of the offices presented in this book is the application of a dialectical approach to architecture. Perhaps best known for this approach is the Dutch office OMA. A permanently tentative method in which various viewpoints and contextual information are analysed and synthesized into a comprehensive and coherent spatial concept, resulting in a critical comment on a given condition. The approach is essentially responsive. Until a given building is realized, it is pure fiction, formulated strictly as a storyline. This storyline rests on the formulation of basic fictitious desires, intentions and hopes within a negotiated space, and the eventual realization is deeply dependent on the persuasion skills of the architect and, ultimately, the project itself. No doubt, we live in a culture that promotes the exaggerated statement, whether feudal regionalism or hysterical conceptual schemes. In the attention economy, the insatiable hunger for gripping images, stories and hook lines impairs our complex understanding of material and spatial phenomena and risks reducing architectural problems to catchy one-liners. At one extreme, Dutch studio MVRDV’s brutally playful conceptualism has moved beyond the playful and into radical fun, blatantly unapologetic and cheeky.

A truly limitless exploration of conceptual, spatial and cultural diversity. And at the other extreme, the more subtle and deliberately understated attempts at telling a story through architectural materiality and historical insight, as seen in the hyper-local work of architectural practices such as the talented Wang Shu’s Amateur Architecture Studio, the architectural equivalent to political correctness.

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ART OF EMPATHY In conversation with Bjarke Ingels

Since founding BIG, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels has become the poster boy for a new generation of utopian, pragmatic architects exploring the much-debated Yes is More doctrine of tomorrow’s urbanism. Ingels and his partners at BIG combine an outspoken and highly communicative conceptual approach to architecture that cuts across traditional Nordic design values and methodology. In their work, BIG expresses a fundamental global outreach while standing on the shoulders of deep-rooted Danish welfarism.

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KLW Can we start by going back a little bit, to the early years at the academy and the formation of your basic design approach?

BI A pivotal moment in my years at the academy was when I had a disagreement with a teacher and she told me, “I think you’re twisting and turning things all the time, to make them suit you own agenda.” I complained to a friend of mine, Christian Seier, and he told me, “that is the biggest compliment you could get as an architect.” To twist and turn things to make them suit your agenda! That is what we designers do. It’s like understanding that the Danish word for design is “formgivning”, (form-giving, ed.) which literally means giving form or shape to something, that hasn’t been given a form before. To bring something into the world, that hasn’t existed in the world before that.

It might already exist as an idea, or a need or a function, but it doesn’t have a form yet, until you give it a form. So in that way it’s almost shamanism, manifesting something in the world, that isn’t already there.

KLW In the philosophical version of pragmatism the actual purpose was to produce the new and the variation.

It wasn’t a moral claim, but it was kind of the truly creative, also philosophically speaking – creating new concepts.

BI Sticking with some more Danish philology, the other Danish words for “architecture” and “design” are “bygningskunst” and “brugskunst” which mean “art of building” and “art of utility”. I love Steve Jobs’ statement that “out of 20 engineers, 1 engineer is an artist.” And that’s the funny thing about art – it simultaneously means something that is labelled as art – and sold as art – and something that is so brilliant that it transcends its category and becomes art.

So in Steve Jobs’ terminology – an artist can be someone who makes art and sells it as an artist – or someone who can think beyond the traditional boundaries of his/her profession and create things that have never been created before. It is a kind of elevation saying “one out of 20 engineers is an artist” while the others are just craftsmen or professionals, but 1 out of 20 really can think creatively as an engineer, philosopher, architect or even artist.

Transcending the established boundaries by opening new doors – for yourself and for everybody else.

KLW There is also some generosity in this …

BI Exactly! And that’s also what we were talking about.

It is precisely to give form to something.

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KLW Yes, because one thing is giving, another thing is having the will to give. You know, to give meaning

BIG’s first project in New York combines residential building traditions from the New York skyscraper with traditional Copenhagen blocks with large courtyards to form a hybrid type often referred to as a “courtscraper”. The ambition of West 57th is to keep the benefits of both the intimate, safe and efficient courtyard and the airiness and uninhibited views of the skyscraper.

BI I think the whole notion of style is a question of a certain uniformity. And, of course, I don’t think that we can 100% renounce that we have certain idiosyncrasies and certain preferences, certain things that fascinate us more than others. The whole process of form-giving is a vehicle to deliver certain things that we want to see in the world.

However, I’m striving towards the other side of stylelessness, which is to be free in every moment. To choose whatever means, whatever forms, whatever materials that most serve our purpose in each particular situation. Style is a prison, it’s a straightjacket, it’s a form of inhibition.

