INTERVIEW / December
area. If there are two of us in the room,
it’s impossible to use the toilet, you end
up disturbing the other person. I think
all of these ‘exercises’ in opening up the
bathroom are completely foolish.
From the perspective of architecture,
which are the must-see places in
the world?
My husband and I travel to see all of the
new places, and those are very definite
destinations. For example, because
I’m currently working on the Zuzeum
private museum in Riga, I went to see
the recently opened Louvre Abu Dhabi
designed by French architect Jean
Nouvel. I was also in Paris and took a look
at the new Philharmonie de Paris. We
were just in Helsinki, where a completely
new museum has been situated in a
restored cinema. We’ve been to the
Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, where we
Planning a house is a very
intimate process. I’m like a
family doctor, a psychologist
heard Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Every
spring we visit the biennales in Venice,
and, of course, we look at all of the new,
restored, or reconstructed museums.
You travel quite a bit!
Yes, but not as an end in itself. We work
a lot, so we have to see a lot. Right
now, as I’m designing the Zuzeum and
the New Riga Theatre, I’m looking at
all kinds of theatres. For example, my
entire architecture office took a trip to
Warsaw, where Krzysztof Warlikowski
has his theatre in an old factory. Then
I was in Tallinn to see the Tallinn
City Theatre. I made a special tour of
Moscow’s theatres, and I went to the
Netherlands to study theatre technology
and acoustics, seeing as it’ll be the Dutch
setting up the acoustics at the New Riga
Theatre. Together we walked through
the theatres, the fly lofts, the backstage
areas. Usually these are trips with a
specific goal; we send ourselves on a
business trip.
The German historian Oswald Spengler,
whom you mention in one of your
publications, said that the soul of a
building and a person are one and the
same. Do you agree with him, when
you’re designing each new building?
I have very many clients building private
homes, and, in order to build these
homes, we need to become almost as
close as family with the people who’ll be
living in them. We devote a lot of time
and energy in getting to know each
other, in becoming friends. I visit them
to see how they live, what they like, what
they don’t like. We have very many con-
versations. We even travel together. And
I often hit the bull’s eye quite quickly; I
understand exactly what this particular
family needs almost on the first try.
Planning a house is a very intimate
process. I’m like a family doctor, a
psychologist. For example, I know who
sleeps on which side of the bed, what
their bathroom routines are, where each
partner keeps his or her medicines, who
takes showers, who prefers taking baths
and gazing out the window and who
reads or listens to music in the bath tub.
I know their habits in the kitchen, how
they come through the door with their
arms full of groceries, and how far they
need to walk to the refrigerator.
In the past, no one gave any thought to
these things when building big apart-
ment blocks, but nowadays people are at
their wit’s end about where to store their
belongings. People have so many things
today, all sorts of hobbies: fishing, skiing,
and so on. If you don’t design space for
all of those things, life quickly becomes
chaos. For example, here in Ķīpsala, I
never have stuff lying around, because
I have my archive space, my space for
winter and ski clothing, a root cellar.
People nowadays have big wardrobes,
lots of clothes, perhaps too many. In
many new homes we even design
chutes for dirty laundry – the Danes
taught me that. Just toss the clothes in,
and they fall directly into the laundry
room. It’s also important to have a good
light by the bed if the residents are in
the habit of reading. And a correctly
placed television.
These design decisions usually lead
to discussions, and the families I design
houses for sometimes even start argu-
ing a bit when I ask, for example, how
much TV they watch, do they eat while
they watch TV, are they actually going to
light a fire in the fireplace. I can’t solve
people’s problems with a well-designed
house, but I can help them. For example,
a family dining table unites people if it’s
correctly placed in the home. bo