Interview with Uriel Fogué

Cecilia Andersson:
I notice you call yourself an architectural agent, not a studio. Please tell me a bit about that.

Uriel Fogué:
The construction process involves a complex network of relationships where different agents necessarily have to reach all kind of agreements. Conflict is the main material that builds architecture; using J. Mehlman’s words, we could state that the intervention in the city is a battlefield that culminates in a convergence of interests. When our role in the city making is that of an agent, rather than an author-creator, we can understand Architecture as a space of political participation, and not just as the prescription of technological solutions to the citizen’s demands. Architecture loses an opportunity every time it does not get involved in the dynamics of the city, every time it waits for an ideal reality to become true, while other powerful agents silently develop their strategies.

Cecilia:
You have spoken about how each citizen is potentially an architect. How do you envision that in practical terms? Can you give an example?

Uriel:
The idea relates to the strong link between the consumption of resources and our cities' public space. If we assume that our energy consumption habits initiate a relationship with the environment (either implicitly or explicitly), we will understand how the politics of our daily life are affected by, but also affect, the space in which we live.
Every way of living is inscribed in the space of the city, because the way we all behave impacts on our assembled context. Our day-to-day aesthetics are marked by, but also create and alter, the environment in which we dwell. In other words, the citizen's habits have an impact on the city. Therefore, the citizen becomes an active agent with the abilities and capacities of an architect. Inhabiting is no different than reaching agreements, establishing links, performing and working with the environment.

- Management of energy = design of space
- Inhabiting = Managing energy
- Citizen habits = architectural effects
- Citizen = architect


Cecilia:
I’m also very interested to hear more about how you want to realize ideas where citizens ‘inhabit’ infrastructure itself. I suppose it has to do with adjusting a system that is way too standardized and cumbersome, as well as uneconomical and wasteful, and give space for individual choices. Please give an indication as to what actions you’re involved with pertaining to the possibility of improving and inhabiting infrastructure, which to me sounds like a rather poetic endeavor?

Uriel:
Modern cities from the 1930’s to the 1960’s tried to make their infrastructures invisible. Apparently, it was due to technical requirements but, nowadays, this condition is not operative anymore. Now that infrastructures are exposed we have realized that, apart from the technical requirements, there were also ideological causes related to the way modern cities had been designed at the time. Modern instructions, such us the unity of History, the unity of Reason, the closed definition of the historical subject, etc. had as a result an implicit design of a universal and necessary final user. The definition of this user as an objectivity left no space for plurality. This artificial operation is not sustainable anymore and therefore, a change of the section of the city has been led by the market and the infrastructure consumerism. We as architects need to undertake this fact as a new programme requirement and get involved in the shaping of this ‘invasion’, sketching up the integration of this new ‘infrastructure-citizens’. It is a great opportunity that challenges the public spaces of our cities. It is not (only) my poetic endeavour, but indeed a political challenge!

Cecilia:
What do you see as the most urgent concern for architects in regards to the current situation in Madrid?

Uriel:
Architects should understand the political and performative dimension of (aesth)ET(h)ICs, exploring the opportunities that the development of this new change of paradigm (in which we are all involved, whether we like it or not) offers as a challenge to us.

The work of an architect (not only in Madrid) is always a bet that is shaped through the design. In my opinion some of the more urgent bets in regards to the current situation would be the following:
Bet 1: To re-assemble environments.
Bet 2: To design of energy-products.
Bet 3: Drawing up of contracts that recognize all the city agents.
Bet 4: To promote technological complexity as a space for possible agreements and discussions, giving the possibility to the citizens to take part in the otherwise closed processes.
Bet 5: The promotion of desire.
Bet 6: The exploration of density.
Bet 7: The involvement of the citizens.
Bet 8: The [critical] inheritance of the ‘old’ city.
Bet 9: To reach an agreement on a new definition of ‘classical’.
And Bet 10: To discuss the latest city developments.

