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Architecture Caribbean: What is it about architecture that excites you?
Vasco Correia and Patricia Sousa: The opportunity of adding meaning, awareness, comfort and efficiency to life. The opportunity of translating contemporary culture to the built milieu, and feeding back life with this translation. Basically, what excites us about architecture is the same thing that excites us about life, as the former’s object is the latter’s.

AC: What is your design philosophy?
VS & PS: To approach every project with a fresh mind, as a collective-thinking process in a laboratory; to analyze with accuracy and detail the clients requirements, the context; to define clear energetic and construction goals and with all this, to produce holistic solutions to complex challenges.

AC: How would you define successful design?
VS & PS: Design is successful when it is an answer or an ensemble of answers; this means that design should start with asking the right questions, with “designing” the questions if you wish. Looking back, it seems to us that the most successful buildings are the ones that not only become part of culture but are also capable of renewing their meaning throughout history, the evolution of culture and mentality. We believe that these buildings are so successful because they translate the “zeitgeist” of a given moment in a way that is unusually broad and clear; in a simplistic way, one could call them “perfect”.

 

AC: How do you approach your projects? How do you begin?
VS & PS: We go to the site and we spend hours there; we try to be as descriptive and analytical as possible: we note measures, sightlines, materials, position and size of trees or urban elements, we photograph panoramas and details.
On a subsequent visit, we try to behave as if we have lived there forever: we go to the nearby cafe (when in a city), the nearby hill or tree (when in nature), we talk to local people, we listen to sounds and search for aromas.
We come back to the office, we pin all this information in the wall, and we forget it for a while, in order to produce abstract functional/spatial structures. The design process begins with possible bridges between these two poles.

AC: What feeds your creativity during the design process; (sketching, building physical models, computer programs); what is your main technique for exploring your designs?
VS & PS: We can’t say which is the main technique for thinking design; the problem with all design tools is that they can never reproduce reality in its complexity, its tangibility and unpredictability, and so every tool is important in the sense that it complements the others’ weaknesses. In this sense, we try to use every tool – sketching, physical modeling, 3D modeling and 2D drawing – as extensively as possible. We test different, sometimes disparate solutions in a process of trial and error.

AC: What do you read and/ or do for inspiration?
VS & PS: We try to follow art and music as much as possible, and we travel. Travelling is an essential part of the architect’s formation, as it forces us to question ourselves and others.

AC: How do you two influence and feed off each other when it comes to design?
VS & PS: We work in a logic of team creativeness; we believe that this is essential if we want to produce an architectural speech that is culturally meaningful and not the mere expression of one’s personal taste.
When we look at the 20th century classics, their authors were able to think beyond what was generally accepted as “good taste”, they could see the transformations in culture and technology, and understand its implications for architecture and the built environment.

AC: Who are your favorite Architects/ Designers (Portuguese and International), and what do you admire about their work?
VS & PS: It’s hard to name favourite architects; some of the most admired architects of the 20th century are responsible for as many masterpieces as tragedies. In this sense, it is easier to name architectural works that have changed the course of architecture, works that you can refer to as turning-points, after which everything changed. Ville Savoye of Le Corbusier, for instance, is such a work; it proved that the architecture of its time was actually outdated, and that reinforced concrete would allow for a whole new way of thinking space and construction. It also brought in the idea of time; architectural would no longer be static, it would become dynamic, which meant that perception replaced decoration / the symbolic world as a tool for conveying meaning – the implications of this shift are endless and still as relevant today. The Kunsthal Rotterdam by Rem Koolhaas / OMA may be seen as an update of these concepts, as well as a sharp codification of contemporary culture and our volatile tectonics.
We are inspired by many other works, and not all done by architects; anonymous, popular architecture that we spot in Lisbon, in Rio de Janeiro, in London…is just as fertile.

AC: Vasco, what was your experience working with Norman Foster like?
VS & PS: Working with Norman Foster had a great influence on how I view architecture; there was a feeling of great optimism in the office at the time, but also of responsibility – every step in the design process must be supported by a clear rationale. Since we were all working towards clear goals, the team-dynamics was very productive – we would discuss design decisions, test them, and assess results. Also, energy and sustainability played a key-role in the design process.
That culture stood with me ever since and it became a key aspect of every design produced by Camarim.

AC: What would you say sets your architecture apart from others?
VS & PS: Recent events such as global warming and the economic downturn give us a different perception of the world. Euphoria, which defined the first years of the 21st century, is being replaced with awareness. We believe that we are part of a post-bubble generation that accepts with the instability of today’s world; we are more interested in wise, responsive building strategies than in statements.

AC: What advice would you give to students entering, and currently studying architecture?
VS & PS: Try to understand what is happening in the world when thinking architecture. Energy is the new challenge and it will affect architecture and technology enormously – academic speculation on this issue is crucial.

AC: What would you say is the most valuable contribution you have made or would like to make to the profession, and Portugal?
VS & PS: There’s much more that we would like to do than what we have already done. We would like to research on more energy-efficient architecture, and would like to participate in changing current energy and building codes to adapt to a new paradigm: for instance, if codes are tailored for using air-conditioning, you’ll need air-conditioning. We need codes to be more flexible and more intelligent. We would like to improve the production of energy in a way that everyone is constantly producing energy to feed back into the network (with your roof, your car, the heat generated by your office computers). We would like to help speeding-up the regeneration of downtown Lisbon; obsolete property laws strangle renewal efforts and the creative economy. Personally, we would like all our buildings to be loved by their users.

AC: What would you say is the current state of architecture in Portugal?
VS & PS: Architecture in Portugal is undergoing a rapid change, from a very homogeneous cultural generated around a group of “masters”, of whom Siza is the most noticeable, to a very heterogeneous scene of young people with international experience who are exploring different ways forward.

AC: What concerns do you have (if any) with regard to the profession?
VS & PS: In the past years we have witnessed a kind of Barouque-euphoria: a belief that the Guggenheim-effect could replicate infinitely around the world, which led to a naïve notion of public investment. Deyan Sudjic, the director of the Design Museum – London has a wonderful text about this. Apart matters of personal taste, the danger here is that we miss the real issues of our time, like energy / global warming / water scarceness: buildings and construction are responsible for 1/3 of energy consumptions worldwide, and unless we speed-up the research on these issues resources will become so scarce to a growing population that the current geo-political map may undergo turbulent transformations.

AC: Do you have a dream project, what is it?
VS & PS: Casa Tropical, which we built in Northeast Brazil, gave us a huge experience on passive-cooling strategies and on how to achieve the comfort of an urban loft in wild nature, under extreme conditions (we had, for instance, to design a system for harvesting, filtering and storing rainwater). A dream project would be to be able to design a new house or a complex of houses in the tropics where these issues are taken to a next level of experience of real nature and self-sufficiency.

AC: What do you think about Architecture Caribbean and its goal to highlight Architecture, Visual Arts, and Design?
VS & PS: Architecture Caribbean plays a very important role in promoting quality architecture in the region; this is essential to pursue a high-level of architecture, which requires both architects and clients to stay informed and up-to-date.

AC: Thanks for the interview, any final thoughts?
VS & PS: To summarize, every project is a challenge on its own, and has its own “biography”, in the sense that is it done for a specific client and a specific context, and both are always unique; that’s what’s so exciting about architecture, that’s what stimulates us. Thank you for your interest.

Architecture Caribbean again thanks Vasco and Patricia. We hope you’ve enjoyed it! If you have any comments, or additional questions for them, don’t hesitate to drop a comment using the form below.
See Architecture Caribbean's feature of Camarim's Casa Tropical here >>> 

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