Dong Gong - Vector Architects

Guest of this appointment is Kirsten Ring Murray, one of the principals and owners of the internationally renowned firm Olson Kundig Architects. Founded in 1966 by Jim Olson, the practice, Seattle-based, with a new office in New York City, during the five decades of its existence has enormously grown, expanding its portfolio beyond residences, which was a distinctive part of their realizations, covering more than fifteen countries on five continents, from amazing natural locations to crowded urban contexts. Their versatile full-service design besides residences, often for art collectors, includes museums, academic and commercial buildings, hospitality, interior design, master planning and landscape. The narrative and the design approach, contemplating the relationship between dwelling and landscape and encouraging the connection between people and surroundings continue, whether in a natural habitat or in an urban metropolis, bringing context to its existence and purpose, creating an experience of place, even along the street. Careful consideration of topographical and climatic conditions, use of materials worked in close collaboration with craftsmen and artists, leaving frequently, on purpose, visible maker’s hand signs are the main ingredients, contributing to tell an authentic story of the place. The firm recognized by the AIA with the National Architecture Firm Award, has been named 4 times one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company and included on the AD100 list 14 times. The owners have been honoured with some of the nations and world’s highest design awards: Jim Olson, the Seattle AIA Medal of Honor, Tom Kundig a National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, inductions into Interior Design Magazine’s Hall of Fame and the AIA Seattle Medal of Honor, only to mention a few. Their works published worldwide by the most prestigious magazines, on the covers of The New York Times magazine, ARCHITECT, Architectural Record, Architectural Digest, Wall Street Journal are collected in four monographs. Our guest, Kirsten Ring Murray, has realized a range of project types, nationally and internationally published, and awarded. She has received many AIA Honor Awards, in recognition of her contributions, playing a particularly relevant role in the firm’s culture, expanding the boundaries of the corporatist spirit, pioneering programs, and injecting vital energy into core activities. The conversation starts exploring a background that may have led Kirsten to become an architect. Grown up, experiencing various places West of United States, passionate about drawing and reading, with a keen interest in science fiction, was particularly attracted by the environment as landscape, by an organic architecture tendency emerging at that time in Colorado, with the main attraction for Paolo Soleri’s arcology and curiosity in the experimentation of arts and craft of Modernism. Joined the studio in Seattle in the late ‘89, a studio of 11 and now of over 250 people, she was drawn by different reasons as the firm’s legacy grounded on craft, integration of architecture and art and always felt very comfortable in a place, where conversation and dialogue were highly appreciated and the individual expression unusually respected and encouraged. Challenging and active, the practice has over the years maintained this distinctive note, believing in the importance of debate and considering a precious opportunity to work with different personalities, many individual voices in a synergistic effort. Great contribution to strengthen teamwork collaboration and to open a dialogue with the external community goes to Kirsten, who has promoted a series of original and successful initiatives, especially through [storefront], a common space, part of their office building, transformed into an authentic laboratory of exchange and experimentation. We dwell then on the physical ambiance of their studio in Seattle, able to transmit with an extraordinary legibility an identity, mainly based on a continuous evolutive process and we analyze, in this regard, their capability to translate the peculiar character and core values of a company and its team in every workspace they realized. We dedicate a special reference to the recent LeBron James Innovation Center at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, a new construction, that brilliantly communicates the brand's agenda of speed, innovation, craft, fostering collective collaborative spirit and to the conversion of a historic building into a new dynamic, healthy and versatile environment, in the respect of individuality, for a provocative New York City Media company. Search for custom-made solutions, kinetic elements, exposed ‘mechanical wizardry’ and exquisitely refined, detailed finishes, visually and emotionally engaging, is an important peculiarity of the practice, especially of Tom Kundig, often referred to as a 'maker architect’ and Kirsten explains the relevant and fascinating potentialities that this creative ‘pre-digital’ process embodies. Architect as a ‘mediator’ between nature and built, able to offer continuity between indoor-outdoor and authentic immersive, intimate experiences in the place, mediating rationality and poetry is another integral aspect of their design approach, that we explore in regard to residences, especially in magnificent and powerful natural contexts, as Slaughterhouse Beach, in Maui, Hawaii. Among extraordinary, at top commissions that have involved Kirsten, from practitioner to principal, there is an affordable condominium, conceived almost 15 years ago, 1111 East Pike, that, despite the economic constraints, still impresses for its innovative and fresh unconventionality, its visual appeal and flexible internal solutions, revealing a passionate commitment to enrich with any architectural gesture everyone's life. We conclude the conversation with a particularly rewarding project, Paradise Road Housing at Smith College, five apartment units arranged around a central courtyard, forming a community not only between students but between the campus and the larger Northampton community. A LEED® Gold housing complex intended for self-sufficient seniors and students, celebrating inter-generational social interaction and connections.

