项琳斐/XIANG Linfei
陈雨潇 译/Translated by CHEN Yuxiao
2019 年1月21日,2016威尼斯建筑双年展金狮奖得主、耶鲁大学教授伊尼亚基·卡尼塞罗在北京市城市规划设计研究院进行了题为“未完成建筑的机遇”的讲座。讲座之后,《世界建筑》对伊尼亚基·卡尼塞罗进行了简短的采访。
WA: Rica工作室从2014年开始在西班牙和美国进行实践,现在你们又成立了时代建筑设计事务所,可以向中国的读者介绍一下你们的事务所吗?
伊尼亚基·卡尼塞罗:时代设计公司是我们在北京以及深圳设立的新建筑事务所。我们在西班牙和美国拥有涉及实践与学术两方面的丰富的设计及建造经验。
这些年来我们在设计与建造,参与国际竞赛以及在常春藤联盟中任教之间找到了平衡。我们非常期待将我们的经验具体应用到中国的环境中。
WA: 您认为在西班牙、美国和中国的实践有什么差别吗?
卡尼塞罗:我们现在的时代与以往的历史阶段相比,非常独特的一点是信息比以往任何时候都更加触手可及。我们可以了解其他国家、不同文化正在发生的事情,并将那些知识与信息应用到我们自己的语境中。我们感兴趣的是在一个特定的场景中产生的想法,比如在西班牙语境中产生的理念,如何能运用到完全不同的限制条件当中,比如完全不同的中国的土地,以及这里的经济、文化和社会环境。不同想法的碰撞会产生新的对话,由此我们有机会发现新的有趣的建筑策略。
1-3 2016威尼斯双年展西班牙馆“未完成”展/Exhibition"Unfinished" at the Spanish Pavilion, 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale (摄影/Photos: Luis Diaz)
WA: 在2016年威尼斯建筑双年展上您为西班牙馆策划了“未完成”展,这次展览呈现出一种改善既有建成环境的乐观态度。在中国,我们面临着同样的问题。随着用地供应的缩减,城市更新和改造成为重要议题。您认为,在这样的情况下建筑师的角色会发生变化吗?也就是说建筑师不仅是创造新建筑了?卡尼塞罗:当然了!在2007年以前,西班牙每周都会有很多公共建筑的设计竞赛。2007年以后,当经济危机席卷西班牙,公共投资大幅减少,可用的土地也被削减,所以建筑师只能改变我们实践的本质。我们必须开始仔细地审视城市和现有建筑,以发展新的策略,增建的同时保留原有结构,使其具备新的适应性,甚至新的策略性拆除。通过更新和改造使既有建筑具有更多的灵活性,以适应新的用途和功能。我相信在当代背景下,我们的工作不是创造与城市环境隔离的新的建筑物,而更多的是通过策略性的介入转变现存事物的意义,这对改进与重新解读既有建筑具有重大影响。
WA: 在改造项目中,您认为设计中最重要的是什么?
卡尼塞罗:我认为重要的是有一个开放的视野,不仅仅着眼于你要介入的项目,也能关注到它所处的更宏观的背景。关键是能够解读城市中和改建项目所处的环境中存在的所有关联、所有网络,并思考这个新的介入会如何影响到这栋建筑,及其所处的整个环境。这对我们极其重要,因为当我们接到一个非常具体的项目委托时,我们需要拓宽设计目标,应对客户可能并没有意识到的其他城市问题。
我们认为,作为建筑师,我们有这个责任,一方面要回应我们的客户和他们的具体需求,但同时也要思考我们的介入对更大的环境的影响,比如思考我们的设计会如何被接受,如何与其所处的环境关联,如何随时间改变。城市会受到既有建筑衰败的影响,而我认为我们应该考虑到我们的设计中的所有变量。
WA: 在更新设计中,您更看重什么,旧的还是新的元素?
卡尼塞罗:我认为既不是旧的也不是新的,而是二者之间的对话。我们相信建筑介入的力量在于创建一个对话、一个连接,可能会重建场地的历史并让公众看到它。所以我认为作为建筑师我们有能力发掘隐藏的故事,通过功能使用、建造或材料的策略性介入,重建之前人们看不到的东西。我们相信做建筑就是在讲故事,发掘老故事,推动新的故事发生。
WA: 在一栋历史建筑中,会有不同时代的历史信息,你如何取舍呢?
