TELMO CRUZ

It is with great pleasure that we have as our guest the architect and professor Telmo Cruz. Be welcome. We wanted to start by asking you to tell us about your academic career, to tell us about the teachers and what exercises marked you.

First of all, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to be here. As I am very reserved, I have a lot of reservations about these public exhibitions, but it was an opportunity to hear all my colleagues’ interviews. And I was very impressed! What put the most pressure on me, because they are all exceptional!

Since I can remember, I always wanted to be an architect. I come from a small land, Seia, and the first memory I have is of being in my room – we had a small television and I was going to see Channel 2 there – and I remember watching a program where the church appeared. from Ronchamp, from Le Corbusier, and thinking “This is what I want!”. And from then on, I never hesitated. Which is strange … at 12 or 13 years old I knew what I wanted! But it happened. As soon as I got the chance, I left Seia. I went from Liceu de Seia, which was a small school, to Liceu José Falcão, in Coimbra, and I was not prepared for that! I went to live alone – I was 16 – for a pension, right above Praça da República, where all the students crossed paths. Living in the pension there were football players from Académica de Coimbra, who were studying engineering, and that ended up becoming another family, of which I was the smallest of them all. There I went to high school, and then I applied for architecture courses in Lisbon. I was fortunate to have good grades, I didn’t have much stress to enter college.

When we entered college, I came with that high school regime, with tasks, tests; I always had good grades and was a very good student, fulfilled everything, but in college it was a bit different. Only the contact with the Belas-Artes floor, with that greater informality, everything was very different … This was in Chiado, and I, who was already happy when I had gone to Coimbra, had now come to Lisbon!

 

Didn’t it occur to you to go to Porto?

Not then. I had a family in Lisbon. And it didn’t occur to me. I had no idea what an architecture school was, how much more if there were differences between Lisbon and Porto! That now seems very evident to us, but at the time, I had no idea. I came to Lisbon, my brother also came, and we stayed in a rented room, as the students all did.

 

Regarding the course, what expectations did you have?

I was a kid. I had those illusions that we were going to save the world and make houses for everyone! But although the school is not very exciting, it is nothing extraordinary, I was lucky. As I heard all the other interviews, I was left with that polarized view that everyone loved the school in Porto and everyone hated the school in Lisbon, but I picked up some teachers who were very passionate about architecture, very young teachers. In the 5th grade, the choice by João Luís Carrilho da Graça’s class was already a very conscious choice, I knew it was what I wanted to follow. In the 4th year, I went to see the exams (of the 5th year) of the classes of Carrilho and (Manuel) Graça Dias – which were the two classes that excited the school – with Maximina, who is now my wife. We had chosen Carrilho, we were excited about that very hard, very direct way of coming up with solutions that were very tied to the conditions of the territory. And the exercises were always fantastic, it was all extremely seductive, the white models, it was all very exciting. We chose it, and Carrilho didn’t disappoint us at all!

I still worked, after the course, in 1991, a year with João Luís Carrilho da Graça, in a theoretical project, VALIS. And everything that at school was already very intense about Lisbon, that he felt was a method that was growing – he was still building all this – then it had a professional repercussion, absolutely identical, and it was very exciting. João Luís’s studio, at the time, already had a lot of work, they were doing the execution project for Pousada do Crato, but I was in a room in the background, with a Lebanese woman and Pedro Gadanho, who was doing the academic internship . We were in that condition, somewhat isolated, to continue, in the professional environment, a project that was coming directly from a school exercise on Lisbon. And it was extraordinary! As it was extraordinary, not long ago, to enter the exhibition at the Garage of the CCB and see a model of VALIS, which I had not seen in over 20 years! We hear João Luís’ lectures nowadays and he has greatly sophisticated his speech! Now, the speech in Manhattan begins … But we realized that this process started at that time, at that moment! And it is always a pleasure to recognize that!

 

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During the course, did you have the experience of collaborating with studios as a student?

