Javier Senosiain 

AC: So, I would like to start with this question: In a country where architecture has traditionally been dominated by orthogonal lines and heavy volumes, what led you to seek a different way of doing things and move toward organic forms?

JS: Well, it was a very slow process, little by little. When I finished school, at that time the social service requirement was completed in a town, and based on the needs of the town, you would propose a project. I proposed a cultural and sports center.

I started designing orthogonal, square spaces, and at one point I realized that sports are very fluid. So I changed the concept to spaces and curved forms.

And I did well on my professional examination. From there, I became interested in exploring curved spaces, which I think are more human.

AC: And what led you to overcome the fear of taking that approach? This was your professional project, right?

JS: Yes, exactly.

AC: Many times, during our studies, we are assigned very large projects, and then you enter professional life and find yourself remodeling a bathroom or doing things like that. What led you to take the leap and actually build something organic?

JS: Yes, I think it was that curiosity. I started researching and reading a lot, traveling, and relating everything to curves. Eventually, I became very, very convinced. I became passionate about all of this.

In the end, a book was created called Bioarchitecture: In Search of a Space. All of this research was what led to the first work, the Casa Orgánica.

Everything was related to curves. For example, you see that the headphones you use are curved, your glasses are curved. Eduardo's hat also adapts to his head.

And speaking of Hundertwasser, Hundertwasser said that man has three skins: his epidermis, which adapts to his organism; the body; and the house, which should adapt to the human being.

So, following this concept, several ideas began to come together. They were concentrated in the first chapter: nature, function, space, structure, and form.

Looking back, in my opinion, these are the four pillars of architecture.

This could be summarized through the creative process of the shell, of the mollusk. The mollusk, using its mucus and excrement as materials, shapes its shell, which adapts to its body and its needs. It is its home, which it carries everywhere.

The research also speaks extensively about space, about man's natural space. And ultimately, the straight line hardly exists in nature.

AC: Speaking of these curves and continuity, do you believe that this feeling of physical and physiological comfort is something universal, or is it more personal, in the sense that each person perceives it differently?

JS: No, I believe that the aspect of curved spaces being more embracing is universal. I am absolutely convinced of that.

At the end of the day, we are all human beings, we are animals, and we are Earthlings, although sometimes the word Earthling sounds a little strong.

And what is universal comes from the universe, from the planets. Everything rotates in a spiral, from the microcosm, through the DNA molecules seen under a microscope, all the way to the great galaxies. Everything rotates in a spiral.

So I believe these are the natural, essential, basic needs of human beings. Perhaps we are not very accustomed to them because of customs, economic factors, and different circumstances. We are accustomed to living inside boxes.

But, as I mentioned with the mollusk, its space is curved. An animal of the air, for example, would be the bird. The female settles down and, with her chest, molds the materials that the male originally brought, which are mud and straw. She moves her chest and shapes her nest, which also adapts to her body and her needs.

And an animal of the earth, for example rabbits, uses its body to sculpt its dwelling, which also adapts to its body and its needs.

So I believe that, in reality, it is not a whim, so to speak. It is a need. As we were saying, it is physiological, but also, to a certain extent, psychological and physical.

Man seeks, or rather, animals seek, the penumbra, as Barragán used to say. And these curved spaces are more welcoming, more embracing.

When you give someone a hug, it is like this. You would not hug someone from behind, which is convex and generally rejects, but the concave side is much friendlier.

AC: So would it be a matter of returning to our origins? Ultimately, we are animals, so perhaps our home, our cage, in a certain sense, should be made in the same way animals make theirs?

JS: Exactly. What you are saying about returning to our origins was a major part of the search for these curved spaces.

Going back to the origin. Gaudí said that the word "original" comes from the word "origin." He said that being original means going back to the origin of things.

AC: Okay. And during this process, what was it like to return to that origin? How difficult was it to communicate this idea to your clients and get them to trust this new way of inhabiting a space, which was ultimately very different from what they knew?

JS: Generally, they are clients who really like nature. They are connected to culture and art: painters, poets, etc. And generally, they already know the work, so it is not particularly difficult in that sense.

AC: So you could say that your beginning was with your own house, which opened up an entire panorama of possibilities with clients?

