Interview with Juan Domingo Santos on the occasion of 'Alternatives', XIII BEAU

The Juan Domingo Santos interview took place a few days before Christmas (2016) and a few weeks before the negative report about Alhambra project, that he designed with A. Siza, was known, and describing it as excessively interventionist, which caused that Junta de Andalucia abandon this project, proposing a complete revision, so as not to lose the investment of millions of euros made so far.

 
- We, as directors of the Biennial, proposed a theme that was 'Alternatives', 'Alternatives' in response to one situation from many points of view. 'Alternatives' as a change in the profession, as new work strategies for architects, as the way to understand a profession affected by a crisis time that has been coming for some time. And how the crisis has already become a issue that isn't problematic to exercise, especially for young architects. A generation that has already been born and has emerged within the crisis, and for which the crisis is but an argument to project and build.
 
Instead of doing the classification of the themes as it was formerly done in biennials, "it's the best single family housing work, the best collective housing, the best facility"… We proposed themes which have nothing to do with scale or program, but with several concepts such as heritage and landscape.
 
We were interested in this year's 30th anniversary of the Spanish Heritage Law, so the idea we put forward was in this line. It was about seeing what Spanish architects do around or how we response to heritage. And it didn't matter if it came from the intervention of a commercial office in a historic building, the remodeling of a theater or a historic set of a block from the city.
 
We did a selection of projects, which were qualified, about how to approach the intervention in the patrimony, we didn't care about scale and program, the important thing was to know how the problem is dealt with. Regarding the categories of landscape and city, totally the same. Those were the criteria.
 
And then, what did it suppose? We are four: three directors and one biennial coordinator. There was also a jury that I think it is made up of thirteen or fourteen people, some from the world of art, engineering ... external guests, not architects, to throw a look that wasn't only disciplinary or inbred, but a look from other perspectives.
 

 
- I participated in the 'On site' exhibition, I was with two projects; One that I did with Siza in Granada and another that was the house in the cherry orchard. That exhibition raised because Terence Riley is interested in seeing certain ways to project current architecture. It was not about Spanish architecture, but when he did this study observes that many projects and many architects converge towards Spain, like Herzog & De Meuron, Álvaro Siza... many architects, foreigners but who worked in Spain, because that time - we are talking about 2000-2006 - was a period in which the country became a workplace with a lot of contests.
 
Spain was strong, and so it was a place where many things happened. So in the end Riley decides to make that exhibition about Spain, because it becomes a focus of attention beyond the intervention of individual architects. Something happens that Spain becomes a place of trial and experimentation for the field of architecture.
 
This exhibition is very different, it is like a reflection we do internally the architects, the jury and us as directors, to see how is facing Spanish architecture with these issues. And you will see that the selection of projects, except very particular cases, are small scale projects and there is no participation of the 'Star System'. There is a generation of young people who are doing very interesting projects. That is what makes this exhibition of 'On site' very different, that many of them were very consecrated architects and great studies, and now what is shown is that there is a young Spanish architecture, and when I say young I do not say only of age, but also of spirit, an architecture that does things that are fine with few means.
 

 
- I was recently in Miami to give a lecture in the School of Architecture. They said that they were attracted by the way architecture Issues related to heritage or landscape; A sensitivity to the way they deal with issues that they do not share, but they did not understand.
 
And he was very attracted by the sensitivity of the Spanish architect to everyday things, to preexistence, to history, to the idea of ​​projecting with memory. The sensitivity to bring together very different things in front of the big project, the program, the substitution.
 
We have a culture of recycling, a culture based on history. We study history in the schools of Architecture, and our cities are very patrimonial and that supposes a sensitivity on the part of the society, They do not have such problems because they do not have a heritage like ours, and the basis of all their progress lies in the invention.
 

 
- That was Garcia Lorca, right? How to become universal thinking about everyday problems. I believe that in a universal and global world as we live, it has capacity and the specific has a place; The more global the world is made the more it affirms or reaffirms its own and specific. The important thing is not quantity but quality and quality of what you do. It is true that I recognize that I have very clear coordinates in my work, but if I were in another city I suppose I would do the same, but in another way.
 

 
- I believe that in Spain we are not entrepreneurs enough. We do not have a mercantilist look at architecture. That has some advantages but also has some problems, and we do not know how to run this business. Maybe if we could work harder on this, society would understand us better. Because many times the architect is willing to lose money as long as he carries out an idea of ​​his. 

- In the end things start as everything in life. I say to my students: "today we do not desire". I think that the desire for something has been lost, one has to desire and also to be more relaxed. I think you have to mark to yourself other timings to and look for what you like, and to want things as well.

