CHARLOTTE TRUWANT & DRIES RODET

︎︎︎Callum Symmons

CS
How would you articulate a relationship with the past in your work, with the idea of inheritance and also disinheritance?

CT
This question of the past, or inheritance, has always been close to us. The way we practice architecture is deeply rooted in the understanding that many things are already there. This awareness of context, whether it's physical, historical, or cultural, always plays an important role.

We are also an office shaped by the education we have received and the people we have encountered. We often talk about these things: what frames us as architects, what is important today, and whether what we're doing is coherent. It is through these questions that we can collectively articulate a discourse.

In Japan, for instance, the process of inheritance is very clear: it is directly related to your education, the chair under which you studied, and the office for whom you worked. It creates a clear genealogy, defining the category or movement you become affiliated with. The situation is not so different in a Swiss-German context; there is always a certain wish to understand where you belong. Irina Davidovici’s book Forms of Practice retraces this situation well.

For us, it is perhaps less clear-cut; at the time of our education, things were quite uncertain, something we appreciated, and which is perhaps reflected in our perspective today. I think what most defines us, where we always start from, is our relationship with landscape architecture, for both of us.

DR
I would say we approach everything as inheritance: low culture, high culture, architecture, advertising, everything. For us, inheritance is everything that came before us, considered in a very non-dogmatic way.

CT
I studied in Lausanne, which at the time was a school transitioning away from the Swiss preoccupation with architecture as an object and towards ideas of territory and landscape urbanism, under the influence of Snozzi, Galfetti, and the Ticinese School, of which they were part. Snozzi was still teaching at that point, alongside figures such as Patrick Berger and Paola Viganò. Anne Lacaton also joined the school while I was studying there, at the same time that Lacaton & Vassal had completed the first phase of Palais de Tokyo, another strong influence. The question of landscape was very present, but as architects, we didn’t really know what to do with it.

One project that was always present in the background was the swimming pool in Bellinzona by Galfetti, Ruchat and Trümpy, which somehow succeeds in navigating between landscape, urbanism, architecture, and history.

There was also a strong connection to the Dutch scene; Xaveer De Geyter was invited to the school at one point. It meant we were at the same time brought up with this culture of the metropolitan landscape, the man-made landscape, where the Ticinese school and the Dutch context intersected.

At the same time, coming from a Swiss-German context, in the early 2000s, there was an almost contradictory influence present in the school, centred on the idea of the architectural object and inspired by the work of Herzog & de Meuron. Martin Steinmann lectured us on form and typology. We were caught between these two poles; for me, the territorial was always the more compelling.

DR
At the same time, I was studying much closer to the Dutch scene, in Ghent. De Geyter had just published After Sprawl, a different reading of territory, and OMA was also very present in my education. Nonetheless, many of the teachers had a clear fascination with Switzerland, and the university librarian invested heavily in Japanese architecture.

At that time, the culture of the library, the books that were acquired and brought into the school, was extremely influential, probably more than it would be today. The books on display were the way that the world entered the school; in many ways, the librarian curated our education, with early Sanaa forming part of this unusual mix between Holland, Switzerland and Japan.

When we first met, we realised that we shared a remarkably similar and influential background of references.

CS
How do you position yourselves within contemporary European architecture? You’ve been described as part of a ‘new generation of Swiss architects’. How consciously do you engage with this kind of framing?

DR
While many people feel that there is a certain shift taking place today, I wonder at what point you begin to define a new generation? It is always easier in retrospect; when you are in the middle of it, things feel far more opaque. It is unclear who stands at the centre of such a shift, or whether there is one at all.

Defining it may be an interesting exercise, but for us, it is more of an everyday matter: who you work with, who you share concerns with, and who you encounter in similar discussions. Perhaps it is not a question for us to answer, but for someone else.

CT
On the other hand, we are very conscious of a certain condition today that tends to bind young offices together. This is partly a pragmatic strategy, allowing us to undertake more complex projects while remaining small, but it is also a way of challenging the notion of the sole architectural author. We appreciate how new and unexpected ideas emerge from these spontaneous collaborations; compromise is not necessarily negative, and can produce something more uncanny, stranger, or less clearly defined.

We draw this from the early work of OMA, between Koolhaas, Vriesendorp, Zhengelis and Hadid: a collaboration of equal authors that was fluid for a time, with many actors involved, before eventually crystallising around Koolhaas alone. Their deliberate combination of multiple perspectives in order to generate something new is deeply inspiring to us. That period fascinates us because it feels close to our own reality.