JS: Yes. In a way, my first client was myself. It was the family home. That was where we spent a great deal of time researching.

The project itself took us about a year, and construction took four years. After that, things became easier because we already had certain aspects worked out, whether constructive, formal, spatial, structural, and so on.

Earlier you mentioned function, space, structure, and form, and those concepts are completely interconnected.

Here at Parque Quetzalcóatl, there are the three kingdoms: the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. And the three have different functions.

A large part of the park is about exhibiting minerals, plants, or animals. But because they have different functions, the spaces are completely different, the structure is different, and the form is different.

It is like us. Each person we see has different forms, different proportions of internal organs, a different structure. And a function. Although that is generally the same, all of this can be observed in nature.

AC: And going back a little to the Casa Orgánica, what was your experience of living in your own project? Was there anything you discovered while inhabiting it that you had not anticipated when you designed it?

JS: No, in reality, the idea and intention were to seek basic, elementary, essential spaces, such as eating, sleeping, cooking, etc.

In the Casa Orgánica, there are basically two spaces: one for daytime and one for nighttime.

Originally, the concept was like a peanut. You would pass through a large space filled with light, which is the living room, dining room, and kitchen, through a low, narrow space in the shadows, into another space with more light, which would be the bedroom during the day.

In reality, there were details that were completed during construction, but we never felt that anything was missing.

Well, my wife does complain that the closet should have been a little larger, but aside from that, I think I would make it exactly the same again.

AC: To what extent do you believe that we, as architects, should design a person's environment, and at what point does that begin to interfere with their way of life?

JS: Well, yes, I believe it is very important to take people into consideration.

Sometimes people say, "We are what we eat," and many times, well, in this case, we are also where we live.

I think it is very important to create something where people feel happy, comfortable, calm, serene, etc.

Those kinds of psychological aspects, such as serenity and mystery, all of the things that Luis Barragán talked about, are very important.

The psychological function is just as important as the physical function. And ultimately, they should be one single function.

To see everything as a whole. To see the part in relation to the whole, just as the whole relates to the part.

AC: Has the way inhabitants take ownership of a space and use it differently from how you imagined ever surprised you?

JS: I don't remember.

But I think that is completely valid. I am becoming increasingly convinced of the importance of emotional function over physical function.

In fact, there are many buildings in Europe that have changed functions. A building may have originally served as a bookstore or something similar, and then it became an exhibition hall, for example. And sometimes the second function works better than the original function for which it was designed.

So yes, I believe that at some point a client or someone may change or modify a space, as long as they feel comfortable in it, because perhaps they will feel more at ease, etc.

I think that slogan that says, "form follows function" has been around for more than 100 years, and I believe it should no longer be that way.

Rather, function and form are one whole. It is not that form comes after function, or that function comes after form. Function and form should exist simultaneously, as a whole.

AC: In your practice, what do you think distinguishes your creative process from others? Is there a particular dynamic or way of working that you consider fundamental to achieving the results you have achieved?

JS: Yes. In the practice, the idea or intention, the philosophy, is that there should always be a creative process, which is essentially research.

Within that research, there are four important parts: the program of needs, site analysis, the analysis of analogous buildings, and the functional diagram with areas and zoning.

The second stage I mentioned, the site analysis, involves considering the land, the topography, the surroundings, the views. And generally, or I would even venture to say, 80% of the architectural concepts come from the site analysis.

Once you have these four stages, synthesis comes next, which means summarizing those four aspects. Then comes the concept, which I believe is the most interesting and mysterious part of the creative process.

If you arrive at a good concept, I tell my students, "You've already done it." The rest is about developing that concept in the preliminary design and reinforcing it through the architectural and executive projects.

So, generally, we do try to follow this creative process.

AC: And at what stage do the forms come into play?

JS: Well, they vary. They evolve.

We try not to establish them a priori, from the beginning, because that can feel somewhat forced or formalistic. Instead, we allow them to emerge at the appropriate moment.

The forms, as in the case of the Nest of Quetzalcóatl, came about naturally. We call it the "Nest" because if you enter through the head of Quetzalcóatl, you arrive at an open space where there are other serpents. There are about six serpents, and that is where the name Nest of Quetzalcóatl comes from.

