i.s. by Zero-G

i.s.

i.s. perry ogden (photographs) colm t贸ib铆n (introduction) hans ulrich obrist (in conversation) claudio silvestrin (architect) ciar谩n 贸 gaora (book)

colm t贸ib铆n donnelly house

the irish sea is wearing one of its masks. in the morning when it is calm the sea is a mirror, sheer in its texture, and then, as the light shifts and you stand looking at it, you realize that there are no proper terms for this range of colour, which is narrow one minute and almost infinite the next. grey, grey-green, and then a stretch all whitened and almost yellowed by the early sun, and then, if you look south, some blues, ranging from turquoise to aquamarine, and then further out eddies of gun metal grey, dull, almost black in places, with a strange, calm purple emerging. and by the time you look again, the names you have gathered are all useless, except for the purple which remains. the rest has changed. from the outside, the house looked ordinary, one of those large houses built in the late nineteenth century on this stretch of road overlooking the sea, above the dart line south of dalkey village. it would be easy to close your eyes and imagine the opulent rooms, the cushions on the large long sofa in the living room on the left hand side of the hallway, for example, the well-upholstered armchairs, the patterned faded carpet, the rug in front of the fire, some bookshelves maybe, with some family photographs, and a landscape painting over the marble fireplace, and maybe a china cabinet with some valuable pieces in the far corner beside some other easy chairs, more severe perhaps, re-upholstered. and the feeling that having enough money to own a house like this carried with it a golden duty to clutter it up with chintz. comfortable, though, with perhaps a nice dining room table in the room on the right of the hallway from some period in the past, and formal chairs to match, and a good sideboard with some old silver, some of it perhaps inherited or carefully collected. sets of fish knives and pastry forks that came as a wedding present and a set of china, complete, and some waterford glass.

and upstairs too a sense of comfort, mahogany bedsteads and mahogany wardrobes and some old bedside tables. and blinds as well as heavy curtains. and perhaps a kitchen in the basement that had been modernized with a new aga and some stainless steel and a stripped pine work surface and a little breakfast room with modern furniture and a very comfortable tv room where the family spent more time than it cared to admit, cosy in the winter. outside, the house called mount eagle which john pawson renovated for joe and marie donnelly in 1989 had all the appearance of normality. as soon as you went inside, however, it was a shock, something new and strange, whose beauty took time to absorb. although the house had maintained the architraves and cornices and the essential shape of the original rooms, it had been emptied of its things; it might have been easy to feel that it had been decorated in the modern style, all white and minimalist, and was awaiting the furniture, the paintings, the rugs, the objects which any family collects over time and wishes to display. but then you looked around and saw in the room on the right of the hallway a single piece of sculpture standing, and in the room on the left a single painting hanging. and then you noticed that there was furniture, but it was spare and strange, and not placed in any obvious position. these rooms were finished and ready and lived-in. the whiteness and the openness of the spaces were filled with the raw liquid light which came from the sea. it was hard to know what to do, the way the space had been made put you on your toes. upstairs gave you a better clue. there was one magnificent bedroom, which must have been made out of two or three smaller rooms which had windows facing north-east and due east and south-east so that all the tricks of light, all the changing colours, could be seen in this room. there was no division, except a piece