It’s a self-imposed inhibition, to have to do certain things and not be allowed to do other things and I want us to be able to allow ourselves to do exactly the one thing that will make the greatest difference in each specific situation. One person who is vocal and eloquent about creativity is the illustrator Christoph Niemann. You can follow his thought processes in the documentary Abstract on Netflix. The episode about him and his work has almost become an absurd comedy; like a Woody Allen film. I loved following him, because he’s actually doing, what I thought I was going to do. I thought I was going to be an illustrator or a cartoonist myself before I ended up as an architect. He has a beautiful quote in the series, quoting the painter Chuck Close who said “inspiration is for amateurs, professionals go to work.” And that’s exactly how we work! Once in a while I will be blessed with a a priori idea, but most of the time I start with a completely empty mind and then we start working. But the other thing he says is that he strives to “be a much more ruthless editor and a more careless artist”. That is also exactly how we try to work in BIG and that’s why BIG is actually scalable and maybe that’s an important point. It’s important when you create, that you drop all your inhibitions and all your preconceptions and you allow yourself to say stupid things and make

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and form to something. What you just said relates to method, you produce a lot of variation in your work. Maybe there are some elements reproduced, but still the basic urge is to drive diversity.

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ugly things. But then in the moment of choice – when you decide what you do, you have to be rigorous and ruthless, without mercy. It doesn’t matter where it comes from – or who it comes from – what matters is why you choose to do it. It’s the basic Darwinian recipe for evolution – nature’s own form-giving process – that life forms evolve through excessive variation and selection. The variation is based on random mutation, the selection is based on performance (in the form of survival or not).

BI I went through a few transformations because when I started at the architecture school I was a drawer. Drawing is a powerful skill, because it makes you better at expressing visually what you are seeing or thinking. But it can also be a problem if you’re too good at drawing and I saw this with some of my students later on. If you’re too good at drawing, you suffer from the fact that you try to make the drawing beautiful. So you’re trying to make a beautiful drawing and that’s not necessarily what the drawing is about. The drawing is about expressing the idea in its purest form, the raw state before it becomes beautiful. Like the new-born baby who is often ugly (except to the parents) but then it takes form and then it grows into a beautiful child. So therefore it is important not to try to make a beautiful drawing.

The second thing that happened was that rather than trying to draw instantly what you want to see, which is the very definition of preconception, that you already know what you want to do, I began to trust more in the process.

To think of the process as a procedure: first I’m going to try to do this, with this and … almost in your mind you conceive of an experiment and you don’t know yet what it’s going to look like, but you know why you want to do it. And then you see it and then it can be beautiful, it can be ugly, it can be interesting, it can be banal, you don’t know that yet. That means that when you do it, then you see it for the first time, because you’re not trying to draw what you saw inside your head, what you already knew. You conceive of the experiment and then you conduct the experiment and then you assess the results with a critical mind.

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KLW When did you – just to go a bit history lesson – become so vocal about this? When did you realize that you needed that freedom? How early did you discover that basic attitude or approach as a way of creating that variation or going beyond the straightjacket of pure stylism?

KLW That’s pure method, a way of organizing your thoughts.

BI Exactly. I was actually misguided for a while, because I really believed in the purity of the conception, so I almost thought that you had to think it first and then

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just do it. But then I realized and I think that’s really when I went to OMA, where I was surprised by the lack of preconception.

KLW That’s interesting. I would think it was the other way around somehow?

BI Yes, because it’s both. I had imagined that everybody at OMA would be fully versed in the thinking of Koolhaas, but discovered that they weren’t. One guy came from Libeskind – it made no sense to me that you could work for Libeskind and then go to OMA? I couldn’t imagine two more contrasting sensibilities. Also, it was not like we were doing only what Rem asked us to do. We were producing frantically in order to deliver evidence for Rem to speculate on, to edit. And he would ask for specific things, but mostly we would just generate all kinds of stuff.

It was just raw productions of substance. But what made sense was – again – that it doesn’t matter who does or why they did it. What matters is why you choose to pursue it. It doesn’t matter where the form comes from, but if it actually does the job and you can re-conceptualize it, then it doesn’t matter if the form inspired the concept or the concept inspired the form. Who cares? As long as, once you pursue it, you know exactly why!

KLW We have talked about this before, using the concept, or conceptualism, to frame your method.

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BI The Danish word for concept is “begreb”. As a Dane, you think of concept as concept (because we also have

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that word) and then we think of “begreb” as something else. But it’s the same word: concept, at gribe (to grab, ed.), to conceive is really to “be-gribe”. “gesturing to grab something.”

KLW Alright, it’s a very German way of going about this …

I like it!

KLW I heard you say that before … that you’re not the master author of everything. It’s not like there are foot soldiers trying to interpret what you think, you know … “Does he like this?” But it’s more that there is a certain openness. Is that kind of like outlining a certain method?

BI That’s a very important part of it. Another thing it could be important to emphasize in this context is that when I was 21–22 I moved to Barcelona and a lot of things happened. I had already moved away from home when I was 18. I grew up in Skodsborg, north of Copenhagen, and I moved to Copenhagen 20 km away, so it was exactly the same context. I had the same friends.

