sidrišče in oživljenost 
yvonne farrell 

anchor and animation 
Fotografije: arhiv arhitekta / Photos: architect’s archive 


Shelley McNamara in Yvonne Farrell sta pro­tagonistki biroja Grafton Architects, ki deluje v Dublinu od leta 1977. Leta 1990 sta bili tudi med ustanovitvenimi člani Group 91 Architects, ki so zmagali na mednarodnem natečaju za regene­racijo Temple Bara, Dublinske kulturne četrti. Od leta 1976 predavata na Oddelku za arhitekturo na University College Dublin, učita pa tudi dru­god po Evropi. Grafton Architects se ukvarjajo s projektiranjem univerzitetnih središč, šol, stano­vanjskih naselij, za kar so dobili izjemno število arhitekturnih nagrad, ena izmed njihovih zadnjih slovitih realizacij pa je Univerza Luigi Bocconi v Milanu. 
Za začetek bi rada poudarila dve osnovni ideji, ki sta nam pri Grafton Architects izredno pomemb­ni: sidrišče in oživljenost. V obeh sta povzeta sve­tova, ki ju kot arhitekti naseljujemo – dejanski svet in svet, ki si ga zamislimo. Naša sidrišča so kraji, materiali, kulture, vzorci, izkustva, zgradbe, Zemlja in mesta. Oživljenost pa za nas pomeni svetlobo, pot sonca, spreminjanje letnih časov, ljudi, gibanje in uporabo. Filozofsko sidrišče je tisto, kar je za nas vedno res in kar prestane pre­izkus časa, filozofska oživljenost na drugi strani izhaja iz odprtosti za nove ideje, pridobljenih iz­kušenj, novih vplivov in razgovorov, ki spremenijo naš pogled na svet. Svet, ki si ga zamislimo, je za­sidran v našem arhitekturnem spominu. Od 7.000 svetovnih jezikov, vsake dva tedna eden izumre. Ko izgubimo jezik, z njim izgubimo stoletja razmi­šljanja o času, o letnih časih, o pokrajini, o mitih, o glasbi, o neznanem in o vsakodnevnem. V svetu, ki se spreminja, je arhitektura vse bolj odgovorna 
Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell are the protagonists of Grafton Architects, a Dublin-based office active since 1977. In 1990, they were among the founding members of Group 91 Architects, which won the international competition for the regeneration of Temple Bar, Dublin’s cultural quar­ter. Since 1976, they have lectured at the School of Architecture in University College Dublin, and also teach elsewhere in Europe. Grafton Architects design university complexes, schools, and residential communities, for which they have received an impressive number of archi­tectural awards. Their recently completed projects include the famed Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. 
First, I would like to discuss two points that are im­portant to Grafton Architects, anchor and anima­tion. They emphasise the two worlds we inhabit as architects, the real and the imagined. The anchors are place, material, culture, pattern, experience, building, Earth, and city, and the animation for us is light, the path of the sun, changing seasons, people, movement, and use. Philosophical anchors are things that for us remain true, things that have stood the test of time; philosophical animation comes about by being open to new ideas, new expe­riences, new influences, conversations that change the way we look at the world. The imagined world is anchored in architectural memory. Of the world’s 7,000 languages, one disappears every fourteen days. And when we lose a language, we lose cen­turies of thinking about time, seasons, landscape, myth, music, the unknown, and the everyday. As things change, architecture becomes even more responsible for anchoring and animating societal 

za zasidranje in za oživljanje družbenih vrednot. Kot človeška bitja smo potopljeni v svet arhitek­ture. Arhitektura je naša odgovornost, prav tako, kot je naša odgovornost tudi zgrajeni svet. Naše mesto je Dublin. Tu smo veliko projektirali, združevali in popravljali njegove ceste, trge in poti. Naše delo vodijo strategija in izkušnje, de­lamo vedno v realnem svetu, vendar skušamo uresničiti tistega, ki smo si ga zamislili, predani smo urbanemu in verjamemo v mesto. Zanima nas življenje mesta, ki ga skušamo z branjem nje­govega zemljevida in risanjem zemljevida našega branja, narediti v kraj. Dosledno se trudimo, da bi zamišljene predloge združili z dejanskim razi­skovanjem in dejanskimi zahtevami. Naša orodja so potreba, struktura, svetloba, podnebje, kul­tura, pomen, površina, otip, tlorisi in prerezi ter materialnost. Ko poslušamo eno mesto, slišimo drugega. Ko začutimo eno kulturo, nam to poma­ga vsrkati drugo. Sprehod po enem mestu nam pomaga razumeti merila drugega. Graditi v enem nam pomaga graditi tudi drugje. V času, ko smo se oblikovali kot skupina arhitek­tov, je bilo v Dublinu zelo malo dela. Poimenovali smo se Group 91, saj je bilo to leta 1991. Združili smo se, da bi skupaj izpeljali majhen projekt, ki nam ga je prijazno zaupala dublinska mestna uprava Dublin City Council – dodelili so nam pro­stor na katerem bi razvijali predloge za življenje v mestu. Ko je bil razpisan mednarodni natečaj za ureditev dublinske četrti Temple Bar, smo združili osem malih birojev s podobno arhitekturno kul­turo pri projektu, kako to mestno četrt priključiti ostalim delom mesta. Na takih natečajih ponavadi zmagajo veliki biroji, ki se posvetijo po eni ulici naenkrat in jo obdelajo, tokrat pa smo zmagali mi. Razdelili smo si delo, tako da je vsak od sodelujo­čih birojev dobil lokacijo in po en projekt na njej. Druga plat našega dela, ki bi se ji rada posvetila, je moč, ki jo arhitektura ima, ko je del naših življenj od otroštva do odraslosti. Čas med otroštvom in odraslostjo porabimo med drugim za to, da se naučimo živeti. Izobraževalne stavbe so pokaza­telj tega, kako neka družba gleda nase, kakšne so njene vrednote, v kaj vlaga in koliko spoštuje bodoče generacije. Zgradbe, v katerih poteka iz­obraževanje, so eden od prvih krajev, na katerih se odvija javno socialno življenje, in so eden od prvih krajev, kjer se srečamo s skupino, tako da že same po sebi odpirajo priložnost za intelektualno in praktično diskusijo ter učenje. Kakšen je poten­cial krajev za učenje, kako lahko pripomorejo k družbi? Kar se tiče trajnostnega oblikovanja, kako jih lahko vključimo vanj in kako lahko z njimi izra­zimo povezanost družbe, pa naj stojijo v majhni vasici, večjem kraju ali v mestu? Lahko narišemo zemljevid gibanja od doma do šole, srečevanja staršev, tekanja učencev in njihove igre, nadzora staršev. V zemljevid lahko vrišemo pot do srednje šole, od doma v študentsko naselje, v stanovanje. 
values. We as human beings are immersed in archi­tecture. Architecture is our responsibility, and the built world is our responsibility. Our city is Dublin, and we have been working, stitching and repairing its streets and squares and laneways. We work with strategy and experience, we work with the real, making the imagined, we are dedicated to urbanity and we believe in the city. We are deeply interested in its life, and we are mak­ing it a place, in reading its map and mapping this reading. We work hard to find the way with rigorous thinking of combining imaginative propositions with factual research and actual requirements. Our tools are need, structure, light, plans and sec­tions, climate, culture, meaning, surface, touch, and materiality. Listening to one city, we hear another. Feeling the culture of one helps us absorb another. Walking in one helps us understand the scale of an­other. Building in one helps us build in another. At the time, when formed a group, there was very little work in Dublin. We named ourselves Group 91 -it was in 1991. We had come together for a small project that Dublin City Council had kindly given us -a site to work with proposals for city living. When the international competition for Temple Bar, a part of Dublin, came about, we were eight small practic­es who shared common architectural culture, and we worked together to stitch into this existing part of the city. Normally, these competitions are won by the very big firms, who take a block of city and deal with it, but this time we won this competition. Each of the architectural firms was given one project in this space to build. The other part of our work which I’d like to talk about is the power of architecture to be part of our lives from child to adult. We also use this time from child to adult for learning to live. Educational build­ings present and represent how society sees itself, what it values, what it invests in, and how we cher­ish the future generations. Educational buildings are one of our first places of public social overlap, one of the first places where we interface with the group, and educational buildings provide the op­portunity for intellectual and practical discussion and training. But what is the potential of places of learning, what can these buildings do for society? In terms of sustainability, how can we find overlap, express cohesiveness in society, whether it’s in a tiny village, in a medium town, or in a city? We can map the movements from home to school, parents con­verging, students milling, students playing, parents watching. We can map the movement from home to secondary school; we can map the movement from home to apartments, to hostel. We can map enjoyment of the city, countryside, town, or village. Importantly, educational buildings are paid for by the general public in their taxes. So what more can educational buildings be, what more can they contribute? Can they be a park, a secret garden, a university, place of learning on a rooftop, in an olive 

