Implementing Advanced Knowledge
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4.3.1 Interview
Enric Ruiz-Geli
Enric Ruiz-Geli - Interview
(The text that follows is an extract of an Interview done on 29 october 2015 by Jordi Vivaldi, in occasion of the participation and engagement of Enric Ruiz-Geli in many IaaC academic activities as lectures, juries and his Studio Self-Sufficient buildings)
It is well known that along your career you have been in close contact with the world of the theatre, working beside big names related to this field as Iago Pericot or Bob Wilson. We can easily perceive in your work and in the way you lecture or explain your projects and theories, a certain interest in the “show” and in the “spectacle”. Is this attitude a layer that you are adding to your work in order to better communicate and sell it, or do you consider that “show” is intrinsically embedded in the semantic content of your projects? Yes of course, show is clearly embedded in the work. There is no show and content, there is no content and show. When I was in ETSAV my contact was nature, we were in a no-man land and it was great. However, when I moved to Barcelona and I entered in contact with its way of life and the possibility to participate in all the activities that the city was offering us every day, I started to be very intrigued by theatre. Stage design is an activity where architecture happens instantly. It has something very useful that is a very small gap in between idea and reality. In architecture, we know that this relation is not made out of days, but of years. In this sense, for a young architect stage design was perfect; suddenly next month we have 2000 people coming to “Mercat de les Flors” to see architecture. In a certain manner, stage design is still a way to crystallise architecture, but the media to do it is very particular: Light, fog, confetti, sound, projection, data, explosions... I was studying architecture at ETSAV and at the same time stage design at the Institute of theatre with Iago Pericot. But only stage design, that is to say, no acting, no directing... After some time working with Iago, he became very intrigued about the kind of stage design that I was doing, and he introduced me the figure of Bob Wilson, someone that at that moment I didn’t know. Of course in that point I started hunting Bob Wilson, and I finally found him in the Biennale
Cover - Enric Ruiz-Geli beside Buckminster Fuller Figure 1 - Enric Ruiz-Geli during his lecture at IaaC 2
of Venice. After some weeks I met him in the Martha Graham Foundation of New york in order to show him my portfolio of architecture. While showing him my portfolio, I said to him that I was a retired architect and that I wanted to move to stage design. He looked at the work, and he said: “don’t retire do not do it, your work is very good!”. Then we agree that I would give him my architecture and he would give me his stage design abilities. What I learnt from Bob after working with him almost 8 years, is that there is no stage design without time. Time is the forgotten media of architecture. Architecture needs time: scene 1, scene 2, scene 3.... During 8 years, time was fundamental in my work with Bob. Now I cannot draw architecture without time: architecture and time is one.
From what you are saying, it seams clear that your interest in stage design has strongly influenced your work in architecture, specially in the temporal understanding of it. However, one of the key concepts of your architecture, is your concern towards questions like sustainability and self-sufficiency. How did you arrive to this preoccupation? Is theatre again related to this interest, or are there other circumstances that lead you to work with nature? Terence Riley is probably a key figure to answer this question. When we were preparing the exhibition “on Site”, at MOMA, Terence was first very interested in the work of Villa Nurbs, but finally he chose the hotel forest project to be in the collection. Terence was the first one saying that we were not doing architecture and stage design, but that we were doing performative architecture. Before him, we never heard this term: performative architecture. An architecture that, as nature does, operates, acts. An architecture that performs, a word that is not that far from the vocabulary used in the world of the stage design. Coming back to your question about show and spectacle, I have to say that if time is our first point, dialogue is the second one. We always believe that a certain dialogue between architecture and society is crucial. We heard from Bob Wilson that there is no theatre if there is no dialogue in between the stage and the audience. If when I do click on the stage no body reacts, there is no theatre. It mean that you have to perform and then keep silent in order
“...if there is no dialogue in between buildings and society there is no architecture” 4
to hear to the audience. If there is interaction, dialogue, there is theatre. No dialogue, no theatre. No dialogue, no architecture. This point is very strong: I can be the greatest actor, I can have the best lights, I can have the best stage designer, but if I don’t receive any reaction, there is no theatre. That’s why I say to my students of architecture in IaaC that if there is no dialogue there is no architectonic proposal. We are doing buildings, so if there is no dialogue in between buildings and society, there is no architecture. And what is evident, is that to have a dialogue, you need to perform, to dress, to shoot, to attack... in brief, you need to communicate. But overall, you need a reaction. Society is sleepy, bored, society needs reactions, splashes. Society needs shacking. There is capitalism, there is conformity, and in order to wake up society and consciousness you need to strongly communicate and attract attention. In this moment is when you wake up. We don’t want architecture in the comfort zone, architecture has to be in the radical zone, in the extreme zone, in the cutting edge zone. Critical analysis needs performance.