Nothing changed. So there was no real ability to radically change myself, because somehow your environment keeps you in check. It’s hard to change if your environment doesn’t change. Then what I really noticed, when I moved to Barcelona was how different the world can see you – and how being seen differently allows you to be different. It came from this pure coincidence. Three days before I moved to Barcelona we had a tour de chambre at my student residence. The theme was films. I loved Trainspotting, so my girlfriend was in a British school uniform and I was Sick Boy with completely bleached white hair. So when I moved to Barcelona three days later I had white hair, so of course everybody I met saw me as a guy with white hair. People in clubs tried to buy drugs from me. It’s amazing that people you meet see you as you are right now, today, they had no idea that I had dark hair 3 days before. So they have a completely different

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BI A “begreb”! You take a series of unrelated elements and then you grab them into something that is a new, interconnected construct … In the context of BIG, it’s scalable.

Saying that it doesn’t matter where the idea comes from, but it matters why you choose to pursue them, means that all 440 BIGsters have an unlimited license to imagine and produce ideas. My job is just to make sure that we pursue the most interesting ones. Of course, I do love it when I come up with the big idea. And I do sometimes. But I don’t have to! And I don’t need to, most importantly. I love it when the team comes up with something that is truly amazing – and that I hadn’t seen coming! But now that it did – it’s the only thing we can do!

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preconception of who I was. I was completely outside my native environment. It was before mobile phones, it was before email. Air flights were too expensive, it was before budget airlines and a postcard would take a week or two to arrive in Copenhagen. So there was no communication and a phone call was 5 euros per minute, so there was no way you were going to call home. So I was effectively cut off from my native environment. I was met exactly as who I was. I was living in a shared flat with guys and girls from Corsica, Strasbourg, Darmstadt, Lucerne and Santiago de Chile. I really learned how differently you can approach the same things depending on where you’re from. And the same with the architects. I learned that that is exactly the same problem, you see it in a completely different light, depending on the environment you have grown up in.

You have different references. You have different preconceptions. It’s like this hermeneutic idea of the cognitive horizon or perceptive horizon, that you cannot look at your own biases from within.

KLW You have a blind angle, so to speak.

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BI Yeah exactly, you can’t see yourself. But a way you can actually see yourself, is if you start empathizing with other people that have different preconceptions than you do. You start seeing how that is different from yourself and in that sense, by understanding the other, you start understanding yourself.

KLW That is a pretty powerful argument for diversity?

BI But it’s the same in journalism. You try to approach a problem from a lot of different angles. What you are doing with your book here is that you are trying to approach the creative process of design from a lot of different angles.

And in doing so, you will actuallysee different sides of the same problem. What I love with the fact that we are quite a few nationalities at BIG is that …

KLW It feeds the engine.

BI People bring with them a different perspective.

Not necessarily a fresh take, but a different one. It might be completely conventional, but because it comes from Santiago de Chile instead of Copenhagen it is completely different from my conventional take on the same issue.

KLW So if you should put this into a historical context, when it comes to the history of architecture, it’s a rather new phenomenon?

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BI One last thing that I think is incredibly important to understand is – and this is like one of our greatest enemies

KLW It’s like an image of diversity rather than real, vibrant difference?

BI Exactly, you should trust that reality itself is going to deliver that diversity. Because reality itself is so full of restrictions and inhibitions and constraints, and problems to solve and obstacles to traverse and hoops to jump through and bridges to cross, so even if the concept is strong, it will be bent and dented and squeezed by all the forces of reality … And that’s why in architecture you end up spending a disproportionate amount of energy on stuff that you know is going to change. What we are designing now, is going to be redesigned 500 times. So the only thing that matters right now is the big idea and all the other stuff is just proof of concept for now. So it doesn’t have to look organic in the first sketches – it can be crystal clear. You must trust that the process itself is going to deliver refinement and diversity and surprises … Because it will.

KLW People don’t know this when they enter your office, right? Of course, you don’t have the BIG method that people are introduced to … they just start working? They become part of this editorial process, where they get to work.

The Maritime Museum does not take up any space at ground level and does not obstruct the view to its neighbour, the famous Kronborg Castle, home to Hamlet. At first sight, the museum actually seems not to inhabit any space at all, instead leaving the excavated, open dock area to be the centre of the museum. Placed around the rim of the dock, the different areas of the museum are connected by sculptural and structural bridges.

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at BIG and with our interference with the world – is that the world is so worried about totalitarian vision – or the big idea. And that’s why all urban master plans have to look as though they weren’t planned, with this manufactured diversity …

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BI Yeah, they simply start working, with what they brought from home. But then there is this dissemination of skills as if by osmosis, and in that sense I think parts of the formula are very concrete. You have to submit a PDF every week. It has to be in a horizontal screen format, 16 by 9, you have to add these little speech bubbles … actually the exact same speech bubbles we’re using in HOT TO COLD. We started using them after YES IS MORE because we realized the speech bubble is great! So the square speech bubbles from HOT TO COLD is actually our weekly PDF graphic language. The best thing is of course a design meeting. In the absence of a design meeting then try to put in very short terms, what you would like to point at on the page and what you would say, as if you were showing it to me. So then there is a speech bubble pointing at the thing that is worth communicating in this drawing or this image.

