Being young, fearless, and hungry for creation are my biggest virtues. I am hopeful I will remain so when navigating my elder years. My creativity manifests in the realm between architecture, design and art. To my eyes, there is no real separation between these 3. They all build each other and can’t live without the other. I am an architect. I am a designer. I am an artist. And so much more, because I refuse to be catalogued under one category. When asked what kind of architecture I do, I often stay silent, pensive, or reply that I am not really sure. How could I know? Why should I know? Do I want to know? The latter is the kind of question I want to answer.
I am in no rush to describe what I do or to find a narrative. On the contrary, I fear discourse. I find it to be an antagonist to creativity. By definition to create is to invent new things, but a narrative is a collection of connected stories or elements. If one stays in a continuous discourse, in spite of it evolving to some extent, there is no more invention, no “tabula rasa”, as every element being “created” is just a continuation of the previous one. I do not want to sin of discourse. I want my non—discourse to be constantly creative, to be new and bold, to keep taking risk.
I find risk to be tasteful. There is always greater beauty in the unknown, in the unseen. The unknown might be scary at first, but once discovered, it becomes desired, it creates the standard, the trend. It’s all about the moment when this transformation happens. And it’s all about perception. When taking risk, it is very important to know where, how, why and who is willing to accept the risk you are taking, towards starting the process of general acceptance. I find the real beauty in these initial moments, when there is uncertainty, when its one’s first iteration, the first time an artist is putting out an idea.
We architects, however, are taught that iteration brings out perfection. Although many aspects of a project can endlessly continue to be perfected, after every iteration, a sparkle of creativity or genuineness is lost. Every new version is contaminated by external factors. From my artistic perspective, perfection is not the answer. Perfect things are finite, while imperfect ones last forever. A perfect thing asks to stay forever like that, but it will change or deteriorate at some point. An imperfect one already is imperfect, and creates less expectation. I find a lot of tranquility in this thought.
In this same way, I find more peace within a savage ocean than a tranquil sea. If you think about it, how more exciting and inspiring is the ocean? The uncertainty, the waves, the danger etc. I try to show this roughness in my work. I love sharp edges and shapes, straight lines and planes, but I also like irregularity and imperfections. It’s about creating experience, power and movement being very important factors. These bold ideas, I have obtained through my perception of what surrounds me, and help me navigate the creative world of my work.
I try to create things that transmit this experience, that pass on this movement, these never stopping waves that I have been absorbing along the years. Not all waves break, but the ones that did, I project into pieces and spaces in a simple, concise and architectural way. I want people to perceive the waves in a similar way I do. I therefore project them into the physical realm and showcase them in a very specific way. What I create is as important as how I show it. For this reason, I make my work be perceived through a perspective that I carefully try to construct - where my ideals, uncertainty and passion meticulously come together to create what I like to think of as art.