“Architecture shapes us, but we shape it in return.”

German philosopher Ludger

Schwarte and his belief that, “we aren’t only the products of our environment or of where we live, we also transform the climate we depend on.” How do you think we influence the architecture around us? Do you believe that our influence on the built world is what liberates it from its confines?

I mention Foucault because he worked on prisons. He developed a theory around architecture as a tool for control, and somehow he was certainly true but not entirely true. Architecture is not just for control, but that has become a tradition, so I am questioning that tradition. That is my question, “can we stop thinking this way?” The answer that was given to it was German philosopher Ludger Schwarte who said it also shaped the environment. Architecture shapes us, but we shape it in return. I was very interested by Schwarte and how he developed his ideas. He worked on architecture as a philosophical concept. He says something about architecture being a device or tool for creating possibilities, things that haven’t been foreseen. You didn’t know it would happen but architecture made it possible. Potential comes from power, your potential to do so. He says that possibility goes way beyond that. It is really interesting because it challenges us to think about buildings that you see but don’t know how you would use them. Their purpose is not immediately discernible, whereas there are some spaces that leave no ambiguity, and are so clear. Other ones are uncertain, they are ambivalent. Ambivalence in terms of use is quite interesting. I think every building is a small organization, it is a society before it exists. You don’t live the same way on a flat surface as a vertical one. If you stuck people on top of each other, they wouldn’t react the same way if you put them side by side. You decide how people interact. You always give them an environment that is something political. The question is how can this political meaning that comes with architecture, whether we like it or not, remain open? Architecture then becomes the place where this political aspect of life plays itself, the result is not where it starts. Maybe we need more equality. We can start reflecting on how we can arrange or organize ourselves, then architecture has a role.

Tyler Mahoney:

You and your firm worked on the CRV (City of Virtual Reality) and you explained it as a “Cluster of Activities” as the site features numerous different programs coming together to form a city. With such a big focus on virtual and digital innovation, I was wondering what kind of role architects have in this booming world of technology. With popular virtual living spaces like the Facebook MetaVerse becoming more and more popular, do you think architecture has a future in virtual reality and the digital world or do you think the profession will slowly become lost?

Architecture has many different aspects and it depends on how you consider architecture as a discipline, but if you think of architecture as construction, it’s strangely disconnected from this world (the digital world) because architecture is always made by people. I like the strong distinction between the things that architecture can be.

“Architecture has many different aspects and it depends on how you consider architecture as a discipline, but if you think of architecture as construction, it’s strangely disconnected from this world...”

Many years ago, your question was much different as there was such a distinction between the two. I thought it did push towards reinforcing the identity of both, assuming that in the end we are making constructions, but at the time architecture was, and we still are, discovering new tools. We were playing around with a lot of digital tools using parametric stuff. But, then you have to build it. The whole process of design as construction is how you are going to build it. I think this is the tradition in architecture but it has been lost for quite a while because of the discovery of these digital tools but it is slowly starting to come back. The idea is that architecture and the 3D simulation would come together through an imaginary set of images and that is how we created the virtual city. We imagined that the two worlds did overlap and so places that were obviously fiction taken from various media including sci-fi movies were connected to physical construction.

Luke Chamberlain:

You’ve stated in the past that in your architecture, “details should ideally play no role.” Can you elaborate upon what you feel makes minimalism such an important aspect of your design? A detail is a detail.

Marco Brizzi:

It’s a perfect quote, just like Mies van der Rohe: “Less is More.”

Yes, he said, “God is in the details.” So sure, details are architecture, but not in every kind of architecture. I mean, there are some very ugly details. The other day I went to quite a very big building in Paris planned by some friends of mine, and there was such a huge mistake - I couldn’t believe it. It’s an indoor stadium. They had to work so hard and the programs had to really work with each other. They didn’t have time to reshuffle everything or to study these two pieces that meet. There’s a moment where a circle and a rectangle come to meet each other and I asked, “What happened here?” And so they said, “Well, we didn’t control that, we didn’t have the time.” And that’s the best part, or probably one of the best parts of the building, because they faced the problem and had to find solutions. That’s the worst detail ever if you think of it as what it should be. As I say to the office, “details are often about hiding the handrail, or roofs, the windows, the texture, the marks, hiding everything, so if you don’t like handrails, roofs, or windows, then just don’t do architecture. You have to accept that it is what it’s made of and that things have a thickness and that there is always a detail, whatever happens.

Gunnar Norberg:

In an interview with Urban Next, you talk about the role of the architect becoming smaller as designers begin to work with larger and larger teams. What evidence leads you to this belief? It just happened. Not by choice. It happens that our role is getting smaller. We used to think of cities, ecology and engineering. It is different depending on each country. In the Netherlands or in England, architects may play very different and distinctive roles. One is doing the interior, one is doing the exterior, the other is doing the management. We are losing control of that for sure. I think it would be better to regain more control. I’m not sure how we can do that. I think that architects may have one opportunity. Architects assume that they can play different roles. They could be the client, the firm, the city, and it could be the construction inside. I think that this may be hope. I am optimistic, and we can imagine that our own roles are multiplying potentially. There could be a possibility that as an architect, you don’t necessarily have to be behind a desk or a computer and make plans, which usually is what happens in an office.

“Few of us, architects or artists, can reinforce the ideas of how to build and how to make things happen in a new way.”

The only good thing under such conditions is that we may have the opportunity to diversify our work. We may be more naturally able to conceive a city, a piece of furniture, a book, an installation, or a housing project. If your job is that open then it can be fun. You can find new ways and be asked to come because you’re not just a specialist, but can do all. So if your competence in between such things is good, it means people will ask you to work. Not just because of your know-how, but your intelligence, capacity to have ideas, visions, and make projects. Few of us, architects or artists, can reinforce the ideas of how to build and how to make things happen in a new way. It’s your job. It’s exciting.

