This is not the first time that Santiago Cirgueda visits Quito; he came as speaker of BAQ a few years ago. He confesses that the 20th edition was more enjoyable, however, he was harshly critical of the theme, "useful classroom" and the lines that derived from this topic: social architecture, “collectives” and the materialization of architecture. (Also see critical review and conversation with Andrés Maragaño from Talca).
Verónica Rosero (V): What do you think about the approach the curators have given to the biennial? Are they telling to the public the whole movie? Are they teaching just one way of doing things?
Santiago Cirgueda (C): The subject interests me very much. But as an approach, it looks typical, they haven’t had nor time, neither resources. I believe it is unsuccessful in the way that they haven’t been demanding. They haven’t told the truth, they don’t ask you to look beyond what they tell you. They must give minimum demands if they want to generate new educational policies. In the way they are managing the conference they won’t achieve any change.
Néstor Llorca (N): In order to explain the whole process, how should they present it? How can a replicable model be implemented, with processes that others can understand? How can you make of it an instrument that doesn’t lie just in beautiful and ambiguous values?
C: Telling the truth of the archer, the one that you tell in the bar later with two drinks. It isn’t what they are telling now have in front of the public. They are afraid of being copied.
V: Well. They have already copied them, don’t you think?
C: Of course.
"If I can’t decide where my taxes go, why does a big company? Because it has many relationships and millions of wealth."
V: If you make a comparison between the images presented by several of the speakers there is a very marked iconography. Sometimes you can’t recognize to whom they belong to. It is a kind of homogeneous stylistic movement.
C: Totally. But aside from the stylistic movement there is an important simile. What worries me is that there is a dude from Sevilla who is in Queretaro, Mexico, that said to me: I come here to find out about your process, to implement certain things. This study is sponsored by the private sector. He, as a Sevillian, looks at me a lot. But he doesn’t tell me stories: “how nice, the students are building wooden things”. He talks me about the normative project of that structure, how long it really lasts and how temporary it is. Sometimes it lasts for 3 months, and you have to throw it away. And who finances it? In many Mexican projects financing is private. They have forgotten public reciprocity.
What is occurring? That private sponsorship as a base provoques the forgetfulness of the public. That is what I mean: "the public is administered as it is administered and I do my social projects with the private". The taxes of a nation goes to public administrators who have been voted democratically. I don’t forget. But there are so many people who say, "Let them do their social policies, I'm going to do mine." But I pay taxes, and my mother, and my father, and my cousin. You, administrator of public goods, I demand you a better education, because you are the one who makes the laws. Not in the private sector, but in the public one. Rural Studio (BAQ speaker) talked about the donations of the projects ... well Xavi, don’t forget about the public resources. That is the serious topic. So what are we talking about? Also TALCA (BAQ speaker), they are telling us a lost potion. They should tell us the truth of the archer.
N: But it is dangerous: if you don’t understand the whole process and you don’t know where you are, and what resources you will use in these social projects, you are likely to provoke that these actions increase the problem you were trying to solve at first.
C: Of course. They are making it easier. In fact, there are some examples on board. For example, in Mexico, a company can decide where will go its taxes. If I can’t decide where the taxes go, why does a company? And why does a big company? Because it has many relationships and millions of wealth.
N: And it becomes a circle.
C: It returns to its family or its people, to its own interests. But those who produce the greatest amounts of money finally don’t give a solution. It becomes in a kind of ideal that they are the public administrators of taxes. I do not want that bad circle. And I will look over what the state does, and if it does it right. If it doesn’t I will denounce it, I will manifest, or even I will be illegal.
V: It's funny how the budget issue has become an obsession. You have to get money, "investors" for the execution of the project. But what about reflection? Do you think there is an anti-academic discourse "when the biennale talks about the useless classrooms?
C: I see it in the collectives, especially in Europe. For example, Assemble (BAQ speakers). They are preppy children. They said: "... we are in school, and from everything we have seen, this is funnier, we find it very ‘happy’ ..."
