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Architect Marco Casamonti met with the
best-known and most widely published Chilean architect of our day, Mathias
Klotz, in Rome where he received the Borromini Award for 2001, awarded
to the architect in the junior category for his Altamira School. Casamonti :So, let's start very easily. Mathias, you are sufficiently well-known in Italy because some of your works have been published in some important magazines: even in our magazine AREA. Here there is a publication of some of your works, of some of your houses. But first of all I think it is important to know a bit about your biography, a bit about your development. Mathias Klotz : My biography? I studied architecture in Chile. I started studying architecture in 1983: I wanted to study art, but I enrolled in the faculty of architecture because I thought it was more methodical, and I believed that as an artist I wouldn't have concluded anything good, so it seemed to me that architecture in the future would have been more useful to me. And, by chance, when I was 22 and I had just finished my studies, I took part to a competition for building a house, a private competition. I won it. I started to work without any previous experience of working for some other architects, and I realised three houses that were a bit different from common houses because each of them was destined to one person only. So there was a sort of one large space, without partition walls, and so on. Thanks to the fact that these houses were weird and different from the others, I started to receive assignments from people who had seen them, and also assignments for houses with some peculiarity. So time passed and without even realising it, I was working as a professional architect. Casamonti:Well. Your main works at the beginning were private houses like this one. And what about now, are you working even on other things - bigger works - or you keep on working on the one-family houses? Mathias Klotz : Good question! Because in America - let's say both in Latin America and in North America - the topic of the house is very strong, at least up to now. The American society has at its disposal an immense amount of space, that is why, people belonging to a certain social level, usually have the chance to build a second house. At the beginning, almost all my assignments were second houses. And why just second houses? Because towards second houses people are more flexible, given that, as far as the architecture of the house is concerned, usually in the town those same people own much more formal houses and so on. So, back to the question, up to now the topic of the house has been very important in my work. Apart from this, we have been working on architectural themes of public utility such as office buildings, colleges, industrial buildings, and now we are working on the urban development of a very big area: we start from the sketch of the road, and so on. Casamonti: Listen, in order to better know your office, how many people do you work with here and how is your office organised? Mathias Klotz : It's very badly organised! Casamonti:Just like every architect's office, isn't it? Mathias Klotz : Yes. Twelve people work here, more or less. I say more or less because when I have more work I have more people, when I have less work I have less people (about eight) working for me. Usually they are all very young. I am the eldest. Nobody is older than me. There are some Chileans, and some foreigners who have just finished their studies: they come here with the idea that after finishing their studies they have to do one year of apprenticeship. There have been some French, Dutch, Belgians... never Italians, no I've never had Italians. Casamonti : Listen, you have started to work with very cheap materials: wood, wooden houses... Using also very simple technologies. I think this is very interesting. Is this a choice due to the conditions of the area where you have been operating or is this your idea of architecture: working with very poor materials, with simple technologies, with a very restricted architecture from the technology point of view? Mathias Klotz : Well, the idea is to work a bit with the technology of the area where the building is. Chile is a country with a very long shape, where the main activities converge in the centre of the country where the capital is, and lots of our projects have to be realised very faraway. The technology and the available materials are these, which means that we can't use other materials, but somehow there is a selection that is linked to the fragility of the landscape, with the kind of buildings that there are in this landscape.... And we must start from this assumption, because for instance if you look at these my first houses - they have been published because they are made of fir wood, that is the most common wood in the world - they have been painted in white and they are in harmony with the landscape, where there are several white buildings nearby, and so on. At the same time in the South of the country there are my houses - the South of the country is much more wooded, and the wood is much better down there....... I was saying, there are some buildings realised with this high quality wood, and with this wood kept at the natural state so as the climate could adapt it to a colour simile to this landscape. But it's a