Interview with Javier García-Germán (J G-G) and Ferran Vizoso (F V)

Why should environmental drivers be the design guidelines for any project, and how does form need to follow climate?

F V      I think environmental drivers should not be the only guidelines in an architectural design; they should be added to the rest of design guidelines architects are using. The reason we should include these drivers is because of ethical reasons. I think the general goal is to diminish the environmental impact of current architectural design, and by having environmental drivers as guidelines we can maintain the capacity of the ecosystems to deliver its natural properties. It’s not only for us it’s for future generations because it will be a huge problem for them if we don’t do it.

J G-G   Architectural form needs to follow many things, like function, its representational dimension or aesthetic interest… but to a large extent form follows climate. If we compare the traditional Alpine chalet, which usually has very low ceilings to prevent the stratification of heat, to architecture in northern Africa, where we encounter high-ceilinged rooms to address the opposite effect, we can see that there are different strategies to achieve comfort. It’s not only a question of form, but also a question of the materials that are used and how the materials and form interact with the program. That’s why environmental drivers are key for any architectural design

In this workshop, the students worked on a site in Menorca, studying its climate to propose comfortable spaces. Why is Menorca an interesting location to explore an environmentally conscious design?

F V      Menorca is a little island surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea, so it’s a piece of land with very clear limits, where it’s very easy to understand its metabolism. It’s a territory that has been thoroughly studied, so it’s very easy to know what comes from outside and what’s been produced on the island, making its metabolic system very accessible to students. The metabolism of a territory, the management of materials and energy is interlinked with its inhabitants, their culture and behaviour. This relationship is easy to recognise and analyse on an island.

J G-G   Climate determines society to a big extent. For example, in Mediterranean culture, climate has a huge impact on how we gather together and occupy the territory in relation to the sea and how we behave personally and relate to others. That’s why climatic comfort is a cultural endeavour, and architecture to a large extent responds to those social needs. As architects, we need to resolve this issue from a technical standpoint and deploy the tools that enable us to address it in an intelligent way. This means that the cultural and technical aspects are very connected. We need to solve climatic questions interconnecting them with what society demands, and at the same time, we have to do so with the means we have at hand, which is very connected with the technology and the economy that is in place.

You’ve been insisting on the temporal dimension of architecture, encouraging students to work with resilient and circular designs. How can an awareness of time tackle environmental issues?

F V      Circular design and the circular economy are huge challenges for designers nowadays because we need to transition from a linear economic system to a circular one. From extracting and mining raw materials, producing, using and throwing away, we have to shift towards a management system where waste becomes a resource. It’s not easy to do, but it is mandatory to address the issues we’ve mentioned before. We cannot keep creating waste and affecting the environment as we are doing now; the problem is not only ecological but social and economic. The way to achieve circular design is to introduce time into architectural design: time in the sense that we have to stop designing only for the final picture and more for the whole process. We need to think about what happens before the construction. Where do the materials come from? Where were they produced? What are their environmental and social impacts? We also need to think about architecture as something that will be used and that needs to have the capacity to adapt to changes. This consideration of a design before and after its use is the big issue here. There’s a huge amount of information we must deal with to achieve an environmentally conscious design.

J G-G   Today, it’s essential for architects to address how users interact with a building over time. Architects like Rem Koolhaas, who is well known for his environmental concerns, has been studying this since the beginning of his career. For example, in Delirious New York, he talked about skyscrapers as artifacts where uses undergo constant change. So, it’s a question that has been interesting for architects throughout history. There are two main strategies: one that has to do with flexibility, which is the capacity of buildings to cater to change through change; and the other one is resilience, which is the possibility to cater to change through stability. Both of them are good ways of tackling uses and change, but I prefer to champion resilience. Architecture deals with permanence and durability, so architects need to propose layouts that have the possibility to stand up to changes in use without any problems. That’s why I am in favour of a room-based architecture rather that an open plan one. The idea is to move towards stability in form as a tool to tackle changes of use over time.

How did this course shape the students’ skills?

J G-G   It’s an interesting workshop for a Master’s program because students already have a clear idea of what design means. They have a set of tools that enables them to design according to what they have been taught in their previous schools. This workshop adds a layer of knowledge to those tools. During this course, they have acquired the capacity to understand the climatic implications of architectural decisions.

F V      Our aim was to make students think about architecture through climate and energy. It was quite a novelty for some of them, not so much for others, but I think in these eight weeks, the workshop improved the students’ ability to think about architecture in this way.

What impressed you the most about the results?

F V      I was impressed by the students’ capacity to manage climatic and energetic data and to apply the strategic thinking we proposed with this workshop. I think that’s because both of those capacities are sort of in all of us: the relation to the sun, the wind, rain, humidity, temperature and the use of spaces and resources is in our innate formation.

J G-G   What most impressed me was the students’ capacity to deploy a trans-scalar understanding of Menorca. The workshop was very ambitious, but the final results stablished interesting connections between different scales.