Na levi strani je čudoviti paviljon v Benetkah Sverre Feh­na, na desni pa je fotografija apnenčaste pokrajine, ime­novane The Burren, v okrožju County Clare na zahodu Irske. Obe fotografiji sta za nas zelo pomembni. Druga fotografija predstavlja pravo Zemljo in apnenec, ki se je oblikoval skozi čas. Oblikoval ga je dež, ki tvori žveple­no kislino, s katero kamen dolbe sam vase, apnenčasta pokrajina je resnična Zemlja, ki nastaja skozi čas. Na prvi fotografiji pa paviljon v Benetkah prikazuje strukturo, ka­tere podobo si je vnaprej zamislil človek in jo izdelal. Je neke vrste posrednik med zemljo in nebom. 
On the left-hand side is the beautiful pavilion by Sverre Fehn in Venice, and on the right-hand side is an image of the li­mestone in The Burren of County Clare in western Ireland. These two images are important for us. The second one, on the right-hand side, is the real Earth, it is the limestone that is carved through time by rain that forms sulphuric acid and cuts into itself, so it is the real Earth over time. And on the left-hand side, the pavilion in Venice shows a structure that a human being invented and imagined before it was made. It also mediates between ground and sky. 




Zemljevid Dublina, na katerem so označeni predeli me­sta, v katerih smo projektirali v minulih tridesetih letih: Temple Bar, Trinity College, trg Merrion Square in trg St Stephen’s Green. 
The map of Dublin. The marks show the areas that we have been dealing with over the past nearly thirty years: the Tem­ple Bar, Trinity College, Merrion Square, and St Stephen’s Green. 

Šola Izobražujmo skupaj Severni Kildare v kraju Celbrid­ge (North Kildare Educate Together School), prerez. 
North Kildare Educate Together School in Celbridge, cross-section. 

Skica za šolo severni Kildare. 
Sketch of the North Kildare School . 


Vključimo lahko še uživanje mesta, podeželja, kra­ja ali vasi. Izobraževalne zgradbe financira javnost s plačevanjem davkov, tako da je pomembno, kaj so še lahko, kaj nam še lahko ponudijo. Ali je lah­ko šola tudi park, skrivni vrt, univerza, prostor za učenje na strehi, v nasadu oliv, miniatura mesta, ali je del infrastrukture? Izobraževanje je del druž­be, razmislimo še o starših, ki otroke pripeljejo do šolskih vrat in jih tam popoldan poberejo, in pred njimi sklepajo prijateljstva. Kot arhitekti bi morali razmišljati o prekrivanju različnih načinov upora­be in o delitvi prostora: tržnica ob koncu tedna, športna dvorana, občinska uporaba ali konferenč­na dvorana. O šolah in ostalih krajih izobraževanja bi morali razmišljati kot o vrsti infrastrukture. Na Irskem smo zgradili osnovno šolo za nižje raz­rede – North Kildare Educate Together School v Celbridgu. Na Irskem otroci v šoli preživljajo cele dneve. Šola ima deset razredov, dva od njih sta na­menjena otrokom z avtizmom, osem pa ostalim otrokom. Želeli smo, da bi bili razredi med seboj enakovredni, vsak od njih naj bi bil učilnica in ate­lje hkrati, s prostorom namenjenim le otrokom, v njihovem merilu. »Posebni prostor za malčke« smo oblekli v les, tako da je postal kot škatla, de­loma v vrtu, deloma v notranjosti. Mali prostor je lahko oder, lahko je nekaj, kar si otroci uredijo po svoje, lahko je prostor za branje, in tako postane izobraževalni pripomoček. V šoli se majhni otroci prvič srečajo z javnim življenjem, kar je potrebno proslaviti z velikimi prostori. Prostor učilnic smo raztegnili navzven, na mali vrtiček, kjer otroci spo­mladi opazujejo na primer žafrane in narcise. Prostor za šolo je na ravnini, saj leži v osrednjem Irskem, v County Kildare. Omejeni smo bili z ma­teriali, zato smo uporabili kar »material za parki­rišča«, kakor smo ga poimenovali. Parkirišča se običajno gradi iz vnaprej ulitih betonskih plošč, z največjim nagibom 7 stopinj, ki smo ga izrabili tudi mi. Streho smo zasnovali kot krajino, z nagibi do sedem stopinj. V učilnice, ki so vse obrnjene proti severu, pa smo svetlobo spustili skozi peri­skopska okna na strehi. Tloris je zamišljen okrog dvorišča in majhnih vr­tičkov, ki so vsi na severni strani. Ko je bil tloris oblikovan, smo v strešno pokrajino zarezali okna tam, kjer smo potrebovali svetlobo. Periskopska okna v učilnice spuščajo svetlobo z južne strani. Šola je transparentna, s hodnikov lahko vidiš v vse razrede. Ob istem času smo delali tudi projekt za višje raz­rede osnovne šole Ardscoil Mhuire v Ballinasloe, kraju kaki dve uri oddaljenem od Dublina. Šola je bila zgrajena na vrhu griča. Ker nismo želeli za­brisati spomina na preteklost ter smo znotraj šole želeli ohraniti občutek gibanja in strmine, griča ni­smo odstranili z buldožerji, ampak smo šolo zgra­dili okoli njega. Hodnik smo postavili v zgornje nadstropje šole in ga z rampami povezali s spo­dnjo etažo. Uporabili smo enake konstrukcijske 
grove, a city in miniature, a piece of infrastructure? Education is embedded in society, and if we think about how parents spend their time dropping off children and picking them up, there are possibilities of friendships at school gates. So we should, as ar­chitects, think about the overlap of uses and sharing resources: weekend markets, sports halls and com­munity use, meeting rooms. We should think about schools and places of education as infrastructure. We did a primary School in Ireland -the North Kil­dare Educate Together School in Celbridge. In Ire­land children spend their whole day in one space. This was a school with ten classrooms, two of which were for children with autism, and the other eight classrooms were for general children. We wanted a democracy of classrooms: each classroom was to be an atelier, with a unique space for the students, the small children, in their scale. We lined “the special place for the little ones” with plywood that became both a box in the garden and a box of the interior. That little place has become a stage, a place for a child to be on his or her own, or a place where they can read. So it becomes a kind of educational tool. We felt that the school was the children’s first inter­face with the public and that they should celebrate this with a large space. The space of the classrooms was extended to the outside so that the children could see for instance the crocuses grow and the daffodils in the springtime. The school is built on very flat land, in the County Kildare in the centre of Ireland, and we were also us­ing very restricted materials. We used what we call car-park material. Car parking is normally built with pre-cast concrete planks, so we used the maximum slope of this material, which is seven degrees. We made the roof into a kind of landscape, using the continuous seven-degree slope to its maximum, and bringing light into the north-facing rooms by a series of periscope roofs. The plan is centred around the courtyard with all the gardens facing north. We designed the plan and the roofscape, and where we needed light we made cuts through the roof. The periscope of light actually gets the south light into all the rooms. In terms of transparency, the corridors allow you to see into the classrooms. At the same time we were building a secondary school Ardscoil Mhuire in Ballinasloe in a place about two hours from Dublin. This school was to be built on a hill. We did not want to obliterate the past by bulldozing the hill -we wanted to build in the sense of movement, of the slope. We have located a corridor on the upper part of the plan and con­nected it with ramps to the lower corridor. We used the same construction elements as in the previous project, the seven-degree pre-cast concrete planks with the rooflights popped up to capture the sun into the spaces. The school is a jigsaw of spaces but that nature in terms of landscape below and the sky above is carved in. 