So there is a whole skill set that disseminates osmotically within the office. It doesn’t come from me, it comes from the culture of the office.

KLW And then of course, as we talked about earlier, you have a partner group that is really brought up with this kind of thinking. So you’re kind of aligned, right?

BI In that sense, it is a quite horizontal structure. If I’m there I will speak to anyone and if I start feeling that someone really gets it, of course I’ll start speaking more with him or her … But when I’m away, of course I’ll talk mostly with the people I already have a shared sensibility with, simply because that’s how you can communicate effectively at a distance.

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KLW So, you behave like an editorial mastermind trying to devise or keep that engine going, where it produces diversity?

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THE LAW OF GENEROSITY In conversation with Kjetil Trædal Thorsen

The Oslo-based studio Snøhetta has produced a body of work characterized by comprehensive formal diversity. From their early important work Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt from 1995 to the Tverrfjellhytta, Norwegian Wild Reindeer Pavilion and the Times Square reconstruction, Snøhetta has had a considerable impact on the architectural discourse over the past twenty years. Founding Partner Kjetil Trædal Thorsen has established Snøhetta as an agenda-driven studio firmly rooted in the egalitarian ideology of the welfare state, promoting a flat-hierarchy studio milieu and approach to conceptual invention.

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KLW Snøhetta is known for a pronounced degree of formal variation in their work. There seems to be a long way from the Oslo Opera House to the SFMOMA Expansion in San Francisco or the Banque Libano-Française HQ in Beirut.

You write, “Our projects are examples of attitudes rather than designs. They are samples in a series of contextual examinations rather than isolated masterpieces. They are associative rather than symbolic.” The last time we spoke, you drew a connection between Norwegian welfare society, democracy, openness, transparency and flat hierarchies as core values in your corporate culture and your own processes and projects. Is that the story about Snøhetta and the expressions you produce?

KTT As in many aspects of life, it is a coupling of several things. This applies to the local context, the internal processes and the people who are assigned to the tasks. There is never just a single cause. I think our strongest card throughout the whole period has very much been our integrated and interdisciplinary collaborations with many different people. We have accepted our own limitations in the sense that we don’t have all the answers. And it has been necessary to work with other people who can do the things they can; people who have different insights that are useful in architecture. When you go to work every day, that just feels normal. We don’t go around thinking about what it all means. We’ve never made a lot of money. But, then, it hasn’t been that important, because if you think about knowledge and human differences as important values in life, including the way we work and do projects, that is another focus. So we spend our money on knowledge, because, otherwise, we couldn’t manage the responsibility of having employees with widely different backgrounds, and then we couldn’t do the projects we want to do.

KLW There is a basic attitude to what it means to be part of a working community that has evolved into a kind of architectural method, you might call it a creative generosity towards the employees and collaborators, that you’ve insisted on?

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KTT Yes, it has always been that way. It is definitely present as an undercurrent in our work. It wouldn’t work without it. It breaks down hierarchies and turns questions on their head. It has some relationship with the high degree of individuality in the office. It makes every situation that arises into a small image of the world of architecture as it is precisely now. As Norwegians, we don’t have a historic architectural tradition of any importance that we need to take into account, so in that regard, Norwegians have freedom of movement, architecturally speaking. We are not limited by a professional tradition that dictates certain aesthetic preferences. In Denmark, there are strong historical personalities and schools of thought that operate and continue to dominate; perhaps you could call it a specific taste.

The building design of Tverrfjellhytta is based on contrasting ideas: a rigid outer shell of raw steel and glass and a soft, organic inner core. The wooden core imitates rock or ice that has been eroded by natural forces. Tverrfjellhytta functions as a comfortable observation pavilion offering hikers a view of Snøhetta mountain.

KTT Yes, but you still get pretty strong statements in terms of quality craftsmanship, because they follow a tradition, and because it’s good architecture nonetheless. But it’s not an oppositional architecture, for instance.

KLW Snøhetta can be considered a globalized studio in its own right, working in a way that is liberated from the endeavours to represent space that characterizes the architecture of signature and, with that, also liberated from the dying gasps of modernism. That is a motif of release that I see in you and your way of working. At the same time, I would like to understand how you maintain a method and the way of looking at the assignment that define the studio’s work with such a high degree of diversity? How do you keep that engine running, how do you fuel it?

KJETIL TRÆDAL THORSEN

KLW Yes, “taste”, good taste as a stylistic straitjacket. Or the neatness, a certain frictionless style, where architecture becomes servile and smooth and thus unable to respond to contemporary conditions and developments?

KTT To some extent, this stems from the diversity of our staff. Moreover, we have built a culture of love. Extreme love.

What might this mean? How far can “xx” go? How does it look if you approach the mountain from the other side? Is it steeper, is it plainer, what is it like to climb there? There are different reflections all along the way. There is a lot of compassion as well. It’s difficult to describe it as anything other than a general sense of respect that we make sure to give back to the projects and feed the curiosity.

