A few weeks ago we got together with Joaquín Torres of studio A-cero architects for a quick chat. Putting his public persona aside we found a man who is confident, humble and honest. He has a no BS approach that is quite disarming. Here are a few snippets from that conversation:

I couldn’t care less about architecture magazines. Of course it’d be great if El Croquis wrote about my work but, to be honest, I know it has less to do with the quality of my work and more with the fact that I’m not part of their clan. Early on I came to terms with the fact that publications like these –publications targeted to architects or designers- do nothing but feed our own egos. I’d rather appear in magazines that are less prestigious but reach the public we are interested in.

If nobody knows you exist, it doesn’t matter how good you are or how wonderful your work is. Knowing how to sell your work and the product you do is crucial. Unfortunately most of us architects believe we are beyond good and evil and that we don’t need this.

It’s the world you should aim for. I have learned from other spanish businessmen that Spain falls short in many ways. So we opened a branch in Dubai in part due to an architecture prize we won and following the advice of one of our client’s at La Finca. Since then, we have invested a lot of time and energy in making the studio international. We opened branches in Ho Chi Minh, in Bombay and tried in Santo Domingo and Sao Paulo, though we ended up closing these last two in the end.

I live in a state of chronic dissatisfaction. I always feel that we should do more and better. And I don’t give up until I get it. I have the advantage –or the disadvantage– of being overly critical of my work. I know when something is good and when something is not. I don’t need others to judge fairly the quality of my work.

I’m very demanding but I consider myself just. I have very clear ideas of what needs to be done and how to do it. I know how to value things that are done well and things that don’t work. And I’m not scared of saying it out loud and putting my finger on it. I think I have surrounded myself with a group of loyal collaborators because of it.

We think we have the monopoly on good taste but what we actually need to do is listen. The most important thing is to keep the client happy. In the end he’s the one who is going to live the house day in and day out.

We should put ourselves at the same level of our clients. If they talk to me about Mies van der Rohe then great, we can push the level up. If they don’t, then we should keep it simple. It depends. In the end, architecture is about the way we interact with space. And anyone can relate with that.

Internet is not the future, it’s the present. I guess I realized intuitively that having a solid online presence was critical. Social networks are very important to us. I invest at least two or three hours a day to answer comments on our blog, tweet and update our profile on Facebook. We have a communications team that oversees this full-time but in most cases I like doing this personally.

I never use computers. I just use them for social networks. I do sketches by hand. I stopped using AutoCAD years ago. Although we have a great team of draughtsmen in our studio who use the best and latest programs, I do corrections by hand.

We have an amazing client portfolio. I’m proud to say 99.9% of them are happy clients that do nothing but recommend us. A-cero‘s popularity is based on word of mouth. When people criticize my work I always ask them: Have you been there? Have you been in-situ? Have you talked to the client? Have you asked him why he’s so satisfied with our work?

There are three turning points in my career: designing my father’s house in Galicia, knowing when to say ‘no’ to clients and my friendship with Luis García Cereceda. I will always be in his debt. For his friendship for his faith in me and because career-wise the La Finca project opened up many doors and brought about many more projects. Not everybody is as lucky. I was and I made the most out of it.

You need much more than just talent to succeed. Yes, I’ve been lucky but the true recipe is to work, work, work. Work more than anybody else. And know how to sell. How to sell yourself.

Honest design is what we try to pursue by logical thinking. An ideal form is derived naturally through the process of attempting to maximize the potential of client’s demand, material and its function. I realized that it was important to make ‘honest’ design by going back and forth and to be surrounded by different materials to be used in the experimental process. In architecture or interior, product and furniture design the attitude does not change. I try to maintain a similar philosophy.

Keiji Ashizawa

We stand by every single word.

Ashizawa Design Co. is based in Tokyo. For an overview of some of his work in interior design, architecture and furniture take a look at this image search.

Jean Prouvé was once quoted saying: never design anything that cannot be made. Part designer, part architect he always conceived himself primarily as a craftsman, a builder. In Norman Foster‘s own words, in Prouvé’s work “technical imagination is placed at the service of function and economy”.

And that’s infinitely apparent when you understand the thought process behind his first attempts at prefabrication. How to produce furnishings and components that were simple to ship and easy to erect? How to create structures that were both solid and adaptable; temporary and long-lasting? Simple: modular design. His structures tended to be light, flexible, and even mobile, combining traditional building materials with aluminum and steel.

At the time, Mr. Prouvé was revolutionizing the concept of construction so he went back to the basics. He kew that if he was to create a new language, he first needed to devise an alphabet and that’s what he did, he created “L’alphabet des structures”. Because once you devise the basic elements of a system, it doesn’t matter what the future holds; you’ll know what to do, how to react.

