It’s been a couple of years now since I heard Argentinean architect Rafael Iglesia describe one of his projects as the attempt to produce a thing, not an object. A thing, he said, does not have a project, it has not been designed, but an object has.

I might have misunderstood what he meant, but I translated it as the difference between a chair and a stone. A chair is designed to be able to sit on it. A stone, if of the right size and form, may allow sitting on it, but was not designed as such. A thing has a life on its own, it has no purpose; only circumstances, e.i. use, make a thing become intentional.

Even though it might seem a paradox, the idea of designing a building as if it has not been designed remained in my mind. I wanted to achieve the status of those cases that are closer to nature than to artifice, even though they are obviously manmade, cases in which the consecutive layers of knowledge applied to a given question and the uninterrupted trial and error approach besieging a problem, have shaped answers efficiently and smoothly. Some archaic shoes, some antique vases or some primitive tools have erased the traces of their formation process up to the point of acquiring the capacity to fit life, naturally.
The VITRA job seemed from the very beginning to be the case to do a thing, not an object, something as natural and statement-free as a stone, but if of the appropriate size and form, able to perform as a building, in this case as a children workshop.

T...