Atelier

Lisbon, Portugal, 1987. Graduated in architecture at Lusíada University in 2011. Collaborated with Effekt (dk) and And-Ré (pt). Guest professor in Évora´s architecture faculty. Founded Corpo in 2014.

Faro, Portugal, 1997. Graduated in architecture at Lusíada University in 2022. Joined Corpo in 2021.

Considerations on the difference between Architecture and Sculpture

A man-made creation that relates reality and conceptual thought, where the latter is manifested through material in a way that provides some kind of meaning to the experience of the former.

The above description could be, partly, the very definition of architecture, that is, the construction of meaningful forms, but the same can also be applied to sculpture. Both disciplines seem to share this fundamental and foundational aspect that is essential to their classification as significant physical constructions. However, regardless of this major similarity, Architecture and Sculpture diverge in one key aspect: function. Function appears to be the definitive frontier between the two, as Gordon Matta Clark humorously put it: “One of my favourite definitions of the difference between architecture and sculpture is whether there is plumbing.” — considering plumbing as, essentially, a functional feature. If one accepts the premise of function as the major difference between both disciplines, one is immediately confronted with another problem, that of, the assessment of function itself, which can be rather dubious. Matta Clark´s works, for example, were once fully functional buildings — with plumbing systems — that had, at some point, been abandoned. The cuts Gordon inflicted upon these building´s bodies have transported them into the realm of sculpture, despite the fact that, even with the cuts, they could, with more or less concerns about safety, continue to perform as architecture. The building, or shall we say, the sculpture, could (still) perform as a shelter for humans. Other architectures became sculptures without undergoing any intentional transformation, but solely because of their physical attributes and/or historical significance. Such is the case of Le Corbusier´s Villa Savoye — which in fact never served its residential purpose — or the ruins of the Acropolis, in Greece. Although both of these examples demonstrate an historical relevance within a specific context, they are mainly experienced today because of the aesthetic attributes of their physical forms, which remain significant, thus blurring the frontier between architecture and sculpture. The opposite trajectory can also be valid, that is, the idea of a sculptural form becoming a functional architectural structure. One could take, as an example, Richard Serra´s steelworks, since they are somewhat close to an architectural composition in scale. In his Torqued Ellipse (1998), one could easily envision operations of utilitarian appropriations that could take place inside its form. If provided with adequate furniture, this piece could perform as a meeting room, or a small chapel, maybe a recording studio for string instruments, a gallery room to showcase other smaller sculptures, a yoga hall, a painter´s studio, a beauty salon, and so on and so forth. In this case, function is directly dependent on necessity and imagination. Through these appropriations of the space, making it functionally performative, the piece would inevitably shift from content to container, and in the process, from sculpture to architecture. It could be argued that the introduction of furniture in a sculpture poses as an alteration to its conceptual intent, that is not primarily functional but becomes so due to the distribution of chairs, tables and/or shelves, but then again, the same could be said for architecture — a bedroom is only considered one if it has, in fact, a bed inside of it, enabling that specific use.

If these premises are to be considered valid, a clear and unequivocal classification of objects between architecture and sculpture — and design and art on a grander level — is then never truly possible since it relies directly on how an individual (or group) perceives and chooses to engage with a specific object/space, despite its universal associated meaning. Ultimately, according to this reasoning, the very same object can shift infinitely between one and the other category throughout the different stages of its physical existence.

thoughts as ruins
Scattered, diffuse, disorganized. Fragmented images. Unclear. Architecture conceived from a mental ruin of dispersed thoughts, disconnected parts, unfitting elements, incoherent sequence of inexistent spaces, constructed from a present, a past and a possible future. Data and imagination. Connection and disconnection, simultaneously. Architecture as a perpetual transition between a mental ruin and a physical ruin. Never fully architecture.

drawing as thinking
A bilateral mechanism of action and reaction, mind and hand, energy and device. The hand must follow thoughts. Simultaneously. Draw faster. Draw essential, draw out of impulse, out of improvisation, out of intuition. Perfect synchronism. A burst of marks, smudges, shapes and lines materializing fleeting mental images within the confinements of a paper and a reality. Confusion.