Guests of our appointment are two brilliant and leading architects, Shirley Blumberg and Marianne McKenna, co-founders in 1987 with other two partners, in an egalitarian collaboration, of KPMB Architects, a Toronto-based studio. The firm, enormously grown and become one of the most authoritative in Canada, internationally recognized for the important public buildings realized across the country, United States and Europe, has always coherently remained committed to the main shared beliefs in equity, diversity, and inclusion, cohesion and open dialogue, expanding over the years the leadership team, naming new partners alongside the founders.Their impressive portfolio embraces a wide range of sectors, from education, healthcare, scientific research, arts and culture, corporate, hospitality, recreation, and mixed-use development.The works, porous and accessible, sensitively responsive to the context and needs of the people, highest standards of quality, efficiency, and sustainability, have for over three decades enriched the social fabric, strengthening communities and receiving over 400 prestigious acknowledgments, including 18 Governor General’s Medals, one of Canada’s highest honours. Collected in three monographs, they are extensively published. My guests have both enormously contributed to the success and notoriety of the practice with award-winning realizations, recognized for architectural excellence and social impact. Blumberg, author of projects as the Centre for International Governance Innovation Campus in Waterloo, Ontario, the renovation of Princeton University, New Jersey, the Remai Modern Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada, involved in social justice programs, has founded Building Equality in Architecture Toronto, BEAT, an initiative to promote equity for women in architecture, and led Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), framework of the firm’s practice. McKenna, named among Canada’s most powerful women, and the first to receive last year the Design Futures Council (DFC) Lifetime Achievement Award, has as well realized brilliant and noteworthy works, as the Royal Conservatory TELUS Centre for Performance and the renewal of the Massey Hall in Toronto, The Rotman School of Toronto and The Bradley School in New York. They have been both invested as Officers of the Order of Canada for their involvement in architecture and community. It’s from their compelling stories, both grown up, experiencing different geographical and cultural ambiances, Marianne the rapidly transforming atmosphere of Montreal and Shirley the inequitable climate of South Africa, during the period of great social and political ferment of the years ’60, that starts our conversation, and we continue by deepening the reasons that have influenced their decision to become architects. Toronto, at the time, was transforming into one of the most socially progressive, pluralistic cities, a livable, walkable, safe place, become the city of Jane Jacobs, escaping the fate of many American cities, deprived, through urban renewal, of their downtown neighbourhoods. It was there, in the studio of an American architect, Barton Myers, that over several years a deep affinity grew and bonded Shirley, Marianne and other two young architects working at the office. ‘Hungry’ to do something different and significant, the two women and two men established their own firm, an unusual hybrid, collaborative model for the time. A kind of ‘ecosystem’, that has perpetrated until these days, based on healthy competition, great respect of each other and a lot of open dialogue.Taking inspiration from a description by Roland Barthes about a perfect resonance, well adapting to their architecture, we focus on one of the firm’s main ambitions, to create buildings of high resonance with people and communities’ needs and aspirations. We analyze some of their most famous interventions on heritage cultural buildings and their talent to open them, making them able to change the urban context, greatly impacting the quality of people’s life.Complementary and sympathetic additions have allowed them to transform the rigidity and impenetrable enclosure of famous universities and campuses, injecting, in the respect of the old, new meanings and narratives, and more inclusive messages.They are currently involved in a great number of projects about affordable housing, that guarantee the best environmental and sustainable conditions and promise to broaden the community of people who will benefit from them. Another enormous master plan, Downsview Framework Plan, in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects and SLA Architects, is currently on-going, intending to reimagine 520 acres of a former military airport in North Toronto into a place for connected neighbourhood, based on city-nature and inspired by the concept of the “15-minute neighbourhood”. Passionate commitment to build a culture of diversity and inclusion has seen the firm, and Shirley in particular, working in upgrading terrible conditions of Northern indigenous people, with a series of prototypical housing, conceived in close collaboration with leaders and community members of Fort Severn First Nation and in a recent winning proposal, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, developed, teaming up with two aboriginal, an artist, Jordan Bennett, and an activist, Elder Lorraine Whitman, and young local architect, Omar Gandhi.Our conversation concludes on the sounding relevance represented for both of them by architecture: an opportunity for changing and improving with sensibility society, for Marianne, and an amazing privilege for giving with generosity people a choice and making life better, for Shirley.

