Essential Approaches to the Landscape.
A Conversation with Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta,
by Santiago de Molina
Text published in El Croquis 228 RCR 2017 2024.
Every conversation happens in a different way. This one with Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta (RCR) took place over four days in Olot, two at the end of a long spring and two in early autumn. The formal portion was recorded over several hours. But, in reality, the true conversation, the underlying one, didn't take shape during that formal portion. In the literal meaning of the words, one cannot find what RCR wants to say while responding to a simple list of questions. Like in their architecture, the most concise and essential answers are formed in a space between the questions and the words. Or to be more precise, on their far side. In a space that exists in the tone of the replies, in the pauses, in the silences, in the implicit things, and in the moments in between: in that interstitial space of communication that Roland Barthes referred to precisely as "the rustle of language". In the case of RCR's architecture, this liminal space has become a continuous aspiration. What's more, their shared mode of communication seems to have built a way of understanding architecture and life. It is in this place where the essential and profound appears for them. This conversation took place with each of the members of RCR in different formats: sometimes individually, sometimes in pairs and their variations, or with all the members of the studio at once. Strangely, in all these episodes, the same thematic thread was present, with different intensities and tones, despite each of the architect's different personalities. This text is, thus, a kind of conglomerate in which we find pieces of all of them, woven together through a cooperative understanding of architecture in which it is difficult to differentiate a single individual voice without the presence of the others and, at the same time, you can hear a stronger, clearer voice that results from the whole.
This issue is the fifth monograph El Croquis has dedicated to RCR's work. The first began with a "Test for an Architecture Exam" (2003), in which the definition of architecture appeared as "the art of materialising dreams on a long journey". The latest issue, which covered the work until 2017, concluded with the acceptance speech for the Pritzker Prize. You repeated the same definition but added a coda: "...And on this journey we are pursuing architecture that contains the whole universe". This current monograph lets us take stock of a career that can clearly be regarded as a long one and that, like any journey, has been full of pauses, detours, surprises, learning, uncertainty and discoveries. Where are you in that journey now? I'd like to ask whether you have managed at this point to fulfil the expectations, the dreams you had in the early days of your career. How did you imagine yourselves in the future?
[RCR] We still believe that the concepts of a journey and a dream belong at the core of the experience of architecture. Looking all the way back to the beginning, we never imagined that this dream would unfold over the long term as something unattainable and far-off. Perhaps what has brought us into the present is the sum total of specific dreams all linked together. You come to a series of crossroads, of forks in the road that you simply must take but which lead to different places. For example, from the outset we wanted to avoid falling into the kind of work that would prevent us from thinking about architecture as something relevant. If we're talking about a long-term aspiration, we were interested in the possibility of dreaming about Architecture with a capital A. Having said that, it wasn't an aspiration that tied in with a desire for persistence as such, but rather with a way of moving through specific phases, and doing so coherently, knowing that each project was, in itself, a dream. No matter how big or small, each dream was very important to the overall journey. Moreover, it must be said that RCR's most important project has always been a collective dream. We haven’t had to force things to make that happen. Thanks to a certain ease in balancing work and life, that early approach has become more nuanced over time, although its essence has not changed.
Rafael Moneo said that the best thing about being awarded the Pritzker Prize was that it saved him from the temptation of thinking about the prize. Being freed from fantasizing about winning it one day helped him accept the award without feeling anxious. In your case, and in retrospect, what were some of the consequences of receiving the prize?
[RCR] (long pause) We've never advanced in our career with any prizes in mind. In our case, prizes have been a reinforcement or a source of encouragement, but they have never been the goal. What has fundamentally changed in the wake of certain prizes is how others view us and our work, rather than our way of working. For example, we have very intentionally kept the studio the same size since then. We understood receiving the prize as an invitation to stay the course: maintaining a simple life, taking advantage of the good things that were happening to us, adapting to them without getting carried away. We are a very small team, and we don't have serious difficulties keeping it afloat. The studio is still just five minutes from home, and that lends a certain simplicity to everything, a dose of reality and naturality. We have believed in this shared project to such an extent that nothing coming from the outside has entirely absorbed our attention. That said, it is true that we received some interesting offers after winning the Pritzker Prize. We had to turn down many of the possibilities that arose, which would have taken our sights off that long-term journey we were talking about earlier. In our case, it is curious that each project has led to another in a natural evolution, and that has kept happening. Each project has become a dream in itself, revealing new crossroads. Sometimes, like with the Perelada Winery, the journey has gone on for 18 years. This sense of time in the long term has not been altered by the recognition because coherence has served as a guarantor of stability for us.
We should acknowledge, though, that certain things have changed. For example, we had to stop giving many of the guest lectures because they demanded time that was no longer available to us. We have always tried to avoid becoming slaves to anything, be it commissions or situations. It can be hard to hold onto greater degrees of freedom, but it is important. We should also say that balance is fundamental; it's something almost magical for us. We have been mindful that balance, in the deeper sense of a movement between two opposite poles, goes hand in hand with the awareness of a fluctuation. Although there may be ups and downs along the way, it entails accepting that everything will come back to a point of equilibrium. Managing balance on a personal level, too, is key. When you share something bigger than just yourself, everything takes on a larger scope.
Receiving such an important prize has been a significant burden for some of the winners…
[RCR] Often enough, the point in time when the prize comes is more important than the prize itself. Every decade since the studio was founded, we have taken the time to take stock of where we were, and the prize gave us an opportunity to look back on our past work and towards the future. In that moment, we imagined lots of things about the future, but mainly we tried to see the opportunities it provided us to reach new places and find new conversation partners. For example, one of the loveliest things the Pritzker Prize brought us, indirectly, was a partnership with the municipality of Yoshino, in the Nara region of Japan. It has been a gift to be able to delve deeper into a world that fascinates us. That relationship led to the donation of cedar wood for the construction of the Paper Pavilion we are currently building at La Vila. The smell of Japanese cedar in La Garrotxa is a beautiful, indescribable thing.
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