Ian Ritchie in conversation with Petra Eckhard (GAM Lab, TU Graz) – March 2019

PE: What was this process like when you designed the opera house for The Royal Academy of Music? How did the context analysis finally translate into architectural form?

IR: When we came to design the new opera house for the Royal Academy of Music, we started off studying Cremona musical instruments, such as those of Stradivarius and asked: Why were they so special? What was special about the wood, the forest, the way the trees grew, why some but not others; the varnish or how they [musicians] treated it? A rare preconception – we knew we were going to be using wood. Wood has a wonderful ability to reflect sound, depending on its density and is so alive – one wonders if it actually ever stops moving. I went out to find the best joinery company in Britain, because our office knew nothing about wood. The learning curve was fantastic. When you are designing an opera house it’s all about the voice. The voice is the basis of acoustics. When you start producing a sound with your voice, it comes through the many chambers of your body, it then passes through the vocal cords, through your mouth, your tongue and the final space is the one in which you can hear the sound. For me this auditorium was an extension of the body and I knew that wood is the material of that moment when sound emerges. At the opening night it was a relief, because the sound was sensational. So, we nailed it aesthetically and acoustically. Also, the aesthetic detail geometry of the recital hall and recording space on top of the opera house auditorium came from musical instruments, fairly literally, whether the bow or the tuning end of a violin or a cello. That gave us all the inspiration for designing it. So, the students now have two magical spatial instruments to play with.

PE: Your office is based in London, a global city with a dense, eclectic center with high land prices. Which challenges do you face at the moment?

IR: I think the challenges with London are not its density per se. They are to do with homelessness. That comes from certain political directives, and the numbers of homeless have grown again. I was very surprised to see them on the streets of Graz; I thought Graz was wealthy enough to have the right policies. You can’t stop those who want to live on the street, but the people who end up on the streets due to housing policies I find deeply, deeply hurtful. I think it’s interesting that 90% of the people of this planet are sitting on the ground. Who invented the chair? The Persians. Why they invented it I don’t know, but it’s interesting that the majority of human beings still sit on the ground. When we see someone sitting on the ground in the West, we ask: “Why?” We’ve paved everything and we have invested money; why would you want to sit down there? You get a microcosm of capitalist society in London that’s in your face. It can be quite nasty. A decent society, I think, educates its people, houses its people and looks after them when they are not well or old. A tripod of a civilized society. When all of those become commodities, society is severely undermined: you’re creating an artificial one. Even if you like this form of society, it’s unnatural because it is being forced all the time because everything is for sale.

PE: At the moment the economic impacts of Brexit are a major area of debate. What do you think would be the effects of Brexit on architectural production in the UK?

IR: All I can comment on is that you have already an attitude, amongst many architects, that could be best summed up as: “I want to do a building on every continent.” That strikes me as a very strange ambition. “I am a global architect, because I’ve done it.” If you ask those architects: “How would you adapt to the culture? Would you adapt to the culture?” They wouldn’t know how to reply, because the only way they can do these buildings is through wealthy clients who want to get value out of the project. The brief is affected by needing to extract value, as that value is attained through iconic shape, by putting up more apartments in the tower than anybody else could. So that’s the way it works.

As for Brexit, it’s a sign of insanity. When the EU was set up initially as a common market and as an economic model in 1950s, it created the opportunity to open doors between countries. I thought it was a stepping stone to a more open world, and that Europe with its initial six EU member countries would actually be an extraordinary model for the rest of the world to look at. We all have cultural differences and have been at war with each other for centuries, but somehow, we managed to be intelligent and create cultural exchanges, Erasmus programs—all these things came from the idea of a united Europe, and it doesn’t mean it has to be one homogenous country. If Brittany fell into the Atlantic Ocean, Europe would be a poorer place. You don’t want culture to disappear. The idea that you could bring all of this together as a model for the future of the planet was brilliant. To see the United Kingdom doing what it is doing now is not a United Kingdom decision, it’s an English decision. It’s got nothing to do with Scots. The Scots don’t attack Europe. When you see the risk of a disintegrating Europe, as a model, I get very sad, I have to say. In a way, I’m explaining that architecture is somewhere way down the list when it comes to Brexit.