Most of the problems we face as designers today aren’t new so it’s always refreshing and inspiring to see how others have tackled them before. And then it’s just a matter of learning, adapting and applying.

If you have a chance, Industrial Beauty (though I like the name in Spanish better, Belleza Fabricada), is an exhibition at Ivory Press Madrid of some of Prouvé’s most significant work, including drawings, sketches and furniture. It will be open until November 12th.

For an overview of some of his work, this Flickr compilation is a good start.

I think the human body and buildings have a lot in common. Buildings are as weak as they are heavy, and one tool in our armament is a process known as genchiku, which we can use to decrease the overall weight of a building – you could think of it as a process that gets rid of unwanted flab and beefs up muscle where it’s needed. However, I think that some people don’t consider balance in quite the same way – simply putting more on top doesn’t necessarily make a structure stronger.

Shigeru Aoki at The earthquake from an architect’s perspective

The World as Design
Otl Aicher

Honesty and design. It’s a book about integrity, about what decisions should be made, when and why. My favorite book about design, it has really changed the way I see my profession.

The book is a series of essays written by Aicher relating to all sorts of things; from how the Eameses designed chairs to the morals behind choosing one color over another to paint a house façade. This book made me understand that there is a reason for everything and every design decision should have a reasoning behind it.

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
Matthew Frederick

It’s a tiny book about the basics of architecture and therefore, about the basics of the relationship between people and space. It’s very interesting because it gives you good advice for whenever you need to think about information architecture in terms of environments, just as an urbanist would. Not what happens inside a page but how to receive a user, how to guide him, what should the paths look like. When to make “open spaces” and when to make aisles, etc.

Designing for People
Henry Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss designed many iconic objects we still use nowadays. He was also the first one to apply human factors to his designs. He stated that the characteristics of the human body should be taken into account when desiging something for human use. The idea was revolutionary and completely against the design of his time (the 50′s), which was much more worried about forms that would sell well.

On Designing for People he exposes his ideas along with some thoughts on how to run a studio, its processes and methodologies. A classic.

Universal Principles of Design
William Lidwell

A great compliation on design principles (behavioral, mostly). Each principle is carefully explained; on one side of the page with text, on the other with illustrations or diagrams. Perfect to learn the basics and see them in action; it conveys the message clearly using excellent examples.

It touches on many subjects, among them: how appearance influences people, how many options are optimal, how to order stuff… It’s a must for anybody who wants to understand how users make decisions.

The Psychology of Everyday Things
Donald Norman

A great introduction to cognitive psychology applied to design. Very good at helping understand how we relate to the objects that surround us and the things that go on in our minds. Norman introduces the concept of affordance, among many others, one of the few things I try to always keep in mind when designing.

The Industrial Design Reader
Carma Gorman

A compilation of readings (articles, essays, excerpts…) on design, architecture and the like. I’d say 80% is still applicable to interaction design no matter the year the texts were written (some are from 19th century and very valid).

It’s a good book to help remind us that, even before our times, great minds put a lot of time and effort into thinking how things should be made. It helps me keep focus and give foundations to what I do.

The Invisible Computer
Donald Norman

This book by Norman has a few extremely good chapters on how design (as user experience), technology and marketing interrelate in a project and the role each one should play. It provides you with (and helps you understand) the whole picture; how technological products are made and why most of the time we fail.

Information Architects
Richard Saul Wurman

Wurman coined the term “information architecture” and uses it in a slightly different way to what we are used to. We think of it as structures of webpages, he thought of it as what we now call “information design”. The book is a great compilation of examples by excellent designers on how to shape information in a way that conveys the message more efficiently (most of the times that means visually).

Ambient Findability
Peter Morville

Morville, one of the founding fathers of information architecture, wrote this excellent book about how information acquires new dimensions when leaving the realm of the traditional website. He talks about how GPS, RFID, sensors and many other technologies are creating new forms of data that make information more meaningful. To me, this book was a great introduction to the value of metadata, the internet of things and geoeverything.

Being Digital
Nicholas Negroponte

It’s the bible of the digital realm, a book that sheds light on the consequences of converting everything to ones and zeroes. Most of what he says on the book is stuff almost everyone knows now but back then: it was shocking. It should be a mandatory read for some policy makers even today.

Inside Steve’s Brain
Leander Kahney

Learn marketing, design, communication and product strategy from Steve Jobs. Who else could teach it better? The book is half biography half chronicle about Jobs and Apple. It goes deep into many issues in a very entertaining style. Some chapters are worth their weight in caviar. The book was last year’s Vostok present to our clients.

