Material in Play.A conversation with TEd'A arquitectes
By Santiago de Molina
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The professional work of TEd’A began in 2000, following a learning period that could be considered global, with a focus that suggests a particular sensitivity to the architecture tradition of Majorca. This generic-local contrast has become a characteristic quality of your work.
Jaume Mayol: Studying far from your place of origin gives you a different perspective when you return home. You realize that the things at hand &mdashthe things that might seem commonplace, mundane, honest, basic, elementary and ordinary&mdash are also fabulous. In out contemporary culture, the architecture on offer is global, so when you approach local things, you are surprised. Perejaume is quite right when he says that any given place in the world is incredible and fascinating; that you only have to look carefully and pay attention to discover that, starting with the local, it can become universal. In other words, a Roman house is neither better nor worse than an African house. They both share a concept of a house that is common or general, yet in both cases it meets the specific requirements of each place, having been perfected thanks to its own traditions. We feel comfortable with Regionalism, and even closer to the rural world. We prefer evolution to revolution. We try to understand the specificities of each place, we try to study and understand the local traditions and use what is already there as a tool. We try to work with things we have seen before and learn from the past to draw the near future.
Speaking of specifics, even your name, TEd’A arquitectes &mdashan acronym which, if I’m not mistaken, stands for Taller Estudi d'Arquitectura (Architecture Workshop Studio)&mdash refers to two concepts which, separately and at different times, are common when in an architecture office, but when used together, describe a kind of activity that suggests a hybrid between various trades.
Irene Pérez: We want to be both a workshop and an architecture studio. Our idea of a workshop could be likened to a craftsperson’s atelier, a place where people work in groups, share knowledge and learn from each other, usually slowly but intensely. And with studio, what we have in mind is Antonello da Messina’s monastic image of St. Jerome in his studio, a place where each person delves into their own chimeras in each project, in each issue. By putting the two concepts together (Workshop-Studio), we hope the result is distanced from the preconceived idea of an office. We don’t want &mdashnor do we know how&mdash to proceed in an unpolluted way. We’re used to working in an impure way. Our projects advance on top of each other (like in a workshop), one model dismantles another. And that forces us to experiment constantly, study things, and maybe even remake them, because something that’s been tested in one project can be useful in another.
Continuity also seems to be important to you as well as a working method. One can appreciate your awareness of the fragility of this continuity on many levels in your Majorcan roots, not only in terms of purely architectural references but also with references that are related to language.
JM: Tradition comes from the Latin tradere (to deliver, to bequeath) and it means taking something further. Tradition gathers ancient knowledge, appropriates it and then gradually transcends it. Tradition works by repetition. Repeating and perfecting. Tirelessly repeating the same gesture, the same object, the same detail, the same solution. In the case of our profession, the same typology, the same material. With each repetition, the details are updated and perfected, and that also helps to strengthen the identity of the place where one is working (from the Latin idem, the same thing).
The names you use to distinguish your houses, for example, which are the names of their inhabitants, also refer to the Majorcan term (Can). That suggests a special relationship with your clients and a defence of a significance of the house that goes beyond the physical container, insinuating the concept of the home.
IP: Yes, we could name our projects in reference to their location (House in Montuïri, for example). But when you bring in particular people, they immediately stop being houses and start to become homes (Jordi and Àfrica, Guillem and Cati, etc). People are an essential ingredient in our projects. The house you end up building is born from the desires of those clients, from their intentions, from the way we research their lives. Identifying our houses with personal names is a very basic way of turning that object into a place that can be taken over; a place that ceases to be ours and becomes theirs from the very moment when they have to transform it and live in it.
JM: There is no underlying strategy for those names, but it does have to do with the way houses in Majorca are traditionally known. Calling a house Can is a way of acknowledging a place name in it&mdash something that ultimately reverts to the island itself. Jørn Utzon’s Can Lis, for example, links the house to a place, but at the same time it also provides information about the place&mdash it enriches it.