Paulo Mendes da Rocha is very talkative. He starts with a small thing, and ends up in the stratosphere. That's why he's so fascinating.
This conversation was featured in Diário de Notícias to mark the opening of his two exhibitions, "Infinito Vão" and "Duas Casas" at Casa da Arquitectura, in Matosinhos. Architecture is something made for the future. It's an historic account.
So. . .
I'm not able to make that diagnosis about the state of architecture. I hope architecture is something that will continue. On the other hand, when you talk about Brazilian architecture.
. . You have to consider the monumental dimension of what would be an American architecture experience.
How can you gather all the knowledge of that western, Christian civilization which is also very arguable, and transport it to a virgin territory? Because the great contradiction - and that's the best part, contradictions - of that amazing time, since we're talking about Portugal, the seafaring 400 years ago or even yesterday. 400 years in human history is nothing.
Seen as time is history's preponderant factor, 400 years is giving little time to time. You see the perspective of considering that vast empty territory an what was done with the Pacific coast people, Incas, Mayas, Aztecs. They were scorned.
A civilization. . .
. . .
similar to the Egyptians, with pyramids and stone buildings. And an amazing culture. - And mysterious to us.
- Mysterious. They destroyed it, they didn't see it as mysterious. - Something worth studying.
- We now see it as mysterious. Once again, everything to do with time. From the point of view of historical time, we're discovering not America, but what we can do with our travels.
After all, mankind is fueled by curiosity. Today, we have devices sending us news from Saturn's rings. So that episode in time that connects us this way, I mean Brazil and Portugal, is related to that curiosity about the dimension of universe itself, of our presence in the universe.
An unfathomable mystery and, at the same time, the reason for our existence. It's that awe, that curiosity. If you consider architecture as a discourse on that matter, to transform nature into something inhabitable, because by itself it is not, you see what we are referring to when we talk about architecture.
In short, regardless if you're going to ask me a great deal of questions. . .
We're here because of Casa da Arquitectura. Nuno Sampaio created this extraordinary thing that is going to gather and publish reflections on architecture. Architecture is a way of saying, "Who are we?
Who were we? Who will we be? " It's an experience.
The building part. The technique. First and foremost, it's an experience.
Organized, cumulative, to be successfully repeated. To build a bridge, a viaduct. A water tank, even.
A window. But if you consider nature itself is not inhabitable and that building nature's inhabitability is the focus of architecture, and the purpose of the city, you see how wonderful is this thing Nuno Sampaio created called Casa da Arquitectura. It's a place to talk.
It will never end. You can't imagine architecture as an artificial thing created for another planet. It's always related to.
. . Nowadays, we have to.
You could say that bearing in mind what we're celebrating in this meeting, the discovery of the Americas, why not? Portugal is always evoking the Discoveries. The seafaring Portugal.
And what about Space? While we're talking here, there are people working in an orbital space station. Meaning, nowadays it's not absurd to say, between us, in Casa da Arquitectura, we're already trying out in quite an objective way, the expansion of human life in the universe.
Let there be architecture. Have you imagined architecture without gravity? We can do this to the engineers.
I put a stone here and say, "Don't move this stone. It's the doorway to my house. " That would be a true aerial house.
Right? They're always talking about your pillars and about your houses suspended in the air. It's the issue of language and speech.
It's impossible to dance without gravity. The dancer would jump and go into orbit. With the thrust.
We are living moments of great. . .
What we normally say, crazy moments. That's why we are saved by the sparseness of our time for each individual. Life is brief.
We are only a small episode in history. But we are aware that we're part of history, meaning all the past and future projections. That's the whole dimension of the idea of projection, project and architecture.
From an academic point of view, I know I'm very ignorant. And what I am, as a virtue to overcome that ignorance barrier, is very intuitive. Meaning, I'm one of those people who don't know why they do this or that.
It's hard. Why? Why is it hard?
- To say? - Yes. When you do something, you're saying it.
The things you build are your speech. How is that first step? To create the first idea for a project.
I don't know. I don't think there's a first idea. What arises in the face of a peculiarity that poses questions and problems for a given case, - that place, a specific program - is a summoning of all that you know.
And therefore, it's an indescribable dimension, unless you use the language of architecture itself. You have to build it. It's like any other speech, it's hard to explain afterwards.
It's made for the other, not for yourself. Hopefully, it will endure. That's why I think it would be interesting, if you'll allow it.
