An interview with Barozzi Veiga, the winners of this year’s Mies van der Rohe Award, about role models and the influence of cinema.
In the August issue of Baumeister, we profiled the young architects Fabrizio Barozzi and Alberto Veiga, this year’s winners of the Mies van der Rohe Award. Here is another interview with Alberto Veiga about role models, design tools and the influence of cinema.
Baumeister: First of all, congratulations on winning the Mies van der Rohe Award. What does the award mean for the office?
Alberto Veiga: The prize itself has enormous significance in architecture and brings with it recognition from colleagues, but above all greater media attention. So it also increases the pressure. With our future projects, we now have to prove that we really deserve the prize. However, I don’t believe that we will generate more projects as a result. It mainly brings with it more responsibility.
B: What reactions have there been so far?
A V: The prize has changed somewhat. In the past, the focus was more on large offices and large projects. In this respect, it probably came as a surprise to most people that a relatively small office won the prize. However, the reactions were all positive.
B: You won the prize for a concert hall in Poland – how does planning and building work in another country?
A V: The planning process takes place here in Barcelona. However, we always have a local partner who takes care of the approval planning. The specialist planners and engineers are also on site. All the threads then come together in Barcelona – the information is filtered and put into an overall context. All drawings and details are created here. When construction starts, we send people from our office to the construction site to supervise everything on site. So we are involved in the project from start to finish.
B: Is your focus still on building abroad?
A V: Basically yes. We have always seen ourselves as an international office. My office partner Fabrizio Barozzi is Italian and our employees come from all over the world. We are not looking for new locations, but for new projects, and we find most of them outside of Spain.
B: What is the situation in Spain at the moment?
A V: There was this huge economic crisis in Spain, which is still having an impact today. In terms of architecture, I believe that the housing market will recover somewhat in the next few years, but I don’t expect too much. That’s why Spanish architects should focus more on building abroad and not in Spain. In the last 20 years, we have built pretty much everything we can here. Every small town now has a school, a library and a museum. Issues such as conservation and renovation will play a role in the future.
B: What is your relationship with the Spanish architecture scene?
A V: As I said before, we don’t feel like a Spanish office. Although we live here in Barcelona, we don’t perceive the city primarily as Spanish, but as a place that is located between countries. We have people working in our office who all have different cultural backgrounds; the influences are correspondingly diverse. We are a European office.
B: How does the design process work?
A V: Working in different countries is certainly a basis for this. The influences we absorb there and the experiences we have there are decisive for the process. At the beginning of a competition, we first go to the site and try to understand the location. This is done in such a way that everyone gets a personal impression first, then Fabrizio and I discuss the concept. Later, the team is also consulted. Our way of working is very Socratic, so we talk quite a lot (laughs). Constantly critically questioning the concept is very important to us. We are definitely not the kind of architects who immediately have a vision and where the process then consists of materializing the vision. Fabrizio and I are part of the team the whole time, from start to finish. We work together with the team on drawings and models.
B: What influence does contextual work have on the design?
A V: Context is of fundamental importance! Nowadays we live in a world where everything is possible and anything can be built. Geometrically, there are no longer any limits. But if we don’t succeed in entering into a dialog with the location, picking up on its atmosphere and anchoring the building in its local context, then all the work will have been for nothing. You may end up with a successful artifact, but in the end it remains just an artifact.
B: What role do the visualizations play in the design process?
A V: We bring the visualizations into the process as early as possible in order to find out what atmosphere and character the building should have. And to avoid unpleasant surprises shortly before the competition is announced (laughs). We also do all the visualizations ourselves. They were an important tool for us right from the start.
B: You have a very cinematic feel – are there any particular influences, such as the films of Stanley Kubrick?
A V: We are inspired by cinema, but it’s not that we take anything directly from a movie. We are more interested in understanding the cinematic techniques. For example, with black and white films. Many of our visualizations also have this black and white aesthetic. We then discuss how and why this works in certain films.
B: Are there any specific architectural influences?
A V: We have quite a few influences. I think you can see that in the projects. And to return to the subject of context: Because we are trying to develop a specific solution, we also have specific influences that differ from case to case. So there is no particular architect or a single building that has influenced us.
B: Does sacred architecture play a role for you?
A V: We often work monolithically: just one material to focus on the interaction between light and space. We are also interested in religious architecture, which often works with these connections. That’s what we’re generally interested in. We try to recognize connections and integrate the resulting insights into our work.
Portrait: Anna Mas
