IaaC bits 2.3.1

Implementing Advanced Knowledge

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2.3.1 Interview

Caroline Bos

Interview - Caroline Bos

(The text that here follows is an extract from an interview by Areti Markopoulou and Manuel Gausa with Caroline Bos in occasion of his lecture at IAAC, edited and presented by Jordi Vivaldi)

At IAAC over the last 10 years we have been working with the concept of Advanced Architecture. We are convinced that we have passed from the postmodern era to a more informational one. Which is your position towards the idea of Advanced Architecture?

Do you consider that we are still in the post-modern era or we have definetely moved to a new kind of architectural and cultural thinking of paradigms?

I also think that we are in a different time, and in a way as architects we need to be more sensitive to the concept of change. We are always looking for a shift and transformation; sometimes just in our effort to find change, we end up creating it. In any case, this exploration tends to keep the discipline alive, and probably we can easily agree on the central role that newness plays in our inspiration. Actually, some days ago, I was thinking about the question of the emergence of a new cultural period beyond modernism, and I couldn’t avoid making a mental diagram about it. In this respect, I think that this process in which a period is substituting another one –in this case advanced architecture substituting modernism- is not that lineal, because the change of one paradigm to another one is not something pure and clean. I’m convinced that we are still working with ideas coming from the renaissance, illuminist, modernism…Ideas that operate like an onion -with many different layers that are overlapping-, and now we could say that we have made a new layer, but all those concepts coming from other periods are not lost, they are still there even as an opposition.

We represent an Educational and Research Centre that promotes projects related with new technologies within a multidisciplinary context. In the world of contemporary Architecture there is no longer space for the solitary artist, and in order to provoke innovation now there is only space for collaboration.

It is necessary to bring other disciplines into the discipline of architecture, some of them related to the new technologies of fabrication, communication, engineering, ecology, electronics or programing. From your experience in different educational projects, which is the relation between new technologies, innovation and architectural projects?

Cover - Nodes Network: Customized visualization based on J.Tarbel, Node Attribution 2.0 generic Figure 1 - IAAC Interview 2

Let me mention first of all that I like very much what I see here and what I know from you. In my opinion this is a fantastic school, and what I really appreciate in IAAC is how you are taking the latest technological steps as a key parameter towards developing your architecture, as well as mixing it with art and social interaction. To me it is really interesting on the one hand how the artistic imagination can always be inspired and trigged by new technology, and on the other hand how technology can also be pushed by imagination. This is the good aspect of this mixture, how each one can push and be pushed by the other one. However, the challenge comes from the question about how long will this recipe be stimulating, how long the “digital” or “digital something” will keep exciting us in order to be relevant; because in the end this is what we want, to be relevant in the present. But maybe in 5-6 years it is not going to be like this, and then it will be necessary to rethink this aspect. In any case we all agree that technology cannot never be completely leading, it should be a tool used for other purposes than the mere celebration of itself. However, to

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clearly focus in one direction is a very operative and useful option. Nowadays, it is not enough for the students to go just to one school, but they need to get in touch with many different manners of thinking and have a mixed education.

That is why your system is really interesting, because your strong identity lets the students take a bit from it, maybe not the whole, and then move on keeping this knowledge with them.

In many of your reflections we can understand the importance of the unpredictable and line of thought of a sort of criteria-organization (we remember the relevance of the idea of Attractors and Diagrams as nuclear and strategic dispositions, etc..)‌ Are you still interested in this kind of reflection?

Why do you think that this is so important in our discipline?

I think that some of these thoughts are still very contemporary, while others are timeless. For example, the center of the Greek temple was inaccessible; people were meeting around the entrance and in between the pillars. It was a kind of undefined space with an undefined social behavior.

Therefore, in my opinion these spaces have always existed, sometimes as markets or religious centers, and sometimes as infrastructure or shopping centers, as we can find in our period. The real challenge is how we can enable these spaces to convert the social phenomena, even if unpredictable, into the main actor, the central activity. Somehow the function of our space enables the social episodes to appear, and therefore those spaces have always existed, but now we are changing their content into airports, shopping centers, museums etc.

The trajectory of UN Studio is very interesting because it has been able to mix professional and productive efficiency (that is to say operative capacity) with an instrumental and formal research desire. What is your opinion about this?

Uncertainty is a very important concept to increment knowledge in our community, but therefore, at the same time you have to be very strong and confident. In this sense, in our studio we have a strong belief in what do we want to learn, and this is how we are developing our identity. Generally speaking, in order to mix pragmatism and research is important to work in two different layers. The first one is crucial, and it refers to what you want

Figure 2- Mercedes Benz Museu, UNstudio

to do as an architect. This question helps you to make your own path in this complex world. The second layer implies understanding the question of what is really needed, what the client is requiring and what he wants. But, in particular, we have to be able to differentiate between what he thinks that he wants and what he really wants. The first layer is an internal driver, and the second layer is an external driver. You have to find a place in between these.

