RICARDO CARVALHO

It is with great pleasure that today we have as our guest the architect and professor Ricardo Carvalho. Be welcome! We wanted to start by asking you to tell us a little about your academic career as a student, what were the teachers or outstanding exercises?

Good afternoon. Thanks for the invitation. It is an honor to be here, in this succession of guests who, at heart, are the fruit of Da / UAL.

Talking about an academic path, in the case of an architect, is always a good way to explain your own work. In my case, we have to go back to the 90s. I went to the Faculty of Architecture of the Technical University of Lisbon, between 1990 and 1995. And part of my journey is explained in the face of perplexity. I entered a school completely adrift where there was an absolute lack of debate about architecture (or any other). This meant that my colleagues and I had to look outside the school for what it meant to learn to think and do architecture. In that sense my interest in the trip began. The trip was a way of living with works of architecture that could give me what I didn’t find at the university. I tried to make the trip a practice that belonged to the school and I did it with some friends. At the time it was more common to travel by train, we used Interrail to go looking for jobs that we found interesting. We also tried to bring to architecture things we liked, music, art, literature, all in the courtyard and in the cistern at the Convento de S. Francisco. All of this produced a way of being at the university that went beyond what was going on in classes.

Of course, there are always outstanding teachers. In my journey I would say that Carlos Lameiro and Jorge Spencer, in the second year, were absolutely outstanding. It was very difficult to do the 2nd year because it was a year of diving into conceptual issues and a very particular poetry that was proposed to us, and that meant that we had to work hard. It was very good and interesting. Then, the drift continued until he found Manuel Aires Mateus. Its radicality and ability to deconstruct what were teaching stereotypes fascinated any student of Architecture.

Despite the drift of which he spoke, there were excellent teachers of Theory and History of Architecture. And that motivated a taste that stayed with me. I had great teachers, João Belo Rodeia and Michel Toussaint who were outstanding and also some teachers of History of Antiquity. Therefore, my course was based on this puzzle: few figures, but very radical figures (each in their own way, with great intensity in the way they approached their chairs), the trip and what I call Parallel Worlds that inform Architecture.

I must say that my journey through the Faculty of Architecture was also a challenge, in the sense that it was really necessary to be sure that we wanted to be architects in order to move forward.

 

Was the choice for Architecture a lot of thought or was it in another way?

My parents say that I drew compulsively, with all the supports I had at hand. Every day. Every day I offered a drawing to my parents. And these drawings oscillated between two things: portraits of invented people and architecture, castles at sea, palaces that he would eventually have seen on television, and also, Russian Orthodox cathedrals, for the theme of the domes, for their very exotic shape.

The choice for Architecture was always present, but not due to family pressure. I have no architects in the family. My parents found this decision so exotic and at the same time so true, that they were largely responsible. They supported me a lot, they bought books on architecture, they tried to stimulate the conversation around architecture – although they didn’t dominate the discipline – and in that sense I had an easier way. My path was open and that’s where I went.

 

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And at that time there was not as much information available as there is today about architecture and architects. Did you have any architects that fascinated you before going to college?

My relationship with contemporary architecture is a very late one. It is a relationship that has always been established with the architecture of the past, a connection to the so-called Classical Architecture. The great buildings in the western world were the buildings that I was able to discover with my family and approach and talk to. Interestingly, at the university, architecture was not discussed at all, all the great protagonists of the international debate did not pass through school and therefore my relationship continued to be with the architecture of the past. And when I was traveling, aged 18/19, the architecture I was going to see – because I didn’t know the rest – remained that of Miguel Ângelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Bramante, Giulio Romano. I can say that the architect I became was an architect deeply influenced by the past, not because of a conceptual program or a constructed position, but because it was what I knew. Contemporary architecture came much later.