KLW Are you the one – of course there are also others – that instils this curiosity?

KTT Well, it’s a different type of inspiration. We say that we can’t motivate our employees; we can’t do that. But we can

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inspire. Motivation has to come from the inside. So the only thing we can do is to inspire as a way of supporting their own motivation. We can give them the freedom to “get there”. So, what are our sources of inspiration, our fuel for this love? It can be insight and inspiration from another art form, anything from dance or music to literature. The sources of inspiration are a diverse range of expressions; it can be nature, politics, it can be so many different things. But what fits the problem that has to be solved right now? How do you “snap” the full image into it? And what things do you boil down and put together again?

KLW Do you act as a kind of moderator in the discussions at your office? As part of your work process?

KTT I think there are more questions asked than there are conclusions. So many questions come up. The brief conclusion is that the result of that process is the best work Shøhetta does. We talk with each other a lot. It is less classic architectural work and more dialogue and development processes, where we set off images in each other’s heads.

We try to be descriptive in our work. And there may be diagrams at this level, but it isn’t architecture. It’s a diagram that reflects a problem.

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KLW I would like to go back to the question about what “the Nordic” model means in your work, if it means anything at all. As a studio, you have been part of an intense wave of globalization and witnessed how that has affected the architectural field. You have 30 different nationalities in your office, but you couldn’t have done that 30 years ago, for instance.

What is the story of this development, from the founding of the studio as a small, local office to being entangled in a global attention economy, where the only question is, “can you explain Snøhetta in a three-line paragraph?”

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KLW But if the purpose and the connection are so clear, what, then, is the architecture in opposition to? What battles are there to be fought for architecture?

KTT Architecture can be a comment. If it is more than an infrastructure, where you can sit in a room and talk, then it is a comment both politically, in relation to a system, and culturally, in the sense that it is sensitizing. This means that, the site and the physical surroundings can make you discover things about yourself you didn’t know you had; a kind of epiphany.

New discoveries are very strong. I don’t know if you can remember from your youth, when you read a new word that you suddenly discovered. And then you begin to see that word everywhere! In a way, most people are very anchored in what they can already do, but when they discover something new, the new thing is discovered anew many times over. And that is part of our long-term human evolution, in a way, building strength and awareness. Our work has to reflect that. The new discoveries in every project are what is important to us.

We keep working to push that.

KJETIL TRÆDAL THORSEN

KTT There is a connection between the way we function and work and the mobile workforce that is part of today’s reality. In a way, architecture represents a kind of ideal model for a mobile workforce. You move with the job, and the mobile workforce is strengthening the European economy. Mobility is one of the most important things to happen to the field of architecture.

Many people are fascinated by the Nordic model, and would like to work in the Nordic countries. That is perceived as a success. Why is it a success? Well, because it is a necessity. It is a way of organizing human relations and firm principles that work. It is well oiled, it is fair, and there are good pensions, low unemployment rates and good structures for families. There is a whole series of things that are perceived as good values.

And then you just have to earn the money, right? But there is something about the Nordic model that makes it a topic of interest. Globalization enters into our work and puts our model of society into perspective. There is a connection between Snøhetta’s methodology, working environment and view of humanity and the context represented by Norwegian society.

KLW This very collaborative, almost collectivist method and attitude allow for different kinds of projects. But weren’t you trained in a classic apprenticeship at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design?

KTT No, never! I studied in Austria, but I never went to the lectures. I sat in the studio, eating and drinking. We had political refugees staying there for several months and we had a big pool where we tried out sailboats.

KLW But beside a concept-driven or cooperative methodology there are some purely formal themes that recur in your

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work. The diversity is very interesting because there is a kind of unrest in the attitude you adopt when you look at a new project. Or in the investment – the attitude you invest, the experience you invest and the interest you invest. Has it always been like that at Snøhetta, and is that why you are renowned for being innovative?

KTT Yes, exactly. When we are a peak example, we are being taken advantage of. Especially in today’s political environment, where innovation is a buzzword, and the development of culture and economics go hand in hand. Suddenly, there is a whole series of things that are “okay to do”, because we’re not artists, but we’re not the opposite either. So what are we? We don’t fit into any of the categories. But you also notice a pride that we have achieved what we have. So it’s a mix of co-option, pride and convenience.

THE LAW OF GENEROSITY

KLW You broke – consciously or unconsciously – with the Nordic fetishism for materials by allowing yourself to examine a multitude of motifs. In Denmark, we are weighed down by the legacy of the “golden age” of Danish architecture and design. So the connection between the model of society, the general understanding of humanity as part of a larger system and architecture; you’re not afraid to make that connection?