Guest of this appointment is a young Korean architect who, endowed with a distinctive personality, has realized interesting works marked by a loud identity. Jo Jinman, graduated from Hanyang University, Seoul, with a later degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing in 2014 and founded his own, eponymous practice, Jo Jinman Architects.He has participated to national exhibitions and won several competitions, acknowledged with the ‘National Young Architect Award’ by the Ministry of Culture, Korea, 2015, ‘Korea Public Building Prize', 2016 and ‘Korea Progressive Architect Awards’, 2017, by the Ministry of Land and Infrastructure, ‘Seoul Architecture Award’, 2018, by Seoul Metropolitan Government, World Architecture Award, 2019, World Architecture Community, 'Emerging Architect Awards’ and 'Design Vanguard’, 2019, from Architectural Record.His architecture, against the limitations of a simple function, explores challenges and expectations of society, proposing energetic spaces, open to be adopted and developed over time by the people themselves and mostly seeking a continuity between indoor and outdoor. A complex simplicity characterizes his work, aiming to offer new, alternative possibilities and creative solutions.He has worked for several years as Public Architect, for Seoul Metropolitan Government, dedicating his efforts to implement connections between people, city, and nature. Adjunct Professor at the Hanyang University of Seoul (2013~2020), and in 2022 at Taylor’s University, Malaysia, he has recently published ‘Notes of a provocative architect, Jo Jinman.’The conversation starts from the period of his post-graduation, a moment represented in Seoul by a massive building development, mainly represented by economic speculations, and his need to reflect about his future responsibilities as architect towards society. A change of environment has brought him to Beijing, for a Master at Tsinghua University, and a working experience at IROJE Architects & Planners, and after some years to OMA, Rotterdam, as senior architect: two different experiences that have positively impacted his formative growth. Return back to Seoul, in 2014, he established his firm, realizing several public interventions, according to an idea of architecture continuously evolving and transforming, eliminating barriers, especially between nature and people, and encouraging relationships. An architecture able to offer hybrid spaces where unplanned things happen. Naesoop Library, a public space open to four completely different sides, growing from a hill, spontaneously fragmenting and adapting its shape to the complex topographical situation, emphasizes, attuned to his design’s philosophy, the permeability between inside and outside and the potential to enhance multiple functions, breaking the traditional paradigm of a library as austere environment of silence.We focus then on a research he led years ago, as public architect for Seoul Metropolitan Government about leftover spaces still available for public interventions in the dense Seoul central area, that has identified a series of empty highway underpasses, offering a possible multifunctional network of reconnections in the urban fabric.Two other projects, Riverside Apse, a small iconic café, and Changshin Quarry Viewing Gallery, a simple but impressive, cantilevered observation deck, have been conceived as gestures to bridge past and present, with concern about historic parts of the country, in need not to be forgotten.The special unique identity of K2 office tower, imposing its striking, refined silhouette in a congested part of Seoul, is Jo Jinman’s response to the challenging difficult limitations of a narrow site. A harmonious monolithic presence, balancing complexity and simplicity, an extremely creative, elaborate work of technology and craftsmanship, cloaked by a light mantle of repeated, perforated thin cement louvers.Restrictions and demanding situations are for Jinman particular stimulating starting points, that he brilliantly solves with extremely original and pleasant solutions, as in the case of other two residential projects, Layered Terrace House and Nine Wall House, both addressing multiple needs of three-generation families with special minimalist and elegant, distinct formal languages, embracing nature, light and various dynamic creative possibilities able to enrich daily life of the residents.

Guest of the appointment is Fernando Rodriguez, a young architect, co-founder in 2008 with Pablo Oriol of FRPO Architects, Madrid-based studio. After some years of experience at other firms and with a group of friends, they were led to establish their own practice by winning the important competition of the City of Justice, in Madrid. From that moment, they achieved brilliant results and recognitions, such as awarded Europe 40 UNDER 40, selected participants of the Golden Lion Venice Biennale Spanish Pavilion (2016), participants at the Spanish (2007, 2013, 2021) and the Ibero-American Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism (2006, 2014), finalists of FAD Awards International, of Architectural Record Design Vanguard (2012) and Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards (2019), nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Awards (2015) and this last Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (2022). Their works in Spain, Mexico and the US, often winners of national and international competitions, embrace masterplans, private residences and public housing, cultural, mixed-use and industrial buildings. Their architectural gestures, characterized by formal simplicity and essentiality, include most of the times rich and complex programmatic compositions, organized with great versatility and flexibility. Attractive volumes and powerful plain geometries, conceived with technical rigour as innovative, creative ensembles of light structures and light materials, according to an idea of adaptability and obsolescence, address important issues as minimal impact, material savings and energy efficiency.Fernando Rodríguez has studied architecture at the Madrid Polytechnic, ETSAM, and at the Technische Universität of Berlin. He teaches at the Architectural Design Department of UPM ETSAM. He has also taught and has been guest critic at other international institutions, such as FAU PUCP Lima, Technische Universität Berlin, IE School of Architecture and Design and Universitat Internacional de Catalunya. The conversation starts from their recent winning proposal for the international competition ‘Magnifica Fabbrica’, an ambitious project envisaging the regeneration of an extensive peripheral area of Milan, famous for its industrial past, and the creation of a multi-use complex to host laboratories and exhibition