One of the main tools that you apply in order to analyse how reality performs has to do with the concept of “particles”. We heard you many times arguing that “all is about particles”. In relation with the contemporaneous philosophical stream called Object Oriented Ontology, it seems that when you apply this expression in architecture, you are undermining the architectonical object, claiming that the particles that are composing it are more important than the object itself (something similar to some presocratic theories about reality or the atomism of Democrit and Epicur). In your specific case, which is the role of the architectonical object in your work? Can you completely reduce the architectonical object to its particles sum? First of all, I see architecture as a platform. I’m a technocrat, and if architecture is a platform for all the different cultures that we live in, science is one of them. A certain understanding of reality is necessary: we are architects form Barcelona, we are architects that believe that architecture is in the context, so if you excite the platform, the context, architecture will emerge. This is what we learnt from Miralles, from Villaplana, from Elias Torres... But this platform has been changing along generations. This platform was the street, but then we wanted to film the street, then we wanted to measure the street, and now we want to put and take out data from the street. We have the influences of physicists like Perelló and other scientists that were telling us that all is about particles, all is about quantum. It is not about the skin of my body, is about the performance of my body. My body breathes and my body sweats; I’m not interested in geometry, like
Gaudí, I’m not interested in image, like Pop culture, I’m not interested in structure, like the modernist. I’m interested in the performance of my work. I’m interested in how it works, in the performance of my skin, my bone, my blood... all work together as a performance, as a machine. But what is it made out of? If you go down to photosynthesis, at the layer of molecule, and you keep going down, you will end up stopping at the layer of particles.
In this sense, when you are moving from the window’s layer to the glass’s layer, and from the glass’s layer to its particle’s layer, it seems that you are loosing some information in each iteration. For example, if I break a glass of water in pieces, I will be able to rebuilt it because these pieces are keeping the information of its original shape. Unlikely, if I break this glass in its particles, I will not be able to rebuilt the particular form of that glass, because those particles are not keeping the information of the manner in which were previously organised. So, do you think that this information that you are loosing through the process of iterating has any significance? No, on the contrary. Let me give you an example: Sauna. I’m a body inside a sauna. It is one reality. Another reality: particles, i’m 80 percent water. My water is going out of my body, down to the floor, then is going to evaporate and to condensate on the glass of the sauna. Somehow, my body is going to be on the glass of the sauna. My partner will have the same experience. We are exchanging bodies in the water. I’m water, my water is going out, my body is going out.... Architecture it’s a strategy, if I focus in water, then I understand water. Water is linked to heat, humidity... it’s the typical problem of science. What I do is to isolate the phenomena, and only learning from that phenomena I understand the picture. For example, I research about glass. If we look at glass as a phenomena, in terms of particles, it is sand. If i’m in front of the sea and 3d scan glass I will detect sand and salt. When I put a window in front of the sea, some phenomena is happening. People say that the glass gets dirty. When I look to this phenomena as particles, what I see is that salt is reacting with the sand. This glass, according to my particle’s understating, is not dirty, but is a new kind of glass. A new kind of skin is appearing. Coming back to your example of the glass of water, it seems that in this case you are understanding the phenomena of crack primarily as a geometrical crack. Instead of this understanding, I don”t see there geometries, I see there embedded energy. This glass has a certain mass, a certain amount of embedded energy, and this energy together with the energy of the floor are going to produce a new system. Figure 2 - Model Mediatic Building, Enric Ruiz Geli Figure 3 - Model Donosti Project, Enric Ruiz Geli 6
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Geometry is an applied mould. We see geometry as an output, not as an input. Geometry acts, as a design method, what is called emergency. When you apply complex systems, an emergency will happen. If geometry is at the start of the system, emergency won’t happen. If it is at the end, that geometry will be an output, it will be an accident of your system, it is the visualisation of your phenomena, it is the output of your system.
