PEDRO REIS

It is with great pleasure that today we have the architect and professor Pedro Reis as our guest. Be welcome! We wanted to start by asking you to tell us about your academic career as a student, what your architecture course was like, what teachers and outstanding exercises you had.

First of all, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to participate in a UAL project that I think is great and that helps us to develop the idea of ​​school and all the activities that go through there.

My idea to come to architecture started very early. When I was a teenager I already knew that it was a course I liked to take. I already liked the buildings, the space.

I grew up in a very large house, which was a very beautiful house, in Silves, in the Algarve. It had been designed by an architect, clearly influenced by Raul Lino, it was a very beautiful house, a special house. And from an early age I felt, also with the influence of a number of people around me, that architecture was something that really made sense and that I would like. Obviously, without knowing anything about what architecture was, but I already had, in a way, some sensitivity to spaces and a taste for buildings and construction.

I studied until the ninth year, in Silves, in the Algarve, and then, with the idea of ​​coming to study in Lisbon, for a school already focused on the arts, I came to António Arroio (Escola Secundária Artística). And it was also an opportunity to leave the house because, in fact, living in a small town was not something that interested me very much. And I came to live alone, at the age of 15, which at the time was not a normal thing, with great courage from my parents – not mine, because I was slightly unconscious – and, at the same time, trustworthy. So it had to go well. And it went well, I did it to António Arroio.

 

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From then on there was the question of having good grades to enter the University. At that time it was already difficult to enter Lisbon and Porto had, in fact, a lower grade and it was the school I wanted to go to. I didn’t understand anything about architecture. I had some basic notions and, basically, it was friends and parents of friends who always told me that Porto school was better at the time. It had a much more rigorous education, it already had a history, compared to previous decades, of being a school quite different from Lisbon and many of the future architects were going to study for Porto. And there I went.

It was a move to a new city, which I didn’t know. I also liked the idea of ​​Porto … The intense granite, the fog! That whole universe was something I found funny! And it was very simple. I had colleagues who went with me to Porto, but then I met Rogério Gonçalves, José Adrião. As the school was relatively small, we knew people from several years. There was no tendency to make friends only from the year itself. And I, perhaps because I had some autonomy, because I lived alone for a long time, I approached older people, who were already more autonomous, and also because it was more stimulating for me … And I quickly integrated myself in the city and in the youth circuit students and the school.

The first year at the school in Porto was, in fact, a very remarkable year. Not because I was fortunate enough to have a great teacher – when I arrived I had practically no teacher, because he was doing a doctorate and so he was little there, and I ended up having to go looking for other teachers to lead me on. work and support us in the project – but it was very remarkable for the Drawing chair. Because it was a chair that forced us to observe, and that for me was a huge revelation. Obviously, the Project and History chairs – which Professor Fernando Távora gave – were fantastic and made us enter the world of Architecture in a fascinating way – but the Drawing chair was the one that gave me a tool to look at to the world in a completely different way. From the moment we learn to draw, we learn to observe. And this is a fundamental design tool.

Between the 1st year and the 2nd year there was a one-year break, I went to the troop and when I came back I was already more mature and I also caught other people in the class. I met Nuno Brandão Costa, who was always one of my closest friends, Francisco Vassalo and many others. We created a new group of friends there, already different from the group I had initially, but I always had this relationship with the older students who were ahead, José Adrião, Paulo Seco, Pedro Pacheco, Francisco Vieira de Campos and Cristina Guedes. Part of this group had started to make a studio that was Atelier dos Almadas, which was a fantastic studio because we were all out of Lisbon – and how we caught the transition between the Fine Arts and the new Pavilion Carlos Ramos, the school space it was very small and therefore there were no great conditions to work – it was indeed a universe of great intensity! We almost had a parallel school. In a second phase, I joined this studio and that was our second home. We had fun, obviously, but work was the center of our lives.