KTT No, it happens automatically, because you represent the system you operate within. But there is still a larger degree of generosity in some projects; not all. For instance, we see our own opera house as an extremely important example in that regard. Because it does two things: it takes the law about the outdoor seriously and it takes the law of “almindingen” (the common, ed.) seriously. In the Norwegian DNA, privatization of the coasts is just impossible; it is deeply rooted in us. You can row your boat to any stretch of coast and lie down in the sun. That is the law of the public domain, and it is really strong in Norway. That’s why the opera is public property, and for the same reason, the opera is hugely popular in Norway.

KLW So in a way, the studio is a child of the welfare society and its worldview?

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KTT Absolutely. But then, we have to use that point of departure to comment on and further develop things that we feel are lacking or not okay. There is a whole series of parallel developments in Norwegian society, and not all are good; if you look at the development in inequality and if you look at environment and energy, which is probably one of the biggest and most important issues to come. What is actually being done? For instance, the Norwegian reputation for being highly energy-conscious. That’s just nonsense. I mean, if you look at it seriously, that’s the way it is. But at the same time,

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we are building towards social sustainability, we build via the economy. So you have a stable political system, you have equal access to education for most people. But we wouldn’t have been able to fund that, I mean, we pump oil out of the ground every day. Fishing and agriculture would not have been sufficient.

KJETIL TRÆDAL THORSEN

The Oslo Opera House is a very sculptural merger of landscape and architecture, with a roof that is open to the public. The relationship between building, ground and water constitutes a balancing act expressed in the compositional lines of the building, gently tipping the building volume out of the ground, a key theme in several Snøhetta projects.

KLW There are certain design themes that are repeated in your work as compositional constants or interests that you continuously return to? I’m thinking about the compositional approach in the opera that is also found in other projects?

KTT There is one theme we have worked on extensively.

It is the point of intersection between a new object and what is already there. If that intersection is active, then that is the condition. So if you think about this intersection, be it water, hills or urban environments, the point of intersection and the volume that emerges is of great interest to us. For instance, we made a kind of cut through the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria.

KLW That is both metaphorical and really concrete.

KTT Yes. In this project, there is a weight distribution from the water with its powerful buoyancy; the building wants to go back, because one side is heavy, and the other side wants to go up, because it’s light.

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The library in Alexandria is characterized by the circular, tilting form with an incision down one side. It stands 32 metres tall while also reaching 12 metres into the ground. The weight distribution in the building creates a powerful sense of buoyancy. The large reading room inside is the largest of its kind and spreads out over seven terraces.

KLW That is a very clear diagram.

KTT Yes, and it’s the same with the opera. If you see the opera, the relationship between the water, the ground and the house constitute the same balancing act.

KLW That looks like a key theme! Because it creates a dynamic figure that is repeated as a motif. Exiting. Is – and this is an impossible question – architecture under pressure?

What is the future of architecture, from the perspective of maintaining the explorative attitude that you manifest?

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KTT It’s not just one thing, but typically it would be a situation in a competition where the contractor wants more for the money than they can get. We all know that situation; it’s pretty classic. But basically, it’s about maintaining the central dimension and stay “inside the explorative space of architecture” when we work, and getting politicians and other decision-makers – public or private – to understand that architecture is essentially a tool for getting on with the development one is in the middle of. Architecture collects and encompasses many more dimensions than the purely physical. It’s in a dialogue with the world that it must be and is a part of. And that means that there are many more layers in architecture, which is much more than a building. And that can be an addendum in architecture for those who are used to defining architecture as a sort of infrastructure, for instance.

PROTOTYPING THE SOCIAL In conversation with Dan Stubbergaard

In a Danish context, Dan Stubbergaard, founder of COBE, is known for his massive urban-scale contribution to the rapid transformation of Copenhagen from industrial city to welfare urbanity. Many of COBE’s public projects redefine the meaning and function of social interaction in the city, as Copenhagen changes its profile to fully embrace the urban liveability agenda of 21st-century architecture and planning.

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KLW My purpose here is to understand how and to what extent a term such as conceptualism has taken root as a methodological cornerstone in your work.

DS When I was a student in the late 1990s, the leading architects had a highly academic method for developing and communicating about architecture. You had to read through large amounts of text to understand how an architect had achieved a certain goal. The process that I personally went through during my studies, by going to the Netherlands, to MVRDV, at a time when the Dutch were taking over the world stage with their conceptualism, that was what helped me understand that you could describe, communicate and employ a different method when developing architecture than the one I had learned at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. At the Academy, we relied on some very artistic processes to arrive at an architectural concept or statement. Bjarke Ingels too had a completely different way of approaching architecture in the Scandinavian tradition which we come from and were trained in at the Academy, which is all about Scandinavian functionalism and purity of expression. I think it’s still in our bones, but daring to challenge and sample materials and being open to different ways of doing things was just enormously inspiring and hugely important for us.

KLW There was – and maybe there still is – a regional, Nordic trace, Scandinavian modernism or maybe even an echo of something classicist at the Academy?

DS Yes, at the time the focus was mainly on rectangular boxes, under the general theme of “how to make an attractive composition of facade louvres on a box system”. It was Scandinavian modernism coupled with a kind of deconstructivist work methodology. You cast a plaster model and then discuss that model in very academic, analytical terms.

