To try to answer the question about how we understand research in relation to our professional practice, I would begin by recalling that in my opinion our practice is related on the one hand to the world of ideas that are transformed into matter, physical reality, and at the same time, it responds to social, external issues. Our place is in active dialogue with the outside, our work does not respond to our own demands, but to problems, questions that are posed to us.

In this context, starting from the origin, a project responds to a question, a problem that is proposed to us.
Here, analysis, reflection and knowledge are fundamental to progress. The research is an open research but applied to a question, in a place and under certain conditions… From here we must use all our intellectual and cognitive capacity to find the possibilities…

Therefore, I understand that our research capacity is based on two limits: one, to respond to external problems, and two, it is not a theoretical answer that is asked of us, it is practical, physical, reality.
The second part is therefore the encounter with matter, with space, with form. Here we encounter another world, that of technique, of action, which must also be frequented and appreciated by us.

In this context, research, which implies a capacity for action-oriented analysis in my opinion, is related to knowledge (a vague but synthetic concept).
The relationship of professional activity with academic and cultural activity in general, in my case, interests me as a way of increasing the cognitive capacity of our changing exterior. In our work, isolation is not always useful.

Notes from Scalae lecture, October 2023

Curator:
Anna Ramos, Director of the Mies van der Rohe Foundation Barcelona.
Félix Arranz, Architect and editor, Scalae.

Critical Panel: Claudi Aguiló, Mariona Benedito, María Buhigas, Mamen Domingo and Jaume Prat Ortells.