Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD

#58 BeAr (ES), Arquitetura Entre Vistas ABROAD

This episode, we travel to Bilbao, Spain, to meet Ane Arce and Iñigo Berasategui, the duo behind BeAr. From their pov, architecture is a discursive practice. “We want to talk with our architecture.” But how can you sustain a discourse without becoming trapped in it?

Every project is an opportunity to begin again. They refuse specialisation and claim a certain naivety as a way of approaching a project. Sometimes, being radical means doing very little. Other times, it means transforming almost everything. “The first radical approach is to understand what is there.”

Tradition, for BeAr, is not something to reproduce literally, but something to reinterpret. Familiar elements can produce radically new forms, without losing their connection to the people who recognise them.

Construction is not what comes after design. It is part of the design process itself. And the process doesn't necessarily end when the building is finished. “The beautiful thing is that the building continues its life on its own.”

After all, “every decision we take on a project has political consequences.”

Guest: Iñigo Berasategui (BeAr, Bilbao, Spain)  

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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This episode, we travel to Madrid, Spain, to meet Alberto Campo Baeza.

He quotes Vitruvius, Cicero, and Goya. He speaks of gravity and light, of solids carved by light, of masses defined by time. For him, “architecture, poetry and music are very close, very difficult to separate.”

“Without light, architecture is nothing.” Light constructs time. Gravity constructs space. These are not metaphors, but tools, primary forces. As he puts it, “air is to music as light is in architecture.”

His ambition is disarmingly direct: “When I receive a new commission, I try to make the most beautiful house in the world.” And he makes it clear by saying that “beauty is not reserved to special people.”

Simplicity, for him, is not minimalism. 

Essential, logical, laconic.

“No more than necessary”, he says.

Guests: Alberto Campo Baeza (Madrid, Spain)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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This week we travel to Athens, Greece, to meet Konstantinos Pantazis, co-founder of Point Supreme, alongside Marianna Rentzou.

They claim that “architects nowadays have forgotten their larger social role” as it is not just about buildings but the city as a whole. And yet, the city is not singular. “Cities are made out of all of us, our different beliefs and desires.”

Their projects reflect this multiplicity and unfold as open systems.“Every project is like a sample of spaces, conditions, situations.” Not bound by scale. In fact, “we are not interested in any particular scale at all”, they say. But by the possibility of combining fragments, references, and realities. “We try to bring as much ideas, references and situations as possible.”

This openness is also a way of testing clarity. “We want our proposals to be understood by our grandmothers.”

This also extends to how they represent architecture. Their images are constructed worlds: collages of many painters, many photographs, many objects. “It’s not about aesthetics,” they insist. “It’s about allowing the viewer to be free from any particular association.”

It is not about controlling meaning, but about constructing frameworks where meaning can emerge. A strategy not to explain too much but to open things up.

Perhaps, in a time that struggles to imagine the future, their work doesn’t offer a single vision but something more collective: a space where many can emerge.

Guest: Konstantinos Pantazis (Athens, Greece)


Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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This episode, we travel to Zurich, Switzerland, to meet Pablo Donet, who together with Tim Schäfer and Tanja Reimerfounded Donet Schäfer Reimer Architekten (DOSCRE) in 2018.

Their work doesn’t begin with a manifesto. “It’s not about dogmas,” they say. “It’s things we find out by doing things.” Drawing becomes a way of thinking. “Only by drawing, and drawing and drawing again, you suddenly see something, and then you work on it.” Nothing is invented in isolation; everything is tested, evaluated, adapted.

Housing is their main field of experimentation. Project after project, typologies multiply rather than stabilise. What some might call constraints become productive triggers: “we try to take the full potential out of these limitations.” 

Multiplicity is not a weakness but a strategy. “We always fail to choose one image that transports the whole project, there is too much multiplicity.” Columns, windows, colours, plans: differentiation allows architecture to absorb contradictions instead of resolving them too quickly.

They speak of naivety as a tool, of identity elements as ways to compensate for what housing often lacks, and of Zurich as a place that appears progressive yet remains deeply conservative.

“We don’t have a language yet,” they admit. “Sometimes I wish we had.”
Perhaps the work lives precisely in that unresolved space.

Guests: Pablo Donet, DOSCRE (Zurich, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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This episode, we travel to Tokyo, Japan, to meet Yuji Mukaiyama, Alyssa Ueno and Yushi Sasada, founders of ULTRA STUDIO, established in 2018. As a young practice, they work from within contradiction; not to resolve it too quickly, but to let it shape the project.

“The client always wants something contradictory,” they say. Between one demand and another, they search for a bridge. “We try to move from problem A to B, this is our design process and part of the identity of the result.” From these tensions, “we always find some kind of abstract form.

The process begins with making. “In the beginning, we do a lot of models, some forms are very abstract.” Connections often emerge by coincidence. “The decision is not made by a master sketch; it’s something inside the process.” Keywords are shared, consensus slowly forms, and drawings evolve. “We are developing a new kind of drawing; not plan, section, or elevation, but something closer to an expanded elevation”. I’ll keep an eye on that. Who is with me?

Their projects resist linear explanation. “We don’t have a step-by-step process. We jump in and understand it almost backwards.” What matters, in the end, is perception. “Architectural form should expand how people see - not only designers, but users and viewers.”

Guests: Yuji Mukaiyama + Alyssa Ueno + Yushi Sasada (Tokyo, Japan)Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Today, we travel to Rotterdam to meet Fokke Moerel, partner at MVRDV,  a practice known for questioning limits, expanding what architecture can be, and asking, relentlessly: “why not?”.

