Awarded the AR Emerging Peter Davey Prize in 2020, Philippines-based Khadka + Eriksson Furunes discuss the politics of aesthetics and celebrating the unknown
Why did you become architects?
Architecture is both an aesthetic and a political activity. The questions of how, why, and what we build are negotiations of competing intentions, interests and values. As such, the resolution of these questions is necessarily about the politics of our aesthetics. We are interested in expanding the diversity of voices represented in this discourse.
Your practice requires extensive dialogue and exchanges with others. How has your way of working changed the way you think about buildings?
Whether architects or not, we all have the power to build and to determine the values and meanings embodied in our built environment. Knowledge is a form of power, and seeing architecture as a process allows us to create a space for the sharing of knowledge. Everyone has experience, ideas or expertise they can contribute. Yet the impediments are the tools and the language through which our thoughts and ideas about architecture are processed, communicated. We begin each project from a point of humility and empathy. Through our work, we try to contextualise these tools so that communities engage in the design process through a mutual sharing of knowledge.
The word ‘community’ is overused in the discipline, yet it is essential to your practice. How do you understand and utilise it?
The term community is often romanticised or oversimplified: an assumption everyone is the same. For us, a community is a group of people coming together for a common cause. It refers to how they journey together to address a need, an issue or an ambition. We normally use the term to describe the people who live in the situation where a project takes place, but with an understanding that people within a community have different interests and are situated differently within complex social relationships. The process of collaboration aims to make these differences visible, and to build on them by making space for everyone to contribute. Ideas are developed slowly to make sure everyone is involved. Working in smaller groups and comparing what we make creates friction. This is where the really interesting ideas can be found. Creativity is the outcome of working with frictions and challenges that we face when translating ideas into action.
What works of architecture have been particularly influential for you?
We are inspired by the unknown and everyday architecture we find around us. Most vernacular architecture is a direct expression of the life and climate that it is embedded within. Growing up, we took it for granted because it was part of our lives, and that is perhaps the strength of this architecture. It is not only about the material or the structure, but also the processes by which it is built, maintained and transformed.
Who are the people outside the field of architecture that you look up to and why?
Addressing asymmetrical power relationships and inequalities in participatory processes is a challenge. It involves the hierarchy of knowledge whereby knowledge is conveyed from the expert, often assigned as the architect, to the layperson. We are inspired by how others transform such one-way relationships into relationships of mutuality. Paulo Freire defined knowledge as something that can emerge out of a dialogic interaction between students and teacher, rather than being deposited in the minds of the students by the teacher. In other fields, Augusto Boal and Orlando Fals Borda also come to mind.
If you could choose your next project, what would it be?
We are interested in seeing how mutual support can play a role in the design and construction of emerging collective housing typologies: finding ways of living together that span multiple generations, social classes, backgrounds, occupations and living arrangements. It would be a challenge to address these conditions, but it is necessary. We are also looking to create more community libraries: social infrastructures for creative thought. Beyond these typologies, we are driven by the willingness to work with others and collectively make something unexpected, unpredictable.