But there are other works that people themselves have given names to. For example, the "Shark." After finishing the Casa Orgánica, during the rough construction phase, the workers began calling it the Shark, and the name stuck.

And that's how we ended up with the Mexican Whale, the Flower House, the Nautilus, and so on. But these names don't emerge a priori. They are given afterward.

AC: I also think it is interesting that nowadays many firms are leaving physical models behind. With all the 3D modeling tools and that kind of technology, models seem to have become less common. But in your work, models seem to be very important, right?

JS: Yes, I believe the model is extremely important because you can see both the interior and exterior.

In the case of the Casa Orgánica, for example, we made two models simultaneously: one showing the interior and another showing the exterior. So you can really see everything.

With renders, on the other hand, things can be very misleading. And now with AI, you can create beautiful renders, but actually building them is not easy at all.

I am increasingly convinced by the model over the render.

Previously, when we were in school, to make a render, you would build a model, photograph the model, project the photograph onto a screen, and trace it on tracing paper. That was the render: a real rendering of the model.

Now I see in the practice that to make a render, you have to build it in 3D, which takes a great deal of time. And ultimately, in my opinion, you don't see it the same way you see a physical model.

It is also partly a matter of personal preference. I had a professor, Ernesto Gómez Gallardo, who used to say, "Everyone kills fleas however they can."

But there can also be ways of "killing fleas" that are helpful, so to speak. In this case, that would be the creative process.

AC: You have been a professor at UNAM for many decades. How easy was it to communicate the vision you had to your students? Or do you think someone needs to have a different "chip" already built in to be able to create this kind of architecture?

JS: For me, it was very easy to show my students this type of organic architecture because I would take them to see the Casa Orgánica while it was under construction, and then again once it was finished. Sometimes I would take them to see other works or show them images.

The theory came partly from the book Bioarchitecture, which took a long time to develop, and I believe it was well-founded.

It was very natural and very simple because I was very convinced of what I was doing.

I remember, I think it was my fifth semester as a professor, when I told my students that I was no longer going to design with straight lines, which, looking back, was a rather silly thing to say.

Because architecture, like everything else, can be hexagonal or cubic, and it can all be very good. Ultimately, everything depends on the design.

AC: In many of your projects, we see that the accessories and furniture become part of the building itself, almost as if they become a single piece. Is this because of the organic forms contained within the building, or is it more of a critique of consumerism and conventional ways of inhabiting a space?

JS: I had never thought of the furniture in the Casa Orgánica, which has fluid, free-form shapes, as being a critique of conventional commercial furniture. But directly speaking, yes, it is a critique.

More than anything, though, it came from the intention to integrate the design, so that there would be continuity between the floor, which is slightly curved, the curved wall, and the curved roof.

Then, suddenly, a lamp emerges from it, the lamp curves, and suddenly the water comes out of it. It becomes a sink.

We ended up having five accessories. In one case, it was like a bird, a seagull, which emerged somewhat coincidentally during an expansion of the Casa Orgánica.

I started with a metal rod, bending it into a curve, and the water came out of it like a faucet.

That same rod was integrated with the toilet paper holder. So we developed it from there.

Then I added the mirror, which was oval, and then the light.

At one point, we began to see the shape of a bird, a seagull, so to speak.

Ultimately, the mirror came from one wing of the seagull, the lamp from the other wing, the water came from its beak, and the toilet paper came from its tail.

So, in a way, everything became integrated: the mirror, the light, the beak, the toilet paper holder, and the faucets.

The bird's legs became the handles for the hot and cold water.

When you enter, most people don't really notice it. But I think what is interesting here was not so much the final result of the seagull, but the process through which it came about.

In The Little Prince, there is a passage about cultivating a flower. What is important is not simply arriving at the rose or the carnation, but how you make the hole, plant the seed, put in the soil, and add the water.

That process may be just as important as the final result of the flower.

And what I am getting at, especially for students, is that the creative process should not be chaotic or traumatic. Quite the opposite: they should enjoy it and take pleasure in it.

I think that is extremely important. The result is just as important as the process and how it unfolds.

And it is fun, too.

AC: Has there ever been a project that turned out differently from what you imagined?

