This interview was conducted with Jean Pierre Crousse via Zoom on April the 5th, 2021 by DaeJane Richardson and Dottie Sloan.

Dottie Sloan: Starting off with education, the first thing we would like to know is why you chose to go to Europe to continue your education over in France? What made you want to hop the pond, as they say?

Jean Pierre Crousse: For me, it was first in Italy. When I finished my degree in Peru, I went to Italy, to the [University of] Milan Polytechnic. I [was] there [for] one and a half years. I came back to Peru, and then with Sandra we went together to Paris. Sandra studied in Paris, while I was working.

I don’t know if it’s the same in the US but in South America there’s a lot of people with European origins, and there’s the idea of going to Europe as a way to find your roots.
At that time, education in Peru was really strange because we were in a deep social economic crisis and even in a political crisis, there was the Shining Path, there were terrorist attacks, and so I decided I should go and see more things. At that time there was no Internet, and we were coming out of an autocratic government in which there were very little imports. So, we didn’t have any books, any architectural magazines, everything [we had] were photocopies of a very poor quality. So, you can imagine, – education was very different from nowadays. The need to see other things was vital it was not [just] curiosity. If you wanted to be an architect, you needed to go and see things for real.

When we arrived there, I felt kind of ignorant in comparison to my fellow students because my education was not so good. We had a very good studio teacher [throughout] all the years [in University], and that was incredible.[1] He’s one of our mentors, but the rest [of our education] was very lousy.

So, arriving there and seeing all these students that knew a lot of things and we didn’t, we decided to create our own architectural knowledge, not by reading books but by going and seeing buildings. I think that was very important in our formation, learning as students, to go and see things and not to read about things, or at least read about things once you have already visited and seen [them] for yourself. And seeing them by drawing them, not by taking photos. And then, there was the other kind of education, that is the education you get from practicing architecture.

DS: I like how you mention, go experience things, that’s very important. I have heard that a few times: you need to go and experience things. It’s one thing to just sit there and read a book, or watch a video of someone else experiencing something, but actually going out and seeing things for yourself, and seeing how things sit within a site, how things have been incorporated over hundreds of years, I think that is important. So it’s nice to hear that again because I need to have that experience.

DaeJane Richardson: And especially now being online.

JPC: You know, in research, in scientific research, they call that primary source and secondary source. A primary source is when you go to the source of knowledge, of the thing you are studying. And a secondary source is when somebody tells you about it via books or lectures, or whatever, or a photograph. In architecture, the primary source is the building, or an interview with the architect, or whatever, but also the building. And the building, as you say Dottie, is an experience of space, of light, of the haptic experience of touching, of feeling. That’s an experience that not very many architects had, prior to the pandemic, and even less with the pandemic. I think it is very important to have this experience because it shapes the way you do architecture. I think that what we started to do with these trips we took to see all the masters, all the ancient architecture, etc., was to start our projects from the inside out. Trying not to first imagine the volume, or the faceades, but to imagine the experience of people inhabiting those buildings.

DR: Going off your comment on how you design, what’s your process when you start a new project? You’ve mentioned the importance of the section and that this really helps you develop how you move through something and to have a unique enriching experience. How do you go about actually starting a project? Do you study the site first, the people that are going to use it, do you think about the use for the project?

JPC: I will tell you first an experience that we had in practice that shaped a lot of what we have done afterwards, as a design process. Our first competition, a professional competition we did in France that we won with a couple of French architects, was the refurbishmentof a museum. It was the Malraux Museum [designed by] a group of architects, Guy Lagneau, the main one, and they worked with Jean Prouvé. It really was a very important building that was created as the first house of culture. It was a new program in the 1950s, that was [later] transformed into a museum, very badly transformed. In the 1990s, 1994, they launched a competition to transform it into a real museum, a Beaux Art museum. We realized that the architect Guy Lagneau was still alive and he wasn’t invited as a jury. We decided to go and see him and show him our project in order that he could give us feedback. After the first meeting, he was very old man, he was 90 years old, he had retired 30 years earlier, or 20 years, at that time, [he told us] he was really not interested. A day later, he called us and he told us that he couldn’t sleep that night thinking about our project, and that we should come back and see him again. Because [the existing building] was an all glass building, we did boxes in this glassed box,.When we went to see him again, he told us that we were doing very badly, that our project was very bad, and that we were destroying his intention as an architect. What we should do is to push forward the ideas that were behind his building, which were transparency, flexibility, and light, etc. We came back and started the project from scratch. We realized that he said, “if you want to have some respect, you don’t have to have respect for the architect, you have to show respect for the architecture. So, don’t come and see me, I am telling you to do that. You should work not for me, you should work for the building.” It was like a huge insight for us on how to do architecture.

