Viar Estudio

Several
main intentions guide the way we work. The first is the search for an idea to
guide every project, because we pretend to develop an architecture based on the
concept and not in form. The shape is a consequence. A multidisciplinary team
works through a system of layers, which decants each project’s idea by a slow
approach, finding the idea little by little, carving it. First is the thought,
the speculation, the reflection from the origin; then, the confrontation with
reality, the design and construction.

Experience
and experimentation, common sense and risk are part of our style of work. A
careful reading of the status of each project, of its circumstances and
specificity, give us the keys to find the idea. We always think from the
origin, looking at the origin. (No preset ideas)

Constructive
logic and also what we call construct action are essential to build on our
projecting experience. Construct is build, is to make an edifice, but in its
most intimate sort is to merge elements under construction laws. What then is
to project? Projecting and constructing for us are the same action.

Each
project is an adventure, a journey of which we only know the beginning and we
don’t even suspect its end, the various possible ends. We are interested in the
route, in the force of thought, so the studio is involved in each project,
seeks risks, fail, experiment, innovate … gets dirty as Karl Kraus (The task of
the artist) said: “The artistic painter and the broad brush painter have in
common the fact that they get their hands dirty at work. Exactly what
distinguishes a journalist from a writer”.

Some ideas about our work 

Architecture
is so complex that trying to explain it is no worth. Even so, we have three
main concerns, while we design and think Architecture (already quoted in Aarhus
project), which are:

LIGHT
AND SHADOW.

Architecture is linked to Light, to light and shadow. We are concerned on the
plastic or visual values of architecture, on the entangled path between
architecture and light. Talk on light is also talk about it’s hollowing, the
voiding or emptying of light: which is the shadow. We (the architects) don´t
create light, we produce shadows and atmospheres. We are into the architecture
that receives, spreads light and creates atmospheres.

NEGATIVE SPACES.

Light IS Space, and our work tries to create quality spaces.

To create the space we, architects, are used to design interiors, to empty
masses, to void, and then we think in the interior. We are changing or
improving this point of view, we are into what we call the NEGATIVE SPACES,
they are the inverse or reverse. They can also be named as convex spaces. We
are interested on what is the OUTSIDE of the interior. This is what we also aim
to design as mirror spaces.

IMAGE AND SIGN

To summarize this idea -difficult task-, we believe that architecture moves
among two main topics; image and sign. Image means the duplicate, the view, the
representation of the object; Sign means an associated idea, concept. This is
the difference between visual and conceptual perception. We are talking about
the purely optic, visual understanding of architecture or the conceptual,
abstract, linked to ideas, full of relations understanding of our work. We try
to play both games; create architectural images and signs, deal with objects
and ideas.

PLAINNESS
& SIMPLICITY

We
try to design and adress to a clear architecture instead of to complex one. As
Joseph Tainter says, complex societies tend to collapse.That´s why we think
Architecture must answer to our complex society, but with simple solutions. As
Ockham´s Razor principle quaotes “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the
fewest assumptions should be selected”. Because of that, we search for
plainness and simplicity in our solutions. But we also endorse and claim for a
“complex and contradictory” architecture, fertile on ideas, meanings and
suggestions, spacial quality, the fullfillment of light or the richness of
meanings.