Viar Estudio

Several main intentions guide the way we work. The first is the search for an idea to guide every project, because we pretend to develop an architecture based on the concept and not in form. The shape is a consequence. A multidisciplinary team works through a system of layers, which decants each project’s idea by a slow approach, finding the idea little by little, carving it. First is the thought, the speculation, the reflection from the origin; then, the confrontation with reality, the design and construction.

Experience and experimentation, common sense and risk are part of our style of work. A careful reading of the status of each project, of its circumstances and specificity, give us the keys to find the idea. We always think from the origin, looking at the origin. (No preset ideas)

Constructive logic and also what we call construct action are essential to build on our projecting experience. Construct is build, is to make an edifice, but in its most intimate sort is to merge elements under construction laws. What then is to project? Projecting and constructing for us are the same action.

Each project is an adventure, a journey of which we only know the beginning and we don’t even suspect its end, the various possible ends. We are interested in the route, in the force of thought, so the studio is involved in each project, seeks risks, fail, experiment, innovate … gets dirty as Karl Kraus (The task of the artist) said: “The artistic painter and the broad brush painter have in common the fact that they get their hands dirty at work. Exactly what distinguishes a journalist from a writer”.

Some ideas about our work 

Architecture is so complex that trying to explain it is no worth. Even so, we have three main concerns, while we design and think Architecture (already quoted in Aarhus project), which are:

LIGHT AND SHADOW.

Architecture is linked to Light, to light and shadow. We are concerned on the plastic or visual values of architecture, on the entangled path between architecture and light. Talk on light is also talk about it’s hollowing, the voiding or emptying of light: which is the shadow. We (the architects) don´t create light, we produce shadows and atmospheres. We are into the architecture that receives, spreads light and creates atmospheres.

NEGATIVE SPACES.

Light IS Space, and our work tries to create quality spaces.

To create the space we, architects, are used to design interiors, to empty masses, to void, and then we think in the interior. We are changing or improving this point of view, we are into what we call the NEGATIVE SPACES, they are the inverse or reverse. They can also be named as convex spaces. We are interested on what is the OUTSIDE of the interior. This is what we also aim to design as mirror spaces.

IMAGE AND SIGN

To summarize this idea -difficult task-, we believe that architecture moves among two main topics; image and sign. Image means the duplicate, the view, the representation of the object; Sign means an associated idea, concept. This is the difference between visual and conceptual perception. We are talking about the purely optic, visual understanding of architecture or the conceptual, abstract, linked to ideas, full of relations understanding of our work. We try to play both games; create architectural images and signs, deal with objects and ideas.

PLAINNESS & SIMPLICITY

We try to design and adress to a clear architecture instead of to complex one. As Joseph Tainter says, complex societies tend to collapse.That´s why we think Architecture must answer to our complex society, but with simple solutions. As Ockham´s Razor principle quaotes “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected”. Because of that, we search for plainness and simplicity in our solutions. But we also endorse and claim for a “complex and contradictory” architecture, fertile on ideas, meanings and suggestions, spacial quality, the fullfillment of light or the richness of meanings. 

• Mosque in Reykjavik