Atelier TAG “seeks to reinterpret the civic function of architecture through the careful study of sociocultural context…in order to create evocative spaces where society as a collective can express itself.” Building primarily in the public realm, the firm has completed projects, including the Bibliothéque Raymond-Levésque in 2011, as well as the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne, and the Bibliothéque Municipale de Chateauguay. Based in Montreal, Atelier TAG is led by Manon Asselin and Katsuhiro Yamazaki.

Gabriel Silberblatt: As an emerging firm, what do you see as the advantages and challenges to practice in today’s economic, professional, and intellectual climate?

Katsuhiro Yamazaki: The biggest challenge, obviously, is finding the opportunity to execute any significant public work. Up until recently, in Canada, particularly in Quebec, there had been competitions that were open to anybody registered at the Order of Architects. That’s actually what gave us our first public commission, an anonymous competition that came about right about when we started as a firm. However, that system is closing up due to a culture that is trying to gain more control over how money is spent. The idea is that because the Ministry of Culture foots half of the cost of the projects, the competition ought to be open; however, recently they’ve been more selective about who can enter. So I think that is the biggest challenge.

Also, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have practiced in New York, who actually deal with the contractor side of the profession, and they talk about how interesting it is that in North America, contracts are drafted assuming things will go wrong. As opposed to in Europe where it’s a little more optimistic. So it’s a very litigious profession, which poses obvious challenges for a young office. As a means of redress, the approach we took early on was to team up with a more senior office—since we knew we didn’t have enough experience to deal with all the complexities of actually completing a public project. We have a really good relationship with one in particualr: we come in to ask the designers for input, but never hand over the project completely. But it’s not a clear separation between execution-architect and design-architect, which is more common in in the United States. So we established a nice relationship and they like working with us because their firm has become so big that now they have to take on a lot of not-so-interesting projects—bathroom renovations, or brick restorations, or dealing with the red tape associated with these huge government buildings—it’s construction, but it’s not really architecture. So it is good that they have people like us that allow them to get their staff motivated and kind of keep on getting invested in the profession and eventually carry on the practice itself.

GS: Can you tell me more about the interview project you undertook, talking to emerging architects of the Global North? How did you choose where you were going and who to sit down with? What did you learn from the experience?

KY: It was a lecture by Michael Rock of 2×4 that we saw that really spurred the project. He talked about this diagram where he said, “As opportunity to execute important work increases, there seems to be decline in intelligence and exuberance,” and he talked about this critical intersection-point at the mid-point of the architect’s career: either you become a more profit-oriented practice, which you see a lot or you try to maintain a certain critical level of thinking. I think you could almost say that the separation of OMA and AMO is natural in recognizing these two aspects of the profession, and that you cannot ignore either of them. At the same time we were seeing that a lot of the young offices were doing the most interesting work out there. We wanted to know why that is, why in a profession where experience should be paramount, the success of the work doesn’t seem to translate directly from the experience of the firm…

As opportunity to execute important work increases, there seems to be decline in intelligence and exuberance

But going back to the initial question: we didn’t want to interview everybody who was well-known, even though we did a few of them, but we thought a lot of these interesting practices happen in under-the-radar networks. I started in New York, and and through a few people that had contacts here I met a lot of people that were teaching at Columbia. Eventhough these young people all maintain their independent practice, if ever there’s a project they’ll be interested in participating, they merge and collaborate together. That is something that I’ve always been interested in: how to maintain a practice that doesn’t require a lot of staff, and that is still able to be selective, without aiming to be big that you have to do everything. It’s a big challenge because a lot of clients, especially governments, don’t want to deal with multiple heads. They want one company and they want one person that will be liable for the whole process—as I said before, it’s a very litigious profession. And it was quite interesting, when you go Europe, you see people collaborating.

So as I was saying, that’s how the interview project kind of developed. The most interesting part was to go from Spain, which has seen a complete decline in the profession in terms of opportunity to work, to places like China where it was booming, you could come out of school and suddenly have an office of 30 people busy doing hundred-thousand square meter buildings. It’s been a good experience for us, there’s a lot of “white noise” in architectural culture, which is so image-driven now, and so much publication going on that you don’t have much of that time to isolate and think what would it be that you want to do. There’s this constant bombardment of the mainstream. Sousuke Fujimoto took a lot of time off at the beginning of his career and he talks a lot about this kind of primitive architecture or going back to spatial relationships that are compelling. Obviously, he had certain opportunities that a lot of people do not, but still I think it’s nice to be able to see these things. So we’re in preparation; we did a lot of interviews—we have hundreds of hours of interviews so we’re trying isolate certain topics to come up with a way of presenting it.

GS: One of the questions we ask of all the firms has to do with voice: because this series emphasizes the voice of practitioners: how would you describe your voice?

KY: I think it was essentially shaped by what was put in front of us, and we engaged the profession with the opportunities that were presented to us. We could be very different, or the relevance of what we have to say might differ significantly from place to place. Montreal, as I said, is very distinct, young people can still manage to find their own way—it’s not very expensive to live in Montreal, like it is in New York. But perhaps one important issue that was significant to the development of our practice is that we address the issue of the “image”. My partner teaches in the University of Montreal, and she sees the students are becoming more and more fascinated with the image, to the extent that they essentially read architecture like postcards. They don’t really get deep into the meaning of why certain things are done, and there seems to be less engagement in the construction, in the syntax of the building itself. Now it’s so easy to create amazing images with all the software to the point where, if you cannot build it, you can make it look like it’s already built. Or you take a photograph, and you can photoshop the things you don’t like, so there’s a convergence of two complete extremes. Anyway, I hope our voice is one that has been shaped by the realities of construction and the concrete challenges that were brought and put in front of us, how we dealt with them, and how we tried to create meaningful interventions.

Extending the physicality of the design, you can actually design something start to finish and still carry on that experimentation

GS: Yes, I am interested in the importance of “building the building.” For example, in your design methodology, could you talk about the importance of the physical model?

KY: It is so important. When my partner Manon worked for Koolhaas in the eighties, she would make a huge model, look at it with a camera and try to find accidental or serendipitous opportunities where she could enrich the project. It was a methodology learned in the office. We still like to use a lot of those big models. When we were going through school, being a shop person was a status thing: we admired the few people who were really good at it. There was this fascination with being able to use the tools, know the materials, make sure the wood doesn’t split and with making something very clean or effortless out of something that’s quite complex. We were very fascinated with LTL as one of the first young architects who presented architectural practice as something really fun and messy as opposed to this kind of very professional, tight, clean thing that everybody at that time was focusing on. That was so much about control; we wanted to find solutions through  making mistakes.

GS: Were you using tools before you decided to become an architect?

KY: No, actually I was terrible at using tools.

GS: It was a necessity?

KY: Yeah, I actually almost cut my finger off when I was at school, and I learned how to use a table saw from that experience. But no, I wasn’t trained before I went to school. Now I really like building on my own. I just read a book called Building Solo, it’s a manual for building a house on your own—how to hoist that first truss and that kind of thing; it really fascinates me. It’s interesting because of course building is such a collaborative effort, and yet, sometimes you need that isolation. Especially when there are many involved in a project, you need to have that moment to reflect on what you’re doing, and maybe that’s why I’m interested in Building Solo, extending physically the design process…you can actually design something from start to finish and never stop designing..—

GS: On the other hand, your young firm has actually had a remarkable number of opportunities to execute work on a larger scale—there are at least two civic works on your resume…

KY: The scale that we practice is actually perfect for us because we are not urbanists. We cannot think on that scale; that’s one thing we recognize. Our buildings have been usually around 4,000 sq. meters, relatively small in scale, but where you can still exercise a fair bit of control on all aspects of the design itself. It’s not a project that’s so large that you completely lose touch with the periphery of what’s happening. In our first project, we did partner with a production office, but we actually did 90% of the working drawings and they did some of the spec writing and more of the legal aspects of how to sign the contract to give to the contractor

GS: You say that you don’t want to work on an urban scale, but then with some of your civic structures like the Raymond-Levésque library and others, they’re still so intensely interested in communities of people—inside and out—and how they are relating to one another. So it’s not exactly urban design, but it seems to be moving in that direction, no?