In relation to Escola do Porto, what the school proposed to us was learning about work methodology, through a series of tools, for the development of the project, for the readings of the city, the territory, social relations. And that was the most important thing that the school offered us. But, at the same time, it was very strict in the way it structured the exercises, objectives and fields of exploration. From a certain point, we started to see architecture magazines and meet other architects. The school also endeavored to give lectures. There was a fantastic one, which marked my generation immensely, came Jaques Herzog, Peter Zumthor, Giorgio Grassi, David Chiperfield, who were architects who were having their first important works (except Grassi) and that came with a huge freshness for the school and, in fact, marked this generation.

 

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At the same time, I always wanted to know new things, to travel and to have contact with different realities. Not only as a tourist, but to discover new ways of functioning and how societies are organized and, therefore, in the 4th year, I wanted to go to London. And I took the opportunity to have an Erasmus (I probably got the 2nd year of Erasmus) in such a way that there were no candidates, I ended up receiving a double scholarship. I went with Francisco Vassalo, who also had a double scholarship, and we did a year in London. We went to the Southbank Polytechnic, which is now a university. It was a fantastic adventure, because we went into a completely different education system. There wasn’t exactly a work methodology, there were several workshops and several project guidelines, with very varied themes, with varied approaches, with completely different design themes, and that for me was a breath of fresh air. Suddenly I could think of a project in a completely different way, spend a year reflecting on how we relate to the world and, from that experience, move on to a project idea.

There was a very wide field of exploration, which was very refreshing and exciting at the same time. We could get to know the city, with an architecture completely different from what you can see in Porto

I had already met London as a tourist and had also been working there in the summer, in the 3rd year – I always worked in the summer, even before coming to architecture I had already worked in archaeological fields, I worked two summers doing an architectural survey of the construction on land in the Algarve, with architect José Alberto Alegria – because I knew Jorge Carvalho and Teresa Novais who were working at Chiperfield and Foster and I went there to work in the summer, for the Staton Williams studio, which was a studio with great architecture and with great quality. I did those summer jobs … paint drawings, make models and stuff.

Then I went back to Porto, and got another change that was the transfer of the Architecture of the Fine Arts of Campo Alegre to the new University of Architecture already designed by the architect Álvaro Siza. And, in this transition, the year of curricular internship passed to the 5th year and I went to do the internship for the architect Fernando Távora’s studio. And it was an absolutely fantastic internship, with a person with fantastic wisdom, intelligence and sensitivity and who gave me a first approach on what is the development of the project, the monitoring of the work. But, above all, more than what was learned in design, it was the living with architect Távora that was the most important thing.

After the internship, the 6th year was a year more dedicated to urbanism, with a large-scale intervention. At the same time, I started working, with the architect José Fernando Gonçalves, on a project for the architect Souto de Moura for the business studies center in Maia. As I had already spent a summer in the studio of the architect Souto Moura finishing (executing the paint) an execution project for the GeoCiência Pavilion of the School of Aveiro – the opportunity arose to continue in this work and I ended up going to work with the architect Souto de Moura, where I stayed another four years.

 

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After four years at the Souto de Moura studio, do I know that you still traveled to another country? Have you always had this desire to go looking for other sources?

Yes. For me, the journey with Eduardo Souto de Moura was very remarkable. I started on a project that was already in the execution project phase, almost starting the work and, in a way, I was the person with the most knowledge about the project, and I immediately had a first contact, hard, with the reality of facing a work. I just left university and immediately had to accompany a relatively large work, which was the Center for Business Studies in Maia, a work that later did not end … But it was immediately a first contact with the reality of having to produce drawings, give an answer… And that gave me, in a way, some confidence to then start developing a series of other projects in the studio and I had the opportunity, with Eduardo, to work on a series of projects, from houses to large buildings, and at all stages of the project. Until, afterwards, I ended up leaving because I wanted to do something else, not that I didn’t like working with Eduardo, I always did and that we are still friends today, but there were other personal challenges and it was important to make this change. But it was, without a doubt, the architect that most marked my training.