There was an architect who changed the way I see architecture forever. About halfway through the course, I read Aldo Rossi’s “Architecture of the City”, and there began a relationship of absolute intensity. I read everything Aldo Rossi wrote, I went to see his works and, at the same time, I started to see the works of Álvaro Siza – it is important to say that Siza was not discussed at the Faculty of Architecture in Lisbon, we had to discover it for ourselves and that’s what we did. I went to see the pools and the Tea House (by Leça da Palmeira) and many other works. Suddenly, these two figures became guardians for me. They still are, and it is interesting because they are also the tutelary figures of the people who took the course in the 80s and, eventually, of the people who took the course in the 70s – it seems that nothing has changed …

This is to tell you that the positions about the city and the contemporary world of architects such as Rem Koolhaas, for example, were not addressed in college. They were very interesting and have contaminated the whole debate since the 90s, but the school did not have the capacity to call to itself the unrest that was happening in Europe, led by the Dutch panorama.

 

Later, when you were teaching at the Architecture Department of the Modern University, you even organized trips on architecture. Tell us how it went.

Yes. It started with a group of friends with whom I already had a friendship relationship prior to the university itself and we incorporated people we know at FAUL, with whom I became friends. They were trips that had architecture as their motive but, as we know, architecture is in life. Architecture is there but there are many things happening at the same time. It started, as I said a little while ago, with a fascination with Renaissance Architecture, we went to see all those works that we think are foundational.

Then it continued on trips with students, but especially on trips with the group that was in the Order of Architects in the early 2000s, which asked me to expand the group. And that’s how we went to different places in the world to see specific works of architecture. I’m talking about Berlin, Chicago, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Zurich or São Paulo. Travel has become a way of being in the discipline.

 

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And when did you become a teacher?

It was a very short time after finishing the course. I finished in 1995 and when a course ends, a void opens up. In my case it was never a void made of indecision. It was a void made up of completely different interests. I wanted to work in architecture but I also thought I could try being a university professor, as I thought the world of publications and magazines was absolutely attractive. Things ended up all happening at the same time, like many things that happen to us in life, do not come in chapters! They come in a kind of perfect storm.

At about the same time, Joana Vilhena and I ended up having orders for architecture work that gravitated to family contacts and we managed to set up a tiny studio. At the same time, Michel Toussaint calls me to say that the editor of JA-Jornal dos Arquitetos, for personal reasons, had decided to leave and that one person was needed to take the magazine forward and the challenge was to occupy that place. The answer was obviously affirmative and I joined Michel. Simultaneously, with a difference of a few months, there is an Architecture course at the Modern University, which in the meantime ended, which was going through a crisis in the Project’s pedagogical program, there was a need to renew the teaching staff and a series of people entered new to give several chairs, Project included. And these new people touch the panorama of contemporary Portuguese architecture up close and touch Da / UAL up close. Besides me were José Adrião, Ricardo Bak Gordon, Fernando Martins, Pedro Reis, João Santa-Rita, Diogo Burnay, Victor Mestre (I hope I’m not forgetting anyone). And suddenly, I found myself involved in a pedagogical project that I knew nothing about but surrounded by incredible people and it was an interesting moment.

Another interesting moment was when we all left and that was when Nuno Mateus, who was the director of Da / UAL, noticed this movement and called me to ask if I didn’t want to join the group. And I immediately said yes!

 

Do you mean that the first studio work was already an autonomous studio? Didn’t you go through an internship in other architecture studios? What workshops have you been to?

I finished the course in 1995 and immediately afterwards I thought about doing a master’s degree in London and applied. But, at the same time that this happened, we did a contest. Joana Vilhena, Gonçalo Castro, Rute Figueiredo and me. This international competition was the Thyssen Prize, it was a very important competition, for the new Coach Museum and for the Portuguese Equestrian School (exactly where the Coach Museum is today). There was a strong jury, Álvaro Siza was one of the members, Santiago Calatrava too. We did the contest at that moment of hesitation that I was talking about a little while ago, in managing the void. We rented a small apartment in Graça, to make a studio and the first job was that contest. We did it with total dedication, there was also another small project going on but that was “O” project, and after doing it we thought we had to go on with our lives because this is not possible (we had left college for weeks) . And suddenly, I was in the studio at night, the phone rings and they tell me: “It belongs to the organization of the contest and you won one of the first three prizes.” I was silent thinking that they were playing. The contest had 250 proposals and we thought it was an unthinkable thing to be able to get anywhere!

