The bureau was founded by architects Róisín Heneghan and Shi-Fu Peng in 1999 in New York. In 2001 they moved to Dublin. At the end of 2013, heneghan peng architects won an international competition for the design of a new building for the NCCA on Khodynskoye Pole in Moscow.
Archi.ru:
A significant part of your bureau's projects are museums (the Giant's Trail Visitor Center in Northern Ireland, the Great Egyptian Museum in Giza, the extension of the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin, the Palestine Museum on the West Bank of Jordan). This implies the need to interact with exhibits - inside and / or outside the buildings you design. What should be the relationship between architecture and exhibiting artifacts or natural attractions?
Royshn Henegan:
- It seems to me that architecture should create conditions for the exhibited objects to be seen and appreciated. However, no one is interested in the "white box", curators and artists are looking for an interesting space. It seems to us that architecture should not be completely bland, it is not necessary to paint everything white. The exhibition space can have its own special features, sometimes it helps to better prepare the exhibition due to the fact that the artist has something to work with. Think of the Arsenal at the Venice Biennale. It was never conceived as a museum, but it has become a wonderful exhibition space with its own spatial power that makes it a pleasure to be there.
Sometimes it seems to us that sites that have no characteristics are the most difficult objects, because, working with them, there is nothing to push off from. It's great when there is something complicated on the site - like that shopping center in Moscow. It is not distinguished by its beauty, but it set the context for the work [I mean the Aviapark shopping center on Khodynskoye Pole, next to the construction site of the NCCA - approx. Archi.ru].
You mentioned that you can “start from the environment” (working against) and “work with the environment” (working with). Which of these approaches do you use when building close to World Heritage sites? How to find a compromise between the past and the present?
Royshn Henegan:
- We have worked with several UNESCO World Heritage Sites, both historical (pyramids in Giza or Greenwich) and natural monuments (Giant's Trail in Northern Ireland and the Rhine Valley in Germany). World Heritage Sites are considered to be outstanding examples of culture and exceptional sites. That is, the architect is simply obliged to pay attention to them. But we must always be guided by this principle: we must be attentive to the environment for which we design. There is no reason not to build modern buildings in historic sites. Look at Greenwich, where we just finished building the School of Architecture building. There is the Queens House of Inigo Jones and the buildings of Christopher Wren of the 17th century, historical and architectural monuments, but at the time of their construction they were all modern buildings.
Do you set yourself the task of creating "iconic", iconic buildings?
Shi-Fu Peng:
- We do not believe in symbolic museums, icon museums. I have always said that there are no symbols in the world of symbols. A satiety of symbols sets in, when one ceases to be distinguishable from the other. There are enough talented architects who create bright recognizable buildings, buildings-logos. There is no need to do the same, and we are not good at designing such buildings. We believe that a building and its architectural quality should not be the focal point of a museum.
For example, our project for the Great Egyptian Museum is based on inscribing a cone into the composition of the three pyramids of Giza. The museum is dedicated to the pyramids. If you remove the pyramids, the triangular building we designed will look silly and pointless. The iconic character of this project lies in the two-kilometer distance between the museum and the pyramids.
Like archaeologists, we reveal what already exists. We help people see architectural objects and landscape better. Our approach is consonant with Michel Foucault, who did not invent anything new, but only laid bare the conditions that exist in society at a certain time.
Another telling detail of the Egyptian Museum's project is its location on the edge of a desert plateau. It turns out that the museum is nothing more than a cliff. The customer very competently chose the site at the junction of geological structures. The transparent stone wall we have constructed is a symbolic expression of the landscape that separates mountains and desert, or life and death.
Speaking of the Great Egyptian Museum, why did its design turn out to be such a protracted process? At what stage is the implementation of this project today?
Royshn Henegan:
- We won the competition in 2003, and finished the design of the museum in 2008. After that, we had a long discussion with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, and construction began in 2012. The current estimated completion date is 2018. If you look at the construction site using Google Earth, you can find a fairly recent photo of our project, see the concrete roof already erected in some areas.
Is the slowdown in the construction of the museum connected with the Arab Spring and, in particular, with the changes in the Egyptian government?