One example that I’m always mentioning is the case of the Central Station. In this case we did a stakeholder analysis, although they was asking just for a central station. By looking at the data that we collected, we realized that the role of the station was going beyond its mere use of transportation: it required offices, commercial space etc. And the reason is very simple: currently 70% of the people that are going to the station are not going for its traditional use, but they want to find in that facility other uses and purposes that can engage better with their own day to day life.

We have always considered UN Studio as a team that, despite its undeniable professional and productive success, is still keeping a certain intellectual and theoretical curiosity, not only in relation with its own work, but also with a collective understanding of the architectural culture. This is probably the result of the initial link with an architectural critique that Ben and you had from the start. In any case, how do you sustain this theory-practice duality attitude?

This attitude that you are referring to is due to some personal interests that we have been cultivating from the very start of our Studio. Actually we convince that nowadays, being so confronted with our environmental crisis, we have to reinvent architecture again.

And we have to do it because architecture is no longer sustainable, and therefore, the first step is to understand what is the real value of our discipline.

In this respect, we have realized that this value reposes in knowledge much more than in design, as nowadays knowledge has the power of being much more specific. Somehow, we see that we are entering an era that is announcing the end of design. Actually we could say that design is lost, because lately there is a lot of undistinguished design. It seems that we cannot innovate a lot more in design, and taking into account that as architects, and as we mentioned before, innovation is probably one of the main drivers for our discipline, this becomes a real problem.

This being said, it is true that our mixture in between theory and practice is quite particular. We think that neither of these is coming first while Figure 4 -Programmatic Diagram, UNstudio 6

the other is coming second. On the contrary, there is a deep and constant interaction among them. Generally speaking, I think this is really related to how Ben and I work together, in how we follow each other. Theory and practice each separately are not interesting, only when they are mixed is the result interesting.

We live in a world of cities. Across the globe, the number of people living in cities will increase to 6.3 billion by 2050, up from 3.6 billion in 2010. It is projected that by 2025 there will be 37 megacities with populations of more than 10 million people. So there is an important need of rethinking how we design cities, infrastructure but as well the limits of nature with cities.

In your opinion does the current model of our cities work? And which are the important aspects that we should take into consideration for planning the (mega) cities of the XXI century that will respond on the needs of the increasing population rate?

Personally I have always had a very anthropological approach to this subject. I mainly understand the city as an experience; it’s my natural way of thinking it. This is a very important issue for us, because we work in many cities in other countries. For instance, a project from UN Studio that would properly explain our mentality is the Holiday Home, a very small installation that we did in Philadelphia. The condition of the Holiday Home is how many people move away from their native place and loose it forever. When you move to another city, your main home is always gone, and the feeling of nostalgia that emerges is fundamental to all of us. This reflection, besides being related to the idea of flow and change, it’s very interesting because it underlines the idea that for every person the context is really difficult to fully apprehend, even for its local inhabitants. Sometimes people feel that a local architect will have a better understanding of local context, but I don’t think so, because actually our relation with our context is very tenuous. We tend to think that we can reach this understanding, but the truth is that it is very difficult, even if we grew up in that environment. This is the basis for our way to operate: it’s important to be sensitive to the context but also is important to be honest and say that we have a difficult relation with it, all of us.

For the second part of the question, it is important to understand how do we produce designs that are inhabitable in the conditions of a megacity. I use to travel a lot, and when I go back to Amsterdam I feel like being at home, even if I am not in my house. It’s the city that somehow makes you feel already at home. Therefore, and especially in the case of a megacity, people will spend most of their time outside of home, so this thought becomes particularly relevant. As soon as people move around a lot, we have to see the city as a larger home rather than just the scenario where our home lands. And design is such a way that it offers the possibility to do it.

Figure 5 - Millennium, UNstudio Figure 6 - Gallery Center City, UNstudio 8

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IAAC BITS

IAAC

DIRECTOR:

IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

EDITORIAL TEAM Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean Mathilde Marengo, Communication & Publication Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Silvia Brandi, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts

DESIGN: Ramon Prat, ACTAR Editions

IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands

Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of Barcelona Willy Muller, Director of Barcelona Regional Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

PUBLISHED BY: Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia ISSN 2339 - 8647 CONTACT COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLICATIONS OFFICE: communication@iaac.net

Institut for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Barcelona Pujades 102 08005 Barcelona, Spain T +34 933 209 520 F +34 933 004 333 ana.martinez@coac.net www.iaac.net

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