The next was a jump to New York! I went because I wanted to change my life. The idea was initially to come to Lisbon, but then I realized that I was not going to do anything in Lisbon. At the time, there was no architect with whom it made sense to work. After being at Souto de Moura it was still a little bit soaked in all that intensity! Because it was many hours of work, very intense, every day. We used to dedicate ourselves a lot to the studio, my life was practically working, with pleasure. But it didn’t make much sense, after being with Souto de Moura, to work with another architect in Lisbon. And then I ended up deciding to go to New York.

It was a huge leap. Not in terms of scale of work because I even went to a relatively small studio, by choice. As soon as I arrived in New York, after having been working with Eduardo, I had a passport … I didn’t have that notion, but, after a week, I didn’t know how many job offers. I had the chance to go to big studios, like SOM or other big ones, but in fact it was a scale that didn’t interest me. I had no intention of staying in New York for a long time and I wanted to enter the project universe, in the relationship that is established with all the actors in the design and construction process. And so I chose to go to a smaller studio, that of Toshiko Mori, who is a Japanese architect who had been working in New York for many years and who had made a series of houses in Florida and some more interior projects in New York , and I had the possibility to do some new projects in Florida and, that for me was decisive, because I could follow the completion of a work, in a space of two years, it was more useful than being in a large studio to make (design) houses bathroom, for example.

This work was important because I realized how the whole system of monitoring works works, the whole system of the relationship with construction companies, the question of legislation, which is something that must be understood, because it is a huge constraint for the project , it was a challenge. At the same time, the work in Florida was an opportunity to get to know America more. It was very interesting.

That New York period was a period of discovering the city, of architecture, of beginning to realize the importance of architecture on a scale as big as New York City… of getting to know the Mies and a series of buildings that mark the city… of fact, at that time, contemporary architecture was not very interesting in New York, the architecture of the 50s and 60s was more interesting …

Then Toshiko was a professor at Harvard, later she became the director of the architecture department, and I still had the opportunity to go there to criticize the work of the students, it was a great experience, but I felt that “either I stay here for the the rest of my life or I have to change ”.

And yet, when it was in this phase of change, Timor was destroyed. And I was in a transition phase in my life, planning to come to Lisbon, and in the meantime, I decided that my things were going to Lisbon, but I was going to Timor. Because, in a way, a little romantic, I thought that, after reading (Ruy) Cinatti and coming with all the training at the Porto School and having been building houses for millionaires who would only use the homes for a week, I wanted to find another focus of interest there for work and another approach, linked to solving problems that would be vital to people’s lives. And that sense of architecture was what was missing from the New York experience.

I still came to Lisbon, I was stationed here doing some contests with José Adrião and Pedro Pacheco for a month or two, but I quickly went to Timor and started to work.

Then I was invited by the United Nations to set up the country’s reconstruction operation. Because with the destruction, following the referendum, as it is known, the United Nations mission was instituted with the objective of making the transition, reconstructing the country and organizing the administration of the territory, in a transition phase, until it is possible to implement a Timorese administration. Therefore, the mandate was very clear: it was necessary to rebuild basic infrastructure, rebuild and construct buildings so that we could have a functioning administration – there were neither courts, nor hospitals, nor schools, nor prisons – and it was necessary to set up a structure to do this. operation. In an initial phase, on the part of the UN, there was a certain difficulty in understanding the scope of this mandate, because until then the United Nations was used to doing peacekeeping missions, and, in fact, doing an operation for the reconstruction of a country. and establishing a transitional administration is not just an operation that has to do with military and administrative issues. But that was quickly realized and that’s when I entered. Obviously, because I had a career as an architect, I already had some experience, I had the advantage of being Portuguese and being able to use my language and also feel free to use English as a working language and this combination made it make sense to go to there to mount it.

