RAPHAEL ZUBER

︎︎︎Samuel Penn

SP
Your new book includes the four projects you exhibited at the Venice Biennale 'Reporting from the Front' in 2016 titled 'Spaces'. Why did you choose these particular projects?

RZ
At that time it was the ones I liked the most; from the time we made the decision to do the exhibition in Venice and not looking back too far. They were a bit recent and I think it was a good selection.

SP
Did the four have anything in common that you thought made them a good grouping?

RZ
They have, but I don't think that was the reason. Maybe because they were the most clear.

SP
But they all have common features. For instance I noticed that the entrance sequence is very important in each. If you want to talk about space, then there's one thing you do that is in each one of them, you have compression and release at the point of entering. I know it's nothing clever but we should begin with the basics.

RZ
The Frank Lloyd Wright stuff.

SP
Yes, compression and release. You enter from a low space and then emerge into a larger space. At the university campus building in Mendrisio you enter the cross shaped space that is an outside courtyard from a low underpass. So you're not inside the building yet but you've entered the building at that point. In fact I never really noticed where the entrance to the building is?

RZ
There is no entrance—laughs.

SP
Laughs—and in the funeral chapel in Steinhausen you have the canopy.

RZ
In the weekend house on Harris there's also this corridor.

SP
And in the apartment building in Ems you also do it, but you do it from the corridor inside the house. That door from the corridor leads into the space that you call an outside space, but that is actually inside and the living space, that's the entrance into the space.

RZ
This, and also a bit the staircase. It's a very different space when you come in.

SP
Yes, but you don't think of that as the entrance. It doesn't have the same significance because there you're not entering the principal space. That space with the stair is part of the outside space. So actually you enter from inside the house.

RZ
Yes that's true.

SP
Then the other basic thing is that your spaces are generally rectangular, long and tall. In each of these spaces you enter from a compressed state into a long rectangular space, and then you also tend to enter into the space laterally from the side, not length ways, so the space spreads out to either side of you. Is this conscious or not?

RZ
Not very conscious.

SP
You do in the funeral chapel, even though there it's in the corner. Mendrisio has the same. You come into the space and then it spreads out, and in Harris and Ems too.

RZ
It's about the movement and the complexity of the space. But then it's also always about how the space relates to the outside and everything else.

SP
What do you mean by everything else?

RZ
I mean the immediate outside, the neighbouring plot, the city, the world, everything.

SP
Why is it important for you that it connects to the outside world, to the rest of the world?

RZ
I started to think about this when I saw Nishizawa's work. I saw how opposite his way was to the way of Valerio Olgiati. Valerio's work is always very enclosed and very detached from the universe. In his buildings I feel this ideal of Palladio's Rotonda, where you make up a world. And Nishizawa's work is rather about being an animal somewhere, in the universe, being part of everything. This I find an extreme opposite, and it changes the whole. I mean of course it's a mental thing; it's in your head, more than how you immediately feel being there. But still it changes your feelings, being there; your behaviour, your thoughts, everything, your whole attitude changes.

SP
In its relation to things outside, to the world?

RZ
Yes.

SP
What is it in Nishizawa's work that made you think: "this is important"?

RZ
I don't know, I just realised that Valerio and Nishizawa are extreme opposites. That it's two completely different ways of living, with all that living means, and I appreciate both, and I could not tell which one more.

SP
If Olgiati is creating a universe of his own, is there something in this that's not quite enough?

RZ
It's not that it's not enough, but I would rather like to be part of everything that is around, and not closed in this mental construct I made up myself.

SP
What is it about living in a mental construct makes you feel like this?

RZ
This is what I don't know. On the one hand I find it great of course. But now thinking back on Nishizawa, his buildings have this lightness. In German I would call it Natürlichkeit. It's almost as if it's just there without having to think about it, even though it's very complicated, and also constructed. I felt closer, and this I don't know how to express either; I felt closer to animalism, closer to nature or reality, just more normal, Natürlich again. Not Natürlich in the sense of nature, but in the sense of 'casual', but without losing intellectual power.