The second part is the budget. I’ve worked with and without money because I want to, and I claim for public budget, because we are managing some public goods. In the case of the “Club House” [1] for mental health there is a population of 150 people who no longer goes to public mental health centers. I am lightening to the state of its responsibility. There is an improvement because the project and reconstruction mechanisms are psychiatrically adapted to these people, they are going to consume less drugs and less public resources.
"social pornography is its users."
N: How can you prevent that this current trend from becoming a slight movement?
C: You see collectives in Europe that are maintained by public funds, and work with society. But they don’t tell you everything, and that must be said at a conference. They don’t tell you that they are working with students in a Muslim neighbourhood. Later, they take a photograph –a little trick- the photo of the happy black child on a swing. They don’t say they are spending 200 thousand euros for a square that would cost 35 thousand. It is made with pallets, as typical, with 4 arches that are mistreated and can’t stay up. They don’t tell us that, uh? I’ve investigated, they don’t tell me that the black guy and the Muslim are in conflict, one cuts off the ear of the other... there’ve been three deaths there.
V: There is a discussion that some architects are afraid to address: that the architect is not able to solve social problems. The structures that provoke racism, social and gender discrimination, and insalubrity aren’t caused by them, therefore, architecture doesn’t solve them. Even less when the projects are of ephemeral. This is the responsibility of other structures. With so complex social problems, are they taking the easy way? Is it necessary to validate the processes with social photography?
C: I'm sorry there's tremendous pornography. The great photographer of the great sculptural work that had to exist. I think that Zaha Hadid and Foster were necessary in contemporary history. They were evidence of a economic moment of splendor. All the magazines took that expression of exaggeration, done with gigantic technical and economic means. Now, it’s happening the same with the social projects and the social pornography is its users.
N: Think of that mechanism, the replica of a trend that becomes a scenography. If the students of a decade ago were formed with the idea of a spectacular architecture, the current one are influenced by the social. There are other mechanisms, other starting points, the speech has changed, but the star system haven’t changed. Everyone wants to be a little star, they are looking for validation and media presence. Don’t you think that currently, in some cases, there a superficial speech and the rest is being made up as a scenery that represents what should happen and not reality?
C: It's my absolutely opinion
N: That generates a dispute about the university and its structure, and in that light speech you see students raising walls, not students generating architecture, solving the urgent, with prejudice of the level of intervention and reflection on the activity.
C: Here, in Ecuador, the university has a compulsory social bond, in other countries there is such a link as a constituent of the university. There is a social responsibility in students and in architecture schools even though they are from different origins. It is important not only the relationship with society, but the social action of building. I can have a robot that raises a beam of 600 kilos or look for 20 volunteers, invite them to beers and lift that beam between all of them, and these people enjoy the process, the robot doesn’t.
V: What you say remembers me, in a certain way, Constant and his New Babylon when he talked about replacing homo faber (the human being who fabricates) with the homo ludens (the human being who plays). There is a playful tint in your process, with a thin line between them: they are making and playing at the same time. I also see traits of the Walking City of Archigram.
C: Neither Archigram built as a team, nor Constant built as a person or as part of the group. In the catalogue of Constant's exhibition in Madrid, we were compared with him, we’ve been mentioned 3 times. My publisher, a brilliant guy, is furious about the empowerment they give to Constant, when he never dared. They were romantic intellectuals (along with Guy Debord), who conversed and got drunk and finally never faced the state and burst it.
V: But it is necessary. Yoy must think that here in Quito, just in the Faculty of Architecture of the Central University, the public one, there are more than 1000 students. In a few years they will want to build yes or yes, and execute their magnificent work, when the consolidated city is deteriorated and saturated of buildings. Wouldn’t be great that part of these students go out to "get drunk", to talk, to think, to write books, to make models like Constant?
C: It is absolutely necessary, if I not, I can flatter myself with my colleague in my house, in the effervescence of intellectuality. You can produce with screws, models, knowledge and books. You are a producer in other areas and you have fun doing it, then it happens that it is more comfortable ... a certain type of work that doesn’t have to face certain agents ... you are with your friends, your power group doing painting, poetry, politics ...