In their work, boundaries never arrive pre-set. “This kind of pre-set boundaries or rules is something that we don’t have.” Every project begins with orientation: “Where are we? First you have to understand where you are to know what you are going to react to.” And with awareness comes responsibility: “you are using a part of the planet, so you better use it well.”

Themes in the office evolve constantly, “sometimes they age, but they never stay the same”.

From rooftop landscapes to mirrored buildings that invite you to take a picture of the world rather than a selfie of yourself, MVRDV stretch the idea of what a building can host and who it can belong to.

“When should you stop pushing?” they ask. “Where can we go even further?” The Depot in Rotterdam answers this directly: an archive once thought to be only 20% accessible is now 95% open to the public; a building unafraid of its own “objectness” and iconicity.

After all, using Fokke words, architecture is about “celebrating every piece of life.”

Cheers to that.

Guest: Fokke Moerel, MVRDV (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

This episode is sponsored by J&J Teixeira.

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Today, we travel to Leipzig, Germany, to meet Anne Femmer and Florian Summa, founders of SUMMACUMFEMMER. Their work resists distance - between drawing and construction, theory and action, doubt and decision. “We like that there is a much deeper connection between planning and actually building it.”

Architecture, for them, begins with questions. “The question is: how many questions can you take and tackle at one time?” They embrace uncertainty as a tool, not an obstacle. “Not knowing the correct answer is often more interesting… there are more and more doubts in our thinking.”

Between the desk and the site, they move freely. “We have this freedom to choose whether we are on the desk or on site.” In that movement, they find clarity and, sometimes, surprise. “Is it still a model or is it already reality?”

They make a disclaimer: “It’s important not to mistake it for a DIY attitude”, as they are interested in seeing the professional side of architecture getting into these questions.

Actually, they mix life and work seamlessly: they have an office, they teach together, they are a couple, they have kids together. “I thought the architecture profession was a space of a its own”; they say, “I didn't realise it was connected to so many other things in the world.”

Guests: Anne Femmer + Florian Summa (Leipzig, Germany)Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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This week, we travel to Neuchâtel, Zurich and Lausanne to meet Anna MacIver-ek and Axel Chevroulet, the duo behind MacIver-ek Chevroulet. Their practice seeks “precision as a tool to achieve an architecture sensitive to its context and generous to its users” - yet for them, precision is inseparable from freedom.

Where lies the balance between control and release? “Sometimes you go to the toilet and when you come back, things have been decided.” Architecture, after all, is a shared process - unpredictable, collective, and alive.

“We started to learn to love this idea of constraints.” Limits, they say, are fertile ground - shaping creativity rather than restricting it. That is how breaking down, reassembling, and connecting become part of their design language, almost “like a motor, you can tear the buildings apart and reuse certain elements.”

They are fascinated by connections, both literal and conceptual. “The connections used to be in the center of architecture but disappeared with the use of concrete that is able to hide all the connections.” What was once visible became hidden, and they seek to bring that clarity back: “Screwing, nailing, or simply placing one thing on top of another. (…) Making knots is insanely efficient. (…) We’re hoping to use magnets soon.”

“You need to have freedom in every scale of representation… everything works in a sketch and nothing works in a sketch.” Between drawings, models, and images, they navigate multiple kinds of precision. “No medium is less precise than another; it is just another type of precision.”

“It’s part of the job to be lost,” they say.

But fear not, “if you have the right process, somehow, you will find a way through.”

Guests: Anna MacIver-ek + Axel Chevroulet (Neuchâtel + Zurich + Lausanne, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

This week, we travel to Gothenburg and Stockholm, Sweden, to meet Johan Olsson and Andreas Lyckefors, co-founders of Olsson Lyckefors Arkitekter. Together since 2005, they lead a practice of around thirty architects and interior designers — and three dogs.

For them, each project is unique — “a unique period of time, a unique client, a unique place.” What carries through from one work to another is not a style, but a method: “of course we have things that continue from project to project, but that has more to do with methods than the outcome.”

They refuse the idea of a fixed aesthetic. “It would be unrespectful to keep an aesthetics over and above everything we do.”, they say. Architecture, for them, begins with listening: “listening is gold. Talking is silver.”

To embrace change, to adapt, to extract meaning from constraints, this is their way of working. “In the future we will do architecture in a way we don’t know yet. We cannot be stuck in preconceived ways of doing things.”

Guests: Johan Olsson + Andreas Lyckefors (Gothenburg + Stockholm, Sweden)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

This episode is sponsored by J&JTeixeira.

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This week, we travel to Aachen and Stuttgart to meet AMUNT, founded in 2009 by Björn Martenson, Sonja Nageland Jan Theissen.

AMUNT reinvent the existing. They pay attention to the quirky, the overlooked, the oddly specific. “There are ideas in these quirky things, that’s why we collect them.” But collecting is only the beginning. For AMUNT, these observations become operative: “to transfer means the possibility to bring something new to the vocabulary of architecture”. I agree.

Each project begins with context - not as something given, but as something constructed. “Everybody can create their own context… you design what you think is your context.” This openness also allows for letting go: “at some point, it becomes the client’s project on the inside, and we let go”. Wise.

Constraints play a central role. “We like to take benefits out of constraints… these constraints form a kind of character”. Within limits, they find freedom. “It helps you to find, in the sea of possibilities, a solution that is not just based on taste (…) If we have at least 2 reasons for something, then it’s really good”.

In the end, everything has a character: imperfect, specific, quietly alive…waiting to be found.

Guests: Björn Martenson + Sonja Nagel + Jan Theissen (Aachen + Stuttgart, Germany)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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