Architects usually do the same, they make a slide show, they tell about their projects and then you ask them what they think about "form", about architecture; ask them to tell about their clients and so on. But this time, I'm really excited about my questions, and curious about your answers and I think that you had the same effect on the people who were there as well.

If you don't mind, I've prepared separate questions for each of you, but I'd be glad if you all say some things when you feel you have to.

My first question is for David Kohn. I went through your projects at your website. Under the subcategory "Details" you have also some industrial design products as well. From that point, can I conclude that you perceive design as an issue which should not be practised separately in different areas like "architecture", "interior architecture" etc., but as a complete matter in itself?

David Kohn: Yes and no.

BK: OK, and how?

DK: I'm very interested in ideas of use and comfort in architecture and that has a lot to do with research, you know our restaurant project, we did a one year research.It's all about the relationship and the proximity between people, how close they can be, where the lighting and the mirrors should be in a very confined space... With all of these quite specific details, we were able to make the restaurant become some kind of a background. You know, if you got everything right, you don't notice anything. But then you remember that it was great.

The opposite of this is the architecture that always says "I'm here". When you go to a restaurant which is really sharp, being there is like painful. Architecture should make pleasurable to be there. I would say for each of these scales they have something to do with pleasurable architecture. Because this architecture starts with the body, really. So, these designs of pieces of that scale, try to bring to spaces a high level of comfort.

BK: You showed us a visualization of your approach. There were a conventional approach and your approach. And at the center of your approach was research. In my opinion, research is one the most important things, as far as design is concerned. So, what led you to adopt this view? How did you realize its importance, its essence?

DK: First of all, we all are very young, beginning our careers or are in the middle of it. In a way, research is more important now, we're trying to give the practice a depth. Then there are two issues. Firstly, the proportions of the projects that architects build is like nearly 10%. So you are involved in 9 projects that never get built, in 10 projects you do. It seems incorrect to place the finish project in the heart of the practice. But you should put research first, because then it is more meaningful, it is not only a project, it is a development of your practice.

The second thing is: When I started my first job, which was teaching at the university, I could engage my students in real projects, I could bring specialists in the teaching environment, because as a teacher, I wanted to learn what the students were doing, what they were learning. So is the architecture, you have always things to learn. When you are given a theater to design for the first time, then you should learn everything there is to learn about a theater. Last year, I worked with a Turkish theater company. We were invited, went to theatre, my students met it. There were set designers, playwrights, everbody was talking and I was learning from them. The students were energized because it was real. And everyone gives their time with no contract, because it was a research. The set designers were very happy to meet architects. Everyone getting something valuable without competition, without contracts. And it led to the publishing of the research.

Je Ahn: I think every practice is like this, isn't it? Whatever yo do, whether you design something or not, research is part of it. Even you do the most commercial thing, you still do research on the subject. I think what we're interested in, is the research's manifestation. It's quite directly informing our design by realizing the process we're going through. That's a big part of what we do. It's not denying that other practices don't do it, but we're just aware of it and this is a start. I think, in order to do good research, you have to start at the beginning saying "This is research".

DK: Yeah, it requires some kind of methodology.

All: Exactly.

Joost Beunderman: We're all specific about what research is actually all about. Usually it's about establishing a context.

All:... and when you print your research you reach different people, it's fun.

DK: It's also politically benign, getting everyone involved in your project, then it's a culturally acceptable and valuable process. Because, when you put your project in the middle, it starts to become slightly confrontational because it has commercial aspects.

BK: This was exactly the reason why I asked you this. In Turkey, we somehow always have the project in the middle.

JA: I think the problem is research that we discussed at the beginning. The core of the research is always communication. Whether you are learning through the communication that makes it research, it's a collective intellectual process. And then the final product is again communication to the wider audience. It's really about the process, being aware of what you are doing.

JB: Back again to what you said about commercial practises and research. The big buildings which are now empty because they were done in respect to the objects. They weren't doing research during all of these... They were researching how can you build with minimum costs etc.

