Open Mic A conversation with Stefano Pujatti
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Chad Boston Stephanie Johnson Qian Kang Justin Krzemien Clare Lassegard Elijah Less Olivia Mason Grayson Muia Nicola Pici Keaton Reinhart Ryan Snyder Molly Sullivan Ruihang Zhu
Made by students enrolled in the “Video, Media, and Architecture� class taught by professor Marco Brizzi at Kent State University in Florence in Spring 2017.
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Contents 4 Biography 6 Interview
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Biography
Stefano Pujatti is an Italian architect and the founder of ElasticoSPA. Pujatti graduated with a degree in architecture at IUAV and followed with a Master in Architecture Sci-Arc Los Angeles. From the beginning he has been very interested in the recovery of urban areas and abandoned structures. In 2005 Pujatti opened his office after the splitting of the firm Elastic, founded in 1995 with Simone Carena. ElasticoSPA is located in in Chieri, based in the Turin countryside of Italy. Since starting his firm has expanded, it is now comprised of ElasticoSPA, ElasticoSPA+3 and Elastico Canada. This firm has competed in many competitions and won numerous awards over the years including the participation in the Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2006,2010, 2014) and the Biennale of Architecture in Brasilia, New Trends of Architecture in 2005, and the ANCE-INARCH prize in 2007. Pujatti has numerous publications both in Italy and abroad. This firm has is rather unconventional and seeks to elicit a different “way of thinking”, with a desire to “bring together a group of designers, architects, engineers, photographers and people.” Their location is based in the countryside to allow cities to be observed “from a distance and recognize their virtues and defects with a disenchanted look.” In addition to his firm Pujatti is passionate about teaching and is currently an adjunct lecturer in design at the Politecnico di Torino, IUAV in Venice, as well as the University of Toronto. This firm produces works of all sizes and types ranging from single family houses, remodels, public spaces, cemeteries, hotel, and many others.
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OPEN MIC
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
INTERVIEW WITH
Stefano Pujatti FLORENCE 2017
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Student: In your opinion, what is architecture? Stefano Pujatti: Now that’s a very, very hard question, because architecture is everything that is built. Somehow to me architecture is, something that is interesting to look at, or can be used. That is architecture. Florence was built by some big names that we all know, but most of it by people that we don’t know. They built the following with many forces and materials. The way that form is made, and maybe architecture speaks about from, to me architecture speaks about form, of how all the forces, natural forces, mental forces, economic forces, and construction forces, make things happen. They become something concrete. They become something we can live in, something we can experience, and architecture has a lot to deal with scale and dimensions. I like to talk about architecture because it makes an expectation real somehow. At the same time, I strongly believe that architecture is something that has to be built, but that does not mean that what is not built is not important to architecture. There is a whole new wave of Italian drawers and that is very important to architecture, but that product is not [quite] architecture. They are used by architects, but the drawing is not architecture yet. So this is something that needs to be experienced. What hobbies do you have that help you with your ability to design? Oh well, I have many hobbies. One, I cannot say, two, I cannot say, the third is I ride horses. I really think that it helps you to touch with nature, to me, for my architecture it is very important because it makes you follow the rules that sometimes things are unpredictable. I would be using a car if I wanted something to be predictable. I ride horses because I want something that is unpredictable, like riding a wave when you surf. In my way of approaching architecture, is like surfing, or like riding a horse, because being on top of something that is not always under control, and you like it more when it’s not always under control. You are Americans, I am a big fan of rodeo,
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and I am way too old and [am uncourageous] but I would love to be a bull rider. That is an incredible force and strength working against you and you have to manage it. For me, I would fall off, just like architecture there is a failure somewhere, but at the same time it is fun. We do architecture because the ride is fun. I do not know if I answered your question, but every hobby. Every hobby translates somehow into architecture. So on top of your practice, do you have a passion for teaching? It is safe to say that architecture is your calling, but what drives you to want to teach your own practice? Well this is a good question [to make me think] about what I do. Teaching is always; first, questioning what you are doing, second, trying to contemplate it through the different media. Sometimes you just do architecture, like why should I tell people what to do? Sometimes you are tempted to, but, sometimes you have the opportunity to read yourself through your work. Teaching is important, and at the same time, the energy from students is important. I think that now in this moment of my life, I am too old to teach because when you get to a certain level of experience, experience is not always a positive thing. You can become presumptuous, because you think you know things. So you think, I have experienced this and you know what the problems are, and you avoid the problems. Actually, everytime I start a project I try to forget what I know because if I know the problem I will not go there. Maybe, that is where the good thing lies, exactly what you think is the problem. My way of designing is in the risk that lays there, the interests. So if you are experienced sometimes experience makes you avoid risks, so when you correct a student, for example, you see something that will bring him to a problem and you start saying “Oh this will be a problem for you when you [continue] forward�. But maybe that is not true, maybe it would just be a problem for me, and for you it may be a solution.
