Hidden Architecture was created in February 2015 between Madrid and Liverpool by Alberto Martínez García and Héctor Rivera Bajo. The project aims to create an atlas of architecture, parallel to the pro-official in order to replicate the discourse and the well-accepted understanding of historiography of architecture built up by themselves. As stated in the project’s official Manifesto, “Hidden Architecture is resistance, an attempt to make visible the difference in architectural practice and provide a deserved value to certain projects and concepts subtracted from the academic narrative.”

In this interview we discuss with the founder the genesis of the project and the potential of digital publishing.

KOOZ What prompted the project 'Hidden Architecture'?

HA We began in 2015, once we had finished our degrees in architecture, and we were starting to work. In the beginning, we were guided by intuition in some respects that later would become the ideological core of Hidden Architecture. First, we both had research and archive background from our thesis projects that we wanted to organize and publish. Second, the change from the academic to the working world was drastic in the way we think like architects. The acceleration of the working pace and learning against the clock made us more radical when we had to face this research project. We also became more rigorous with its materialization. Otherwise, we could not have coordinated our work as editors and practitioners.

Finally, we got bored with the online publications that used to visit at that time. Excluding some remarkable exceptions, most of the websites published the same buildings without any critical approach, filter, or editorial policy. We thought there was some room for something different. Other online publications we found very interesting were mostly focused on theoretical or historical discourses. On the other hand, we wanted to publish architectural projects that were not widely published yet.

KOOZ You define the project as an act of "resistance" could you explore this notion further?

HA The act of resistance is extensive and has many angles for each of use. If we had to narrow down this concept, we would say that we attempt a resistance against the self-satisfaction to certain discourses because they fit with other interests beyond architecture. "Sustainable Architecture," which has been among us during the last two decades, is an excellent example of this. Whereas the original intention is praiseworthy due to the severe damage climate change is provoking on the planet, architects have used it as an excuse to varnish and whitewash bad buildings. Some designers (from small studios to corporate offices) are doing great work attempting to reduce the carbon footprint of the buildings. Still, the final discourse leftover is to apply out of context techniques that most of the time are self-defeating but work to be published on specific sites. We created a series named Ungreen where we attempt to create a resistance against these dogmas by recovering from the ancestral knowledge shared among generations throughout the history of humanity and defining how urban settlements have adapted to its weather conditions.

KOOZ What do you classify as Hidden Architectures? What parameters do you use to define the various case studies?

HA The concept of "hidden architecture" is very relative. We are aware that it depends entirely on the culture and education of each person, the context in which someone develops as an architect and the cultural and social structures that this education "installs" in each of us. A certain reference can be very shocking because it is unknown to us, but on the contrary it can be fundamental for someone who has studied in a distant country or under another educational model or reference. Throughout history, the official narratives have given priority to, built and spread an occidentalised discourse, placing in the centre of their discourses the works and authors of very determined countries, while they have relegated many others to the periphery and even to oblivion. Some, we do not know if the most fortunate or the least, have been treated with a certain paternalistic or colonialist condescension, being interpreted and valued on the basis of an exoticism of their features. It always seemed right to us from the beginning to try to strip ourselves of the dogmas that we accumulated throughout our studies to be able to appreciate and value works of architecture and its elements independently of questions of style, period, or physical context. Sometimes it is difficult and we ourselves make the mistakes we intend to leave behind, but this attitude has led us to fabulous discoveries, even rediscoveries.

KOOZ How do you source and collect the individual drawings and images?

HA Mainly through archives, foundations, or periodicals that have currently disappeared or are out of print. Sometimes we have been able to collect the material and even the testimony directly from the authors, or their direct heirs, which is very gratifying and enriches greatly the approach we can make to each work. Unfortunately, a very high proportion of what we publish is the work of authors who have already passed away, so we must resort to secondary sources and look for ways of research and dissemination that others have traced in the past. This also has its interest, an enormous one. We believe that the criteria for publication in the media are, and always have been, highly ideological and determined by parameters that sometimes have little to do with the objective quality of the works. Approaching publications from past decades with this premise, and also with the vision of someone living in the year 2020, can offer us many clues as to why certain architects were elevated by historiographies and why others were not.

KOOZ What drew you to the space of the digital as a means of sharing your atlas?

