Architecture, of necessity, is an art of reflections. Far from projecting illusions designed simply to dazzle, we rather aim to infuse architecture with holistic ideas designed to keep pace with our evolving society.
The practice of architecture involves a necessary position on crucial and complex issues such as sustainable development, resource depletion, density, mixed programs, social utility, and so on.
It is therefore important to provide an architecture with content. Each situation is singular. The answers to one set of questions can never simply be transposed to another. Each project must be based on the understanding of the mechanisms involved and on the exploration of broad frameworks within which they operate.
We are convinced that there is no creative and productive design process without a permanent reflection on the process itself. Such a posture is far from narcissistic. It aims to ensure accuracy, finesse, and consistency in each and every one of our responses.
In our projects, we remain dedicated to seeking out these reflections on the surface of the tracing paper. At our office, the use of this paper is an integral component of architectural creation, an essential element in our design process. Of course, this doesn’t mean we’ve left the computer behind – it simply means that we invest a great deal of importance in the idea that the machine should serve the hand, and not the hand the machine.
Overlapping layers of tracing paper allows us to give depth to our drawing, which is otherwise limited to two dimensions. Tracing paper has an unfortunate tendency to dilate itself, rending our overlays always already somewhat hopelessly inaccurate. And the overly-precise contours of computer-printed drawings are thereby tinted with trouble. This blurred vision is essential: it plunges us into a beguiling reverie that guides our pencils on the paper to suspend spaces and senses in latitudes not yet charted, to penetrate them with emotion, poetry and colors.