"When we commit an illegality there is a background of a social function on that property or those public resources. I don’t do an illegality like the bastards who commit it to be richer."
V: They are areas of different complexities.
N: How do you think the relationship between the processes of architecture and social optics should work?
If you study architecture the situation makes you build or deconstruct, and for certain issues you must know the social relationship. Talk to a social worker and you will see that the architects are super aggressive when doing social interviews. In Spain social workers have known for years the relationships of people. I was entrusted with 350 homes for this year, knowing that I can’t meet 350 families. I planned to divide them in small groups, and if a building is made by four architects, they don’t get it. In the architecture school if you ask a group of 4 friends to make a project, they don’t know how to manage it.
In Uruguay, with Mujica, housing projects are made with technical equipment teams in technical institutes, to make social housing. You must have a public document that includes an economist, an administrator, a lawyer and a social psychologist, because they understand that Uruguayan model works. It's one of the best models in the world, I mean it. This strategy of sharing knowledge is fundamental, but here we think that architects does everything: they do the interview, they take the picture with the old woman, and then, they convince us that we are gods.
V: Regarding the legal issues. Do you have many situations of complaints?
C: We have committed illegalities in the embezzlement of public funds. But as it hasn’t been for personal benefit, but for a network of collectives that needed one thing. I have committed illegalities on previous illegalities. For example, I cut a road with a bulldozer and I’ve been reported, but the road was illegal, so I broke a thing that is illegal. When we commit an illegality there is a background of a social function on that property or those public resources. I don’t do an illegality like the bastards who commit it to be richer.
V: Would it be something like being "ethical over legal"?
C: Yes, indeed, there are things that are illegal now and will be legal in 2 years. For example, the woman's vote. When they fought for it many women were hit in their faces, but it was ethical for the woman to vote, and there were many deaths and many men beat women for wanting to vote.
N: That means that for this type of actions you must have things clear, understand how the law works
C: A lot. That is why I claim that certain "cool" groups work with cultural management and when asked them if they know about the culture law that protects them they have no idea.
V: There is a video of Recetas Urbanas where the anthropologist Manuel Delgado says: "... what I like about Cirugeda is that he doesn’t have a city model ..." Don’t you think that the problems of the city are generated precisely because of the lack of city models?
C: We both know that the sites where I act have a city model, a normative model, a model of society and a model of consumption. But that model is tremendously economic. You have to go to an anti-model. The last thing I do is to ask for a license, I don’t need it in order to execute a project.
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It wasn’t easy to summarize and transcribe our dialogue with Cirugeda. We closed the conversation after more than an hour in which we discussed, we agreed with certain questions, and with others not, but certainly it was an enriching conversation. We conclude by saying: "You have the soul of a lawyer. What would it be of you if you were a lawyer?" Santiago smiles ... he knows that he moves in a thin line between illegality and ethical legality. We walked to the Casa de la Cultura to mingle among the public of the BAQ that was debating about the speakers of the day. Seated on pallets (the typical thing, Santiago would say), the public continued with a monothematic debate, demanding the presence of colleagues with different thoughts from the one that was being treated, assuring that everybody should approach in one way or another to the same theme (¿?). Santiago said to the audiece something he already noticed at the beginning of our interview: "... just as you are presenting things, the objectives that you have set will never be fulfilled. We must know deeply the laws and tell the truth of the archer."
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NOTES
[1] Cirugeda about his project: "I was working with the first mental health club house that is an alternative model, but it was not born in Spain. It is now being implemented in Cuba, with a group from Spain. We raise alternative ways that have worked in other countries for years. I named it Psychiatric Tower. There, people have again sexual desire, are able to have family, return to be normalized people, which is what they want. They don’t want to be sick, to be drugged, with depressions, with signs of suicide. Now you say the Spanish public administration that there is a group of 150 users who want a different model of health, and they say: no. Spanish public health is good, right, just like education."
