LOT-EK

Recorded on February 12, 2025. Read a transcript at the bottom of the page.

Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano launched their joint firm, LOT-EK, in 1993 in New York right after finishing their post-professional masters at Columbia. As the recent documentary about their work claims, LOT-EK starts from the things they find. It’s an approach their entire body work supports. The firm received the Emerging Voices award in 1999, and in 2011 Tolla and Lignano were recognized as USA Fellows by United States Artists. Over the last 30 years, they have worked across a range of scales, from light fixtures, exhibitions, and pop-up experiences, to schools, homes, and housing—with projects in New York to Johannesburg, Korea to Australia. Their work has been exhibited and acquired by international cultural institutions worldwide, including the MAXXI in Rome , the Venice Biennale, MOMA, the Guggenheim, and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. They have taught at MIT, Syracuse, Parsons, in addition to their current roles as Adjunct Assistant Professors at GSAPP. Their recent and current projects include Spill at Hosfeld Gallery in San Francisco, The Black School House in New Orleans, Bal Harbour Shops in Florida, and the Lot Radio in Brooklyn.

About I Would Prefer Not To

Conceived and produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab and presented with The Architectural League, I Would Prefer Not To¹Herman Melville, “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street,” The Piazza Tales (1856). tackles a usually unexamined subject: the refusal of an architectural commission. Why do architects make the decision to forfeit the possibility of work? At what point is a commission not worth it? When in one’s career is it necessary to make such a decision? Whether concealed out of politeness or deliberately shielded from public scrutiny, architects’ refusals usually go unrecorded by history, making them difficult to analyze or learn from. In this series of recorded interviews, I Would Prefer Not To aims to shed light on the complex matrix of agents, stakeholders, and circumstances implicated in every piece of architecture.

Transcript

This transcript was created using speech-to-text AI software and was lightly edited for continuity. The text may not accurately capture all information or aspects of the conversation.

Ana Miljacki 00:21
Hello and thank you for tuning in. I’m Ana Miljacki, Professor of Architecture at MIT and director of the Critical Broadcasting Lab. And on behalf of the Architectural League of New York and the Critical Broadcasting Lab, I welcome you to our architecture podcast series titled I Would Prefer Not To. I Would Prefer Not To is an oral history project conducted through audio interviews on the topic of perhaps the most important kind of refusal in architects toolboxes, refusal of the architectural commission. By definition, the topic of refusal stays hidden from public scrutiny and thus also hidden from history. Withdrawals of this kind tend not to leave paper trails and are not easy to examine or learn from. And yet, the lessons contained in architects, deliberations about and decisions not to engage are politically relevant and urgent. Decisions to not engage a commission, or types of commissions, or commissions with certain characteristics inevitably forfeit potential profit placing other values above it, at least momentarily, today, I’m talking to the principals of LOT-EK, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, thank you for joining me, Ada and Giuseppe.

Giuseppe Lignano  01:33
Thank you for having us, Ana. And

Ada Tolla  01:35
Thank you, Ana. Exciting to be here with you.

Miljacki 01:37
Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, who come from the same neighborhood and same architecture school in Naples, launched their joint firm, LOT-EK in 1993 in New York right after finishing their post professional masters at Columbia. They start from the things they find, as the recent documentary about their work claims, and the entire body of LOT-EK work supports. The firm has received the Emerging Voices Award in 1999 and in 2011 Ada and Giuseppe were recognized as USA booth fellows of Architecture and Design by United States artists. Working across a range of scales over the last 30 years, from light fixtures through exhibitions and pop up experiences to schools, homes and housing, and from New York through Johannesburg to Korea and Australia, the firm now numbers nine people. Its work has been exhibited and acquired by international cultural institutions worldwide, from the MAXXI in Rome and the Venice Biennale to MOMA, the Guggenheim, and Whitney museums in New York. It has been presented in two different monographs and the movie I mentioned. They have taught at MIT, Syracuse, Parsons, in addition to their important roles at GSAPP, their recent and current projects include Spill at Hosfeld Gallery in San Francisco, The Black School House in New Orleans, Bal Harbour Shops in Florida, and the Lot Radio in Brooklyn. So Ada and Giuseppe, I know that your office is teaming with energy and different works in progress, but as always, in this program, we will start by talking about the work that is not happening. So let’s first talk about your most memorable decision to not engage or to drop a commission. And if that has not happened yet, can you imagine it happening and on what grounds?

