Well, thank you all for that lovely long applause. Thank you very much, Leticia, for inviting me to be in conversation with David Chipperfield here this evening. I'm Alice Rawsthorn, and I'm delighted to join you all at Fundación MOP this evening. In the conversation with David, we're going to talk about the future of two phenomena that are very close to his art: design and Galicia. David is undoubtedly one of the leading architects of our time. He was brought up on a farm in southwest England and studied architecture in London in the 1970s before working for Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. He opened David Chipperfield Architects in London in 1985. His firm has won over 100 international awards, including the Neues Museum and Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Museo Jumex in Mexico City, and Kunsthaus Zürich. Current projects include the London School of Economics Global Hub and the National Archeological Museum in Athens. David has received the Pritzker Prize, a knighthood, the Premium Imperiale, and was named Galician of the Year in 2019. He and his family discovered Galicia over 30 years ago, spending summers here, and he established Fundación RIA in Santiago in 2017. A few weeks ago, he opened Casa RIA, housing the foundation, his Santiago office, a public exhibition space, and the restaurant A Cantina. We'll begin with a whistle stop tour by David on his work and perspective on architecture. Over to you.
Thank you, Alice. Just before we chat, I want to explain the apparent shift in my interests from conventional architectural practice to what we're doing here. This image of Doha shows cities shaped by investment rather than human needs—we build housing but not communities. However, there's now understanding about sustainability and inequality. As architects, we still believe in making beautiful, purposeful buildings that contribute to the environment. The Jumex museum aimed to create a public building from a private collection; the America's Cup building in Valencia sought to become a public hub. The Neues Museum taught me about collaboration—the architect is not the singular author but gives voice to others. Increasingly, we renovate existing buildings. Fundamentally, architecture can improve our daily quality of life, whether in streets, squares, housing, or schools. That brings me to Galicia, where our house in Corrubedo represents a romantic celebration of nature and community. That's the introduction.
Well, and lovely to begin it with a celebration of romance. And what a view! How did you discover Galicia initially?
It was an accident. I was in a conference in Milan, and an architect, Manolo Gallego, told me to bring my children to Galicia. We came to Corrubedo and stayed.
Why did you find Galicia so engaging and why has it continued to intrigue and engage you over the years?
Apart from the beautiful view, I think from our perspective, we live in London, which has been very exciting but full of excess. It was sobering to be in a community with a sense of reality. The quality of life here is not artificially suspended; you don't have to buy it. There's a certain quality from daily realities, enjoyment of place and people. As we understand the problems of consumption, Galicia offers a perspective on how to be more modest with ideas of quality of life.
Galicia has provided the location for a project that's been of great importance in enabling you to embrace the changes in architectural practice and in our economic, political, and social reality. That's the foundation of Fundación RIA in Santiago. How and why did it begin?
I suppose we came here for holidays, but the more time I spent here, the more I got irritated by the erosion of quality. The previous president, Alberto Feijóo, asked what should be done. He thought a handbook on materials and colors, but I said it's more than architecture—it's about public space destroyed by traffic and empty buildings. So I could look at these issues with the eyes of an architect but beyond normal responsibility. The foundation started to occupy ambiguous territory that seems a gap in administration. We ended up involved in traffic, empty buildings, and keeping young people in towns. It's about the connectivity between decisions that need to be made better.
How has your experience of working with the Foundation on issues like this influenced your personal perspective on architecture and the way you practice it?
When I showed the first image, it's partly because I wanted to bring that to the table. I haven't given up architecture. I still believe the quality of buildings and the physical environment is fundamental to our quality of life. We've been pushed towards designing singular buildings, but we need the picture within which those buildings contribute. We can't make a city out of single things. There has to be an idea about what a town should be about. If the village gets worse every year, why would young people stay? It's fundamental.
Architecture is about improving quality of lives. You can't just do it within a building. The Foundation has allowed my general practice to address issues of responsibility in sustainability and social concerns. There's a shift in the profession towards these issues. The Foundation is at the sharp end of this shift, doing things in a more radical way than the rest of the practice, but the rest of the practice is also shifting. In the last three or four years, I've seen an enormous shift, not just by us, but by clients.
The latest development for the Foundation and your work within Galicia is, of course, the opening of Casa RIA in Santiago. How will the Foundation develop as a result of that?
I think one of the things that we, as a team, have experienced is that for many years we were three or four, now we're eight, but we are doing so many projects. I've spent my whole life being an architect, which often makes you unpopular. It's a very promotional and competitive profession. It's been hugely relaxing and enjoyable not to be selling yourself, but the team is trying to act in people's advantage. We have no political or commercial agenda. Casa RIA allows us to provoke questions and promote discussions without necessarily having to complete them ourselves. It's a house of dialogue. We opened it a few weeks ago. It has an exhibition space, we will have continuous exhibitions and conferences, and we're trying to set up research programs with universities like Yale and the London School of Economics. We can bring people from outside to work on issues here. There's a potential transfer of knowledge. Already we have people from Switzerland on our board advising us. This gives the Foundation an opportunity it hasn't had before.