Maria Smith: Let's say it a "practical research."

JB: Yes, exactly. And this is the point we all agree at. We have a research-driven approach in place making, architecture or whatever you call it. But I think what we have in common is the central row of researching. And you said this is not a common practice approach in Turkey, it's not in the UK either.

JA: It's not at all.

MS: There are two kinds of research I think. You involve people and ask them etc, but there is also a research where you put yourself through an experience in order to generate a knowledge, you put yourself in a particular environment.

BK: In school, I never felt myself a part of a project.

DK: Probably the conventional wall is a separation of the students from the real world. I think it's a trend in education. Trying to connect the students with the world outside of the institutional boundary, I think it shouldn't be turned into rhetoric. It's so simple, actually. Like children, they are much more alive and engaged in what they are doing, and according a research of UNESCO, researching how children may learn easily and effectively, they learn when someone from outside their boundaries comes in, someone they don't expect. This stays the same for all ages. When you are at the university, and someone comes and says "This is real, help me please", then the students say "Oh my God this is real!"

JB: This is not a research or communication you do because you have to, the intellectual curiosity starts with very simple questions like "What do you actually do?" So, this is the same thing in your theatre project. The research starts with this question.

DK: In your presentation, there was a sentence: Ideas that engage people, are very valuable. I think, there is a kind of a very positive economy that can come out of engaging people. We always make these oppositions of some kind of a commercial world, in which everyone's making dirty money and there's lots of unhappy people; and there is a world of creativity, completely penniless and broken. In fact, every young person we teach, wants to make a living and doesn't want to hear that as an architect you have to be poor and miserable. I think that we have a duty to point out that you can do very exciting creative things, and it's not cynical, it means to be inventive, it means connecting people that need things from each other. Otherwise it's like to trying to find an economy where there is no benefit in two ways.

BK: One of your projects, the house in Norfolk was positioned in a completely flat area, and you said the area was so flat that it was only shaped by trees. And you also planted new ones to create a "scape". I want to say scape rather than landscape. Also in your other projects, I always glimpsed a piece of landscape. Where is landscape in architecture?

DK: We all been exposed to an understanding that projects shouldn't stop within the building. As architects, we have responsibilities to the city, to the landscape. This is the first thing. And it's like a caricature of conventional architects, old, white men with grey hair working all the time. But I think clearly it should be the opposite. You should be always trying to mesh your work into the context if you want it to survive. But you always see projects, for example in Britain, you built a new art gallery and it comes like "Bum!" in the middle of the city and everyone says "Look at the architecture!" and later it closes because no one uses it.

If you are able to cooperate with landscape, then the narrative of how you enjoy the building feels much more extensive in your understanding of where you are. Our client now understands that his garden is part of Norfolk and the way his garden is structured is the same way Norfolk is structured. And I believe this is a possibility of connecting in a broader way to a place.

JA: I don't know how this traditional divide between landscape and building really happened. The boundary physically exists, obviously. But how do people use the streets? Today, the streets are their home, they become parts of their homes. I think it's more than a perception issue, how people understand where the boundary lies?

When we started, we had the issue of this hard professional divide between architect and landscape architect and they said on the plan, "You design this bit, and you design the other". And there's no real communication between them. I'm not saying that there should be the architect designing everything, and it's not possible after all. In profession, we always have to collaborate.

JB: There is another reason I find, why this is truly important. In many places, cities are now shrinking. Urban landscape is not always growing. You can look to the North of England, to Germany, parts of France, the United States, cities are shrinking and we have less money to spend on their regeneration. What is left behind, is actually the landscape. The urban renaissance was all about the same thing, traditional public spaces, squares, well defined streets, high density living... That's all good and well, but have no relevance to much of Britain. Much of Britain don't have high density or traditional public spaces, it never had. You have bits of village, large parks of industry, random bits of housing. It doesn't follow any traditional urban pattern.