SP
But there's a another kind of thinking in his projects. When you talk to Nishizawa it's clear that he's not just interested in architectural ideas. He's not constrained by wanting to say something specific about architecture.

RZ
I think so, yes. More also just letting himself go, experiencing.

SP
Do you see the same, for instance if you look at the work of Lewerentz. Which do you think he is, more open like Nishizawa, or conceptual?

RZ
This I find difficult to say because he changed so much in his lifetime.

SP
Let's say the churches toward the end of his life.

RZ
Klippan is very different from the others. The others I don't find so strong. He's maybe somewhere between Nishizawa and Valerio. It's also very precise, a constructed world, but it still has a bit of looseness, openness and this sense that it's not this absolute.

SP
This is something we talked about years ago; that we should try to discover a looser and more natural architecture. Is the thing that you're attracted to in Nishizawa's work is that it seems more inclusive, that it's easier to understand, and people can react to it in a simple way without having to have another level of understanding?

RZ
Yes.

SP
That most people who go into one of Nishizawa's buildings will have an immediate reaction?

RZ
Yes, an instinctive reaction.

SP
And in Olgiati's we have think a lot, to try to find something out.

RZ
And to confront yourself with it, to react to it.

SP
And to not stop until you do.

RZ
To say it simply, in Nishizawa's buildings I feel part of everything and in Valerio's I feel detached.

SP
And would you like your architecture to be more part of everything?

RZ
I don't know, but probably yes.

SP
Are the four projects more attuned to Olgiati's way of thinking; that to understand them you somehow have to unveil something? Or is there also a more immediate, let's say 'open' part to them?

RZ
I find these four projects more open. More connected and less closed, probably because the spaces are less defined and bigger. For instance, the funeral chapel although closed physically is mentally very open. And Mendrisio is visually very open; the space doesn't have a visual boundary.

SP
But I think that when people look at your work they are still expecting to figure something out, to try and understand it conceptually. And the question is whether these projects are conceptual, if you want them to be understood like this, or if you want them to be appreciated more naturally? For instance, the funeral chapel could be read as a story. If you understand all the parts then you understand the story?

RZ
I guess to understand something you still need a conceptual device. But I guess a person that isn't thinking will just enter these spaces and experience something, and one that begins to think will have a bigger experience. It's always like this.

SP
Why is this device important? The Pope Leighey house by Frank Lloyd Wright is very straightforward, maybe less intriguing, but spatially very comfortable. It feels like a house, like someone's home. It doesn't need any conceptual devices.

RZ
It's just good. You feel good when you enter.

SP
Then you look at the kitchen, and its tall space, or when you enter the living space and it's suddenly taller than the entrance, is that a trick? Do you think he's trying to reveal something? I guess what I'm trying to get at, is why it's important to have something to understand?

RZ
With Frank Lloyd Wright there is nothing to understand.

SP
But they are still stimulating buildings.

RZ
What is stimulating?

SP
The question is rather what it adds for the user of the building, this intrigue, when something has to be understood mentally, and can't just be appreciated as a space. The intrigue is an added dimension, it's not necessary, but you do it.

RZ
In Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, for me, there's nothing to think. I enter, I feel good from the beginning and everywhere I go I feel good. Sometimes I think: "why do I feel good here, is it a good situation." Then maybe you notice that the ceiling is lower, or whatever.

SP
Is this not enough?

RZ
Yes exactly, now the question is whether this is enough? For instance in Klippan, all these things also happen, but are over very quickly. I could imagine that if you live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house after quite a short period you won't think about these things anymore. You just feel good being there, and it changes your lifestyle, maybe your way of living. In Klippan this is all there, but there's also this question of the column that is not in the middle, that changes the whole space. This is a very constructed thing, and this is something you can always think about.

SP
So using writing as an analogy, we could say there's the normal narrative of a story and then there's a subtext; a deeper meaning. But that subtext is generally also constructed. Or maybe the author isn't so clear about what they want to say, but there is always a conscious or unconscious subtext that explains or points to something deeper. So rather than intrigue or a conceptual device, we could call this dimension the subtext. In this analogy is your subtext something conscious or unconscious?