elemente kot pri prejšnjem projektu – za sedem stopinj nagnjene betonske plošče s privzdignje­nimi okni, ki v prostore vodijo sončno svetlobo. Tloris šole je sestavljanka prostorov, v katero je vgrajena narava, pokrajina spodaj in nebo zgoraj. Pred kratkim sem naletela na nekaj izredno za­nimivega, tako arhitekturno kot s stališča trajno­stnega oblikovanja. V ZDA in v Evropi so izvedli raziskavo o dobrem počutju. Esther Sternberg, vodja sekcije za nevroimunologijo in vedenje na Ameriškem Inštitutu za mentalno zdravje (US Institute of Mental Health), ki je strokovnjakinja za stres in možgane ter avtorica knjige Zdravilni prostori: znanost krajev in dobrega počutja, ko­mentira ameriško študijo iz leta 1984, izpeljano na 46 pacientih, ki so po operaciji žolčnih kamnov ostali v bolnišnici. Nekatere so namestili v sobe s pogledom na opečni zid, drugi pa so gledali na skupino dreves. Pacienti s pogledom na drevesa so bolnišnico lahko zapustili hitreje po operaciji in rabili so manj protibolečinskih zdravil. Kaže, da nekaj mora biti na pogledu skozi okno, na nara­vi, ki nas lahko ozdravi. Morda nam je pogled na prijeten prizor v užitek, na katerega se telo dobro odziva, pri čemer ima gotovo vpliv tudi svetloba. S stališča trajnostnega oblikovanja to pomeni, da nekdo lahko zapusti bolnišnico dva dni hitreje, kar prihrani denar in material. Vse to le zato, ker je zgradba bolje premišljena, in je v odnosu do pokrajine in neba, kakor arhitekti projektiramo že po naravi. Mesto Trim je tipično irski kraj z raztresenimi koš­čki ostankov preteklosti, na primer ruševinami ve­likega gradu s svojo okolico, od katerega je ostalo le par kamnov. Vendar ima teh par kamnov moč, da osrediščijo cel kraj. Dobili smo naročilo za pro­jekt umetniškega centra, gledališča in sodišča v centru kraja Navan, kako uro oddaljenega od Du­blina. Središče kraja je bilo tako rekoč prazno, tam so bili knjižnica, Fair Green, ki je postal parkirišče, in tržnica vsak petek ali soboto. Želeli so, da bi novo gledališče postalo del centra kraja. Sprejelo naj bi bilo 320 gledalcev, primerno velikosti kraja. Gledališče je spodaj, zgoraj pa je še ena plast, ki lebdi nad njim, v kateri je bilo najprej predvideno sodišče, sedaj pa je tam umetniški center. Pas vmesnega prostora ščiti notranjost zgradbe. Gledališki foyer je vmesni prostor med krajem in notranjostjo, hkrati pa nudi tudi pogled nazaj na kraj iz višje točke. Zamislili smo si ga kot eks­perimentalno gledališče senc, ki naj bo hkrati vmesni prostor med mestom in gledališčem, in del predstave, ki jo obiskovalci gledališča uprizar­jajo mestu. Obdržali smo obstoječo topografijo in prostor za gledalce vstavili v pobočje hriba, ka­kor v amfiteatru. Prostor nad odrom je povezan s podstrešjem. Raziskovali smo, na kakšen način se pri Scharounu v zgradbah srečujejo ljudje, si ogledali razprave med zagovorniki eksperimen­talnega gledališča brez določenega odrskega 
There was something we came across recently which I thought was very interesting architectur­ally in terms of sustainability. There was research done in the United States and in Europe about the well-being. Esther Sternberg, the head of the section of neuroimmunology and behaviour in the US Na­tional Institute of Mental Health, who is an expert on stress and the brain, author of the Healing Spac­es: The Science of Place and Well-Being discusses a United States study from 1984 where 46 patients that had gallbladder surgery stayed in rooms. Some were in rooms facing a brick wall, and others were facing a beautiful group of trees. The patients that viewed the trees out of their window left hospital sooner and needed less pain medication. There must be something about window views, about nature that can heal us, so when we look at a scene that is pleasurable, we derive pleasure from it and we react to it, and light also has an impact. In terms of sustainability this means somebody leaving hos­pital two days earlier which is saving money and re­sources. All this just by designing in a way that we as architects naturally do: by relating to the landscape and to the sky. Town of Trim is fairly typical Irish town with strewn pieces of what has survived from the past: there are great castles with their surrounds, normally with just the stone left for instance. For us they are a kind of power of centring of a town. We were asked to build an art centre, theatre and a courthouse in the centre of the town called Navan, which is just about an hour from Dublin. And the centre of this town was essentially empty -it had a library, the Fair Green that had become a car park and has a market every Friday or Saturday. Essentially, this theatre is embedded into the core of the town. The theatre was for 320 people, fit for the size of the town. The upper layer, which hovers above the theatre, was to become the courthouse, but it became, in fact, an art centre. We used a ribbon of space to act as a protector for the interior. So the foyer itself becomes someplace which is an intermediary space between the town of Navan and the interior. But it’s also a place where you are elevated to view back over the town of Na­van. We conceived the foyer as an experiment in shadow puppetry: as people would arrive to the the­atre there would be an intervening space between the theatre and people, where they would in turn become part of the theatrical performance, shadow puppets in a performance for the town itself. We kept the topography of the slope of the hillside and embedded the actual audience into that slope so we evoked the tradition of amphitheatre. The fly tower stage links up to the attic space. We studied a lot the Scharoun’s way of overlapping people, and the dis­cussion between black box and fixed stage, and the theory dialogue between two bodies of actor and audience. We fractured the body of audience into two there were three bodies in the end: the stage and 