When it starts to shrink, you start to get a very new type of urban scape with which we have to deal. I think buildings are not going to be solutions in that sort of circumstances. Dealing with that, is a matter of a landscape challenge I think. Not just a landscape challenge, also a social challenge.

DK: Obviously there is a relationship between spaces, how they function but also their temporality. The sense of place is given by the cycle how the place works, how the people there identify themselves. And I think, too often in architectural debates everything is consideres spatial, it's all about three dimensional, it's all about form. When someone like Richard Serra makes a sculpture, it's about walking around it. It's not about the object. And I think this is really helpful as an answer: You don't have to make formally sophisticated architecture in order to make temporarily sophisticated work.

BK: Mr. Beunderman, your heading in your presentation was "Back to the architecture". You also kept emphasizing "places" rather than buildings. So, what do you think, made us walk away from architecture, if we ever did? What is the source of the distance between we (public) and architecture, again if there is such a distance?

JB: First of all, I have to say I'm not an architect. But what we probably meant to say with this phrase is "back to the architecture as a true profession". It goes back to the point of the professional citizen expert who asks for public value or private value through his/her expertise. Doctors do that, lawyers do that etc. And I think that had been changed. In old practices, specialization was a fact. But then this allowed a lot of people to become real "package architects", some project architects, people only producing the intellectual package of producing a very large building. Back to architecture means back to the core of the profession, it means a return to the expertise. And it's really a big challenge. It's actually unbelievably ambigious...

(Laughter)

MS: There is a really big problem and I suppose it has to do with the way that architects are educated. 90% of architects' designs is rubbish, not realized. Architects deal with those things, and there is for some reason some kind of a hierarchy, someone does only the sketch of a design, and all the others enable the project to be realized. This just really undervalues the other architects and the other architecture. And it's really hard to teach that, you finish your education, come out and see that situation.

JB: That is true. This has also some similarities with the Bladerunner movie. You know, in the film, at some point the guy's workshop who creates the eyes of the cyborgs gets attacked by the cyborgs and the guy says "Don't get me, I don't know anything about the entire scheme, I just made the eyes!" That is a perfect metaphor for increasing specialization and fragmentation of any production and also design process: "I don't know what I'm doing is all about and what is it for" understanding... That pressure is real, yes we cannot be all the master designer, but at the same time I think people let themselves put in that position by being parts of very very narrow set of concerns.

DK: It sounds like we should do both things, we should embracing greater specialization but by involving more people we should also be championing the general practice. The process we have allows us to learn rapidly how to do in new situations, we are always able to strategize about coping with contingent things and that's the critical thing. I think it would be a disaster if design became where one has to be a specialist in anyone's field.

BK: In the presentation of 00:/, you said that economic issues are usually left out in architectural practice. How did you catch this aspect? How should architects be trained then, both in school and professional life? Is it possible to embed economic and operational issues in architectural training, and how?

JB: Yes, I think it is possible. And from another perspective, it depends on the topics the architects choose to develop themselves. You know, we read a lot about philosophy and design etc, but economics hasn't been a part of that and didn't have a role at understanding what the profession is all about. There isn't a reason why the issues can't cooperate. It has to do with institutional routines, it has to do with cultures within the teaching institutions that we have, so it has much more to do with general organizational inertia. There is absolutely no reason why economics or why business organization can't be parts of architectural education.

When we go one scale up to urban design, we are now seeing in the UK that masterplanning, as we understood it in over last 10 years is becoming incredible. It's not adding value to the clients and people see that they've been paying enormous money to consultants and very little public value is created. Planning, as it has been understood, is somehow being discredited. Different mechanisms for urban generation and development will come in the following. And they are not about form, they are about micro community generative engines, what is the particular urban culture that we have to use in order to change the land, and architects openly lack these skills, and it is inevitable that these skills become more and more part of the core of design.

BK: It is probably not a solution to put economics lessons in architectural education program, is it? Nobody would remember anything after the exams... So, what should be done in real life, in your opinion, to make the architect candidates to gain these skills?