RZ
No I think it's conscious somehow. Now thinking back, it's this question about how to relate. The question, do I want to be part of nature, or not? Do I want to feel part of my constructed story, or existing as a small piece in the universe alone? Do I want to feel part of nature or not, is it something constructed that stands as a separate thing in the universe, or something loose that's just part of the universe. Like for example the Zen Buddhist gardens that try to mix nature and artifice into one thing with the ultimate goal of connecting or melding them together into one thing. And as an opposite the Islamic garden for example that build up their paradise that has nothing to do with nature.

SP
Those are good examples. Both these ways of thinking about a garden relate to a way of thinking about the world: the otherworldly paradise and the perfecting of nature as artifice using nature itself.

RZ
It's about the unity of everything, human, not human, animals, plants.

SP
The Japanese garden is less related to Buddhism than the Islamic gardens are to Islam, but both are generated by an organised belief that is bigger than one individual. Is this something you think about in your work?

RZ
For me personally, no. When I'm working on something I don't think about this. But when I let it go then it's part of the world, part of something bigger.

SP
Great works are reliant on great thoughts. Are you proposing a great thought, something bigger?

RZ
This is what I would like to do, yes.

SP
So the things you are trying to communicate are about human nature and understanding?

RZ
Yes, they are about bigger things.

SP
But do you know what this bigger thing is? Have you thought about this?

RZ
No I don't know. I mean I'm constantly trying, but I don't know it.

SP
I'm not saying there's an answer. I'm sure the individuals who made these gardens also didn't know.

RZ
No, but I do know that these four works and the ones before were much more part of the closed system way of thinking, a quite small closed system. And for example the house I'm making at the Black Sea is very different. I can still explain it, very precisely actually, geometrically, systematically, spatially, but it's much more loose, much more open. But this is exactly what it is, what is this big idea? I see one in the work of Nishizawa and one in the work of Valerio that are opposite, and mine I see somewhere between, but I don't know where and also not what it is. It's because of this that I can't really talk about it.

SP
We should try to keep it simple.

RZ
We should be as simple as possible, before getting complicated—laughs.

SP
Most architects that are notable had an objective. For instance, Palladio tried to create Greek temple facades and Sullivan struggled with the office tower. As things changed in society the architects that were most noteworthy tried to respond to the challenges in some way, Mies too, by asking if it was possible in the industrial age to make great architecture, or to make an architecture that could relate to the spirit of his time.

RZ
If a classical architecture was still possible.

SP
The question then is, is there something in society that you're responding to?

RZ
That's the big question. What would you say Valerio and Nishizawa are doing, if you explain it in these terms?

SP
Really, I've no idea.

RZ
Exactly.

SP
What do you want the reader to understand from seeing the stills from the animations?

RZ
I thought that these were projects that you could understand differently by seeing the stills, but it's probably not true. You could also understand them similarly by just having drawings. The renderings help a bit but just with drawings you can also understand.

SP
I think you need to see the space with these projects.

RZ
Chapel not, Ems not, Mendrisio maybe, Harris you probably need to see.

SP
So why did you want to talk about space in this exhibition in Venice? Was it that space would allow you to talk about your work in a more open way?

RZ
Not just to talk, but to work and think more freely.

SP
Space is quite difficult to quantify. You can talk about proportions, volumes, how you move from one kind of volume to another, but it's never just about the space, and in your work too, we rarely discuss space itself but the elements in a space.

RZ
This is the same, the elements and the space.

SP
So the elements are the 'space-making' devices that make you act or see things in a certain way?

RZ
Yes.

SP
In your new house at the Black Sea you have a ceiling element that comes down into the living space. How would you describe what that does?

RZ
It makes it more cosy—laughs.

SP
Laughs—So if we can say that the idea is still important, is the idea in each building thought of uniquely or are there ideas that migrate? Are there overarching ideas that can be extracted from the works?

RZ
Maybe it's about how to create a place, a specific place and how this place relates to all other places, or to everything else. I would like to know better what I'm doing and I would like to build more.

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