Cassidy Delfine:

You talk about how politics, ecology, and engineering are a part of your practice. In your opinion, how do you design and implement these ideas into your works?

Every angle allows for us to do something different.

Claiming that architects had to go back into considering infrastructure is where things started for us. If you do infrastructure then you do ecology and politics. You’re not exactly designing. It’s somewhere between planning, designing, and construction. It’s between different things. So, that’s one question we asked when we started the office, because design was so powerful at the time: “How can we avoid design?” I think at the time we started, a lot of buildings just looked like objects. Rounded buildings for instance, because we had techniques to make round objects quite easily. You would make the model and it would look great. You would make the building big and it would look like sh*t. It’s just not built the same way at all. There are lots of little pieces and materials, and this little thing is not the same when it is bigger. It’s in another world. So we thought we should try to think differently and avoid designing as much as possible.

Payton Anzaldi:

When you created the project of the 34 dwellings, nursery, and emergency shelter, I admired the way you made different focal points to surround each program of the project. The nursery focused on natural light and protection, the emergency center focused on independence and privacy, and the housing focused on views, clarity and compactness. Can you take us through your mindset of how you singled out different points of independence and compactness and how you decided these characteristics were most important? Do you always have focal points to design around when creating or do you take a larger overall idea into projects?

We came in with quite a strong specification on where everything was to be placed. You don’t see this much in the shape of the building, but we really thought about how the building’s internal spaces could allow for this mixed activity to exist. This took years to be built. It was not a complex building but it was a complicated program. The program is the core but it does not have to translate into architecture. It is the same building even though there are three different programs inside. We often work on mixed buildings. It often happens where we have different programs coming together. This can be quite complex due to regulations but it is also a good thing to bring multiple things together.

Julia Stark:

You talk about how one of your main challenges is dealing with both the economical and ecological crisis coming together because there is a lot of contradiction between the two. You state that this narrative is not easy to respond to, but what would you say you have found to be steps in the right direction?

We have one way and that’s to try to use less matter, basically. That’s our little thing that we usually repeat. We always try to work with few means, few materials, and it’s an attitude where we tend to reduce the number of things, with intention. For us there’s a clear way to associate that minimum thing. Not minimal, but minimum things as in the least amount. It’s not necessarily just matter, but I think there’s potential in architecture to, you know, when you have few means to reach something that wouldn’t exist otherwise. When suddenly you don’t have enough means, it should be a condition that is recognized as such.

That scarcity of means can be interesting, I would say, both economically and ecologically. It’s interesting when it’s sort of accepted, and it needs to be like a real condition of architecture. In France, the more concrete poured, the less expensive it is. It’s hard to understand, but the materials are so cheap that the more of the same material you put in, the less knowledge you need to study about everything else such as windows. It goes totally against everything we want to do, but ecologics are not so logical.

Joel Semancik:

I had found and read some of your book Go with the Flow. I understand that it had been released around 20 years ago, but within this book you documented a three month trip throughout Europe. When looking back at the project are you reminded of any specific moments? Despite how long ago it was, I still have memories. I would say that it was an absurd experiment with a friend. We started and it was almost like an exercise. We thought to ourselves, let’s live on the motorway and see what happens. We studied gas stations as places of social interaction. Like normal places. That was the very beginning of digital cameras. Otherwise, if it had been two years before we couldn’t have accomplished this project. It would not have been possible. We were super young, probably your age actually. Photography was still expensive. The digital camera made it cheaper, but we still had to buy the camera and a laptop. We were on the motorway for 3 months and still needed to have the ability to work. We were working on the road. It was a work in progress. I have strong memories of the project, but I wouldn’t do it twice. I think of it now as a connection between photographic and scientific research. I really did the two separate things and they reconnected much later. In the 2G they came back. The photos had already been published but not many people had read the book. It was published in an academic book, not many copies were available.

Molly Zwack:

This semester, our third year architecture studio site, Piazza dei Ciompi, is situated in the heart of Florence’s historic Santa Croce neighborhood. When designing a project surrounded by historic buildings, infrastructure, and culture, do you aim to assimilate your design into the existing context, contrast it, or a mixture of both?

It’s up to you. I don’t know, it will be your choice. Really, I will not give you an answer because I think you should probably study all possibilities. You then can make a very subjective choice and try to explain it objectively. But I will not give you an answer, I will let you work on that and reflect.

Harris Cheifetz:

Seeing as you have a master’s in urban planning and a PHD in arts, which of your degrees do you think opened up your perspective the most and ultimately impacted the way you create and design?

I would say as an architect—since I am one of the few who has completed my masters and doctorate—that I think we may have the interest in things and objects, things built that can be physically touched. We as architects also may be a bit animist. We believe things and places have spirit, it is a strange kind of religion we share. So, I would say that’s the thread, the thing that goes through the different domains. We are able to do anything.

Once a bachelors is completed, architects can go on and master anything. Given, we also often think fictitiously, we not only think that objects have spirit, but we believe that they are an extension of our mind and our body. We have a very specific connection to things. Whenever someone says something is materialistic, it usually means it is bad, but for us it is good. Material is important. I think that the one particularity that we have as architects makes us able to travel within any discipline with a specific view, giving a very specific argumentation or description. Imagine you’re with students coming from sociology or geography, and you are going to try to describe a bookshelf. As an architect you can describe every detail about the bookshelf, all of the components, and everything that is important and meaningful. Questions arise though: ‘Why should we do that?

Why not do it differently?’ These kinds of questions matter and nobody else shares them. Ultimately, I don’t know if urban planning or art is more important.