ARCHIPCAST #19 – Winy Maas

Teaching was there from the very beginning immediately because for me it's a place where you can do things which you cannot do in a commercial office.

Yeah. No, no, in detail that was quite an important element to the landscape architecture episode, which has not been ended in the so looking back, um, my parents had a garden center and a florist. My mother's a florist and my brother also. So they had some influence on the choice because initially I wanted to do architecture, but because of what they were doing and I was helping in the business by designing the gardens because my father couldn't do it. So I did the drawings when I was like 12, 13, and then executing them. That was, I think, had a strong influence on like, okay, I want to do landscape architecture. Actually, I wanted to do both already from the beginning. And because I studied also, my secondary school was a bit like Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History', that book maybe that you know, where you are in a kind of giant garden, a former seminary for priests students. So it's a bit like Harry Potter, the whole atmosphere, and where the priests wore gowns and was taken over by ultra left-wing teachers that wanted to turn the world into a much more progressive environment. And that all in a kind of environment of villages in the southern part of the Netherlands close to Belgium. That was a second source because that for me was kind of eye opener to be in that environment which was intellectual, which was so connected with writers and with filmmakers and with thinkers and with scientists. Every teacher had an amazing relationship with Bertolt Brecht in the past or with writers as Harry Mulisch, a very Dutch but very good writer. And that caused I was like, wow, what a world I'm coming from a village where everything was about fighting between gangs in a farmer's village somewhere in the Netherlands. And then coming into this gymnasium that was like an El Dorado for me. And then being part of discussions, being part of the committee of the pupils, and that had like hidden in the ground somewhere behind trees in the forest their own place, where you of course you pick then stuff from the chemistry department to brew your own Geneva. So you can see a little bit the environment where we grew up. And there were all these kind of elements in that Harry Potter environment, and that led to a wish to be more intellectual than my background did allow for. So that combination then led to the next steps: filmmaking and writing and art and intellectuals.

Yes, that I think was very influential and super intriguing for me to find a way in that. And I decided to do it step by step also. That's one thing. So that's why because from a gymnasium normally you go then to a university, but I decided to go to what they call in the Netherlands the 'school', which is like another level diploma school for landscape architecture, which was in a very small place somewhere in the swamps in the Netherlands and with only 200 students. And then to learn all the plants because it was not a scientific school. It was a school where you apply things. But the good thing about it is that you then have to learn all the things like how are things made, how the water systems work, how many plants can you know, what are all the ecological systems, and you have to be trained in that way. That helped me also a lot. Still now I know quite a lot of plants and every time I walk through a forest or whatever then I pop them up. But it helps also not to stop afterwards because there is always an education which is like higher, and this meant so I took that then as a tool basically to go later to university. And with the help of that first school of landscape, I could also skip the first year in university. So it made it more easy for me to access and there do initially urbanism because through landscape school I could enter urbanism, skipped the first year, but then also into architecture afterwards. That was a bit of a negotiation with the university and then they were a little bit like, you have to restart completely. They said, 'Come on.' And then they allowed me also because I did a good architecture project in the first time to do this kind of what we call this trilogy of subjects that are connected: landscape, urbanism, and architecture. Yeah. So there are more people that have done it, but this is somehow you can see it back in the work, I think, back in the approach, which is systemic and anyway wants to put objects in a perspective or in a wider context. That's what you learn, I think, more in landscape architecture, especially, than in architecture, which is very much object-driven, right?

No, that's very true. I mean, normally you see that the landscaper comes then in the end and he has to dress up the lawn in front of the house, and happily it's changing in many environments already. These kinds of collaborations are better settled.