of glass, between this bedroom and the bathroom. the bed was in the middle of the room. there was no sign of any bedside table or wardrobes. but when you studied it carefully you saw that at the back of the bed, locked into the wood, were two extendable bedside tables, complete with lights and little shelves, that could be pushed back in during the day. and the back walls of the bedroom and bathroom were made up almost entirely of storage space, but, like the bedside tables, with handles hidden, so you did not notice them. you noticed instead the huge spare space, the luxury of light, the sense of opulence which came with the degree of finish in the plasterwork and subtlety in the flooring, the wood, the lighting, the bathroom fittings, the handles, the switches. slowly, it became clear that the house had not been gutted as much as mysteriously filled. it was hard at first not to wonder. a single kit-kat wrapper left on the floor would ruin everything, as would an old jacket draped over a chair or a halfeaten chinese take-away. one false note and the whole thing would collapse. living here required discipline and care. i was awe-struck by the house and its beauty every time i went there. one day i went with joe and marie donnelly to look at the site on the dalkey side of mount eagle which was part of the grounds. it could hardly have been called a site, however. it was a piece of rough ground sloping down from the road towards the sea. there were some heroic trees which had managed to grow tall in this difficult ground and a good deal of scrub. you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even walk on it, the ground was so steep. it was easy to see why no one had ever built on this piece of land. there was nothing to build on, there was only slope. i cannot remember when i realized that joe and marie did intend to build on it; it was not said directly or immediately, but it became clear over time that that was the aim â&#x20AC;&#x201C; to build a dream house on one of the most impossible, and one of the most wonderful, sites in the whole country.

it is always hard for anyone, not only writers and painters, but also clients of architects and architects themselves, who want to produce the single best work possible, the single work by which they will be remembered, not to want to do something immensely complex and intricate. i remember a plan for this site which seemed, at the time, amazing and fascinating. there would be three huge spaces, each on different levels, resting on each other. since i could not imagine even building a humble hut on the site because of its gradient, i though this was the most delightful dream and utterly impossible. for a while, however, i noticed that joe and marie donnelly were taking it very seriously. it took a lot of talking and thinking to dream up a single long simple space, with no frills or intricate details. the architect himself, claudio silvestrin, was himself a single long simple space, dressed in black with a bald head and a clear gaze. i thought he meant it when he proudly told me that he only owned one black jacket and one sort of black t-shirt and one type of trousers and shoes. he, as he came towards you, was a walking piece of pure minimalist stylishness and seamlessness. the house he began to dream up, with much consultation with his clients, was going to resemble himself lying on his side looking out to sea. i was there one of the first days the diggers came to try and make the site suitable for building. i do not know how they did not topple over onto the dart line and into the sea. they worked slowly and carefully, since as many of the old beautiful trees as possible on the site had to be preserved. as work progressed it was easy to understand why some people in dalkey became alarmed. the house was going to be simple in style, but it was going to be incredibly long, and as the foundations began to appear, it seemed like someone was building a big long industrial space on a brutal scale on what is a cosy stretch of the south dublin coast.

slowly, however, it became clear that the house itself, unlike most of its neighbours, was going to be hardly visible from the road. the plan was to sink it, so that from various positions close by it would seem something quite modest and unobtrusive. it was also going to have no great drama as you approached it, no moment even as you went down the drive towards it when you would get a sense of its great ambition. the world would impress itself on the house, in the form of light and weather; the point was not for the house to impress itself upon the world, unless the world was made up of sea-birds. thus as you came down the drive and then further down a narrow set of steps, entering the house from a high door in the back wall, the shock of its size was still not apparent. and even as you entered, it was at first unclear. and then as you turned to the right - into the huge long main room with glass on all one side overlooking the sea, with some beautiful pieces of furniture, but mainly empty, there was a great austerity, almost a monumentality in the space, mixed with a soft comfort which came from the light. the house had to be simple and seamless. the few interior walls which divided the spaces did not go the whole way. this meant that you could, if you stayed near the glass at the front, walk the full length of the house, with some openings on to a terrace. the floor, the paintwork, the plastering, the doors and the divisions between the glass had to be barely noticed, unobtrusive. it was not a house where you could hang paintings in a row along the wall. drawings seemed to work better than large paintings. the light from the sea, because of the length of the house and its height, came and played tricks all day, shifted and moved, darkened suddenly and then softened again. there was a sense of the house as massive and uncompromising but also utterly fluid, almost gentle and comforting.

