AULETS is an unusual name for an architecture office. It is a Catalan word meaning a young or tender alzineda — a grove of alzines, the holm oaks (Quercus ilex), the emblematic evergreen oaks of the Mediterranean. An aulet is a small, often enclosed, grove of holm oaks either left standing or planted on purpose in a field, allowing livestock —such as sheep, goats, or pigs— to graze under the dense shade away from the scorching Mediterranean sun while feeding on the fallen acorns. It is an interesting name for an architecture office, because it denotes a place, not a building, which makes it ultimately a fitting name for the architecture office of Francisco Cifuentes Utrero and Sebastián Martorell Mateo. Because they don't consider architecture as an autonomous object, but as part and parcel of the territory it originates from. Their buildings always feel like a displaced part of the stone quarry or the forest that provided its materials, and they never want to disrupt the connection with the territory that produced them. They anticipate their buildings to change together with the transformations of the land and eventually become part of it again. For them a building is not a machine to dominate nature, but a temporary shelter for us to find cover during our short presence on earth, as transitory as the shadow an aulet casts for the animals sheltering beneath it. For that reason, Cifuentes and Martorell see their architecture as a contemporary expression of vernacular architecture whose precious building knowledge of thousands of years they aim to harness in their own projects. They are very interested in working with existing structures, but even when they build a new one, their projects feel like transformations of sorts, as they always refer to pre-existing knowledge, material techniques and spatial practices. Immune to the hubris of the New, modernism's favourite fetish, Cifuentes and Martorell can't stop themselves digging in the extant and never tire of surprising themselves and others with the amazing finds they make.

Andreas Ruby (AR): Your office, AULETS, was founded in 2012, but you, Francisco, had had your personal practice already since 2002. Can you explain what led you to found AULETS together with Sebastián and how this collaboration shaped the work and agenda of AULETS?

Francisco Cifuentes (FC): That's right. I started working on my own in 2002. In those early years, I combined my professional practice with studying for my PhD and teaching. In a relatively natural way, I understood practice as a collective effort, sharing projects with colleagues like Pedro Vaquer, Tomeu Riutort, Jaume Crespí, Carles Oliver, Isabel Mestre, Sé Duch, or Xisco Pizà. Rather than a studio in the conventional sense, what we built was a constellation of people who were learning about construction, about the different trades, and about how to pool our interests and our questions. I started working with Sebastián in 2008 as a result of a public space project that we helped developed with Xisco Pizà, Isabel Mestre, Albert Viaplana, and David Viaplana. Little by little, we began joining forces on projects and sharing a way of working with close ties to construction, and that collaboration eventually gave rise to AULETS. Later, Tomeu Riutort came on board, which expanded the team during the years that followed.
AULETS was founded in 2012. Rather than just creating a firm, we wanted to build a workspace where we could bring together knowledge from different disciplines. We were interested in collaborating with architects, ecologists, geologists, technicians, manufacturers, master builders, and craftspeople to understand questions that extended beyond the design of a building. Ultimately, we wanted to understand how materials, trades, resources, and the territory are also part of architectural design. We were trying to get an idea of what can happen when all those elements stop working separately and start building a single reality.

Sebastián Martorell (SM): What I found most interesting about that collaboration was the discovery of a path to learning about architecture through our projects. Each instance brought up new questions about materials, construction, or the territory, and design became a tool for investigating and experimenting with those ideas. Over time, we understood that we shared the same interest in understanding how materials, trades, and the territory participate in the construction of architecture. I think AULETS was born precisely from that shared desire to continue exploring those questions through practice.

AR: Francisco, in 2007, just a year before Sebastián began working in your office, you had started your PhD on Sa Llotja, a seminal public building in Palma from the 15th century, designed and built by the architect Guillem Sagrera. It was the beginning of thorough research on medieval stone construction that was going to occupy you for eight years. On first sight, the subject of your PhD seems to suggest a thesis of a young scholar preparing for an academic career at a department of architectural history. But you did this research as a practicing architect with a clear interest in building contemporary architecture. In what way did this research inform the evolution of your approach to design and construction, and by extension the architectural agenda of AULETS?

FC: As you say, there's a certain convention that situates studying a 15th-century work in the realm of architectural history. But my approach to Sa Llotja was almost the opposite. I wasn't so interested in interpreting it as in learning from it as it pertains to practice and trying to understand how Guillem Sagrera designed it and worked to build it. Just like a stonemason, a carpenter, or a potter learns by working in a master's workshop, an architect learns by drawing and building, but also by studying how other architects have built their work. The research thus turned into a way of learning through the built work. We shared this method of learning about architecture in seminars with Carlos Martí, Josep Quetglas, and Paulino Viota at the Barcelona School of Architecture (ETSAB). In the case of Sa Llotja, it involved studying the stereotomy of the 14th and 15th centuries, the construction systems, the tools, and the ways of thinking from that era. In 2008, just as I was starting my PhD, I had the opportunity to join up with Pere Rabassa during the rehabilitation of Sa Llotja, helping me to learn not only about each of its components, but also about the things you don't normally see: the foundations, the walls, the vaults, and the construction systems that support the building. Drawing became a tool for disassembling and reassembling the work. During that process, certain constructive decisions let us retrace the path Sagrera followed and get inside his architectural thought process. What surprised me during the research was discovering that, today, we're still dealing with many of the same problems Sagrera was facing: how to work with a specific material, how to build with the means at your disposal, or how to turn the conditions of a place into architecture. The tools and technologies are different, but the logic that interconnects matter, construction, and design is the same. Maybe that's why, for AULETS, Sa Llotja is still a benchmark for continuing to explore the profession, materials, construction, and the relationship between architecture and the territory.
SM: Participating in Francisco's research helped me understand firsthand the process, the rigor, and the time demanded by an investigation. It was also important for us because it helped to build a common foundation for developing our practice. Beyond the specific content of the thesis, what really interested me was the way the research was approached: not so much in descriptive terms, but from a desire to understand the logics that structure the architecture. Understanding the logic behind a project lets us understand the questions that gave rise to it and to incorporate them into our own work. The object of study was also important. Sa Llotja is part of our city and our cultural landscape. It was built with materials that are still used in Mallorca, and it responded to territorial conditions that are still present today, to a large extent. That proximity lets us establish a direct relationship with the building, and it helps us to understand it as a work that we can generate a dialogue with. This working method has been crucial for AULETS. Understanding architecture as knowledge that is accrued cumulatively —learning from existing buildings, materials, trades, and the people who made them possible— is still one of the foundations of our designs.