Should I explain it a little bit the project? Well, as you mentioned that the building should speak, that they should speak to more profound things beyond just themselves, you know. And as one example of a relatively recent project also speaking to society at large, even collective memory, in this case of Albania. Albania is a project as a whole, not only by me but by a country that wants to innovate and that wants to be part of the European Union and that wants to turn itself from a very poor country into a much more wealthy and healthy environment. So with the politicians in combination, I think they are representing the population that decides in that way has decided to make that transformation together. They have a lot of energy, the people that live there, and it is a bit like, you feel small but you want to be big, that is what it tries to achieve. It's only with a small group of people, 3 million, 2 and a half million people, big diaspora. It is since 20 years trying to transform itself and it uses architecture also for that in that operation. So because if you come from a fully communist country where no one was owner of anything because it was all state-owned, where education was rather poor to be honest, where sewage systems were lacking, where a good law system was lacking. So those are the first things to do in a way to set up or to transform a country and to lead to a prosperous direction. The nice thing was when I met at that moment the minister of culture and he was looking for architects and that every building would be something also beautiful or remarkable. So which I think was, but then you are immediately connected also with the position of such a building in that developing country. You have to face new ownerships, have to train thinking in law and in the rules, and you have to train to think in earthquake issues or all that, those didn't exist already. So you had to train young people, also young architects at the schools in Tirana to do something. So it was immediately a wider role that architecture gets, but also me as a person could contribute to that. But that remains a fascinating project to see that happening over time from communism to corruption to a democratic and wealthy and healthy environment. So that is, and the pyramid is quite a milestone in that because the pyramid is a building in the heart of Tirana which is the mausoleum of the former dictator Enver Hoxha and he made it himself with his wife who was an architect. This kind of very strange communist building which can be also beautiful but was not a very beautiful person for the majority, because he led this country as a dictator. I mean, women had it difficult to be in the country and there were a lot of political prisoners and it was incredibly directed by this single oriented people. So like them, he and his wife, and then he made this giant pyramid where he sitting on a horse was there. This is what I find really great in that context about that project, that you could take the pyramid that's referring to this dictator and turn it into a gathering place for everyone, with color, with individuals coming forth bursting out from it. It becomes like a democratic source in the end, a new transformation without destroying the past, and introducing these elements not only scale but the stairs, pulling the ground up for people and letting them see from different views. I mean, as a way of using architecture to show people what can be. Well, I think it's good for the listener to understand also the in-between step because after communism the first 10 years were chaos because there was no idea what to do, and so this building was a symbol of protest. So all the windows were smashed. The person was decapitated, graffiti everywhere. It was the place for the new anarchistic radio station. People went on top of the building and slid down. Very dangerous to do it. So then in this transformation of the country, there was a certain moment: what do we do with this thing? When we were in the discussions that we had with more people on that place, there was okay moment. I said, yeah, what do you want to do? You can kill the building completely, erase it because you hate that period, so that is then done. You can also reglorify because some of you liked communism, former communist leaders, and also there was a nostalgia here and there in a younger generation to parts of that, like what you have in the DDR also at the moment. So how to choose? I think I can suggest, and then it's like the parliament has to decide. So no way that we glorify and turn it into a kind of museum. Okay, decision made. But also we don't, it is also good because it's very specific and this is the only thing like that in Europe if not the world, and then so let's also keep the memory somehow in a way of it. So I told them, yeah, you can find a way to overcome it, and building is a way of addressing that couple of things. So first, programmatically to say who is going to pay for this because they have no money in the government. So ultimately the foundation of the diaspora paid for it and they found a renter. So someone that also could function, that could continue the maintenance level, and that's TUMO, that's a school that's actually an after-school where normally in primary schools you don't get, there's no money for computers or there was no, so they are trained in the newest technologies and the new thoughts on ecology in after 4:00 in the evening you go there to do it. It's a very popular system initially coming from Armenia but then in many other countries now established. So it was politically an act to dedicate a pyramid to that, and then they became a commissioner of us to make that school. But then I said, okay, but I think it should not be completely privatized that building because it's the country that belongs to it. So we do a couple of things for that to keep it like a truly public building by erasing all the glass from it. It became outside space inside, so it becomes part of a park, a forest that we make in the center of Tirana. It is a concept that came from a Belgian architect that would beautifully start in the central plaza which we now continue even inside the building. Then you can squat the building, the structure with boxes. So there are 40 boxes that are thrown in where the classes are, where the library is, but you always can walk around through the building through these boxes, but they're also on the roof for an Airbnb, but also for a school from Paris, also for the European school has their thing, but also for some hipsters that make new machines or games that could come into it. It's like squatting was what was symbol of the step from communism to ownership. So that was also celebrating that. And last but not least, I think that we made the building completely accessible not only inside the structure but also on top of it where you could walk, but by making stairs at every rib of the building you can go up and then lift so that the top is collective and can form maybe a new parliament.

Um, I hope so that that is a method to do that. Of course, this building demands for that. It was the same, it's the Albanian variant of the Bundestag in Berlin. So there is a, but it can be also done in a house or on a smaller scale. That I'm interested in both. Maybe that comes back from landscape architecture because in landscape architecture you have to make a view on landscapes, on the future of the river, say on the Vltava river or other rivers, and so the bigger picture, and you have to be able to make a small and beautiful garden which can also make sense. So that, I think, is what, so it's also the art to that also the small things do something or say something in that wider perspective.