Designing Pleasurable Products
Patrick Jordan

Forget Donald Norman’s “Emotional Design”. If you want to know about emotional design then get this book. It’s entertaining and rigorous and it has everything you need to know about how emotions play a role in the way we choose and use products.

In Praise of Shadows
Junichiro Tanizaki

It’s japanese aesthetics in prose poetry. It speaks about organic materials, objects that age gracefully and the beauty of imperfection. It describes the secret pleasure of wabi-sabi.

Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
Leonard Koren

A great essay on wabi-sabi, that side of Japanese aesthetics that looks into the graceful decadence of materials, seductive imperfection, shadows, organic materials, wood, ceramics and beautiful rusty colors. To me, modernism is great but sometimes you just need a break, a good break, not one of those breaks that postmo hipster boys have in store.

Braun: 50 Jahre Produktinnovationen
Bernd Polster

Braun is the Apple of the 20th century. This book is a catalog of all the stuff produced by Braun during the past 50 years. You can see the influence of the Ulm School of Design, Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, Otl Aicher… And also learn through colorful examples how Oral-B ruined the best design driven company that’s ever existed. The book was a gift from my students some years ago and I go back to it when I need inspiration for use of color, layout, etc. Full disclosure: Dieter Rams is one of my prophets.

Digital Diagrams
Trevor Bounford

I lend this book to whoever asks me to recommend a book on information design that’s not just theory. Edward Tufte is fine but it may leave you clueless about how to start. This book will give you many examples and even Illustrator tips on how to visually display data. A great book to have around.

The Kitchen is for Cooking
Otl Aicher

Aicher had to redesign a kitchen. In the process he learnt so much about how everything works inside, an entire microuniverse, that he decided to write a book about all his findings. I consider it a great example on how to understand contexts of use, which are often wider and more complex than expected.

Typography
Otl Aicher

There are many books on typography and I confess that I’ve only read a few but, boy is this one good. It makes you feel a complete ingnorant. What’s wonderful about is that it makes you understand how people read so you can make design decisions on how to display your type. You have to read a good book on typography before you design anything intended to be read and this is probably one of the top books to aide you.

From Bauhaus to Our House
Tom Wolfe

Good modernists sometimes get so fed up with ourselves that we need a break. Wolfe’s book is a satirical essay on the modernist madness and all those “white shoe boxes” derived from the first Bauhaus buildings. Is there a modernist aesthetic and you just used it without being it a derivation of function? Perhaps you are modernist-sick. Go get the book.

Conversations with Jean Prouvé
Armelle Lavalou

A tiny but marvelous book on how an industrial designer thinks and works. In this book Prouvé is extremely honest and modest, a quality difficult to find in today’s designers. He was also a real innovator in materials, form and structure. The way the book is written is like having the master talking about himself in front of you.

Sistemas de Signos en la Comunicación Visual / Zeichensysteme Der Visuellen Kommunikation: Handbuch Fur Designer, Architekten, Planer, Organisatoren
Martin Krampen and Otl Aicher

The book is worth its price just for one chapter, the one where Aicher explains the difference between analytical and synthetic information. It’s the first thing I teach to my students every year. When you know that, you know 30% of everything a designer that works with information needs.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

It’s a great collection of stories about how people behave unexpectedly in certain situations. Gladwell is very good at pop psychology facts that sometimes are good for understanding user patterns or for provoking them.

Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen

An introductory classic. One of the books that started it all. Nielsen is not the guru he used to be but he deserves credit for this great compendium of applied human-computer interaction that kicked our profession in its initial days. The book was also great for convincing clients and “evangelizing”, if you ever want to use that word.

Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krugg

Krugg’s book is also an introductory classic; if Nielsen’s was about principles this one is about techniques. How to run a usability test without a white coat, how to report usability issues effectively, etc. Many examples and cartoons, easy to read (it took me less than 2 hours!). Very good for superbeginners who need to do usability tasks at their products. Also very good for those who’s job is not on the usability/design trench but need notions.

Le Corbusier Talks with Students
Le Corbusier

Designers usually pretend to know a lot about Le Corbusier but they usually know little more than a few modern-design villas with beautiful horizontal shapes without understanding the reasons behind such decisions on form. This book summarizes many of his thoughts on design and architecture. Since the book is a transcript from his talks, it feels very natural and close. You end up learning a few things about systems and contexts from a discipline that has many things in common with interaction design.

UPDATE (31 Jan, 2011)

The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand

Yes, a novel. Setting aside Rand’s political views, The Fountainhead is clearly a good story about honesty and values in creative work. The book is about an architect who fights the world to stay true to his beliefs on what a building should be. There is much about his views on architecture that matches what I consider good design. Also, all the character’s struggle to stay true to himself is a great teaching in a field where clients, peers and fashions have so much influence.

