It is 4 pm. After going around once or twice, the GPS indicates to me that I have arrived at my destiny. In the Otero and Delague street, in Madrid. I am a little-little nervous, I leave the car and I start looking for the Aranguren+Gallegos studio. Number 118, Here it is. But, will this be the house or not? I observe the surrounding buildings. Unquestionable. This is the place. Imagine how it could have been the previous building and how it is the final result. Amazing.
I push the intercom and his secretary answers me, kindly, to come in. I go into the building. Every step is a surprise. I get into a Little yard, I walk up a small stair, I stop in front of another door. I go in. The secretary tells me to wait, that Jose will immediately see me. I observe the interior. Mobile walls, shelves full of books, and wide áreas, without any disturbing element that could distract attention beyond the importance.
I left my backpack and my jacket on a chair, while my nerves increased with the waiting. I sit down, anxiously, in a chair made of a translucent mesh. On the table, made of brilliant grey material, I find an isolated computer screen and nothing else. On my left, I see a little shelf with the facade of the ABC Musem, in Madrid, one of his latest Works. This calms me down. “I am in the right place,” I think to myself.
After waiting some never-ending minutes, I hear some footsteps. A grey-haired man with a polite face, in his fifties, dark jersey and clear trousers, gets down from the upper level. Without a doubt, Jose Gonzalez Gallegos. He says hello, we shake hands and he sits down. He starts to talk while I set the camera and the voice recorder. His voice calms me down and his behaviour. It shows his years of teaching. I feel like a student in front of his master. I am worried about my nervous voice, and the fact that this is my first interview. Also, my south accent can make him uncomfortable. He crosses his arms. We start the interview and with the first question, all the ideas begin to flow and all my worries and previous nerves disappear:
INTERVIEW TO JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ GALLEGOS by Roberto López.
R.L. To begin I want to ask you a very generic question that for each architect is a different definition. What is architecture?
J.G. [Setting his arms on the table, with a pencil in his hand] Architecture could be defined by what is not architecture. Is not only construction, not only building or economic activity. The classic concept is an artistic manifestation, a personal adventure, a way of thinking in space, answering a couple of conditions not only specific or emotional but also cultural: is the expression of an époque through construction (he enumerates with his fingers). Really is very complex, is very difficult to enclose it in just one definition. All these are partial definitions of this so complex phenomenon. Issomethingamazing [He smiles].
R.L. Throughout your career You have made a lot of Works and projects but Is there one you would stand out above the others?
J.G. No. To talk about just one project is like to talk about one film with just one frame. [He starts to explain with his arms and with the pencil in his hand all the time]. The activity of an architect is time, a process. In that process, you have thoughts, like if it were a computer, with its hard drive, something that has a lot of gigabytes and you can increase its capacity and with software, a temporal situation that would be the project. Itself you order the hard drive to answer to that software with a number of gigabytes. This is how I see one of our projects along our work. It is not just an isolated phenomenon, it is not a bigger or a smaller success. They are work or thought lines. We have a work line in dwellings and securities or uncertainties arise along our different projects.
The same happens when you approximate historical buildings that, because of our European conditions, we have to answer many times to pre-existents. The same with exposition areas or with hotels. What is a hotel nowadays? Which are the main parts of a hotel? ¿Is it the room? Is it the spa? Is the fitness?... These are questions that you ask yourself and you answer throughout different projects. One project alone has not a lot of interest for us, we like the attempt of multiple answers.
R.L. I would like to ask you a question that, in your case, gains relevance, since you are an architects couple. Has got architecture been the result of an individual work?
J.G. [He smiles] To be politically correct I would say that architecture is a discipline that involves many others, that is teamwork, the socialization of the creation... I don´t believe that. I am in an age now where I have certain securities, besides many other insecurities.
Architecture is an adventure that someone leads but it is a very unilateral decision that has effects on lots of people and it needs a lot of people to make it real. It is teamwork but someone has to lead it, someone has to say that is something correct. In our case, we are two architects. [he follows his words with his hands without laying his pencil] It is a dialectic we establish in which there is a personal thought about the possibilities of a project, a previous discussion about where it could go, in which way we see more possibilities and from there, we find one, that we search both, although at the end it belongs to me or her. And from there on we add all the needed people, your architect's collaborator, your illustrators, engineers... it arises all that world, but from a required choice, that at the beginning all is possible and all is relative. Someone has to assume that risk.