Royshn Henegan:
- To some extent, our participation in the project practically stopped in 2008, so I cannot say what impact the political changes in Egypt had on the implementation. There were definitely consequences, because new people came to replace the previous ministerial team that oversaw the construction of the museum, and some of them did not understand the idea of our project.
How do you supervise the construction process of the Great Egyptian Museum - if you, in principle, do such supervision?
Royshn Henegan:
- We are not engaged in supervision, we only answer questions regarding changes in the project. To be honest, we are not playing the role that we would like to play. So, some unsuccessful changes in the project were approved, which can no longer be fixed.
“Royshn, in your TED talk, you described challenging tests for materials used in the construction of the Great Egyptian Museum and the Giant's Trail Visitor Center. How did you choose the material for the Palestinian Museum and the new building of the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow?
Royshn Henegan:
“In that speech, I am focusing on the museum in Giza and the visitor center for the Giants' Trail in Northern Ireland, because in these two cases the stone was used in a complex, atypical way that has not been tested before. That is why we needed to conduct our own experiments. At the Palestinian Museum, we use limestone, a traditional material for the region. As for the new NCCA, its complexity lies in the structure, not in the material.
Your museum is expected to be the first energy efficient building in Palestine. Was the work on the project complicated by the lack of experience in erecting "green" buildings?
Royshn Henegan:
“Sometimes during the construction process it was difficult to adhere to the quality level required for energy efficiency standards. Erection of an energy efficient building is different from simple construction. For example, the installation of thermal break windows is not a mandatory construction step, but it is absolutely essential to achieve energy efficiency.
You have won several architectural competitions for the construction of bridges, including the construction of bridges in London's Olympic Park and the Mittelrheinbrücke bridge over the Rhine near St. Goar. How do you usually work with this type of object?
Shi-Fu Peng:
“In the past, bridges were always built by engineers, and engineering design was key, not architectural design. This is not surprising: often the bridge is several hundred meters long and is supported by only two supports. The architect cannot move the support a little in accordance with his plan, otherwise the bridge will collapse. When we deal with bridges, we start collaborating with engineers at a very early stage in the project.
Recently, the urban environment in which we live has become extremely important, and bridges exist in it. City bridges cannot be purely engineering objects, they also need to be the embodiment of an architectural concept.
Surprisingly, when working with bridges, we are not at all interested in the bridge itself, because city bridges are usually quite short. The real challenge is how to "ground" the bridge, how to connect it to the urban landscape. Once the architect has finished fitting the bridge into the landscape, consider that all the work is done - anyone can design the bridge. When planning city bridges, we start with an analysis of the urban landscape: in what conditions the bridge will exist, what traffic and human flows go along it and around it. Our understanding of bridge building is not always correct. We lose more often than we win, but this is our typical way of thinking about bridges as objects of the urban environment.
How do you usually choose the contests in which you will participate?
Royshn Henegan:
- We're looking at the jury. Then we ask ourselves if the project is interesting to us and if its scale suits us. In addition, we definitely pay attention to the amount of work that needs to be done to participate in the competition. If you are participating in a large open competition, then try not to go into unnecessary details right away.
To participate in the competition for the design of the Great Egyptian Museum, we were initially required to provide five A3 tablets. It was a feasible amount of work. Then twenty best projects were selected, and the work became much more. The competition for the design of the Giant's Trail visitor center was also completely open and involved the preparation of three A1s as an application. The project of the new NCCA included a selection stage for a portfolio, after which twenty applicants were invited to participate.
How do you work in an unfamiliar environment?
Royshn Henegan:
- We certainly start by studying the construction site, trying to understand the climate and feel the place. Despite the above, we made many mistakes and sometimes misunderstood the environment. For example, in the Middle East, we did not fully understand that public space should be protected from the environment, and any outdoor activities are extremely limited due to the unbearable heat. And we tried to bring there a European sense of public street space, where it is interpreted as something key and beautiful. Working in Europe is somewhat easier. Of course, there are differences here too, but there is a common language and understanding of the relationship with open space.
Shi-Fu Peng:
- Indeed, we are representatives of the generation that needs an understanding of the environment. Our project for the NCCA is based on environmental analysis. If similar environmental characteristics existed elsewhere, we would suggest a similar project.
