Will Alsop

Will Alsop is one of the most renowned players in the contemporary world of architecture. With outstanding projects such as the Hotel Du Department Des Bouches-Du-Rhone he has gained international repute. Also his dedication to welfare projects shows that architecture is not only a vocation for him but a service to mankind.

Sandra Pfeifer (SP): Will Alsop, is it true that the first building you designed was a house for your mother in New Zealand?
Will Alsop (WA): That's true. I was about six or seven years old when I did these drawings. I found them in one of my mother's drawers after she died. I would say it was, what in the mid 50s they would have called „ultramodern“...It had a pitch roof, big what we would call picture windows, a terrace with a very 1950s style ballustrade around, double garage, of course. I wouldn’t say it was my best architectural work.
The reason why I wanted it to be be built in New Zealand ... I suppose it was the geographical location which was quite interesting - I have never been to New Zealand. I have only been to New Zealand two years ago for the first time. Obviously New Zealand must have captured my imagination at that time – or I just wanted to put my mother a long way away from me (laughs).

SP: Do you think about your buildings/projects often after you completed them? Are there some you come back to for a visit?

WA: I do. Not all of them. The buildings you are most proud of they are like your children in a way.
And you never forget of your children. And sometimes I do go back, walk around or climb past, depends where they are, just to see how things are and if people look happy in them. And they do.

SP: Can you imagine your buildings still around in 300 years?
WA: I don’t think any of my buildings will last three hundred years. In today’s society people don’t want to spend the money to make something last that long. Society is more transcient, it doesn’t expect it to be there forever.
The only possibility is if some heritage organisation decides it’s a really important piece of architecure and that way they decided to protect it. Then of course they have to spend the money to keep it there.

SP: What responsibility you think you have as an architect?
WA: What is your responsibility you carry as an architect?
That’s easy. I suppose my mission statement is to make life better. Which is also my responisbility if I can. To make life better for other people and for me of course.

SP: As an architect what does future mean to you?
WA: Future is always about change. And I think change is a sort of double-emotion. It is necessary to keep everyone alive but people at the same time are scared of change. They like to know.
What I noticed is when you show them someting new, that is different, they like that too.
When I think about future I think about two things: an ever evolving world, at the same time I dreamt that there are more people who would be happy to sit in a comfortable chair outside, smoking a cigarette, thinking about nothing at all.

SP: How important is self-humor for you?
WA: It is incredibly important. You have to see the deficiencies of what you are doing and the best way is to laugh at it.
If you take yourself over-seriously then you are not a good architect.

Check out my full interview with British architect Will Alsop in full English and German version for pool magazine n_23 / summer:
http://www.pool-mag.net/content1.html?id=538&iid=23