Collage Manifesto

Abstract

Collage mentality pervades our work. We are interested in spaces of contradiction, unexpected associations and disruptions of meaning. We aim to transform reality with the minimum means. Collage use elements borrowed from reality, then employ them against it, aiming to attack everyday banalities, habits and formalities. These elements are brought together in a semiotic collision, undermining the role of consciousness, subjectivity and all questions of style. Architecture tries to remain archetypical, to not belong to any specific period or style.

Collage as a technique facilitates the synthesis of oppositions in the built work; in essence, it originates from the power of the readymade. It aims at the uncanny connotations and subversive power that contradictory elements can create together. Influences like Warhol, Man Ray, Cadavre Exquis, Tarantino, Koolhaas's early works: simple, sharp and simultaneous. The first collages were urban proposals, as they seemed to be the only instruments sensitive and accurate enough to grasp the complexity of the city. Reality, collective memory and political ideas contained inside carefully staged images that encourage critical reflection in the viewer.

Each project is a series of oppositional spaces existing in sequence, against or inside each other. The spaces are familiar but unexpected, just a step ahead of the usual. The only thing that matters is difference and complementarity. The relationships create a puzzle of history and tradition. We design the relationships, not the element.