inter·view Vol'02 — inter·punct

We’re running late. Really late. So sorry. We wanted to get this to you sooner. Really, we did. And so, this is the long-awaited follow-up to our inaugural issue para·meter.

You see, this started as a simple attempt to capture a moment[1] in architecture. We were students[2] at the time, astounded by the pace with which conversations on architecture unfolded, and confounded by how quickly the topics of conversation changed. Camps sprang up briefly, held for a moment and then evaporated: parametricism, functionalism, environmentalism—whatever. It was all talk. Discourse was, in our estimation, an overabundance of opinion unfortunately deprived of reason. What was left when the lecture ended and the lights came up?

We tried to imagine an antidote to the situation.[3] We figured that by recording a series of conversations we might be able to pin down this slippery field and begin to measure its contours. We would question and parse the discipline, using the words of interlocutors to produce a cross-section, only to then push beyond. We could catalogue architecture’s alliances, produce an index of practices, and maybe even draw a map of its ideologies. And it was only going to take us a year.

30-some-odd months later we can happily report that our work is not yet finished. Perhaps it’s barely begun. The pace of conversation has only quickened, and the necessity of stocktaking remains an urgent priority even if it will only ever remain incomplete. Time itself seems to move faster now. Moments pass. Quickly. Zaha is gone. Two biennales came and went. Now more than ever, “discourse” is confused and confusing. Yet we still feel the interview is our best hope for making sense of it all. Informal, quick and dirty, the interview generates its own rules through dialogue. A record of “being in the moment,” the interview is not a belabored product of cogitation. It’s spontaneous and more or less authentic.

We present the transcripts, here, in print, to preserve the fleeting thoughts that might otherwise disappear into the void. Let the record show that these conversations represent positions in an expanding field of practice—travelogues of our personal search for what’s relevant today. At the very least, they’re an attempt to hold a mirror up to architecture: to which we humbly ask, “what do we talk about when we talk about architecture?”

[1] Long since past.
[2] Two of us still are students, for what it’s worth.
[3] And this is what you got.

Editorial note in "inter·view," written by Editors Chris, Phillip, Mark.

Vol 2. inter·view features 15 interviews with a diverse group of noted architects and practitioners, including Maria Aiolova, Alex Maymind, Hugh Broughton, Winy Maas, Harry Gugger, Sou Fujimoto, Bernard Tschumi, Wiel Arets, Jose Oubrerie, Mark Pasnik, Neil Denari, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, Christina Ciardullo, and Vishaan Chakrabarti.