Lignano  03:33
So, okay, so it’s interesting. This question is very interesting for us, and the reality is that we have never really turned down a commission, from the get go, so to speak, from the proposal of the commission, of a specific commission. But on the other side, instead, I could say that we turn down commissions almost weekly, so to speak. The type of work that we do is very different, it’s very unique in the panorama of architecture practice and production right now. And for that reason, we seem to always attract people that really only want what we do, and they don’t want anything else. So that has always created a very different place for us to be. On the other side, we have also the opposite thing, because our practice very much touches the construction method, the way that you actually build something, right? Because we work with existing objects. We work with existing infrastructure. It’s not conventional construction at all that. Definitely not when we’re talking about a building. So on the one hand, that excludes a priori, probably the more difficult clients, like developers, for instance, who always want to build the same way. They really are not interested. They may be interested in looking at other aspects of the architecture practice, but definitely not the construction methodology, right? They already know how they want to build something. It’s going to be, whatever. So that is already kind of a no, an intrinsic no. So the one end there is that, the other thing that instead happens constantly is that our practice is also mistakenly seen as cheap because we upcycle shipping containers or other things. People, especially that don’t know much about architecture and construction, they just come with the assumption that this is going to be some cheap thing. And of course, when we break it to them, when we tell them that it’s not like that… just today, I had a conversation like that, and the person was like, Okay, this is still very interesting to me. We’ll talk. I don’t know if we will talk again, but there is that aspect that kind of repeats quite a bit. And of course, we are not interested in those type of projects. They’re not interested in us once they discover the reality of what we do. But also we are not interested in… for us, it’s very important that what we do is a way of expanding the human experience, and the architecture experience, the artistic experience, not of reducing it. And therefore, there needs to be that interest, which, again, is always there in all the projects that we have done. What has happened in other other circumstances, the project has stopped because, basically, we understood that the client in the end was not really interested in what we were doing, or there was a misconception or a misunderstanding, and we have stopped some projects in that way. Was it us saying Basta? Maybe sometimes.

Tolla  07:20
I think never. 

Lignano  07:23
That’s the other part. 

Tolla  07:24
I think we never. I was very puzzled. I mean, I’ve been following a little bit your podcast from the beginning, and I kept thinking about the fact that we, I think we suffer also from a condition that is very of the architects, a sort of desperate optimism that is the one that wants you always to think that no matter what, you can do it, and not just that you can do the thing, but that you can do the thing you want, the thing you hope for, the thing you are setting your desires on.That you can do it really well and that it can work out. And I think the attitude that which is probably a good one, right, because you enter things with embracing and joy, is also the one that makes it difficult to see when the match is not right. I literally, we spent hours thinking about, did we ever say no? Did we ever say no? And the only thing I could think about is saying no to someone that we had worked with for 10 years, never built anything. And after the last drop, we said: we are never working with this person ever again. But it was a no to a project, and then the other big no was, we’re not gonna join this, sort of blackmail, of these paid awards that are invading our life. Where you’re just, you’re paying to submit your project. We’re not gonna pay to submit any project anywhere. But these are the only moments where we conscientiously said no to something. Otherwise we always went in.

Miljacki 09:19
So this position, your position that you start with the things you find, or, as Ada said in a recent interview, you respond creatively to what humanity has pushed aside, has had both material and maybe organizational implications for the firm. And so maybe another way to talk about this is, how do you navigate the landscape of your interests and commissions? Do you have criteria that you go by? Do you seek out specific situations, or do you seek out specific ways of describing situations, or both?

Tolla  09:53
Yeah, I think we’re attempting to do that, but it’s definitely true that we have also not, meaning we have also followed more just the flow of things, as it happened, and luckily, we’ve also encountered a lot of beautiful things following this flow. But it’s really interesting, if I think about that sentence, applied to the landscape of commissions, not just to the landscape of objects that we take on. There is something very, very true in there. Obviously, we are thinking with much more intention at this moment, and in that, of course, there is also a lot of exclusions and more like, where do we bring our intention? What are the projects that we really want to continue?

Miljacki 10:46
So this is a question about how you manage to cultivate this particular body of work, which I agree, is very specific, right? So what do you say yes to?

Lignano  10:56
Right. And first, I wanted to go back to the parallel that Ada was doing now with what she said in the video this, which was, we take what is pushed aside, so in doing a parallelism with commissions, we have inherited projects that other people have started and completely screw it up in from the point of view of the client, right? Because there is something in the LOT-EK practice that is also about really forcing yourself to be very smart in creative solutions that are not wasteful, that take advantage of difficult situations and everything too, and when the client understands that, the work is very, very good. I think we really respond to, again, clients and commissions that align with our thinking, and not just with the practice, but with the thinking.