To some extent, we had to win, because our victory was won at a strategic level. The site is located on Khodynskoye Pole, where the new park is adjacent to the world's largest shopping center. All participants came to the conclusion that this mall is an urban problem, so all proposed projects of horizontally elongated buildings that could block the mall.
We decided to act differently and proposed a vertical building that should focus attention on itself, making the shopping center just a background. Conceptually, our project is similar to the Eiffel Tower. If you look at the Eiffel Tower, your attention will be focused on it, and not on the Paris stretching behind it, because it is a vertical dominant, opposed to the horizon line. We can say that we solved the problem, abandoning the solution of the problem, we cheated.
The shape of the building is pretty Russian. We are often asked why we use so many cantilever stems on this project. My answer is this: we are in Russia, modern consoles were invented here, how can we build a building without them? The entire building of the future museum is literally dedicated to cantilever stems. I always say that the more you squeeze the cantilever stem, the more the building will resemble an American skyscraper. American skyscrapers are in some way perfect economic objects. Cantilever stems are the opposite of economic feasibility. This element seems to us to be the embodiment of the ideas of the Russian avant-garde.
Russia is a difficult country for foreign architects. What are the main positive and negative aspects of your work on the Moscow project?
Royshn Henegan:
- We like to take on all the work at an early stage of the design, and then gradually transfer the implementation of our ideas to partners, while maintaining involvement in the project as observers. Such a scheme of work was impossible in the implementation of the Moscow project. In it we play the role of design advisers. However, this also means that we will be involved in the process until the completion of the building, which appeals to us.
On the one hand, we were somewhat surprised at the impossibility of being more closely involved in the project. On the other hand, our partners from Moskomarkhitektura have always listened to our opinion. Russia is a country with very strict SNIPs. Comparing work in Moscow and in London, it is obvious to us that in Russia the space for negotiations is much narrower.
Shi-Fu Peng:
“We were surprised by the many rules and ingenuity in manipulating them. In any country, rules cannot govern 100% of the population. There will always be 10% that fall outside the general pattern. After all, you cannot limit people in their desire to think creatively and come up with non-standard solutions. People always find loopholes. Russians know very well how to get around the rules.
What is special about your work in Ireland?
Royshn Henegan:
- In Ireland, as, perhaps, in London, we are better acquainted with the construction process and are more involved in it. We are currently renovating the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin and are constantly on the site. The advantage of such involvement is a good knowledge of space, a thorough understanding of how people use it and how they move in it. The disadvantage is the inability to look at the object from the outside. Carrying out projects in their own country, the architectural bureau unwittingly shares all the original attitudes inherent in this environment, without questioning them. The privilege of specialists from the outside is that they can remind you of the non-necessity of following the usual path.
Do you feel a connection with modern Irish architecture?
Royshn Henegan:
- To be honest, we have never felt like representatives of Irish architecture. Despite the fact that I am Irish and graduated from a bachelor's degree here, Shi-Fu is American and we both studied in the States. While we are currently based in Dublin and of course bringing some Irish culture into our projects, we were not nurtured by this system as much as other Irish architects like Grafton Architects or O'Donnell & Tuomey.
Since the creation of your office in New York, you have managed to move to Dublin and open a branch in Berlin. What were the reasons and results of these movements?
Royshn Henegan:
- That's right, our office was opened in New York, at that time we worked there. Then we won a competition in Dublin, and remote development of this project would have been a challenge. To some extent, we had no reason to stay in New York. Europe has a much stronger competition culture for young architects, so we decided to move to Dublin. Our first order in Dublin was quite large, an office building with a budget of 40 million euros, which created a certain material base for us.
Shi-Fu, what do you think about life in Ireland? What was it like moving to this country?
Shi-Fu Peng:
- In my opinion, the location does not matter to us. By and large, we had no choice where to live. In terms of doing business, Dublin is pretty good. There is such an abbreviation FLAP (Frankfurt am Main, London, Amsterdam, Paris), it denotes the leading hubs of business class air transportation. In contrast, Dublin is a highly rated tourism airport, which is two to three times cheaper than FLAP to use. As you can see, our location has certain advantages.