From that moment on, we value that more each day: how to work for the building and not for our own obsessions as architects. Because I have my obsessions, formal obsessions, Sandra has hers, and everybody wants to show how good we are in some ways. We set apart all the ego that is[something] very strong in an architect,–we always want to demonstrate how good we are– and we started to ask ourselves questions.

When we do a project, there are no rules. For instance, sometimes, visiting the site is not the first thing we do because we [may] have an idea about the site already, or we know it, or whatever. But the main thing is that we start with a conversation, exchanging ideas, thinking about it. Even when we travel, when we see other buildings, it can ignite things, spark things in our minds. We try to imagine the project in our minds, but without drawing in the first stage until we agree in all the principal ideas. And only when we arrive to an agreement, we start drawing, we may start doing models, and one of us would draw, the other one would make models. Then we talk again and see how the drawings or the models are pushing forwards these ideas, or are questioning these ideas, because questioning is also important; maybe the first ideas are not the good ones. But you should arrive to that conclusion by making, not only thinking. Then, when the first ideas are already drawn in sketches or preliminary models, with the office we start making more precise drawings and then come back [to the preliminary sketches and models]. It is a circular process in which precise models, precise drawings, sketches, preliminary models are constantly compared in order to clarify the ideas that we want to push forward, and [if] these ideas are always in the sense of what is pertinent, that are conveying sense, that are conveying meanings. There’s another thing that we like to do [and that] is conveying more meaning with less matter, with less effort, not effort of working, but visual effort.

DS: Following up on what you brought up about your collaboration, how seamless did that happen? Was there a lot of confusion in the beginning, or did it take a while to get there?

JPC: It is an ongoing process so we’re still figuring it out. The good thing is that it is not a method, it’s a process. A process can change continuously, and of course, we struggle with all the work we do. Creative work is done with some amount of struggle, because you are doing what you don’t know yet. [Struggle] is necessary, it’s a base for our work, because if we don’t struggle, it means that we know already what we are doing, and if we know already what we are doing, we’re not pushing things forward. We want to constantly go to that threshold, where we don’t know yet what we will do, and we don’t really know what we are doing. But the only way to know that is by doing. Architecture is like that; you don’t know until you do it. And it is by doing, and thinking afterwards, that you realize if you are really pushing forward your knowledge on design or not.

So, struggling is essential, because you struggle when there’s no certainty. It’s very important not to have this certainty. And when you arrive to a certain certainty, you have to be very distrustful. You have to not be condescending on what you are doing. You have to challenge everything continuously because there’s a threshold when you start to feel confident on what you’re doing. Not at the beginning, because at the beginning you have to prove to the client that you are good, that you are doing interesting architecture. But when you are more or less recognized as a good architect, that’s a big problem, because the usual thing [to happen] is to enter in a comfort zone where you can do whatever you know already. That would be fine because the clients are expecting what you know already. The challenge is to be young and inexperienced all the time, even if you have much more experience.

DR: So, what you are saying is that it is good to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Don’t be complacent when you are trying to take on another project. It’s always nice to figure out what those innovations could be.

JPC: Yes, absolutely. And that’s vital also as an architect because you are always experimenting. I would say, it would be really boring to do always the things that you know already how to do it. Maybe if it was not our passion, if it was only our job, that would be very nice. But it is not like that.

DR: That was really helpful especially considering that earlier you mentioned it was good to struggle, that if you struggle that means that you are working out of your comfort zone.
Do you and Sandra work together on every single project? Or are there times where you work on an individual project where you only occasionally ask for the other’s opinion?

JPC: No, we do all our projects together, all of them You know, maybe later [in the project]. For instance, in the site work, one takes the lead, in order to go to the site, etc. But the other one comes also every now and then, to see, to have an external opinion, but only in the site work. For the rest [of the project], we do everything together. And, we really don’t recognize any authorship between the two of us. It’s from the both of us, everything. So, it’s not that one project is more Sandra’s, and the other more mine.

DS: That is great, that is fantastic. I love that you are able to collaborate on everything. It is a good skill to have. Just starting off in architecture, a lot of us get thrown into group projects and we have to learn how to balance each other’s ideas, who is going to take on certain elements of a project, how to check on each other to make sure we are staying on track, and how can we design something that shows the ideas of everyone. Finding that balance is the best thing.

JPC: Yes! The clue to that was the project of the museum in France, because from that moment on, you are not working for yourself or both together, we are working for the project. That’s why we can work together, because if Sandra has a good idea, it’s a good idea because it is working for the building, not because Sandra had the idea. And vice versa. In that sense it is a little bit like Louis Kahn’s philosophy. Louis Kahn was constantly saying “what the building wants to be.” It’s kind of that same approach to architecture.