prostora in zagovorniki fiksnega odra ter teorije 
o gledališču kot o dialogu med dvema telesoma – telesom igralca in telesi gledalcev. Na koncu smo gledalce razdelili, tako da so v našem gledališču telesa kar tri: oder in dve telesi gledalcev, ki med seboj komunicirajo. V dvorano smo spustili dnev­no svetlobo, saj se jo kdaj pa kdaj uporabi tudi kot konferenčno dvorano. Trg Merrion Square je zelo lep predel Dublina, saj je velik prostor, poln zelenja, ki ga obkrožajo hiše v slogu kralja Jurija. Dobili smo naročilo za projekt novega Oddelka za finance, ki naj bi ga zgradili kot del kompleksa vladnih zgradb okrog Merri­on Square. Oddelek za finance, del Ministrstva za finance, je potreboval novo zgradbo, ki bi bila čimbolj prilagodljiva. Lokacija za novo zgradbo je poleg St. Stepehn’ Green, ravno na prehodu med zgradbami ob cesti, s štirimi nadstropji in zgrad­bami okoli trga, ki imajo šest nadstropij. V Dubli­nu so pomembnejše zgradbe zgrajene iz kamna, običajne pa so opečnate. Želeli smo uporabiti kamen in mu dati občutek teže in volumna, zato smo uporabili 100 mm visoke in 100 mm debele kamnite plošče, ki smo jim dali 20 mm zamika. Na naši lokaciji je stala podolgovata zgradba iz leta 1912, ki je tudi spomeniško zaščitena, zato smo jo morali vključiti v našo zgradbo. Levo zraven naše lokacije se nahaja zelo pomembna točka v Dublinu: majhno hugenotsko pokopališče. Hu­genoti so francoski protestanti, ki so jih v 17. sto­letju izgnali iz Francije, in so se zatekli v različna evropska mesta. Nekaj jih je prišlo v Dublin, kjer so veliko pripomogli k razvoju mesta. Njihovo pokopališče je zaščitena struktura. Pri projektira­nju smo sodelovali z organizacijo Hugenot Trust. Prejšnja zgradba, ki je stala na naši lokaciji, je imela na strani pokopališča slepo fasado, vendar so nam pri Hugenot Trust dovolili, da tudi na za­hodni strani naredimo okna, kar je pomenilo, da ima naša nova zgradba pogled na vse štiri strani in popoldansko sonce. Pri arhitekturi je zelo pomembno, kako se spre­hodimo mimo nje. Človeški korak, dolg nekoliko manj od enega metra, se ni spremenil že tisoč­letja. Dolžina človeškega koraka je za nas merilo arhitekture, pravilo razmerja. Fasada oddelka za finance je dolga približno 22 m, kar je trideset korakov. Želeli smo, da bi bilo teh trideset kora­kov dogodek v mestu, ki se ga hkrati zavedaš in ne zavedaš. Hiše iz 18. stoletja v slogu kralja Jurija na zanimiv način nakažejo svoj vhod, saj je vhod v hišo na mostičeku, ki hkrati povezuje in ločuje. Skušali smo ponoviti idejo mostička, ki hkrati ločuje in povezuje, zato smo kot vhod uporabili velika bro­nasta vrata, ki ti dovolijo vstopiti v zgradbo če so odprta, če pa se jih zapre, dajejo občutek varnosti. Na levi strani zgradbe na hugenotskem poko­pališču cvetijo neprave hijacinte, na desni strani pa je naša zgradba posrednik med različnimi 
two bodies of audience having a dialogue. We intro­duced daylight into the space, which is sometimes used for conference The Merrion Square is an incred­ibly beautiful part of Dublin, a great room of green space made by the Georgian houses. We were asked to design a building for the Department of Ministry of Finance within the complex of government build­ings around the square. It was essentially a building for the Department of Finance, a special section of Finance, which wanted flexibility. The site was on the cusp between the street system, which was essen­tially four-storey, and the other space of St Stephen’s Green, which was approximately six-storey. The main buildings of Dublin are essentially stone and the ordinary buildings of historic Dublin are brick. We wanted to use stone in a way that had a sense of mass and weight and we used a 100 mm deep by 100mm high planks of stone with a 20 mm recess. We had to deal with a very long exist­ing building, which was built in 1912, it was a pro­tected structure, so we wanted to incorporate it into our building. To the left-hand side of the building there is a small, but very significant place in Dub­lin: a Huguenot cemetery. Huguenots were French protestants that were evicted from France in the 1600s and found refuge in various cities around Eu­rope. Some of them came to Dublin and made huge contributions to the city, so their burial ground is a protected structure. We worked with the Huguenot Trust; the building we removed had a blank gable overlooking the cemetery, but the Huguenot Trust people trusted us and allowed us to put windows on the west elevation, which meant that we could make a building which had sun and view over the city in four directions. The architecture is about walking past it. The hu­man step of less than a metre has not changed in thousands of years, and for us it is our architectural metre, a scale rule. The façade of the Department of Finance is approximately 22 m or thirty steps long. We wanted to make it an episode in the city where you are both conscious and unconscious of the building. The 18th century technique of Georgian houses is really very clever, there is the entrance over a bridge that connects but divides. We tried to retain the spirit of the connecting but dividing bridge with the bronze gate -that lets you enter the building but when it is closed, it is secure. On the left-hand side of the building there are the bluebells of the Huguenot cemetery, and on the right-hand side our building mediates between brick and the volume. This building’s programme does not need any main space so we decided to emphasize the vertical volume of the stairs into the main space, again similar to Georgian build­ings with their amazing staircases. The four-storey staircase hangs in the plaster interior and mediates between outside and inside. We put the circulation on the perimeter of the building, as in cloisters, 