because of all this delicacy and ambiguity within such a breath-taking space, every detail had to be discussed and worked out. i remember a lot of talk about how to solve the problem of a barrier on the terrace so that the unwary would not fall into the sloping garden below. almost anything placed there could break the clear clean line of the view, and more than anything else the house depended on this idea of clean clear line. what became, for me, strange and fascinating was how beautiful this house was at night when it was open to the weather â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the wind, or the fog, or rain â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and the sheer blackness of the night sea. despite the subtlety of the lighting system and openness of the spaces, or perhaps because of them, you did not feel fully protected from the night. i found myself time after time in the house wanting to walk out on to the terrace, even in the winter, and take it in, the beauty of the irish sea at night, some nights almost calm, holding back, almost quiet, and other nights full of its own coiled power. the house, like mount eagle before it, was not like other houses being built or redecorated in ireland. it managed to be serious without being too rational or cool, opulent without any sign of display, strangely comforting without being playful. it used the site, a place of immense privileged beauty, with a sort of respect but no false modesty. it remains one of the greatest architectural spaces in the country.

hans ulrich obrist in conversation with claudio silvestrin 7 september, 2006

hans ulrich obrist: my first question is about your connection to the art world, because i got to know you by being in the jury of the rebaudengo foundation, where you have not only built the museum but you have also done the remarkable new victoria miro gallery, and then the donnelly house, which is the house of a collector. what is your connection to the art world? claudio silvestrin: i also did the victoria miro gallery in florence in 1990, now closed, and then the first white cube in london, so i’ve been working in art galleries for maybe twenty years or so. and i also worked for the hayward gallery on a particular installation; anish kapoor asked me to do the design of the installation. so i guess my style is appropriate to showing art, because it tends to remove the ego; and to be as neutral as possible, to have the perfect background for showing art. so i think there is a logic in that, and it attracts some art collectors. and how do you find your dialogue with artists? very positive. i’ve done work with michael craig-martin, i worked with anish kapoor. can you talk about these works? well, it’s the creative relationship that is the positive side, the exchange. i remember i did work with richard serra, when i did my first exhibition at the hayward, gravity and grace. also i find work with curators fairly easy, probably because what i do is not about me acting as a pop star. it is this goal to be neutral. although it is impossible to be one hundred percent neutral, the ego has to be discreet, and you must emphasise the art. at the end of the day the idea has to be beneficial to the artist or to the art collector. so you take basically your ego back? that is obviously also not only a very neutral approach but possibly a minimalistic approach... i was

wondering about your relationship to minimalism, because you can define minimalism in all kinds of different ways. there is a relationship to historical minimalism in a sort of donald judd sense, but at the same time there is also minimalism in the sense of a maximum effect with a minimum of means. what is your form of minimalism? well, i don’t particularly think whether what i do is minimalist or not minimalist, i just do it. i think it just fits what i think. and obviously i’ve been influenced by minimalist art of the sixties and seventies; you know, serra, and certainly walter de maria, which came even before donald judd. so that is where the inspiration comes from. and then during my upbringing in italy i was tremendously influenced by lucio fontana. i went to see a lucio fontana exhibition; my master advised me to go and see it. and when i went to see this exhibition i felt something that i cannot describe; it was incredible, beyond rationality. i really felt it was my soul meeting lucio fontana’s soul. and i think that gives a direction to my life. then i found out years later about walter de maria and james turrell but the first one was fontana. have there also been heroes in architecture who have influenced you? well obviously mies van der rohe, and luis barragán, whom i discovered when i was more mature. mies van der rohe, he has always been number one, but i think he’s probably number one for many architects. what is it that appeals to you about barragán? well, i think mies is more part of a northern culture, and barragán is more latin and south american or southern european. i think perhaps even in my work that the two north and south cultures overlap each other. what people call minimalism in my work is not as cold as maybe another minimalist. for instance with the victoria miro new art collection space, i wanted to have a dark, dark brown floor, which