JB: At the very least, they have to know about the outlines and about the questions to ask. Not really lessons, but I'm talking about what the relevant questions are and which access is right at which point, and I think this is the great change in the last years. You don't have to become a specialist, it' really about understanding what these things are and how they help to what you do and when to ask...

JA: I think that's very very important, "when to ask for help". Obviously, I came into a very serious part of the conversation...

(Laughter)

DK: The students don't need to be taught this theorial economics, but they need to be taught equal put in a situation with a client in a real city with a real economy. I think the best way is to try and create real projects. This is my view.

MS: I don't think it should be about giving them specific information in a foreseeable situation. It should give them more skills and an understanding. It should not be, you know, "One day your client might say... and in the next part you're going to deal with that..."

JB: But also it's a cultural issue, in most architectural schools students are led to this. The incentives are towards seeing the architect as a semi-artist and the trouble you have in being allowed to collaborate to a real project, is shocking in a way. And I suppose it's natural when you're 18 or 21, that you lack some practical skills. But the schools need to put a check on that, actually and in some cases we need to be rigorous.

JA: I think the architectural education is long. I mean it takes like seven years to just get out of the university really. The main problem I found is, that it's not varied enough. It doesn't give students any choice of what they want to learn, it dosn't give them any knowledge on the issue that they're operating on. The education is too much design-focused, they teach you design. They are tought how to create. I think that is valuable as well, but that should not be the focus all the time.

DK: Maybe the context in which they've been taught to create is a spatial one. So, in the city when architects study design, they look at the form, to a three-dimensional shape, and then: "The way my building is super-interesting is because the way it relates to the urban form..." But there are always other layers that one can say "My work is really intelligent because of the urban economy, I'm using this kind of rubbish in this process and then I make mine.." It's not saying that invention is not needed, it's quite the opposite, invention is needed, but we just need thing to be in other contexts, nut just form.

JB: The word you just said and the way you put it, it's a klischee. "Oh, that's just superinteresting!" It's really strange to see how the incentives are so strongly on originality, creativity and so little about vigour. In natural sciences and law, yes of course originality and creativity is important, but...

DK: I think architecture has to be pleasurable in a way that science isn't.

JA: Why isn't science pleasurable?

DK: Science can be pleasurable, but the way it's constructed, it's not to be pleasurable, it's to be useful. As an architect, I would say...

(Laughter)

JB: Maybe we can't agree about these intuitive understandings. I'm not saying that city planning can follow 100% scientific, sociological and economic analysis. It's not always true, sometimes it is only experiment, you make it and see what happens.

DK: I think possibly, this is the legacy of modernism. The brilliance of modernism was to create some kind of universal style that was exportable. But at the same time, it was seemingly invented. So it became premium on, if you want to not just do modernist buildings and extend the modernist projects, than you have to invent from the scratch something new, and I think there is always a quite sinister commercial motive in the background... You know you can create something new that on a global scale, can be exported to anywhere and everyone wants it. That's super-valuable, but maybe there's a lot to learn about what makes a good house or apartment building, I mean we don't need to invent something new with which you extend modernism with your own brilliance. There's no need of that.

JB: As 00:/ for example, we deliberately have a few known architects on board. We see ourselves probably more as a network of a few generalists and a few specialized researchers and as well as architects, in a wider network of collaborators. And I think a lot of discussion that we had today with the Turkish firms here, was on how you organize practices, how you fix boundaries between your organization and rest of the world.

DK: I think also, one way to escape the traditionalist view, it is possible to see modernism as a vernacular in itself, and than you can extend the modernist language without feeling like you're a modernist with a M. It's kind of a beautiful way of building and then you dont' see it "I have to make a new tabula rasa".

JA: I'm quite hesitant to put this "-ism" to physical manifestations. Sometimes it's very difficult to detach yourself from the physical understanding of things. The relationship with understanding is very critical, I think.