višinami in materiali obdelave hiš. Ker zgradba po programu ne potrebuje velikega glavnega pro­stora, smo se odločili, da bomo kot najpomemb­nejši prostor poudarili vertikalo stopnišča. Pri tem smo se zopet zgledovali po hišah v slogu kralja Jurija, ki imajo razkošna stopnišča. Stopnišče, ki povezuje štiri nadstropja, visi v ometani notra­njosti in predstavlja prehod med znotraj in zunaj. Prehode in hodnike smo postavili na obrobje zgradbe, kakor v kloštrih, kar nam je omogočilo, da so pisarne različnih velikosti. Razporedili smo šest dimnikov, ki iz obrobja zgradbe zajemajo zrak, ki potem kroži po zgradbi. Dimniki so zopet referenca na 18. stoletje in na silhueto Dublina, v kateri imajo dimniki pomembno vlogo, le da so bili ti namenjeni kuriščem, skozi naše dimnike pa zgradba diha. Spodnji pas fasade smo potisnili tri metre navzno­ter, zgoraj pa smo v konzolo namestili stopnišče, ki daje težo pogledu s ceste. Velik poudarek smo dali obrtniški izdelavi zgradbe. Želeli smo obliko­vati navpičen vzorec kamna. Odnos z pokopali­ščem smo vzpostavili s teksturo steklenih površin (nekaterih v nivoju in ostalih umaknjenih) in ma­lih kamnitih balkončkov, pravzaprav francoskih oken, do katerih je dostop iz notranjosti. Leta 2001 smo se udeležili natečaja za projekt Univerze Luigi Bocconi (Universita Luigi Bocconi) v Milanu. Za sodelovanje je bilo, na podlagi veli­kosti in dodelanosti gradbenih procesov, izbranih deset birojev iz vse Evrope. Milano se nam je zde­lo posebno mesto, saj ni tako živahen kot Firence niti tako formalen kot Rim. Prvotno Milano izvira iz Keltske naselbine, kar smo s ponosom prebrali iz njegove strukture. Rimljani so ustvarili mrežo ulic, Španci so ga obdali z zidovi, vse skupaj pa je šlo še skozi Avstro­ogrsko obdelavo, tako da se je Milano razvil v čisto samosvoje mesto. Navzven se kaže zadržano, navznoter pa je zelo elegantno. Ker ni nobene reke, morja ali gora (razen Alp na oddaljenem horizontu), smo naš projekt delali v precej običajnem delu mesta. Verjamemo v možnost socialnega prekrivanja in univerzo cenimo kot enega redkih zares javnih prostorov v sodobni družbi. S projektom smo morali loviti ravnotežje med funkcijo in obsežno strukturo, med zasebnimi in javnimi prostori ter med konstrukcijo in povezavami. Verjamemo, da se to, kar je običajno, v dialogu z gravitacijo preo­blikuje. Naš projekt je bil pravi boj Titanov, morali smo skopati šest nadstropij pod zemljo in zgraditi šest nadstropij nad njo. Univerza je kake pol ure hoda oddaljena od mi­lanske katedrale Duomo, katere streha je prava kamnita gora, pod katero se družijo ljudje. Duo­mo je kraj z atmosfero sredi Italijanskega mesta, pravi skrivni vrt. Milano smo pred začetkom projekta sicer že več­krat obiskali kot turisti, vseeno pa imaš, ko se vanj vrneš kot arhitekt, ki naj bi v mestu zares gradil, 
which allowed us to have various sizes of offices. We placed six chimneys to take air in from the perimeter and circulate air up through the building. Again there is a reference to the 18th century streetscape of Dublin, but then they were fire chimneys, in our case, they are breathing chimneys. We pushed the lower facade three metres back and projected out a cantilevered staircase that gives the sense of weight from the street. We put a great em­phasis on the craft of building. We wanted to create a vertical weave of stone. The relationship to the cemetery is build with a series of flushed glass and recessed glass and stone piers where you can step into it on the inside, they’re like bay windows. In 2001, we took part in a competition for a project in Milan – Universita Luigi Bocconi. Ten practices from around Europe were chosen to participate, based on their size, and the craft involved in their building processes. For us, Milan felt unique, it’s not exuberant like Florence, it is not formal like Rome. Milan was originally a Celtic settlement, which we were very proud to read, it was layered and gridded by the Romans, it was wrapped in Spanish walls, steeped in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was uniquely Milanese. It’s restrained on the exterior and sophisticated on the interior. As there was no river, no sea, no mountains, only the Alps on the very far horizon, we worked with an ordinary piece of city. We believe in the possibility of social overlap, we val­ued university as one of the few truly public spaces in contemporary society, and we manipulated function, large-scale structure, public and private spaces, construction and connections. We believe in the transformation of the ordinary in dialogue with gravity. It was a tussle of giants -we had to dig six metres below ground and six levels above ground. The university is about a half an hour’s walk from the Duomo, that has the incredible power of stone mountain, its roof, which has the quality of people involved and socialising under it. The Duomo is an atmospheric place in the middle of an Italian city, a secret garden. We had been in Milan many times before as tourists, but when you come back as an architect with a seri­ous possibility of working there, your eye becomes a detector, you are looking at the surfaces, the stones, the people. For us, it was amazing to look at the city that was hard on the outside but had this series of layers that, when you went to the interiors, you dis­covered there was a completely other world. And we discovered a stone called the Ceppo, which is very much used in Milan. The Ceppo had the tiny joints, which give it a monolithic quality of a geological concrete. For the competition, we were given a site which was roughly 80m by 180m in a part of Milan that was or­dinary and was always part of the continuity of the university with buildings by Giuseppe Pagano, Gio­vanni Muzio, and Ignazio Gardella. When we went there, it was fairly ordinary, it wasn’t a dramatic 


Vhod v šolo, spodnji pogled ven uokvirja pokrajino, zgor­nji pa nebo. Spreminjanje barve in podobe neba sta pod nadzorstvom arhitekture. 
The entrance threshold where the lower view is about fra­ming the landscape and the upper view is framing the sky. The changing colour and the character of the sky are moni­tored architecturally. 






oči na pecljih: neprestano opazuješ površine, ka­mne in ljudi. Opazuješ mesto, ki je navzven trdo, vendar ima mnogo plasti, pod katerimi odkriješ čisto drugačen svet. Odkrili smo na primer lokal­no vrsto granita ceppo, ki se ga v Milanu pogosto uporablja. Ceppo ima mnogo drobnih razpok, ki mu dajejo monolitni značaj geološkega betona. Natečajni projekt je predvidel lokacijo, veliko približno 80x180 m, v predelu Milana brez večjih posebnosti, Lokacija je že od vedno pripadala univerzi, in obdajajo jo zgradbe Giuseppa Paga­na, Giovannija Muzia in Ignazia Gardelle. Ko smo obiskali lokacijo, se nam ni zdela nič posebnega, celo precej navadna, vseeno pa smo začeli z de­lom. Projektna naloga je zahtevala pisarne za ti­soč profesorjev z ločenim vhodom, dvorano Aula Magna za tisoč obiskovalcev in pet konferenčnih dvoran še za dodatnih tisoč ljudi. Študentom bi moral biti omogočen vstop v univerzo, tudi kadar bi v Auli Magni potekale samostojne konference. Ena od pomembnih vprašanj, s katerimi smo se soočili, je bilo, kako socializirati tisoč pisarn. Dobili smo navodila, da naj bodo vse pisarne nad zemljo in vse dvorane pod zemljo, nam pa se to ni zde­lo najboljše, saj smo želeli, da bi tudi konference ustvarjale in prisostvovale delu univerzitetnega življenja. Takole smo razmišljali: »Ali bi bilo mo­žno zabrisati mejo med tem, kar je pod in tem kar je nad zemljo, tako, da bi pisarne obesili s strehe kot neke vrste labirint povezan s serijo dvorišč, s katerih bi prihajala svetloba, kar bi pisarne bolj povezalo s podzemljem?« Milanski mestni tlaki so nas tako navdušili, da smo se jih odločili pripeljati v notranjost zgradbe in v univerzo vplesti še en del mesta. V celotnem kam­pusu upoštevamo teksturo mesta. Aulo Magno smo postavili na križišče med eno zelo prometno in eno bolj mirno ulico. V natečajnem projektu je bila Aula Magna miren enoetažni prostor, vsa­jen globoko v notranjost tlorisa, vendar se nam je zdelo, da tako ni dovolj povezana z mestom. Razvili smo jo po delih in jo razdelili na prostor za štiristo in prostor za šesto ljudi. Takoj, ko smo jo prestavili na stično točko med mestom in kampu­som, je kar naenkrat postala naš oporni kamen, naša svetilka. Prostor za gradnjo je bil dolg 180 m, 25 m pa se nam je zdela primerna dolžina hodnika. Lokaci­jo obdelali z mrežo z ritmom 25 m. Aulo Magno smo postavili ob prometno ulico, toda prostor je bil preozek, preveč hrupen in prekratek za vhod, tako da smo vhod premaknili naprej po ulici, proti sredini kampusa, točno na križišče dveh osi – osi vzhod­zahod in osi gor­dol. Vhodni foyer ni bil več na nivoju ulice, temveč se je premaknil v ne­gativni prostor, pet metrov pod nivojem tal. Narisali smo diagram, ki smo ga poimenovali življenjski filter svetlobe, v katerem je svet nad zemljo postal mreža s celicami po 25 metrov, mi pa smo po njej, kot pri otroški igri, kjer sem in tja 
place, but we began. The brief for this competition was for offices for 1,000 professors, which needed their own entrance, Aula Magna for a thousand, and five conference rooms for another thousand people and that the students themselves could come and go into the university when the university might want to have the Aula Magna work independently for conferences. One of the most important deci­sions was how to socialise the 1,000 offices. They said that all the conference rooms had to be below ground and all the offices above ground, but we felt that it was not a good thing to put everything underground, we wanted some sort of life and some sort of eruption for the conferences. So we said, “Could we blur the line between ground and under­ground, and make the offices into a suspended lab­yrinth with a series of courtyards that would allow light through, so the offices and the underground would somehow connect with one another?” We were also fascinated by the floor of Milan, and we decided to continue the floor of the city right through and connect the city into the sense of the university. This shows the stone texture -we con­tinue the texture of the city right into the campus and we positioned the Aula Magna on the junction of the city: a busy street, a quiet street. In the com­petition, we had the Aula Magna as a single-storey quiet room, deep in the plan, but we felt in this way it had no connection with the city so we developed it in sections, so it was for 400 people and for 600 people. And when we moved the Aula Magna to the junction between city and campus, it became our rock, our lantern. The site was about 180m long, and we felt that 25m was approximately the right dimension for the distance of the corridor. That allowed us to begin a rhythm of claiming the territory of the site every 25 metres. When we placed the Aula Magna on the busy street, it was too narrow, too noisy, too short for entrance. So we moved the entrance sequence down the side street to enter in the middle of the plan at the point of junction between two direc­tions, east-west and up and down. With this we made a foyer space that was not on the entrance level of zero, but was five metres below, so the foyer became a minus space. We have drawn the diagrams that we call it the in­habited light filters, so that the upper world became an abacus where with a 25m grid and we pushed and pulled offices around it to create the light voids that bring the light into the interior. There was a great concern about the soffits that would change the character of the lower world. One of the most important breakthroughs was when we said, “If we want to change the soffits, if we want to have the tussle of giants between two worlds, we need a structure that gives us liberation.” The beams of structure go to the highest point on the top floor, and the offices are hanged from them, which meant we could manipulate the soffit, to 