JS: I don't think so.

At the end of the day, things always look different from how you initially planned and conceived them, whether in the model or otherwise.

There are aspects that look different, and I think generally for the better.

In the case of the greenhouse, for example, you design the colors and everything else, but once you enter the space, when the sunlight comes through and you see how the colors are transmitted onto the plants and the floor, it creates an atmosphere that you could hardly have imagined beforehand.

AC: You just mentioned how different the sensation is once you actually enter or live in a space. Your architecture has now become very popular among famous people who come to experience it. Do you think an image can communicate something that being physically present in the space cannot?

JS: I don't think there is anything like experiencing a space in person. There is nothing like it.

There are very good images, and sometimes there are even cases where an image looks better than reality.

There are photographs of Fallingwater that are incredible. But even so, I think seeing Fallingwater from below is an extraordinary experience.

AC: In one image of the Casa Orgánica, I saw that you designed an organic electric car in the 1990s. Does that car belong to the same imagined world as your projects? Does it form part of your projects and what you imagined?

JS: In the particular case of the car we designed, it was a small electric golf cart, and essentially we designed the bodywork.

It was heavily influenced by Fühler, who designed a car for Amaxion in 1928.

He tripled its speed simply through its shape, using the same engine. By changing the form, he tripled the speed.

At the time, the first cars were derived from horse-drawn carriages and stagecoaches. They had the driver in front, the wheels, and so on.

But as the speed increased, the air would slow the car down.

So Fühler was inspired by the study of aerodynamics. In a library, he discovered that a raindrop is rounded on the bottom and pointed at the top.

So he created a three-wheeled car with that shape and tripled its speed simply by changing its form while keeping the same engine.

I tell my students about this, and I was very influenced by it. I wanted to design a car similar to that one.

AS: Do you think organic architecture will become more necessary as our environment becomes increasingly synthetic and dominated by screens, or does it risk becoming a form of nostalgia?

JS: No. I believe organic architecture itself is already part of a broader trend. I think you can already see it emerging.

A little before the year 2000, about 30 years ago, I remember giving a talk where, at the end, someone asked me where architecture was headed.

I told them that it seemed to be moving toward the natural and toward the human.

Toward the natural because we have done enormous damage to nature in recent years, and toward the human because we have not sufficiently taken people into account in housing and architecture.

We consider many things: regulations, permits, costs, and so on. But sometimes the person who is considered least is the human being.

And I believe this organic architecture can become not necessarily a fashion, but a trend.

When architecture, particularly in large works such as cathedrals, began using arches, vaults, and domes, it started with the Pantheon in Rome, then the Byzantine period, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque.

Then came Art Nouveau, which was something of a continuation of all of this, but it did not take off.

Between the wars came Art Deco, and from there we continued developing different forms.

Since 1918 and the Bauhaus, for more than 100 years, we have continued with minimalism.

I believe there will, in some way, be a trend toward organic architecture, especially because there are architects working at a very large scale who are now more visible in magazines and elsewhere, such as Zaha Hadid, Foster, and others.

And yes, I do believe there will be a trend. People want to return to nature.

And all of these electronic and digital aspects, like any tool, have their benefits and drawbacks, but they have also had a very negative impact.

AS: How does that idea confront a reality in which clients are increasingly focused on reducing costs?

JS: Well, I believe this type of organic architecture is not as expensive as it may appear, for several reasons.

When it is used, for example, in the Casa Orgánica, it is like an eggshell.

An eggshell is only about three millimeters thick, and it is extremely rigid because of its double curvature. If you try to squeeze it, it does not break.

Our major organs are also contained within curved forms. The skull contains the brain, while our other important organs, such as the heart, lungs, and some of the viscera, are contained within the rib cage, which should really be called the thoracic vault.

So, returning to that shell, the construction system used in the Casa Orgánica is ferrocement.

The floor, walls, and roof are four centimeters thick.

If you compare that to a conventional brick house, essentially the two layers of plaster are equivalent to the ferrocement plaster: two centimeters on one side and two on the other.

And the foundation, for example, is minimal because everything is continuous.

So there are elements that are more expensive and others that are less expensive.

