01.02.2014

A conversation with Arch. Miguel Arruda

01.02.2014

A conversation with Arch. Miguel Arruda

'We take visual perception for granted, while the tactile sense is not so present, which is something that one discovers in sculpture.’

You took a degree in Sculpture (1968) and only much later you took the one in Architecture (1989). Why was that?

I always wanted to be an architect but I failed mathematics and physics in the 7th year of school and, in order not to waste time, I took the entrance exam to the then School of Fine Arts, where the courses of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture existed. In the area of Sculpture and Painting, as it was only necessary the 5th year of school, I entered for Sculpture, because it was the area that seemed to me the closest to Architecture. Then, I calmly failed mathematics and physics more times, and when I passed I was already on the 3rd year of Sculpture and was pleasantly surprised. I had never thought about sculpture. I drew… At the age of 17, I participated in the 2nd Gulbenkian Foundation Art Exhibition, where they accepted one of my drawings, asked me to frame it and give it a price, and by the time I arrived at the exhibition it had already been bought. About 40 years later, the person who bought it, Eng. Torres, the founder of the Gravura, very kindly exchanged that drawing for others, because I would like to keep it. With Sculpture, I discovered some things that were very important to me. We have a complex sensorial reality, we have the visual perception as a given, while the tactile sense, which is extremely important, is not so present, and is something that is discovered in sculpture. The very discovery of materials and the physical relationship with what we are creating seduces me a lot. In relation to architecture, I don’t like to go to sleep with matters that I haven’t solved yet, so the issue of architecture has always been present. After sculpture, design followed, then interiors, and finally I took a course in architecture at the age of 50. I didn’t know that architecture was going to take up so much of my time. It’s a bit of a cannibalistic activity, it has a great complexity, we have to dialogue with a set of disciplines on a set of subjects, and this is very violent. But I really like what I do.

With the Escultura Habitável [habitable sculpture] that you’ve created, you put two “passions” together in one work. How did you come up with this idea?

Escultura Habitável is the enlargement of a piece I made in 1968. According to Dr. António Mega Ferreira, then president of the Centro Cultural de Belém, who was the one who allowed the piece to be placed in the CCB, he considered that this piece is a form that I’ve always carried with me. It is a sculpture with anthropomorphic roots, whose forms are implicit in the human body, according to my sculptural path. The Escultura Habitável resulted from a pretension of mine, and of the people who work with me, to check certain spatial tensions. Delfim Sardo said that, while at hand scale, it was a manipulable piece; after being expanded, in 2010, it became penetrable. And it’s true. I wanted to know what it felt like being inside that shape, and outside of it, and when entering or leaving it. There is a certain Cartesian western fixation in relation to the cube, as opposed to a more introspective eastern idea of the sphere, which has a lot to do with me. I wanted to experience what it felt like to be inside a shape with those circular and materical characteristics, even more as it was made of cork, which is a material with a very interesting tactile sense. It was this curiosity that led us to make that experience, which made me realize a number of things important to our work.

You are also very attached to design. Tell us a little about the recent exhibition at MUDE.

It was an invitation made to me by Dr. Bárbara Coutinho, director of MUDE, which follows the “Habitable Sculpture”, which in turn took me to the Milan Triennale, in 2012. The Museum has very interesting features. It was a challenge, it had about five thousand visitors; media coverage was positive; and the international repercussion also, some people from abroad came to see it, which earned me an invitation to an exhibition in Gent, Belgium, in September. In May I will exhibit again in Milan, and already in January there was a design exhibition in Basel, with Movecho.

Besides sculpture, architecture and design, there was also time for an academic career. Was it also an important component of your activity?

Yes, I became a Full Professor, I’ve been President of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon for four years, and I closed my teaching activity because the studio needed me to be more present. It also took a long time for me and there was no financial possibility at the time, as there is today, of making my academic career compatible with my professional activity, which is a pity.

What are the main differences in your way of working today and when you started your profession?

When I started working there were no computers, so there is an unavoidable difference. But after getting it right with that tool, things returned to some normality. The challenges today are more complex, the situations are different and we also have to adapt, some even have to reinvent themselves. We cannot live today as we used to because we don’t live in the same way and obviously we shouldn’t build in the same way. But the evolution has been positive and I think the challenges are more and more complex, more demanding, but also more interesting. Here, on this western beach of Europe, we have an added difficulty that still consists of some isolation, so it is essential to relate internationally.

What is it like to work with BETAR? And how did you receive the nomination for the Mies Van der Rohe Award in 2010?

At the Arade Congress Center, a project I did with BETAR, more specifically with Eng. José Pedro Venâncio, a very proactive and fruitful partnership took place regarding the relationship between architecture and engineering. BETAR has a great experience as an engineering company but it also has a great experience of dialogue with architecture, and this magazine is proof of that. It is very rewarding for architects to work with BETAR because it is an effective partner, not only for the depth of technical knowledge it has, but also for the ability to understand all the issues surrounding the architectural plan. Mies Van der Rohe is a very important award. We have been mentioned with the square D. Diogo Menezes, which, associated with some regularity of our presence in publications of the specialty abroad, had and still has a strong meaning.

This interview is part of the Arts & Letters Magazine #50, February 2014
Partially automatic translation from Portuguese: some expressions may differ from their actual meaning.

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