premikaš ploščice v okvirju, razporejali pisarne in ustvarjali odprtine, skozi katere v notranjost vsto­pa naravna svetloba. Bili smo zelo pozorni na to, kakšna bo spodnja površina pisarn, saj ta določa značaj prostora pod njo. Eden najpomembnejših prebojev se je zgodil, ko smo ugotovili: »Če želimo spremeniti spodnjo površino, če želimo uprizoriti spopad Titanov, boj med dvema svetovoma, potem mora biti kon­strukcija zgradbe osvobajajoča.« Na podporne tramove, ki morajo segati vse do najvišje točke v zgornjem nadstropju, smo obesili pisarne. Njiho­vo spodnjo površino smo lahko prosto obdelali in dobro oblikovali prostor med zemljo in nebom. Borili smo se, da bi hkrati oblikovali strukturo in izraz. Če se še enkrat spomnimo na Duomo in na vpra­šanje prostorov, v katerih bi se bilo možno tudi družiti, nikakor nismo želeli zgraditi slonokošče­nega stolpa za profesorje nad študenti. Želeli smo zagotoviti vidno in socialno povezavo med prostori za profesorje, prostori za študente in me­stom spodaj. Imeli smo idejo za pisarne, imeli smo idejo o zrna­tosti zgradbe, nismo pa še izbrali njenega jezika. Ko smo projektirali natečajne projekte smo hišo ovili z ovojnico, toda čutili smo, da nima pravega jezika, da ni povezana. Odločili smo se, da Aulo Magno odpremo in jo pripnemo na etažo z pisar­nami s pomočjo periskopskih oken, podobnih ti­stim, ki smo jih uporabili osnovni šoli, o kateri sem govorila prej. Podobno rešitev smo zasledili tudi pri zgradbi, nedaleč od Univerze, ki jo je projekti­rala Gae Aulenti, kar nam je dalo pogum, da smo Aulo Magno naredili za del milanskega arhitektur­nega jezika. Aula Magna ponoči služi kot laterna: če se zvečer pelješ mimo nje v tramvaju, imaš tudi kot državljan priložnost, da začutiš povezavo z veliko institucijo univerze in dobiš nekoliko vpo­gleda v to, kar se v njej dogaja. Za beneški bienale smo pred nekaj leti izdelali 
1:50 maketo zgradbe. Pokazala je, kakšen prostor ustvari previs zgornjega dela Aule in kako mesto vstopa v negativni prostor pet metrov pod nivo­jem ulic. Alejandro de la Sota, veliki španski ar­hitekt in učitelj, razlaga vlogo arhitekta kot trud, da bi bilo to, kar ustvarja, čim bližje niču. Njego­va misel je blizu temu, kar smo ustvarili: zamislili smo si prostor pod 22 metrsko konzolo Aule, ki daj občutek teže, kot prostor niča, z občutkom materialnosti. Ko smo se z naročniki dogovorili, da bomo upo­rabili kamen ceppo, smo obiskali kamnolom se­verno od Milana. Vsekana površina kamnoloma je bila neverjetno podobna izklesani površini Aule Magne, skoraj kakor bi bil kamnolom njena make­ta, ki so jo v naravni velikosti izklesali severno od Milana. Odkrili smo, da je milanski način pridobi­vanja kamna drugačen od tega, česar smo nava­jeni. V pobočje izvrtajo le majhno odprtino, skozi 
manipulate the space between ground and sky. We struggled to find both expression and structure. Referring again to the Duomo and the issue of so­cialising spaces, we did not want to create a world with the professors were in an ivory tower above. We wanted to make a visual and social connection be­tween the spaces of the professors and the students and of the city below. We had an idea for offices, we had an idea of the grain of the building, but there was still the issue of language. As we struggled with the competition we wrapped our building with a skin, but we felt that it was not connecting, it did not have a language. We decided to erupt the Aula Magna and clip it into the office floors with periscopes, similar to the school periscopes that we talked of before. And we found similar solution in Gae Aulenti’s project not far from the site, which gave us the courage to express the Aula Magna as part of the language of Milan. The Aula Magna serves as a lantern at night: if you are passing by on the tram you get the opportunity as a citizen to have some connection with the great insti­tution of a university and you can see what might be happening in the university. We made an 1:50 model of the building for the Bi­ennale in Venice some years ago. It showed the space that the cantilever of the upper Aula creates and how it brings the city deep into it minus space five metres below ground. Alejandro de la Sota, the great Spanish architect and teacher, talks about the architect’s role as making as much nothing as pos­sible. His thought is close to our thinking: we con­ceived the space under the Aula’s 22-metre canti­lever with a sense of weight as a nothing space with the sense of materiality. When we agreed with the clients that we would use the Ceppo stone, we visited the Ceppo quarry north of Milan. The carved face of the quarry was incredibly similar to the carving of the Aula Magna, almost as if it was a 1:1 model carved in the moun­tains north of Milan. Also, what we found unusual was the way of carving stone: you carve into the mountains and you take out great 9m by 9m cubes of the material through a small hole that lets the light into the quarry so you get a great cathedral on the interior. In Ireland we cut from the face of the mountain, so at the end there is an amphitheatre of carved space. The visit to the quarry gave us cour­age to carve five or nine meters deep into the floor of Milan as we felt that the light could actually be drawn down into the space. We were working with ten departments, all of which had to be dealt with independently. We tried to find a shared component between them, so we created a little library. A series of double-and triple-height spaces links the library of separate departments. When we won the competition and the client came to Ireland to see our work. We thought that they would want us to make our office in Milan, but they let us do the planning and the construction 







