RICARDO BAK GORDON

Later, I was one of the first to participate in the Erasmus Exchange program (it began in 1988, it has just celebrated its 30th anniversary). One day, I was at the Escola de Belas Artes, in São Francisco Convent, where we had our classes, and somebody said: “They are going to conduct interviews for a cultural exchange program, students will be able to work in other universities”. Somewhat blindly (which is typical in my life), I walked to the line for the interviews and was selected. I arrived home and told my mother that I had been selected to study for a year at Politechnico di Milano.

Finally, I was in the centre of Europe. Two hours away from five to seven countries. I travelled extensively. What I took from this is that I am not trained by one school or place, and that is massive. I did not value one school, figure, moment, or place over others. This has given me some self-teaching skills, as if I were a hunter-collector who walks around and collects the best he finds in the different places he passes through.

In regard to Porto, there are several people who did something similar to what I did at that time. They started studying architecture in Porto and then moved to Lisbon. They are quite well-known architects today and have their offices in Lisbon. It became a process – you go to Porto and then come back to Lisbon. Would you like to expand on this?

At that time, to access grade in Porto was lower than in Lisbon. That was the reason why I and others went to Porto. I admit that other students, more educated on the pros of the Porto school – students whose parents were architects, who knew who Álvaro Siza and Fernando Távora were, already knew the Porto school and chose the architecture school at Porto, because their families helped them choose the school, that path. And Porto was the place to study at, that was what made sense at the time.

I really enjoyed the year I spent there and what I learned there. My learning goes beyond architecture, way beyond the limits of learning, teaching, architecture practice and architecture pedagogy. I learned about the human relation between the school communities and I never again lived it so intensely and so intimately. That is something invaluable in my academic life. Another invaluable element was drawing as communication: I still draw every day. I perfectly remember the day that I sat down and was told: “Learning to draw is like learning to speak Mandarin. There is no such thing as having a knack for drawing! You have to learn to draw and, once you have mastered the language, you will find out that it is the fastest research language in architecture”.

Drawing is the second fastest language, the fastest being dream and thought.

My drawing professor was José Grado. He was a mythical teacher, you either loved or hated him. He was very strong, sometimes even violent, in the way he connected with students. For me, that was an incredible discovery – that work methodology (using drawing) is one I cannot see myself not use. Though we know that architecture is researched using several different methods, drawing is not the only way to conduct research (Jaque Herzog says with pride that he does not draw), for me, that is a very important element that I learned in Porto… But I learned many others.

And how do you do that in your classes?

Maybe we should ask my students. How do I believe I do it? Firstly, by making people dream and wish for what they are going to be involved with. To start from zero, i.e., give our all to what we can produce, what does not exist yet, a positive contribution to people’s lives, to those around us and to the places we are going to change. This enthusiasm and this poetic vision are what I aim to convey to students.

There are also other rules that I consider guidelines for all my projects and participations in teaching; those rules are to structure the project in three very clear stages. The first stage is based on the principle that you cannot design a project without a strategic vision. For this stage, we can use words such as “concept”, “strategy”, “idea” – the words change with time, they are replaced because they are no longer in fashion. This is the opposite of those memories of early days at school, when we would sit, tracing paper in hand, and thoughtlessly draw lines and try to understand if something came up (I am completely against this principle). I want students to have inkling of what they are going to so before they start their design.

This inkling will allow them to start their research and change that idea into an architecture project. That takes long, the first images are blurry (just like a foetus in the mother’s womb, who is first only a set of cells, but which has in it everything to become a person, it is only not visible yet). After this is the stage of research, you let ideas ripen and develop until they become a project.

Finally, the stage of communication. Projects are made to communicate, they communicate on their own, we will not be there to defend them, to talk about them, they will have their own life. They will have their own life because they will enter a competition, they are accepted at City Hall, they will get permits and meet their clients (maybe you will have the opportunity to be next to them and defend them); and afterwards they will have other lives, as different as becoming a piece of art (and you will not be there) and be studied in 50 years’ time (if all goes well, and again, you may not be there). Language and communication are an important topic. This is why I ask my students to talk and talk and talk. To talk to me and to the mirror… And that only after they have talked to the mirror three times can they devise the idea, and the idea becomes denser. They then must filter and filter and build the sentence several times until it is accurate.

It is as if they were teaching their own project. Because you always learn through teaching.

Exactly.

Could you tell us about what you are planning for your workshop at Da/UAL [October 2019]?

This workshop has rather unique features. Its name is Estúdio Vertical (Vertical Studio). This is the first time that a workshop involves all students working as a group, in teams that include students attending different years. This is new and, in itself, an extraordinary experience. First year students will be with fifth year students, all cooperating and participating with their ideas, discovering their differences and their similarities and their common concerns with the project regardless of the year they are attending.

Our proposal was to focus on the concerns with the city of Lisbon and on major topics linked to cities. We have gone through an important crisis in Portugal and, at that time, some actions and reactions took place, such as the explosion of tourism in Lisbon. For some time, city authorities tried to support tourism in several ways, as well as grab the opportunity to take hold of the city’s public space, which was rather neglected by the municipality. We all know about the program “Uma praça em cada bairro” (a square in each neighbourhood), which resulted in several areas of the city being refurbished. We also witnessed another phenomenon, which can be viewed as positive from two perspectives – several areas of the city which are historical architecture heritage, and which were run down were refurbished, either by its users or by investment funds. They were partly responsible for what we call gentrification. We must weigh the pros and cons of this topic, though.