9. Studio naama

Architects
London - UK

‘Civic Gestures’

Many aspects of literature are quite rigid. We have a lot of assumptions around how we read. We assume that we start at the beginning and must read until the end; that if a text is written and printed then it must be absorbed in a linear way. There is a lot of shame associated with ‘dipping in and out’. When teaching, I am constantly trying to work out people’s assumptions, to understand where they are going. This normally involves knocking things over, like cats in YouTube videos. You may try to steer them away from one reference, or point out that they are giving a certain resource too much respect.

Mark Rist First of all, I would like to say that I have dyslexia, as many architects do, which I mention because it impacts the way I use books. I have a very good memory but when it comes to books, rarely will it be the name; it may be an image, or a passage. It can make archiving difficult, but it does mean that I am constantly jumping in and out of books.

To try and follow the sense of a reference...

MR Exactly. Even for projects I have spent a lot of time looking at, names have less importance to me.

Natalie Savva But you can remember exactly what the book looks like, or a tiny image of a specific detail of a project.

MR I could probably draw you the section from memory. In many ways, it is quite frustrating, but on the other hand, I feel like I remember the more crucial elements of the architecture. I thought it would be interesting to discuss that as a starting point for the interview.

NS Definitely, because it has fed into how we look for references - it has promoted the use of books over the internet. The process of exploring the library feels like an important one.

It relates to a topic that has continuously presented itself on this platform - lost, or misplaced references. Sometimes the lost reference can become more useful than the found one because the idea develops in your mind. How do you work with books?

MR Fundamentally, we are interested in the concepts discussed in the books; the essays that examine the visual references and the meaning behind them. We will constantly revisit key texts to remind us why a project, an idea, or a certain architectural move, was important.

How has the library developed? What is the chronology behind those key texts?

MR It is an interesting question and we did spend some time thinking about this. There are certain texts that we have used consistently, whilst others we struggle to find them relevant anymore. Whilst at the University of Portsmouth, I was given Mr Palomar by Italo Calvino (Picador, 1986). Everyone is largely familiar with Invisible Cities (Vintage, 1997), which I see as the equivalent of 1984 (Secker & Warburg, 1949) within George Orwell's body of work. Mr Palomar is a book about the everyday and is incredibly humorous and open. A particular moment in the book stood out - when Mr Palomar at the beach wades out into the sea, staring at the water and a shard of light centres on him. It is a moment of individuality, discussing ideas of ownership over the environment and the connections you can make with it. There is a physicality to the text that deals with these kinds of awkward and difficult relationships. I find Calvino's work innately human, which still resonates today. The idea that you can look at the world through language and dismantle it into everyday pieces, only then to reassemble it as a scenario, was a key theory for me.

On the other hand, a set of early 2000s Bartlett publications that were definitely once important to me, seem to have lost their relevance in practice. Whilst studying for my diploma, I felt torn by these contradictory ideas; one on the everyday, brought to the centre of theoretical thinking by Murray Fraser versus big, visionary image-led projects. I felt a severe friction between the image and what the role of architecture should be. Interestingly, I think this resistance led me to the Japanese metabolists; the notion of providing infrastructure and letting life develop around it.

NS I studied at the Cooper Union and had a different experience. As an art, architecture and engineering school, the work we produced was more material-based. The whole school ran on full scholarships for all students. When I was there it felt like a pivotal moment in time, Occupy Wall Street was happening, and we staged a lot of protests against the decision to charge tuition. I was only meant to be there for two years, but because of discrepancies with the American education system, I stayed an extra year. This meant for a year in between I mostly took electives. I became an art student for a year.

That feels quite serendipitous, an opportunity to slow down for a year. The idea that you could broaden your knowledge and understanding of architecture, through the lens of art, humanities, and social sciences, seems amazing. Perhaps opportunities that are missed in the fast-paced and expensive UK system.

NS Exactly. I really enjoyed the breadth of the American system. You have to complete a certain number of credits in humanities and social sciences, so I took classes in Native American studies, one called Women and Men: Power and Politics, surrealism and the city, a huge range.

Was there any literature that came out of those electives that was particularly important? At the time, or still now?