katero izvlečejo 9x9 m kocke kamna. Skozi luknjo prihaja v kamnolom svetloba, ki notranjost nare­di podobno katedrali. V irskih kamnolomih se ka­men lomi od površine pobočja proti notranjosti, tako da na koncu v gori ostane zaobljen kamnit amfiteater. Obisk kamnoloma nas je prepričal, da smo se pravilno odločili kopati pet do devet metrov globoko v milanska tla, saj smo videli, da je svetlobo mogoče spustiti tudi tako globoko v prostor. Projektirali smo zgradbo namenjeno desetim različnim oddelkom, od katerih je vsak imel svoje zahteve. Skušali pa smo najti neko skupno točko med njimi, ki bi jih povezala, tako da smo predla­gali majhno skupno knjižnico. Knjižnice različnih oddelkov so med seboj povezane s serijo dvo in tro višinskih prostorov. Ko smo zmagali na natečaju, so naročniki prišli na Irsko pogledat naše dotedanje delo. Mislili smo, da bodo želeli, da ustanovimo biro v Milanu, ven­dar so nam pustili, da projektiranje in zazidalne načrte izpeljemo v Dublinu, s strokovnjaki pa se srečujemo v enem od obeh mest. Potrebno je veliko poguma tudi s strani naročnika, da za tako velik projekt izbere tuje arhitekte. Pritiski so bili ogromni, saj je Univerza Bocconi novo zgradbo želela čim prej. Vseeno pa je trajalo celo leto, da smo sploh izvedli pripravljalna dela. Podzemni temeljni zidovi so različno visoki, saj podpirajo različne pisarne. Nad njimi je jeklena struktura, s katere visijo ogromni jekleni nosilci, ki podpirajo tla pisarn. Pisarne so obešene od zgo­raj, nekatere njihove stropne plošče so uporablje­ne kot viseči vrtovi oziroma svetlobniki za prostor pod njimi. Zgornji del strukture skuša biti čim laž­ji, spodnji del pa predstavlja težo. Točno nad Aulo Magno je majhen prostor, kjer se profesorji lahko srečajo med seboj in spijejo kavo na mali terasi. Pred mnogimi leti smo v eni od uličic za trgom Merrion Square v Dublinu projektirali miniaturno kino dvorano z recepcijo, parkiriščem, pisarnami in stanovanjem na le šest metrov široki parceli. Vendar smo se od tu naučili, kako se dela severno fasado in kako je dobro postavili plasti stekla, da jim daš globino, primerno svetlobo in dovolj za­sebnosti. Podobno smo tudi pri projektu v mestu Navan raziskovali uporabo več plasti stekla. Vse to nam je prišlo prav pri projektu za Bocconi. Okrog notranjega dvorišča smo razporedili pisarne, ki smo jim zasebnost zagotovili z več plastmi ste­kla, ki v pisarne vseeno spustijo dnevno svetlobo. Razvili smo posebno tehniko, pravimo ji »tehnika visečih steklenih strešnikov«, pri kateri so kosi stekla, zloženi kot strešniki, ki se delno prekrivajo, obešeni od zgoraj. Ko se Univerzi s tramvajem približaš z južne strani po ulici Viale Bligny, zgradba od daleč deluje tiho, skoraj sramežljivo. Ko pa prideš blizu, postaja močnejša in vse bolj drzna, dokler v določenem trenutku zopet ne izgine v vsakdanjosti ulice. Ko 
drawings in Dublin, so the specialists were brought either to us or we went to Milan. It takes great cour­age for the client to choose strangers for such a project. The pressure to produce the building was enormous, the Bocconi University wanted the build­ing as soon as possible. It took one year to prepare the site for the building. The diaphragm walls have different elevations to support different offices. And then arrives the upper structure from which the huge steel rods are hanged in order support the floors of the offices. The offices are held from above; some of the office plates be­come hanging gardens which become clerestory lights for the space below. The upper structure is really about lightness and the lower one is about weight. Just above the Aula Magna there’s a little place where the professors can have a little café and a terrace. Many years ago in Dublin, in one of the smaller laneways behind Merrion Square, we had done a tiny cinema and reception and car parking and offices and an apartment on a six-metre wide space. But what was important for us was the study of the north elevation where we wanted to layer glass and give it depth and discretion about light. Both in this project and in the Navan project we had researched the layering of the glass which helped us in terms of the Bocconi project because in the inte­rior of the courtyards, we needed offices with layers of glass screening to give privacy and also daylight to the professors’ offices. We developed what we call the hanging glass shingles technique -the glass hanged from the top arranged like slates so that they are pinched at the top and they overlap. When you approach the University from the south along Viale Bligny with the tram, the building in the distance seems very quiet and has a shy personal­ity. As you walk closer, it becomes bolder, it becomes stronger but at some stage, it almost vanishes into the ordinariness of the street. And as you then turn the corner, the dialogue we created between Uni­versity and city starts to become -we hope -legible. What amazes us in architecture is you have a pen­cil drawing, and then suddenly it becomes reality, and for students in the audience, one of the things we say is, “Be careful of what you draw because it actually becomes reality.” The power of the drawing, the power of the study, and the making of the archi­tectural work is about what you think. So for us, the continuity of making is just amazing. At night, the eight metres of clear glass -the soffit of the Aula Magna -make a public space where you can view deep into the building. The view from the Via Röntgen is different, you see the hard surface of the crust of the building. We thought that the plan was actually very strict, but in reality, the site was more diagonal, and it allowed us to place the offices as overhanging cantilever. People immediately began to use the buildings in ways that we were delighted with, having for ex­ample their meals at the outside courts. We tried 

