THE PIN–UP QUOTE: Eva Franch i Gilabert

There are two ways of waging wars: one is by throwing stones and one is by putting them next to each other. So the idea of throwing stones — the guerrilla — has proven to be the less effective. Let me give you an example: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s German pavilion, designed for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona. When the Spanish king Alfonso XIII arrived to inaugurate it, he found a space he had to enter tangentially. He tried to find the central space that architecture had always provided for him as someone who was entitled to be in the center of the universe, and suddenly he was lost in a plane of reflections and everyone standing on those slabs of marble suddenly became the center of their own universe. If one thinks of a building that brought democracy into architecture, so that no one can be the center of ceremony, this is it. Producing social and collective forms that are not just perpetuations of existing forms of power is why I’m interested in architecture. At OfficeUS, we’re interested in retelling history in such a way that we can be the kings of our own freedom.