An example: In a factory, dishwashers and freezers are made. In an assembly line, if someone decides at the beginning that a dishwasher has to be made at the end, a dishwasher will be made. In the end, If nobody decides anything you could have a freezer. Someone has to decide the beginning and the end. Our discipline involves a lot of people, and has a lot of costs, it is very complex. Lucky is the sculptor or the painter that decides his work from the beginning to the end with its costs and means. We have to convince an investor, a team, and a lot of people to make our work. For that we are so envied architects, we are more than them because our activity is so complex and so difficult to get results from.
R.L. When you have to project, what can we find to be on your work-table?
J.G. [He looks at me interested] Everyone has a title. There are some people that decide to guide their lives in the attempt to make architecture. You don´t know if you are going to get it or not. You train the best you can and you have your points of interest. When you decide that your interest is that, you have to establish your times and your grazes with other parallel activities [he lays the pencil and starts to explain with his hands].
For example, for us, teaching has been always essential to establish that balance between reflection and action. That brings you to the necessity of putting the knowledge as a daily condition. This generates a lot of books around you. What is there on my work table? Walls of books. They are my backpack: my masters, my interest, my proximities… my backpack. And maybe I am not going to consult them to make projects, but is like an intellectual acoustic mattress, you feel comfortable, watching above your table, that is empty facing a generation that at you drawing.
I have passed a process of believing that it is possible to think on screen despite the current generation doing it, but first I have to draw before putting it into the computer. I have a paper, I have not got an empty mind, the creative work is subtraction work. When I have a project, we have a lot of things to put in. Is a subtraction process, this could be, this not, it is never an empty mind. Is from the full backpack where you have to take out the correct tool to solve a problem. That is the table, all your world, you have to build your internal landscape, what makes you this way, what you build every day. A project is not someone that calls you for a contest with a delivery date that makes you act. You are acting every day. People say things like “look for this architect made a project in just 3 days”, yes but he has been thinking for 30 years about it and in that certain moment, he introduces that 30 years of thoughts. That is it! [helaughts slightly, satisfied].
A&G office. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. Besides architects, you are also a teacher. Your life has been linked with the ETSAM of Madrid and I would like to ask you, how did the degree influence you in your student stage and what do you try to transmit to your students now?
J.G. [He takes the pencil again, always following his words with gestures and hand movements] Our formation as architects in the ETSAM, similar to any school in Spain, is better than many schools abroad. I feel proud of how I have learned and how I approximate the architecture with an important technical component that is not usual in foreign schools such as Italy, Germany or France, where you have to previously specialize if someone chooses a more technique school, more artistic or more business school. I feel proud as an architect to have been formed in Madrid, and in Spain, where we have a correct ancient formation, with a Napoleonic conception where architects have knowledge of everything. We can say that we know everything but we don´t know anything. That is what gives us the possibility to be inserted in other more partial fields of our activity and, also, more completed and we can go in-depth in them. Summarizing:
- Firstly, I am happy about the ancient formation that we have in Spain, enviable abroad.
- Secondly, I am improving what I have lived in this school.
What I try to transmit is, at first, honesty. The risk of being a teacher and an architect that builds is that you can´t betray yourself in your work and you cannot repeat as a teacher, you have the tension that your professional work is going to be checked by young people, that young that is 20 years old. You are older and he is always 20. Not repeating yourself makes you more interesting intellectually and in the teaching field. That honesty degree and those aspects are what we have to transmit to students. Notforgettingthatyouwere once a student.
R.L. Because of being so much time linked to the University, you will have passed all the study plans that have been. ¿Where do you think we go, do you think we have improved or we have made it worse?
J.G. As the responsible professor that I am now in all this academic hierarchy, I am an observer that knows more details about study plans, and their evolution of them. My promotion started with “the 75 study plan”, which closed the plan before, “the 64 study plan”. After, that plan came “the 96 study plan” and now “the 2010 Bolonia study plan”. I believe this evolution of study plans is a minimalist process. Where is the minimum economic, the minimum hardware, the minimum of everything? I thinkthatwe are living a devaluatingprocess.
