Studio Farris Architects is an architectural practice based in Antwerp, Belgium, and founded by Italian architect Giuseppe Farris in 2008. The studio's stated goal is to discover the intrinsic potential in every project—questioning the obvious, and exploring the surroundings and cultural heritage. This while always looking for harmony between sustainability and innovation, functionality and experience, ratio and feeling. For Giuseppe, the building's users always play a fundamental role in the conception of the architecture. We talk to Giuseppe about these concepts and his "lack of style."
 
 
STEVE M. NAPIER: Tell us a little bit about your background—how you got into architecture, what your influences are, where you went to school...
GIUSEPPE FARRIS: I went to Istituto Universitario di Architettura Venezia, IUAV, a very renowned architectural school in Venice. I studied with Aldo Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. It was a very conservative school. 
 
SMN: This was during the nineties?
GF: Yes, from 1993 until 1999. I started to decide to do architecture, but just by chance because after my school graduation I wanted to do something creative, and a friend of mine told me, "You have to do architecture because you can draw well, and there is a lot of design there." 
 
SMN: So you were not, at like 10 years old, simply amazed by architecture?
GF: Not really. It was just by chance. When I was nineteen, somebody said, "Okay, go there! There is a lot to do in design, and you can draw all day." I said, "Okay!" and I went and did it. Then I moved to Venice from Cagliari, which is actually my home. It is in Sardinia. I loved it, so I became an architect. Then after Venice, I moved to London to explore the AA [Architectural Association] school because a friend of mine went to school at AA. Then, I decided to follow him, but after a few months I said, "Okay, I think that for me, it is better to start working because I have this feeling."

SMN: After graduating, you started your own office very quickly?
GF: No, not really, because I first worked for seven years. In 2004, I started to work together with another architect—we worked together as independents for other architectural offices. It was a very strange way to work because we had no office. It was more of a way to be independent and work with other offices in the Netherlands and Belgium. So we did that for three or four years, from 2004 to 2008. Then, I opened my own office.
 
SMN: In terms of your influences in architecture and when a client actually approaches you with a problem, how do you actually approach this and find a resolution?
GF: What we always do is be very pragmatic, like with the architectural programme, client, and city requirements. You are not free in architecture. It is not like art where you start from a white paper; you always start with a huge restriction and huge problems that seem to be never fixed. 

What we start to do is more like analyzing how we can improve the place that you have to build or improve the way people live and work. Then you start another process, which is to make links, like you are in a deep particular space or place. This particular building, culture, or heritage—we start to connect the links with the programme—but the first the approach is always pragmatic. It is always to be very efficient, to be very strong in understanding the needs, and to realize that you can make positive changes even if at first the restriction is a little bit negative. You have so many things that you have to think about, and then you say, "Okay, we can make something." It is the first thing that we do.

SMN: It is interesting to me, your Park Tower. I can see it fits within the cityscape but not in terms of colour, which makes it stand out. In terms of geometry and the lines, I can see that you really studied the urbanscape, but why did you decide to make it white?

GF: White? There are different reasons. The shape and the volume was a kind of restriction. You couldn't change the shape. The tower is based on a master plan of the urban designers. It was in an old, neglected railyard, and they decided to develop a lot of new buildings, towers, and offices. It was for a mixed purpose. One of the volumes was the tower, and there were very strict restrictions—78 metres high, and 28 by 51. The city had an idea to make every tower look bright. They wanted to add some uniformity of colours and materials, and it was very strange because the other tower was black.

SMN: The other towers are very dark, and also there is a lot of brick. White really stands out.
GF: It does, but what we did was to conform to the master plan; the other tower did not. The second thing we did is imagine it would rain all the time. We thought that we should make something very fresh. We wanted people to say it is a fresh tower—and a fresh way to start the morning. The third thing is the idea of the tower being very interesting in terms of light and shadow because we made two skins. The first one is construction, and it is also white, but it is very massive. The second skin is white, but opens and closes. It is the same grade of colours, and it makes the tower look very interesting with the light change when the sun is low. Then, you have that kind of colour and shadows in the tower, and it is always changing. This is because the two skins are in the same colour and in the same material, but you have different depths. In real life, it is much better than in the photo.
 
SMN: When I first saw it like a year ago when the photos started coming out, I was like, "Whoa, that looks terrible!" I do believe in being open-minded, and you can't really judge architecture until you have actually seen it in real life. You have to understand context in real life.

GF: What we wanted to do with the tower was a very important thing. Normally, if you have a high-rise building, then you have a lot of wind and sunlight. It is very hard because you are not protected in a high-rise building. There are no other buildings around you. So we decided to make a connection with the city because we wanted to have an extroverted feel with the tower. Normally, a tower is very introverted because people stay inside because you have too much wind, you have too much sun, and so on. 
 
We wanted to have people outside, and that's why we did this second skin. That's why I encourage residents to go outside and use the terraces and make the tower come alive. This is a very important issue for the tower. My goal is to get people outside and experience all the time-changing in the facade. Now, if you look at the tower in the summertime, it is fantastic because the people are using it, and it is full of people. They even put their bicycles on the terrace.
 
SMN:Who and what styles have influenced you in the way you approach architecture?
GF: First of all, I don't have any style. I try, but I don't have style. Do you think I have a style? If you look at my project, do you see a common style? I don't know.
 
The reason why is because what we do is to not try to make a style or a designed look, but the approach is always the same. This is something else besides style. Like I said in the beginning, we are very pragmatic in the study of the programme and the restrictions, and try to make it valuable. Then, we start always from the place we are designing the building to understand the culture, the materials, and what cultural links there are. We look at everything around us, and then start to make the decisions. This is always what we do. 
 
Of course, it changes from project to project because the culture here, for example, is different from Antwerp or Rome. If I would build something in Australia, then I would do something very connected to the place. Something in the nature is completely different from something you have to build in Melbourne or a city downtown. Even if you are downtown, the building is completely different than when you are building two streets further down because the environment is changing. The problems are changing and the restrictions are different. If you can talk about style in that way, then I have style.
 
I like to work with materials with details, which are very important in the design of our architecture.
 
SMN: It can be slightly controversial for architects to say, "I don't have this style." As you are saying, you have to understand place in the programme to be able to give the building a sense of place, how it fits into the fabric and how people are going to use it.
GF: A sense of place, and to improve life and have an urban environment all around the building. This is important. It is not only what you get inside the building, but also the perception of the outside of the building. It is both, not one or the other.
 
SMN: Are there any things that you are concerned about in architecture on a global level?
GF: What is very important for us is that when we approach every project, we are very concerned with thinking about sustainability, which is for us is not to make a lot of engines and machinery, and in an engineering way to sustain the building, like air-conditioning and heating systems.

The architecture concept of the building solves the sustainability, like how you get in and out of the building, soft lights, the thickness of the walls, the shape of the building, and the different skins of the building. Just to make the building sustainable is the typology that makes the buildings in the past like they are. If you go to Italy in Tuscany, or you go to the South of France, or to an Eskimo village and you see an igloo, or in Australia and see the old primitive buildings—it is a typology because of the climate or the material that you have in that environment. 
 
So we have started to rethink in that way. We use this perception to make building sustainable with the architecture and not only with machinery. This is very important to us. We like to do it with everything.