spaces of Teatro alla Scala. We deepen the aspirations animating their regenerative vision and process inspired by a balance between technology, culture and landscape in the perspective of a reconnection with the urban living fabric. The establishment of a new industrial paradigm will open the production of Teatro alla Scala to the public, avoiding the idea of a close museum, and an extremely interesting sustainable program, based on a circular concept of water cycle, inspired by traditional Milan's agricultural fields, will link the Fabbrica with the landscape through a series of lagoons, water gardens, that will allow people to share a natural process of phytopurification.We then focus on the small pavilion created as flexible structure, providing all the conditions for aging without altering its character that was selected to be part of the Spanish Pavilion, in the occasion of the 15th International Architecture Venice Biennale. Fernando explains the importance of this small statement that, above dealing with scarcity of resources, represents an emblematic conceptual abstraction, able to express a complexity of issues with maximum simplicity.Estacion San Jose, a permeable, flexible, multiple mixed-use, public infrastructure, in the city center of Toluca, offers an occasion of relevant considerations with its clear and gentle contemporary formal radicality, able to merge in the complex urban fabric without loudly screaming.Lightness is an integral part of the firm’s vocabulary, expressed by the use of light materials, like polycarbonate, thin perforated metal screens as the completion of light structures with the aim to consistently address above aesthetic purpose, more ‘ethical’ aspirations.A series of wooden houses in different woodland locations, MO House, on the outskirts of the city of Madrid, and M1 and M2 Houses, in a mountainous location of Oregon, represents at 10 years of distance, a deep experience about the exploration of new material for construction.A powerful, wild natural context is the frame of an equally powerful gesture, one of their first projects. OS House, a black box, wrapped by zinc shutters, on a high, rocky cliff of the Bay of Biscay, dominating the view of the sea, surprises for the harmonious consonance that develops between its bold idiom and the rugged plot of land. For the conclusion of our conversation, we dwell on the proposal conceived in collaboration with the renowned studio Selgascano for the Spanish Pavilion, Expo 2022 in Dubai. An innovative, ultra-light, ultra-removable, ultra-transportable and ultra-sustainable virtuous pavilion, an extremely light steel structure suspended from nine air-inflated cylinders of recycled ETFE, exploring the largest possible volume with the least amount of material. An authentic, paradigm of minimal impact, material savings and energy efficiency, a significant choice evoking a captivating and revolutionary chapter of history, featured by the inflatables.Along with the satisfaction of the on-going ‘Magnifica Fabbrica’, a series of more than 30 eco-energy power plants around Spain and a network of interventions, ultra-sustainable small residential housing in a degraded area of Madrid, are deservedly enriching the portfolio of the young studio.

Guest of this appointment is Michael Leckie, founder in 2015 of Leckie Studio Architecture + Design. After a Bachelor’s degree in genetics, Michael received his Master of Architecture at the University of British Columbia, UBC, practicing for several years at Patkau Architects, having later a collaborative work experience with a colleague.The young multi-disciplinary practice, based in Vancouver, embraces different typologies, single-and multi-family residences, renovation, hospitality design, boutique-interiors mainly realized across North America. Essentiality and simplicity characterize their energetic realizations, displaying an attentive sensibility towards details and the act of making.Awarded several times as emerging firm by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, and the Institute of British Columbia, Leckie Studio has won in 2019 Architizer A+Awards, shortlisted for Dezeen and Frame awards, winning recently the 2022 Architectural Record's annual Design Vanguard. The projects of the practice are widely featured in publications including FRAME, Arcade, Wallpaper, Azure, among others.A side project company, The Backcountry Hut, established by Michael and a partner, complements the practice, creating prefabricated modular prototype shelters, flat-packed sustainable structures, simple to be assembled and easy to be transported. The conversation starts from the long journey that has led Micheal to study architecture, after a series of interesting experiences, as an undergraduate degree in genetic and microbiology and an adventurous, nomadic life, a network of knowledge and experimentations that have contributed to the individual character of his work.We speak about the initiative of realizing prefabricate, mass-customizable small-scale cabins, a challenging opportunity of hands-on approach, creative design for young architects and about a new shift that the production is gradually witnessing. For a series of contingencies, economic factors and a diffuse rethinking of certain existential values, people seem motivated to consider alternatives to the increasingly densified and prohibitive urban situation, re-evaluating more liveable and affordable suburban areas and the economic cabins, easy to be assembled by any common person with no construction experience, offer an attractive complement of this new, possible model of life.Full House, a multi-generational residence in Vancouver, a flexible space, plenty of green and natural light, proposes another interesting topic, appropriately responding to our urban dystopian scenario. The attention focuses then on a recent realisation, the University of British Columbia Arts Student Centre, winner of this year's Architectural Record’s Vanguard award, an iconic, contemporary and essential gesture, well expressing the core mission of ‘common ground’ it embodies, promising an innovative and collaborative active space. We then explore the whimsical, special atmosphere created for a new-born cosmetic clinic, a beautiful, soft, monochromatic ambience evoking freezing moments of cosmic geological silence, inspired by the ‘Quarries’ of the famous photographer Edward Burtynsky, and the surrealist works of Matthew Barney. An interior particularly original and appropriate for the treatments of the clinic, well expressing the brand’s identity, and its core values.Micheal concludes by explaining his idea of an aesthetic driven by pragmatic considerations and his aspiration to a biophilic design, in respect the client’s expectations.

