Chapter 1 of 24
The House. Close Up
The next project that I would talk about is the Carlson-Reges residence which is the most recently completed project of ROTQ Architects. I would like to talk about the process of designing and building buildings. ROTQ was started in1991 primarily to explore, among other things, the working relationship of people within the office with the intent of questioning the nature of authorship. Traditionally there's a sole author, or authorship is given to one, without truly acknowledging the fact that architecture, the production of architecture, is a collective enterprise. What we were interested in attempting to do, through the questioning of authorship, was to be non-proprietary about the ideas that become present in the office when there's focus on a particular project. What that means is, the bigger idea is placed out on the table so to speak, and then everyone in the office that's working on the project, which includes in all of the work myself, Clark Stevens my partner, and our senior associate who helped start ROTQ, Brian Reiff. We have other architects and we always have a large contingent, four, eight interns working in the office which is done not to have cheap labour but to keep an educational component always present, so that we keep the office as a teaching practice as well as having a conventional practice. By learning how to incorporate each other's processes and ideas in the project, we've learned how to incorporate the interests and ideas of the client, the interests and ideas of all of the craftsmen and all of the consultants that are working with us on the project, in ways that give everybody proprietary roles and interest in the project. It becomes, in effect, what we all hoped to achieve in the 60s, a community. In this case it becomes a co-operative, collaboration for design, truly a collaboration. The unique way which each of us has which comes from our own experiences - and our experiences place also certain hierarchy of values on what we bring to the table because of that prior experience - becomes a basis for evaluating and assessing which ideas remain present when we're trying to construct a communal system.