This award had three positive points: first, it had a huge media exposure; second, he had a nice monetary prize; and thirdly, it made us believe that it was possible to continue to do something from there. So my work as an architect has always been a job of sharing between my personal project, as an architect with his own studio, and working with other people. This happened with Fernando Salvador and Margarida Grácio Nunes who asked me to work – it was very easy because their studio was on the street below and it took five minutes between them and that was why I was able to get together – and it was a great work experience. I think those two architects have an ability to generate happiness in the studio, which I know is not a very common thing. And so it was a job that I remember with immense happiness. The work I did, which lasted about a year, was the plan for Bica do Sapato – which included two projects, Lux and the restaurant Bica do Sapato.

After that, with classes, with JA-Jornal dos Arquitetos, with the few works that Joana and I had in the studio, it was impossible to commit to another structure. Fernando and Margarida tried several times to get me back but it was not possible. I think my life project was the combination of these three things and that is what I believed, until today. I still believe in all three. And therefore, I was always a divided architect.

 

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At some point, you were already teaching at UAL and there is the opportunity (or the logical sequence) to occupy the direction of the course… 

It was a sequence of many years! Between entering as a teacher and that happened almost ten years passed. When I joined, the course director was Nuno Mateus, who was also the teacher with whom I taught. Therefore, the 2nd year team was composed by Nuno Mateus, Fernando Salvador and me. The experience was very interesting because I was progressing in the direction in which I had the experience of several years. First I was in 2nd grade, then in 3rd grade, with Nuno Mateus, and then with José Adrião. I ended up having a very varied experience in terms of partnerships, within Da / UAL.

The progression towards the direction took place in a different way. Nuno leaves and the school decides that the architect João Luís Carrilho da Graça (JLCG) would be the next Director. The condition that the JLCG imposes is that Flávio Barbini and I could support the board. Flávio ends up being named Deputy Director and I remain as Academic Secretary. JLCG, after a short time, maybe a year and a half, takes on other commitments and has to leave and the school has to decide what will happen again and Flávio Barbini is appointed as Director. I was the person best placed to take on the position of Deputy Director and so we continued for some time. And so it was until Flávio Barbini also decided to leave and at that moment there is a new situation that is created but this time there is something new: it is necessary that the new direction be taken on with people with an academic profile that previously would not have been necessary and therefore I was the person who, on the one hand, had the experience of the management for some years and, on the other hand, met these other conditions that have to do with being a doctor and being able to correspond to what are the goals that the tutelage imposes. It was the person who was naturally positioned to assume that role. And here I am.

 

In your teaching experience, you have always taught Project and also some theoretical subjects. Is your big goal to provide your students with what you didn’t have?

I had never thought about it! In fact, I never had what goes on at Da / UAL. I never had, as a student, the feeling of being part of an institution that had a pedagogical project. I think this is what Da / Ual tries to guarantee. Yes it is! This idea, which is so important to me both in the design studio and in the theoretical chairs, may be a response to a void I felt. No doubt. I would even say that I try to have the school establish an umbilical cord with these students, who, as we know, are quite young, and contemporary culture, precisely because I felt that this did not happen when I studied architecture. I think this is fundamental! It is obvious that the history of architecture always serves as an architectural culture, but to make it eclipse what is happening today, in a kind of isolation from the world, is to go into loss. And what I try to do, as an architect and as a teacher, is to combine the wealth that comes from the past with the enormous wealth that is the present.

 

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What is the relationship of your professional practice and what do you do in your classes? This is because you teach the 3rd year, which is the end of the 1st cycle and is a very remarkable moment for students. Do you want to tell us a little about your experience?

I never taught alone and therefore the construction of the argument was always done in partnership. In the case of the 3rd year, this construction was deeply shared with José Adrião and Rui Mendes because we built what we wanted to happen there and which is very simple to explain. What we want to happen within the design studio is to experiment with a method.