Yes, I started in the 2nd year. The learning of the profession, was done in workshops, this practice was absolutely current. I worked with my 1st year teacher, and then with my 2nd year teacher, and we only stopped working in the 5th year, when we decided that we really had to focus intensively on the course and practice of João Luís’s atelier (classes), that was really demanding, very intense. Classes started at 8:30 am and we didn’t leave before 1:00 pm, with daily reviews of all projects, with internal debate in the class of all works. This not only mobilized the class as a whole, but each one had to develop their critical skills. These classes were always very exciting, João Luís was always present to make his criticism, more incisive, more accurate, more certain, about all exercises. We had a formula to follow, white models, drawings with only lines. There was a certain standardization of the speech support base, but then, the speeches were all different. I found that year to be very intense and exciting.

Of course, there were other teachers at the school … I remember Michel Toussaint’s classes! I, who came from the ends of Serra da Estrela, had never heard of countless things that Michel Toussaint was discovering and revealing to us, in those vaulted rooms, with a projection in the background, where he passed examples of everything! I always liked almost everything! It was never easy for me to say that I only like one thing and that was very interesting! Also João Belo Rodeia, who was, at the time, hyper-focused on Le Corbusier, probably had recently finished a thesis, he was exciting! Seeing a person who, over many years, looked at a topic, made it “explode” and let it go to the students was very interesting!

With all the defects and lack of enthusiasm that the school had, and had many, the course went well. I can’t complain much, even though I didn’t give us all the tools to evolve from there. We had to do that in workshops.

 

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After the course, you spent a year in the studio of Carrilho da Graça and then you went to the studio of Gonçalo Byrne…

I went to Byrne on August 3, 1992. The date is easy to memorize, because I assume that I joined because it was a vacation! At the time, Manuel Aires Mateus was the key figure in the management of all projects, a kind of great coordinator, which freed Gonçalo to a condition of reflection and criticism, even today he very much likes to function like that. And Manuel would have called Carrilho to ask if I was worth it and João Luís would have confirmed it (I imagine so …).

From then on, I started to understand what it means to be an architect, in this more global and disciplinary context, where Gonçalo is an exemplary figure. He is one of the most generous and intelligent people I know. Putting these two conditions together, we have an architect who is really committed to making cities and making life supports – he uses the expression “life containers” which is not my favorite. And doing this in an absurdly intense and cultural way! It is not common in any other office, at least with this generosity.

This intrinsic generosity also exists in the project. We were very excited about Siza’s projects, and it is true that they are extraordinary, he is a kind of last Leonardo Da Vinci! Gonçalo’s projects do not have that seduction of a kind of artistic consistency that flows from project to project, but they have an enormous consistency in the understanding of the city in full, and this condition is only achieved when it is possible to dialogue and integrate paradoxes in a solution. And, in the atelier, we had these two conditions: one, more Siza, and the other, more generous from the urban and the city; that coexisted, and well. Since Manuel (Aires Mateus) represented the most compositional focus of the discipline of architecture and Gonçalo integrated everything into a solution, because he has this enormous ability.

I remember that, when I started, the University of Aveiro’s Rector’s competition was being held, which was being developed by Paulo David – there are many people who did a very important apprenticeship there – closely followed by Manuel ( Aires Mateus), with a very abstract and beautiful solution. And there is a moment when Gonçalo intervenes, and turns the entire Campus around that building, puts it in a hinge position, and inside it opens a small town, where all the functions that needed to be distributed are distributed, with hierarchy, with squares, with streets … everything inside that small building! At that time, I was making models there, and I didn’t even understand any of it very well. But there is a day, after delivery, when Gonçalo gives a conference and describes the project, and then I realized everything! And this was impressive! And these things still seem to me more exciting in architecture – and I will probably be wrong – than the very intense focuses on the most compositional and photographic conditions of architecture.