NS There was. Susan Sontag was a big influence, particularly Against Interpretation (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966) and the chapter, 'Happenings: An Art of Radical Juxtaposition'. I realised I don't own many books from that period because I borrowed them from the university library, where I also worked some semesters. Many were about performance and dance, Being Watched - Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s by Carrie Lambert-Beatty (MIT Press, 2008) and The Pina Bausch Sourcebook - The Making of Tanztheater by Royd Climenhaga (Routledge, 2013) were critical references. I was very interested in site-specific art, so Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties by Suzaan Boettger (University of California Press, 2002), particularly Chapter 5 - 'The West as Site and Spirit', was a major influence at the time. I also worked with Passages in Modern Sculpture by Rosalind E. Krauss (MIT Press, 1981) a lot. It still feels relevant to my practice today.

Lucio Fontana's Spazialismo was a major influence on me during that period. I don't have many of the books but still have records of them, photocopies and sketches of pages. I also studied a lot of film when I was in New York, methodologies we continue to try and use within our work, drawing from that time; New York City is my muse.

MR I think that is tied to Cooper Union in many ways. The School has anchored itself as a cultural hub within New York, undertaking site-specific work in the city. A love of New York City is almost prescribed as part of the education there. This infatuation is expressed quite tangibly through the work of Diane Lewis, an influential architect in the development of the school. Several Cooper Union alumni have also been prominent in major projects in New York, creating massive ripples. People like Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio of Diller Scofidio + Renfro worked on the High Line, members of SOM were also part of Cooper Union, and so on. Their architecture is so ingrained with the culture of the city that it makes an incredibly diverse and interesting urban environment.

NS This is a book by Diane Lewis, Open City: Existential Urbanity: The Architecture of the City Studio 2001-2014 (Charta, 2015), a compendium of student work from her studio at Cooper Union, including my 4th year semester with her. We often use these drawings and model images with our students, to help us discuss scale and the idea of collectivity, as well as the importance of the plan and working by hand. I was part of the symposium to launch the book at the New Museum and MoMA, a really special two days of panels with alumni and other invited architects and designers relating our past studio briefs with practice as it relates to the city or urban environment. Diane went to Cooper Union when she was 16 and never left, teaching there until she passed away in 2017. She's an incredibly important figure for the School and to me as a teacher, I wouldn't be the architect I am today if not for her.

MR It feels rare for architects and architecture students to draw to scale in a meaningful way. That is where my interest lies in this book. In practice, we will often add our building to a map, but Diane Lewis's work is concerned with crafting a building and forming it in the city. This image is a good example; a large portion of the city and many different buildings; crafted interventions, drawn at different scales to discuss the connection between these two buildings. The book is full of studies where people are purposefully and confidently cutting things out and pasting them back together to form an understanding of the city, building it up in a nolli-map fashion. There is a strong articulation of what is open, and what is closed. By montaging the city, you begin to see these connections. Ultimately, it alludes to the fact that buildings are not standalone, but are full of people and relationships, fundamental elements for a great city. New York has this cultural presence, formed around the arts.

It is interesting to think about New York on such a micro-scale. With its size and density, you might expect ideas around the individual to get lost, especially when working on large-scale cultural projects. It is fascinating to hear you pointing out work that develops such detail around intimate relationships, to understand the idea of neighbourhood.

NS It is about the effect of a building on the public. Any architecture you create is civic architecture, therefore it has to be built with consideration for the context of the city. Even if it is a private building, it has to respond to the public, it has an edge condition which abuts it.

You briefly touched upon it, but is there a correlation between this book and some of the work you were undertaking in Japan?

MR I worked there for a short period with an office called studio velocity. At that time Atelier Bow Wow were a significant reference and their thinking around volumetric architecture. One of their key theories was around a building being one intervention within the city. They produced drawings where they plotted these buildings to show how one building might have a rippling impact on its immediate context and subsequently how that may connect to the larger city. I always liked this idea - to think about our profession as being city-makers, regardless of scale.