immediately removes it from cold concrete, which is in almost every gallery in the world. also in the donnelly space i wanted to have a natural stone colour. i always go for colours which are not artificial but are dictated by nature, so there is a nice wood colour, untreated, or a stone colour. so in a way perhaps it is slightly more under the influence of mediterranean culture. my house for hans neuendorf in majorca is strongly influenced by mediterranean colours, and it is probably still part of my italian upbringing; that’s why i think barragán is something to look at, as much as mies van der rohe. so your work is more south than north? no i think it is overlapping, intertwining, rather than confronting. this brings us to the donnelly house. as the donnellys are eminent collectors, it asks the question of what is a house for a collector, as a typology, and to what extent a house of a collector is also a portrait of the collector. i was wondering how you approached that very complex challenge, to design a house for a collector, and if you could tell me a little bit about the genesis of this legendary house. well, it’s not particularly complicated. the way i saw it, you have a fantastic location, and the first instinct would be to have a house facing the sea, looking at the sea day and night. however, if you also want to use your house like a private collection gallery, then you balance this exciting location with some background walls which are suitable for hanging paintings. and i think the design has been successful in having both these aspects worked out. because for instance the typical mies van der rohe house, like the farnsworth house, is all glass, but then obviously you can’t hang paintings on the glass, unless you’re a bit weird. so here we balance the glass with specific walls made to hang paintings. after the design we actually made a

model which was twenty feet long, six metres long, on the big formal dining table of the temporary house where joe and marie stayed. and so we really had the possibility to work out which painting on which wall, and if the wall would have to be shifted, it was all thought out much earlier than the construction. and this balance i think worked out. you can look at the space, in perspective with the painting, and the landscape and the sea, without conflicting with each other. i think that was the goal, and it has been successful from that point of view. there have been many house collections—one thinks about the barnes collection, and one also thinks about sir john soanes in london—what have been the models for your house for a collector? i’m not sure whether there is a model, i didn’t think in that way. i’m not very intellectual in my approach, i just felt it was quite distinctive... so you follow your intuition? yes. and it was an intuition both with the architectural configuration of the house on the site, and at the same time, to solve this problem. i don’t think very much, usually i just go according to what i feel, and then i do spend a lot of energy on the details. but in terms of concept it comes quite naturally. it just happens on site; it completely comes out of the heart, rather than reading books or referring to this or to that, it just comes very very naturally. it seems to me that with any architecture, dialogue with the client is important. vico magistretti, the great italian designer and architect who just died, once told me that for him, the dialogue with the client is at least fifty percent. the dialogue is mainly on the details. i think for the initial concept, it has to come from, i don’t know what, but it usually doesn’t come from a dialogue.

it happens in your mind? it just happens, and the dialogue is really on practicality and details. and how did you start work, how did the inspiration come to you for the casa donnelly, and how did the dialogue evolve? did it happen with a drawing? what is the role of drawing in your practice? i think the role drawing still plays is very interesting in the age of the computer. well, the donnelly house was not done on computers, just by freehand. the concept of the house came by just walking among the trees. walking? walking, walking... you know, it was completely out of the heart, there was no explanation, no rational explanation. but then sketching these things to marie and joe, they said, that’s exactly what we wanted, but we didn’t know it. so obviously it was visualising an aspiration that also joe and marie had. and then from this inspiration, the fine-tuning happened in dialogue with mr and mrs donnelly, who are passionate collectors and also very active in society in many other ways. i can imagine that that has been a very intense dialogue. how did this dialogue happen? qingyun ma, the chinese architect, once told me that he always communicates with his clients by letter; vico magistretti told me that he always communicates with his clients on the telephone, so everybody has his or her own way. so what is your way to deal with the client? face to face. i can’t understand long telephone conversations or letters, i like sketching during the dialogue. i remember joe said, i can’t believe you even came here without a camera. most architects go with a camera, they do a whole video. i just went there with my passport and some credit cards, and then a pen and paper.