Could we say then that you are doing exactly the opposite of what mere biomimic strategies proposes? Is the contrary yes. Biomimic consists in applying a geometry that has been learnt from nature. But in this case it is at the start of the process, not at the end. Actually, nature does not operate like this. Nature is continuously learning and mutating, and geometry comes at the very end of this process. In this sense, what we do in our work is to isolate several natural processes in order to understand them, and once we comprehend them is when discovery happens.
Actually, when you are radically applying research in your professional work in order to find these discoveries that you just mentioned, you have to assume a certain risk of failure. Experimentation, by it nature, cannot guarantee a 100% of success, specially when is dealing with the borders of the current knowledge. Do you think that society and your clients appreciate this effort and, therefore, they could assume a certain risk when they are working with you?
Figure 4 - All is about particles, Enric Ruiz Geli Figure 5 - Enric Ruiz Geli and Ferran AdriĂ testing the particles scan, IaaC Archive
Well, actually there are two different questions in this reflection. Firstly, society tends to operate with very big systems, like democracy. Society is a group of individuals, and they operate like tribes, like modernists, like students, like teachers.... and what we know is that systems need hackers, and hackers need systems. Now for example you are hacking my agenda. But at the same time, I need you, because I also need this Interview. Google needs hackers, Ikea needs carpenters. To understand this is a very big step. It is true that Ikea is killing fab labs and carpenters: Ikea is selling furniture made out of low quality materials, no-design configurations (which at the same time is a particular kind of design)... On the contrary, when I want a chair I go to the neighbourhood’s shop, I check all the possibilities, I enjoy the smell of the wood.... Obviously is a different experience than taking the car and going to a big space where I will buy a chair that I will have to build at home. What happens is that in the streets there is no arts and craft. The Ikea system is killing this system. But somehow both needs each other. These carpenters need that we think like Ikea is promoting itself: we need to transform our house transform it in our own republic. Ikea is waking up people, is activating our need of change, and this is also interesting for carperteners and fab labs. In this sense, they are partners. This is what el Bulli is doing in relation to the supermarket. Both needs each other. Ferran needs Caprabo, and Caprabo needs Ferran. This is something that is not obvious but that is happening around the world. Nike and Corte Ingles. Edward Scissor Hands and the Ladies, Tim burton and Disney.... Because there is so much to do and to wake up. So yes, definitely society appreciates experimentation.
If society appeciates experimentation, should we also consider that they are ready to accept a certain failure risk? In California we have the myth that you can fail and is ok, no drama happens. But it is s a myth: society is not ready to fail. For example, Media City. Can I fail in the structure? No. Structure is 30% of budget, I cannot fail. Can I fail with the glass system? No. Can I fail with... no. In what can I fail? I cannot fail. What we can do is to allocate success and failure. If my work is a great success and at the same time I have patents, I can fail inside my experiments in a couple of details because in the top of the overall there is a success. The way to deal with failure is to encapsulate the risk and at the same time have 10 awards of your patents ready. In the case of the Media City, 3% of the total budget was for the Arduino: 100000 euros of 23 million euros. So I can fail in this first amount if the overall works. But if I create a new patent, this patent will be 8 million dollar. So, it is reasonable to affront the risk, and if I fail in this detail is not a drama because I have a backup that is all the successful rest of the system. 10
“...what we do in our work is to isolate many natural processes in order to understand them, and at this point is when discovery happens” A backup that is always quite close to nature. As you were saying before, nature is really embedded in your work, but not through any biomimic strategy but as a process that will end up with a certain geometrical output. However, if we understand that architecture is closer to be a “cultural” problem rather than a “natural” problem, how can you deal with these cultural problems through natural drivers without reducing your position to pure technocracy?
