Architype Dialogue presents

NOMENA Arquitectos

What was the most difficult issue about working on a building that focuses on religion, or the most unexpected challenge that may have influenced new thought in your project?

To make a building capable of orchestrating an experience that makes man aware of the divine beyond any particular religious belief.  In order to achieve that we had to do away with deliberately symbolic forms and rather resort on more essential architectonic devices like the promenade, an enclosure, verticality, matter and light.

Did this project expand or evolve your role as an architect in any way? In general, do you feel that the role of the architect is changing on current projects?

We like to think of an architect more like a renassaince character: jack of all, master of none.  An architect is not only someone that makes buildings, but tries to builds thoughts which can then be channeled through different mediums.  This takes time though, and time is scarce in a world where every craft tends to specialization and knowledge gets compartmentalized.

How is your design aesthetic possible today in a way that it may not have been before and how have trends in technology and society inspired new thought and solutions?

A design aesthetic is not of particular interest.  The formal result is the one that can express the idea in the bluntest way.  An architecture with the least amount of adjectives.

In the context of this project, how is your office and design process being influenced by current trends in academic curricula and incoming young architects? In turn, how are current projects and processes guiding the ongoing reformulation and development of academic curricula?

The younger generations are less dogmatized, open mided, unbiased.  Which is not to say that everything is valid.  Quite the opposite: critical distance.