The same happens with our relationship to landscape, because our buildings are recognized for their relationship to landscape, etc., to usages. When in fact it is all the same. Working for the building is also working for the site, and working for [the] people who are going to live, or to work, or whatever in that building. You are working for many clients at a time, and the client is not only the one who pays you; it’s also the one who is going to live or work there, it’s also the landscape which is going to be better with your building, and not worse, and the building itself that will be beautiful and harmonious, etc.

DS: You have mentioned that topography and the land itself is very important. We’ve noticed that you have designed numerous projects along the coast of Peru. When tackling projects that are on flat ground where you can’t necessarily use drastic changes of topography to influence a design. How do you go about tackling a project like that?

JPC: That’s why it is important to design in section because the section is your topography, your own topography. It is the way you bring light from above, it is the way you calculate the scale in relationship to the human being. Being on a flat ground is not a problem if you can understand why it is flat, or what is happening there. Because it’s not only topography. [A site] can be in the middle of the city, but you have to understand the flux of the city, you have to understand the neighbors, the orientation, the sun, the wind. Each one of these things are informing how to do architecture. It’s not only topography.

Also, there is the usage, what is that building meant for. For instance, for a house which is the most personal program that you can do, because then the client is only one, this doesn’t happen in other programs. In an office building you have the client that is the owner, but he is not necessarily the only one who will work there, or maybe he won’t work at all in that building, and he is only the owner. So, there is another client [or clients] who are those who are going to work there. But in a house, the client who pays you and the client who will live in it is the same one. It is an interesting relationship. In those cases, we try to make him not to tell us about the house that he intends to have in the plot that he has bought. Instead we want him to tell us about his ideal house as if there was no topography, no nothing, no city, but what is his ideal house. How he would like to live despite economic constraints, or whatever. Then, we can imagine things that will make the house that he always wanted to have but he never dare to imagine. So, there’s a lot of things that can inform architecture besides topography, that can give meaning to architecture. At the end, everything is like a landscape. The landscape is the landscape of what’s there and what’s there can be physical or non-physical, cultural.

DS: Cultural landscape of the area. I really like how you ask them, what is your ideal place you want to live, not what is your ideal place of where you are going to be located, or these conditions, or whatever, but what do you want, and then you can figure out and incorporate other elements of culture, people, location, everything back into that. I like that way of thinking about things. That helps you reach for the unknown imaginable that some people are restraining themselves on design.

Since you put so much thought and effort and care into each of these projects, do you ever revisit some of your projects later on in time to see how they’ve evolved or to see, especially with more public places, to see what kinds of people occupy the space or how nature has affected these buildings?

JPC: Absolutely, we love to go back to our projects and see [them] with a critical view, it is not complacent, it is critical: what can we improve, what is not working well, and how people are using the things that we thought would be used in a certain way. And [the project] may change radically–the way people use[it], the relationship with the spaces, the usages that we imagined–but if it’s harmonious, it’s OK, we succeeded. Our concern is not keeping, or trying to keep the building as [it was] finished, as we conceived it in the first stage, but that the different usages and the changes of things are harmonious, are embedded, the structure is allowing different usages. That’s the best thing we can do. We can’t pretend architecture not to evolve. But if it evolves in a good sense, if the building allows evolving of usages, it’s a great thing, it’s a success for us.

DS: Have you ever had anything where you intend for a certain space to be used in a way and it just completely is not used in the way you imagined but it still works?

JPC: Yeah! We try to imagine spaces that have no label, but they have some spatial conditions–dimensions, light, ventilation, etc.–that could host many usages. We like to call them [spaces for] undetermined usage. In Peru it is easy because they are very cheap to make because we don’t have to heat them, to air condition them, [nor] to make them air tight. Those free spaces that can open possibilities. We haven’t had a building that has transformed completely its usage, kind of an office building that is [now] a housing building, but partially, yes. That’s good.

DR: You talked earlier about how you approach precedents, to spark ideas and innovation. In a a comparison we made, [we realized] that while Casa Equis is a residential project and Lugar de la Memoria is a public space, they have similar characteristics. Do you allow some of your older projects to inspire new projects? When you tackle a new project with Sandra, do you look at precedents to influence your new projects?