Or you make a drawing, draw op top of it many times and eventually derive an extract, which is very formally abstract. That was, in a slightly caricatured form, what generated the architectural idea. That’s why it was such an eye-opener for me to go to the Netherlands and learn a completely new approach and discover that it was possible to communicate and work with architecture on a conceptual level that may have seemed almost banal to some, but which in my mind was a revelation when it came to simplifying complex programmes and challenges into very clear solutions that could be inscribed within a concept. To me, this was clearly the fuel that gave me a new drive in my work as an architect.

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KLW How does the method you adopted and later evolved further relate to style? You mention the

DAN STUBBERGAARD

The rock museum, Ragnarock, clad with golden studs and lined on the inside with red velvet, is located in Roskilde among old warehouses in a former industrial compound. The museum hovers above the existing halls, which have been preserved, as has the site’s informal character and its appeal to artists, skaters and musicians, introducing a fruitful contrast between old and new. The museum is part of a music environment with public and communal facilities placed as a village located inside the halls.

deconstructivist understanding of architecture, which often results in a very recognizable line or signature.

There are certain particular, ongoing form exercises that unfold in a signature architecture and which it continues to preoccupy itself with in a purely spatial, almost phenomenological manner. So, style, as a proto-typological attitude, plays a different role in the methodological game and in the way it drives the projects you work with?

DS When we introduce ourselves to new contractors and describe who we are as architects, we usually say that to us, architecture is not about a certain style or language of form, but more about how architecture connects with social contexts and surroundings, and how it generates a social community. In this sense, we describe architecture using fundamentally different concepts. We use other words to describe architecture than words that deal with form, and style. That is less interesting to us. The creative fuel when we develop projects and the way we describe them is, what kind of context do they form a part of? In what way are our projects site-specific, and how do they generate a social

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community? What kind of social DNA emerges around our projects? We simply use completely different words to describe it. The concept brings all the analyses together in one clear, overall framework. That is where our focus lies, and that is also what generates our ideas.

PROTOTYPING THE SOCIAL

KLW Is it also a way of running an architectural office?

At the time of writing, your office employs some 100 people from different backgrounds, because globalization means that they come here from many different countries and backgrounds; they aren’t rooted in a Scandinavian modernism …

DS … And they all have a unique perception of architecture and a unique expression, which is amazing. But what’s important, and what constitutes our sense of workplace community, is that we always discuss the architecture in a wider setting than just the individual perception of how it should look, what kind of style or form it should have, or what kind of volume we need. We discuss architecture in terms of how it adapts, how it creates a contrast in a specific place or what kind of social value we can add with a building or an urban plan. So our discussions are much wider than ugly versus beautiful – aesthetics are important to us, but within this common framework of understanding.

KLW Is there a particular way you prefer to see the projects develop? Obviously, you can’t be involved on a detailed level in all the projects, so your role is probably more editorial?

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DS In the engine room, we have a very structured approach concerning idea development that we ask everyone to apply. In the idea development phase we have a template for what kind of analyses are required; how to actively analyse a site and a programme. We conduct social analyses of what we would like to achieve, but also of what kind of users we are dealing with. For this, we have a start-up document that everybody has to use for all projects. And every Friday, we prepare a

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KLW But that also means being completely indifferent towards the myth about the creative artist-architect and removing the taboo surrounding the method discussion. And this impacts your recruitment too, doesn’t it? Because you don’t recruit proselytes, you don’t recruit people who are fascinated by Dan Stubbergaard’s style. You recruit people who – this is my guess – have already demonstrated a conceptual curiosity?

DAN STUBBERGAARD

weekend booklet that takes stock of the project, and which is handed over to the team and myself, so that everybody on the team can see what has been done. In other words, there is a tight, ongoing review process throughout. It’s not a loose, creative environment, where we work in an artistic capacity, all proceeding in completely different ways. And this applies to every scale, including volume studies, diagrammatic, conceptual sketches and ideas – is it possible to design the project in a single drawing; what would it look like? We have these different exercises that everybody has to do, whether they’re a new intern from Japan or whether they’ve been here for ten years. When we design buildings, our methodology is to leave things open for a long time, also during the detailed design phase, where we work on prototypes and a variety of options. And of course, we have the evolutionary sketching process that I learned at MVRDV, where you produce a lot of different prototypes. And that is the approach I’m talking about: perceiving a site from different angles via volume studies, sketches, models, visualizations, material samples, mock-ups etc. and initiate that evolutionary sketching process at every stage of a project, where ideas inspire new ideas, and you begin to look at different prototypes, what works and what doesn’t work, and move forward in a dialogue. In my view, this framework is not something that kills the creative process, it’s simply the culture that we have developed. Then it’s up to the individual team to stimulate things within this structured approach.