Tolla  12:21
I always say yes to people that don’t have money, projects that don’t pay, I’m very good! I could, I’m excellent at finding all the projects that I love, of course, that are more complex as far as budgeting, but for me, because I think I say yes to projects where there is, where I find the meaningfulness, not just in our action, but also in the intention and the possibility of growing through a project. For me it is very important. I have to say that I feel to some extent more liberated now that I’m older, because I feel that I can say yes to that, like I can! I can follow things that might not have the glitz and glamor or the size. Size is a big thing in architecture. I never feel bad working on things that are small or awkward. I think that there is, there are always interesting opportunities. Often there are opportunities for collaboration or for exchange. So I gravitate, in that word. For me, there is also the fact that it’s the same predicament, the container onto itself, is something that we all know at this point, and people respond to in different ways. And the same thing that Giuseppe was talking about at the beginning when he was saying, people expect something cheap and dirty and quick, right? But by the same token, people come to us because they think that with the container, you can easily do something temporary or something and often, for me, these are interesting opportunities because they’re a way to work outside of the conventional architecture project. Sometimes projects are quicker, they’re in public space, or they are utilitarian. We did these containers for Big Reuse, which is a composting facility. And it was really, for me, its always interesting to have the opportunity also to test some of the ideas in conditions that are not necessarily the commission, not necessarily predicated by the architecture commission.

Miljacki 14:46
I do eventually in this conversation want to link the things that you say yes to and the way in which, or no to, and the way in which you sustain the practice itself or have sustained over the last 30 years. But for now, I want to ask you something else, a little bit, slightly different, because you’ve also said many times, some of those times to me, that you start with pictures, which was the premise of your first monograph, Urban Scan and I’m wondering if we can talk about what you see and how you think about what you see? And also, maybe this is a long shot, a kind of expat type question, does Naples have anything to do with what you see?

Lignano  15:34
Yes, yes and yes (all laugh). Yeah, the urban scan really was, we started the urban scan back in 1990, 91 right? Ada and I always carried in our pocket the smallest available camera, way before phones existed. Our arrival here in the US in 89 and traveling all around it really illuminated the potential of the, let’s call it industrial landscape, but it really is everything that we make. We started calling it the artificial nature, nature meaning something that grows on its own, it seems almost under nobody’s jurisdiction, so to speak, and artificial, because we know that instead, it’s all man made, right? It’s all human made. And the proliferation of that, from driving in the middle of the desert in the West, and there is a lineup of vending machines in the middle of nowhere, right? Or antennas or all kinds of stuff. So we started looking at these objects and these growths within the natural environment, suburban environment, urban environment as an incredible potential. Potential in terms of the objects themselves, because they become obsolete and they are thrown out. And instead, we thought they could be reused. They are incredible objects. A lot of intelligence went into them, and a lot of material went into them. And we always said, we’re not just upcycling the object per se and the carbon footprint, but we’re upcycling the human intelligence that went behind that. And so we started just taking pictures of the stuff, and we were interested in the object per se, but also the way that they overlap, accumulate. Also you realize that people don’t see them, or they are actually photoshopped out. If you take a picture of a building or something that you’ve just taken, right, something that you don’t want to see. But instead, we see it as a great potential, and so Naples has a lot to do with that. We were like pre-tensed beans, right? The way that you do a pre-fabrication. We were already kind of prepped for this, because Naples is a place where this ingenuity of using things that you find, or things that are abandoned, or things that are very cheap, or whatever, very easy to obtain, is something that happens all the time. Also, Naples, as a 2800 year old city, is extremely layered, more than most European cities, even. So, the idea of transforming things, the idea that nothing is pure, that is always transformed, that its always layered with something else. There is no pure expression of anything and everything. My Roman market becomes a church, and the church becomes a home, and the home becomes something else, and the overlaps. And so I think we totally inherited, that’s in our DNA. And that’s what we actually, We have always been wanting to express. That ingenuity, or we always mention also our grandmothers, making the lunch the day after, with the leftovers of the dinner before, not just by warming them up, but by adding just a little bit and making a wonderful meal. And even better than the night before.

Miljacki 19:33
I’ll get to food, but Ada, do you agree?

Tolla  19:38
I mean, absolutely. I would add that at a more personal level, I think again, with age, it’s interesting to see how this has really become a practice for us, like, this kind of observation, pausing, reflection, studying, learning, questioning, through the camera on the environment around and the underlying question, this idea of finding beauty in odd circumstances that are not necessarily seen as beautiful, that is, again, is a daily practice of both learning what’s around us, tuning in with what’s around us, but it’s also very personal, of course, because it’s a way to just tune your mind to something else. And it, I think, is a very powerful thing for both of us. I find I feel very connected to it continuously. I mean, it’s interesting, after so many years, to feeling so connected to the practice as such.

Miljacki 21:12
So, in an interview in which you present a Brooklyn townhouse you designed, Giuseppe, you talk about sustainability as an interest that was at odds with the discipline, maybe in the late 90s and early 2000s and we now have words like circularity, upscaling, and I think, a more general awareness about the various types of cost that is routinely sunk into the material world. I’m not sure that this is the right setup, but I would like us to talk about circularity as both an aesthetic project and a kind of politics of materials and resources, starting with the things you see and find.