drawing as ruins
Close systems of symbols more or less decipherable, more or less significant, more or less coherent. Perpetually inconclusive. Perfect only in imperfection. Complete only in incompleteness. Meaningful only in their meaninglessness. Definitive action. Impossible to erase, to undo, to retrieve an already exteriorized intention. Impossible to return to the pristine white paper or the virgin site. A statement in constant state destruction. Infinite readings.

to Matta Clark vt
— To critically incise specific cuts within an existing built structure, to make visible space and architectural components previously hidden by removal of individual parts.
— Creation through destruction.

ex.1
I´ve considered Matta Clarking the ceiling so those old beams can be uncovered and put in contrast with the carefully detailed white ornamentations.

ex.2
Instead of completely removing the existing walls and replacing them with new ones, perhaps we could Matta Clark them, as if it was an incomplete building, an intentional ruin.

ex.3
The entire roof could be Matta Clarked, creating a partially covered courtyard.

Seashells seem to embody all the mysteries of the ocean, have you noticed? Think about it, it’s true. Some arrive at the shore crooked, marked and broken, as others seem pristine new, has if their previous occupier as left, unnoticed, just a moment ago. In between, an entire variety of these shiny objects, aligned along the line that divides the sea and the sand, seems to organize an indecipherable alphabet that describes mixed stories of an aquatic landscape we could never fully experience, much less understand. Do you see it now? The mystery I was referring to? The alluring aspects of these beautiful objects? It must have something to do with entropy. For sure it has everything to do with the passage of time. Smithson must have noticed this. Perhaps not with seashells in particular, but certainly while he filled the trunk of his car with rocks from the desert, intending to showcase them in New York galleries (!). He must have been aware of how those stones were physical analogies for a wider territory most city people don’t experience. Non-Sites, as he called them. The title seems appropriate. Imagine the surprise visitors of these galleries must have felt, as they went through the exhibition contemplating stones and mirrors! Thank God for Smithson and his audacity. Many years later, as a child, completely unaware of the American East-Coast artistic scene from the 60s, I would come to perform similar practices of dislocating objects. By now, I run the risk of turning this text into a cliché description of my upbringing and how it shaped my current work, etc., which was not at all my intention, but please bear with me as I try to sort out my fascination with seashells, what it has to do with my particular practice and with architecture in general. Especially with ruins, but we´ll get to that in a moment. As I was saying, I remember, on the weekends, sitting on the passenger seat of my father´s Peugeot on the way to the beach, filled with anticipation and imagining all of the seashells I would find that day, and later bring home in a plastic bag. I was particularly interested in contrasts, you see? Either the thick, hard and heavy shells, mixed with other sediments with an overall coat of matte white, or, the thinnest to an almost transparent point shells that you could actually, kind of, see through, and would shine with the slightest amount of water. Yellow. These last ones tended to be bright yellow. I would bring as many of them home as I could possibly fit into the pockets of my beach shorts. I think mostly, my delight came not so much from the sense of ownership of these precious objects, but from the unexpected consequences that my naive, but nevertheless intentional, act could produce. I´ll give you a concrete example: by detaching these seashells from the beach and displaying them in a bookshelf in my bedroom, carefully arranged, it was as if their aesthetic qualities and natural sense of mystery were immediately amplified. They would become generally more noticeable, you know? You have to consider the unexpected event of finding a proper collection of seashells in a child´s bedroom, among LEGO constructions, comic books and a house shaped piggy bank. I like to think that Smithson would find this interesting. In a way, his practice was also quite child-like, if you ask me. Although his writings were very eloquent and conceptually grounded, his works always seemed to discreetly say “Here, look what I found. Isn´t it nice?”. Come to think of it, the same with Le Corbusier. Not the young Le Corbusier of the modernist manifestos and the Dom-Ino Villa, but the old Le Corbusier was certainly a shell enthusiast. How else could you explain Ronchamp´s roof?