 

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We start from scratch, define a strategy. First we did a survey of all the buildings destroyed, we did an analysis on the possibilities of rehabilitation of the buildings – many of them, in addition to being originally poorly built, had also been badly affected by the fire, the structures were deformed, many of them, unrecoverable – but, within what was possible, we established this plan, we defined which buildings were in the city … But we are talking about a small scale! Timor had 800 thousand people at the time. We are talking about a nationwide operation, but it was a relatively small thing.

Basically, this work was not exactly a project. It was a management job, in which my training as an architect was, in a way, vital to being able to rank and build what I think is fundamental, which is to build the right equation. Understand what the problems are, how the equation is formulated and, from there, try to solve the equation. And there were two things that were very important: first, everything had to be done in a short time – very short because the mission lasted for two years and we supposedly had all the buildings up and running where people can work normally. Then there was the question of financing – there were several funds that participated in the reconstruction, some from the UN and others through the World Bank, and it was necessary to combine them. Then there were several types of projects – large scale and small scale – and, at a certain point, I realized that if all these processes were incorporated into the UN what would happen is that we were going to do some public tenders to which only big companies could compete, they were just going to be foreign companies, all this funding that would come in, would quickly come out … What I tried to do, within the UN, was to define different packages. That is, to group some buildings that clearly need more capacity to be executed quickly, and then there is no alternative but to get large companies, which can provide the answer quickly, but small-scale buildings could be made by local companies. . There was a huge workforce in the country, which was basically managed by a number of Indonesian companies at the time, and there were two or three with minimal structure. And my job, at that time, was to walk around the districts all doing information sessions and trying to mobilize people who had the minimum know-how to get together and make small companies to be able to compete for small works.

Working for the United Nations was fun because I had to put together a team and this team had engineers from Nepal, architects from all over the world… they were often sent by the system without any idea of ​​where they were going, it was very difficult assemble this team. I felt that there was a great difficulty, on the part of the UN, in finding the right people for the right place. And we couldn’t get the job done until we managed to get all those people together so that they didn’t feel completely useless. We had a double job! Eventually things got better and worked out and we managed to bring people with a more adequate profile to the team, but it was a great difficulty. And, from the outset, we tried to involve Timorese and people who had a relationship with Timor and who had some training or experience.

 

 

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In a second phase, we moved on to the school rehabilitation project, which was a plan financed by donors and administered by the World Bank. The occupation of the territory was part of Indonesia’s plan; political dominance guaranteed through the presence of the military, but above all through schools, education and the installation of a series of companies and industries and job creation. There were schools and houses for the military in all the settlements in Timor…. There was a lot of construction, from the 70s until the end of the last century, but most of those schools no longer made much sense. And, therefore, there was a great school mapping project to define which ones were closed, which ones could be improved and which ones did not make sense to exist. And what we did was, basically, a plan to define different project scales and here, for the first time, the question of architecture was raised. So far, what we have been doing is defining a series of minimum construction standards, technical and finishing infrastructures, but in schools we were creating from scratch.

There had already been a previous team, with whom it had not gone well, because they arrived there with a completely imposed model. And what did I do? I assembled a team of Timorese, with more architects and engineers that I took from Portugal and Australia, and we were, in a way, dismantling the school model. We went to understand which models were known in the territory, we went to see the Indonesians, other models already used by the World Bank in other identical situations, previous models, until Portuguese time, and we tried to analyze what were the advantages and disadvantages of each one and how could we create a model that was adaptable to the various topographies in the country and that, in a way, arose from this discussion and this project. That it was something that was accepted by everyone as the project of a school for Timor, which, in the end, was what we were doing. I laid the foundations for this project, but then I came back. But that work has been done and is done.

Then, with the United Nations, we further improved the process because everything had to be, constructively, very simple. And at the same time that we were building the schools, the idea was to do learning, that is, the idea was to train the construction teams, improve the quality of the construction. Because, in reality, it was what was missing. It was very difficult to raise the bar in development if we did not attack all the elements and all the actions that interfere in a work. Then the team I put together was autonomous and with Independence, I decided to come to Lisbon.