HA We understand the digital space as an open and non-hierarchical one, with a rhizomatic structure if you like, ideal to facilitate access to knowledge to anyone with Internet access. One of the main motivations that we have had since our beginnings was to try to facilitate and make available the knowledge we got, to other people who may not have that possibility. There are many people who do not live near a library, or an architectural bookstore, or who simply cannot afford access to quality education. Why should these people be trained as architects with more limited references, with much more impoverished references than those whose social and economic status is better? Once we are architects, we must all be clear that our objective must be to serve society, and to this end we should all have the same possibilities of access to knowledge. Now the situation has improved considerably, but when we started Hidden Architecture in 2015 it was much more complicated to access the work of certain authors, works of great quality, through the Internet. And we are all aware that a large part of what is published on the Internet, and can have massive media acceptance, are works of very poor quality. We do not want to put ourselves in that position of intellectual superiority to say "that's worthless", because we would certainly be wrong, but we want to offer an alternative discourse accessible to all that simply says "this may also interest you". We could discuss the reasons leading curricula, universities or even the media to try to define what kind of architect is acceptable to be today, and what interests and values lie behind that, but of course it is a complex issue that would extend the limits of this interview.

KOOZ What are your most important sources and tools of reference?

HA Beyond the more traditional historiographic sources, which we have already commented on in a previous response, we have great confidence in social networks as a source and tool for the transmission of knowledge. They present the disadvantage that anything goes there, and it is necessary to have a minimum criterion and knowledge to be able to distinguish what is really valuable from what is anecdotal. Once this obstacle has been overcome, they are an inexhaustible source of references and clues and, especially, a very powerful tool for contacting realities that are very far from us. Our main objective with Hidden Architecture in a few years will be to build a critical community that uses cooperation to claim the value of certain architectural practices, past and also contemporary. We have started to develop different modalities of collaboration with different people not belonging to Hidden Architecture, but who share with us that critical vision about current publications. Some of these collaborations have been occasional, and others have evolved into series on a particular theme. For us, this is a scenario of opportunities with great potential. In the future we would like one of the main sources of Hidden Architecture to be the voice of multiple external collaborators, who complement the Atlas with their specialised knowledge about a certain reality that is unknown to us. This idea of cooperation has a lot to do with the relativity of the Hidden Architecture concept. In this globalized world, a univocal and unidirectional voice is meaningless, even less so when the aim is precisely to claim the value of the local, of the specific and problematic against the homogenisation based on dominant patterns.

KOOZ Should you have to pick one image which has significantly influenced your work, what would this be and why?

HA The topic of the images and the use made of them is something that is of particular interest to us. On the one hand, it is obvious that architects work with images to communicate. Without them our message could not reach people. However, on many occasions the image goes from being the medium to becoming the message itself, and we find that dangerous. Since we started our editorial work at Hidden Architecture, we have learned a lot about images, how to use them in different media, to intuit which images will work best and why, which structures or compositional elements make people feel a greater fixation on one image or another... There is a lot written about this, but it is exciting to discover the use of the image in an empirical way in media that are a priori as non-hierarchical as social networks. Our desire would be to be able, one day, to completely detach ourselves from an aesthetically intended use of the image. To be able to analyse and describe architectural works or experiences that do not focus on the visual, that their frozen presence in an image is not a fundamental starting point for assessing their value. The experience of the architectural act goes far beyond the limits of photography. Approaching architecture by giving priority to this approach and neglecting others is reductionist and wrong. To do so for spurious purposes or dishonest attitudes is completely reprehensible. If we had to choose an image as a reference, we would choose the negation of the visual. For example, the work "The Black Square" by Karl Malévich.

KOOZ How important is the act of collecting for the architect?

HA We think it is crucial. Architects are professionals who base, or should do, their ability to act on the collection of moments lived throughout their life. These experiences, some real, others virtual, coming from cultural manifestations such as literature or cinema, make up the basic grammar that we architects use. We do not intend here to deny the existence of an innate talent for the discipline of architecture, but we are more inclined to think that the capacity of architects is directly related to their cultural background and their critical capacity. We like very much a statement that says something like that imagination is the delirium of a technique. We understand that this state of delirium can only be reached when the technique is widely mastered. To do this, we architects must be enriched by our own experiences and by experiences taken from others. We collect experiences to be able to extract from their analysis and reconfiguration operational strategies that allow us to solve specific problems. Serving society.

Bio

Alberto Martínez García (Madrid, Spain, 1988) is an architect graduated from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM) and Master of Architecture II post-professional degree from The Cooper Union (New York). Currently living and working in New York, he has previously worked and lived in Shanghai, Amsterdam, Portugal, England, and Madrid. His interests include the importance of history in contemporary architecture, the evolution of housing, and the expression of contemporary culture on a small scale such as interior and product design.

Héctor Rivera Bajo (Ciudad Real, Spain, 1987) is an architect from the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Alcalá (ETSAUAH). After some years of studying and working at Lisboa and Madrid, he lives in Zürich. His interests are focused on the use of certain spatial patterns within the domesticity realm to trace Territorial Hierarchies and produce identity by social and community space. This approach to the Infrastructural Nature of Architecture must be considered from a critical attitude in regard to architectural historiography.