DS Yes, I mean, I think we have built some interesting things. I’m both very proud of and very humble towards the people who work here, because there is an amazing culture and sense of solidarity here. We’re not a hierarchical workplace, where you have to use your elbows to get ahead. It is the good idea that is selected in a team; it’s not about who came up with it. The best project is really when you don’t actually know where the idea arose, because it appeared in a catalogue of methodologies.

KLW A break with a very classic figure – this is the authorless approach. But sometimes as an editor, you encourage what you think are the best ideas?

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DS Also in order to motivate. But I don’t do it with a view to making it fit our style, as in, “this is a COBE project.”

Any idea is assessed mainly on whether it contains a clear story, a connecting thread; can we explain this in a good way? How does the project make a social difference? And will it be beautiful? Aesthetics are still important. We have no interest in producing something that is ugly. Of course, we also always try to make something that is beautiful.

There is also a clear sense of unity at COBE; in that way we are very Danish, and Scandinavian, I think. And the neatness; we haven’t been able to eliminate that, but then again, we never really wanted to.

PROTOTYPING THE SOCIAL

KLW Stylistically speaking, what you do isn’t programme architecture. The modernist movement and ideology also included a social programme, you could say.

They just had a more overarching idea of the function of style, that is, proportioning or dimensioning in relation to our welfare, which cultivated a special stylistic idiom. In that way it isn’t a continuous examination of certain design ideas or a design ideology.

It’s a more open scenario. As I see it, in principle, you can work in any type of material, sampling freely in a kind of postmodern sampling culture!

DS If we build a big project next to some historic brick warehouses – at Krøyers Plads in Copenhagen, for instance – the first question we ask ourselves is, should the new architecture create a contrast to the historic buildings, or should it blend in? If you think you can achieve a stronger result by working with the existing expression, then, naturally, you choose brick as your main material.

Thus, we make a choice, saying that we want to achieve coherence, and that in this case, the site-specific qualities and the history are so important that we would like to build on this history.

KLW And that is also a political choice, in the sense that it may determine whether the project will ever be realized?

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DS To get through to the citizens, it can be a helpful tool that facilitates a good process with the public or the politicians. And it helps us achieve our goal in a project such as Krøyers Plads. If we had a style that dictated what we do, where, for example, we only build slender, white buildings, it would have been hugely difficult to get that project approved, so it is a strategic choice. But it’s also a deeply felt conviction for me, that it’s the right way to generate architecture. Then, if we build a library in Copenhagen’s Northwest district, a part of the city with no architectural identity and no real centre, where the setting can be grey and dismal, then it’s an architectural choice

to create something that really stands out. A structure that does something completely different which nobody has seen before, so here you choose a material such as gold.

And what it does is that every taxi driver in the city knows that there is a golden building in Northwest, which is a new library, and we have created an urban centre. That is a different choice. In that situation, I don’t think, “wait a minute, we have to remember that we always build in the most delicate material available, and everything has to be white, because that’s the recipe we use.” That logic doesn’t exist in my mind, or at the studio. It’s the site that generates ideas. Or the presence of certain obvious obstacles or problems you want to solve, and then that becomes the creative fuel that drives the development of the project.

DAN STUBBERGAARD

The library is an extension of an existing cultural centre combined with a new library and concert hall in Copenhagen’s Northwest district. The building consists of four golden boxes displaced in relation to each other to resemble a stack of books. The building also works as a village hall, a community centre and an urban space tying the multicultural neighbourhood together.

KLW Maybe it also has something to do with the simple fact that the circulation of ideas and the easy access to knowledge expose us to a wider range of options?

DS We have access to information and knowledge today on a whole other level. It only takes 3 clicks to bring up 40 references to great brick buildings that one can be inspired by.

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KLW So the circulation of ideas is also a liberation; it allows architects to say, you can’t recognize me on 5m my signature, you can recognize me on my qualities; on the fact that my projects perform. They are performative.

PROTOTYPING THE SOCIAL

DS What we want to create is simply architecture that people embrace. If you access the website of any Danish architectural firm, it will tell you that their design is human-centred or focused on life between the buildings, and basically, I find that amazing. I believe that’s the key to making successful buildings or architecture: that it is taken over by the life that takes place inside. I think Rem Koolhaas once said that a building has two phases or two lives; there is the life it has while it’s being programmed, projected, designed and built, and after that, there is a second life, after the occupants have taken over. And here it is important to remember that a building must allow for variation and flexibility.

KLW That conceptual or very vernacular, investigative, detecting methodology is perhaps more popular now; it represents a more honest interest, some might say?

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DS I agree. But to us, it’s also a tool when you meet the local citizens at public meetings or discuss a project with the municipal architect. In these situations the site-specific, vernacular perspective is a great tool for explaining why we do what we do, and why our building looks like the way it does in that specific place. And that’s because we relate to a site, a context, a culture, a way of socializing rather than that – in my mind – caricatured view of architecture, where it’s a style or a signature that certain architects stick to.

When we build in De Gamles By [a century-old sprawling nursing home complex, ed.] in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro district, which has big trees, and everything is built in red bricks, our project is going to try to preserve the trees, and

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