Unlike João Luís, Gonçalo Byrne never demanded a kind of exclusivity. He understood the studio as a kind of school, where people come and go (and I don’t know why I haven’t left yet …). This was enhanced by the possibility of continuing to work outside the home. And I started, with Maximina, to work with Paulo David. We went out each one of his jobs, I went out with Paulo and we went to his house. We had a small studio there, we left at five in the afternoon, and stayed there until two in the morning. Working, doing what we had to do. And the next day, we were at 10 am in Gonçalo’s atelier. And the possibility of having this double life – which we liked at the time, because of the enthusiasm of architecture, but which, a little more mature, I still maintain today, because I stayed at Gonçalo for a while – gives us the possibility to work and reflect at two speeds, and at two distances, and gave me more ability to analyze what we were producing. Even starting to have a triple life, when they invited me to teach at Autónoma!

All of this results in a kind of triple personality, which focuses on the same object and I think it is more exciting than just having a record. They are different records, looking at the same, and each adds to the other. Nowadays, if I was asked if I wanted to go to work with Siza, I would say no! I couldn’t take it – and it’s a personal problem, it’s not a problem for Siza – to live only on a single record. Only this commuting between lives fills me. And I try to make them relatively watertight. For ethical reasons. I try never to be in a position to be able to benefit the other. This is an issue that worries me enough to have autonomous things.

 

© Pedro Frade – Todos os direitos reservados

 

And is that your survival strategy in the face of what architecture is becoming?

I had never connected these two things very well, but yes. Also a little because of this possibility of triple analysis and because, as I mentioned, I like architecture a lot and it costs me to say that I like this one more than that one – I put Niemeyer and Stirling in the same bag – they are different, but each one has very interesting things to tell us. At this moment, I sense a kind of hedonistic condition of Portuguese architecture, which is focusing on a kind of regional consistency – which states that Portuguese architecture is “this”. And this “it” lives in a society that has little to invest in architecture, and it seems to me that, sooner or later, the global investment in architecture will end. The counterpoint will be Switzerland, which, in this condition of a certain regional consistency, has a society that invests in architecture, and it is extraordinary when that happens. And it does not seem to me that this is happening with Portuguese architecture, in this society, which is much less structured and demanding, where themes that are not hierarchical can easily be ranked. Sometimes, I am surprised by phrases, in conferences, that confirm this tendency of a certain aristocratic condition of the architect, which ends up in a way of doing, of writing, of acting. This seems to me a path that is increasingly limiting what Portuguese architecture is, instead of clearly exploring the possibility that is embedded in that architecture that comes from ground architecture: that of optimizing all resources, optimizing all opportunities , to take as far as possible, with very little material, solutions. That afterwards last and resist, because, quite simply, they have not lost any opportunity!

I really enjoy looking at vernacular architectures from around the world. In all of them, these decision-making threads are recognized, which, from generation to generation, optimize solutions. Of course, they are optimizing for a narrow view of the territory, for that little bit of the territory. But if we can learn the strategy and mirror it to the world, I think it’s more exciting. For this reason, this kind of mono-image condition of Portuguese architecture costs me a little bit. I would prefer it to be much more plural than I think is happening.

 

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Because an image is being built, which is, in some way, more unique and more internationally recognizable, but not by the Portuguese, and is something elitist? Or because we have no architectural culture, as a society and, therefore, do not recognize the intrinsic quality of things?

It is clear that Portuguese society does not have the capacity to recognize the values ​​with which Portuguese architecture can contribute to society – it is not part of the priorities of any government, as long as I can remember.

But what I was saying is a little bit different. Indeed, this restriction of Portuguese architecture expressions, possibly more in the media than in reality (but I also do not presume to know much more reality than that which comes in the media) seems to be building a kind of Portuguese architecture brand, which is not rich enough to resist what is the real complexity of the world. And when it comes to placing orders with Portuguese architects through this branding condition, they are in a very fragile position. Because they are expected to produce a certain thing. But the conditions are always absurdly different, in each project, depending on the territories.