I sometimes wonder whether this condition of early-career collaboration is cyclical, repeating with each generation. You could say the same of Team 4 in the 1960s, before they separated to establish their own offices. I hope that this is not the case here, and that the current spirit of collectivity and collaboration endures.

Overall, the idea of a generation emerges organically, through a mode of working, rather than through the attempt to define similarities or a shared theoretical background.

CS
How do you conceive the approach of your office to this experimentation, or to newness? It appears your position is founded upon an ambition for constant experimentation, so I wonder how easily you can reflect on the developing body of work you are producing? Is there an underlying project?

CT
We are both very curious, and that curiosity is a strong motivation in the way we practise. If we were to try to describe the output of the office, it would be more a cloud than a line.

This does not mean we don’t move from project to project; we do. At the same time, we are developing shared terms or themes that we try to articulate with increasing precision. Each project becomes an opportunity to reflect on and further investigate these themes.

Within our process, there’s always a search for the unknown; a desire to discover something we do not yet fully understand. To sustain this curiosity, we seek out in-between perspectives, working on the thresholds between different practices. The most established of these intersections is our relationship with landscape and landscape architecture, which perhaps originates in our shared experience working with Bas Smets in Belgium, Dries for longer than I.

DR
After working several years in landscape, we had an experience in Japan that unsettled many of the principles we had internalised. We travelled there to conduct a research project, and suddenly the frameworks that we had been operating within were turned on their head and seemed to collapse. This vacuum of understanding gave us the space, over six months, to discuss this new context we had been confronted with. It allowed us to redefine our position in relation to landscape and architecture, and to reconsider how these two practices might influence one another.

To be clear, and the distinction is important, we’re not practising landscape architecture, we’re practising architecture. Yet we look to landscape architecture for perspectives and attitudes that may have been forgotten in architecture since the modern movement, and that we can reappropriate or recover. For instance, we are deeply preoccupied with the idea that our work should not be understood as a solution, but as a proposal, an exploration of a set of conditions.

Through this double experience of landscape and Japan, time became a concern in our work. We started to think about how a project might evolve, and how to put in place conditions that guide its transformation without predetermining a final image.

CS
How are these perspectives and processes made manifest in a project?

DR
To give a very concrete example, I would mention the project Fountain of Youth, a landscape intervention developed in collaboration with Fabian Marti, a Swiss artist. Early on in our careers, we worked with him on several integrated artworks that did not respond to a predefined problem and that were not constrained by a specific brief.

Working on these projects gave us the space and the freedom to think more openly about the questions we wanted to explore through our practice. Even now, when working on commissioned projects with very clear requirements, the experience of this early work keeps us less focused on solutions alone and more attentive to possibilities.

The Fountain of Youth is a landscape intervention of around seventy metres, situated within a larger masterplan designed by Jan Kinsbergen. The fountain unfolds across the site, transitioning between different conditions. It draws on the typology of the Renaissance fountain, moving from reservoir to river to pond.

It is important to us that this framework incorporates a degree of uncertainty: there is no fixed water supply; the fountain is fed solely by rainwater running off the sloping terrain into the basin, and is completely dependent on climatic conditions. The only aspect we control is the speed of the water and the texture of the surfaces it flows across.

CT
Overlaid onto the fountain is a mythological infrastructure developed by Fabian, introducing a series of figures and symbols into the project: the Ouroboros, the snake, the egg. The title itself adds another layering to this narrative.

For us, this project marked an important shift. Its form was not predetermined, but emerged from our openness to the context: the topography of the site and Jan Kinsbergen’s masterplan. The same engagement with water would have produced a completely different form elsewhere. The questions this project opened for us, around climate, control, and uncertainty, continue to inform both our work and our broader attitude towards architecture.

Another project that reflects these themes is the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris. We have developed it together with the Parisian office ASBR, and it stands in strong contrast to the Fountain of Youth. There is almost no landscape involved; it is entirely an interior condition, a sequence of rooms that were physically connected, yet spatially disconnected.

This project transforms an agglomeration of buildings, comprising four distinct typologies: an elongated storefront opening onto the street, a 17th-century hôtel particulier with a high ceiling and windows facing a courtyard on both sides, and an industrial structure, all linked together.

Here again, the notion of architecture as an object is challenged. We often work within contexts where the envelope is predetermined or unalterable for regulatory or budgetary reasons. In such cases, the work lies in modifying the conditions of what already exists.

Our response was to make this assemblage more porous, creating continuity and coherence between these rooms. We made almost no structural interventions; instead, we concentrated on the thresholds between the spaces. The walls, doors, and windows between the different rooms were conceived as adjustable elements: they allow spaces to expand or contract, to admit natural light or become completely dark, to shift acoustics, and even to accommodate changing functions.