But structurally, if we look at how most spaces are currently defined, they use vertical and horizontal lines, with vertical and horizontal structural elements.

The horizontal elements are the slab, beams, and floor. The vertical elements are the walls, columns, and structural posts.

By comparison, these spaces also allow us to experience space and time as we move through them, almost as if we were moving through these curved, fluid spaces.

You feel the space as you move through it.

For example, if I stand up right now, I experience the space very differently. I feel the space over time.

In the other way, I see it in three dimensions.

By walking through it, I add the fourth dimension, which is time.

AC: Frank Lloyd Wright sought to bring good design to ordinary families through his Usonian houses. Today, many of them are exclusive and expensive properties. Do you think an architecture like yours could be developed on a large scale, or does handcrafted design ultimately remain beyond the reach of most people?

JS: I believe this type of architecture can absolutely be developed on a large scale.

In fact, we recently finished a book called Green City, in which we based the concept on the "peanut house," which is 30 square meters.

If the family grows, another 25-square-meter peanut can be added, resulting in 65 square meters.

We also designed another house using a pneumatic structure that is inflated, sprayed with urethane, and then deflated. The pneumatic structure can then be used to create another house.

Based on these groupings, we propose an eco-neighborhood.

I don't remember exactly how many houses, perhaps around 1,500 or so.

To get from a house on one side to the services on the other, it would take two or three minutes by bicycle or 15 minutes on foot.

At the center of the eco-neighborhood would be services such as a daycare, a place to buy food, a gym, a hair salon, and so on.

Six eco-neighborhoods, because they are roughly circular, form an eco-village.

At the center of the eco-village there would be larger commercial services, perhaps an elementary school, larger retail, a clinic, etc.

Six eco-villages form an eco-city, and six eco-cities form a megacity.

So, this may appear utopian, but in this model there would be no use of internal-combustion vehicles except in emergencies, such as ambulances, fire trucks, police, etc.

It is a different conception, removing perhaps one of the things that has caused us the most harm: the automobile, particularly because of pollution and the loss of time in some major cities.

AC: The eco-neighborhood sounds very interesting. I had never seen it before, because today social housing in Mexico is often built and then left unoccupied. People may move there temporarily, but because these developments are built outside the cities, and because our cities are so centralized, these social-housing communities ultimately become abandoned.

JS: Yes.

AC: And money is wasted.

JS: Yes, exactly.

AC: If you could speak with five people who have lived in one of your works for more than a decade, what do you think they would tell me about what it really means to experience one of these spaces?

JS: Well, I think, based on some of the opinions I have heard, they would say that they live very peacefully. That they are very comfortable, embracing spaces.

I think that is what they would comment on most, or what they do comment on.

SA: In terms of how you visualize a project, how much does the context determine what ultimately gets created? How much modification of the ecosystem takes place, and how much is determined by the context?

JS: Yes, I believe the context is fundamental.

As I mentioned earlier, the architectural concept generally comes from the site analysis: the surroundings, the topography, and the views.

I believe that is essential.

In the case of Parque Quetzalcóatl, about 80% of the design work was done on site, on the actual land.

And generally, the needs were dictated by the land itself.

There was no predetermined program of needs. Instead, there were caves, for example. We went down into them, and the resulting curved form became an open-air forum because the form itself dictated the function.

Where water accumulated during the rainy season, we created some reflecting pools.

There was a cave where Tepujal, a type of tepetate sand, had been extracted in the 1950s. So that became the mineral kingdom.

We adapted the design so that the mineral kingdom could remain there.

In this case, it is a ravine that crosses the site diagonally.

The site is 5,000 square meters, and the project was very difficult because where there were no trees, there were caves. And where there were no caves, the terrain was extremely uneven.

So we didn't know where to build.

We developed several preliminary designs, and ultimately narrowed it down to two.

One was like a small building with a view.

For the other, which is what we ultimately built, we made a model with all the contour lines.

All of the trees on the site were placed into the model, and we put a small floating object into it, the kind children play with at the beach or in a swimming pool, measuring approximately 1.20 by 10 centimeters in diameter.

We moved it around. We would place it in one location, settle it onto the terrain, have it cross over a ravine like a bridge, settle onto the terrain again, rise about 20 meters, span a 20-meter opening, and then descend.