This weekend, there was a Portuguese-Spanish meeting. In this event, Spanish architecture was almost always referred to as a more real architecture – that is (Rafael) Moneo’s words – in the face of a more abstract Portuguese architecture. And I think this is a reduction! It does not correspond to reality. And we are all very excited about this more abstract condition, but this one seems to me a dead end.

 

Somehow, the architects who are part of this more recognized range, even more at the international level than at the national level, were inspired by Portuguese popular architecture and other international masters. Today, do you think that the fact that our students (from Autónoma) come from all over the world, and do not necessarily know Portuguese popular architecture, will change anything? There is a break here, isn’t there?

It is this break in the link that has contributed to this kind of restriction of those who may be the themes of architecture. There are themes that have become not a theme. There are taboo themes! If someone wants to have a disciplinary conversation about comfort, they will have numerous problems. It’s not a theme!

As in Autónoma they invited me to teach Construction classes, that’s my theme! I live a lot in utilitas and firmitas, and it seems that Portuguese architecture lives only in venustas. And that doesn’t make any sense! Of course, there is still a kind of healthy tension between the most instrumental, craft chairs, such as Constructions, intended for the production of a built architectural object, and the freest chairs. However, I admit that construction is a means, I can admit this condition, and that architecture, which needs this discipline, can live with countless constructions, the same meaning can have different bodies. If there is one thing I try to do in Autónoma it is not to do what I hated at school. And then, yes, I hated the Construction chairs, which positioned themselves autonomously from the design chair, even aristocratically autonomous. As if there were a perfect body of knowledge, autonomous from Project. That was a paradox that made no sense, and when I started thinking about how I was going to deal with this – because I had never taught, I am one of the most recent teachers at Autónoma, I have been teaching for seven years and the school started fifteen years ago, every my colleagues have a much longer academic path – the first thing I thought about was to see if I could make the connection with the Project discipline. Over the years, I have always been looking for the best articulation of these disciplines.

In the 4th year, the experience is almost always the most balanced, it is the one that allows the discipline of Constructions (at UAL it is called Technologies) to follow Project decisions more closely and make these decisions become sufficiently broad and complex to integrate everything at the time of the decision. It always went very well. In the 3rd year, it was more difficult, and in the 1st year … it’s a challenge! It is a challenge because they are new students, who come from high school with another type of preparation, more distant from what would be necessary instruments for architecture. Therefore, we have to find a way to close this gap, and we must be very direct in this acquisition of instruments; that’s why the 1st year students are doing surveys and drawing, because they lack this possibility to communicate ideas rigorously, but with the phrases of architecture, with the drawings of architecture.

In the 2nd year, which is still a recent experience, I have been making the first recognition of the qualities of some materials. That will be the ubiquitous concrete, which is one of the most used materials in current architecture. Then the brick, as a counterpoint, a material that is made in another way, that comes to pieces, for which it is necessary to imagine the expressive possibilities that the brick has versus the expressive possibilities of concrete. And it has been going well, it has been able to articulate with Project.

And the 5th year … it’s a very sophisticated year! Both Inês Lobo’s and Francisco Aires Mateus’s ateliers are workshops that, in order to greatly increase the intensity of the students’ work, require focusing very precisely, in the case of Inês, in an almost always urban territory, in the case of Francisco in a territory normally less consolidated. This requires a certain tightness in the way of teaching. And this tightness is in the sense of not being able to destabilize, not to blur, and, even so, to make decisions appear that are mobilized by external things, in this case, construction materials, opportunities. The 5th year is very much based on Matter, on Energy (it is the big hats that fly over the themes) and the challenge has been, without disturbing and without blurring, to introduce these themes, which are global themes.

 

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Since your area is different from Project, how do you see the relationship between Research, Professional Practice and Teaching?