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTICOSPA +3, SLOW HORSE (2013)
So that is why I say I am getting too old for the phase of teaching in my life. Not because I do not find it interesting, but I do not know if I can be interesting for the students. Do you notice a difference in obtaining an education in Architecture in America vs Europe? Well yes, there are differences, there are differences between America and Europe. I do not know much about Europe in general, I know a lot about Italy. Italy is like Florence all over, in the whole country we have a lot of things we always take care of, where again, we are an experienced civilization somehow. That is the problem in architecture. We know where the risks lay. While back in the states, everything is much fresher because there is more of an opportunity to try new things, without the fear or strength of now being appropriate somehow. I was studying in Venice, California, then I worked in Paris, then in
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ELASTICOSPA +3, MARBLEOUS (2008)
Italy, now I am working in Toronto. But it is important to get to a place where it is not so full, where there are not so many things. Somewhere that is a bit more diluted. Do you notice a difference in the way of thinking your students from Italy think and apply their skills to your students from Canada? The way they approach design, their design process, or their style of architecture? Of course there are differences, but as a teacher, what you will understand with time is that you like to spend time with bad students, because good students do not need you. They make you feel useless. Bad students give you the satisfaction of being smarter. So that is what happens to me, I spend more time with the bad students because I feel better for myself. So there are good students and bad students all over, of course the
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTICOSPA + 3, PIAZZA BODOIA (2003)
background is very different, but what makes a good student a good student is curiosity. In the moment that you find [a student] that is curious, and if he does not know something, he does not have it in his background, he is going to build it as soon as he finds out that there is something out there, he is going to look for it. The idea of pioneering and going to something, that is interesting about good students, and I watch them with a lot of envy. What was the most important thing you learned while studying architecture in the United States? The important thing about education of architecture and architecture itself, is I am a farmer, a breeder of animals, crossbreeding animals is very important. If you keep using the same genes you are going to get the same cow, and the same cow
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AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTICOSPA + 3, EXPO 2015 (2014)
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is never enough. You want to crossbreed things, so the more that you can add to education, the more genes you can find to bring in. Then the product will become more interesting. The person you are, your childhood, your background, is part of that, but the more experience that you bring from outside dilutes your initial formation and that is what makes it interesting. Was there a highlighted “gene� that you specifically took away from your time in California? Oh yeah, well I am not a good reader and because of that I see my work as a natural flow of what I do. I never question too much if this is more California, if this more Venice, whatever, but there are a few people who wrote about our work and somehow recognize a Californian influence in our work. I am happy that there is, I do not know to what extent it is, but, maybe when you see my work you will see it and you will tell me. What would you say is the biggest architectural challenge that Italy is facing today? Politics. We have to rebuild the political architecture of our country. Everyone would say something like an
earthquake, that is technical. How technical something else can become, that is interesting. You can speak about earthquakes, you can speak about the cold, the hot, the rain, things that exist, nature. So I would never think about an earthquake as an exceptional thing, it is something that exists and it exists here, so I design for that. This does not mean it is what people are talking about now. It is like sustainability, what is sustainability? I do not know. If it is what people are telling us it is, adding some styrofoam or stuff like that on the walls, is that sustainability? So those are questions that are global questions. I do not see any problems with Italian architecture, there are a bunch of good Italian architects, I think more than many other places. We come from a huge crisis, which is bad, but it can be a good thing. The problem is that in the recent years, apart from Renzo Piano and some others, there is a young generation of no one good enough to stand up world wide. That is the problem. It would be good if someone steps forward. Could you define the word formal [form] for us? In many of your theoretical thought processes and descriptions
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“Form is architecture, and form is about culture. Everything that happens can deform.� online the word formal [form] is used quite often, I was curious to know what your personal definition of the word is. My lecture tonight is going to be about form, so I do not want to answer you now. The lecture is about form. Form is architecture, and form is about culture. Everything that happens can deform. So maybe we can talk about deform. My idea is like every time I start a project I think of what should not be there and then I deform it. I am never really careful of what is actually supposed to be there. I always work with what is supposed to be there, and then add layers to deform it.