so you went there many times. that was the first time, then i went there many times, and some times we met in london to develop the design, and then we built this amazing six metre model. and i sent one of my japanese architects to ireland to build this model. six metres, that’s the size of this room, double this room. it was enormous. but the client can reassure himself, because when you spend a few hundred dollars you have to be sure you’re going to like it. and marie and joe are really focused in terms of taste. so on one side they’re ideal clients because they’re so good with their eye, on the other hand, they are also demanding. but i found that very positive because it makes the final result even better. have there been any tensions in this process? or was it all a kind of entente cordiale? there’s been some tension, but it wasn’t related to the design. it was related maybe to the execution, because i’m a perfectionist, and that caused problems. but i think they went the whole way; marie and joe don’t like to compromise. was the house completely realised the way you wanted it to be? could one imagine extensions to the house in the future? it is accomplished because it has been made with sufficient extra bedrooms and a guest house, and then there is a caretaker underneath, so i don’t think they’re going to need an extension. if i have to be charming i’d say yes, i’m one hundred percent happy, but if i have be honest, i’d say ninety-nine percent. and where is the one percent? small details that people don’t even notice. you really have to see it there on site, because they are things that are almost imperceptible. but i do perceive them, because they come from inside me, so i can see if a curve of something is not the

perfect radius that i wanted. even the miro gallery, there were some details that i’m not happy with, but only i see them, or very few people see them. it is not easy to be a perfectionist, because of financial or time reasons, and the biggest challenge is always to convince a whole team. yes, we’re living in a time when that sort of idea which you describe, of perfectionism, will obviously also reduce the number of projects you can work on at a given moment in time. as the vietnamese general giáp quoted by mario merz famously said, when you gain territory you risk the loss of concentration and vice versa... i was wondering how in the current economy of architecture, you deal with this sort of paradox: what is your economy? rem koolhaas has pointed out on several occasions how strange it is that the architects don’t make any money and the artists make so much money. there is an unbelievable gap between the millions in the art world, and the still syndicated fees for architects. i think that if you love your job as an architect, unless you got some amazing stroke of luck and your business takes on multimillion pound projects, like foster... or gehry. when you come to that, then you can have your own private jet, and you are successful both in architecture and in business. but in general, it’s not a well-paid profession, and as you said there’s a big gap with artists. but i guess artists produce an object which you can sell after one year or ten years, and the value goes up, if the artist is good. architecture doesn’t work that way, so if you have done projects that are commercial projects, where the apartment or the house you do is put on the market, instead of being one hundred thousand it may be one hundred and ten,

or one hundred and five, but it cannot go higher than that. so the margin is relatively small. with artists it can double, the value of the painting or the sculpture. that’s the marketing, and there’s nothing we can do, and we have to be happy with what we have, because we have chosen to be architects. in fact when i give my lecture to young students it’s one of the first things i say: if you want to make money, go and study law, or other things. now, speaking about students, rainer maria rilke wrote this lovely small book ‘advice to a young poet’; i was wondering what would be your advice to a young architect. well, first of all i would want to really know the architect as a person, to know if he is really good, if he’s got something in his heart. and then if he’s really got it, don’t give up. because sooner or later you will achieve your dreams. what i do not like though, particularly with the younger generation, is that they want everything now, which is fine if you’re a tennis player, but if you’re an architect and if you don’t have patience, forget it. if you really believe in what you’re doing and it’s really strong, then it’s only a matter of time. obviously luck, you have to be fortunate, but then, just time. so your advice is time. time. the young, they want to build a lot of things by the time they are thirty-five or forty, and maybe you have to wait until you are sixty. so if you are really good, then eventually it will happen. you have to wait for it, and if you give up hope, then it will definitely not come. in relation to your economy, how many people work in your office? does it grow, or do you want it to grow? well, it depends on the opportunities; at the moment we are almost thirty, and i