. . I'm talking about my presumption to answer your question correctly, you as a journalist.
A news story. A news story about someone like me, who did this and that. I want to see what you'll say.
It's a speech to establish a dialogue. Therefore, there's no denying a certain satisfaction when you realize. .
. Satisfaction in the sense of pleasure, an almost erotic vision of life. A certain pleasure in seeing you arouse the interest of another.
In that sense, an award is good news. The award is not of great interest, it's more the notion that people are taking notice of you. But did you expect to win the Pritzker?
Many of the greatest hits on stage were booed on opening night. Awards are not always the best signs. Beware of that.
In Portugal, you did the National Coaches Museum and, as we see in the exhibition, you designed a house in Rua do Quelhas with Inês Lobo. But Inês Lobo makes anyone shine. - Really?
- With Inês? You said the same thing about Ricardo Bak Gordon and the whole Coaches Museum team. You said, "They did all the work.
" But that's not true. You had the first idea. You have to take responsibility.
I'm responsible. Even with a big team, it's my responsibility. The one who says, "Do this, don't do that" is the one in charge.
All the rest are accommodations to solve a problem you yourself created when you said you would do things a certain way. That's when the problems arise. What are we going to do in order to go through with this?
It's really interesting. Do you like to work with younger architects? Your experiences in Portugal are always with younger architects.
Nowadays, and not trying to be funny, I can only work with architects who are younger than me. It's really hard. Nonetheless, they are much younger than you, 40 years younger than you, give or take.
Ricardo, Nuno, Inês. It's 40 years. Half your age.
- In our work, age is meaningless. - Is that so? If you go fishing with four or five people on the same boat, you're all at the same level.
What we do is always what we have in common. The specifics of a project are always a pretext for you to elaborate a broader speech that has to do with transforming nature. It's a construct.
There's nothing particular. If someone commissions a house, you are always reasoning. .
. . .
. about the present. All architects do so.
And what's the reasoning? Well. .
. You're never designing a house, you're always designing a city. Nowadays, you don't have that notion of an individual house, it's always set in a building with several other houses.
The necessary concentration for the city to take advantage of its greatest virtues: public transportation, easy communication, etc. So, in my opinion, we're always building the city. For us, architects, the concept of space already refers to the public space, there's no such thing as a private space.
If it's private, it's not space. If you imagine something, you have to make it public. You can sing, dance, write a song, formulate a mathematical equation, you explain it.
But you have to tell someone so that it can be considered space. There's no such thing as private space. Our mind is a private space, but you have to make it public.
Otherwise, you'll die without anyone figuring out what you thought about. So language, in all its forms, the oral and written word, which are the most common when you mention language, but every form of language. Your facial expression, etc.
That's what you use to make public what's on your mind. But those are very poor ways of communication. We think a great deal more and in a much more complex way, evoking the past, the present and the future, what exists and what doesn't exist, evoking our subconscious, what we have inside of us, in a very hard way.
Mind you, we use 25 letters to encompass all that was ever written. For example, in various languages. Twenty five letters.
Seven music notes to express all the symphonies. It's a wonderful thing, right? We are but poor fools.
We live on the edge of the sword, as they say. That's the only interesting thing about life. If life was peaceful and easy, no one would bear it.
No one would bear it. The worst punishment you can inflict upon any of us is to say, "We have nothing to do tomorrow. " Someone immediately thinks of something foolish to do.
It's impossible. I'll say this to amuse you. Maybe you don't know this.
My father was a great engineer. He had famous friends, such as. .
. I remember it well, because they were great friends. My father used to take me with him when I was just a boy, and I would see him talking to Artur Rocha.
They were not related, my father is Mendes da Rocha. He was good friends with Artur Rocha. Portugal has, and it always had, even in their time, 80 years ago, from what I remember about those two engineers I saw talking to each other.
. . They had a close connection to Portugal, especially with the cement and concrete guys here, an industry which was highly evolved in Portugal.
They were partners with the people from Escola Politécnica. When Artur Rocha would come across my father, they were experts in harbors, canals and hydraulics, and when they talked about some project and evoked their friends in Portugal, not in a joking way, they didn't make fun of them, they smiled because it was pleasant, it was a private joke of theirs, but they used to talk back then, in conversation, with a Portuguese accent, they would mimic the Portuguese. "Careful, that is very hard to do.