Your studio has achieved many international awards. Of these which are you most proud of and why? We did not get many. You do your work to do it well, and you are happy with the fact that people recognize something that is interesting. Our way of doing architecture is trying to do a search, and doing a search is like doing the most fun part but at the same time your search is never the one that they use for things. So, we like to try things, figure out how to make them work, and then never do them again. While a very efficient office would figure it out and then use it in other projects. We search for new things and solve them. We do
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not use them. We try to figure it out, we fight for a small thing for years, but then we are never able to use it again because our genes are from a lot of researching things. So, when we see that our search is recognized somewhere, we are very happy about that. We say okay, so that element that we put there, can be used by someone, so that way of thinking can be used in the next iteration. The way of making it known can make it available for our use, and to improve of course. If we start working with that, we would never be able to improve it, because we do not have that kind of thinking of improving things. We research things, we find them out, we make them work, but, we do not have the patients to make them perfect. Other people can do that. That is why every prize is important because it tells us that what we were researching has some interest for architecture. Your firm’s name is Elasticospa and promotes the idea of flexibility. Many of your buildings have very unique forms and ideas like the Slow Horse project compared to the Atelier Fleuriste project. What does being Elastic mean to you and how does that influence your architecture?
Elastic is a very important word and because it does not have a form, how do you form elastic with forces? You pull it and push it and it adapts. So we do not have all the answers I do not know how architecture should be, we never thought about that. It is interesting to say that everything we know is there and is waiting for some forces, the forms can add, take away, pull and push. Gravity is a force that you have to fight with to contrast or to follow. Weather is another force. So our architecture projects somehow has to respond to this. This is why I said that architecture is built. Time is another element that changes the project, changes the form, but changes what the project is and maybe, time can change many ways of the project. We gave this name just
“Elastic is a very important word and because it does not have a form, how do you form elastic with forces?�
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTICOSPA + 3, POLCENIGO SCHOOL (2012)
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ELASTICOSPA + 3,ACILIA AUDITORIUM (2011)
for a joke at the beginning but the more things that happen by chance are sometimes more important than what you think about. So with time, we figure out that the name was something meant to be. All of your firm’s projects are so unique and have very differing styles from one another, but it is evident there is a underlying idea that marks them as Elastico. What do you think this unifying idea is and where does it come from? I don’t think there is a main idea. There’s a method. The idea is maybe the method, and they are done with the same method. There is a method of
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTICOSPA + 3, GOLF HOUSE (2011)
researching what you are interested in doing. A way of thinking towards what your research should be doing, and a lot of “what if ”, “what if ”. When we work together on the design it is like “what if ” we had this. Sometimes they think I am joking. I have to say it is a playful method. It is like a polenta where you have to stir a lot then it becomes harder. At the beginning it is water and flour, then you start stirring and stirring. The more you stir the more you see. Our projects are like that. We put in the ingredients, and we start stiring, “what if, what if, what if ”. And then the structural engineer thinks the only important thing is gravity. The electrical engineer is how do I light the building? How do I bring the power? How do I put in the alarms? As an architect it is all important. It is all flour to stir.