DR
In these transformation projects, which now make up a large part of our work, the density of constraints often forces us to propose things we would never encounter if starting from scratch. We use these constraints as a point of departure to develop proposals that go beyond what you would simply build anew. They become an opportunity to produce something different from what we are accustomed to seeing.

These interventions can range from the heating strategy of a space to the way a façade is insulated, or even to the integration of a step-free access ramp. If you want to make a proposal, and not just provide a solution, every constraint becomes a potential project in itself. This attitude pushes the current interest in pragmatism and an economy of means to an extreme; I often refer to it as opportunistic pragmatism.

CS
It feels appropriate to talk about your modes of representation, the culture of architectural drawing that you are part of, and have led.

CT
When we speak about the work and present the work, we always insist that very few drawings, models, or collages are produced after the fact. What we show is part of the process itself. As a small office, we simply do not have the time or resources to rework projects for publication. Either it is produced in the moment, or it doesn’t happen.

With the kinds of projects we increasingly work on - reuse and transformation - representation brings along complexities. When proposing a reuse strategy, you often do not yet know how the project will ultimately appear. So why produce a hyper-realistic image of something whose material reality is still uncertain? At that stage, any image risks being looser than a hypothesis. It is therefore important for us to maintain an open-ended mode of representation, one capable of absorbing the evolution of the project and accommodating inevitable change.

DR
At the same time, I find the broader shift in architecture towards hyper-realistic imagery interesting. In the French context, for example, such images have often functioned as a guarantee after winning a competition, a way to prevent contractors, developers, or clients from fundamentally altering the proposal. It becomes a kind of insurance mechanism.

In Switzerland, there is generally more caution at the competition stage. There is still fascination with hyper-realistic renderings, but also the desire to preserve trust in the process.

We have encountered criticism suggesting that a project can appear too resolved, leaving little room for discussion or collaboration during development. It’s an interesting condition. For us, given our fascination with uncertainty and the effect of time on architecture, this way of representation is not always the right tool.

Working with less definitive tools can be more productive. With students, we frequently use collage as a way to formalise an idea while keeping it open to interpretation. Such images can be radical enough to articulate the ambition of the project, yet leave space for it to become even stronger over time.

In this process, we often see an echo of a book we really like, Flowers and Mushrooms by Fischli Weiss, a merging and melting of disparate elements into something unexpected. That strange encounter is something we value. It is also something we try to facilitate on our website, where new connections emerge as one navigates between projects.

CS
What kind of inheritance do you hope to pass on with your office and your teaching practice?

DR
It’s an interesting question, what you hope to leave behind. It is tempting to simply say that this is not something that you should think about, that the focus ought to remain only on your work today. We feel somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a consciously constructed legacy.

In Switzerland, teaching is closely connected with practice; there is a reciprocity between the profession and the academy. In our case, our studio, Atelier for Uncertain Conditions, reflects the themes and the discussions present in the office. At the same time, we do not see teaching as necessarily related to the everyday realities of building; rather, it is the underlying conceptual questions that form the connection.

CT
For us, uncertainty, which runs throughout our work, is also central to teaching. We encourage the students not to approach the projects dogmatically, but to allow discussion to unfold before developing the projects. Of course, this is an ideal; reality is always more complex.

In academia, there's often pressure to produce a “project” as an end product or to reach a certain level of resolution. We try instead to emphasise the preliminary work, understanding what is already there. Sometimes a project can simply consist of a careful reading of a site, revealing its latent potential.

The challenge as teachers is “How to cultivate an attitude of openness and curiosity? How to develop a criticality in the proposals the students make?” and sensitivity in the way they intervene?

That does not mean avoiding specific problems; rather, we see them as opportunities to go beyond solution-driven thinking. There is also a pragmatism to this desire; we are very aware of the notion of wicked problems, problems so complex that any apparent solution most likely leads to another, unforeseen problem.

Somehow, we need to find a way to move beyond the weight of the problems we face today. Not by ignoring them, but projecting ourselves beyond them. Pierre Huyghe’s work is important for us in this regard. His use of fiction or near-future scenarios creates space to formulate a proposal before reengaging with present reality. That capacity for projection is essential.

We also recognise that we operate today in an extremely difficult, demanding and fragile context, especially for students. The contemporary world is a challenging environment to approach, to consider, and yet it’s precisely the context they will be confronted with. If anything, we hope to give them the tools and the attitudes that prevent paralysis in the face of that complexity.

DR
It remains important to continue making architecture, not to become merely problem-solvers.