 

  

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And when you came back, was it when you decided to set up your own studio? How was that process?

Timor’s weather was very intense. We worked from seven in the morning until midnight, every day, for two and a half years. It was very intense because there was a very strong energy in the city.

I never forget that, when we got there, the city still smelled of smoke, of burning; tropical rains prolonged the scents of burnt wood, and for months and months, the city smelled of burning. Until, after a year, the first birds began to appear. It is a fantastic thing! Suddenly, you start to hear birds in the city and after two years the city, in fact, had been reborn. And we didn’t even realize it! It was a very special mission, because it brought very young people, willing to do it, and it brought out the best that the United Nations had at the time. And that was felt because the desire for that mission to go well was enormous and we were very committed. And, in fact, it gives us great pleasure to feel that our work has an immediate impact on people’s lives. Contrary to what happens with our architectural projects, which take a long time to achieve, we knew that there we had a mission to develop in a short period of time and the results are not only immediate but also rewarding, because we know that the people’s lives have indeed changed for the better.

Then I came to Lisbon! I had to restart my life, I hadn’t been to Lisbon in a long time and I decided to start my studio. I had a small project for a friend’s apartment… then, in the months ahead, I did a competition for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Elvas, with a multidisciplinary team with the equipment designer Filipe Alarcão and the designer Henrique Cayatte and the Architect João Regal and we were lucky! We managed to win the contest and it was the start-up project.

I had not had much experience of personal project, I had always worked in workshops and, therefore, this was my first. And it was a great project to start! After that, it was normal development, doing some houses and competitions, and being lucky enough to win more competitions…

 

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And that experience of coordinating very large teams (in other studios) makes you want to increase the studio or, on the other hand, a smaller studio, as you were looking for in New York, is your studio model?

There is an issue that is decisive and fundamental. It is one thing for us to run a company, or structure, or organization, for which we have no responsibility to think about financial management and costs – as when working at the UN or another organization, profit is not the goal and there is always someone who it deals with that part and we focus only on solving our work – when we talk about organizing a large studio structure and we have to understand how to finance all of this, it is completely different. But, in fact, if it were my goal to have a studio that had to grow a lot, that would have been the path that I would have tried to develop, but no, it was not. I always bet on having a relatively small studio, where I can be involved in all phases of the project, from conception to the monitoring of the work, and, above all, in the relationship with the client, which is one of the things that gives me the most pleasure and which I give a lot of importance. Not that there is anything against the big studios, I think it must be fantastic to develop huge projects with an immense impact, but, in fact, small scale is the way I structured myself.

 

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You told us about your experience as a student, on the one hand at Escola do Porto with a very clear methodology, and then, as an Erasmus student, in England, with a very different freedom. It has been a constant in the last interviewees, the idea of ​​giving students what they did not have as students, trying to be the teacher they never had … How do you pass those experiences on to your experience as a teacher?

There is no concern of mine to try to give students what I did not have. I think I was lucky to have a school that allowed me to have a very solid background, which was the Escola do Porto. That left a mark on me, I still feel immense advantages in the way I develop the project, in relation to the methodology; but I also feel that she is, in a way, castrating other possible approaches. Because, in fact, it was very striking and that conditions my way of working, there are a number of options that I do not take, simply because I know that that meaning is not the way my reasoning is structured.

The relationship between the way I look at my career as a student – and how I can translate it into my learning as a teacher and the relationship with my students – is very straightforward! I think it is very important that students feel, in the teacher, someone who is directing a research and who is guiding their development, but the teacher must define and open the field of approach. And the methodology often goes through this.

For example, I started teaching classes in the 1st year, before Autónoma, still at Universidade Moderna, when professor Ricardo Carvalho invited me (at the time he was a professor there, professor José Adrião was also there), and I immediately started to realize that there was a huge research field and we could do it in the first year.

