This week, let’s travel to Rotterdam, Paris and Zurich to meet André Kempe and Oliver Thill, two German architects who founded Atelier Kempe Thill in 2000.

Talking about simplicity can be a complex task — but today, we take on that challenge. For Kempe and Thill, architecture is “the creation of order in the world of chaos.” “The world is already too complex,” they say, “and a piece of architecture can create a moment of order.” Yet simplicity, for them, is not effortless — “it takes a lot of effort to do something that at the end looks rather simple.”

Typology stands at the core of their thinking — “in typology there is a lot of collective knowledge.” The plan, followed by the section, becomes a tool for clarity. Their architecture resists spectacle: facades are rigorous, interiors quiet, and repetition reveals rather than hides logic.

Ultimately, “there is an order — but one that can always be a little bit stretched.” Between reason and softness, their work searches for balance — between the ideal and the real.

Guests: André Kempe + Oliver Thill (Rotterdam, Paris, Zurich)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Lugano, Switzerland, to meet Enrico Sassi — architect, landscaper, teacher of Urban Design at USI in Mendrisio, and editor of “archi”, a Swiss magazine of architecture and urban planning. From his studio in Lugano, he navigates the blurred lines between inside and outside, architecture and landscape.

“It’s not so important to make a distinction between inside and outside,” he says. What matters most is to “produce good living spaces.” For Sassi, “space is our specificity,” and materials are alive with possibilities: “each material has an expression… you can take out energy or beauty or interest from each material.” Nothing is ever wasted: “you don’t throw away a piece of stone. Keep. Keep because it is always useful.”

His work unfolds like an archaeological reading, where “you show stratas” and let the story be read over time. Theory is important, but it cannot remain abstract: “if we don’t have something in our head we are not able to do something with our hands. But only theory… it’s theory.” Construction itself is part of the story, and “you need to be ready to change your mind during the process because the story is moving and new things appear.” 

Maybe it’s an opportunity, it is not a problem.

Even bridges, pavilions, and infrastructures carry care and emotion: “color is adding joy to a piece,” he says, recalling a bridge touched by blue and yellow. “We don’t expect a bridge to transmit happiness.” But maybe we should.

Guest: Enrico Sassi (Lugano, Switzerland)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Zurich to meet Maria Conen and Raoul Sigl, working together since 2011 under the name Conen Sigl Architekten. Their practice is rooted in curiosity, precision, and a constant questioning of how architecture belongs - to its place, to its people, and to its stories.

“How is this building grounded in the neighbourhood?” they ask. Every project begins with observation - reading the place carefully, understanding “what do I look at in this project?” and leaving space for multiple answers. “Maybe there is not one answer, maybe there are a lot of answers.”

Drawing plays a special role - not as documentation, but as reflection. “Drawing as a synthesis is more to keep in mind our thoughts for the project.” These synthesis drawings are not about technical detail, but about memory and pleasure - “the things you are most interested in.”

Architecture, they say, should be precise yet open, allowing life to unfold in unexpected ways. “Not always the best materialisation or the best concept of colours makes a good space. Sometimes it’s the people.” Beauty, after all, is “so multilayered” - it shifts, resonates, and tells a different story each time you look.

Guests: Maria Conen + Raoul Sigl (Zurich, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Zurich to meet David Klemmer - an Austrian architect working in Switzerland, running his own office since 2017. In 2022, he founded Studio Diode, an independent satellite dedicated to digital images, where he acts as a digital photographer, constructing and staging virtual portraits of architecture. Two poles define his practice — one introverted, one extroverted — both essential.

David understands architecture as an instrument. “An instrument is something that cannot work on its own. It needs a human being.” And like instruments, his buildings are expressive, their structures “exposed, not hidden.”

From guitars to satellites, he finds resonance in objects that connect the intimate and the distant. “Musical instruments are the closest things to us… satellites are the most far away.” Yet both shape how we perceive and imagine space. “When I work in 3D, I feel an astronaut.”

For David Klemmer, reality is not absolute. “Plans, sections, or even conversations can reveal something I cannot experience when I go there.” Drawing, image-making, and design merge as acts of understanding.

Guest: David Klemmer (Austria + Zurich, Switzerland)
Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Venice and Arzignano to meet Marcello Galiotto and Alessandra Rampasso, founding partners of AMAA, a “Collaborative Architecture Office For Research and Development” as they call it.

They have recently stated working form New York, as they thought that would be a good pretext to be closer to Donald Judd’s aura.

“Instagram fully fills our mind, so it’s not easy to select”. Therefore, they’ve developed their own toolbox, the "AMAA box” - which they progressively disclosure on throughout the episode. “To have a proper selection is important, so we do our selection of a lot of things”.

At the end, “all these influences create a language.”

There are 3 main pieces: a site, an architect and a client. 

“All these 3 things need to work together”.

“To be trustable with a client you need to be a storyteller, thats the first thing. But you also need to be humble and practical. (…) The client needs to be with us for the research, for the process, for the after”. The process is good, but the after is the best part, they claim.

Let’s not for get about the site, as that is the place where they best express their way of thinking. “We really love to dirty up the situation”.

