"We already had the installation ready for Design Variations 2020 . It would be titled Silence and its goal was to bring the gaze back to what is already there. It would have been a mirror of water in the center of the Courtyard of Honor that reflected the image of Palazzo Litta. It seemed more than enough to communicate that what we need is already here and we just have to find a way to see and use it . Then the pandemic and the sudden obsolescence of the idea of silence. We have already had a lot ... "

A beach in the Baroque, on the other hand, has left a different mark.

We changed our path and wanted to focus on reusing universal images: the cabin, the ice cream cart, the beach. It is not a pop quote, it is a widespread and legible idea of lightness in the middle of the courtyard of a Baroque palace. A building that has the ability to overcome its function and remain in a permanent condition , crossing the centuries. This is the great ecological lesson of European architecture.

Not giving architecture functions also seems to be a response to the time of confinement and the pandemic.

It is very important to go ahead and find a workable lightness again. But we must not forget what we have learned. For architecture, it has become very clear how much private space has been neglected from the point of view of the project: the condition of many people in the last year has depended exclusively on what type of house they have. We need to take back the private space. And the problem is very simple: the rooted idea of functional living is also in the laws and bureaucracies that regulate the construction of buildings and their distribution. We need more freedom to live in environments that can change, that inhabitants can appropriate.

Functioning space also has to do with the emotional relationship between inhabitants and houses.

Giving a function is a contemporary concept . In historic buildings, the rooms changed use according to needs and times. A monastery was born to house a religious community, then a barracks, then a hotel. Instead today we live in spaces without any freedom, because the law decides everything, we are forced to live in a unique way. But it is clear that this is a design attitude that no longer interests anyone . So why continue on this path?

Does the radical need to bet on freedom stem from the rules and laws in which architecture is constrained?

Life cannot be normalized: this is what we understand. The norm is a deadly bore . We must reflect on how to bring more freedom into the conception of private space, of the normal homes of normal people . The need for freedom is the strongest urgency that emerged during the pandemic.

Could a lesser definition of the boundaries between outside and inside be a solution?

This is the easiest answer. We are following a project on the outskirts of Lisbon for a residential complex: in practice there are thirty gardens on which as many apartments open. It was certainly not a difficult job. But we have to worry about more "normal" architectures. How can we bring a certain measure of freedom in small houses, in confined spaces, in pre-existing buildings. I imagine buildings with spaces that are all the same inhabited in different ways according to who occupies them . Each with its own language, with functions that interconnect and change. And the first thing to do is to make the norm flexible, to smooth out functional boundaries. And so we return to the classic idea of European architecture, immanent, resistant, ecological . A building that is occupied by people and not by functions.