Tolla 21:55
It’s interesting also to have this question from you, we just did the little exhibition at MIT, where we really try to tackle that more explicitly, or at least visualize it, which is an interesting thing, because it’s again, some of these things have also become some form of research for us, but not necessarily something that comes into the projects or through the projects, because the projects are the projects and they’re homes and buildings and installation and so on and so forth. But as you said, we resisted early on, we resisted some of the terminology, and we embrace it much more now. Upcycling is definitely a word that we have loved the appearance of because suddenly we could just live with the things we have, not trash them into smithereens and reuse them with some glue. But, yeah, the circularity is definitely twofold; to connect to the question on the urban scan is very much also about reinventing something that has to do also with our present, who we are right now. Thinking very strongly that the things that we project are also very grounded in who we are as a culture, but also as an economy. The container is the economy of right now, very interestingly, particularly in this particular moment, with the talks about tariffs and everything, and this idea of, while we are a completely interconnected world, attempting to chop these limbs, right? To some extent. But it’s an object that we have loved very instinctively, to then learn how invasive of a species it is, how profoundly invasive, and to come to terms with that, and to some extent that validates the work we do, because we should use more and more and more and more to try to be part of this series of leftovers that come out, but at the same time, just reflecting on, how can we also express what they do and what they are? And, it’s interesting, when we were talking also about, what are the things that we say no to, one that came out as Giuseppe and I were discussing was we always said no to cover the container. So to some extent, this idea of honesty…

Lignano  24:33
Or to cover something else, yeah.

Tolla  24:35
Yeah. But the idea of the object needs to be honest to what it is. It can transform. It can become colorful, happy, joyful, say something, but it’s still that. You see it as that, Its still a piece of our culture, of our economy, of our politics right now.

Lignano  24:55
Yeah, that’s where the connection between the circularity in an environmental way coincides with the artistry of that, right? 

Miljacki 25:05
The aesthetics, yeah. 

Lignano  25:06
Its a little bit like pop art, like Andy Warhol glorifies a Campbells Soup, but it needs a Campbells Soup, and the image of the Campbell Soup is the image of the Campbell Soup. So we then we made that aspect of the containers, we also used to make, lamps with detergent bottles, and they would say, oh, but why don’t you remove the tide thing, or why don’t you cover this and so on and so forth. So interestingly, one thing that I would mention also in this vein, is that, what we have become interested in, in all of this from an environmental point of view, is the idea of waste in general, right? That’s what really is at the base. And interestingly enough, there is a Neapolitan philosopher who wrote a very important book called Wasteoscene. His name is Michael…. Marco Armiero. You know him, Ana?

Miljacki 26:02
No I don’t.

Lignano  26:03
He published this book that is called…

Tolla  26:05
He works in Holland, in the upper European, Holland, Stockholm. So he’s more in the Northern European academic realm. But it makes a very interesting argument on the Anthropocene and the Wasteoscene, as in really defining waste.

Lignano  26:27
What he says, very simply is, we design what’s waste. We decide what’s waste. Waste doesn’t exist. We say, Oh, this thing I don’t want anymore, this is waste, and I throw it out. So what the artist does, what we do is through aesthetics, through finding beauty in this thing, you’re giving value back to this object, right? Because it’s all about that.

Miljacki 26:53
Let me ask you, I want to offer you this before you completely answered it already. Because I was there as well, where you, Ada, went. And so in the conversation that we had a while ago with students at MIT, and, probably a decade ago, you talked about the difference between a stew and a salad. And maybe this is something that is a trope, and the way that their different tectonic makeup, let’s say, makes different readings available. And I thought this had to do with a certain way that circularity or repurposing or determining is always visible and accessible in your projects through fragmentary figuration, either that visibility or there’s an aesthetic dimension that you insist on in relation to the circularity itself, right?

Tolla  27:00
There is also just, this is crazy, but there is also just love. I mean, if you are living with something or someone, but this is really a thing, for this many years, with such a vengeance, and then you know the in and outs and the little, you know, little nooks and and spaces below, to the side, on top. You become very enamored with the object. And I think that that is also a piece of it. There is also an enamorment.

Miljacki 28:19
So I’m going to come back to the container, because I feel like that was an ode to it. But I’m hoping that before we do that, we discuss a little bit the mechanics of your collaborations with clients, with users, with contractors, with fabricators. Who tends to want to work with you? How do they find you? And how do you find them?

Lignano  28:42
Who tends to work with us? People from all walks of life, I have to say, but definitely people that are interested in art in general, right? People that are very tuned with contemporary art in some way, and they see the expression of that in our work. Those are the people that I was mentioning at the beginning. Those are the client that, once they discover us, they can only work with us. They tell you very clearly I couldn’t work with anybody else. This is what I’m looking for. Because I’m not looking for glitz and glamor. I’m not looking for just a cool shape. I’m not looking, I want something that is meaningful, right? And so that’s what, that’s what we tend to attract basically. 