This is an unpublished book, Works 2006-2015 by studio velocity (Kentaro Kurihara and Miho Iwatsuki). I lived in Okazaki when I was there, which was delightful - full of beautiful houses. This book was only a prototype so the drawings look a bit raw, but what you can see, and what I experienced, is that they meticulously draw habitation. They use scale to ask themselves different questions.

NS When you draw the wind, you also have to draw the person's clothes blowing in it...You will see leaves passing through an open window to indicate the presence of passive ventilation. It follows the same logic as Open City: Existential Urbanity; to understand your neighbours around you, you have to draw them. This takes your understanding from an architectural to a human level.

Working at different scales helps you develop an understanding of what is important. These drawings are likely distilled from other drawings that have looked at a wider range of elements. It is a beautiful way to understand the rhythms of the city.

MR It is. And it is difficult to make those connections. Undoubtedly, you must spend more time on site, you might have to make films, interview people, or record transcripts. At studio velocity, it felt incredibly considered. A direct understanding informed the design process.

There is one studio velocity project that I have to show you. It is set in a regular and somewhat defensive street, atypical for Japan because everyone had fortified their edges. The gardens had become private, cars were on the edges of the plot, and so on. One client in particular wanted to build a house to bring the community together. He deliberately pushed his residence to the back of the plot, creating a garden in the middle and a gallery to the front. The garden draws people in. This was a massive realisation for me that there were alternative ways of making architecture. The intention of the project shifts away from materials and instead to community. It is an idea that we try to distil in our work - making houses, or housing, public.

I think a lot of Japanese architecture is misunderstood because people are exhausted by the 'image' of it. This is an amazing project, Kait Workshop, found in The Japan Architect: Junya Ishigami (Shinkenchiku-sha, 2010). The structural strategy is tremendous. 305 irregular columns, rationalised to form specific internal zones. The structural engineers form an incredible connection between the two, creating a forest-like environment. I believe the concept emerged from the position of the existing trees on the site and the idea to rebuild them. That is where the organicness came from. Although working at a very different scale, we often consider these big ideas when designing.

This leads to something I wanted to discuss with you; as a practice, you are setting out your position. You have a clear and highly ambitious idea of the role of architecture and what it can achieve. Manifestos aren't particularly fashionable anymore, but it feels like you do have one. Perhaps we need more manifestos...

MR I feel like we belong to the generation that has battled against the manifesto.

Exactly. In many ways, it feels like you are channelling some of the ambition from a previous generation; high-modernism, post-war building, or Walter Segal's self-build housing. To me, you appear to be setting that level of aspiration, in pursuing an architectural practice of resistance; to the climate catastrophe, to severe political unrest.

NS I always wanted to pursue something else alongside architecture and I was fortunate enough to work on many large scale art installations and exhibition designs for six years outside of Studio naama. The process is much faster than with buildings so it allowed me to experiment. It was inspiring to test so many different ideas that people interact with. This relates to an attitude of self-build where we draw on several references; Shelter 1 & 2 by Lloyd Kahn (Shelter, 1973 & 2011) and the furniture of Donald Judd, featured in Design Does Not Equal Art: Functional Objects from Donald Judd to Rachel Whiteread by Barbara J. Bloemink, Joseph Cunningham, and Paul Warwick Thompson (Merrell Publishers, 2004). The ideas behind Judd's simple yet beautiful plywood furniture are prevalent in a lot of our thinking. We often have to work to tight budgets, so combining a love of making with creating something functional, as well as beautiful, is fundamental to our practice.

MR There is an egalitarian background to our work. The Calvino readings we touched upon earlier have a huge anti-capitalist approach. I think the current position we find ourselves in offers an opportunity to reset and think about some of these things. If budgets are low for a variety of external factors, then there is an approach and aesthetic that can work with that. It can move away from the glossy image of a building and instead consider what is fundamental to a project. We find that inherently exciting. Sustainability presents a similar scenario. Of course, there is a lot of technical knowledge to understand, but the topic also offers significant grounds for conceptual thinking. With this in mind, there are two references I would like to show:

Jo Nagasaka / Schemata Architects: Objects and Spaces (Frame Publishers, 2017) is a fascinating book. Definitely something I would recommend to students. One essay I found particularly intriguing examines the image of architecture being disrupted. Nagasaka explains how Schemata learned this when a client visited their small, hand-painted, plywood studio. The client asked, 'Why can't we have a building like this?' They had never thought a client would want a building like that before. This simple realisation offered them an opportunity to reset their thinking.