On one hand, “we need to be thinkers but at the same time we need to be builders”.

On the other hand, “from a functional problem you can find a way to be also aesthetic”.

What goes around comes back around.

“The reference is giving to you the power of detail, the power of keeping up your way of thinking and your intuition.”

Guest: Marcello Galiotto + Alessandra Rampazzo  (Venice + Arzignano, Italy)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Santiago, Chile, to meet Iván Bravo whom back in 2002 has founded Iván Bravo Arquitectos, now alongside his associate architect Martin Rojas.

Once upon a time Iván noticed he was really interested in the process of the work…even more than its outcome. Polemic.

Isn’t it curious that “in art, ”obra” is the final work” (obra de arte /masterpiece) meanwhile, “in architecture, “obra” is the process” (construction site).

“It was really interesting to understand that one final work, which we call “obra”, is all the process, including the end”, he says.

But can an “obra” (as a construction site) even become an “obra” (masterpiece)?

After all, their clients “are not clients that want architecture, they just want a house.”

Maybe this is all about getting “lebre por gato”.

In other words, “to get something better than you expect to”.

Maybe its about cousins who spot Toblerone’s in architecture projects.

“We are constantly mixing rationality with intuition, of course.”

“The publication of an architecture, the final photos, are a fetichism of the whole process.”

Guest: Iván Bravo (Santiago, Chile)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to Dublin, Ireland, where Ryan W Kennihan - originally from Chicago - has established his practice in 2007. 

Ryan is much more interested in an architecture of resonance then in one that is completely self-involved. “Whatever “non-referencial architecture” means, it is the complete opposite of this”. An architecture of resonance is a certain sense that arises from using forms that exist all over the world.

Their practice is about a constant meaning giving. “We want as many as possible, a proliferation of references”.

At a certain point we might find ourselves questioning if we are taking part in the evolution or just continuously extending a mistake. One cannot be sorry, “its very much about looking forward and looking back, trying to be old and be new; to be refined and be awkward.”

“What’s interesting to me is not the framework itself but actually the variations within the framework.

Guest: Ryan W Kennihan, Ryan W. Kennihan Architects (IE)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to London, United Kingdom, to meet Adam Khan, founder of Adam Khan Architects since 2006. 

Adam aims to take architecture where it doesn’t normally go. “We have a lot to toggle, as architects, without having to leave our discipline”.

But how can architecture extend elsewhere solely through architectural means? It's about doing it through the discipline of architecture, “not using architecture as a way to illustrate some other thing.”

But then… how do you incorporate the program, context, and situation without compromising its autonomy as a discipline? “There is much not under your control, you are kind of riding a runaway horse.” Architecture is such an imaginary guess, sometimes.

The most amazing thing is noticing that “someone actually bothered doing that.”

Guest: Adam Khan, Adam Khan Architects (UK)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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Let’s travel to germany to meet the architectural practice Heide von Beckerath, today represented by Verena von Beckerath.  

Housing has been a never-ending topic in their practice. “When we started working with collective housing projects it was something new. (…) lately,I found out, collective housing is something that everyone is talking about”.

They are not claiming to be the pioneers of the attention now being given to the housing issue. However, they have long been aware that certain aspects have either never been applied to housing or have been forgotten in the discussion. Using their words:  “Its not something that we have invented, its something that is there but maybe has never been applied to housing in that way.”

Sometimes “a single word can change the acceptance of an architecture approach.”

Sometimes, its not very clear who has to water the plants.

Every time, “as architects, we always have to be a little ahead of things.”

“Housing…I mean…this is probably what we have to do in the next years.

But this does not mean that there is change in what we see that is built.

That is the next step.”

Guest: Verena von Beckerath + Tim Heide, Heide von Beckerath (DE)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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CREDITS

Two Houses

2019, 38 min

Director: Verena von Beckerath

Assistant directors: Niklas Fanelsa, Momoko Yasaka, Maximilian von Zepelin

Camera, Sound, Editing: Jens Franke

Produced by: Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Verena von Beckerath (ed.), A Room with a View, Monroe Books, Berlin 2023

with contributions by Andrew Alberts, Ludovico Centis, Lawrence Hoque, Albrecht Kastein, Oda Pälmke and Yvonne Matijas Seguso

In this episode we travel to both Greece (EL) and London (UK), where we can Neiheiser Argyros, this time under the voice of Ryan Neiheiser.

Repetition and diference is a long-time interest of theirs.

They don't bother looking at things over and over again, “there is something about repetition that might lead to something unexpected”. However, in other to find the unexpected “you have to completely invest yourself in an idea and totally believe that it can exist in the world”.

“A big part of finding new ideas is about copying interesting ideas”.

Interesting, I might copy this idea myself.

Once we explore the idea of “reuse”, Ryan brings a new, and more precise, word to the table: spolia. “We have been trying to make use of the word “spolia” to nuance the idea of “reuse”.” And they will keep on doing it over and over again.

Guest: Ryan Neiheiser + Xristina Argyros, Neiheiser Argyros (EL + UK)

Host: Ana Catarina Silva (Porto, Portugal)

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