卡尼塞罗:这是个很有意思的问题。这取决于这些信息与当代环境的关联性。所以在一些特定的时刻,你可能需要做出选择,是强调某一特定的时期更重要,还是重建建筑方案的最初意义,或者改变它、摆弄它。
我认为创造和选择你想与当前语境以及未来交流的内容,是设计策略的一部分。在我们的NAVE16项目——马德里旧屠宰场改造的案例中,我们对展现20世纪初期马德里所使用的建造技术非常感兴趣。这就是为什么我们剥掉了石膏层,将建筑内部的老砖墙和砖石结合的建造技术展现出来。所以可能有人认为这是一个基于经济限制条件做出的决定,但这更多的目的是展示西班牙一个世纪以前所使用的传统的建造技术,唤醒场所的记忆并赞美它。
WA: 在无穷知识的时代,未来难以预测。但是作为建筑师,您必须在设计中考虑到未来的适应性,您如何应对这样的矛盾?
卡尼塞罗:在我看来这里没有矛盾。我认为这只关乎灵活性。作为一名建筑师,我需要回应具体的问题和当前的需求,但同时,我也对如何将一个空间转变成别的东西非常感兴趣。
而不可预测性对我来说一直是设计阶段主要考虑的问题,就是不断想象可能出现的新场景。当然你无法知道将来会发生什么,但是在设计中开放的选择越多越好。这是与灵活性的需求相关的。
举个例子,在Pitch住宅的项目中,我们设计的重要概念就是决定将所有的储藏空间推到边界。这样为室内简单的重组带来可能,于是它可以适应不同的使用方式而发生改变。窗户并没有连接一个特定的房间,它们更像一个连续的条窗,可以带来空间的持续重组。我们的兴趣在于创造适应性空间,尽可能的灵活,允许未来新的场景出现。
WA: 您的教学经历对您的实践有影响吗?
卡尼塞罗:绝对有。我最初在美国康奈尔大学任教,之后去了哥伦比亚大学、库帕联盟学院和耶鲁大学。我对美国学术界的感受是,与我接受教育的欧洲体系非常不一样。我认为美国大学的教学方法更概念性、实验性和整体性,而欧洲的教学倾向于工科的方式。我在马德里高等建筑学院(ETSAM)获得了技术的背景,在那里我学到了设计需要的策略和工具,学到要永远考虑整合结构、建造、材料等建造建筑的专业知识。在美国,多数的常春藤学校都对我们的社会正在经受的现实问题(政治、环境、经济等)有着强烈责任感,而更少有技术手段。自从在美国任教以来,我们一直在应对更广泛的话题,关于气候变化、全球变暖、可持续性问题、不平等问题等等,这为我们提供了一个机会,去处理建筑专业领域以外的更具全球性的问题。我们非常有兴趣通过设计来处理这些问题,并提供解决方案。因此,我认为这段经历让我对建筑师的角色有了更大的抱负,让我意识到我们所面临的机遇以及如何介入。
WA: 您教过中国学生吗? 请谈谈您对中国学生的印象。
卡尼塞罗:我们在美国和中国教过很多中国学生。中国学生对出国学习有着浓厚的兴趣,尤其是去美国的大学。他们非常聪明,非常勤奋,我总是对他们的技能和他们充分的准备印象深刻。通常他们有点害羞和安静,我总是鼓励他们更开放,多交流,与美国文化和他们的同学建立更多的联系,因为我认为他们会在文化交流中受益匪浅。美国学生非常开放和友好,创造了丰富的学习环境,同时他们也能受益于中国学生的学习规范性。在美国学校教中国学生以及到中国来教书,使我更加了解中国文化和当前的问题,这对我来说非常有趣。
7-9 Pitch住宅/Pitch House(7,9 摄影/Photos: Roland Halbe, 8摄影/Photo: Iñaqui Carnicero)
WA: 那么您对中国城市环境的改善有什么想法?
卡尼塞罗:我看到中国城市中对胡同和其他现有住宅建筑干预和引导新现实的巨大潜力。我认为这很重要。
我在北京看到的是,在许多社区依靠重复和使用相同的设计来建造更多的单元。最后,你会发现同一座建筑重复了上百次,这与胡同传统的更加丰富的肌理形成对比。我对城市的兴趣在于城市规划者和建筑师如何为城市带来新的现实,从而改善城市生活,通过设计加强社区居民之间的关系,带来更多宜人的公共空间。
我看到了建筑设计和城市化之间的某种脱节。这里有很多很好的机会去思考城市中的公共空间,及其与人们在公共空间中的行为方式和舒适感的关系,因此建筑和街道之间的过渡充满了城市更新和重组的潜力。
WA: 您想对中国的年轻建筑师说点什么吗?