mixture of assumptions, the technology available in an area and... the predominant architecture of the area itself. Casamonti: And, looking at these houses reminds me to ask you: what relationship is there between your architecture and the tradition - the history - but also between your architecture and modernity? This relationship is always present: a material strictly linked to tradition, but also, clearly, some architectural elements that communicate with modernity. So, how do you manage to work with these two dimensions? Mathias Klotz : First of all I don't have a very clear and fixed theory of how and why I realise my works. I believe in a - let's say - rather traditional architecture, I mean, I believe in an architecture that takes elements from the tradition of different things, from the material of the site to all this that is -we can say - the inheritance of the Modern Movement, that is between culture and tradition; there is no avant-garde.... In America - I mean the American continent - the Modern Movement is the only deep-seated architecture movement that exists, the only one with a tradition. In America the Modern Movement has developed more than elsewhere. But why? Because there were much more possibilities to build. So in this continent architecture is much more assimilated than in the others. Casamonti:In the light of the questions Marco has just asked you, you have grown up as a student and as an architect between two main trends of though: Postmodernism - let's think of Aldo Rossi, Portoghesi at the beginning of the eighties - and Deconstructivism - let's think of Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhas and so on, who had their glorification at the end of the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties. So you have completed your formation between these two - let's say - "stylistic" trends. In which way have they influenced you? What have you taken from them? In which way do you use vernacular elements in your architecture? How can architecture be self-constructed? How much is there of one element and of the other? What's your reflection on this? Mathias Klotz : Well, when I grew up as a young architect there were very few people - those I met - who did not belong to Postmodernism. There was the Deconstructivism, there were the first examples of it when I was finishing my university studies in 1987. Although these two movements were opposed... what I think is that Postmodernism - that is a movement from a point of view extremely "stylistic" - has an element which is a fundamental mistake, i.e. that in a certain sense it breaks all the assumptions of the Modern Movement. The Modern Movement has a sort of "regulation" that consists of the five principles of the Modern Movement and so on: I think they are quite right and they adapt themselves quite well to modern life. In a certain sense, what Postmodernism does, is breaking off with all this. But it leaves the door open so as to state that architecture is not rigid, that it can be completely revised. So, what I think is that this kind of architecture is like a scale in balance among these elements: the rationality almost - how do you call it? - "fundamentalist" of the Modern Movement, and the extreme opposite which is the absolute formalism of Postmodernism, and it believes that the last one is closer to human beings. So you have mentioned Koolhas. I think Koolhas has nothing to do with Deconstructivism, except just this revision of the Modern Movement that is a Modern Movement much more human and much closer to the look that takes the elements from it. This is an aspect that could seem contradictory to the Modern Movement, with respect to what it was in its original form: but I, at least, personally feel closer to this - lets say - "Neo-modernism" than to other trends. Casamonti:Yes, here there is a very strong relationship - we could see it in these buildings - with the landscape. Its as if every building was opened and it looked at and it was built by taking into account what was nearby, but not so much the autochthonous architecture of the place as a landscape considered in a very wide sense. So is this the case of these photos or is it just a coincidence...? No, it cant be, so.....? Mathias Klotz : No, it's just, again here... this is as well a recurrent theme. Recently - in an issue of 2G DOSSIER dedicated to Marcel Breuer - I wrote an article about Marcel Breuer, and basically, what I wrote in that article..... it was a rather mediocre article, but after all what I did was to explain what happened to Marcel Breuer, who came from the Bauhaus and from Europe, when in America he found a vast landscape, new and without borders, most of all in Chile. Chile is a country almost 5.000 km long and it has 15 million inhabitants. So this situation he found is not rare at all here, it's rather frequent. That is why, the predominant landscape of the buildings outside the cities is different. Then there is the problem of what happens to the landscape when we work on the city... but, even here, the cities are definitely much less built than European cities and they are very different from them. The American cities are usually enough anonymous. So, in conclusion these problems are reproduced on a different scale. Casamonti:This is very interesting, because it also gives way to some considerations on your vision of Europe and