Guest of the appointment is a prominent figure in the Columbian architectural scenario, Giancarlo Mazzanti, who has dedicated part of his professional life to confer a new identity, a quality environment, and social welfare to poor, unprivileged areas of his country, demonstrating that architecture can offer effective opportunities for a social redemption. Graduated from the Universidad Javeriana de Bogotá, he completed his postgraduate studies in architectural history, theory, and industrial design at the University of Florence in Italy, founding shortly afterward his practice, El Equipo de Mazzanti, in the city of Bogotá.He realized very young the famous ‘Spain Library’ in the city of Medellin, followed by a wide range of projects from schools, libraries, sports facilities, museums, masterplans and installations, that have gained wide national and international recognition.Awarded many times first prize and honorable mention in occasion of the most renowned Biennals, from the Venice Architecture Biennal to the Colombian, the Ibero-American and the Pan-american, he has won among other important recognitions, the Locus Foundation’s Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, Paris, and has the honor to have his works included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, in New York, the Museum Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Carnegie Museum of Art, CMOA, in Pittsburgh. He believes in an architecture as action and, as an authentic activator and mediator, proposes multi-program public spaces that stimulate and foster relationships and interactions.The conversation starts from that architecture of social value that has always seen him involved in the attempt to mend situations of severe inequality and marginalization, trying to understand how he had the chance to play a relevant role with his interventions in a difficult country like Columbia, for long time dominated by the violence of drug-wars and a diffuse, extreme poverty. We speak then about one of his first works, the simple but extremely iconic and brilliant gesture that characterizes the Spain Library, an architectural act considered by Mazzanti of real value, because not limited only to one function but embodying, as a hub of new opportunities, the potentiality to multiply public uses according to the needs of the poor neighborhood.The intriguing synergy between the topography of the terrain and the organization of his works is another fundamental part of an architecture that, above suggesting familiar presences, aspires to grow organically with the context. The famous Four Sport Scenarios, a fusion of poetry and great flexibility, a porous public building conceived to host the 2010 South American Games, with the uninterrupted sequence of undulating profiles of its roof bands, coated in several shades of green, plays on the idea of a large green canopy, perfectly integrated with the surrounding mountainous landscape. Working on the modularity system of the bands has helped to envisage and propose an adaptability that, in consideration of the rapidly changing society we are experiencing, fits, almost with the same qualities of a tree, to new situations. A building able to expand and develop over time also without the author.This operative strategy, finalised to deepen modules, aggregations of patterns, far from rigid functional programs, has been applied with prototype configurations to many elementary schools, as Timayui Kindergarten and 21, Atlantico Kindergarten, 21 different plots, in north of Colombia, in a region vulnerable to floods, responding to diverse topographical or programmatic requirements, with very limited budgets and timeframes.Two other exemplar proposals, the attractive tree-like canopy, made of translucent polycarbonate dodecahedron modules, of Forest Hope, a small but particular significant sign able to provoke a multi-generational response in a depressed periphery of Bogota, lacking of basic, public infrastructures, and Pies Descalzos School, a more ambitious realization, conceived as a modular sequence of intersected hexagons, with patios, trees and public spaces, dominating from the top of a hill an equally harsh reality of a community living in miserable conditions, have both opened a dialogue with people, gaining their trust and confidence in effective, possible changes in their unfortunate existences.According to an idea of architecture not as an object in itself but capable for using Mazzanti’s words, to “trigger behaviors and new dynamics, encouraging people to act in ways they will never think to act”, the fundamental approach of the practice to every project is the involvement of the community, in processes of co-creation, giving an effective voice to their hopes and expectations. The experience has significantly imprinted one project in particular, Marinilla Educational Park that, ensuring an authentic, vibrant interactive, social scenario based on encounters and exchanges, preserves a cultural identity.Another important topic, how to encourage a de-contextualization of the traditional cold, aseptic environment of healthcare centres, arises from a proposal of more than 10 years ago, suggesting a green and liveable atmosphere for healing experience, a vision that has been later implemented for the refurbishment of the Fundación Santa Fe, a hospital in the centre of Bogotá,The conversation concludes by touching the concept of ‘play’ and the relevant role it performs in all works as a contribution to a more human and creative architecture, far from rigid and controlled programmes of functional efficiency.

