“The house is a very important space and we often overlook it”

Still with the memory of the months that forced lockdown have left us, we wanted to speak with the professor of Architectural Projects Xavier Monteys, one of the Catalan architects who has most investigated the action of inhabiting, through the research group of the same name that he leads at the School of Architecture of Barcelona (ETSAB) where he is a teacher. Monteys has taught and lectured at various university centres and institutions, he writes an opinion column in El País every fortnight and has published several books, including Casa Collage, An Essay on the Architecture of the House (2001, with Pere Fuertes), The pleasure of the city (2011), The room, Beyond the living room (2014) and The street and the house, Urban planning of interiors (2017).

Do you consider yourself an architecture critic?

I don’t consider myself a critic. I have been drawn to it as a result of my contributions to the Criticism columns of El País. Many people see me as a critic because of this aspect of my work, but I am an architect first and foremost.

What are the keys to a good piece of writing about architecture?

For me, it is like writing well about anything, and it implies, above all, wanting to reach everyone, which is a decisive question to make yourself understood. This means that we must be able to explain clearly and understandably a concept about buildings or cities. Although there are times when we have to resort to technical concepts, these can also be explained to be understood. It is also important not to write for architects. I used to recommend to younger teachers that when they wrote an exercise statement for students, they should take into account that their parents could read it and they should be able to understand it. The fact that what we write is not understood does not make it better or more interesting, and we should also avoid cliches and commonplaces.

What are your references in terms of criticism or communication of architecture?

The texts that make me think or that have made me change my mind or have influenced me are sometimes not necessarily linked to architecture, and they don’t have an age either. Sometimes things written many years ago are still relevant today. The truth is that I like to nurture myself with references from all fields, even if they are foreign to architecture. I use them both for my articles and to explain things in class. Lately, for example, I have been reading a lot about gardens and plants and it is very useful to talk about many other things.

You are a lecturer at ETSAB, how have you seen university life change?

I have seen university life degrade. It has become very bureaucratic. Nevertheless, we have experienced a small spring during the lockdown. As there was no time to regulate the way we would teach online, it started in a very organic way, it was very imaginative and above all not uniform. It was like the equivalent of teaching on the stairs, on the terrace, in the library, in the parking lot, in some gardens or on the street. Now obviously the academic authorities are regulating it with the best intentions, but I think that this uniformization and bureaucratization of university life has affected the experience. I notice it especially with tributes to old teachers where I have noticed through the people who attend and what they say, that things have changed and not exactly for the better.

I am a strong advocate of the idea, before entering university, of spending time working on different things, outside of your family or, as some say, away from your comfort zone. A time without studying, and simply seeing how what we have learned so far has helped us to face life. Going from high school to university without a cut is very risky.

What do you do on the Habitar research group that you lead at ETSAB?

We think about what people do in relation to the house and the city, and we publish, do research, exhibitions and some filmed material about it. I like to talk about inhabiting and not about the house because I think there is a superficial conception, and it is paradoxical, that architecture is finished once the work is finished, but it is then when it begins, or begins again, when it is used. In this sense, the Anglo-Saxon term used to talk about the house makes much more sense than here. They talk about housing to talk about the house, and housing has a more verbal connotation, it is about the action of inhabiting.

This lockdown has been a very intense experiment in the use of the house. What have we learned from it?

Well, the house is truly a very important space and we often overlook it. What is very interesting about what has happened is that it has affected us all, therefore, both architects and non-architects have learnt from it. Surely now we value the importance of the house much more than before. I also believe that it is more important to value the house as a person than as an architect because ultimately, architects must work with people and it is the people and the use they make of the house that should guide the decisions of the architects.