Miljacki 29:39
Does the same apply to contractors and fabricators?

Lignano  29:42
Contractors, the interesting thing is fabricators, and there has always been a little bit of a distinction in our work with that because with a lot of the work that we do on the object, even before it’s brought to site, whether it is a building or an Installation in an interior or somewhere, there is a lot of prefabrication work that happens. And what we have discovered is that it’s very tough to find people that would want to do that, but once you find them, they’re really, really, really enthusiastic? To give you an example, we were doing a project in 2000 which was using a, you know, one of the elliptical tanks. It was the Morton loft. And the person that was working with us, who actually went to MIT after, was calling around all the companies that deal with these things, that fix them and everything. And they were like, what are you talking about? What do you want to do? Or even get upset, hang up on him. But then we find Peter Garafano, owner of Garafano Tank company. And he was like, Really, we can do that together? Oh, my God, that would be fantastic! Why don’t you come over here and then the workers, it would infuse that enthusiasm also in the workers. Because imagine a company that deals with this tank, that all they do is touch them, fix them, put the thing that has fallen and so on and all of a sudden they’re doing two sleeping pods and two bathrooms on two pieces of this thing. And for them it was… and then, seeing it published and everything… and the amount that you learn, they we learned, because these are not even fabricators that are already set up to do that, right? We really make them do things for the first time, and we were doing them for the first time. So we were learning together. We were learning a lot from them, because they own all the know-how. They know, as Ada was saying before, because they love them, and also, just because they work with them every day, they know every nook and cranny of every piece that they work with.

Tolla 32:00
The fabricator has been a really fantastic ride, because we obviously have inserted in a path that already exists of the post-industrial, in a way. We are entering this kind of post-industrial world, but bringing projects that are completely tangential to their, I mean, or they go in the opposite direction of their conventional practice. So of course, there is an enthusiasm and a curiosity and an engagement. Even when you go to a container shop and say, let’s cut these six containers with a diagonal slant throughout everything from roof to bottom, it’s just the, whether it’s the operation or the attitude towards the object. It just allows them, I think, also, to look at these objects differently. And that is very exciting. I had a really beautiful moment when we were testing for the first time the idea of recombining the containers without actually connecting them, just trying to see if we could compose larger volumes, just recombining them differently. And the guy that was driving me, that was driving this forklift the entire day, at the end of the day, came down, entered, and he told us that his family was doing that, he was from a family of container people and so on and so forth. He walked in, and he kneeled down and pulled out his phone and took pictures. And for me, it was such a beautiful moment, the idea that somebody that has been in that world could finally see it in another way, you know, to another eye.

Miljacki 33:52
So let me stay with love now. So the shipping container, I would say, has become your friendly collaborator over the years as well, and I’ve tended to see it as a manifestation of starting with the existing and the discarded. But I’m sure that you now know its properties intimately, and so does it still surprise you? Are there types of programs that you have found to click with it better than others?

Tolla 34:21
Does it surprise us? Do we make him surprised? When we cut the first cut of steel, which was cut on the corner instead of on a face of the container, that was another really surprising moment, the idea of, like, oh, you can crop this box in, like, you can bite into this box, in a completely different way, where you’re not following the idea of facade, ceiling, floor, side, but you’re looking at it as a volume. And intervene on the volume quality of it. So there are moments like this for sure, and I guess that’s why we’re not letting go.

Lignano  35:08
But also, it’s interesting, because we know it very well for sure. Our structure engineer, Silman, knows it very well as well. We’ve been doing this together forever, and our collaboration is basically key in everything. But we always push it. We push it, we push Silman, and it is always a challenge. It’s still always a challenge. It’s interesting when you don’t work with a loose material, right, that you form, but you work with something that exists, that is three dimensional, that is very simple, but a lot of detailing and everything. As Ada was saying, Oh, well, all of a sudden, you cut it in the corner, or you decide to cantilever it, it’s always, especially seeing also through the lens of structure engineering, with Silman, that you can, if you put them together in a certain way, they become a Vierendeel truss. Oh, really, this becomes a Vierendeel truss? So you discover also, you feel almost like a child. You feel like you’re doing a science project all the time. But there is also, a lot of it that has become easy, right? That has become, almost, you can just mail it as they say, or you can just phone it in. Bu twe don’t like to be in that place. We always push it further.

Miljacki 36:42
So are there things that are better for it or with it than others?

