I love this photo.

From left to right. George Nelson, Edward Wormley, Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames and Jens Risom.

Playboy Magazine July issue, 1961. It couldn’t be anywhere else.

You can read the original article here.

It was a happy surprise then to find out that The Getty Conservation Institute has begun a project called the Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative. Though it’s international, it’s primary focus will be L.A. The city was a wonderful breeding ground for both designers and architects exploring with new materials, new structures and new proposals. Their first effort will be the Eames House Conservation Project.

Here’s a short video about it:

If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough. Some people use over complex (and often meaningless!) language in an attempt to gain recognition and respect. You might have to let some of them get away with it, but don’t imitate them. Professionals who know their subject area well know how to communicate their knowledge to others in everyday language.

#48 in 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

We’re pretty big fans of this book at the studio. Javier included it in his list, ‘The 26 books that shaped me as an interaction designer‘. Thanks to Bruno Teixidor we now know that it’s available in Spanish.

Things we love about it: it’s concise without losing scope, its simple without losing depth. All in all, a book that helps you understand how much interaction design and architecture are linked. It makes you aware of the importance of process in design, the importance of space (negative space and positive space) and function.

You can buy it online here.

Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop.

Being process-oriented means:

1. seeking to understand a design problem before chasing after solutions;
2. not force-fitting solutions to old problems onto new problems;
3. removing yourself from prideful investment in your projects and being slow to fall in love with your ideas;
4. making design investigations and decisions holistically (that address several aspects of a design problem at once) rather than sequentially (that finalize one aspect of a solution before investigating the next);
5. making decisions conditionally –that is with the awareness that they may or may not work out as you continue to a final solution;
6. knowing when to change and when to stick with previous decisions;
7. accepting as normal the anxiety that comes from not knowing what to do;
8. working fluidly between concept-scale and detail-scale to see how each informs the other.

#29 in 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

A Vostok footnote: take 1, 4, 6 and 8 into special consideration.

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