An example: There is a whole credits nomenclature, CTS, ECTS…but there is a date: When we decided to be architects in 1975, we had to assist to 6000 hours of classes to get passed all sixty or more subjects. With “the 96 study plan” this passed to 4500 hours. The “Bolonia study plan” requires 3000 hours. From when I started to now, an architecture student has to assist half the time I was required to attend. Then, they decorate it, with hours of work at home that are like academic hours... this is beating around the bush, but in the end is a savings policy, to reduce costs. It is a minimalist process. But I still believe that architects have a formation time at university and another one, longer, after it. What is needed at one time will be completed at the other? They are personal decisions. You will carry your backpack with everything you can in the university, but if you want to continue carrying it, you will have more professional opportunities. What a pity not to have more time to continue carrying it at the university [He smiles, regretting].
A&G office. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. Which architects have you had as references and which you would recommend to young architects? And Which works?
J.G. [He crosses his arms for the first time since the beginning of the interview] This is something difficult to explain. Those reductionist things are difficult. More than work is an attitude. To be an architect, you need to visit architecture. Travelling is as important as studying, reading or making a project. The physical experience of space has nothing to do with the study of these wonderful works. That building you were studying from an early age, with the Interrail and then as a professor, travelling with our students, is the best architectural project. Because you are going to decide to visit good architectural projects of which you get very strong feelings and experiences that determine you.
[He starts explaining with gestures] We have visited a lot of interesting things and certainly if we make some of these is due to the experience lived. And then, exciting moments. Villa Savoya, on my knees, (smiles, excited) But... is it the house or not? You go to the Mies van der Rohe´s Farnsworth house... marvellous. But... is it the house or not? You go to the Alvar Aalto´s Vila Meirea.Will it be the house or not? I am always asking myself the same question you are asking me. Is it the best house? When we went to Frank Lloyd Wright´s Waterfall House, I think nowadays is the best house we have experienced. Because it has all that floating and abstract world that you can find in the architecture of Mies or Le Corbusier but, at the same time, all that you experiment with also in Villa Meira or in all that rooting American architecture. It is a cave into a flying platform. Is the sum of a lot of things. The Waterfall House, I think is the best of all the ones I have ever known. But if only I have known it physically I would have not valued it. In conclusion, the best work is to travel. [smiles, finishing].
R.L. Along these years we have grown a lot, maybe not in the best way. Why do you think we have grown in this way and how do you think we should have made the growth of cities?
J.G. [He leaves the pencil]. It is a very complex problem that can be told in a very easy way. We live in a society that is what we have, not better, not worse. The society in which we live has decided that cities are in our private interest hands. What builds cities are economic agents: builders, promoters... money. The political interest plays to be a middleman between them and their political responsibility. We, technics, are needed agents to give an end to that process.
[He smiles, adjusting the chair and approaching the table]. Using a surgeon as an example. When you are going to have a heart surgery operation, what do you decide, whether any doctor is worth it or only the best? Or maybe, an interdisciplinary team of opinion, with sociologists, and economists to see how we operate. The best surgeon, please. The best architect is not demanded by society. It will be in part our responsibility. But this is because we are diluted in that world where economical interest is what is really important. What is a sin is that we see cities growing in an uncontrolled way because power is the only one allowed.
Let´s see, for example, that buildings change for economical pressure. We have in Madrid a very clear example. The increase of the Castellana´s Promenade. Four kilometres from the new city. An impressive opportunity for city growth. Heights have been changed Uncountables times because numbers do not match. Is this good or bad? It is a secondary decision. To make the business works it has to establish a quantity of edification. Has any specialized technic said what is the best choice for Madrid in the 21st century? The profitability of an operation is negotiated between political and economical agents. This is it. And afterwards, plans are made, they give surrounding rules to it... This is one of the bigger Spanish and other social problems. It is very difficult to control it. But in countries like Spain, this is a disaster. It is not a construction or an architecture problem, it is not that the architecture we made is bad. We have to distinguish between architecture, a well scarce and difficult to obtain, and construction, which definitely build abilities and square meters. [He ends, satisfied].