This fed directly into one of their projects, Sayama Flats where they developed ideas around subtraction. At this time in Japan, it was a relatively new phenomenon to work with an existing building. The project was small with an even smaller budget, to the point where they soon realised they did not even have enough money to paint the walls. Nor did they have enough for a new kitchen, so instead they thought about how they could re-frame the existing. The demolition and ensuing intervention were incredibly simple. I'm not saying it is 100% sustainable; I don't think pouring vast amounts of resin on the floor can be. However, the idea of working within your means, with what you already have, makes it a fascinating project.

I think the idea of working within your means is inherently about sustainability. I don't think this gets discussed enough but is critical to the field. It can't just be about carbon counting...

NS Exactly. A bigger overhaul is needed in terms of people's thinking; to consider what constitutes a necessity.

MR Which directly feeds into this idea of subtracting - what can we subtract from a project to make it better? Before even thinking about adding. This has fed into ideas within our studio, questioning whether you really need to build.

Schemata became relatively well known through their work, 'Co-ownership of Action: Trajectories of Elements' at The 17th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Here, they engaged in the deconstruction of a 1960s house built in Japan. They divided it into all of its components and archived everything: photographs on the walls, calendars, furniture, to elements used in its actual construction. The whole building and its contents. They even used material from the house to build the lathes that built the exhibition! In terms of reuse, they were pioneers in Japan. In Objects and Spaces, they discuss the tangible, direct and immediate conditions that led them to this.

The other book that I recently added to the library is from Dot Architects, Politics of Living (Toto, 2023). In Japan, there are many 'failing' rural villages. This has led to the formation of arts festivals, an attempt to try and attract young people to the villages, both as designers, but also as spectators. Several architects have become interested in this, because of the particular conditions of village life. It is a lot closer and celebrated as such. The focus in these places has shifted away from national politics to smaller power structures. They want to move away from generic policies that have to cater for a much wider audience. Although the local community is diminishing, they want to work with them and create interventions that help re-establish and develop that community. The book is framed by, one of the co-founders, Toshikatsu Ienari's experience as a builder. He shares an anecdote about a Tadao Ando project on an island growing and growing, to the point where he found himself looking directly at a concrete wall outside his bathroom window. This led him to think about 'big' architecture in a negative way. In Politics of Living, Ienari discusses dot architects search for direct, tangible and simple things. He sees an assemblage of elements as a lost battle, believing that in order for us to build proper relationships, with people, and with architecture, we have to understand everything holistically.

Again, necessities. What it means to live. There are a lot of interesting ideas on sharing and borrowing.

MR Exactly. But there is a radicalness to Ienari's thinking. He says we need to be proactive about this - we have to do it. In many ways, it feels directly opposite to the way we build today, where there is a huge amount of complexity. The work of Lloyd Kahn feels particularly relevant to this thinking. The idea that we could build a house holistically by ourselves, but equally we could get help from the people around us. It is all about building architecture alongside tangible relationships between people.

Absolutely.

MR There is a word that some Japanese architects use, but is a lot less common here - atmosphere. Atelier Bow-Wow uses it and so does Ryue Nishizawa of Sanaa. They discuss the project in its entirety as an atmosphere. We will often talk about an environment or the climate, but these feel like quite fixed terms. I'm particularly fond of the word atmosphere because it can describe a feeling of space, yet it can also contribute to a discussion on rational and scientific ideas. It somehow manages to be both broad and narrow, evocative of feelings, but without using solidified words. It is a word I think we should all be using.

MR In In Praise of Shadows, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (Vintage, 2001) discusses the Japanese toilet and its connection to the landscape. It is a strange contradiction, a very private space being completely open to the landscape. It feels like a repeated theme in Japanese architecture. However innovative Japanese architecture can feel, it always appears completely ingrained in tradition. A good example is Sou Fujimoto's project, House NA, where with each level, an interpretation of a genkan, you traverse a 'clean' space, to a 'dirty' space, to a 'clean' space, and so on. It feels like a conceptual version of something which has been done in Japan for hundreds of years, ideas seemingly embedded in language rather than image.