卡尼塞罗:他们需要知道,他们拥有巨大的潜力改变和改善他们所生活的环境,所以我鼓励他们发展批判性思维,质疑和不接受环境现状,他们要知道自己有能力改变它。
他们应该有这样的疑问,这个城市,或者这个社区是我喜欢的吗?我会如何想象30年后的城市?我能为城市或新建筑的设计提供哪些改进?作为建筑师和设计师,我们是否具备灵活性并考虑到设计中不断变化的环境?因此,我建议他们对我们生活的环境有一个批判性的认识,客观地看待当前的现实,以及它可以如何改进。我会鼓励他们相信设计师具有创造一个更好世界的力量。□
4-6 马德里旧屠宰场改造/Slaughter House in Madrid (摄影/Photos: Roland Halbe)
On January 21, 2019, Yale professor Iñaqui Carnicero, winner of the golden lion at Venice Architecture Biennale 2016, gave a lecture entitled"The Opportunity of an Unfinished Architecture" at the Beijing Institute of City Planning and Design.World Architecture interviewed with Iñaqui Carnicero after the lecture.
WA: Rica Studio was founded in 2014 based in Spain and the United States. Now you also have AGE Design Group. Could you introduce your office to our Chinese readers?
WA: Do you think there is any difference in term of practice in Spain, the United States and China?
Carnicero: A very unique aspect of our current times compared with previous periods of history is that information is more accesible than ever before. We can be connected to what is happening in different cultures in other countries, and we can apply that knowledge and that information to our own context. We are interested in how ideas generated in one specific scenario, let us say in the Spanish context, can be applied to a very different set of constrains, the Chinese territory and its economic, cultural and social situation that might be very different. In that friction of distinct ideas that can create new dialogues we find opportunities for new interesting architectural strategies to emerge.
WA: In the exhibition"Unfinished" you curated at the Spanish Pavilion as part of the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, you present an optimistic attitude to improve the existing built environment.In China, we are facing the same issue. With the reduction of land supply, urban regeneration and reuse has become the crucial topic in China. Do you think the role of the architect will change in such situation? That is to say the role of architect is not only creating new building?
Carnicero: Definitely! Before 2007, many competitions were launched every week to generate new public buildings. After 2007, when the big economic crisis hit Spain, the public investment was drastically reduced and the amount of land available cut, so the architect had to change the nature of our practice. We had to start looking carefully in the cities and the existing buildings, in order to develop new strategies that could keep the consolidated constructions but bringing new additions, new adaptations, even new strategic demolitions that allow for innovation and transformation of the existing to bring more flexibility and serve to new purposes and programs. I believe that in the contemporary context we should be working not with the notion of incorporating new architecturalobject isolated from the context of the city but more in transforming the meaning of what already is there by strategic interventions with a big impact in improving and reinterpreting the existing.
WA: In a renovation project, what do you think is most important to think about?
Carnicero: I think it is important to have an open point of view, to look not only to the project in which you are intervening but also the broader context where it is located. It is crucial to read all the synergies and all the networks happening in the city and in the surroundings where the renovation project is located, and reflect about how the new intervention may affect not only the building but also the context. This is extremely important for us,because when we receive a commission with a very specific program, we need a broader design agenda,an ambition to respond to the other urban issues that the client might not be aware of.
We consider that, as architects, we have that responsibility, on the one hand we have to respond to our clients and their very specific needs but at the same time we should reflect on the impact of our interventions on the larger context, considering for example how our designs would be perceived and relate to the their surroundings and evolve over time. The city is affected by the degradation of existing buildings, and I think we should be considerate of all variable parameters in our designs.
WA: When retrofitting a building, what do you value most, the new or the old?
Carnicero: I think neither the old nor the new but the dialogue between both. We believe that the power of the architectural intervention resides in the creation of a dialogue, a connection that might rebuild the history of a site and make it visible to the public. So I think that as architects we have the capacity to reveal hidden stories, to reconstruct what was invisible to the people by strategic interventions related to the use, the construction or the material. We believe that making architecture is about building narratives and revealing the old ones,and facilitating new stories to happen.
WA: In historical buildings, there are historical information of different times. How do you make the choice?
Carnicero: That is a very interesting question. Well,it depends on how relevant the information might be to the contemporary context. So at a certain point, you might need to choose, if it is relevant to highlight one specific period, or to rebuild the original meaning of one architectural proposal, or maybe to change it and play with it.