have an office in london and one in milan. the quantity of people really depends on the size of the commercial projects. i remember an interview that rem koolhaas did about fashion, shops, and prada, and he correctly said, look at how much architecture work fashion companies give to architects. why should we say no? i’ve been working with giorgio armani for nine years now. in his flagship stores. yes. and therefore that allows the office to also do projects which are not profitable like residential projects, where if you break even you are lucky. the hardest thing is to convince clients of the amount of work you do, because nobody sees in the background how much work you do, the production of details, the thinking, the experiments, nobody sees it, therefore they all think it’s about making a sketch and calling it a day, but obviously it’s not. commercial projects are better understood, but with a residential project it is quite difficult, this is the more difficult part. so a project like the donnelly project, in this sense, is not a commercial project, but is a laboratory? no, it’s more than an experiment. i like to express my architectural beliefs in different aspects of the environment. so one has to have houses and at the same time hotels, or a football stadium. i personally like very much doing houses, because commercially you do tend to have limitations, mainly time, and the commercial fears that businessmen usually have when they do new things and experiments. meanwhile in a residential space the client, if he’s got the balls, can be much more adventurous. certainly if you want to experiment with natural light, it is much easier in a house than in a shop. so that’s why i like to do residential and commercial. and light is obviously a key medium for your work... can you talk about the light of the donnelly house?

well, it wasn’t very difficult because you had that location, so in a way the location became the dictating factor for the natural light. and also the fact that this was for paintings that would be placed in the space, which reduces the quantity of light and makes also shadows in the room. so there is a balance between light and shade. otherwise if the light is extreme, in a way it loses a little bit of its magic, you need shade to emphasise light quite often. so i reckon that it is all about balancing all these elements. and if there is too much shade, you don’t know there is light. exactly. and obviously if you are in a south european country, you don’t need to have an amazing span of glass because the light is very strong. but in the north, in scotland or ireland then you need a large expanse of glass. so in a way it’s quite logical. if you have clear in your mind your ideas and principles, it is quite logical, not arbitrary or irrational. i think the main thing is that everything is thought out in a creative way, rather than being left either to builders, or left casual. so the aim is really that everything is thought out, not in a mechanical way but in a creative way. this is one of the objectives. one of the things that makes the donnelly casa so special is this whole dimension of the salon. whether it’s seamus heaney, or michael craigmartin, or young artists, the donnellys have succeeded in creating a salon of our time. a laboratory of thoughts, of encounters between the disciplines, going beyond the fear of pooling knowledge—reminding us of alexander dorner and the arensbergs. and i was wondering to what extent this dimension of the house being a salon, being a laboratory and a place for dialogue, had been built in in its architectural aspect. yes, this was part of the original brief dialogue. the proportion or the dimensions,

materials—everything was studied in such a way as to have this particular space which is partially for living and partially art gallery. so the two things, instead of being in conflict with each other, are in a space where both are happening. it really works. every time i go to dublin and i go to joe and marie’s house i feel like i’m on holiday. so it functions. it’s a fantastic feel. we spoke with tobias meyer, the great auctioneer of sotheby’s, on saturday at the serpentine marathon conversation about the necessity of an architecture for auctions in the twenty-first century and how this could work. now i think these specific functions could need specific designs, and i’m very fascinated by what could be the design of such a salon for the twenty-first century. how did you design it? is there furniture, are there sofas? is it a lounge? can you describe the dimension of creating this social space? i designed the furniture of the sitting area with the fireplace, the formal dining area, etc. as you know joe is a collector of the forties and fifties, and he has there one of the tables from his collection. however at that time i did design a contemporary table, and he said eventually he’s going to do it, because he understood its importance. if you look at the oldest great houses, le corbusier or mies van der rohe, they were not shopping at ikea or whatever, they understood the importance of the architect’s total vision. and how would your table function if it’s going to be there one day? it’s just a table. it’s just part of the same philosophy as the rest of the space, rather than 1940s or 50s. but certain things come with time. it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and it’s obviously also a long conversation.