Lignano  36:47
I don’t think that it’s about the program. I don’t think it’s about the program. I think it’s more about the ambition of the construction and how much you want to push it

Tolla 37:03
The dream, Its interesting because we’ve been relooking at projects for so long. We had to really just use projects built because our practice was just so awkward that we couldn’t show the rendering, it made it not credible, rather than more credible. But now that we believe we have acquired a little credibility, because we have done a couple of things, we have gone back and fished out projects that we did, either in context of competitions or of our own intention that are more, just much bigger, different scale, different kind of intention, also with an idea of really reusing the container, not reusing 6, 10, 24 but reusing 1000s. And it’s been very exciting to see that. There’s a part of me that, of course, nurtures this part of us that nurtures this dream that one day we could see something like that in in existence, like something that as a completely different…

Lignano  38:16
Our very first project with a container, there was a competition, was very ambitious, very, very ambitious. And also already, in a very simple way, already gave us an idea of the huge potential of using these 40 foot long beams, because it’s basically what it is. But at the same time, it’s a brick, and at the same time it’s a space and it’s a thing, so it has, you can look at it like, Yin and Yang. You can look it in so many different ways, but it was very ambitious, huh? The Goree, the Goree Memorial.

Miljacki 38:53
Yeah, I know it. So, one more about the container. It’s a material artifact, product of global logistical networks, as you suggested, Ada, and you have landed it in various spots around the globe. And I’m interested in that, the globality or the globalness of your project, but I’m also interested in all of the other found objects that have made their appearances over the years, the fuselage, the plastic can, the metal sinks. And maybe that really produces two questions that I would like to ask you, two separate ones. One is about sites or locations in which you practice, and how you think about that, or the container finding itself around the world. And the other one is about the place of the container, among other objects that have interested you.

Tolla  39:47
The question of site, there is something interesting, now, having worked, having put these little seeds everywhere because somehow it does reflect its global nature, right? It’s not just accidentally there, its there because it is there everywhere, right? And so our projects don’t do anything else that make it visible in another form, right? That makes it visible, also in its form, because just seeing it in this weird place makes us more aware of the fact that they are around. So there’s something, I think there’s something very interesting in that it has definitely been a strength for us, the fact that wherever we worked, they were there. Every time we were working on a competition, a far-out idea, an initial sketch for a place, we would just, we would just go and spend a little bit of time doing research, and poof, the containers showed up. So the omnipresence that is, again, fantastic and very scary at the same time, is definitely a component that is interesting to see now deployed, I think, for me. Even more interesting than when we were at the onset, and thinking that this is something that we would do in one place or in another place. The other objects have suffered, I think, have suffered profoundly, because we left them out somehow, we didn’t dedicate the same amount of time and love. And it’s interesting, because today we were relooking, I just found these files of these projects that we did in the 2000s using larger objects, in particular the fuselages, the tanks and the billboards. And it was so exciting to see them and to see how some of the design logic and intuitions on how to work with an object and what to use and what not and how to activate, especially urban sites. We’re totally city people, so we always tend to think very much about how objects like that can enter a 25 by 100, 50 by 100, a more typical lot typology that we imagine in the city. But they’ve definitely suffered. And I think we’re in a moment where we want to fish them out a little bit and take the opportunity and the time to love them a little bit more, and to see if something can happen. It’s been very interesting driving around. There’s a lot of empty billboards, and I keep wondering if it’s because, as a technology its receding. Because, of course, now there is actual media, and the billboard with a piece of paper may be obsolete to some extent. So is that an opportunity?

Lignano  43:09
The other objects we still use, and we’ve always used for non-building projects. We’ve done these projects that Ada was mentioning, also the one time that we taught at MIT, we divided our class in two, and six of them studied the airplane fuselage, and six of them studied the municipal size water tank. And we did projects ourselves with that. But when we do a project, Spill, for instance, it’s the first time we do an art project in the gallery in which we use a container. Typically, when we work, when we work that muscle, because it’s possible, we use other objects. We experiment with other objects. And it’s taken the 30 years we’ve been in business to really make the idea of building a code compliant, zoning compliant, building with these objects. We didn’t invent anything really. We just modified everything that already exists like always. But it has been a real effort. We would love to use other objects at an architectural scale, but it would take, it will take… It’s a big effort. It’s a big effort to figure it out.

Miljacki 44:30
I think of this as cultivating a very particular practice, yeah. But I know that you said, Ada, at some point during this conversation that projects are projects and research, you made a difference between them. But I would like to think, when I think of this body of work as a form of research, I want to ask you things like, are there important feedback loops within this body of work or this research, from photograph to building, from discarded to appropriated, from the kitchen sink to the shipping container, what are the ways that you navigate that? And would you let me call it research?

Tolla  44:30
If you think about the fact that even the container work is not mainstream, that’s the place we’re in. That’s back to your question. We don’t say no, because we still don’t have some of those options in front of us. And to some extent, that has been going back also to the idea of feeling good about age. For me, the idea that we haven’t participated in some of the not very interesting speculations and construction around us makes me feel good, you know, makes me feel good that we didn’t take part in some of that. It is definitely research because it has the spirit of that. It has the intention and the exploration and the curiosity and the open-mindness And the figuring out as we go that is very central to research. So I think the word is definitely correct. My resistance is more with the overlap of the world research, especially in the academic environment, that I always feel a little hesitant about, because I think that our work is more intuitive and is more hands on, and is more learning through doing, rather than this…

Miljacki 46:37
This is why I called it feedback loops. Right?