KY: Yes, at the level of the immediate context, we cannot have a building that is completely complacent with its surroundings. Interestingly enough, all three projects that were completed are within the context of a park. So the idea of the landscape has become quite central; the relationship of the immediate landscape to the building itself. It’s an especially interesting question in a context of Canada where “landscape” doesn’t have the kind of history it does in England. I mean, in Canada, the notion of landscape is less culturally constructed and less about national heritage; its more about nature itself. So a lot of our projects have dealt with landscape as nature, how we can have people experience the landscape, and ultimately, how the architecture can calibrate itself so as to become a richer part of it.

This interview was conducted on March 30, 2012.

Atelier TAG “seeks to reinterpret the civic function of architecture through the careful study of sociocultural context…in order to create evocative spaces where society as a collective can express itself.” Building primarily in the public realm, the firm has completed projects, including the Bibliothéque Raymond-Levésque in 2011, as well as the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne, and the Bibliothéque Municipale de Chateauguay. Based in Montreal, Atelier TAG is led by Manon Asselin and Katsuhiro Yamazaki.

Gabriel Silberblatt: As an emerging firm, what do you see as the advantages and challenges to practice in today’s economic, professional, and intellectual climate?

Katsuhiro Yamazaki: The biggest challenge, obviously, is finding the opportunity to execute any significant public work. Up until recently, in Canada, particularly in Quebec, there had been competitions that were open to anybody registered at the Order of Architects. That’s actually what gave us our first public commission, an anonymous competition that came about right about when we started as a firm. However, that system is closing up due to a culture that is trying to gain more control over how money is spent. The idea is that because the Ministry of Culture foots half of the cost of the projects, the competition ought to be open; however, recently they’ve been more selective about who can enter. So I think that is the biggest challenge.

Also, I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have practiced in New York, who actually deal with the contractor side of the profession, and they talk about how interesting it is that in North America, contracts are drafted assuming things will go wrong. As opposed to in Europe where it’s a little more optimistic. So it’s a very litigious profession, which poses obvious challenges for a young office. As a means of redress, the approach we took early on was to team up with a more senior office—since we knew we didn’t have enough experience to deal with all the complexities of actually completing a public project. We have a really good relationship with one in particualr: we come in to ask the designers for input, but never hand over the project completely. But it’s not a clear separation between execution-architect and design-architect, which is more common in in the United States. So we established a nice relationship and they like working with us because their firm has become so big that now they have to take on a lot of not-so-interesting projects—bathroom renovations, or brick restorations, or dealing with the red tape associated with these huge government buildings—it’s construction, but it’s not really architecture. So it is good that they have people like us that allow them to get their staff motivated and kind of keep on getting invested in the profession and eventually carry on the practice itself.

GS: Can you tell me more about the interview project you undertook, talking to emerging architects of the Global North? How did you choose where you were going and who to sit down with? What did you learn from the experience?

KY: It was a lecture by Michael Rock of 2×4 that we saw that really spurred the project. He talked about this diagram where he said, “As opportunity to execute important work increases, there seems to be decline in intelligence and exuberance,” and he talked about this critical intersection-point at the mid-point of the architect’s career: either you become a more profit-oriented practice, which you see a lot or you try to maintain a certain critical level of thinking. I think you could almost say that the separation of OMA and AMO is natural in recognizing these two aspects of the profession, and that you cannot ignore either of them. At the same time we were seeing that a lot of the young offices were doing the most interesting work out there. We wanted to know why that is, why in a profession where experience should be paramount, the success of the work doesn’t seem to translate directly from the experience of the firm…

As opportunity to execute important work increases, there seems to be decline in intelligence and exuberance

But going back to the initial question: we didn’t want to interview everybody who was well-known, even though we did a few of them, but we thought a lot of these interesting practices happen in under-the-radar networks. I started in New York, and and through a few people that had contacts here I met a lot of people that were teaching at Columbia. Eventhough these young people all maintain their independent practice, if ever there’s a project they’ll be interested in participating, they merge and collaborate together. That is something that I’ve always been interested in: how to maintain a practice that doesn’t require a lot of staff, and that is still able to be selective, without aiming to be big that you have to do everything. It’s a big challenge because a lot of clients, especially governments, don’t want to deal with multiple heads. They want one company and they want one person that will be liable for the whole process—as I said before, it’s a very litigious profession. And it was quite interesting, when you go Europe, you see people collaborating.

So as I was saying, that’s how the interview project kind of developed. The most interesting part was to go from Spain, which has seen a complete decline in the profession in terms of opportunity to work, to places like China where it was booming, you could come out of school and suddenly have an office of 30 people busy doing hundred-thousand square meter buildings. It’s been a good experience for us, there’s a lot of “white noise” in architectural culture, which is so image-driven now, and so much publication going on that you don’t have much of that time to isolate and think what would it be that you want to do. There’s this constant bombardment of the mainstream. Sousuke Fujimoto took a lot of time off at the beginning of his career and he talks a lot about this kind of primitive architecture or going back to spatial relationships that are compelling. Obviously, he had certain opportunities that a lot of people do not, but still I think it’s nice to be able to see these things. So we’re in preparation; we did a lot of interviews—we have hundreds of hours of interviews so we’re trying isolate certain topics to come up with a way of presenting it.

GS: One of the questions we ask of all the firms has to do with voice: because this series emphasizes the voice of practitioners: how would you describe your voice?

KY: I think it was essentially shaped by what was put in front of us, and we engaged the profession with the opportunities that were presented to us. We could be very different, or the relevance of what we have to say might differ significantly from place to place. Montreal, as I said, is very distinct, young people can still manage to find their own way—it’s not very expensive to live in Montreal, like it is in New York. But perhaps one important issue that was significant to the development of our practice is that we address the issue of the “image”. My partner teaches in the University of Montreal, and she sees the students are becoming more and more fascinated with the image, to the extent that they essentially read architecture like postcards. They don’t really get deep into the meaning of why certain things are done, and there seems to be less engagement in the construction, in the syntax of the building itself. Now it’s so easy to create amazing images with all the software to the point where, if you cannot build it, you can make it look like it’s already built. Or you take a photograph, and you can photoshop the things you don’t like, so there’s a convergence of two complete extremes. Anyway, I hope our voice is one that has been shaped by the realities of construction and the concrete challenges that were brought and put in front of us, how we dealt with them, and how we tried to create meaningful interventions.

Extending the physicality of the design, you can actually design something start to finish and still carry on that experimentation

GS: Yes, I am interested in the importance of “building the building.” For example, in your design methodology, could you talk about the importance of the physical model?

KY: It is so important. When my partner Manon worked for Koolhaas in the eighties, she would make a huge model, look at it with a camera and try to find accidental or serendipitous opportunities where she could enrich the project. It was a methodology learned in the office. We still like to use a lot of those big models. When we were going through school, being a shop person was a status thing: we admired the few people who were really good at it. There was this fascination with being able to use the tools, know the materials, make sure the wood doesn’t split and with making something very clean or effortless out of something that’s quite complex. We were very fascinated with LTL as one of the first young architects who presented architectural practice as something really fun and messy as opposed to this kind of very professional, tight, clean thing that everybody at that time was focusing on. That was so much about control; we wanted to find solutions through  making mistakes.

GS: Were you using tools before you decided to become an architect?

KY: No, actually I was terrible at using tools.

GS: It was a necessity?