Fast forward to when I actually became an architect, this practice of selecting and collecting was adapted, in some way, to site visits. If you´re an architect you´ll know — and especially if you´re a Portuguese architect, or if you have learned anything at all from Siza´s early work — that site and architecture are deeply related. It can be by means of complementarity or opposition, but they are always related nevertheless. I´m sure you see why. Without a waterfall there wouldn’t have been a Fallingwater house (W)right? So, on site visits, I would gather physical samples. Something I could station in my desk for as long as I worked on that particular project, to protractedly contemplate, as if that single object possessed the essence of the site itself, the very essence I´m trying to grasp and (somehow) incorporate into the project. This was especially true when the subject was a ruin. Like seashells, ruins also seem to embody a particular sense of mystery, don’t you agree? When walking through one, have you ever wondered about its history? Who built it? For what purpose? Where did those materials come from? The story of its inhabitants? Why was it abandoned at some point?
The fact that, most times, you cannot find clear answers to these questions, makes it even more appealing to me. I would argue that it´s an essential part of its seductiveness and overall appeal. The intention of transforming a ruin into something new must be followed by these basic notions: essence, mystery and time. Any poet would agree with this. Poets possess an enviable awareness of the entire world and all its physical and metaphysical little details. So, as a poet would do I guess, I collected materials from ruins. Bricks, stones, door knobs, a piece of a handrail, a block of crafted plaster, domestic objects left behind, etc.. Archifacts, as I later called them: prosaic constructive or decorative parts of existing architectural systems, with no apparent cultural or historical interest, but that seem to manifest a discrete sense of power, identity and memory to the eyes of the architect/finder. Fetish objects, if you will. Do you remember Matta Clark´s sculptural fragments? Those pieces he removed from his cuts in buildings, later installed and displayed inside of museums, still full of dirt, spider webs and cigarette butts? Well, kind of like that, in a way, but in a smaller scale obviously, easy to manoeuvre and move around according to the hierarchy and needs of the ongoing projects. And instead of being an entire wall fragment for example (with structure, plaster, windows, footer, etc..), it´s objectified into a single element. If you could see it, my office — and more often than not, also my car — is full of such Archifacts. A miscellaneous collection of different shapes, sizes and textures of building materials from different times and geographies. For physical support and display purposes, I started to place them on proper pedestals. Tailor-made plaster podiums that, besides holding the objects in the most beneficial position to be looked at, also seem to provide them with a sense of dignity and (even!) monumentality, eternalising them, in a way. A pleasant consequence that came by accident, to be honest.

With all of this being said, the truth is, if you ask me how this practice influences or shapes the architectural projects developed in the office, I could not provide you with a proper answer. I´m sorry, it´s as disappointing to you as it is to me, believe me. The fact is, at this point, it´s still not clear to me if this is a fundamental aspect that informs our architectural practice, or, solely a parallel artistic activity of romantically preserving meaningless objects, like an obsessive behaviour, to some degree. However, there must be an unforeseen connection, right? Think about it. How could there not be?

but you´re bringing me

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An artistic or creative endeavour is immediately ruined in the precise moment one attempts to finish it.
The desire for completeness cancels the possibility of its actual manifestation.

To abstain from introducing superficial information,
To leave unfilled gaps,
To intentionally remove information of what would otherwise be a complete form,
Represents a loss that is, in itself, a gain.
A gain of essentiality.
A gain of meaning.
A gain of wonder.
Emotional depth is then revealed by means of relatability through imperfection.
An incomplete viewer experiencing an incomplete object.

To consciously renounce completeness is to allow (the possibility of) wholeness.

If one accepts this premise, incompletion becomes a foundational requirement for any work to be significant.
Therefore, in the process of creating something, there is but only one truly critical moment to be attentive to:

when
to
sto

The entire universe has its origins in chaos. In it, everything finds itself, either fundamentally disperse, or in a constant process of dispersion. The human desire to find and/or produce unity must then be regarded as an impulse against the universe. Man, in an ingenious or arrogant attempt to superiorize himself over the environment in which he is included. All these endeavours find, inevitably, the taste of failure. Unity, that is, the indivisibility and order of physical things, can only be found as an abstract concept. If one can consider these premisses as valid, then, those who hold the responsibility of creating forms must adopt opposite compositional principles to the classical ones.