To be honest, this is my job. I will explain this. I was in Brasil in the Lula moment. I went to Sao Paulo because I was doing a lot of projects there during 3 years. Through this experience I learnt the concept of being aligned. First of all, we have to understand that a complex system is a very fragile mechanism. It is deep, it has potential, it has added value, but at the same time is very fragile. To manage Media City was really hard: every one had its own concerns and ideas. At the start it was really hard, almost impossible. Unless we manage to work aligned. It’s the only way. We are different, thanks god, but if we do not operate aligned, it will not happen. In Brazil Lula asked: which is the problem number one? Terrorism? No. U.S.? No. Amazon? No. Every minister had a different problem. “Guys, no. We are poor. 17% of our people cannot eat. This is the problem number one. We shouldn’t hide it.” He called it “fame 0”. 180 million people was waiting for this decision. This is the vector: “fame 0”. We are different, but this is our common target. In Media City we were dealing with this every week. If you clearly target a goal, it works, independently of the point of view. All the system moves to that goal. This is goal alignment. That’s why complex system works: in my case, I use nature as a tool to align all the parameters. And as a technocrat, I assume that technology has produced a sensibility, and therefore has produced culture. We were the first architects out of the school with computers. Photoshop, Illustrator... a culture of virtual reality. It is technology, but after all these years, technology becomes embedded in culture. Nature as a driver can become a cultural product. This is a digital interview. Yes. But is happening in our culture. The work of Walter de Maria is very enlightening in this sense: experience is crucial. If there is no experience, it is hard to transcend technology. You have to cut a cactus, drink from the cactus and then you will be able to not see just a cactus, but to see buildings. For example, in this glass of coffee that we have here, I see a façade in this glass, not a coffee. I see a roof in the performative way: evaporation, condensation... all these processes are producing a moss and this is actually the best isolation you can have: that’s why it is still warm, and that’s how it becomes culture.
Processes like this one are capital in the Self-sufficient Studio that from some years on you are teaching at IaaC. In this regard, one of the main principles of our institution is the conviction that we are in a new era that is beyond modernism and post-modernism. Although the borders in between one era and the other are always blurry, it seems that nowadays we have at least an ideological vector which is substantially different from the previous one. Do you share with us this understanding? Figure 6 - Villa Nurbs at night, Enric Ruiz-Geli 12
I think that the conditions have deeply changed. I think that architecture is a platform and in my point of view architecture is a socialist platform. Socialist platform, understanding it as a social and activist platform. It could be neoliberal platform, business platform, no problem, but my platform is a social-activist platform. In this platform there is respect: I have visited modern icons like Villa Mairea or the house of the Eames, and there is respect to this knowledge and this culture. I feel very attached to these people, to makers like Buckminster Fuller. Beside being a
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technocratic, at the same time im a humanist. I easily could tell you the name of 10 people of this platform that could do the same as Buckminster Fuller did. But it is not positivism, it is a must. We are here in a responsible way, there are 2100 people visiting my website every day, king what is next. This platform is socialist, it has a very strong ethical approach towards society, everyone is watching what we do. We must be responsible. It is not about destroying modernism for a new agenda. No. We have respect, we culturally drink from this source, and at the same time we are humanist. And actually we are a new generation, we cannot talk about us... other people talk about it. We are doing architecture, they they are saying that is advanced, we are not saying it. There is a dialogue with society. This is exactly what we need to keep working and keep advancing. It’s our engine. If there is no dialogue, there is no architecture. Sometimes I listen high-school teachers going to Media City with his students, explaining that Media City inflates, transforms... some times there is no understanding of what is happening. But even in this case, I’m not working for any particular audience. Some people are doing it, they work just for museum. Or just for “elCroquis”. It is not my case. I work for a middle class family, people that are curious, that want to change life... And this people are not catalan burgess, but they are middle class, like myself, people that want to know what is next. To operate in this middle class, even if then I’m lecturing in Harvard or Princeton etc, its the way to check and receive the real feedback. And hopefully in the future they will say that we were 1) humanist, 2) socialist and 3) open. I will be really happy if this is how our work will be understood.
Figure 6 - Ferran Adrià in front of the cloud9’s model of elBulli, Enric Ruiz Geli Figure 7 - elBulli experimentations at Cloud9, Enric Ruiz Geli
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