First we start with the celebration of architecture. Each student chooses a project from a set of 20/30 works and has to tell us that work as if it were his own. This architectural work generates a starting point and a celebration of quality. Heterogeneous quality, we are going to look for things in Paraguay, they could be things by Solano Benitez, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Álvaro Siza, Peter Zumthor, in short. Purposely, the range of choices is very heterogeneous so that different positions conflict, ways of seeing, ways of building, the perception of the place, work on the program, research on materiality. Then there is an exercise that is divided into three points: place, program, material. And so it ends. And what do we want?

We want our students to individually defend a position on a place, a point of view that is personal and that is an architectural contribution to the debate; with the program we want an investigation that varies from year to year but we never end up having the same program in the class, because we want each student to incorporate, in what we launch as a theme, another personal space. For example, this semester we are building a seed shelter, in an old military settlement in Arrábida, and the idea is that this shelter will protect a set of species for the future. There are already some examples built in the world and we ask that each student, in parallel to the seed shelter, propose a programmatic component that they think makes sense for that place. And, lastly, the research on the material that has to make the conceptual synthesis of everything that was developed earlier. In other words, construction is obviously the consequence of a journey.

This method requires something that some students have a hard time fulfilling, which is why we speak of the requirement and of being a remarkable year, it demands an absolute surrender. Because, at each step, we need to contribute something that no one else has, which is our view of the world and our position in the face of a problem. This, for some, is cause for absolute fascination, for others it is cause for some anguish.

The relationship between the studio, which I have with Joana Vilhena, and the school studio is umbilical. I don’t do anything, in one place or another, that I don’t believe in. I don’t ask a student or collaborator for anything I don’t believe in. Delivery and demand are exactly the same, that is, they have to be total. There is no possibility to separate architecture from life.

 

You said earlier that there was no debate, neither about contemporary architecture, nor about thinking about architecture. At the moment, are there many ideas about architecture, new authors, new references? Or do students continue to revisit what already existed in the 90s and 2000s?

I would say that there is no debate. What existed in the 70s, has not been repeated. But, curiously, today that urgency is evident. And I would risk saying that I will come back. Because the 70s produced a way of being in the world, absolutely clear. Either he was in a position of resistance, against something, or if he was in a relationship of empathy and cynicism with the so-called world of the global market. And one position, or another, produced thoughts on architecture that I consider equally valid and fascinating. This idea of ​​bipolarity between positions, richness of debate and consequence in a work that was constructed did not happen again.

I think that today it can happen again because it is no longer possible not to feel that pressure. Everyone, regardless of profession, knows that we are being pushed to a limit space. For some people it is a precipice, for others it is a wall against a wall. One thing is certain: it is not a space with an idyllic panoramic view. And this compression, this crushing, will obviously produce new positions. Resistance, empathy, irony, irritation. That’s exactly what happened in the 70’s. But I wanted to tell you that all this only makes sense if you don’t lose a poetic ability to relate to ideas and positions.

I remember that I read Aldo Rossi’s “Architecture of the City”, which is a very tough, absolutely disciplinary book, and right after that I read “Scientific Autobiography” (by the same author). Between the publication of one and another a little less than 20 years passed and a lot happened. But I remember perfectly that when I first read Scientific Autobiography, I thought, “But this is much more interesting! Because it is much more personal. ” It was Aldo Rossi sharing his contradictions with us, even saying that the dreamlike and intuitive side of architecture counts as much as the so-called permanences or the primary elements that he had described in the “Architecture of the City”. And he wrote a very beautiful thing about the fog entering a church, designed by Alberti, in Mantua, Sant’Andrea, and that image stayed with me. And there was a day when I was with two friends in Italy and I said: “Let’s see the fog coming in from Sant’Andrea.” And there we went. I couldn’t see it at first, it was winter. I couldn’t see it on Monday. I couldn’t see, actually, the times I was there. But what is really important? Perhaps the fog never entered the church. What is really important is that that architect launched a hypothesis about a building so poetic and so rich, from the point of view of perception, that we wonder how many architects he influenced from the descriptions he makes in the “Scientific Autobiography”? From an absolute subjectivity in the way it relates to architecture. And that is equally important to me.

From the moment we barricade ourselves only on ideological issues, or on issues of morphology, or typology, or whatever, I confess that it is the beginning of a loss of interest for me, for me there must always be a poetic connection to themes. Because this is what makes architecture stay and people recognize it as a collective memory.