KY: Yeah, I actually almost cut my finger off when I was at school, and I learned how to use a table saw from that experience. But no, I wasn’t trained before I went to school. Now I really like building on my own. I just read a book called Building Solo, it’s a manual for building a house on your own—how to hoist that first truss and that kind of thing; it really fascinates me. It’s interesting because of course building is such a collaborative effort, and yet, sometimes you need that isolation. Especially when there are many involved in a project, you need to have that moment to reflect on what you’re doing, and maybe that’s why I’m interested in Building Solo, extending physically the design process…you can actually design something from start to finish and never stop designing..—

GS: On the other hand, your young firm has actually had a remarkable number of opportunities to execute work on a larger scale—there are at least two civic works on your resume…

KY: The scale that we practice is actually perfect for us because we are not urbanists. We cannot think on that scale; that’s one thing we recognize. Our buildings have been usually around 4,000 sq. meters, relatively small in scale, but where you can still exercise a fair bit of control on all aspects of the design itself. It’s not a project that’s so large that you completely lose touch with the periphery of what’s happening. In our first project, we did partner with a production office, but we actually did 90% of the working drawings and they did some of the spec writing and more of the legal aspects of how to sign the contract to give to the contractor

GS: You say that you don’t want to work on an urban scale, but then with some of your civic structures like the Raymond-Levésque library and others, they’re still so intensely interested in communities of people—inside and out—and how they are relating to one another. So it’s not exactly urban design, but it seems to be moving in that direction, no?

KY: Yes, at the level of the immediate context, we cannot have a building that is completely complacent with its surroundings. Interestingly enough, all three projects that were completed are within the context of a park. So the idea of the landscape has become quite central; the relationship of the immediate landscape to the building itself. It’s an especially interesting question in a context of Canada where “landscape” doesn’t have the kind of history it does in England. I mean, in Canada, the notion of landscape is less culturally constructed and less about national heritage; its more about nature itself. So a lot of our projects have dealt with landscape as nature, how we can have people experience the landscape, and ultimately, how the architecture can calibrate itself so as to become a richer part of it.

This interview was conducted on March 30, 2012.

An interview with Jerome W Haferd and K Brandt Knapp, the winning designers of Folly, a competition co-organized by the Architectural League and Socrates Sculpture Park for a new residency and commission for emerging architects and designers to produce and exhibit a full-scale project at Socrates. The residency was established by Socrates, in partnership with the League, to explore the intersections between architecture and sculpture and the increasing overlaps in references, materials, and fabrication techniques between the two disciplines. Interview by Gregory Wessner, the League’s Special Projects Director.

GREGORY WESSNER: Since this competition called for contemporary reinterpretations of the folly, I want to start by asking, first what is it that you’re doing? And how do you see it as a folly?

JEROME HAFERD: Our project is called “Curtain.” Very simply it has three main components that come together to create a volume. Those three components are the frame, made of 4″ x 4″ wood beams; steel joints that connect the frame; and a curtain of white plastic chain that is then draped over the frame.

BRANDT KNAPP: We were really excited about the project prompt [for a folly]. That’s what got us going. We both have an interest in, let’s say, program-less architecture; architecture that has little or no function or purpose. I would say the components are for the simplicity of the project. It is complex in its form, yet simple in its components. We started with a plan that is a very regular orthogonal 25-square grid made up of 5′ squares, so it’s 25 feet by 25 feet. Within that larger grid, we inserted a 9-square grid and a 4 square grid. Then in designing it, we set some rules that kept being denied or transformed by the interaction of these three grids.

JH: In our research of follies, there are always words like “fantastical” or “fanciful” or “extravagant.” So we really wanted something very clear and simple. The challenge was how could we create a system that is supplying you with an extravagant amount of references and positions and different forms that come out of a very basic set of rules. In addition to our three grids, there were only a few more rules that we wanted to follow, one of which was creating an entry with a very specific form. Beyond that, it became much more loose in how we played with a few key constraints. We started at the front and then let it evolve as we moved back.

GW: Let me ask you about these rules: what are they, why do you have them, what do they do?

BK: Some of them are extremely simple. As Jerome was saying, we wanted a formal entryway. So if we start with the grid and we know that one side is the main entryway and we know we want to make a fanciful entry, then we have five squares within that side of the grid to work with. Take the center three and there it is. A lot of it had to do with the siting within the Park. Then we think about the back of the project versus the front.

JH: There’s a progression from the front to the back and displacements along the way, so that you depart from what is a really strong front elevation through a series of weak de-centerings to a small quotation of the front entryway at the back. It is a reminder for us of this progression across and around and through. We start with this almost proscenium entry at the front and it evolves into just a weak little square at the back. You could say the rules are self-imposed but in a sense they’re given to us by what a folly is supposed to do: it’s inherent in a folly to play with rules and to deny expectation.

BK: That’s the idea of a folly: it’s “thought play.” We were interested in the idea of transformation and the chain link was the final step to really let this project be extremely transformative. Allowing those curtains to be pushed aside and off the structure. That for us was the last layer of play.

JH: The chain is great because it clicked with us and brought us in dialogue with certain artists, which is what we really wanted to bring into the project.

BK: We’re not extremely interested in material, but the fact that it’s way plastic, glossy chain link …

GW: You’re very excited about that.

JH: Yeah. [Laughter]

GW: What artists were you looking at that you wanted to be in dialogue with?

JH: The chain came out of our internal discussions about making something that is sort of a field and an envelope emerging out of that field, but as soon as we started to think about beads or chain, that’s when we began to look at artists who had done this before. Felix Gonzalez Torres was one of the first we looked at. Jesús Rafael Soto is another artist that we looked at, because we wanted to kind of explore references that we were perhaps vaguely aware of but wanted to delve deeper into.

BK: In our proposal we had a word-play about an idea of a “curtain wall.” It was interesting for us because we work day jobs where we’re working on curtain wall schedules and it’s all very standard and architectural, like a kit-of-parts, and something to order and then this fabricator is going to make it. When we’re sitting here, when we’re designing our folly, we’re thinking, “Okay, what is the enclosure of this thing? Like how do we make partitions or walls or how does this volume really show itself?” There’s of course something beautiful about seeing just a wood frame, but it needs to be a folly. We wanted to find out how exactly to make this volume without using plastic sheets that would just keep out the water. And we knew that if it were a harder material there would be no way we would be in budget. We thought this thing also needs to transform. It’s in a park; it needs air to go through it. We wanted it to move and be bendable. How does this happen?

JH: I think the juxtaposition to a curtain wall is great. On a certain level the structural system and the envelope of our folly is very ephemeral, but you could argue that it’s laden with just as many constraints, just as many expectations and variables as a super-heavy skyscraper curtain wall. It’s just a different set of them.

BK: And conceptually it does make walls. It makes thresholds and it makes barriers between areas and between the interior and the exterior. I know that when it comes to this idea of a curtain and contemporary architecture, we are certainly not the first to propose a curtain. But for us I think people hear the idea of curtain wall and our project is called “Curtain,” so it makes a lot of sense.

GW: In addition to artists, what references were you looking at specifically in terms of follies?

JH: I looked at playgrounds. [Laughter]

GW: So you were picking up on the playful aspect of follies. Follies can have lots of different meanings and purposes. Eccentric. Surreal. Whimsical. Even political. Were there other aspects that you were thinking of?

BK: This is where Jerome and I are great partners because we look at different kinds of things. Two things struck me, thinking historically and architecturally. I thought of British landscapes and I thought of grottos. The fact that this is a public park in Queens and follies were typically on very rich people’s property, built in the garden or landscape for a nice view or to possibly have picnics in or something, excited me on a social level. It also excited me on a visual level and to think about the idea of what is beautiful and what is the sublime. That this could be in a landscape with New York City skyscrapers in the background–what those views are and what is beautiful today or what is sublime? The idea of the sublime mixed with a grotto made a lot of sense. The texture of a grotto and the texture of the chain link is something that was really exciting to us when we finally had that moment of, “Ah, chain link; that’s easy and it comes in rolls.”