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“Sometimes the name comes from the area we are building on, or a passion, and sometimes because it’s stupid.”
ELASTICOSPA + 3, TOP GUN (2008)
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
Quite a few of your projects have some rather interesting names, for example the Yuppy Ranch House and Cats and Dogs. Do these come from any specific elements in the project or are they names for fun? They are names for fun. We don’t care so much. Sometimes the name comes from the area we are building on, or a passion, and sometimes because it’s stupid. Actually, most of the names we use, when it is commercial project, they use another name. But we don’t recognize them. For the Atelier Fleuriste project, it was such a bold choice to use water on the facade, I was wondering if there have been any maintenance issues with such a design? There are maintenance issues, but let’s say, if you want that facade to be clean and neat, that project is wrong. Because you would have someone there all the time to polish it. That was not what we were looking for. There is some moss on some parts, but water does not go in. The rest is water flowing and it is very natural. Every two to three months there is a person polishing it but people seem to like it very much.
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In your project, Marbleous, the marble slabs act as a solar shading device for the facade that faces south-west. As it is interesting and very unconventional, on your website, it says it allows for a cheap facade, yet marble is rather expensive, at least in America. That facade is actually a showcase of marble. We decided to have the facade with slabs of marble, then the guy said he would like to have it black. The clamps can be opened, so they take out pieces and put new ones in. Do you think there is another material possible to resemble marble for any other project or expense wise? Why would you want to resemble marble? Because it is expensive. It is like having sex or going to [watch] porn. It is not the same thing. (Laughter) Most of your projects, specifically your housing ones, the design of the exterior translates really well with the design of the interior. I
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“I would like to know more about those materials and find ways to integrate them into the design. There is never a separation between the design and material.� was wondering what was the reasoning of the top gun house for the exterior to be a little more modest while having such a unique interior. That house is a renovation. I will talk about that house more in the lecture. The house could not be torn down, so we had to make a renovation in the house. We wanted to create that sense of surprise. The design of the hotel Slow Horse is very creative, how do you choose the materials? How do you combine the materials with the environment? Choosing materials is something we never question too much, we kind of use two or three materials. Recently, I am questioning a lot the materials that we always use, and I am trying to use something we don’t know at all. We are now thinking about
AN INTERVIEW WITH STEFANO PUJATTI
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ELASTISCOSPA + 3, LE BATIMENT DESCENDENT L’ESCALIER (2016)
some ceramics, or plastics, or carbon fiber. We are trying to understand what could be the use of these materials. It is very hard because they are not too much in my DNA, but that is what I am interested in. I would like to know more about those materials and find a way to integrate them into the design. There is never a separation between the design and material. Sometimes material comes before the design. Materials are always linked to technology and technology had a big evolution in the recent years because of this thing called sustainability. Sustainability is something that is a technological problem but technology and typology are not things that are separate. This idea of changing the technology and not changing the typology of things is somehow too hard for me to digest. The materiality of our work is a very important thing and we have to try and go to new venues that we are not familiar with. There is going to be something happening hopefully soon.
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This interview with Stefano Pujatti was focused upon his growth as an architect, design process, research, and the globalization of architecture. It was a collaborative effort among students of the Video, Media, and Architecture course at Kent State University Florence. Guest lecturers were brought in from all over Europe for a Spring lecture series and students were tasked to create an interview before each of these lectures. After analyzing numerous interviews with other architects, students researched and explored the work of the visiting lecturers. Questions were then devised by each student, and these questions were analyzed based upon their thematic similarity and their relevance to the work of each lecturer. The most appropriate questions were chosen for each interview, and the specific students who created these questions then were charged with interviewing our guests, using the chosen questions as a base and posing any other questions that flowed with the interview.