" That was just a way for them to say, "Remember what that engineer said? " I always had a close connection to Portugal. My grandmother, on my father's side, - I never knew her, she was already dead when I was born - she was Ana do Espírito Santo Menezes.
And one of her brothers, who was my father's uncle, he was a beloved family member and I was named after him. He's name was Archias do Espírito Santo Menezes. I'm Paulo Archias Mendes da Rocha.
Archias, spelled with "ch". Archias do Espírito Santo Menezes. She was Ana do Espírito Santo.
A Portuguese woman. My grandfather was born in Brazil, but he came from a Portuguese family, Mendes da Rocha. So Portugal.
. . We are Portuguese.
But that doesn't mean a thing, the whole of Brazil. . .
Our language is our mother. Those who speak Portuguese, our black people, our Indians, who speak Portuguese, they're Portuguese now. I think language is our homeland.
The major strength of a union is to have a common language that allows us to understand other people. You not always understand what they mean, but that's something different. If I say "house", you understand what I'm saying, but I don't know if you know what I mean.
What a house means to me and to you. We are a construct of ourselves. A permanent construct.
That's why it's interesting to interview someone. I'm posing as a know-it-all, I'm very talkative, but I'm not presumptuous to say I know how to answer your questions. I'm taking them as provocations.
Because, I'm also saying, "What do you think of that? " I'm the one doing most of the questions. Of course.
I think what's important here is to praise this amazing creation that is Casa da Arquitectura. This is a house of speech. Nuno, you're inaugurating, in my opinion, perhaps the most extraordinary thing Portugal and Brazil did in recent times to build something out of a common peculiar experience which is architecture.
And then it comes into play nature's exuberance, which is very strong in these just recently discovered Americas. Discovered in every sense of the word. Discovered as proof of the possibility of a given thing.
At the time, if someone said the earth revolved around the sun, they would be burnt at the stake. It's very interesting. .
. We live in a condition of lost people inhabiting the surface of a small rock floating around in the universe, revolving. .
. To the point you have to adjust your clock when you fly here. We live in extraordinary times, when taking into account the speed with which mankind has taken advantage of technology, the things we create.
Look at communication nowadays. It's all very recent. I was there when they invented television.
We didn't have that. Not to mention airplanes. It's something absolutely fantastic.
An airplane brought you here. We were stuck inside a can, you have to be crazy brave. 300 people inside a plane, with a belt attached to their belly.
Shortly after, you have freezing temperatures outside, no oxygen, 1,200 km/h and 12,000 meters high, with no oxygen inside an artificial can, blissfully worried if your luggage. . .
If you didn't forget. . .
In this situation, you say things like: "I think I forgot my glasses. " Are you crazy? Blissfully unaware.
Human condition is very interesting. What projects are you working on? - You ruined my day.
- Did I? No, I'm only joking. I have a project that is still roughly sketched, it's just an invitation.
But the thing that fascinated me the most, and this is a message to Rui Furtado, who is present, because I showed him when he visited me in São Paulo, we took a drive and I showed him the beautiful Ilha Bela. So you see. Facing São Sebastião, in a three kilometer canal, it's a perfectly sheltered harbor.
The island is 20 or 25 km wide, facing the mainland, so it's an absolutely sheltered place, with a beautiful harbor. The canal is 35 or 40 meters deep, it didn't have to be dredged. It's the best harbor in the world.
They even have there an oil harbor. Ilha Bela is very well preserved, to a certain point, so that people don't ruin the landscape. They only allow small houses, it's kind of a playground.
It's a beautiful place. City Hall made a survey. I'm going there when I leave here.
The project is to breathe new life into the small village without ruining the preservation of all that luscious green. It's a wonderful place. São Paulo is 700 meters high, on a hill.
You come down to the sea in that place. Ilha Bela is an outcrop of that same hill that comes up the other side with its 1000 and so meters high. It's an exuberant natural phenomenon to an architect, a geographer, any one of us, actually.
But it's very interesting for you to consider an issue, speaking of nature, the Americas, etc. , that is very interesting to refer in this interview, which is the position architecture has regarding that issue of the Americas, nature and so on. Nature is never a mere landscape, it's a set of phenomenon.
So that outcrop of the same hill, creating a moat where water runs through, it's simply amazing. It's an unexpected fantastic phenomenon that creates something beautiful to look at. This is all very beautiful.