JH: Our background is very formal and our architectural education has been filled with a kind of heavy background in the disciplinarity of architecture. Certain references come to our mind simply based on our education and our professional experience. In addition to these things we were also looking at abstract art. It’s interesting to juxtapose minimalist sculpture with certain folly precedents that come from British landscape, which tend to be much more expressive and very Rococo and Baroque. There is the issue of site specificity that Brandt was looking at with grottoes and precedents of that type. Whereas working under someone like Bernard Tschumi, my initial thinking was on a serial or prototypical aspect to the discourse of the Folly and its embedded references. There is an aspect of the system or game which acts as a “generic”. So we were looking at several different things.

BK: And bottom line, it asks you to play. I mean, that’s what this typology asks you to do. We were excited to play. [Laughter]

GW: When you say you looked at the work of artists—when architects say that they look at an artist’s work—what are they looking at in that artist’s work for reference and inspiration? What are they taking from it and how does it get translated into architecture?

JH: That’s a big question. One thing is an interest in how the artist brings something that is an abstract idea into the real world, how they grapple with a form or an idea that is sometimes essentially abstract and then realize that in space and that’s meant to be perceived in the world.

GW: Doesn’t an architect also do that?

JH: Yeah, an architect does that.

GW: So is there a difference in the way an artist does it versus an architect?

JH: I could go on so many different trajectories with this. I, for one, began looking at sculpture even more in this project than I had in the past, but I think that it’s almost easier in a way for architects to engage painting because it deals more with the two-dimensional surface. One way I conceive of architects is that we make drawings and we work with the two-dimensional surface. We work with a frame, we work with composition and formal relationships. I like to see how painters develop their grammar and their language in their work. How they play different games over a series of works, be it shapes—I love to look at how painters work with different shapes; be it larger ideas of the frame and the canvas; or even color or not color. One thing that I began to think about when looking at sculpture versus painting when we were thinking about this project was how it really does matter to someone’s perception as they walk around a piece of sculpture. As much as we like to have the whole picture in one representation, a sculptor is dealing with, among many other things, that problem a lot more intentionally.

BK: I think that I’m interested in anything or anyone that poses questions that get me thinking on a level that art is supposed to, but I think that the difference between many artists and many architects is so blurred. It’s really just that our disciplines set us apart. I think especially today with new kinds of fabrication technology and the fact that many artists have assistants and don’t create the work themselves, by their own hand, they are working very much like an architect. I think that that line between art and architecture really has a lot to do with disciplinarity.

GW: So when you say that a lot of artists are working like architects, what is that way of working?

JH: They outsource their production. [Laughter]

GW: So you’re saying there’s a change in the way we might think of an artist working, some possibly romantic idea of the artist making a work by his or her own hand, alone in the studio. Now they’re more like an architect, who is orchestrating others to make the work.

BK: Yes! Orchestrating, managing the production of the project. That is what architecture is. This reminds me of the question you are asked freshman year in college when you take architecture 101: What is architecture? Is architecture somehow related to art? Does it have an art sensibility? To be able to say this is a work of architecture or a work of art, what are those criteria? To each their own; everybody has their definitions of what art is and we have been formed in a certain way.

GW: So ultimately do you think there is there any difference between art and architecture?

BK: There really isn’t.

JH: There is no difference in the work. The difference is the history and what you’re looking at and what has come before you. And that’s created not only by our education, our discipline, but it’s also external. What are the expectations of a discipline by the public and the history put on those expectations? While we’re on site at Socrates, people ask us, are you making a house? Are you making a shed?

BK: Are you making a gazebo? [Laughter]

GW: Do you think that visitors are going to look at your piece differently than the other projects in the Park, which are made by artists? And would that bother you one way or another?

BK: This is the best question, because we’ve been out there every day. A lot of times visitors don’t want to even say “house” or “gazebo,” until they’re told that you’re an architect, which is interesting. They may think it looks like a house, but they don’t want to put it into that category because of the Park’s context.

JH: They don’t necessarily have the words or any other vocabulary to ask what they want of it. That’s just the closest thing that they can get to, house or gazebo.

BK: Power dynamics are always crazy, right? You get people who are like, “wow, architects!” But they you also get people who are like, “wow, artists!” And architecture is just some gazebo or some house, because people always think in typology.

JH: But they don’t seem to question that it’s in a sculpture park; they seem cool with that. [Laughter]

GW: Your project obviously has a lot to do with grids; you talked about that already. What is the fascination by architects with grids?

BK: I think artists are interested in grids as well, as Rosalind Krauss would point out. I think that grids are important to try and understand something. There’s something about using grid paper when you’re in sixth grade that everybody understands. It helps to organize, analyze and can be a frame of reference. We’re both interested in grids, as many other architects and artists are. I work with grids everyday in quite a rigorous way working for Richard Meier. Both of us have studied under people who have intensely worked with the grid, such as Peter Eisenman. We heard all the time there are three different types of grids; 25-square grids, 9-square grids and 4-square grids. It has to be one of those three grids. Well, our project is all three of them.

JH: I have a funny anecdote, which I think also gets at why we use grids. When we had just the holes dug on site, which is very much based on the grid, Mark di Suvero, who’s obviously very involved with Socrates and very interested in all the work done there, came by and he said, “Oh, so you guys are using a grid? You’re still haunted by Descartes.” [Laughter] It was a little bit of a dig and I said, “Just wait until this thing grows into the trees and transforms.”

BK: I think now he’s scared. [Laughter]

JH: Because he comes by and looks at it now and it’s amazing how much the grid is present but also invisible, now that the project is coming out of the ground.

GW: The grid is lost, in a sense.

JH + BK: Yes!

GW: Now I want to ask you some more broad questions about architecture. As young architects who are just starting out, how do you feel about the practice of architecture right now?

BK: Within the last four years there has been all this talk about, “Oh, now that the economy has gone down, we’re going to have paper architects again and produce these Zaha Hadid’s and we are all going back into our caves to study.” I think that all of us in this world right now, no matter where you are, cannot hide in a cave. We are on the internet, we are connected, we are expressing ideas. I think that architecture in so many ways, in terms of the profession, is melding in some form or another with academia. Architecture will continue to pick up new ideas and will continue to resurface historical ideas, which is what we’re interested in. We’re interested in being in the here and now, being on the internet, being on the phone, being at the club, being at all of these places and being alive, but at the same time having a root, having a core. I think architecture as long as it has that core—which obviously is its disciplinarity—as long as it has something to fall back on, it’ll continue to grow and continue to foster change. Architecture seems to grow into anything and everything. Hopefully it’ll just continue to be relevant.

JH: I’m optimistic about architecture right now. There’s been a lot of frivolity and surface and image and it seems that the next step would be a little bit of interest in meaning again, from the public and from architecture in general, but still retain this kind of postmodern humor. But I think people are interested again in intent and meaning and history.

BK: Rather than, how can you just fabricate that or make a cool rendering.

GW: Were the 2000s, when there was so much building going on and so many starchitects making spectacle buildings, a good period for architecture? Did that inspire you while you were in school?

JH: Only because buildings were actually being built. [Laughter]

BK: I think that it was both. You could definitely see a generation gap. Architects that were younger than the starchitect generation who were successful were much more interested in certain types of think tanks or labs and so on. Even though they might not have been making the money or having the publicity that starchitects were having, they seemed to be provoking ideas and being successful and productive and moving forward in their careers. I think that the think tanks weren’t really seen by the general public the way starchitects were, but to us, they were just as important and they were emerging at the same time, while we were in school. So it just made us realize, “Oh, there are so many different trajectories you can have in architecture, what you can be interested in.”