JPC: Now that’s a good question. We never start by [looking at] precedents, we start with these conversations. We never say, “okay let’s do like that building, that Corbusier building, or that typology.” We never start like that, but we end doing what we have seen. You know, architecture is about transformation, and innovation is the way you transform things in a different way, you’re not inventing anything. So, in that sense, what we are doing is trying to recompose things that we have already seen in a different way, in a way that gives sense to the things we are doing in that place, for those conditions, and for those people. That’s why it should be different, because each site, each client, is different, so architecture should not be the same. What we do is, we start with these conversations and when we arrive to conclusions or to a first approach, we start drawing and making models, etc. Then we realize we are doing something that we did already. And we say, “OK, where does it come from?” We start looking at our drawing sketches, or we realize that we were doing the same Equis house in the Place of Remembrance, and other projects also. Or maybe we drew a building in Spain once that is exactly the same, but we never saw it in a book; maybe we visited it 20 years ago and we already forgot about it and it is coming back to the mind through the sketches that we did 20 years ago, because it is already in our brain. All those buildings are already in our brains even if we don’t remember them anymore. That’s the fascinating thing about architecture. You’re thinking that you are doing a brand-new building and you are bringing up an idea that you saw 20 years earlier and you didn’t even notice. But bringing it to consciousness is very important because if you’re not conscious about this building that you were bringing [back] to [your] memory, you would do the same building, or nothing better. But if you are conscious that you are working with that idea, then you can say “Okay, this is okay, this is from this building, there are some things that I don’t like, and how [can we] push this idea forward, how [can we] make it even better.” [By then] you know already what building is your precedent. But for us, can only be done when we already have this idea in an unconscious way, not in a conscious way. We never say, hey, we have to design a school so let’s see all the schools that have been done before [us]. Let’s make a typology of schools. No, we don’t do that. I don’t [want to] say it is not useful for other architects, but we don’t do that.

DR: That’s really helpful, that is a really good insight, because I know, for instance, in studio our teachers will tend to bring up precedents, “oh this kind of reminds me of this building,” and a lot of us tend to try to remake that, but then they normally have different site conditions, other stipulations that doesn’t necessarily fit. That’s a good reminder that it is OK to take something from another building but make it fit the conditions that you are working on.

JPC: Exactly. And you know, the teachers or professors that ask for precedents [it] is because you as students have a little “bagage” [–body of knowledge–] of things that you have seen.[2] It helps you to have all these precedents in your mind. But those precedents are useful only if you are critical, if you think, what is this building doing in this site, and if that idea is pertinent in what I am doing with this other site, with these other people, with this other program. You have to be very critical. The more you visit buildings, the more you measure them, the more you draw them, the more you integrate them in your brain, the easier you are going to recall, consciously or not, those buildings when you design something. And that’s why experience is important. I am not a better architect than I was 30 years ago, I only have more experience. All these things are flight hours [and] are useful not for doing what I know already as a pilot but to have all this luggage, cultural luggage in my brain that [can] pop-up at some stage.

DR: I really like that analogy, that is a really good one.
Our final question for you is, ‘cause you brought up a lot of really good points and tactics that people should try to adopt as far as gaining that experience, but are there any specific points that you would like to give to young architects trying to gain experience? What advice would you give someone that is starting off where you did originally?

JPC: I would say “let’s go and see.” Go and see. And that there’s a continuous learning. You don’t stop learning when you have your degree. You should be aware that society, in general, will consider that you have learned already when you got the degree and you start working. Maybe you will be required to train, but not to learn. And you should be very rigorous in a non-complacent, that you don’t [feel] satisfied [with] yourself. You have to impose on yourself a constant learning. and a constantly learning is through seeing things, thinking about what you’re seeing. And you can think about what you are seeing through drawings, lectures, or books, but you have to see them first. And be patient. Le Corbusier said “it’s a patient search,” so be patient.

Somebody, I don’t know who told me, I think [Enric] Ciriani, told me that an architect doesn’t know what he is doing until he has 40 years old. Of course, I was less than 40 at that time and I didn’t believe him. And I designed the Equis house when I was 40, and that was wow. Suddenly I understood what I wanted to do in the future. Louis Kahn, for instance, I think he was older than 40 but he did the Trenton Bath, the entrance for the pool in Trenton. It was a changing [room] for going to the pool; it was a very little building, very small building. He said that from that moment on, he stopped searching in other architects what he wanted to do, and he started thinking of his own work. And he was 50 years old, something like that. He understood things that would help him develop his own architecture. So, there is a moment when you have that, and you don’t know when that moment is coming. And until that moment, you should be patient and try, and have a lot of fun, and struggle. And that’s it. Nothing is only having fun, and nothing is only struggling. If you struggle 100% it is better not to do architecture. But if you struggle and have fun at the same time, it’s Okay. If you have fun doing architecture, maybe you won’t get anywhere, 100% fun, because you are doing what you already know. It is complex, it depends on each individual, but you should try to be patient, try give sense to what you are doing and that will come.

DS: I didn’t realize we were going to get so many life lessons today, so I appreciate that. That’s awesome!

DR: This is really helpful, especially the having fun part, because I think with being in school, we tend to forget that, so we focus on the struggling and we lose sight of what’s fun about being in architecture a lot, so I really like that. It put a lot of things in perspective for me.

DS: Thas is very true . I think that is all the questions we had. We had a few more but kind of lumped them into other which is fantastic. More of a nice discussion. I greatly appreciate it.

DR: Thank you for taking the time to meet with us. We really appreciate that. It was really helpful.

JPC: No, thank you

DS: Thank you again, this has been awesome.