That's what happened to me with La Fábrica [the Factory]. When I was a student, I used to commute from Granada to Seville by train, and I passed by the tower where I now have the studio. I used to watch it and say "what a wonderful place, one day it will house my architecture practice". From that moment I did my best to make it my study. I made it and I have been there for many years.

Of course, this has also led me to a huge trial war with urban speculators who want to intervene there. And deep down I'm just a person who defends some heritage values ​​of a place that is abandoned and that wants to reactivate the city.

I am developing some projects, some forums that I organized already there on the occasion of the Biennial, in which I intend to make people aware of the historical value of that site, to open that space to the city. As an architect I am working now not on architectural projects but on energy projects, on how to get people interested in that place. All this is my project now in La Fábrica, to integrate this wonderful site I dwell in with the city.

 
- Sure, of course. For me, architecture is an activity that combines experience, emotion and use; The experience because it is to experiment with the architecture, to take the risks; The emotion because all good architecture has to thrill; And use because in the end the architecture serves a function.
 
Architects today are generally very concerned about functionality, programs, square meters, certification, etc. And we have forgotten these other questions. I believe that geometry is not a value for architecture, strictly. I prefer to understand architecture as vital facts and actions.
 
I like to go for a walk, to visit the place, to talk with people, to look at things, to hear, to listen ... there arises the project. Then what I do is in my studio is to draw that, the things that I have seen. I hope they give me the argument of the project and what I put into action is the activity of the discipline.
 
I do not try to impose a picture of a previous idea and what has to happen in the place. The conditions of the project are the pretexts to do so, and you have to make sure that every project reaches a certain degree of naturalness in its process, so that it has a speech beyond itself.
 

 
- The project of the Factory, for example, has a lot of importance, because I believe that it has become a vital project, it was the trigger of many. There has been a time when I realized that many of my projects are there, in the way of understanding the place, to occupy A site, the relationship with the preexistences.
 
I think that good architecture has to combine narrative and experience, and for me the project of the Factory is very narrative and generates many experiences that give way to projects.
 
There are also other relevant projects linked to the Alhambra, because my story is also related to it. I used to play in the Alhambra. I played football in the Lions' court of the Palace of Carlos V. And certain things that I have done afterwards, I have noticed that they come from there, from those silly little games that you are not aware of what you are doing, and that at Time are there and appear, such as the relationship with materials, with light, that idea that the opaque is heavy and transparent is light in the Alhambra dissolves, there may be an opaque thing that is transparent ... All this fascinated me.
 

 
- I do not know when it begins, it is complicated. What I do know is that I have affinities, I begin to want, and as Tabucchi said "do not say what you want to happen because it happens".
 
For me Siza was a teacher, so I went to look for him and I met him. You might have seen that the projects of Siza and mine do not formally resemble each other or in the way they act, but I learn a lot from them.
 
I learn his sensitivity, how he looks, his honesty, his ethics, the effort for work and the value he gives to things. He understands architecture as a relation of things and the project begins with relating and establishing a set of connections between them.
 
I have learned from him, not so much in his formal architecture, which is wonderful ... I have noticed that in Portugal there are many followers of Siza who are now like clones, they do very similar projects, and I did not want to get caught for him. I always move around peeking into his world to discover certain things, but then I try to make my own story.
 
And when the contest for the Atrium of the Alhambra arose, I knew that he liked the Alhambra and is one of his mythical places, and I said to him "let's participate in this contest, Is the opportunity that you can realize your dream, that you can get to make a proposal in this place with everything that you have told me of the Alhambra ". And that was it, arose. I knew that if there was anyone who could do that project well in the world was Alvaro Siza.
 

 
- I do not know where it goes, but what I perceive is that the architect's ability to express things is more reduced, more limited as time passes. And the model that we tend to is based on companies that act as intermediaries between the client, the owner and the architect; The architect-client relationship tends to disappear except in direct assignments, which are housing projects.
 
A possible solution to this situation would be that the architect became a company, because this way he could organize a broader network that went from raising these ideas to being able to organize a work schedule, construction, and so on. Options? To occupy other positions that are now going to be in the hands of people who are not an architect and who are not going to have that sensitivity.
 

 
Indeed, I was referring more to a policy of established power that is concerned about issues that are not very legitimate. These organizations are interested in saying something today this and totally the opposite tomorrow, for reasons that you do not know and that neither are interested nor have anything to do with citizenship. This seems to me that makes the architecture very vulnerable and should not be so.
 

 
There are so many steps! So many steps and so many terms. I think the beauty of the Spanish Biennial was that, even in the face of a very complex situation, all the architects who are awarded there are able to create paths with enough intelligence and resources to find places to remain architects.