JH: For me it was really interesting because during school I worked in China. I decided, “I’m going to go to a contemporary place where architecture is at the forefront.” See CCTV under construction and see these things that really are kind of other to what we see when we look out of the window here in New York City. That’s why I said it was interesting to me that these buildings were being built. There’s no way to not be excited about that because it pushed architecture so far in terms of actually producing things. It pushed our productive capacity light years ahead in terms of collaborating with other disciplines, getting stuff realized within a budget that allowed it to be realized. You learn, “Oh, you can do this cheaper than we did it before.” I think that it was really important and the aftereffects of that era of high budgeted experimentation are trickling down to a more vernacular expression of forms and ideas that needed that to happen.

BK: We’re always excited that there are clients out there that want to support these high budget experimentations. We are really so grateful for those clients. It’s great that somebody wanted to put his/her money and invest in really furthering our discipline. If those works get built, as Jerome said, then we’re able to study them and look at them on an even deeper level.

JH: Brandt and I are really interested in how some of these things that we assume required a digital process actually start to get incorporated into much more baseline analog ideas about form and people get used to seeing different things that may or may not have anything to do with digital processes.

BK: But going back to our folly, it was doable because of some of this same software. But even though it’s a crazy triangulated surface, we’re building it out of standard four by fours.

JH: Four by fours and bolts.

GW: Would this have been doable 12 years ago?

BK: No, not without a computer program. We are excited that some of the things that are so easy to design in the computer but difficult by hand are/will be in the physical world. The chain-link is “projected” at a 6” spacing from above and the material allows the catenary arch from the project to be realized. You needed a computer.

GW: Would you have even been able to have the idea?

JH: That’s the better question and I think, no. I think Brandt and I could sketch this form but it would have been a different thing. But it’s so much a part of our generation’s thinking; it’s not even about being digital or not, it’s just now in the vocabulary of what we think about.

All images of Curtain, a project by Jerome W Haferd and K Brandt Knapp. Courtesy of the architects; all rights reserved. Interview conducted on June 20, 2012.

Winnipeg’s 5468796 Architecture is a collaborative firm that engages in design at a variety of scales, participating in “an ongoing dialogue rooted in curiosity and play, generating innovative architectural solutions within modest budgetary constraints.” Their current and recent projects range in scale from the OMS Stage to multifamily housing, including the projects Bloc 10; YouCube; and Welcome Place [Immigrant Housing and Services]. Their exhibition, “Migrating Landscapes,” which examines how Canadians express their diverse cultural memories in the way they live and build, has been chosen to represent Canada in the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. Sasa and Johanna were Architectural League Emerging Voices in 2012.

Gabriel Silberblatt: As an emerging firm, what do you see as the advantages and challenges to practice in today’s economic, professional, and intellectual climate?

Sasa Radulovic: Do you mind if I ask you a question? How do you define “emerging” at the moment? Because everybody seems to define it differently.

Anne Rieselbach: It used to mean, “beginning to have a body of built work that’s getting attention.” We changed the wording a couple of years ago, to an “accomplished” body of work, because as with your colleague Jeffrey Inaba, not everyone is building, and everybody defines “building” differently anyway.  A “body of work” can encompass installation art and similar, more ephemeral work, which we’ve been highlighting for a while, but also, interesting mapping and other types of projects that don’t find themselves in built expression, but nevertheless are a way of finding form.

SR: Lateral Architecture did that last year, right?

AR: Right, precisely. So it’s a consistent view; it’s a vision, which is how we define the “voice.” The “emerging” part is sort of self-explanatory, although it catches different people at different points in their career, so it’s a good question. But, it’s a time where the work has begun to express its own kind of philosophy, so it’s more than one, cool building, but a body of work.

Johanna Hurme: I think the advantage would definitely be that one feels as though one has to really go after something. Because the work isn’t coming in freely, one has to invent something to make a go of it. It’s always a struggle to see what we can fit into the project, how we can make it interesting, or what we can extract out of it. That in itself breeds innovation in some way or another, or at the very least, the process provides a good ground for innovation. We’re constantly trying to find the right resources or trying to find ways of reallocating resources within the project parameters to, in our minds, create something worthwhile. That’s probably the advantage.

SR: The other aspect I would like to add to this idea of “emerging”…We’re very much a product of where we work, of Winnipeg. It’s a rather conservative environment—almost boring and beige. The architecture is really at the bottom of the cultural radar. It wasn’t like that in the 1960s and 70s; then, Winnipeg had a bunch of people that studied under Wright and Mies. They went up from the IIT and Harvard, and taught there. Faculty of Architecure, University of Manitoba was actually one of the best schools in Canada—when Winnipeg was the third largest city in Canada after Toronto and Montreal, I think at the time—it was bigger than Vancouver and Calgary. So it was actually a really good place to work, and a lot of modernist architecture that was constructed in Western Canada came out of Winnipeg, designed by people that had studied there. But since the ‘70s interest in architecture diminished, which had to do in part with different recessions. So we find that part of the reason we’ve started our firm was sort of a reaction to that gap, that lack of things happening. There were no start-ups in the city for 20 years before us, so it was really dead. Just dead. Nothing “emerging.” So a lot of our architecture is a response, if you wish…

JH: A reaction.

SR: A reaction, right. And we’re trying to figure out what it means. One of the things that we came up with is that it’s an attitude more so than a philosophy, if you wish. Many offices question, “What is [our] philosophy?”

JH: Are you answering the question though?

SR: No, no (chuckle).

GS: I’m interested to know how it is you define the difference between “attitude” and “philosophy.” Or how these words seem to have different charges for you.

SR: Well, a “philosophy” is something that can evolve, but seems to be, to a certain extent, firmly defined, while an “attitude” is something that actually allows you to change, based on what you eat that morning, right?

JH: …or allows you to have a different take on each project, I think, more so than the philosophy. If you’re trying to follow the same philosophy, then you’re always trying to extract the same thing out of every project, whereas attitude is somehow trying to demonstrate that, regardless of the constraints and regardless of the resources that are available, you really can do something interesting or you can do something that’s…

SR: …a “reaction,” no? We want to show that no matter what the budget is, no matter what the program is, no matter how bad the client is, we can do something.

JH: There is no excuse. You can’t just say “next time,” or “we’ll find a better client” or “we’ll find a better budget.” Every time we take on the project we as architects take on the responsibility of trying to make something out of it. And we know, of course that we can fail, and I’m sure we do—and we have—and we’re the first ones to admit that.

However, what we’re ultimately trying to do is not only produce work, but also trying to make architecture part of culture, because very often even in our context it’s left out. The visual arts is one thing; people understand visual arts and what the power of arts can be to any community. And yet, architecture is always looked at as a separate piece, and it’s never been understood as part of the production of culture, and that’s what we’re trying to talk to people about.

SR: There’s been a lot of things happening in Winnipeg in the last five years. For example, we actually do critiques of each other’s work once a month. Different firms present five projects and we get together for about five hours and we talk about them. There are usually 50 to 80 people to an event. Considering there are only 150 registered architects in the city, that’s pretty good!

GS: It doesn’t sound unlike the founding purpose of the Architectural League, which was to have conversations around design problems…

SR: And we’d like to start trying to do the studio visits, which the League has been doing, right? That’s still going on?

GS: Absolutely. So you have a monthly critique? How does one determine who is included?

SR: It’s an open call.

JH: It’s open to all architects. It’s called the On The Boards, so everybody who has a registered firm will get the invite.

GS: This is within Winnipeg?

JH: Actually entire province of Manitoba. When we all get together the idea is, that there’s actually time to give input into the project, so if isn’t complete, more work can be done. You’re not just presenting the finished project; you’re actually soliciting advice, soliciting critique and so on, and you present this within the peer group—and it’s confidential so it doesn’t jeopardize your client relationship.  The objective at the end of the day is that we somehow raise the bar of architecture in the city, and we get together and have this collegial relationship with each other. And I think everybody benefits—that’s what we’re hoping.