The 1st year, for me, is a very special year for a student because, if it goes well, if the teacher is good, and if the student is minimally interested, it is a year in which we were able to instill in students a fascination with architecture! It is the year in which we managed to leave a seed there that the student will later develop, with the culture he acquires with the course at school.

Later, I was invited by (Manuel) Graça Dias to come to the Autonomous University, and I was his assistant, with very interesting exercises, and I was also developing others, and we were trying to diversify a range of exercises that allow students to realize the transforming capacity of architecture. How it can, in fact, transform people’s lives, and as a space with different configurations, it can have a completely different effect on the way we live it … Basically, getting a series of tools that allow them to understand the world at their disposal. back, and how you can transform it. This understanding is essential! Then, obviously, it is necessary to introduce culture! Architectural culture. It is necessary that they look at the world around them, not with the look of a teenager but with the look of a young adult who is discovering and building up their training for a possible profession.

 

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In the last few years, did you start teaching in the 4th year too?

Yes! The 1st year is very intense! And when we reach a point where we know that we are no longer at 100%, when there is wear and tear before it manifests, it is necessary to change. And I thought it was important to make a transition to another phase in the learning path where there is already more architectural knowledge, there is more culture, there is more desire for research (which is something that, in the 1st year, does not yet exist), and I have been with professor Nuno Mateus after the 4th year, at UAL.

We have developed an approach that can be very stimulating for students, which is the idea that we will be able to develop a working methodology on various European cities and potentially anywhere in the world. How the territory is known and understood, how the city’s transformation systems are approached, the morphological systems, the topographies, how we are able to understand the city, in a first analysis, and then, in an operational way, to achieve an approach very close to what it is the approach of the work that is developed in the studio – obviously, not trying to be mimetic but approaching some concerns that we have in the professional universe – allowing students to acquire a series of tools that allow them, not only to have a work methodology, how to gain the confidence to realize that they can reach any part of the world and have tools to decode anywhere and, from there, develop a project. This, for me, seems to me an increasingly useful learning because, with globalization, with the ability we have today to go to work in different places and with the need that we have to do it. And I think the school has that obligation. To prepare students to at least make them see that the field of work of the architect can be anywhere in the world. That seems to me to be fundamental.

 

Obviously, there have always been architects traveling, but since the 90s, mobility is very different. At the same time, what was classic work in an atelier is also very different today. What advice did you give to a finalist student today? In other words, if you finished the course today, what would your course be? What is it that a student of today has that he didn’t have, what tools does it matter to have for each one to choose his route?

I think the tools are fundamental. I think we can all have the illusion that, with little knowledge, we can go to the whole world to do fantastic things and that is not true. It is not true, because we must have minimally solid knowledge and we must have the confidence to get to a place and know what can be done, and try to see how we can do what we want to do. Because there are things to do in the world everywhere! Now, what matters is to understand what, in fact, can transform people’s lives and have an impact on our own lives, in terms of the return we can get from there.

The advice I give is to invest in solid training. They have to have a real project experience, in a studio they like and do a consistent and quality job. Because this is the basis for looking after and going to any part of the world and being able to feel safe and start exploring other adventures and other systems. And I think this is fundamental because, nowadays, there is this idea that we can go anywhere, do super interesting things and that are super mediatized and that fill the pages of the internet, but that later have very little impact on people’s lives. I think there is a certain disproportion, I think that architecture today is too mediatized, it is an excess. I think the way in which architectural photography revolutionized the way in which architecture is communicated is fantastic, without a doubt, but I think it is an excess because, as it happens, it is a parallel path. There is a reality, which is architecture, the reality of buildings, which has an impact on people’s lives. Another thing is the whole universe that happens in parallel. And, so often, we are talking about things that are completely different and that is not architecture. Architecture is not a bubble!