We moved it around according to the views and orientation.

We already knew that, in very general terms, there would be two houses inside, one above and one below.

But the entire process was about trying to respect the ravine and the trees.

Ninety-six percent of the site remains as it originally was, essentially untouched.

So yes, I believe it is extremely important to take the surroundings into account.

SA: When you move through the spaces you design, it feels almost like a synesthetic perception, as though every sense has been considered. To what extent does the construction process involve the ethereal, the intangible?

JS: Yes, you really experience it.

There are many visitors to the site. Many, many visitors.

You can also see it in the model.

For example, that serpent's head over there snakes along the landscape and creates a boundary so people don't fall into the ravine.

It functions as a 90-centimeter-high protective barrier.

That same form continues snaking along and water emerges from its tail.

But we never could have designed all of this in drawings.

Instead, we did it right here. We would put down a hose or a metal rod and position it according to where the landscape was steepest.

We would turn it around, and that is where we would create the parapet, as in this case.

I don't remember exactly, but I imagine that once we had the idea for the wall, we thought about putting a little bench here.

And that is essentially how almost everything developed.

The serpent's head was not in the original project.

We had the tube. We never initially thought of a serpent.

We had the tube where the 10 apartments would be, and one day, because we had already completed another project that was shaped like a serpent with a head, I unconsciously, or rather intuitively, thought:

"What if we put the head of a serpent at the mouth of the cave?"

We already knew the cave existed.

We went to the model, made the head, and realized that it looked like a virtual serpent entering the site, emerging, and then going back into it.

So we said, "Well, let's give the serpent a tail."

The tail ended up at the parking entrance.

At the top, the water tank became like the rattle on the serpent's tail.

Below that was the caretaker's space, then the mechanical room, and 10 small storage units, one for each apartment.

So if we look at it, the serpent's tail is entirely formalistic.

All of these different aspects came into play. I don't know where else we would have put them or how else we would have resolved them.

So yes, here the land itself gives us the solution.

SA: And then, regarding ancestral design, how much of your design is informed by ancestral Mexican design? Do you feel that you are in dialogue with it, continuing it, or is it something that has been reset?

JS: I believe there is a great deal of Mexican influence.

I think there are three strong influences: nature, Mexican visual art, and many architects, both organic and non-organic, such as Barragán.

As for Mexican visual art, if there is something Mexico is known for around the world, aside from drug trafficking, insecurity, and so on, it is Mexican visual art and color.

SA: Where does that heavy volumetry, so characteristic of Mexican visual art, come from?

JS: It comes from the mountains of the Sierra Madre Oriental and Sierra Madre Occidental, which have a very massive volumetry.

The Indigenous peoples observed this in nature and, in some way, translated that heavy volumetry into their pyramids and sculptures.

Then came the colonial period, and the Spanish built haciendas and convents out of stone and, perhaps by chance, with small openings. They created haciendas and convents with heavy volumetry.

Contemporary architecture also took these roots into account.

At Ciudad Universitaria, for example, the stadium, the frontones, the library, and other buildings incorporated this Mexican visual language, this identity that characterizes us.

Unfortunately, new generations are not taking it into account as much.

Here, in some way, Quetzalcóatl emerged, perhaps by coincidence.

But when we realized that it was Quetzalcóatl, almost everyone, at least in Mexico, knows that Quetzalcóatl comes from the Quetzal bird.

The Quetzal has iridescent feathers, and that led to the idea of painting Quetzalcóatl's body with iridescent paint.

But it did not begin as a serpent representing Quetzalcóatl.

Only later did we realize that we could add a head, and then that it looked like a serpent.

At the same time as this project, we were already building protective walls so people wouldn't fall into the ravine.

Once we realized that this was Quetzalcóatl, we placed a head at one end of the walls and a tail at the other.

And so there are about 10 or 12 serpents winding through the surrounding landscape.

SA: And finally, I wanted to ask how much drawing plays a role as a method of thinking. To what extent does drawing as a form of projection exist in the way you think?

JS: Yes, it does exist, but not that much.

We do make sketches, definitely, but we don't do many fully developed drawings, except for the architectural plans, where of course we do.

But we primarily make models.