JB: Most of the clients don't want just a building. I mean, we don't work with clients who just want a building. We focus on projects that are about organizational transformation as much as they are about physical transformation. They are about for instance how we can figure a prestigious cultural institution in central London into a network... What sort of a business model, and what sort of spaces would go with that organizational structure. That's the core of what we do. And in some cases there are maybe some physical configuration that goes with all these, but...

BK: Yes, also in your presentation and in your website you emphasize that re-imagining, re-thinking, re-designing and re-organizing are important. What kind of advantages do you think it has to re-make something than creating it for the first time? What can you gain from that, and what can the users, the city?

JB: I don't think it's about the advantages, but it's about the inevitability. In the case of Britain that much of the material that we use is baseless. The areas that we work in, in many cases, are these no-growth contexts. Like I mentioned before, in Bristol or in Birmingham, is about understanding the limitation of resources, that we have and the space will not grow anymore. It is reusing the public spaces and turning them into something that could be a new generative engine. So in other words, it is not about the advantage but the inevitability of re-making. Over next 10 years, we will not be building much as a society. We're overdressed like our jackets are too large already. So, it's much more re-roganizing the jacket, re-sizing it. That's the real challenge.

BK: And Studio Weave... Could we say that you blur the line between art and architecture? Or is this some kind of a klische?

JA: I've never seen the line between them, really. I can't say there isn't, but this really depends on how you understand the word. It's not a simple yes- or no-question.

MS: But maybe this has advantages when people perceive it like that...

JA: It's about the perception and not about the literal distinction between what's art and what's architecture.

MS: But I think, yes, some people see our work as blurring architecture. And even we don't aim to do that, there are some advantages and I think it won't bring any harm.

(Laughter)

JA: We asked that question to ourselves many times but the answer is that there is no answer.

JB: Arts is very popular and it is true that under the guise of arts practice you can do a lot of things. And these things would be impossible to do if you give them another name than "arts".

BK: Yes, my question sounds unlogical to me, too. But at the conference, someone from the audience, actually an architect said that he would want to work with you and that you are changing the process of creating architecture. So, he is an architect, not anyone from "outside" we might say, but he also thinks that you do something different, that you change something.

MS: Maybe there is some kind of freedom in what we do, because a lot of people say to us that there is so much fun.

DK: It's a very healthy thing that architectural scene is creative. And this problem that people don't know whatever an architect does or don't find it always "funny", it's because maybe there isn't enough pleasure to be found in final works. What people do recognize, is decorative things, it's about decoration. Giving a city a pleasurable use would be a better way to think about architecture...

JA: How I see one of our roles is, I don't like this architect with A, but we would like to collaborate with other architects, because everyone has something to put on the table. Every architect has different skills and how we can collaborate often comes out in a very surprising result. We collaborate with book illustrators, with film makers, structural engineers, clients, we always try to draw out their creativity. It's pulling the resurces together, everything's not coming from us. It's impossible. I think our job is more bringing what people do together.

BK: So, and how do you relate interactivity with your projects, then? I mean you create a place but it's people who create the scene there...

JA: No, we don't create the place. One cannot create a place. Places have their depths and values and these are created by people. We try to plant a possible seed to become something. That's pretty much all of our job. We don't know and can't predict exactly what's gonna happen. We can analyse it, but we can't see the future. What I'm trying to do is trying to plant the best possible seed and find the people who can nurture it and keep the environment to nurture that seed within the space. And then it's again the people's role how to nurture that space and make it a place. That transition is very very important. Could I answer your question?

BK: I actually also tried to ask if you start to design with "I need this people to play in this set I created, otherwise it's gone" in mind?

JA: There is a lot of debate in UK at the moment about the public consultation, of how you should conduct the public consultation to effectively inform the design. I think that's really problematic at the moment. We do think about how people will use it and how we create a certain experience, but that does not mean we rely on some existing set of perspectives. Because what we are trying to do is to give a new perspective.

MS: We're kind of hoping to be honest about that the practice has not one perfect solution. I soppose there are a lot of right things to do.

