_30.04.20

iR ARQUITECTURA ON MAKING COMMON KNOWLEDGE FROM THIS ART

Luciano Intile + Guillermo Mirochnic + Enrico Cavaglià

We spoke with Luciano Intile, Guillermo Mirochnic, and Enrico Cavaglià from iR Arquitectura about collective work, materials, sustainability, and the role of this discipline interrelated with social causes.

What type of architecture do you make? What are the schools and designers that influence your work?

Our work is part of contemporaneity: particularly diffuse, heterogeneous and errant... We are fond of the spirit of our time and we try to take on the challenges that this implies, especially in terms of rethinking the social and environmental scope of what we do. We believe that it is from within that space, we can learn how to influence design and society around us, by digging through diverse sources outside of architecture. We usually quote Roland Barthes in our lectures because we like to see ourselves as “dead authors” in his terms, something like pores that express the collective spirit of his time. From that lens, we do not feel creators of anything, and we allow ourselves to use what is produced by others as work material.

What art and technology projects did you exhibit?

The last art project we presented was within the framework of a group show organized by Martín Huberman at the MAR (Mar del Plata Art Museum). We named it Argigram and it’s goal was to offer a space to reflect and produce facilities that would account for different typologies of future cities from a local perspective. Our reflections revolved around what satellite cities are today, in particular those around the city of Buenos Aires, in other words, large, closed neighborhoods generated by fear and the search for protection and security. We imagine a future marked by common sense and a collective awakening without fear. We proposed an immersive sensory experience. We built a black, dark box, devoid of stylistic intentions and cozy inside; once inside and after pressing a button, an audio message invited the audience to join a meditative journey. Experiencing their fears, anxieties, and desires prepared them to invoke the idea of the city of the future collectively.

Argigram

What projects are you working on and how does the current context of COVID-19 and social distancing affect you?

For some time we have been developing a concept of community, understood as a group of people who cohabit the same place in the city. We have some examples that we built that function in this way, such as the Quintana 4598 building.

Lately, we began to work on a project where the community is the central idea and architecture is its support. Three couples acquired a terrain in Villa Ortuzar, within the City of Buenos Aires, and commissioned us to develop a community building for them to live. We dedicated several months to consider the private and the public sphere with a new perspective. We outlined an exercise that allowed us to set the required programs and their relationship to the interior/exterior world. It was a game that we called Comunopoli.

Comunopoli

The result was creating categories for different habitable atmospheres. The first group is a generic space for daily community activities, the second includes bedrooms, bathrooms and storage areas for each home. Above them the living rooms, and space for communal gardens. On the deck there is a park with a swimming pool, pergolas, and areas for gardens.

As a result of this research, we partnered with the landscaping studio Bulla and the feminist collective Ciudad del Deseo, to develop a model that incorporates other variables in order to be able to insert it into the real estate market. We seek to understand these typologies as potential regulators of social, housing, gender, and environmental inequality.

Right now and with the given current situation and uncertainty of the future, this particular social climate gave us the possibility of deepening the theoretical frameworks around it. Strengthening and amplifying some variables that we already saw, and incorporating new ones based on our experiences of confinement.

The “exterior in the interior” trend in the design of spaces, the tiny homes movement and permaculture are some tendences nowadays. What’s iR architecture’s role in this?

We explore many natural techniques and materials such as clay, bamboo, wood, etc. We try to use them and include permaculture standards in everything we do, but without neglecting the concept of sustainability. A truly sustainable project is a project that can be built and can work with the least possible effort when it comes to the economic or environmental aspects. We believe in simplifying processes and using the materials available on site. The basis and the most important point of a sustainable product is its design, not its materiality.

Universo Pol - Morro de San Pablo, Brasil.

The phenomenon of "tiny homes" is manifesting itself in several places and is associated with "micro environments". Both are expressions of minimal housing in different contexts: nature and the city. Both may respond to the high cost of construction. Purchasing a home is a luxury, especially in countries like Argentina.

Cabin Modules - Csóromfölde, Hungría.

Tight spaces are easier to inhabit when their limits are diluted or softened. With access to new technologies, we were able to source many materials with different characteristics. Moreover, there is no longer the transparent/opaque binary status - there are an infinite number of intermediate points. Due to personal characteristics, we have a great affinity with nature and the outside world. The exterior is not simply the context in which the architectural piece is inserted, but is also part of the project itself. To ignore it and leave it out is to waste an opportunity.

El Camarín - Buenos Aires, Argentina.

It can be challenging to find some specific materials in the region with the economic crisis. How does this affect your work?

The availability of materials in Argentina, although not unlimited as in other countries, is quite wide, but the most sophisticated products are not available or have very high costs. For example, high-performance carpentry, some finishes and various objects. We generally work with very limited materials and use them in a systematic and modular way. We usually choose fairly basic elements, so in this way, the quality of what we do is not so closely linked to the materials we use.

On the other hand, we have worked several times around pre-Columbian construction techniques, allowing us to reformulate and incorporate their technical qualities along with their permacultural dimension. The artisan processes found in these techniques generate products that may not be perfect but vindicate the knowledge accumulated over time and in different areas of South and North American regions.

What challenges remain for the architecture field or for iR arquitectura in particular?

In quarantine, we were developing a different way of telling our story. We asked the inhabitants of our constructions to make videos of their daily lives in confinement. They turned out to be some very interesting short films shot from a rather un-architectural perspective. They generated unexpected comments and a deep understanding of the projects, especially by non-architects. This made it very clear to us that the communication of architecture as it occurs today is not very comprehensive. Without rethinking the way we communicate and disseminate architecture, it will continue to be a niche product that is difficult for people outside of the field to understand. Consequently, architecture will less likely be desired.

︎ MY LOVE TO DISTORTION BY SHIS UNUSUAL

iR ARQUITECTURA ON MAKING COMMON KNOWLEDGE FROM THIS ART