The only logic that aligns itself with the laws of the universe is Mess is More: an aesthetic sensibility that highlights and celebrates randomness over rules, asymmetry over symmetry, the diverse, the unexpected, the absurd and the fragmented, as a way to achieve not only a more concordant system with its surroundings, but also a richer composition from the point of view of human experience. Only an artificial composition that contains in itself, from its origin, principles of chaos, can seamlessly absorb the disorder that will continuously accumulate, without losing its conceptual coherence. On the contrary. As its physical form is met with attrition and disintegration, it’s conceptual fundaments will become increasingly more sublime and the experience of such composition ever more meaningful.

There seems to be, in Picasso´s painting from 1930, “L´Acrobat”, something analogous to the practice of architecture. An anthropomorphic figure is depicted, struggling to organize itself within the confinements of a contrasting dark blue canvas. The anatomical configuration of the body parts is intentionally incorrect. Disproportional arms and legs spread unrealistically from a torso-less body in different directions, with a seemingly resting head at the centre. The human figure is presented distorted for the purpose of conveying; not an actual portrait of a real acrobat, but rather impressions of the exciting movements and fantastic agility one commonly associates with these performers.

Similarly, to explore and expand the potential of the fundamental elements of the architectural body is to (perhaps) unveil such unforeseen anatomical possibilities. By individually subjecting each element to a series of transformative actions, according to a specific conceptual intent, new spatial configurations and/or unexpected functional opportunities might be revealed. By this reasoning, limits should be transgressed and common logic perverted with invention, intelligence and a sense of irony.

Perhaps, the ultimate architectural body is discovered in the precise moment its elements are brought to some degree of excess: terraces repeated and stacked in a garden, ceilings cut and their inner structure consequently exposed, columns extended beyond their regular scale, walls made invisible, windows rotated, stairs isolated so they connect nothing, and so on… So much so that such experimentation becomes itself a conceptual and performative approach to searching and discovering possible anatomies.

The allure of a ruin resides in three different aspects:

1. 1. A ruin is predominately useless (absurd)
2. 2. A ruin is a present manifestation of a more or less distant past (nostalgia)
3. 3. A ruin is a physical reminder of our fragile condition (mortality).

Three ways to produce architecture capable of dealing with alterations instigated by either man or nature:

1. Trough absorption – the strategy of emotion. An organic architecture, with no great compositional rules, capable of absorbing change seamlessly, to such an extent that it becomes unclear which traits where originally intended by the architect(s) and which were later imposed by clients, contractors, users, etc… Instead of becoming perverted, such architecture thrives on the alterations imposed by man and/or nature, constantly rearranging itself to serve new purposes while changing its image. Like an old artefact, such architecture becomes richer with the passage of time. This represents the easiest and most effortless way to produce an architecture capable of managing change.

1. Trough the definition of a structure – the strategy of reason. If one understands structural elements (walls, beams, pillars, etc.) as the most stable within an architectural composition, and the least susceptible to change, then, to define a building relying (solely or mostly) on them provides such building with the capacity of refusing man-driven alterations with a strong argument: to change structure is risky and (usually) costly. In such strategy, a building becomes an infra-structure, a silent background in which major changes are difficult (if not impossible) to implement and minor changes have no great impact. Forces of nature will mostly impact fragile elements (windows, doors, partition walls, etc.) and even when turned into a ruin, such architecture preserves – like a temple –its formal and conceptual identity. This is the most dissimulated strategy to create buildings admitting of change, as the architect(s) can easily deflect the responsibility for a specific design in the direction of the engineer(s) and/or justify it with unavoidable technical requirements.

1. Trough the creation of icons – the strategy of the image. An architecture that provides such a strong and powerful image that any attempt to alter it is immediately discouraged. An arrogant and stubborn architecture that, because it cannot manage alterations, relies on its strong compositional traits (its looks) to deny change all together – it denies context because it becomes the context. Although, in the long term, such strategy can avoid any sort of human intention for alterations, it cannot do the same when it comes to the forces of nature, requiring a long-term effort in preserving it’s architectural features as originally presented. However, the actual materialization of such type of architecture is extremely demanding on the architect, as it relies heavily on both his technical and conceptual virtuosity, as well as on his charismatic personality: one cannot simply build icons without being extremely inflexible, persistent and charming in equal measure.