I think that is part of the design strategy, to create and to select what you want to communicate not only to the current context but also to the future. In the case of our project of NAVE16, the old slaughterhouse in Madrid, we were very interested in revealing the construction techniques that were used in Madrid at the beginning of the twentieth century. That is why we peeled off the plaster layer and we showed the interior of the building, the old brick wall and the construction techniques of the brick combined with stone. So one may think that this was a decision based on economic constrains, but it was more about revealing traditional construction techniques used a century ago in Spain, bringing the memory of the place back and celebrating it.
WA: In the age of the not-knowing, it is difficult to predict the future. But as an architect, you have to take into account the future adaptability of a project. How do you deal with such contradiction?
Carnicero: I do not see a contradiction there. I think it is all about flexibility. As an architect I have to respond to very specific issue and current demands but at the same time I'm very interested in responding to how the space might be transformed to something else.
And this unpredictability for me is always a main issue, a main thought that is on the drawing board, to constantly imagine new scenarios to happen. Of course you can not know what is coming but the more options that you keep open in the program the better. That is connected to the need of flexibility.
For instance, in the main concept of our project the Pitch House one main decision was pushing to the boundaries all the storage space. That allow for the easy reconfiguration of the interior, so that it can change, and adapt to different ways of being used. As the windows are not connected to a specific room, they operate more like a continuous stripe window that would allow a constant recon figuration of the space. Our interests lay on the idea of creating adaptable spaces, as flexible as they can be when it is possible, to allow for new situations to happen in the future.
WA: Has your teaching experience influenced your practice?
Carnicero: Absolutely. I started teaching in the US at Cornell University and after that at Columbia, Cooper Union and Yale University. My perception of Academia in the US is very different from the European system I was educated in. I think that American universities have much more conceptual, experimental, and holistic approach than universities in Europe that tend to follow the Polytechnic approach. I think I achieved the technical background in ETSAM (the Superior Technical Schoolof Madrid) where I learned the necessary strategies and tools for design, but also to always consider and integrate structure,construction, material, specifically the knowledge of building architecture. In the US, in most of the Ivy League Schools, there is a strong commitment with current issues that our societies are suffering,(political, environmental, economic, social…) and less of a technical approach. Since teaching in the US we have been dealing with broader topics related to climate change, global warming, issues of sustainability, inequality… and that is always an opportunity to engage with problems that are not that specific to the architectural realm but are more global. We are very interested in how design engages with these issues and can offers solutions.So I think this experience has given me a broader ambition regarding the role of the architect and realize the opportunities that we are facing and how to intervene on them.
WA: Have you taught any Chinese student? Tell us your impression of Chinese students.
Carnicero: We have taught many Chinese Students in the States, and also in China. There is a strong interest in Chinese students to study abroad,particularly in American universities. They are extremely intelligent people and really hard workers,and I am always impressed by their skills and how well prepared they are. Usually they are a little bit shy and quiet, and I always try to encourage them to be more open, more communicative and to establish more connections with the American culture, with their classmates, because I think they incredible benefit from each other, from the cultural interchange,as American students are very open and friendly,creating an enriched learning environment and could benefit from the working discipline of the Chinese students. Teaching Chinese students in american Academia and coming to China to teach, has made me more aware of Chinese culture and current issues and that is extremely interesting to me.
WA: Then do you have any idea about improving urban environment in China?
Carnicero: I have seen huge potentialof intervening and directing new realities looking at Hutongs and other existing residential buildings in Chinese cities.I think that is important.
What I have seen in Beijing is that in many neighbourhoods they rely on repetition and use the same design that is already there to build more units. At the end you see the same building repeated a hundred of times, in contrast to the traditional more diverse fabric of the Hutongs. My interest in the city lays on how the urban planners and the architects can bring new realities to the cities that could improve the urban life, designs capable to reinforce the relationships between people in the neighbourhoods, bringing more inhabitable public spaces.
I see a certain disconnection between the building design and the city's urbanism. There are many good opportunities to think about the public space in the city and its relationship with how people behave and feel comfortable in public space, so this transition between the building and the streets are fullof potential to regenerate and reframe the city.
WA: Do you want to say something to Chinese young architects?
Carnicero: They need to know that they have huge potentialof changing and improving the context of the world they live in, so I would encourage them to develop critical thinking, questioning and non accepting the context the way it is knowing they have the power of transforming it.
They should be asking questions like is this city, or this neighbourhood the one I like? How do I want to imagine the city in 30 years from now?What improvements can I offer to the city or to the design of new buildings? Do we as architects and designer embrace flexibility and consider the changing context in our designs? So basically, I would recommend then to have a critical perception of the context where we live, to be objective about the current reality and how it could be improved.And I would encourage them to believe in the power of designers to create a better world.□