the starters
the starters
Architecture Without Ego
A budding Manila-based architectural practice seeks to create places not just spaces
Interview Kanto Journal
What’ s the story behind the name? Adrian Tumang, partner: We wanted a name that sticks.( If this is your first question, I think we just succeeded!) Naming the firm after the partners is lazy and unimaginative. The name itself should capture our philosophy as architects.
As a starting point, we asked ourselves what kind of architecture we want to create, and it ' s“ architecture with empathy”. And we just happened to like the accidental acronym it formed— AWE. Without the acronym, it ' s hardly memorable. We played with other words to replace ' empathy ', but nothing else would fit. Then one night at a coffee shop, we thought,“ Hey, [ all this time ] we’ ve been asking what architecture should have, but maybe we should ask what architecture should NOT have.” And the first word that came to mind was ' ego '. Architecture should be without ego.
Why ego? Are architects naturally egotistic? Many architects who came of age after the publication of Ayn Rand’ s The Fountainhead have adopted the view of the architect as an epic hero, the omniscient hand that shapes the world according to his vision. The idea is reinforced by a design education that sees architecture as a top-down process of creating a physical object or a container of human activity, a view no longer shared by the progressive world. Our perceptive board reviewer, architect Emilio Ozaeta, who sees and“ experiences” angels, wrote that architecture involves the study of complex human interaction with the designed environment beyond human activities and needs. Recognizing these interactions hinges on feelings of empathy, of putting oneself in another’ s shoes. It’ s the enemy of the ego.
AWE doesn’ t sound ego-less at all. How do you reconcile these conflicting values?
' Awe ' means a sense of reverent wonder or fearful delight. The places that touch us most are those that evoke reverence for forces greater than us. To create such places requires a parallel fear of the laws of nature like gravity and entropy, and all things sacred and divine. Fear makes us better designers. We need to fear the impacts of our work more than we love the idea that drives it. When we abandon fear, we stop becoming agents of awe.
05 53