R.L. Let´s introduce us to the rehabs topic. I would like to ask you, do you think that in Spain there is excessive protection for historical buildings?
J.G. [He turns away his gaze, thoughtful] We started in the '80s and then it was beginning to put away that scurfy aspect of interventions in the patrimonial heritage, where there were some previous schools of architects saying that when a good architect approximates a monument, his new action must look like it has not been made. Maybe contextualizing it with the century it was built. After there were discussions about how this approximation had to be made by a contemporaneous architect where there was a strong fight, because historians, archaeologists, and preservation, are needed, they had prevention to the modern language.
This has been diluting and now this has been overcoming in Spain. What it could have been are better or worse actions but the juxtaposition of times and languages is accepted. Strategies to overlap those two situations depend on each author. But, although it seems obvious that new and old had to coexist, in Spain this has cost our generation, It is not necessary to go far behind. But it is true that in Spain we can talk about these experiences while, for example, in some South American countries, they are like us twenty years ago. They have less historical heritage, they are more cautious. Their historical heritage is only fifty years old and they call it historical heritage. There is more prevention. For this, I believe we are fairly well.
R.L. When approaching a historical building, what is easier or gives you more freedom to act, an action like the one in “Alcalá´s Historical Hostel” about a historical monument, or the one in the “ABC Museum, about an industrial building?
J.G. [He touches his chin, thoughtful] [He starts to explain with gestures] There are two very generic situations in rehab. It is like the case of two patients.
There is a very old man, very ancient but with such a big nobility, that needs to be reactivated but it has a personal and historical personality very important. The architect implants him in the ear and he can hear again. He can put him in a prosthesis and he does not limp anymore. A waterfall operation and he will see again. We can say that you are solving partial problems inside a whole that has an important dignity. THE MONUMENT.
There are other kinds of situations. A fifty years man, with a very strong cancer. Has to have a life or death intervention where everything is possible. You have to be more aggressive and you have to solve the complete collapse of a situation. The architect´s intervention has to be more powerful.
Focusing on the two works you have mentioned before. The Alcala´s Historical Hostel was quite dilapidated, it had been a prison, a barrack... We tried to read the context where the building was, trying to recompose its general laws, recover its original dignity which is already a part of an intervention, recovering its walls, its vaults, its brick walls. Rebuilding the dignity of a building and completing it with a new programme, with its new needs, with the new architecture, establishing a dialogue of juxtaposition where the new and the old dialogue but they never join together.
In Alcalá´s Historical Hostel we rebuilt that convent, that already existed, his walls were remade literally with artisans like in the 16th and 17th-century, to introduce later a bedrooms system, courtyards and orchards that recovered another law of the place, that was the orchard farming, that was behind, but everything that built those historical situations, the wall and the cover, that was the orchard, was completed with a contemporaneous language of bedrooms. Somehow, you are being modern but respectful of the fundamental laws of the building.
The “ABC Museum” case, was a building that was a warehouse. The old beer factory had been demolished. There was just left the building and a party wall because they had demolished the warehouse and they had built dwellings around, leaving a party wall next to a neighbourhood courtyard. The building character was very disfigured. In our case, we had a problem with the size of the courtyard, which was much smaller. Over an operational problem on the hall, reorienting the courtyard towards the museum and taking away the dwellings attraction, was a powerful intervention. The aluminium facades with rectangular geometrics that, in the end, is a sculptural effect that would reactivate that and they would create new situations. They are two works that could illustrate these two worlds.
Alcalá´s Historical Hostel. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. On a visit to the ABC Museum, it caught my attention the idea of feelings that is able to produce and that they are previously sought when trying to carry on a project. How feelings can be projected?
J.G. [smiles, in a friendly way while crossing his arms] We have the spacial vision of architects that is presupposed like the courage of soldiers.
R.L. Yes, but not everyone gets it.