Interview with Andrés Jaque

Cecilia Andersson:
I’m so impressed by the rings you produce. Your idea is that its wearer signal s/he consumed 100 liters of water today. Tell me a bit about this - how you as an architect became interested to communicate facts that reach beyond an architects’ remit?

Andrés Jaque:
For many years, during what has been called the modern parenthesis, architects were occupied trying to invent new realities; new cities, new houses, new infrastructures. And these new entities where supposed to be without doubt better. But now I think architecture is not so much the making of new realities but the rendering of reality as a public affair, as a matter of concern. On the one hand making visible the connection between different realities where our action happens, and making it possible for anyone to take decisions depending on his or her sensitivity. Architecture is becoming less scientific, and more political.

Cecilia:
Tell me a bit about the processes involved in your way of working. I’m for example curious to hear more about the role memory plays, and how you dig into memory when working with a client. Teddy House would be one obvious example.

Andrés:
I ask myself, where does the respectable knowledge rest? This is the question architects face when taking decisions. I believe architecture should be a parliament, rather than a temple. It is not about constructing a pure and idealized object, but give representation to the concerns, hopes and sensitivities of all the actors involved in a building process (humans and non-humans). Knowing that many of these parts would never be compatible without the mediation architecture can provide. Architecture is in my opinion ‘society technologically represented’.

Cecilia:
Bruno Latour talks about the parliament of things, and that modernity basically was concerned with classifying objects and subjects. We’re in the process of slowly shaking ourselves out of modernism, approaching a hybrid existence where the technological and organic interstice. How would you envision this parliament to function in an ideal way?

Andrés:
As Latour explains, it is important to understand politics are embodied neither in humans nor in objects, but in a network of associations between humans and non-humans (technology, institutions, animals, future generations). The only chance for democracy to survive is for democracy to be installed in these associations, in what has been called an object oriented democracy. In my opinion this way of thinking challenges modernity as a context of reference for architecture. We can now see how architectural events become issues that concentrate public disputes. I agree with Bruno Latour, associations between washing-machines, windows, users, resources… are in great need of a chamber where their relations can be accounted for. And in this process we architects can decide not to take part or become compulsory pass point. I myself chose the second option.

Cecilia:
You’re talking about an ‘invisible’ design - more of a process than resulting in an object. Would you say this is mainly a socio-political ambition?

Andrés:
Exactly. But it is important to see this not as an immaterial process. After 1968 architects turned to leave the pursuit of immutable objects for a revendication of immateriality. Even today this idea of architecture without matter is quite sexy and desirable. In my opinion reality is constituted both by material and non-material things. The sand of the beach managed over time by the surf, the naturist ideology of body exposure or knowing how to swim. Innovation can only succeed with a parallel respond to the way reality is constructed. With evolutions that on the one hand transform the material constitution while simultaneously transforming the immaterial devices they are connected to and act together with. There is no divorce between matter, social institution and architectural devices, whether we wish this or not, and create and exclude possibilities for both. In my opinion this is one the central issues that make a clear distinction between many architects of my generation and many of the previous ones. We know the idea of a generic architecture that would serve with the same efficiency to different social constructions never really worked. Architecture is not the neutral background for life, neither a passive and apolitical agent. A loft is not a neutral house where any micro society could happen, it is only the place where educated occidentals without too many environmental limitations imagine anything could happen.

Cecilia:
What would you like to see happening in Madrid in terms of its architectural development? Considering the city has grown massively during the past few years, and now more or less on a complete stand still.

Andrés:
Madrid is a city with lots of evidences, lots of big and expensive facts. It is time for these facts to be connected with people’s dreams and concerns. How can we create a residential fabric that liberate people from their heavy mortgages and that let them change jobs when they feel like it (without having to question if they will be able to pay the bills). How can we make it possible for people to move about, go to the movies for instance but without ruining the beautiful landscape that people loves. How can we build so that people employed on a building sites can be provided with reasonable incomes and safe conditions while at work. Madrid, like most cities is a great machine to achieve things. It is urgent to use such machines to produce the things that we, as a democratic society, desire.