A simple idea extrapolated to a completely different scale.

MR Exactly. All of this ties into the idea that we need to know more about everything - we have to understand the project holistically. In thinking about this, you quickly see the problem with construction today: bureaucracy, regulation, technical issues, fees. It becomes almost impossible to know everything about a project unless it is very small. This has definitely led us to retain an interest in a certain scale of project.

A book that relates to this is by Cathelijne Nuijsink, a Dutch academic and author, How to Make a Japanese House (NAi Publishers, 2012), covering both known and unknown Japanese architects. The format is relatively simple, organised by generation. This presents a lineage of ideas, the transition from one generation to the next. There is very little discussion around aesthetics. Instead, Nuijsink interrogates how the buildings are made and their use. There is one particular example I found compelling, where an architect designed a house for a father and his sons after the bereavement of their mother. The brief is undertaken as a collaborative process, with the fundamental idea being that the father wants to retain a close relationship with his sons as they grow older. As such, the house is designed with a series of curved roofs and platforms - each family member having their own, but connected to the whole. Completely innovative. Text is consistently framed through these discussions between client and architect, rather than aesthetics. The publication ends with Junya Ishigami and after 'Master:', it just says 'no statement' [laughs].

NS This thinking has directly influenced our own work. We try to talk through ideas about use, pattern, ritual, movement and so on, rather than aesthetics. To question how a client wants to live. This involves talking to them about spatial qualities, to uncover what they do, or don't like, rather than talking about specific styles.

I recall from your presentation at the University of East London that you use a lot of art as reference in your work. Is it in these kinds of discussions that you would show a particular painting or a book on painting to a client? Removing the reference to a built form and instead thinking about feelings, intuition...

NS We will often start with a painting or sculpture that we feel a client may have an affinity with and the kind of space they want to live in. We largely work on domestic projects, which are incredibly intimate, so we have to find a way into the details.

How do you work with these books yourselves? What is the relationship between those artists you treasure and your own work? It is evident on your website that the work of Gustav Klimt is a big influence.

MR I think there is a certain sensitivity to the way Klimt paints. You witness a particular tactility brought into focus. Within big, beautiful canvases there is often a focus - one area of rawness. They are extremely emotional landscapes.

NS For me, Georgia O'Keeffe has been the most prominent artist. I keep the self-titled book by Tanya Barson (Tate Publishing, 2016) as a physical record and 21st century reading of her work. I am enthralled by landscapes so am interested in how she frames them; how she engages with the idea of being in them. And this of course relates to where she lived. We were lucky enough to visit her house in New Mexico. It is incredibly simple: adobe structure, courtyard, garden and a view of the New Mexico mountains and valleys. Beautiful. To a certain degree, we are trying to capture the feeling of being there, of being close to nature, within our own work.

Do you read much theory around the art? Or the ideas that support the work?

NS I wouldn't say I read a lot of art theory, but I am interested in the context. I don't want to take it at face value. Of course, there are some artworks where you have an immediate visceral reaction, but if that happens and I don't know the context, then I want to know it even more. In many ways, it can feel strange buying art books, because you do not directly experience the art, but instead read about someone else's experience of it, which can be insightful but less personal.

MR Helen Frankenthaler has also been an influential figure for us. Dulwich Picture Gallery put on an amazing exhibition of her work, showing her abstract and atmospheric woodcuts. But it was the videos that caught my eye, offering an insight into the collaborative process of her work. Frankenthaler rarely knew what she wanted the end result to be but she had complete faith in the process. Some of the work in this sequence is just as beautiful as the final piece. This has directly influenced our practice, to allow for errors and not try to produce work that is too prescribed. There is a spirit in Frankenthaler's work that seems to convey many of these ideas.

All photography by Tim Lucas unless otherwise stated.

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9. Studio naama

Architects
London - UK

Index

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9. Studio naama

ArchitectsLondon - UK

Index

Architects
London - UK