GS: This series emphasizes the “voice” of practitioners: how would you describe your voice as a studio? Or individually?

JH: Yes, I was just trying to say about the voices; I think that one thing that we’re trying to do as a firm, and this is nothing particularly new, is practice as a group as much as we can and really try to make a completely horizontal practice. And this is no easy task. We’ve been wondering, how does one keep a critical viewpoint on the work while practicing collectively as much as we would like? I don’t think anybody has a formula or a solution for that…

SR: We find it much easier to do that with an attitude as opposed to a philosophy to which everybody in the office has to subscribe.

JH: We have been interviewing people much smarter than ourselves, trying to get to the bottom of this question—do they have a philosophy when they sit down and talk about what their direction is and where they’re going? More often than not, they say that no, it’s a constant struggle to try to define what they are trying to say as a practice. It’s something that’s very difficult for us, too.  Right now we realize that we’re at some sort of critical point where we’ve “spewed out” work, but we’re being asked, “What’s your practice about and what’s your voice about?” And we do have some things that we find are common in the work, but if we sit here and pretend that we know exactly where we’re headed, I think that would be foolish.

SR: Right. I want to go back to the discussion we had this morning about one thing we feel is common in the office, as a part of this reaction or sort of attitude, is that our architecture is architecture against ambivalence. All of our projects reject a quiet presence. Whether you like the buildings or hate them, you’re going to be strongly affected by them. That is very much a part of that reactionary attitude towards our environment.

This doesn’t necessarily answer the question about what our voice is, but I think it is indicative of how our firm works: when our Bond Tower got the 2012 Progressive Architecture Award, we went to Zach, one of our guys, and said, “Good job, man. You designed this—awesome!” And he responded, “No I didn’t design this, Colin did.” So we went to Colin, and he says the same thing to us!  Since there was no real deadline for the design, every time there was a bit of a time in the office, a couple of people took it on, and it ended up being designed by seven people.

JH: …and nobody had any idea of who the author was; everybody thought somebody else did it, and somehow it came out of the office. So it’s one of the best examples that we have of our ideology at work. There are other examples such as the Centre Village Project. For that project, we had a Lego model sitting at the table, and the challenge was to extract 25 units out of it. At first the task of getting this many units out of it felt sort of impossible within the scale that we could build, which was a three-story walk-up. And yet, every time someone would walk by the table, they would move a couple of blocks, and it became a sort of geometric exercise.

Thinking back on our process, I would add that the one thing that we keep driving with every project is that there is a public element or that we are considering the public realm in some way. We’re always trying to tie the projects into the city. So even if it is for a private developer, there’s got to be some way to get that into the budget.

SR: We try to thread the city through our projects—or tie the projects to the city, both of those things.

JH: Right, but there is almost never a budget for that. It’s always the sellable square footage, rentable area, and that outside space doesn’t help the bottom line, in our developers’ minds. And yet, we try to weave it in every time.

SR: There’s no requirement at all in the city to do that, right? Though there ought to be.

JH: Part of that “collective idea” seems much more obvious to us than maybe it is to most North Americans, I don’t know…

SR: Well you come from a communist country; I come from a communist country so there…

(laugher)

JH: Well there you go!

GS: Actually that’s exactly what I’m interested in hearing more about. Not only are you both immigrants yourselves, but so much of the work being produced by your studio seems to engage issues of migration or immigration. What do you see as the most important challenges your country faces with regards to new arrivals?

SR: In Canada?

GS: Yeah.

SR:  The most important challenge I think we’re seeing right now is the possibility that the government might limit the openness that the country has had historically.

GS: It’s very open.

SR: It is very open. Having experienced this as a refugee, I’ve been through it, and at the time I immigrated to Canada, which was 1996, Canada was pretty much the only country that you could get into. And that has been very important to us. We’re exploring some of these themes in our Venice Biennale Project. Once you’ve come to Canada, you are very much encouraged to change the landscape of the country, which is a very open system. What it means, really, is that you’re not supposed to assimilate. Canada profits from your different background and experience.

JH: And I think we’ve always felt that, that we can offer a richness. I was very conscious when I first came over—Will I have to lose my accent? Will I be able to speak English properly?—And then people say, “No, no, no, that’s great.” When I hear that, it makes me so excited—it’s a richness to have a different perspective. I see that especially in architecture.

SR: One of my favorite stories that we encountered during our work on the Venice Biennale Project was about a panel of architects from Toronto who were flown to Holland about six or seven years ago, I think—to participate in a conference about immigration. The question that people had was, “How do we get our immigrants to speak Dutch?” which was completely baffling to the Canadians who said, “Why would you get them to speak Dutch?”

JH: “Why? Why do you care?” The attitude, is that you don’t have to; it’s fine—speak your own language. But in terms of architecture, I think the challenge that we’re seeing is that if you have a very strong sense of identity and very strong sense of your culture it is easier to produce work that you can somehow tie into, or you are able to say is Canadian in some definitive way. And yet, I think that we have very little idea of what Canadian architecture is! Canadian magazines are trying to define that all the time. But why try to define it? I think we’re better off just speaking our own accent.

This interview was conducted on March 2, 2012.

The Architectural League inaugurated the juried Emerging Voices series in 1982. It was conceived to focus attention on young and early mid-career architects and designers whose work presents a distinctive point of view and expression and has the potential for significant impact on the disciplines of architecture, urbanism, or landscape design. Over the course of three decades, Emerging Voices has recognized many significant figures of successive generations of American architects, from Steven Holl, Tod Williams, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk in the early years, to Toshiko Mori, James Corner, Jeanne Gang, SHoP Architects, and more recently Chris Reed, WORKac, and Urban Lab. In 1994, the program was expanded to Canada and Mexico, and has recognized Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe, Pierre Thibault, Tatiana Bilbao, and Michel Rojkind, among others.

Emerging Voices: 30 Years will simultaneously engage the history of the program and the history of contemporary American architecture from two perspectives: documentation of the work and influence of program participants, including how the careers and impact of specific individuals and firms have developed over time; and interpretation of how, collectively, the work of the Emerging Voices has shaped and reflected the evolving ideas, preoccupations, and production of American architects in the last three decades.  The exhibition, book, and programs will allow the League to reach a national audience from students to design professionals to the general public.

Chairman Landesman said, “The arts should be a part of everyday life. Whether it’s seeing a performance, visiting a gallery, participating in an art class, or simply taking a walk around a neighborhood enhanced by public art, these grants are ensuring that across the nation, the public is able to experience how art works.”

Architectural League executive director Rosalie Genevro said “We are thrilled to have the support of the National Endowment for the Arts to help us document the thirty-year history of Emerging Voices, one of the League’s most influential programs.  Emerging Voices has  recognized the accomplishments and helped foster the development of many of North America’s most talented architects, and the history of the program provides a fascinating perspective on evolving ideas about buildings, landscapes and cities over the last three decades.”

The NEA received 1,624 eligible applications under the Art Works category for this round of funding, requesting more than $78 million in funding. For a complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support, please visit the NEA website at arts.gov.

To give a gift, click here.

Roberto de Leon and M. Ross Primmer are the founders of de leon and primmer architecture workshop.  They received the League’s Emerging Voices Award in 2011.  Click here to read the interview.

What word or phrase do you most overuse?

RP: Suspend your belief system – what we have to remind ourselves and remind our clients of constantly

If you could have designed any building in the world, what would it be?

RP: To design the perfect box – that kind of simplicity

What typeface most represents you?

RP: Ariel and Helvetica…they are architectural and ubiquitous, but they have become so tiresome, so we like 20^th Century MT and Franklin Gothic Book

RD: Recently we’ve liked Courier

What is your favorite airport?