zaviješ okrog vogala proti vhodu, postane, tako vsaj upamo, razumljiv dialog, ki smo ga želeli vzpostaviti med mestom in univerzo. Pri arhitekturi se nam vedno zdi neverjetno, kako preprosta risba s svinčnikom naenkrat postane realnost, tako da študentom in poslušalcem po­gosto polagamo na srce »Pazite, kaj narišete, kaj­ti to se tudi zares udejanji!« Pri moči risbe, moči študija in ustvarjanju arhitekturne gre vedno le za to, kar razmišljaš. Kontinuiteta dela se nam res zdi neverjetna. Ponoči osemmetrska steklena površina – spodnji del Aule Magne ­ustvari javni prostor, ki omogo­ča pogled globoko v notranjost zgradbe. Pogled z ulice Via Röntgen je drugačen, saj tam vidiš trdo skorjo zgradbe. Naš tloris se nam je zdel zelo strog, vendar pa je v resnici parcela nekoliko di­agonalne oblike, kar nam je omogočilo, da smo pisarne namestili konzolno. Ljudje so takoj začeli uporabljati zgradbo na na­čine, s katerimi smo bili zelo zadovoljni, na pri­mer privoščili so si malico na enem od zunanjih dvorišč. Uporabnike smo želeli spodbuditi, da čim manj uporabljajo dvigala, da se z drugimi sre­čujejo na stopnišču, tako da so stopnice postale pomemben prostor za druženje. Zelo nam je tudi všeč merilo prostora, ki ga ustvarja mreža tramov vsakih 25 metrov. Spodaj in zgoraj so pravi mo­stovi prostora, zaradi transparentnosti pa je no­tranjost povezana z mestom. Ker je naša najnižja etaža pod nivojem ceste, smo vanjo želeli pripe­ljati čim več svetlobe, tako da smo za obdelavo uporabili drugačen kamen: bianca lasa. Bianca lasa je zelo lep marmor, ki nekoliko spominja na notranjost školjčne lupine, v globino zgradbe pa pripelje svetlobo. Če se vrnem na vprašanje trajnostnega obliko­vanja, se mi zdi pomembno, da ko projektiraš za različne načine uporabe, ko projektiraš za mesto, trajnostno oblikovanje vključiš že v izvedbo. Pri­poročam obisk Milana in ogled Univerze Boccioni v živo, saj, koncem koncev, ne glede na to, koliko 
o arhitekturi govorimo in jo skušamo intelektu­alizirati, arhitektura ostaja telesno doživetje. Pri arhitekturi naj bi sicer najbolj šlo za vprašanje naročnika, toda arhitekt ostaja tisti, ki mora v pro­jekt vključiti velikodušnost, ki zgradbo, katero koli pač, vključi v njeno okolico. Spodaj pod Aulo Ma­gno se nahaja velik prostor, ki bi Alejandro de la Sota rekel »ničti prostor«, vendar pa je to prostor, v katerem se odvija življenje. Na koncu so ljudje tisti, ki presodijo, tisti, ki vstopijo v prostor in si mislijo: »Razumem, kaj mi želijo sporočiti!« Za nas je bil najpomembnejši trenutek, ko so zgradbo odprli javnosti – 1. novembra 2008. 
Maja Vardjan: Iz najinega pogovora sem ra­zumela, da se zelo zanimate za razvoj jezika, kar je jasno tudi iz vašega predavanja. Omenili ste tudi, da bi v prihodnjih letih radi raziska­li pomen besede »slikovit«? Priznam, da vaše 
to encourage people not to use elevators but to try and socialise, so that the staircase becomes where the people meet each other. For us the scale of space made by 25-metre beams is fantastic. There are great bridges of space going below, and the transparency forms the connection between city and interior. As we went lower than the street level we wanted to bring light down with us, and we changed the stone to the Bianca Lasa. This is a beautiful stone, like the interior of an oyster shell, and so as you go deeper down, the light follows you with the Bianca Lasa. What’s amazing for us, going back to the issue of sustainability, is that when you build in other pos­sible uses, when you build in care for city, for us sus­tainability is embedded in craft. You might want to take a trip to Milan sometime and enjoy the build­ing in reality, because in the end, no matter how much we talk about architecture and how we intel­lectualise, architecture is about a body experience. So there is an issue about a building being about the client, but I think that the role of an architect is to find that generous component which connects whatever work we do with the surroundings. Under­neath The Aula Magna in the space which Alejandro de la Sota calls “the nothing”, is the space in which life happens. And I think that in the end, people have to judge, they have to walk into a space and say, ‘Yes, I understand what they mean.’ For us, one of the most important moments was on the day the building was open to the public -it was the 1st No­vember 2008. 
Maja Vardjan: From what we talked about I un­derstand you’re very interested in the develop­ment of the language. You also mentioned that in the future, in the next few years, you would like to research the word “picturesque”. I cannot relate the word picturesque to your architec­ture, is there a connection? 
Yvonne Farrell: Shelley McNamara and I are working in Mendrisio, at the moment we are doing research in the Ticino area. I have read in an essay that the picturesque Swiss villages were just a construction. But, if you live in a small village in high altitude sur­rounded by mountains you have to build structures to protect the village because the mountains want to crush it. The settlements are built in places which would not be damaged by avalanche, or houses built in places that would not flood. The picturesque was built out of a fundamental need, and that may­be is touching something very deep in our human consciousness, that when we see a beautiful build­ing set into a landscape in a way that subconscious­ly we know is safe. Maybe we have now translated it into a tourist idea of the picturesque, but on the other hand, “picturesque” is the wrong word, and should be replaced with “tough as nails” as, archi­tecturally analysed, the villages actually very pow­erful machines. 








arhitekture ne povezujem z besedo »slikovi­to«. Ali vendarle obstaja povezava? 
Yvonne Farrell: S Shelley McNamara delava v Mendrisiu, kjer trenutno raziskujeva področje Ti­cino. Brala sem nek esej, ki pravi, da so slikovite švicarske vasice le umetna konstrukcija. Vendar pa, če živiš v majhni vasici na veliki nadmorski višini, obkrožen z visokimi gorami, moraš graditi strukture, ki vasico zaščitijo, saj jo želijo gore streti pod seboj. Naselja so vedno zgrajena na krajih, ki so bolj varni pred plazovi, hiše na krajih, kjer ne poplavlja. Slikovitost je nastala iz neke osnovne potrebe, ki se morda dotika nečesa globljega v človeški zavesti, ki se ji zdijo lepe hiše, v pokrajini postavljene tako, da se podzavestno zavedamo njihove varnosti. To se je morda prevedlo v turi­stično idejo slikovitosti, morda pa je slikovitost sploh napačna beseda. Pravilnejša bi bila beseda »trmast kot mula«, saj so te vasice, če jih arhitek­turno analiziramo, zelo zmogljivi stroji. Drugače je, ko gradiš v mestu, ki ga Lewis Mum­ford opiše kot verjetno najbolj inteligenten dose­žek človeštva. Projekti, ki jih delamo mi, so veliki 22 m, 180 m. Ena od težav, ki jih imam z razmi­šljanjem o arhitekturi v velikem merilu je ta, da bodo koncem koncev mimo njih še vedno hodili ljudje, ljudje bodo vanje vstopali in v njih pose­dali. Zato mi je všeč formulacija Alejandra de la Sote, ki pravi, da arhitekti delamo nič in da v resni­ci ustvarjamo zgrajeno okolje. Naša odgovornost je, da razmišljamo v večjem merilu, vendar pa da v prostoru ostajamo človeška bitja, ne glede na njegovo velikost. Kar me skrbi pri velikih načrtih je, da razen če si zelo previden, ni mogoče čutiti tistega, kar je bilo na računalniku videti tako lepo. Priznati moram, da sem računalniško nepismena, vendar pa sem prepričana, da je treba načrte vedno natisniti. Če­sar ne maram pri foto­realizmu je to, da zgradbe v resnici razočarajo – če zgradbo poznaš vnaprej, s papirja, o njej nimaš nobene prostorske izkušnje. Slikovitost je tudi radoživost in ni le nekaj za tu­riste. 
It is different when we build in city, described by Lewis Mumford as probably the most intelligent in­vention of man. The projects that we are making are 22 metres, or 180 metres long. One of the problems I have with the large-scale thinking of architecture is that in the end, people walk past, people will walk in them, and sit inside. That is why I love Alejandro de la Sota’s phrase, that architects work in the nothing, but we actually make the built world. I think it is our responsibility to thinking at the larger scale but also making at the physical, to remember that as human beings, we are in the space, no matter what size we make. What worries me about the major planning is that unless you are very careful, something that looks wonderful on a computer is not experienced in real­ity. I do have to admit that I am computer illiterate but I do think drawings always have to be printed out. What I do not like about photo-realism is that the buildings disappoint -you know the building be­forehand and there is no spatial experience. The picturesque is also about joyous and not just the territory of the tourist. 





Tloris nadstropja s pisarnami. 
Office floor plan. 




Model v merilu 1:500, ki smo ga izdelali za natečaj. Prika­zuje strukturo Aule Magne, ki se vzdiguje od tal in koplje globoko v zemljo. Podolgovata zgradba je zunanja lupi­na, v kateri se nahaja knjižnica. Plastični kvadri prikazuje­jo kje v zgradbi se nahajajo pisarne. 
The 1:500 model that was part of the competition, that shows the structure of the Aula Magna coming up from the ground and carving down deep into the ground. The long bar building is the outer crust, which houses the library. The perspex bars represent the offices within the structure. 

Maketa prereza natečajnega projekta s tremi svetlobniki, ki dajejo dnevno svetlobo v Auli. 
The section of the model of the competition project, three light scoops bringing daylight into the Aula. 

Gradnja, ki je potekala 22 metrov pod nivojem ceste in 11 metrov pod nivojem podtalnice. Vsakih pet metrov smo zgradili temeljne zidove, ki so v zemljo zasidrani z jeklenimi sidri. 
The construction 22m below ground, 11m under the water table. Every five metres, retaining walls were built with steel anchors into the earth.