Read it when you feel you are senior enough, not too soon. And stay away from work when reading it. A summer vacation would be ideal.

Javier Cañada leads Vostok, a design and strategy studio that creates smart interactive products. You can follow him on twitter @javiercanada or at Vostok’s blog.

The structure of a system reflects the structure of the organization that built it.

Richard Fairley

Now check the metro map:

How much information about the city and the country who build it, right? You can tell it has a strong, centralized and authoritarian political power just by looking at how the lines converge at the very center. Their concept of traffic transversality isn’t lines that doesn’t cross the center but a circular line that reinforces this idea.

But is the metro network what shapes that reality or was it there before? Let’s check a regular roadmap of the city:

Very much the same: strongly centralized, everything that needs to go from A to B needs to pass through the center first. Everyone, every matter.

If you check New York or Barcelona, for instance, you’ll se something different. Everything seems more rational and decentralized. Both cities have a strong grid shape reflecting that interactions between people (being social or business) are more important than political power.

The funny thing about this quote is that it was said regarding software and programming, not urbanism. Do you thing it applies to the design of interactive systems as well? Do we end up shaping structures that reflect the organisation behind. Is that good or bad? Are there powerful examples?

This article on The Design Observer about Massimo Vignelli’s desk has introduced us to a new little gem: Lines. A wonderful addition to our list of movies on design.

In their own words:

Lines consists of mini-documentaries, running 5 to 7 minutes in length, highlighting the beauty and importance of the architecture in everyday objects, and details how the design and structure of these objects affect and reflect our lifestyles.

Highlights: The Desk and The High Heel.

In case you’re not familiar with The Guardian‘s beautiful series on writer’s rooms that the Design Observer article touches on, check it out: you don’t know what you’ve been missing. El País has tried to do something similar, missing the mark by a long shot unfortunately.

There is something subduing in the creation of structures we humans inhabit or use in any way, something about those structures condioning our moves and behaviors. Architecture and (even more) urbanism have that powerful quality.

Architects project their structures to influence in the way we feel and behave. They manage flows of people, they regulate our exposition to daylight to condition our feelings or they make us feel free and empowered through space and height. They make structures that manipulate us.

Architecture and urbanism could be the use of power though means of space. That could explain why politicians have always flirted with architecture, and dictators love to have scale models of their dreamt cities.

Designers instead, have never been that interesting for the powerful (with some interesting exceptions). Their work is usually not that influencing. Designers make things that tend to be smaller than humans. Their structures may condition but don’t force us to do anything. It’s not the space which conditions the individual but the individual who manipulates the object.

The third documentary in this trilogy is about the design of cities. Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.

We also have a promo code for a premium account at Filmin (any movie, any time anywhere) which we’ll give to the person who makes the best list (it’s ok to repeat some movie suggested by someone else). Easy peasy japanesey. A neat gift for little effort.

These are the movies/docs we have so far:

Kitchen Stories (Bent Hamer, 2003)

The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949)

Tucker: The Man and his Dream (Francis Ford Coppola, 1988)

Helvetica (Gary Hustwit, 2007)

Powers of 10 (and other films by Ray y Charles Eames, 1977)

The RTVE series ‘Elogio de la luz‘, each episode covering an architect

The Belly of an Architect (Peter Greenaway, 1987)

Sketches of Frank Gehry (Sydney Pollack, 2005)

Play Time (Jacques Tati, 1967)

Full disclosure: We’ve done Filmin’s web redesign and we love it (the service, not the redesign. Well… both). We’ll go into details in a future post.

The most un-usable architecture firm Web sites are often exactly like the buildings those architects design: Created to make a statement, rather than focus on everyday livability. Perhaps they have to solve one problem before they can tackle the other.

The article is rather shallow, but worth skimping to check out some info-architectural disasters.

More pictures here

It kept me thinking about isolation, percieved isolation and openness. Do their inhabitants feel free? Do outside people see it as a jail or, even worse, as a bunker? How it would be to have children inside? How seing only the sky would affect your mood if you lived there? Would that be a good solution to ugly sorroundings?

The house can be found in Obama, a Japanese town. It was designed by Suppose, a Japanese design and architecture firm which has other interesting and provoking works.

more

“How it would be, if a house was dreaming”

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture – the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers “Galerie der Gegenwart”. Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves – describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.

It was designed by Daniel Rossa – rossarossa.de and produced by urbanscreen.com.

(thanks, Sergio)

You can’t miss Frank Gehry by The Simpsons either!