Tolla  46:40
Yes, yes. 

Lignano  46:42
It definitely is. There’s definitely the feedback loop, for sure. When we teach at Columbia, we teach seminar in the fall and we teach studio in the spring, and they’re both based on making, having the students really make with their own hands. And we always talk about the idea of thinking through making and not thinking before making, like architects typically do, right? So for me, the reason why I would also be a little bit hesitant in calling it purely research, because typically, because in architecture, there is this idea that you can derive architecture practice from research, which is not real because choices are choices, and they’re not really based on your research. It’s not real for us. It’s not real for us. I guess for us, it’s more about the fact that you actually understand something as you make it and understand the vocation.

Miljacki 47:44
Or take it apart, yeah.

Lignano  47:46
Or take it apart, yeah. If you cut into it, right, it’s like a dissection.

Miljacki 48:06
So reading through your website, I concluded a few things that you do, or you did, a lot of competitions, that some developers seek you out. But also for Black School in New Orleans, you have a donations button, which suggests a different mode of work entirely. And I’m wondering if you can describe that landscape of ways in which you support your work, and your work supports you?

Tolla  48:34
In the past years, I think we’ve been lucky to have projects that were very solid financially, that could allow us also to engage in projects they require more attention on that end. And that has been fantastic, I mean, to have the opportunity to do both, and all the projects are all for us. All the projects are, all of our projects are on our website. There’s nothing to hide. We love the projects we do, and we do them with a lot of love. So, but to have the opportunity to work with these different modes has been very, very exciting, because it has also allowed us to have a different kind of commitment on things that is beyond also just the sitting down at the desk and trying to think correctly about something. And this has happened a little bit also with this, we have a couple of projects down south. One, I don’t know if its on the website yet, but they’re projects also that require more ground presence, more community engagement, more understanding. Also, what the realm around the project is that is outside of just the specific site. And very enriching, and something that we find very meaningful and very happy to be working.

Lignano  49:29
The donate button on The Black School, of course, is to raise money for the last bit of construction budget that was not obtained.

Tolla  50:23
The foundations are finished. It’s a project that is moving forward. Very exciting.

Lignano  50:31
It’s moving. They are a fantastic duo, the head of Black school, super active and everything and but we have received a lot of requests from a lot of non-profit, similar nonprofit organizations that really need a home. And they need a home in a place where there is not even really stuff to rent. And as you may or may not know, private American money from private foundations goes to these nonprofit organization only for programming, and programming can maybe include the rental of the place where they are, but they will not give us money for construction, design and construction. Mellon foundation started after the George Floyd murder supporting capital projects with Justin Garrett Moore at the head of that department. And as a matter of fact, Black School got a very nice chunk of money from them. But it’s still, construction projects are always more expensive than they need to be and so there is need for more. But the one that were doing in Mississippi, the conversion of a former juvenile detention center into an art school in the city of Macomb, Mississippi, just an hour north of New Orleans, really needed, the people, the community that really wants it, really needs it, and everything… 

Tolla  50:31
In a way, this goes back to love, to the question of love, because I think that the projects like this also require a different presence there. It’s interesting in this moment in which we all work from everywhere and we can, but the fact that these projects require more hands on, more physical presence and different understanding of things and being resourceful in different way, participating in that being resourcefulness more actively, also as a thinker. On one end, I can tell you, I loved, I love all of that. I always feel that rolling up my sleeves and doing more is more exciting, not less exciting. I don’t love the model of the architect sitting behind the desk in front of a screen, that’s not a model that I, that reflects my personality or my desire but it’s also just exciting to be able to provide a different level of engagement.

Miljacki 53:15
It sounds like in the way you manage the office, there are also feedback loops between projects financially, right? That enable the work that you do? 

Lignano  53:26
Yeah.

Miljacki 53:28
Let me ask you a slightly different question. So you describe on your website again, you describe LOT-EK as a tight knit team of architects, thinkers and makers, and I’m wondering if you have procedures in place by which you both expose this team to the realities of running the office, and do you invite your team to think collectively about the commissions that you will and will not take? 

Tolla  55:24
Absolutely. Ana, you’ve never been to our new studio, which is really tight and all open. Our studios have always been very open, but before there was more space, now there isn’t even that much space. So the space is fairly intimate. But it’s not just the space, it’s really, we are very close. We’re very close. And we work on things together very much. There is no shut door where something else happens on the commissions, because it’s all in the light. It’s in the light as we continue working on projects, it’s in the light when we struggle, it’s in the light where we hit difficult spots with clients. It they’re all very open conversations, and we’re really growing together.