 

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What about the investigation? What is your opinion about the investigation that is being carried out these days?

For me they are two different things. Theory is a consequent expression, with a practice and, in that sense, the theory of Architecture, if it exists, will always have to refer to doing. Research is different, because it always unfolds in two things: what is done in workshops is research and what is done in academies is also research. So we have to clarify what research is being talked about.

Any architect of doing, that architect who uses the binomial thought-construction, knows that putting together a discourse, fixing a concept, developing an idea until reaching a material consequence is a process of investigation. There is no escape! We (architects) are not used to calling it research. We did not know how to take advantage of this vein of what is an existential reason for Architecture itself.

Another thing is what happens inside the academy, which is equally respectable and fascinating, in some cases, which is the decision on a subject or theme that needs to be dissected. But that gives up doing. In that sense, I feel more distant. I have a huge interest in him as a reader and as a professor of architecture, but I don’t feel the umbilical cord that I was talking about earlier. For me, research involves thinking and building.

José Adrião and I, as we taught together and as we had an editorial project in co-authorship, we were often approached to define what Architecture is. But what is architecture? It is very difficult to define. We arrived at a hypothesis, which we still use today: Architecture can be thought and construction. And the investigation incorporates this.

A person being dedicated, several months of his life to design a house is a profound process of investigation on ancient notions of celebration of several things: celebrating the movement inside the spaces, their relationship with the water in the bath, celebrating a light that enters while having breakfast, celebrating family life, solitude in a space that only serves to work. These are deeply serious things, where only an architectural research project can produce something capable of generating meaning. Then there is the construction. There is so much going on in construction that doesn’t happen like architecture.

 

You are removing the notion of poetics from research, but it can also have it…

I did not want! But it may seem that way. It was giving it a scientific character. I think that the scientific approach risks losing the poetics. By the loss of subjectivity and fear. Subjectivity, in the academic domain, is seen as a weak point, when, in Architecture, it is an existential reason for the formulation of a thought.

 

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In the current scenario, which authors of theory, practice or research, would you like to underline as determinants, or essential, and which should be followed up at this moment?

We live in a completely dispersed landscape. It is a sign of the times in which we live but it makes it very difficult to do what you ask, which is to establish a narrative. I believe that it is no longer possible. There are equally interesting people defending antagonistic positions.

From the world inherited from the so-called philosophy of perception, or from phenomenology, there is an architect who has written extensively on these issues, which is Juhani Pallasmaa, who clearly stands on an idea of ​​a relationship with the built world, or with the world of artefacts, which has to do with what Pallasmaa calls haptic perception. In other words, all the senses integrate our relationship with architecture, touch, smell, vision and so on. This is a position obviously inherited from phenomenology and which feeds the path of architects such as Peter Zumthor, or Aires Mateus, in short, the entire Mediterranean vein fits this position very well.

Another position, completely different, is the position that defends theories of philosophical pragmatism. A completely different relationship in terms of the origin of thought. I am talking about Richard Rorty, who is a philosopher who has addressed this topic, and who feeds an incredible panorama of positions, for example, Iñaki Abalos and Juan Herreros talk a lot about this action as pragmatism.

Then you have another lode, even though it is the position defended by Rem Koolhaas, which is a kind of denial of a philosophical derivation and a defense of an analytical relationship with the world’s seismographs: the global market, the exchanges, the migrations, the role of infrastructure, and so on. In other words, it is another position, which analyzes the contemporary world, uses its tools and, apparently, combines architecture with these forces, but then removes a critical position from them.

We could go on. Today it is so difficult to say, “I establish my way here.” It is as if the Labyrinth had several Minotaurs inside but also several threads and therefore the route has to be made, as Ignasi Solà-Morales said – in a book that I really like, Topographies of Contemporary Architecture – “Today it is necessary to propose each step, the foundation and the proposal. ” That is, today we are no longer able to do this in a long perspective. It has to be step-by-step. And architectural theory and thinking in general are at this point. Let’s say that there are ideas that propose only one step and not a walk. That’s what I feel.