There is an insistent and recurring super negative discourse about what has happened that I deplore and that has forgotten to make us see that people, during this crisis, have acted in a way that, regarding their home, has been extremely positive. It is more interesting to think about what the house does for us than what we make of the house. The house has greatly influenced people and people have learned to look at it differently. Every time I hear that the house must adapt to our needs, it feels like a very wrong slogan to me. The only flexible thing in the house is its inhabitants. The walls are not flexible, they are solid. We are the ones who adapt to one situation or another. We have very little confidence in ourselves if we think that the house has to adapt to our needs. Our needs are continually changing and we cannot control that in any way. This crisis is a clear proof of it.

How do you think the domestic space will change?

It will change as people change the way they use it and search for things in a home based on the experience they have had. During the lockdown, we have seen what people have done very smart things. The job of designers and architects is to observe all these and draw (in Italian, designing has the same root as drawing) solutions that make the experience in the domestic space even better.

Are your students working on it?

I know that the activity of the students has been completely taken over by this situation, it has been inevitable. Exercises, designs, proposals and projects around the situation have been proposed to the youngest students. In fact, in architecture school, we usually try to make students work with real cases, and sometimes they feel a bit detached from them, but this lockdown has been so real for everyone that in this sense, it has been a great exercise. Postgraduate students have also been asked to reflect on the situation, and many had already incorporated reflections about it into their dissertations.

You often say that there are too many regulations, even if they are made with the good will to protect users. Do you think that reducing regulations would improve the quality of housing?

Regulations should exist, but could be reviewed and simplified and in some cases delete some articles based on ideas that are reviewable. The problem with regulations is that it is usually difficult to find them brief. They end up being too long and heavy and consequently inefficient. However, in extremis, we must also think that regulations protect us from the most poorly designed solutions.

You recently wrote that this year’s FAD Awards show a trend towards raw, undercooked architecture. Could you elaborate on this idea?

Trends are defined by many things, among others, the economy, television and magazines, competitions, schools (in our case of architecture) and political discourse. By rewarding a type of solution, the awards are in tune with the moment and, imperceptibly, help to form a trend. The works that we currently award are raw and undercooked because we value sincerity and austerity in this time of fewer resources, and in this way, the cladding, decoration and artifice disappear and we have to accept that simplification is overrated and many times even banal.

Whoever rewards is conditioned by what they see, feels, etc. Also by rewarding something, that becomes the measure for the rest of things. As a consequence, there is a certain translation in forms of what is deeply rooted in social and political thought, and that has taken into account. We have to be critical about the moment. The work of the juries is very complex because inadvertently it can become very moralistic. The minutes should warn about this certain uniformity of what is rewarded.

In this article, you say that your opinion on what we have called public space has changed, that it does not even exist…

Perhaps unconsciously, we are using it against private space. Overvaluing his example – loaded with kindness – we underestimate other spaces that are also found in the city.

Related to this, I think we have to dismantle the idea of ​​public space as a whole. The idea arises from a Pessoa poem that says that nature does not exist, that they are parts without a whole. This made me think of public space, because we have coined this term and I wonder to what extent we understand what it means. I don’t think it’s a uniform whole. There is nothing similar between a cul-de-sac and the Diagonal, a flower bed in a park and a garden, Gomis street and Aribau Street, trees and plants. Someone told us that public space was life between buildings and it has stayed that way, but there is much more to it.

There is also an idea that public space is the democratic space par excellence. I defend that the house is the space of freedom par excellence. There is a nuance between the two things. Many comments as a result of the lockdown have inadvertently turned the house into a prison and it is a misconception, it is our space of freedom. So many people have reacted and made the house wonderful. For those who do not have access to a housing or a decent house, the lockdown has served to highlight the need for social policies.

On the other hand, public space has always been celebrated, to the point that the best part of a new housing complex according to the municipal policy are common and collective spaces. These community public spaces in buildings that favour neighbourhood relationships can end up punishing the non-community behaviour of a neighbour who has every right to do what he wants at home.

I accept that public space is spoken of as a democratic space, but then we have to speak of the house as a space of freedom.