Lignano  54:53
After COVID, we reduced basically to the number that we are now, also because we decided that we didn’t want to have production of construction documents in the office. We still do all our construction documents, but we do it with a remote team, and which has allowed us to really have in the office the thinkers, the makers, the doers, so to speak, and to share even more.

Tolla  55:24
This past year has been, this past couple of years have been interesting because also through the art projects, we’ve done a lot of traveling together, and these are amazing bonding moments, of course, both for some of the work on the objects themselves and for the exhibition. And also we started doing the retreats annually for the studio, and that has been another great bonding moment of going to places together and spending a couple of days together, just thinking about where we’re going. So there is a lot of open conversation. It’s interesting because the studio is still very foregrounded by the two of us, every time it’s like, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, and there’s a part of me that wonders how much other voices are willing to come out, you know? And sometimes it’s just, it’s a default that is hard to unset or reset. But within the studio is definitely a very, very open environment.

Miljacki 56:33
I have a couple more questions and hopefully still energy in the in the room to discuss them. Did you ever regret taking or not taking a commission? Oh yes.

Tolla  56:49
Oh yeah.

Lignano  56:50
Oh yes.

Miljacki 56:51
Which one?

Tolla  56:51
Taking, yeah, taking, yes,

Lignano  56:56
Taking, absolutely. That’s what we said, we never said no. In the end, we thought about it, and it’s what’s more happened is that they’ve broken, that you get married… 

Tolla  57:07
That something broke. 

Lignano  57:08
You get married, and then you divorce, we’ve had a few divorces before.

Speaker 1  57:12
And it’s painful, because you think about the fact, you always think about we have to learn, but I don’t think you can learn…

Lignano  57:19
No but also because, it’s puzzling, because, if I think of the majority of these divorces are all people that on paper, and relationships that on paper were good matches, were more than good matches. But there was something underneath that, instead, wasn’t clear, I guess, right? And it didn’t work out.

Miljacki 57:41
How would you describe the conditions in which LOT-EK does its best work?

Tolla  57:47
Oh, client. Connection with client, for me, is more important than money, is more important than budget, is more important than resources. The connection with client is everything, and of course, also with the builders and the team in general. But for me, in time, because projects, architecture projects take forever, it’s crazy. We are building a project that took 10 years, our hair went from black to gray in the span of time, it’s just insane how long it takes. So in that amount of time, of course, the relationship is very very important. 

Lignano  58:33
The most important thing is…

Tolla  58:35
And there are always tons of obstacles, tons of issues, tons of difficulties, tons of money problems, tons of other problems. So if there is an understanding, a tight relationship of trust, I think you can get through. You get through, right? You work through things. But that is a really, really essential.

Lignano  58:58
It’s a trust, but it’s also, as I was saying before, connecting at the level of thinking. What I really mean by that is that the priorities are aligned.

Miljacki 59:09
So is there an ideal commission that you can imagine?

Lignano  59:13
Ideal or dream commission? Yes. What we’re dreaming of right now, one is to do a project like our Drivelines in Johannesburg, closer to us, more within our community, whether it is Brooklyn or we would love to do a project like that.

Tolla  59:35
Like a large housing project, that also brings forward a way to be together, to create a social place.

Lignano  59:48
There’s a part of me, especially, I would love to do a hotel as a place of fantasy, as a place of gathering and fantasy. We were bummed that a project that we were doing through COVID, Its a commission that arrived during lockdown for Northeastern in Boston, and it was a fantastic project. And the idea of two fantastic projects that we were doing with them, we got through the schematics…

Tolla  1:00:17
Student center. 

Lignano  1:00:19
The idea of working with universities and places of culture, we would love to do something like that. And then there’s a dream of an Archive-Museum, of a Museum-Archive. A museum that is an archive and a museum at the same time, where there is no distinction between…

Tolla  1:00:39
Where the utilitarian meets the…

Lignano  1:00:42
Display where there is no back of house and front of house.

Tolla  1:00:47
Where the back of the house is the house

Lignano  1:00:48
It’s a real museum, like a dictionary that you can go through and see stuff. And I’m frustrated with museums that now are all Kunsthalle that have these incredible, incredible collections, and you cannot see it. I mean, libraries seem more or less important than museums from that point of view, because you can really read anything anywhere but to actually see the real thing, and not just an image of it. It’s such an important thing, and it’s really frustrating that there is, that there isn’t a place like that, and we have such great ideas about this, this machine that is both an archive and a museum.

Miljacki 1:01:32
I hear you. So Ada and Giuseppe, thank you very much for talking to me today. And listeners, thank you for listening to this episode of I Would Prefer Not To, produce by myself and Julian Geltman, 

Lignano  1:01:46
Thank you so much!

Tolla  1:01:48
Thank you Ana, and thank you, Julian. Really wonderful spending this time with you.