RD: Zurich – it is just so rational and ordered

RP: Every material meets the next material perfectly

What is the one thing you always pack when you travel?

RD: I’ve gotten in trouble for this – we almost always travel just carrying a briefcase – even for longer international trips, and apparently someone with my name is on the government watch list – it always seems suspicious and I’ve been detained before

RP: I just use my laptop case

RD: But for an item, jeans

What architect from the past do you most admire?

RD: Kahn

RP: Across the board

What is your favorite city or town?

RD and RP: Rome

If you could own any masterpiece of art, what would it be?

RD: How about the town of Marfa

What book has had the most influence on you?

RD: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths by Rosalind Krauss

What is the last song or album you listened to?

RD: The new album from Junip

RP: Everything bossanova

What is your favorite piece of clothing?

RD: Jeans

Name one obsessive architect behavior that you have.

RD: Alignment – on our table everything has to be squared – even if there is some unruly pile everything is aligned to the table edge

RP: For me it is the enfilade – where space axially constricts and opens in sequence and there is this endless elegant progression

RD: We always joke in the office that Ross is about to try the very dangerous triple enfilade

RP: I would also die happy if I could do the enfilade in the X, Y, and Z planes

What is your idea of misery?

RP: Anything administrative or contractual

RD: Mine is billing

What is your idea of happiness?

RP: The day or two before you give the key to the client when you can walk around when it is done and you see that the way the light is hitting the wall is the way you thought it would and everything feels (A) better than you thought it would be and (B) better than you had even hoped for

RD: For me it is hitting the snooze button and being awake enough to know you are able to hit the snooze button

If you weren’t an architect, what would you be?

RD: Film director

RP: Marine biologist

Roberto de Leon and M. Ross Primmer established de leon & primmer architecture workshop in 2003, as a design studio focusing on cultural and civic environments.  Based in Louisville, KY, the studio’s projects include the Filson Historical Society Expansion & Campus Master Plan in Louisville; Big Bone Lick State Park Nature Center; Riverview Park and Yew Dell Botanical Gardens both in Crestwood, KY; and Mason Lane Farm Operations Facility in Goshen, KY. On March 17, the morning after their lecture as part of the League’s Emerging Voices series, they sat down with Nick Anderson, the League’s Program Manager, to discuss the ways in which they are “Emerging Voices,” the uniqueness of Louisville, Kentucky, and how they engage clients and communities in collaboration.

After the interview, read Roberto de Leon and M. Ross Primmer’s responses to the Architectural League Questionnaire.

This series emphasizes the “voice” of practitioners – how would you describe your voice?

RP: I think our voice is intentionally slightly understated.   We like our voice to be liminal rather than heroic. With respect to new architecture and development in the urban centers of Kentucky, there seems to be a sense of cultural insecurity. We try to overcome that.  Roberto and I don’t have that sense of these places as needing to be insecure. When these Midwest communities act on this insecurity the results always seem to be unsuccessful. What we see as the right fit for this particular area is a quieter, softer approach – confident in the uniqueness of its place and its past.

RD: Specifically in terms of how we work there is the sense of helping the underdog.  In rethinking program or material possibilities, or just investigating how to build something economically – regardless of the client – we always try to maximize the value of their investment in terms of how they are building within a community.  That drives a lot of our work.  So when we talk about it in a “liminal” sense, we could talk about it in terms of how we facilitate clients to build in a way that touches the greatest amount of people in the community.  This hinges on things like infrastructure…

RP: I’m tired of the term “infrastructure” – what do you mean?

RD: An example is the Boy Scout Summit [a project in West Virginia currently in schematic design], where we were asked to rank our preference of projects. We were drawn to buildings like the food and restroom pavilions, not the museum or great lodge. We were interested in those connective elements that the Scouts could encounter on an every day basis.

RP: Yes, but I wouldn’t think of that as infrastructure, rather that these are the spaces wherever you go, in which you spend the most time yet are the ones that are most overlooked.  It is the same as cultural not-for-profits. Though these are places of culture, learning, and understanding, they’re also the places that get architecturally short-shrifted because of financial reasons.

Before we pick up some of the issues you are raising, I wanted to ask you about the other aspect of “Emerging Voices” – as a small, emerging firm, what do you see as the advantages and challenges to practice in today’s economic, professional, and intellectual climates?

RP: The architecture and professional environment we work in in the Midwest is completely different than what you find in New York or the East Coast.  So you can’t make the same parallels.  I think in the Midwest architecture is still seen in a 70s, 80s, or early 90s way…that there are offices of professionals and you listen to them and something mediocre comes out of it. When we started our own firm we intentionally decided to keep it small and try to bring back an intellectual thread where the architecture isn’t purely a visual commodity.  I think that is what most architecture tends to be, commodity, at least in Kentucky.  You buy it; you buy the buzzwords used in other cities – at other times. What we are trying to do is slow down and think about the space as a whole.  I don’t think we are completely altruistic in working with non-profits in that these are the people who will listen and are interested because they don’t have the bucks for the bells and whistles.

RD: There is also a nice parallel with non-profit clients in terms of modest project budgets and what we are interested in investigating, such as reassessing what luxury materials mean in this context.  There is also in this specific geographic arena still a bit of the spirit of the Wild West in that if you want to give your time and volunteer and put in the effort there is always room for you – there is that pioneering spirit. The non-profit organization will take a gamble.  Often times they have to.

You’ve mentioned the differences of practice in the Midwest a few times now.  What does the region of Louisville mean to your practice – neither of you are from there originally.  What drew you to practice there?

RP: We both graduated in ‘93 and things hadn’t picked up yet.  Our degree qualified you to bag groceries [laughter].  I was not from Boston or the East and wanted to get going.  So I knew moving back to the Midwest that my voice would be heard at an earlier age.  During my last semester at the GSD, I looked at the Solomon Report of Statistics about various cities.  Richmond, VA and Louisville were both transitioning from an industrial based economy to a service based economy – which meant construction. Richmond I found to be like Boston in terms of its rigidity in how you approached and addressed strangers.  Louisville was all embracing, no questions asked, and I chose that.  That January after graduation, I started at a firm and was literally thrown into the design for the new Louisville Ballet Headquarters, told to “Go for it, and show us what you can do.” The project went out to bid in June and started construction in July.  I think that only happens when you first get of school and nobody quite tells you a project doesn’t normally move so quickly!  And that a young person is supposed to have that much responsibility – soup to nuts. So I think that is a good representation of why we chose to stay there.  That experience alone convinced us that this was an amazing place and that there is possibility here.

RD: The only thing I’d add is that coming from San Francisco and growing up in a big city, I was initially hesitant to move to Louisville.  I took the leap and what I found is that Louisville is such a rich community, in terms of the quality of life, its neighborhoods, its culture, and its arts community.  There is also something about Louisville in terms of its originality and its eccentricities that we draw from constantly.

You are though unique amongst your peers in that you moved outside a traditional center of architecture to give yourself opportunities to practice.  You chose opportunities to build rather than teaching or writing to support yourself?  Was this a critique?

RP: I wouldn’t say it is a critique, but it is an overlooked opportunity.  Cities like Louisville – I’d say it’s unique – but these cities do want creativity and your input.  When we were at Harvard it seemed everyone was from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and New York.  Obviously I don’t slight those places, but there are other places to live – give it a try – it can be limitless – what you can do and what they want.  The big thing we have seen in Louisville and not elsewhere is that it is accessible and open and embracing – there isn’t a rigid hierarchy – a fruitless knocking on doors.

Within Louisville you have found an additional niche in cultural and other not-for-profit organizations.  What is the process in working with these clients that you have found so rewarding?