It is a very difficult topic. On the one hand, there are some factors that influence this relationship. One is the way research investment is made in Portugal, because research does not live without funding, without resources. And everything works very well when the profession and research are confused, when we have research in a chemistry lab, for example. As soon as the profession, the day-to-day life of the researcher, is divided into the profession-research, this form enters into crisis and, in practice, even for regulatory reasons, requires that one be chosen. If you want to have a profession, it is a profession, if you want to have research, you have research. This is a problem in the creative professions, and I think in the humanistic ones too, and it will not be a problem in pure mathematics, in chemistry, professions in which the laboratory is confused with the profession. What this has a perverse consequence is to have reduced it to a consensus that says that investigating is “this”. And any architectural project, done under intense conditions of a high-level architect, requires such an intense commitment and focus on the object of study… the number of hours of work of a small building project team does not need to be a very large one, far exceeds the number of hours needed to do a PhD! And this effort, this real effort, to investigate architecture, with the architecture material, fits in no “drawer” of what is considered research in architecture. But then we see formal, academic research, more stabilized, using all that effort as an object of study! It is a paradox!

I do not presume, in my projects, to be generating such intense material, but there are many cases in Portuguese architecture where this is so! Any project carried out by Gonçalo (Byrne), (Álvaro) Siza, or by (Manuel) Tainha, is, in itself, an intense investigation thesis. He has no doctorate or master’s degree, but he has this condition. It would not be bad to imagine how to change this. It does not make sense to say to a person “-Choose between this or that”, because in practice you are doing both…

Now something occurred to me that Gonçalo Byrne said at a conference: «I prefer the word“ E ”to the word“ OU ”! I prefer to include it than having to choose, because it is much more exciting! ». This sums up the point where we started talking, about the generosity with which he acts. Because we miss this “E” a lot! The structure of the city is very much based on the “OU” and little on the “E”. But all of us, individually, can practice the “E”! It costs nothing and is very economical!

 

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You reminded me of a small conference by Frédéric Druot, who worked with Lacaton and Vassal, which started with the phrase “To give is more!”. And he spoke a lot about the idea of ​​the architect’s effort, as the person in society who has the possibility to give as a mission. Give more than people would expect at the beginning…

That would be the reason why all young people would want to be architects. When there is an opportunity to make this conscious, and not lose that will, I think it’s incredible! The risk is quite what is happening with these “social” (or poor) architectures, when they make statements like “I don’t care about this aristocratic world of architecture, I care about the poor world of architecture” (the Lacaton and Vassal are even more balanced because the results are really exciting). And it doesn’t exist! There is no such polarization. When it’s good, it’s architecture! It is not because you are poor or rich. It is saying “When there is architecture, it is here”. When it is to solve problems, it is, when it is to be it is to be! There are a lot of things that are, just are.

We look at the Ajuda Palace, which will now take that finish, and, essentially, it is! It is a representation of power and it is still architecture because of that. There is always this risk of selecting only a portion of the problem. And I think, it is something done with five pennies or five million euros, as long as there is intensity in the way we look at the subject and in the way that what we are proposing can interfere in the future of the territory, whether extensive or not , it’s amazing! What profession can you say is contributing, physically, physically, to the future? Any architectural work that is done, marks the future. Directly. There are not many professions that have this condition.

 

And how do you see the future of the profession?

Obviously, we are all concerned about the lack of resources. We will all have to continue to adapt. It is very different for a young man who now leaves university, compared to the ease with which I left school, I went to João Luís, after knocking on several doors, 3 or 4 (there were not hundreds), and then I went for Gonçalo.

We were the ones who built this condition… when resources start to be counted, there is a greater demand. I have had a kind of obsession with the quality of the decision. Qualifying a decision is everyone’s obligation. What mechanisms can we find to improve the quality of decisions? Whatever they are. Be the ones we take every day, be the ones that governments take every day.

Much of the effort has been made through resources. When the word resource appears, it begins to become embedded in the processes, to make itself felt as qualifying material. And I think it’s fine, but I think that conditions have to be found so that this can permeate all processes. And it is not evident that the decision-making bodies that we have in Portuguese society do so, at least from a technical point of view. The State has lost technical qualifications in favor of legal entities at a galloping pace. When we see a decision, a Law, I immediately ask myself “Where is the stratum that qualified all this? Why was this decision made? Why is this decision better than any other? ”

And, if we understand this condition of letting the resource, as a concept, permeate all processes, I would say that I don’t see the future of architecture very bad because we are qualified to deal with it.