Guest of this appointment is the American architect Rick Joy, renowned for his climate responsive and landscape sensitive works. Originally from Maine, after studying and performing music for years as a professional drummer, he moved to study architecture at the University of Arizona,working after his degree in Phoenix, at the office of Will Bruder, a special, inspiring architect, particularly attentive to sustainability, who was a student and then an apprentice of Soleri at his Cosanti studio. In 1993, fascinated by the desert of Arizona, Rick Joy decided to stay permanently in Tucson, establishing his own practice Studio Rick Joy, SRJ. His first projects, mainly local residences in the Sonoran Desert, essential sculptural signs cohabitating with the flora and fauna of the context, have almost immediately gained global attention for their conceptual and sustainable approach. Ultra-luxury resorts and residences followed over the years in the most enchanting and pristine corners of the world, from the mountains in Idaho, the forests in Vermont, to the desert in Utah, or along the Pacific Coast in México, and his intimate encounter with nature has continued to transmit with generosity breathtaking experiences.Visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Rice University, University of Arizona and MIT, he is extensively lecturing. He has received prestigious international recognitions, as the 2002 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, the National Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt Museum 2004, inducted in 2019 into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. His realizations, awarded and featured in international publications, are collected in two dedicated monographs, the recent “Studio Joy Works” and “Desert Works”, with introduction of Juhani Pallasmaa and foreword of Steven Holl.The conversation opens, recalling an important decision that saw him leave his music career and his home-town, in the heart of Maine, to study architecture at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, a totally opposite, far away city, in the Southwest of the country.The encounter with an absolutely new environment, so powerfully inspirational in its natural manifestations, as the desert, has provoked a visceral connection translated by an architecture that, according to the famous critic Juhani Pallasmaa, privileges the verb over the noun, letting the place determine and dictate the choices. The Tucson Mountain House, one of Rick Joy’s exemplar houses, a small one-family residence, set in a site of the desert surrounded by mountains, embraces in its apparent simplicity and rigorous selection of materials all those features, that evolved over time, have remained consistent with the concept of deep respect and close, mutual exchange between architecture and nature.We focus on his capability to transcend materiality, supporting more abstract experiences: all his houses, skillfully integrated into the natural setting, seem attuned to specific performances, evoking, through sensory inputs and constantly changing effects of light, emotional narrations connected with the place. We deepen the Desert Nomad House that, with its three boxes wrapped in Corten steel emerging from the earth, visualises a story of desert-abandonment made of rusty remains scattered here and there, and Tubac House, an almost atmospheric stage.His studio, in a historic barrío of Tucson, anticipated with a sort of tension in crescendo, familiar to a drum player, represents with the special atmosphere he has been able to create another beautiful story, enriching the working environment with inspiration and intimate serenity every day.The alchemy of his hospitality vocabulary, from Amangiri Resort, cradled in a secluded, untouched valley of a canyon in Utah and perfectly camouflaged with the striated Rocky Mountains on the backdrop, to the new, recent One&Only Mandarina, perched on the cliffs along a one-mile pristine beach in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico, with their deliberate simplicity, and obsessive dedication to an absolute integration with pristine, spectacular contexts, constitutes another captivating subject, for the unforgettable experiences they reserve.From virgin coasts and verdant wide expanses, we move to the crowded urban reality of Mexico City, where Tennyson 205, a five-story apartment building, stands with its interesting carved like sculptural facade and sleek external clean-lined concrete structure, reserving, despite the elegant but severe exterior, an abundant vegetated inside, with lush courtyard gardens and planters boxes, authentic luxury, for the architect that can’t be renounced.We touch then an important public experience, Princeton Transit Hall and Market, part of the redevelopment of Princeton University’s campus in New Jersey, an elegant statement that above linking past and present, is representing an extremely successful, inclusive gesture, with great satisfaction of the author. We conclude with that particularly generous and rewarding relation he loves to entertain and cultivate with his international team of young people, coming from the most diverse parts of the world.