 

And for the students, do you think this will result in the Schools disappearing? To belong to a certain school? Or on the contrary?

I think it is the other way around. In fact, this is already happening. I think that today it is already possible to affirm it. Not a few years ago, but today. What will happen, with general mobility, another incredible point in our world, is that people will be able to choose the niche positions with which they identify. And more, they can do part of their journey in one niche and another in another. And, clearly, this is Da / Ual’s position. Admittedly, it is a School that defends a way of doing. And this is not about style, nor about aesthetic form. It has to do with a method that is common, in many points, over the 5 years. And that obviously produces architecture with great points of contact with each other.

 

You are being very optimistic about the future of young architects by saying that they can choose the path they want. Which, somehow, is not quite the position that some recognized architects have taken publicly. They have said that architecture is in great crisis and that it is not worth being an architect. What do you say to our students and future architects?

In relation to great architects, I propose a kind of generational conflict. Because listening to these positions does not make me happy, and we are talking about people that I deeply admire. I think that these positions underestimate the possibility of creating architecture from new conditions.

Some of the architecture that happens today, all over the world, the one that has even been more recognized in the media, is clearly an architecture of work with constraints. From developing countries like Brazil and India, from where incredible responses have come, to the eye of the hurricane of civilized Europe, where small practices, small workshops, completely reinvent the way of acting. So architecture will always exist, always! We must accept that each moment implies a different reflection.

What can I say to those who are now studying architecture? They have to understand very well the territory where they move because it will always be possible to do architecture.

I would also like to raise a question here: The teaching of architecture and the path of the masters who influenced our work, was based on the idea that architecture is forever. That architecture is the discipline of compression, which lives on an idea of ​​physical and intellectual permanence.

What is happening today is that many people are managing to generate meaning, through their work, denying permanence, compression (when I speak of compression I speak of the idea of ​​gravity and architecture from the idea of ​​weight). And therefore, the denial of this is also possible and there are already incredible works, in Portugal and outside Portugal, that were able to look at the constraints that are the starting point and to completely reinvent this heritage. I believe that in the future it will be no different. It is impossible for architecture to disappear.

Now a point that I’m not so optimistic about is the number. When there are so many architects at work, and probably so many good architects at work, I would say that it is practically impossible for them to focus geographically here. What I think is that Portuguese architects will have to assume that the practice of architecture will have to transcend this territory and will have to be the world. As it happens for decades, in Italy, in France, in England. I agree with some things that have been said in the media, that geography is not going to be just this.

 

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In recent years there have been a number of young architects making a type of architecture that has already had a lot of labels like social architecture or architecture of catastrophe contexts. Some of these projects have even had more media coverage than some other projects by more recognized architects. How do you see these types of interventions?

I see it with interest when I see architecture. I see it with less interest when the celebration of an architectural possibility is absent. I run the risk of being misunderstood, but this world, which has had enormous visibility in recent years, often completely abdicates any position on architecture. It is something else. It is a necessary, respectable work, but, as in everything, it takes a lot of work, a lot of intuitive capacity to generate architecture based on the constraints I was talking about. We have a little bit of everything.

We have situations of so-called emergency architecture, in a situation of catastrophe or social support, in which the fundamentals are there and therefore it is possible to generate meaning from what is being built. Then we have other situations in which I would summarize these works the construction. They are construction. I don’t have a vision that everything is fantastic. I think it’s like everything else. There are houses made by architects that are loaded with meaning and others that are not. And this world is exactly the same.

 

But, traditionally, they were areas where there were no architects. They were areas where there was self-construction, one or another intervention by the State, but without much intervention by architects. Can it make a difference that we have architects in these contexts?

It will always make a difference to have architects. Architects are absolutely prepared for synthesis and overlap. These are two things that very few disciplines can give people. Architects are trained, from the first to the last day, to look at a problem and synthesize it and to be able to superimpose several contributions on a single entity. And this concerns infrastructures but it also concerns contributions from the social sciences or any other. In this sense, the presence of an architect in any process is always welcome. Because the architect’s contribution can always be, and now I am going to quote Álvaro Siza, “Making evident what was not evident to others”. I believe that we are training people who will contribute in unexpected ways to difficult problems.

