ACTUALMENTE BAROZZI Y VEIGA TRABAJAN EN DOS NUEVOS PROYECTOS EN SUIZA, UN MUSEO Y UNA ESCUELA DE DANZA, COMENZARON DOS EDIFICIOS EN LONDRES Y SE APRONTAN PARA UN CONJUNTO RESIDENCIAL EN BARCELONA. EN MAYO ESPERAN COMENZAR UNO DE SUS PROYECTOS MÁS APRECIADOS: LA CASA DE CRETAS, “QUE ES IMPRESIONANTE, HECHA COMO A PARTIR DE UN SUEÑO”, SEGÚN LA DESCRIBE VEIGA.
CURRENTLY BAROZZI AND VEIGA ARE WORKING ON TWO NEW PROJECTS IN SWITZERLAND, A MUSEUM AND A DANCE SCHOOL, THEY’VE BEGUN TWO BUILDINGS IN LONDON AND THEY ARE PREPARING FOR A RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX IN BARCELONA. IN MAY THEY HOPE TO START ONE OF THEIR MOST PRIZED PROJECTS: THE HOUSE OF CRETAS, “WHICH IS IMPRESSIVE, MADE AS FROM A DREAM”, AS DESCRIBED BY VEIGA.
And the result earned you the 2015 Mies Van Der Rohe Award. In retrospective, what did the prize mean? - We had no aspiration to win anything, but it was a tremendous joy because when we won the Tzscezin competition we were quite inexperienced and suffered a lot for a lot of years. During the first two years we only dedicated ourselves to this building, we were terrified because it was a very big project, we signed contracts and clauses we did not imagine existed ... We did not have a good time, really. Now I remember it with nostalgia, but I would not repeat what we went through. We were lucky with this work, not because it was right or wrong, but because of how quickly people identified with it. I think we won the Mies award because the jury observed how people identified with the building without seeing it as a UFO in the middle of the city. Seeing how it is used, that everything works, that it is ‘worn’ is the best, it is what makes you proud. How is work organized in the office? - When we did the philharmonic, we signed a leonine contract with the local government. We decided not to do anything else until we finished it, and we didn’t know how to do it ... But the studio has changed a lot and today we are 17 people, although it is still scary because almost always we do almost everything for the first time and we almost never know what to do. It is very nice because fortunately we have jobs in very different places,
which forces us to take everything very seriously. You don’t know what we will find, what is the solution or the answer or what is expected of us, because it is different to be an architect in Chile, in Italy or in Spain. We still have to ask each time the basic question: what can we do here ... But it is common in new generations, at least in Europe, where we have understood that we no longer work alone. We know that every time we sit down at a table with something new we need everyone involved. And the result is not fruit of our sleepless nights or hours of obsession, but of the ability to form a cohesive team. Regarding the new generations, what do you think about how future architects are being taught? Are they given the tools to question themselves as you do? - I am not a teacher, I don’t have direct experience, but what I can say is that I was not a vocational architect, what always caught my attention was its humanist character. It allows you to open your eyes to many things at the same time, and if I were a student what I would like is for teaching to maintain that spirit, to open my way of seeing. What architects know is how to shape a space through form, light, and that means sometimes confronting the city and thinking how it can fit into a given problem. But architects are not sociologists or psychiatrists, we do not give shape to society, not even to the city, we do not transform people’s way of life. People are always first and what we try is to improve that way of living in a small space, in a square, in a street corner.
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