JA: We do use the words "grow" and "woven" quite a lot and both processes require time and time is always a big factor when we are doing a project, how this might grow into something else, how is the project woven in to the existing system and the existing perception, because it's providing something new, we're not replicating the same thing. And how they are gonna effect each other in terms of growth, because they grow together. I don't think it is a question that can be answered in terms of its fixed answer.

BK: My last question for you is based on a quotation from your words. "We wrote stories because there was a big gap of language between architecture and public, local authorities. We wanted to make them join us." And you also said "A place cannot be explained with diagrams."

JA: We meant "not just a diagram". I don't believe in that.

BK: And what else could you add to these? For what other reasons did you invent these stories?

MS: There are many many ways you can use. You have to find some common language to communicate and there are many ways to do that. One of the great things about using story telling is that most people can relate to stories in many ways.

JA: One of the most difficult thing that I find about the diagram that it's symbolic. It doesn't give something specific. In a way it's very precise, but in the same time it's trying to be as grey as possible. So you can't try -OK, you can if you try very hard- to describe the atmosphere of a certain area and the very small details in your first experience with it with a diagram, but it would be a very very complex one. As a tool to evoke a person's imagination in the way that you want it to be, diagrams are very difficult because of the symbolic value. Signage, in the other hand, is very very tool-specific. Symbols are very international and I'm not saying it's not effective but I don't think that's all.

JB: As a practice, we really invest time and thinking energy in communicating ideas in a different way. We really consciously stepped away from sort of Photoshop image which normally hides more than it reveals. On the contrary, the process diagram, even it could be read by misreaders and misunderstandings, but it's much more about indicating the sensitivity and the interrelations in different points of the program that we're talking about. That's the story we're trying to tell. But I realized that your stories (Studio Weave) can do the exactly same things with the tool of language. Because it indicates also a picture of a very open understanding of what are the sensitivities, interrelations...

MS: The common thing is what it tells you...

JB: Right. Your way of using the book illustrations...

JA: That's exactly the point, we try to reflect the atmosphere as much as possible with a graphical manner. The whole thing that we are trying to do with the process is to help to initiate the place making, to contribute to certain evotions of human activities rather than the dry understanding of a render. But of course sometimes a render can be quite effective, it is again another set of tools. We have lots of tools, we can use them all effectively rather than relying on one thing.

BK: I'd like to ask you all two additional questions if you don't mind... Firstly, what means the international exchange program to you?

JB: It's broadening and enwidening horizons, I think. The London architecture conversation is surprisingly small and surprisingly inwardlooking. That's my perception at these times. It was unbelievably helpful to be here. Disturbance is always good and this is a very gentle and pleasurable one. And I hope we go on with that, that's gonna be three days in London, I hope we can take this forward as a seed, just like your projects are seeds...

JA: Personally I took it slightly different. I grew up in South Korea and I have a Korean background. And when I move today as a practising professional in London, my questions are often about the challenge between this cultural differences. There are great differences between how a Korean operates and how a British operates although you know that Korea has got the modernization and all the stuff. I found it so refreshing to come to Istanbul and speaking to the architects here and I can use my "West side" and also I can use the sense from my Korean knowledge. So I found it very very refreshing to use these both sides at the same time. In that term it is a very valuable experience for me personally to see where I stand.

BK: And how as being in Istanbul in particular?

JB: It's hard to summarize but I think it was familiar in lots of ways, but quite foreign at the same time. It's a very pleasurable mixture. I've been to places that feel completely foreign, I felt completely outside. A lot of places feel like museums, and you're outside, because you can never be inside. And this feels like kind of a strange hotel, you are comfortable, you feel like you recognize lots of things, but at the same time they are different and not as you expected.

JA: My overwhelming of the city is that it's vulnerable. It's my particular understanding of the city that develops very very quickly. We didn't have a lot of time to walk around, but it seems like that your economic model and social balance are changing. But things should change slowly. This is so rapid that it's happening within a person's generation time. And it expects people to change so rapidly. I can almost sense that. You don't know where this gonna go. That's why I would describe Istanbul when someone asked me, as vulnerable.