America, and on your vision, from Santiago - where you live and work -of the European and American scenery of architecture, isn't it?...from your office which is a bit faraway from us?.....Then, what do you think of the European architecture (obviously if you have the chance to receive all the European books and magazines)? How do you keep in touch with Europe and with the rest of the world? Mathias Klotz : As regards architecture.... I think that European architecture - let's say European contemporary architecture, what is being realising now - .... what is happening now - I think - it began in Spain in the eighties, when it started this reinterpretation of the Modern Movement, after Postmodernism that had its headquarters in Italy. But in a different scale, in a different situation from us Americans, because in Europe - I would say - not 100% but 90% of architecture that is realised consists of public works. In America 90% of the constructions are private buildings. So, in a certain sense, I believe that an architecture line relatively based on similar things, even if in different places, is developing all over the world. But the theme, the geographical situation.... I believe that what is happening in North America is that unfortunately architecture has lost lots of space; in a certain sense in Europe there is a big effort to realise a public architecture of very high quality, there are lots of competitions, young architects are privileged... Just like in Netherlands for instance: there is all the support of the Government to realise buildings designed by young architects. It's a phenomenon that doesn't exist at all in North America; what happened in North America was that the sites where it was planned to realise some architecture were enormous, such as big co-operatives where 300-400 people worked realising a rather scarce product. At least this is my point of view - keep it when you publish the interview! - Consider that I travel quite a lot, I come to Europe at least three times a year, and I fly to North America even three or four times a year. Casamonti: Today you have been awarded with an important award: the Borromini Award which is very important also because its at its first edition, don't you think so? And has this news of being awarded with such an important award surprised you, or were you actually sure that this architecture made of simple elements, of small sizes would have been successful....? Mathias Klotz : Then, the Borromini Award... I have received it for a college I have realised that is much more complex than these little houses. So I am surprised and I am very proud to hear that in Europe you know about my works realised very faraway; and this is amazing. In a certain sense I believe that the typical prejudice of very faraway countries is that they think that things can be realised only when being in the epicentre of the area in question. I believe that architecture can be realised everywhere. Because when I finished my studies, I also wondered if I wanted to be an architect in Chile or I wanted to practice this profession in Spain, in North America and so on. I believe that if you have the chances and you have clients, wherever you are and wherever your work is being realised, you must keep your clients and take advantage of this situation. Casamonti: Listen, what about your relationship with University? Do you keep on teaching at University or when you graduated, then...? I know you work for university, but are you a professor on the permanent staff? Is it a fixed commitment, or is it a casual job? Mathias Klotz : At present, since the 2nd of January of this year I have become the headmaster of the school of architecture, and for me it is rather fundamental to be able to balance somehow the theoretical work that can be discussed at University, and the contact with students which is a way to learn constantly: in this way there is a constant discussion and at the same time I work and build real projects. I believe that the two extremes are less advisable, i.e. being only academics - and so being faraway from the world where architecture is actually built - means being faraway from that world, but at the same time being only an architect keeps away from the theoretical discussion about architecture. Casamonti:Listen, I recently went to Brazil where I had been invited from a University to give some lectures - in the profound south of Brazil - and I actually noticed that the vast majority of constructions does not represent any interesting architectural works; I just saw very vernacular works. And architecture has a very little space down there, at least as regards what I saw in Brazil during my journey. Actually it seems to me that in Chile the situation is a bit different. So, how do you describe the relationship that the architectonic culture - the most important one, that one that produces architectural works - has in South America? Is Chile a luckier case or not? More or less? Mathias Klotz : Chile is lucky enough from this point of view. And, why does this happen? Because Chile - let's say up to the end of the sixties - but in general the entire Latin America up to the end of the sixties has had the rather interesting architecture tradition of the Modern Movement, most of all small countries such as Uruguay. Casamonti:In Uruguay architecture is very good.... Mathias Klotz : If you