as you said earlier one cannot really document the experience, one has to make the experience, it’s an irreducible experience as you say. there is obviously the whole problem of architectural photography reducing buildings to icons, and reducing complex experiences to more reduced, often clichéd kinds of images. so if a book happens on this house, of it being a house of living, of collecting, of salon, of conversations, of shadows and light, how can this complexity be seized in a book? how do you cope with this paradox, that basically architectural photography cannot really render experience? the thing is, i don’t think that there is a solution. the paradox is part of life anyway. i think the idea of making a few sketches would be a good one. then it obviously has to have quite a bit of writings, because it has to emphasise the event. it is possible that marie wants to make a story rather than six photographs which are put in domus magazine. i think that’s probably the main intention. storytelling? storytelling, yes... and also there are certain things that should go in this text, for example the design of the house was based on two trees. i remember the sea wall contractor, and i was so black and white that these two trees were the datum of the position of the house, and this guy was maybe in his seventies or late sixties, and said, i’ve built so many houses, so many buildings—but to have two trees as the starting point for him was out of this world. so i think this is part of the story, it’s one aspect. trees are the trigger somehow, the protagonists. the trees are more than just a personnage peripherique... well, this depends on the architect. in my work i want to put in nature as much as

possible, for instance the bedroom is with the central axis, and the master bedroom on one other tree that was there, and we put in the centre of the terrace. and that is thought out, it is intended to be from day one. so maybe that makes a story. because very often you have architectural critics who will write about it, but no one really knows the original datum and criteria that make those things to be the way they are. and i notice very often this has not existed, people don’t really understand why that thing is there, and what is the reason behind it. and maybe if it’s made into a kind of story, maybe this should be written. the whole idea of the conversation, the sketch, can be as important as photography, i think, and all these different renderings are important: textual renderings, drawing renderings, photographic renderings. maybe to have them all will do more justice to the conception than just some flashy photography. for my very last question: i understand in architecture right now there seems to be kind of a new paradigm shift happening. i was in the studio of peter märkli the other day in zürich, and he sort of disconnects from his office and works in a small studio where he draws, no computers, and then he has his office with computers. it feels a little bit like a disconnection, a desire to disconnect, and also if you look in england at caruso st john there is a kind of a revisiting of smithson, and almost like a new normalcy. not the revisiting of brutalism or materials, but a sort of a new normalcy— maybe a resisting of the spectacular. i hope it’s going to be that way. so i was wondering if you agree with that, and if you would feel to be part of such a notion of disconnection?

well, regarding the way i work, i think every architect has got his own way, and most of my ideas come during conversation with a client, when i have a dialogue, or they come on a site or they come on at five in the morning when i wake up. and then during the day with the computers they have to be materialised. in terms of the spectacular, i really hope that there is a change, because at the moment in architecture it is almost advertising. you have façades, building façades, which are too sensational, a spectacular thing, and it has become almost too much now, and it’s all going in that direction. and i can tell you that students are very superficial in their criteria because of that. it’s all about the dimensional computer, exciting façade, or whatever, so there is not enough research on depth and materials. so if we’re going towards a less spectacular architecture in the next five years, i’ll be very happy. so who would be—even if i understand you’re not part of a movement or a group—who would be architects of your own generation that you would feel close to? well, my favourite architects are peter zumthor, and tadao ando.

site section

roof and site plan

general arrangement / plan

elevation

acknowledgements very special thanks to everyone who built i.s. and to everyone who helped on this book. thanks to mark treharne, executive architect; jonnie bell, landscape architect and will madriga who brilliantly manages everything. thanks to everyone who encouraged.

97 trikey, our dog of 18 years, who lived on site during the building years and was loved and spoilt by all the workmen, went to doggy heaven in jan 08 and is now buried at i.s. md / 2009

colophon published by i.s+zero-g, 2009 as a limited edition of 500 isbn 0-9549220-7-7 photographs by perry ogden introduction by colm tóibín conversation with claudio silvestrin by hans ulrich obrist book produced and designed by ciarán ó gaora, www.zero-g.ie set in akzidenz-grotesk, 8pt photographic prints by brian dowling, bdi reprographics by mpd, london print co-ordination by booxs print production by 1455 photographs © perry ogden, 2009 texts © the authors, 2009 www.zero-g.ie