 

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You are an editor, curator and have been in the direction of JA- Jornal dos Arquitetos. How do you see the panorama of publications, their importance in the media coverage of certain themes and which themes are urgent?

It is a great question, because if, on the one hand, the so-called Portuguese Architecture, gained a breath – and in this sense I am not a pessimist, there are so many great architects from so many different generations – on the other hand, what I see is that the world of publications, which was always something that I considered to be at the center of my concerns, is that it is at a loss. I see that it is a world that has not kept up with this level of demand and intensity that the practice has achieved. The world of publications has always been a way of extending architecture. Because works that were considered exemplary were traditionally published. Examples on several fronts, in solving a specific problem, in a typological or conceptual radicality, exemplary in a budget scarcity issue. The effect of the event-architecture, the effect of the absolute aestheticization of the architecture phenomenon was lethal – and I am speaking in the international context, of what is commonly called the star-system. It was deadly.

Suddenly, all publications believed that, going after the effect of event architecture, they could somehow succeed. And, of course, that was not possible, because we cannot have all publications doing the same. When I was a student magazines were in conflict with each other. Domus wanted one thing, Casabella another and then El Croquis appeared with a monographic number about architects who were very little known. I was in college when the first El Croquis dedicated to the atelier Herzog & de Meuron came out, which we knew from having published one or the other project in Casabella, but suddenly a monographic number appears about a pair with a work that, at least for me , did change everything.

Today, all these magazines that I mentioned are in crisis and, on top of that, all the others were looking for or looking for a very similar model and, in that sense, entered a field of absolute homogeneity, and eclipsed. Today we return to what we have already discussed here, which is urgent to have the notion that to publish is to express a position. It is to say, “I believe this.” This return has not yet been fully completed after the disaster. And this is not something strictly Portuguese, in Europe there are very few architecture magazines that are worth buying. Unfortunately. And I say this with some sadness.

 

And does it make sense for a future publication to be a national project? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to be global? Because, in the end, these more classic publications had a very definite origin and can this turn be given by a similar model?

It’s another great question and anyone who can answer that will have some success! But yes, I think that something is inevitable today, being international. I think we are facing an inevitability of being from here and being from everywhere and simultaneously.

When José Adrião and I did JA, it was easy because we knew each other very well, and it was clear what we wanted to bring: Latin America, the European context – in its heterogeneity – and, occasionally, architectures from other places. This type of architecture was very difficult to find, but in relation to Latin America and Europe, I think we were able to publish authors, either in relation to their work or their thinking, which did not have a tendency, that is, we sought very different positions. We would have to listen to other places, other positions. And in the interviews this was also clear. Listening to Paulo Mendes da Rocha has nothing to do with listening to Lacaton & Vassal, for example. And I must say that for us, as people and as architects, it was probably a kind of second school, it was a personal academy.

 

A characteristic that has been accentuated in the course of the UAL is the internationalization, both of the teachers, and of the students that more and more, have the most diverse origins. How can we maintain a course identity with such a diverse origin? And what do you gain, or lose, with this diversity?

A few days ago I was interviewed for an exhibition that architect Nuno Grande is organizing in Paris, and suddenly I was asked a question about globalization. There is a text by a philosopher called Homi Bhabha on globalization, with a very beautiful idea and it says “Today we live a global metaphor”, and the global metaphor has a very simple idea that is to be open to dialogue. Being open to dialogue means that people with completely different backgrounds, can dialogue without losing the enigma of the places where each one comes from. What is fascinating about these students who come to school – and they don’t have that many origins either – is that this provenance will not be lost, that is, we will succeed, with that teaching method that each of them can always print, to you’re doing, a little bit of that enigma you called identity. This is true of the Italians who go to Da / UAL to do their masters. It is very clear how they print this matrix in their work.

I believe in this idea of ​​interlocution, I believe in a global metaphor that preserves the enigmas of each one, and I think that this is a job that is not only of the school, it is an individual job. Each of us must also want to preserve its enigma. We have to want to be unrepeatable!