Guest of this appointment is Morten Rask Gregersen, co-founder in 2003 with other two partners of NORD Architects, a Copenhagen-based firm, established with the aspiration to make socially relevant architecture, capable of engaging the community and creating inclusive environments. Aware of some radical changes that are affecting our society, continuously evolving, they devote substantial efforts investigating alternative solutions, suitable to the new living conditions that are gradually emerging. Their projects, based on great empathy and respect towards diversity, embrace a relevant number of healthcare realisations, learning environments and public housing.‘Co-create’ characterizes their approach, implying a broad participation of consultants and experts, with the aim to reach the best solutions and provide solid bases for the future implementation, along with the spontaneous involvement and a sense of ownership by the future users.Their works featured in two dedicated books, have been published in leading international magazines and recognised with the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2011 and 2013, respectively for their Natural Science Center and Center for Cancer and Health, along with other acknowledgements, as the City of Copenhagen Excellent Building and Urban Space in 2012.Morten Rask Gregersen is regular speaker and lecturer in academic as well as other contexts, both in Denmark and internationally.The conversation starts by deepening the idea of ‘co-creating architecture’, an ideal, according to which the office was conceived and founded as an open practice, far from traditional introverted models. At that time the team was particularly involved in democratic refurbishments of complex social areas, a commitment remained unchanged over the years. We then explore that concept of healing architecture they support and encourage, epitomised by one of their earliest and most famous works, the Cancer Center in Copenhagen, exemplar of an innovative design, striving to shift the focus from illness to cure, without stigmatising the patient, offering through a welcoming, familiar ambience positive future perspectives.Vardheim Healthcare Centre, in a municipality of Norway, a new centre embracing various healthcare programmes, is another project of interest among the new generation of their welfare public proposals, rejecting the appearance of a massive, intimidating institution. The organisation of the human-scale architecture, reproducing the typology of a village constituted by small entities, develops opportunities of cross-fertilisation of knowledge between different specialisations, inspiring a homely atmosphere. Two Alzheimer’s Villages, respectively in Oslo, Norway, and in Dax, France, address with sensitivity and emphatic attention the delicate conditions of people affected by memory’s problems. Both the environments dignify this situation with small clusters of houses rich of green courtyards and recreational activities, re-creating a micro community and intending to maintain a continuity with the normality of the previous everyday life.Several considerations are reserved to their selection of natural materials, their responsible sustainable approach foreseeing efficient, long lasting design solutions.Fusing learning environments with urban spaces and local community’s life is another purpose they try to implement coherently with all their interventions, convinced that school has to be more open, an active place inside and outside, where creativity, synergy and healthy relations with the community evolve. The importance of learning especially in practice, through shared knowledge is a pivotal training element highlighted by the new school in the historic Meatpacking District of Copenhagen. Another open learning platform, the Natural Science Centre, realised in central Denmark, just at the beginning of their practice, emphasises with its intentional iconic shape the value of new methods of teaching natural science, inspiring young generations to learn this discipline immensely relevant for our future.The conversation concludes mentioning a new complex of student housing, in Gellerup, Aarhus, a poor, difficult residential area currently under redevelopment, where they are trying to reserve as much area as possible to give young residents the opportunity to initiate and be engaged in some activities.

Cazú Zegers, guest of this appointment, is a leading architect in the Latin America panorama. Finished her studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, Chile, she founded her own Santiago-based studio, Cazú Zegers Arquitectura, distinguishing herself, since the very beginning of her independent practice, with a special idiom, closely connected with local culture and territory. Her first house, Casa Cala, a compendium of poetry and territory, embracing, according to her methodology, a gesture, a figure, and a form, was rewarded the prestigious Buenos Aires Biennal of Architecture recognition in 1993. Convinced of the fundamental importance for Chile and Latin America to find and develop an own expression, representing their greatest value, their territory, landscape and traditions, she has elaborated a proper local language, combining vernacular with contemporary references, proposing new narratives of high impact, with low-tech sustainable building solutions. Her light way to inhabit the space perpetrates the profound respect that indigenous people nurture towards their natural habitat.Her distinctive architecture, ranging from private residences, large hotels and sacred buildings to territorial planning, ruralization and multicultural projects in close interaction with local communities, has been internationally published, acknowledged the Grand Prix of Versalles, the National Geographic Unique Lodge of the World and the Latin American Grand Prize for Architecture, among others. Extremely active, Cazú Zegers has been founder and promoter of many initiatives and organisations, as A.I.R.A. Workshop, the Foundation and Center for Geopoetic Studies, later re-founded as a Foundation +1000, creator of “invisible workshop", referencing the invisibility of women artists in Chile, named for her determined involvement among the Latin American architects who break down barriers by Forbes Magazine in 2020. Frequently lecturer in Chile and abroad, visiting professor at Yale University, Chile Brand Ambassador in 2018, she has been selected part of Architecture A-List of ELLE Decor, awarded the Dora Riedel distinction for her innovative work, opening new paths in the profession.Passionate of arts, she has chosen architecture and we start the conversation focalising on the need she urgently felt, many years ago, for a practice more open, rekindled by multiple, different energies. We dwell on her interest in an ethno-architectural investigation, a passion she has cultivated since very young, travelling and sharing time and experiences with indigenous communities and we reserve then a series of