 

Regardless of the scarcity…

Yes, regardless of scarcity. I am concerned that the scarcity is not about the object of the study, but about who studies! It makes me very impressed that, in many cases, the scarcity of project study resources leads to a higher cost commitment on the job. This doesn’t make a lot of sense! And then architects have to move to prove it shouldn’t be.

 

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Since we are in an election period for the Order of Architects, do you think these issues should be the subject of debate?

The Order exists as a regulator of a professional activity, it is a delegation of the State in a handful of people, who have to regulate Ethics and Deontology. But this is not seductive, it does not win elections, and, therefore, it is a speech that is always half hidden, half forgotten. And, in the Order of Architects, it is very clear that cultural issues, such as conferences and exhibitions, receive far more favors and commitment from members than these. This has weakened the Orders.

And I think the Code of Ethics of the Order of Architects is outdated, it was outdated by the time it was made. It is a difficulty of the Orders. All architects have the same rights and duties. And this, which is of great evidence, is no longer evident if I say that not all architects are the same. Without removing anything from the first sentence, the second must also exist. And this is a very difficult issue within the Orders. To say that not everyone is the same but that everyone has the same rights and duties…

 

This week I took a trip to several studios across the country and there was a student who asked me a question that I now ask you, in order to be able to talk a little about your studio, the MXT Studio: It was easier to pass the university to go to work in an architecture studio or leave an architecture studio to make your own studio?

I never left! But a lot for the reasons that I explained, because until today I have never stopped being enthusiastic about the possibilities that Gonçalo has put us on the table. So, I don’t know if I have a very precise answer to give. What I can say is that working for a studio is being in a protected environment. It is not the same as having your own studio. Working in that comfortable world, in which we have only the discipline’s marrow, without having the “dirty” of the profession, is very good, it is exceptional. Having a studio requires dealing with the “dirty” of the profession, but, when well balanced, this condition that the profession has to generate self-sufficiency is still incredible!

We recently made two bridges, one over the 2nd Circular, and one over the Northern Line. There are two processes that, from the start, are absolutely different. One was an international contest, with a lot of competitors and a very good guest panel. Then, we had a bowl to “gnaw the bone” until the end. This was the 2nd Circular. The other was one of those processes more focused on fees and methodology, with the awareness that the resource time will have a limit, which made us say, from the first moment, that we had to find a solution that, from the point of view of execution, falls within a certain time, which is very restricted in what it requires, and extraordinarily inventive in overcoming conditions that were in the competition rules. In practice, they asked for two bridges and we made one. Making a bridge is always cheaper than making two, and we did the same crossing. And we won, and it is built, and it is true that, in the end, one has a very precise geometric restriction, which was to be able to be drawn in a very effective way, the other was much more exuberant because it had to pass this sieve of the international contest . Right there at the start there was an awareness of these two conditions.

The bridge of the 2ªCircular won by luck! That contest had a reboot and that’s why we were able to run, because the proposals we had on the table were not going well. With that reboot, we got another glow. The X appeared on the road and, with that X, we started to sew other paths, which were already there – we understood that this bridge could be a kind of prototype of a network that went over it all. And that was where it went and, of course, we were very happy!

We won this contest two days after winning the one at the Centro Náutico de Abrantes. It was an extraordinary week!

And the truth is that this was done in a small studio. Nowadays, any student who leaves university probably has more resources than those I have. With these computer and renders (3D) resources, which I don’t have personally, any group of three or four students can give incredible answers in these processes. And, unfortunately for us who have more demanding structures, the light structures, which can be set up to respond to architectural contests, can start incredible things. Many of the studios we know, published, those Spaniards Barozzi and Veiga, are an example. They are very light workshops at the beginning, which then win contests, and go around until they are who they are now. So any student at Autónoma can get there!