J.G. [He uncrosses his arms, starting to explain the project with his hands]. Of course, in the case of the project, it was a very complex plot with unavoidable access by a very narrow street, tangential. We had the possibility to demolish a building that was not protected, to rip and make a beam that recovered structurally all the plan of the street that, walking on the sidewalk, almost accidentally, you get into the yard. We can say that is a matter of access. One of the issues of the contest was access. A yard which was closed, that belonged to the neighbours of the dwellings that formed two of the four sides, transforming it into a public space, nothing private. We recovered that passing character and we had to create an attractor to come into possession of that space. We built another situation, that was a plan and the aluminium facade, that pulls you towards the museum. Powerful situations that you can imagine. In the case of the ABC Museum, this is resolved by the strength of the aluminium in these rectangular geometries. More powerful than we could have imagined.
ABC Museum. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. Where is the balance between form and function, and to what extent can this determine the structure and the materials?
J.G. [Leaning his hand on his face] Is an absurd debate because everything is important, everything determines. Our buildings are sculptures that have a plastic strength, they can be like paints or canvas but they also have to fulfil a function, they must have some uses, some scales. Is the sum of a lot of components. For that reason, it is said that architecture is a process. You have to get into all the variables that make it real. What is it before, the chicken or the egg? The function does not determine the form and form does not determine the function. That is a debate that was established long time ago just for the fun of it in conferences. Both things are connected.
[He starts explaining with his hands] When you design something you have an immeasurable world of possibilities and you introduce conditions to your work. At that moment you decide that you are going to put the structure as a condition. This sets you up you in a certain way not only in the form but also in how you organize the functions. It may have a very particular condition that was not needed but you have introduced it. In order to shape things, you start introducing conditions. Therefore, the structure is a condition that you introduce as an architect among others. Or sometimes not. [He smiles] It is like playing with five or six important variables, sometimes even more, that you adjust in each case according to your interests. Because architecture is a very personal interest for each architect.
R.L. In your works we find a lot of dwellings and I would like to ask you about this. Throughout the years, the lifestyle of the population has changed from ten years ago. How do your dwellings adapt to this matter and how do you believe they could adapt in the future?
J.G. [He looks at me interested, leaning one of his arms on the chair and the other on the table] One of the architects´ responsibilities is to serve or to express not only the physical needs of our society but the spirit of its time. There is a reality that are dwellings, more than ninety percent of our buildings. Is one of the architect's responsibilities.
For many years there was hazing by the architects in front of the laws that still continue and it seems to limit you a lot the possibilities of thinking about how to live. There is a law from the sixties around somewhere. But later you see that everything is possible if there is an effort. It is being a while since some architects have tried to influence, and little by little models are arising that are useful for the rest of society. At the end those interesting models, the wise choice, those are the ones we need at this moment of our current society.
There is a problem. Architects, when we designed that law, we knew what kind of users were going to live in that dwelling: Standard family, a married couple with children, many bedrooms. To make a kind of shelf-dwelling to give all the members of the family their own niche. Nowadays, we do not know who is the user, because in a collective dwelling with thirteen neighbours we will have different ethnicities, family groupings, and changing situations inside the family unity. Throughout our life, we know that there are divorces, and there are all kinds of situations. It is not very known. Flexibility criteria we apply in our dwelling, we are not reinventing the wheel. Now, we are introducing little changes, like little sudokus, to insert, in a regulatory scheme that does not allows flexibility, or flexibility variables. Normative does not allow walls to move. Why not? We are going to move them. The law only talks about square meters, it does not talk about sections. If you establish a little variation in a section, other things can happen. They are variables in a misery moment that is continuing applying an obsolete law in Spanish society. They are little battles but always trying to express currently situations inside the contemporary world we live in. This is making architecture all the time.
Dwellings in Carabanchel. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. ¿How much a house can be reduced, and where is the limit?
J.G. [He takes some air and smiles slightly] Which one is the right measurement? Is it the square meters? Is it the cubic meters? Or the weight?Or the heights? There are a lot of variables. We are used to think like the property sector makes us think, only horizontal surfaces.
There was a debate a couple of years with a dwelling minister that made a mistake. She was at a fair in Barcelona. She was at a round table with architects. She heard architects about minimum dwelling, about the versatility of dwellings. They talked about amazing dwellings forty square meters could be made of and when she left the meeting and journalists asked her she said that she was going to propose dwellings in Spain to have forty square meters. It was a scandal. But of course, because the debate was about only forty square meters. The discussion there among architects was about transformations, sections, and flexibility, which made a dwelling of forty square meters a more versatile and interesting space with a bigger value than a conventional dwelling of seventy square meters. The size does never give anything.