Royshn Henegan:
- The opening of an additional office in Berlin happened as follows: we had several employees from Germany, one of whom wanted to move to Berlin. We didn't want to lose it, besides, at that time we had a project in Weimar, so we decided to open a branch in Berlin. Today there are five employees working there.
Looks like you have an international team?
Royshn Henegan:
“We’re probably still half Irish. We also have a lot of Germans and Poles. We used to have a more international team, but with the onset of the economic crisis, many left Ireland.
Your bureau started as a small team and gradually began to expand. What are the main challenges in bringing about such organizational change?
Shi-Fu Peng:
“When we won the design competition for the Great Egyptian Museum, there were only three of us. At the end of the project, our team grew to over a hundred employees (of which about forty work in the Dublin office).
Of course, we have experienced ups and downs. Our first priority is to loosen control. If you look at the world's leading leaders, say, the prime minister of China, they are engineers, not architects. Architects cannot run the state, they want to control everything too much. In the process of working with architects who designed large buildings, we understood the logic of the optimal organization of the office. At some point, we decided to partially become project managers, not just architects. We began to split the project into parts in such a way that different employees could carry out individual components. Usually such parts are pretty obvious. For example, in the Moscow project we have a park in the background and a tower in the foreground, these are two inseparable elements. The tower would make a much more modest impression if it were located in an urban environment. Due to its location in a large park, the tower will become its compositional dominant, like a pagoda in a Japanese garden. It wouldn't make sense in New York.
It's amazing that the three of you started the implementation of such a large international project as the museum in Giza. How did you manage it?
Shi-Fu Pen:
- From the very beginning of work on the project of the Great Egyptian Museum, we decided that we would consider the entire site where the object is located as a whole. Thus, all the elements inside and outside the museum building, including the benches in the adjacent park, were included in the planning grid. It was thanks to the development of this grid that we were able to complete a project requiring hundreds of employees with a team of three.
Royshn, you teach at several universities. How does communication with students affect your work?
Royshn Henegan:
- Talking with people who are focused on developing any ideas and making serious efforts to implement them is very encouraging. Office work is very hands-on, laden with contracts and budgets. Teaching gives me the opportunity to conceptually experiment, talk about ideas, and think more freely.
How did you want to organize the educational process for young architects in the project of the Greenwich School of Architecture?
Royshn Henegan:
- We wanted to build the School around the studio - a large comfortable space for students, where they can make layouts, draw, study and see each other. You see, everybody has a moment when he / she gets "stuck". When this happens, it is helpful to wander around, talk to others, find out what is on their minds.
What usually inspires you in the process of work?
Shi-Fu Peng:
- It could be anything. In fact, I am not involved in the initial stage of preparing the competition projects. At the start, I have no ideas. I need some sort of cloud of cosmic dust [from which stars and planets are formed] that I can work with. I am a good critic.
I go swimming in the morning. In fact, swimming is the only activity during which a person can be alone with himself in a state of weightlessness, which allows him to think and generate ideas. I think that's why Le Corbusier also loved to swim.
What advice can you give to young architects?
Shi-Fu Peng:
- We can advise how to participate in competitions, but not how to become an architect. I hate it when they say that everyone has their own path, but, oddly enough, people approach the solution of the same problems in different ways. Somehow everyone can achieve good results. The advice is simple - you have to work. It is a rare person born of Frank Gehry, and even he, for sure, works hard and hard.
What is your dream project for you?
Royshn Henegan:
- I would like to build an airport. It is a shame that airports have become places where safety is paramount. It would be great to build a small airport that still feels like flying magic.
Shi-Fu Pen:
- It doesn't matter to me what project I'm doing. The more complex the project, the more problems need to be solved during its implementation, the more interesting it is to work. If a client gives us half a billion dollars, provides a site and asks to build a building without limiting myself in costs, I do not want to work on this project. If the client reports that he has only half a million dollars, the site is a contested territory and does not have water supply, then we are interested.
There is a good saying by Rem Koolhaas. One day he was asked why he would never build a house for himself. Rem replied: "In this case, I will have no one to argue with." Nothing is possible without resistance.