Well, it's 30 years old now. What we established is three of us: M, V, and DV together as a, but I think the starting was already quite funny because we first made only small things that we could make, and we won a competition in Berlin that has not been built, and maybe that got attention. And I think the most important moment was the moment that we entered an exhibition in Amsterdam called 'The Power of Now' where in that moment artists from different backgrounds were given a place to show, very well selected by the curators, and that was a highly successful exhibition because the mix of architects, artists from all kinds, sculptors, fashion makers, so many people came there that it was like, and it was so well intellectually positioned as almost pampletic for that group that the 'The Power of Now' that has grown enormously. Rineke Dijkstra is one of the best photographers in the world that came was in the same exhibition, to mention a name. So ultimately it was a coincidental beauty and a source of inspiration for us also and for them. So on that exhibition, the major Dutch art broadcasting company VPRO, they were looking for an architect and they saw also our work. So I still remember that during that exhibition, I was called and I was on a toilet, and we were in a kind of small rental place had 4x4 meter space, half squatted with other artists next to us, in a kind of breeding ground. And then with the VPRO said, well, we want to visit your office because we want to... This is an honor but also impossible because if you come in this terrible place that we had, we will never get a chance. So what we did, we did a kind of operation 'sting' we called it. So we asked some friends, we rented more spaces in this whole factory. We connected at that moment cables for telephones. We asked people to phone in. We showed we were making models but with an artist in that place also we showed the things. We asked like technicians from London over to dress up and to be part of us to come in. So they visited us and then they were like, it fit I think. So we were sent away in the end of the afternoon, you know, you come to talk for a moment, please go out. So they talk with each other and then half an hour later they say, 'Yeah, congratulations. We would like to work. You should make our new headquarters building in Hilversum in the media park.' And then to, so it was, we told them like a year later what we did, but it was a kind of incredible start for an office to then work for a kind of actor like the German version of this, to have for them that gave a certain liberty to architecture also that planned in a budget that is not 100% but 110%, so that allows for something extra. And that was also in the process because they are television program makers and they help young documentary makers also to do things. So they have a culture that gives space to it. So I think I tell about this because I think it's very important that we establish in our societies this kind of possibility for young people to exercise on a high level immediately, because they were so visible a broadcasting company, and then you have to address that almost in a kind of policy. It was a fantastic kickstart. And now your office is in multiple cities, hundreds of employees, hundreds of projects also, and even still with all of this work you're doing, you're teaching also all the time. Yeah. For so yeah, I think for me, teaching is has was there from the very beginning immediately because for me it's a place where you can do things which you cannot do in a commercial office. It is with young generation that is looking, testing, experimenting, and it's a place where you can do research, where it's a public domain which is I think also very important part. So you have to do something which you cannot do in your office. It has to be edgy per definition, that's the role of universities, and it has to activate depth through research. And so see here I think an incredible place that I would love to be part of from that very beginning and to see it also as a tool for innovation. And I never wanted, some of my colleagues do that when you have an opera then they ask the students also to design an opera. I never want that. That was from the beginning, we talk about a hypothesis on the city and we try to do things that do not exist yet and that give it a wider field of meaning and experimentation. And then I think you do something as a university that makes sense, that has a public responsibility, and that gives students the opportunity to research together. Normally in architectural schools, you get a task to make a house. It's good to do that in your bachelor, but in masters you have to explore the sense and nonsense of architecture and the role of architecture in the world. And if you would be a doctor and in your masters you go to a place and you research with that professor innovation of your heart, so why don't we as architects also see that kind of model that you do research, that people are part of that, and that thus they learn. And the good part of European masterships at the moment is that you can with Erasmus etc. you can go around. So the other thing that I thought was important for teaching is this agenda, but also to say with that, go around, go find a lunatic in Turkey or in Gutenberg that is crazy or mad about wood or about animals to work with, and then go to this other lunatic in Delft or in Prague that wants to explore the future city. So I chose with that, I know, but I see that the beauty of studying is trying to go along with more people and to cultivate a certain kind of depth through the collective research. And how to combine an individual in it might be a question from you. I always ask what a student would like to do within that, and everybody has his or her different parts, and I always say it has to be complimentary or it has to be comparative. There are two ways of dealing with how an individual can be positioned in the larger picture. And last but not least, I think what would be very helpful for students is that they can publicize so that they always end up with a book or with a publication or with an exhibition that goes around where your name is on and where you are part of this wider agenda. And that gives them more attention and hopefully also more portfolio and it becomes part of a kind of public discourse also.