R.L. If you observe one of your first projects, for example, the Europan I project, comparing it with one of your last dwelling projects, Have you noticed the evolution over these years?
J.G. [He starts moving his hands] In the Europan I project, a funny thing happened. In our college, we could choose between three project chairs. There was one, the one that everyone wanted to go to, that only built public buildings. Another, more elegant, very white, very cubical, with style. And later, there was another one that only built social dwellings on the outskirts of Madrid, more liberal, that nobody wanted to go. Only those who did not care much about architecture. The one that is worth it, it is worth it and if not you would go to the dwelling chair. With this important cultural baggage, we only made public buildings because they accepted us first. When we finished our studies, the first Europan contest came up, but it was about dwellings. Of course, but we did not do any before. You find more about it because you want to participate. And in the end, our mistake, what people that who knew how to make dwellings. You have to make a column, with correct floors and interiors obeying the law and you have to imagine the exterior image of the dwelling. We won. Very happy with the sculptures but a failure because we did not enter in the topic.
It serves us for the next contest, convened by the Basque govern in San Sebastian, another Europan. From that moment, we had the feeling that we had made what was expected from architects, to decorate dwellings, not to enter into the situation of how you live inside. And from that, with that frustration and that success that create us a traitor feeling according to the residential topic, we started to introduce that aspect where the first thing that interested us was which change we would introduce in the interior of the dwelling and later we would introduce some more changes. But the maximum interest of each contest was to think how was the interior of the dwelling. As time goes by, more insecurities arise, and you introduce more variables... you get old.
Europan I, Querol. Courtesy of Aranguren + Gallegos Arquitectos.
R.L. Recently people are talking about sustainability, bioclimatic architecture, and zero-energy building... which way is it included in your speech?
J.G. I think is good that our flourishing society has all of these approaches because it makes us reflect on everything: how we live, how we consume... Obviously, it included architecture and building fields. I can't imagine an architect who is not ecological. Architects have two unavoidable variables. Our work must be economic and that entrail much logic to be ecological. Architecture is ecological and logical. A dwelling is not sustainable because of the amount of solar heating, It might have but due to its good orientation, cross ventilation, it looks for interesting situations in the enviroment where it will be introduced... It questions natural laws, the good work, the good living. Now is called sustainability. This term clarifies a lot of things to manypeople. But as a professional, I always do the same thing well. An architect doing things well is ecological and sustainable. That of panels is secondary, someday someone will ask what we could be done with these panels with difficult recycling.
R.L. To finish, currently we find ourselves in a difficult situation for architecture in general and for many young architects here in Spain. What advice could you give them?
J.G. [He looks at me with a paternal look, slightly sad] We finished our degree in 1984. The last class we attended, was taught by a professor at our University, we were 300 people. He said that 65% of us there would never build anything. There was an economic crisis at that time. Then the 90's crisis. Currently, we have a bigger crisis but it will go way too. Architecture is life, a process. Obviously, an architect is a person who has the choice to be and always stands and achieves it. From my partenrs, from a 25 year perspective I saw them whatever they wanted to do and what they have done. Now is the same. The economic situation is bad, there are fewer opportunities for the young architect than for the old architect, this is a fact. Resist. The one that wants to fulfil will fulfil, it is important to look for different means to resist. Do not be pessimists, we need to be positivistic. Architecture is always possible. A young architect has an ability to outdoor projection bigger than the one in our era. Where we were programmed to stay in Spain. Languages, matters better degrees, Erasmus experience, exchanges among countries, make easier the outdoor projection. Spain is living now a small “blackout” but it is temporary. An architect who starts, has years to be of different ways. Things have not changed, we are in a bad cycle. It doesn't matter.
After this, he says goodbye and cheers me in relation to the future. End of the interview.
Interviewee.- José González Gallegos.
Place of the interview.- Own studio in Otero and Delage Street.
Date of the interview.- Madrid, December 2012.
Website.- www.arangurenygallegos.com
Location of the studio.- Otero and Delague Street, 118, Madrid.
Place and date of birth.- Guadalajara, 1958.
Currently, he is 45 years old.
METALOCUS "In Focus".