go to any American capital and you look at the architecture of the sixties - even if the architects have been forgotten, the architecture is still beautiful - generally speaking they are nice projects. Then in the seventies, in South America an absolute catastrophe happened and Chile was lucky because in this sad historical and political period it had at least an economic order that transformed Chile - in the eighties - again in a country with an economy that rose with a medium rate between 7 and 9% consecutively in 20 years. Thus, when I finished my studies I was a young boy that was charged to build houses. These are the reasons why - we can say - from the middle eighties up to now the quantity of architecture that has been built is rather high and there are chances for young people, now less than some years ago, but in any case it's still a privileged situation compared to all our neighbouring countries. The situation was very different in other countries: in Brazil, in Argentina, in Uruguay, in Paraguay, and in Bolivia this did not happen. They passed from bad to worse, to bad again; and this has made it possible that Chile in a certain sense represents in South America a sort of leadership as regards the architectonic production, compared to neighbouring countries. Then, if you observe the situation more carefully you will notice that 90% of the buildings are horrible, but if you manage to have your works published, it's not a casual phenomenon, your works are admired here, in Spain and everywhere... you know, the interest for architecture is not that big, it's lower than in the twenties, when the architecture movements had more to do with ideology: there was a will of contesting the world in a certain way, the Modern Movement was meant to reorganise the entire society in a certain way... this is a much more selfish and a much more consumerist society, and this is noticeable. Casamonti: Listen, and your works now, are....those you have described, even these bigger ones are in Chile or has this success, you have had in Europe, brought you some works outside Chile as well? Mathias Klotz : At present I am working in Argentina as well - we are building a project - I have a project in Denmark and I have been shortlisted for a preliminary project for the Museum of Contemporary Art in S. Diego, in the United States. I don't think I'll be the one who will do it, I have just been shortlisted.... Casamonti:We hope you will!! But what about architecture competitions in Chile? You have said there are not many, are they just a few? There are just lots of private works as you said..... Mathias Klotz : Honestly the state architecture does not exist at all. Then there are competitions based on invitations. The competition for the project with which I have won the Borromini Award - that was a college in Santiago - was a private competition in which just five or six architects were invited, and so on. Generally speaking these competitions are almost competitions with included assignment. It's very rare that these private competitions are serious and that the product is beautiful: I don't know why we won, maybe it was the project that represented most their taste, I guess. Casamonti: Listen, can you please give us a short list of good Chilean architects, of young Chilean architects? Is there in Chile any architect like you who works hard, and that magazines perhaps should consider more carefully? Mathias Klotz : Let's see.... in Chile, now... Smiljan Radic has just been published in CASABELLA for a house in Chile. He is a very good architect, he hasn't built much because he is very rich anyway and he doesn't need to work! Theres another architect, his name is Alejandro Aravena, he is very interesting as well. There's Guillermo Acuña and Sebastian Irarrazabal, they are very good too. I find the level of this group of architects very very high. Casamonti:Okay, that's all thank you very much Mathias. -------- Mathias Klotz e Bernard Khoury ----- Entrevista en Revista 2G HG ¿Cuál es tu relación con la Bauhaus y Le Corbusier?
Tu obra rechaza el devaneo posmoderno y la construcción inmobiliaria
chilena de baja calidad, especialmente en la década de los años
ochenta. HG ¿Todavía no habías acabado la carrera? HG Chile es un país de paisajes extremos. ¿Cómo
te planteas la naturaleza en la desolación de Tongoy o en la
exuberancia de Chiloé? HG Tu actitud de vanguardia está renovando la mente arquitectónica
del sur del mundo. ¿Cómo la haces dialogar entre tanta
arquitectura de moda? Una casa tuya puede estar en una calle de La Dehesa,
junto a casas con teja chilena u otras de estilo georgiano. ¿Cómo
te abstraes de todo eso? HG ¿Cómo ves el futuro desarrollo de tu obra? HG Empezaste muy joven con obras reales. Recién acabada la carrera
ya estabas construyendo viviendas. Ahora tienes 38 años y si
miras tu trayectoria en conjunto, hay mucho camino andado ¿Cómo
ves tu proyección como arquitecto en un futuro? HG Cuando te invitaron a hacerte cargo de la fundación de la
escuela de arquitectura, ¿pensaste que ibas a involucrarte con
tanta fuerza? Habías sido ya profesor de proyectos, algo muy
distinto a dirigir un proyecto académico. HG Volviendo al proyecto académico. En un país donde
han florecido más escuelas de las que es capaz de absorber, ¿cuál
es la diferencia que marca tu escuela?
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