RD: Collaboration – we say that flat out. We’ve come to more fully understand what that means, how we work with a community, with agencies, how we work with people to champion projects.  For us we truly feel that we are making a difference in helping people and communities, within this context of consensus building – that everyone has a buy-in.  What we find when we work in this manner is that all the hurdles that you usually encounter magically disappear.  It is not unusual for us to get unanimous approval on projects.  Everyone is brought on board from the very beginning.  Everyone is truly engaged; we aren’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. It’s a very open and transparent design process.

RP: For example, the Filson Historical Society addition and campus.  It is in Old Louisville, one of the many landmarked districts in Louisville. It was Louisville’s first suburb, and is now more or less considered part of the downtown.  The new campus covers a half of city block and the new building is 28,000 sq. ft. It’s the only project of that size in Old Louisville in nearly twenty years and was granted full approval at its first – and consequently its last – Landmarks Hearing. The community and city were all part of the process. The Committee was unanimous in approving it.

It’s also interesting being in New York and giving the lecture – being asked to define who we are and what we stand for in architecture. What we stand for keeps evolving.  I think the thrill in what we do is suspending our belief systems and seeing what we can then do.

RD: I think in the last year our mission statement has come much more to the fore in that we now only do civic and cultural work.

So many of the Emerging Voices speak of social responsibility and it finds form in large-scale planning or “big” thinking.  Would you call this community-driven approach your version of that? A version at the micro-community, person to person?

RP: Yes. I think each and every time we start one of these workshop projects we’re subconsciously altering and morphing the process in a more significant way than we realize ourselves – based on the experiences we learned from the last one.  It grows and changes so constantly it always makes me feel that whatever we did six months ago was naïve. It becomes more and more community-centric and even more person to person. Its reach though becomes increasingly broader – in as much as the impact on the micro-community is now beginning to be claimed as impact to the larger community.

RD: When we started our office we always said we wanted to build.  We never pushed any of our projects as theoretical or as an exploration that might not lead to anything.  There is a finality to building that we like and the collaborative aspect of the design process increases the likelihood of its “build-ability.”  The explorations of very simple, conventional construction systems are also part of this equation. I think the one aspect we are missing now is the follow-up.  Once a project is completed, how do we assess what the process and the project have given the client and us.  I don’t think we’ve really begun to reflect on that in a way that puts all of this in a clear perspective.

RP: In terms of the consideration of craft in our projects, one of my insecurities as an architect is not to feel that this is “homespun” architecture.  That is a pitfall that we try not to fall into when we utilize simple construction and building methods.

Well, on your use of materials, simple processes, and the constructability of projects, was there something beyond local conditions, which led you to this interest?

RD: Something we always gravitate toward in any project is the sense of tactility.  A constant critique we make about many contemporary projects is that they operate primarily at the scale of the city versus the scale of the sidewalk.  How materials feel when you are up against them.  That is something we have always been mindful of.  When all said and done: does it feel great to be in a space, to touch a surface, to smell a material?

RP: Does it feel good to lean against this building?

RD: So this sense of craft is a way to get into the micro-scale of how to build.

How do you see yourself scaling up to larger commissions or working in a different locale when so much of your work is hyper-local?

RP: That has always been our aim – that we would ultimately have the opportunity to scale up. We just learned we received a commission for the main regional library in Louisville.  We always thought we’d expand and grow.  But there is so much in our region that is untapped, and now that we are better known in the region there are new opportunities.

But we design so much on site and so much with the client on the site, I don’t know yet how that translates into larger or long distance projects.

RD: Well the first test has been the Boy Scout project in West Virginia.  I think so far it has been an easy transition with respect to translating our working process to another region. Another test has been the Filson, in that it is half a city block. So far, I don’t think we’ve lost that sense of tactility.  From the very beginning of the project we began questioning in terms of the materials – where do we get molded brick, how do we think of brick as veneer in this historic context, how do we think of the project as a series of veneers?  So our consideration of the project even at this larger scale has been at the scale of the material.

RP: But how you achieve that outside of being a “regional architect” is still unanswered.

When I was thinking about the regional aspect of your work, I was thinking about the Harvard Box and Barnes’ work at Haystack.  How do you translate the stripped down modernist idiom and the repetition of structure to the appropriateness of the local – was there awareness of this at the GSD?  This is not naïve vernacular architecture.

RP: The interest in this was fostered at the GSD.  Most often what we initially find ourselves discussing with the client (the Board) is the difference between Modern and contemporary.  Much of the architecture being designed in Louisville now attempts to replicate or defer to traditional or historic architectural imagery. When the word Modernist is used to describe the grounding principle of the tectonics and sensibility of our work, the client gives a perceptible shudder – imagining the contemporary buildings they see in the area. We explain it’s not. I think a failure of Modernism can be partially attributed to what happened to the idea when it went outside the cities.  It took the look without the finesse and it got very cold and very inhumane very quickly.  I think that though we like and employ the academic principles of Modernism, we also understand the principles of tactility or I should say human tactility.  So we try and bring that Kentucky vernacular and the warmth of materiality – that you do lean against a building, you do sit on a bench, and you do touch a window and the window frame and that steel or aluminum might not be the best way to do that.  We try to bring those two principles together.

RD: So for us, in the tradition of the barn, the joy of it is the building of it, the play with the material. There is a sense of play.  We can analyze something to death but in the end there has to be a joy of making something.

RP: But you’d say there is a sense of rigor to it.  Which in my mind contradicts a sense a play.

RD: Maybe I should rephrase that – maybe play is not the right word.  It’s setting a trajectory and not being sure where we might end up, not always knowing how we’ll get there, and play might be part of that.

RP: In fact, we never know where it’ll go and we are very upfront with clients on that.  “What do you see for us?”  We don’t know.  We don’t know where it will go.  So in that sense we let the process drive us along.   Which can be difficult to let happen.

RD: We always acknowledge there are risks to that.  But I think the process guides us in a way that gives us confidence.  There needs to be a full buy-in with the client and the city in an authentically meaningful way.

For example with Mason Lane Farm, we actually had enough points to achieve LEED Gold but the client ultimately said it is not in the spirit of the project to buy energy packets (the point that would have given the project a Gold certification), it was not to buy this commodity, so we’ll accept LEED Silver.

RP: She [our client for Mason Lane Farm] was so much a part of the thought process.  And had to remind us at times of the spirit of what we were trying to do.

This aspect of sustainability – do you see this as a critique of LEED?  Or the dominant way people discuss “green” architecture?

RD: Yes – but we aren’t rejecting green technological systems necessarily.  I think that the critique we have is that when someone says they are going to build “green” it is going to look the same in New York, in Phoenix, or anywhere in the Midwest.

RP: There is a green look.  “I am going to use photovoltaic panels and a sod roof.”  There is something strange about that, when you compare it to the vernacular.  The vernacular is about sustainability, when there is a specific building technique or type unique to a region, a setting, a climate.  For some reason, more often than not you don’t see that differentiation when applying green products.  And that for us seems so odd.

We do understand the benefits of green technology and what it means.  I think a lot of it has to do with the way that green manufacturers have been able to – in a very political sense – determine that there is money behind it and to get the audience and the client on board in a really disingenuous way.  I think we fight the client a lot in terms of “green” as a marketing strategy that isn’t appropriate to Louisville.  Instead let’s find something equally sustainable that is appropriate to this project or city.

RD: Not only do we have to educate our clients, but that also means we have to educate ourselves on these technologies.  It is like buying a box of cereal that says “All Natural”…  There are a few buildings in Louisville with all the system bells and whistles. It is initially awkward when clients request this in their projects as a “demonstration” of green for Louisville because it is so opposite of what we think is appropriate.

RP: They are successful buildings, for what they are trying to say. We run into awkwardness with clients when they accept that as the default understanding of what building sustainably means.  We have to convince them that they can achieve an equal level of success – just in a different paradigm.

Now read De Leon and Primmer’s responses to the Architectural League Questionnaire.