considerations about difficult situations, as prejudices against women as architects, that have led her to react with great determination and positivity, founding her own independent practice and introducing with success her own idiom, establishing for other women an extremely encouraging and significant example. Casa Cala, her first house built, rewarded the Buenos Aires Biennal of Architecture recognition, is emblematic of her new conceptual reflection on an architecture nurtured by nature. Object of another important reflection is Kawelluco ruralisation, an extensive land of over 1000ha, between forests and a river, of which only 400ha has been developed, leaving the rest as park, minimising roads for cars and implementing tracks for horses. Zegers’ efforts to preserve the natural context, almost completely self-sufficient, supporting culture, and helping the survival of local community, show, after more than 20 years, the farsightedness of her sustainable vision, guaranteeing today an area, only 15 minutes from an important city where it is possible to feel the experience to be in the wilderness.Kawelluco is a seismic territory, like large part of Chile, and to inhabit in a light and precarious way is a paradigm that must drive selection of materials and construction systems, as demonstrate the simple, minimal structures, immersed in the forest, adopted by Cazú. The love-story between Cazú and Chilean nature has inspired another famous, extremely seductive romance between her architecture and landscape. In a powerful, magical natural corner of Patagonia arises, like one of the many dunes created by the strong wind, Hotel of the Wind, an addition that, perfectly harmonised with the spectacular context, interacts as an ‘old fossil’ with the pristine, uncontaminated setting.Other two houses are explored as strongly representative of an architecture able to transform and ‘whisper’. House Emerald, conceived for the mother, a structure open, at the core and along the four sides, to the landscape, embodies and transmits the aspiration to live completely free, without restrains and enclosures, while Casa Soplo, the so called ’ Whisper House’, seems to nourish a conversation with the emotional part of the inhabitants. The conversation concludes touching her active involvement in collaborative, educational programs for young, as the Andes Workshop, an experimental exercise she has conceived with Grupo Talca, offering experiences for students, graduated architects, combining the opportunity to approach local culture and processes, living and working 2 months with a multidisciplinary team, in contact with the community.

Guests of the podcast are two young Mexican architects, Loreta Castro-Reguera and José Pablo Ambrosi, co-founders in 2010 of their Mexico City-based architecture and urban design studio, Taller Capital, TC. Deeply concerned about a dramatic water problem that is afflicting Mexico, and the capital in particular, a water management system insufficient to solve extensive and frequent floods during the rainy season and, at the same time, unable to satisfy the water’s need of a population of more than 22 million residents, they have started a relevant research-based exploration, since the first years of the university, that has led them to develop solutions capable to transform water management and culture. As integrative support of the underground hydraulic drainage engineering system adopted for the city, one of the largest in the world, their philosophy, centered on the efficiency of ‘hydro-urban acupuncture’, has inspired small interventions, integrating retroactive soft hydraulic infrastructures with public space, as recreational parks, implemented with low budgets in areas of dense populated, neglected peripheries. Their research, started from the academia, has continued with the support of important scholarships and prizes, and with the collaborations with universities and other institutions.For the important challenges they addressed and their sustainable and innovative approach, they have received prestigious awards such as the Global LafargeHolcim Award Gold 2018 and LafargeHolcim Award Gold 2017 for region Latin America, shortlisted for the 2020 Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Award, and winners last year of the Architectural League’s annual Emerging Voices, finalists for the World Prize of the 2020 Quito Architecture Bienial and recipients of the silver medal at the 2017 Mexico City Bienial for their Eco Pavillion installation.Loreta, after a Master in Architecture form Mendrisio Academy of Architecture and a Master in Urban Design with Distinction from the Harvard GSD, has been invited as guest professor and speaker to several institutions in America and Europe and has written essays and articles for several magazines and books.We start our conversation with curiosity from my side to deepen the main reasons that have led Mexico City, born like a settlement on water, to confront this crucial, paradoxical situation of excess of water during the rainy season and severe scarcity of drinking water. We dedicate then attention to their innovative, resilient approach to water’s management, focusing on a project in Nogales, Represo, that, far from the coerciveness of a hard system, integrates infrastructural solutions with recreational, interactive spaces, offering a new paradigm of adaptability and trying to get the idea accepted of respecting natural rhythms.We dwell then on the other two parks, realised one in Tijuana, Baja California, and the other, Parque Bicentenario, in Sierra Guadalupe, plus the Parque Hídrico Quebradora, still under construction, all adopting different systems of water management but sharing a common concept, intending to combine place of treatment and recreational place for people.The aesthetically appealing act of respect paid to marginalised and ignored neighbourhoods by these public water treatment-parks, attentively curated, despite limited budgets and the austerity of materials, always local and most of the time recycled, represents another crucial point, able to confer an identity to these severely lacerated urban and social fabrics, engaging the community, restituting dignity and nurturing a sense of belonging.Loreta and José talk also about the great determination that has led them to realise their Eco Pavilion, a meaningful installation conceived with the deliberate intention to raise public awareness about the giant underground drainage tunnel system of Mexico City and the Hydric Pavilion, another interesting opportunity, strategically manipulated, for divulging water culture.We conclude talking about a small intervention in the town of Juchitan Oaxaca, affected by a terrible earthquake happened in 2017: a project of great respect toward the community, embodying multiple opportunities of rebirth and their attempt to offer, with their residential works in Mexico City a daily life more in dialogue with nature even in the congested context of the megalopolis.