Will Alsop on Architecture

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UK is a country with great history. Designing a modern building within this context is a complex procedure. Is critical regionalism an approach to your architecture?

No. It’s a short answer.

You read a lot of stuff, but it’s just words, isn’t it? You do what you do. And you’re now in your twenties. For me philosophy is very important and somehow that would feed through, give you some understanding to feed through to your work. Then you’re thirty, maybe you reduce the idea to your concept. Then, when you reach forty it’s a bit too much, ideas might just not be enough. When you reach fifty, you reduce that to notion, to suspect something.

Well, now I’m sixty, it’s “fuck all”, it’s nothing! I don’t worry about things, because in the end it’s not as complicated as the world of architecture would want you to believe it to be. It’s about commitment; it’s about doing something with the right emotion. It sounds a bit fluffy, but it’s about relaxing. And your best work is done when you’re not thinking too much about it and it just happens, it comes from somewhere else.

In the end it becomes an intellectual exercise, but after you’ve done it. Then it can be debated, discussed in all sorts of different ways, I’m not against philosophy in any way. But I’m more interested in the process of engagement, I’m interested in the idea of not knowing things, in the idea of trying the best possible, to work with people who live in the area and get them to be creative and paint and draw.

I try to make some sense out of what they draw, using my own script of freedom too. Then you put it back to them, you say “you can be as rude as you like. Do you like it or not?” And they’ll like it, because they see elements of them in it, so it’s their project, more accurate are “our” project. It doesn’t have to fit in to any architectural philosophy at all. But it’s right for that place. Your teachers won’t like this at all.

By abandoning the hegemony of an acceptable style, you have rendered the whole process of architecture one of increasing fluidity and transparency; as such you continue to uncover new and refreshing positions for architecture. How do your clients deal with this kind of architecture and how is it accepted by the local communities?

The architect in the end is as good as their client. If you have a bad client, it’s impossible to do something. So you have to have a client that’s open-minded, wants to get through a process. Often architects want to make money in the private sector, it’s often, and it’s allowed. But, the process of having the idea for the building and building it up, involving the public is not always possible. I do that, and the public and the larger community. I enjoy that and it should be fun, because it’s a part of our lives. It depends. In different countries it takes different times. Sometimes, it can take a very long time. That’s a part of your life.

A lot of architects make that, they take this very serious and they look miserable. Then, they produce miserable buildings because of it, because it’s not an enjoyable process. I have a lot of my buildings give that sense of a joy to the people after they are built.

On the other hand there’s another side of being an architect which is not building. Just enjoy. That’s alright too. I’ve been thinking about these sorts of questions for a long time. Because I’m a professor in Vienna so I teach, I have students.

What can I teach them really? In the end, I can only teach students to be themselves. That’s the most valuable thing that you have; to give to the world. A bit of experience, travel and do things like that and build up as a response to the world. In the end, it’s you who will eventually be doing something. What you do is important.

How did you end up with a space like this? You should turn and look at the space. You can see this space on the architect’s draw; smooth, grid, very cool, it’s the result of an architectural idea. We know where it comes from. It comes from that small tales who just grow us some white walls by Le Corbusier. And people like teaching it, except it’s not as good. It’s too big; it doesn’t have the same power.

So, they didn’t understand the elements of what they were dealing through here. It has something to do with being minimal. I’m not sure about minimalism. We have maximalism, that’s alright. But you can do whatever seems to be appropriate. In the end, I’m not talking about designing buildings. I’m talking about embarking another process, where you discover what they could become.

Some of us find that difficult because they won’t know. It changes in different countries. If you’re working in China, they don’t know what it is before you’ve done it. But that will change. They’ll become more mature and get used to it; having lots of money. That’s not so exciting for me anymore and I’m just taking hurry, maybe too much of a hurry.  One year, it won’t take too long either, otherwise it could lose interest. It’s interesting in Greece, because you have no money. It’s fantastic. We don’t have much money either in England, but we have a little bit more.

In recent years attention turns to green urban regeneration. Do you think that it is imperative for the city or it’s just a new fashion with economic outcomes and covertly interests?

I think it’s always been urban regeneration in one sort or another. We just didn’t know it was that and someone named it. Towns and cities; they grow. That’s the nature of things at the moment. It’s united; whether you attach things at the edge of the city or you put things in the middle of the city. Whatever you do has no effect on the city; that what it is forming regeneration. But there are some cities that are just shrinking as well. Because we have our jobs and new infrastructure can change the whole balance of where people want to be, where it is valuable for them to be economically.

That has always been a tragedy. I was reading an article in one of the British newspapers; the other day actually.  It was really questioning urban regeneration. Specialties or receive special attention. One of them for example was one of mine; that’s why I read the article. There’s a lot of public icon into this and it doesn’t really work. The one of mine which I was referring to I know it does work. Because I did all the things I just told you about; working with the local people.